Germany’s Left Party leader Jan van Aken has sparked controversy after suggesting that politically left-wing crimes can be justified if they serve the public good, whereas right-wing crimes cannot.
In an interview with Swiss newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ), Van Aken defended his own past breach of secrecy laws, arguing that “sometimes you have to cross borders to protect the general public.”
Van Aken was questioned about his role in leaking confidential government documents in 2016 related to the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations between the United States and the European Commission. At the time, as a member of the Bundestag, he smuggled a hidden camera into a classified reading room, filmed the documents, and handed them over to Greenpeace. The disclosure helped turn public opinion against TTIP, which was later abandoned.
With the offenses now statute-barred, meaning time has run out for legal proceedings to be brought, van Aken openly admitted to his actions, defending them as necessary to prevent what he saw as a threat to consumer protection and workers’ rights. When asked whether a right-wing politician, such as a member of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, should also be allowed to break the law for reasons of conscience, van Aken firmly rejected the idea.
“Anyone who excludes others and steps down does not serve the common good,” he stated, implying that left-wing offenses could be morally justified while right-wing ones could not. When pressed on whether criminal law applies differently to leftists and right-wingers, he insisted, “The law applies equally to everyone. Only sometimes you have to cross borders to protect the general public.”
Beyond his stance on political crimes, van Aken also weighed in on Germany’s immigration policies, arguing that the arrival of over two million refugees in the past decade is entirely manageable if municipalities receive adequate funding.
“Germany has already taken in more than one million refugees twice. Certainly, there were also problems, but the core issue is underfunded municipalities,” he said.
He also made controversial remarks about billionaires, calling them a “danger to democracy” and claiming that no one earns immense wealth fairly.
“No one works so hard or is so smart that he would have earned a million an hour. They only have the money because they have taken it away from others — either by paying wages that were too low or charging prices that were too high,” van Aken stated.
Additionally, he accused Elon Musk of buying X to help bring right-wing parties to power, adding to a long-running debate about the influence of billionaires in politics. He didn’t, however, make any reference to billionaires like George Soros who have spent a considerable amount of their wealth on funding left-wing NGOs and left-wing parties across the Western world under the guise of “defending democracy.”