THIS IS A PRETTY INTERESTING TURN OF EVENTS IN GERMAN POLITICS. THIS GIRL IS JUST OUT OF HIGH SCHOOL.
By Erik Kirschbaum
BERLIN, Aug 28 Reuters - A young German politician, whose bold anti-Nazi protests on a T-shirt and cover-girl looks have made her an instant national celebrity, has become one of the new Left party’s strongest election campaign weapons.
Though only 19, Julia Bonk already has a year’s experience in a regional assembly, where she began her career in style by wearing a shirt bearing the slogan ``Live better without Nazis’’ to greet the far-right NPD.
Pictures of her in her shirt stole the show from the NPD on their first day in the Saxony assembly, landed her on the front pages of 87 German newspapers and won her wide applause.
Her stunt also gave a voice to assembly members shaken by the far-right’s surge to 9.2 per cent in that 2004 vote, and she helped galvanise opposition to the NPD - who she hopes will be knocked back down in the September 18 national election.
``I thought a lot of other deputies were going to take part in the protest and was a bit surprised that in the end I was the only one,’’ she told said at a congress to endorse the Left party’s election manifesto.
``We wanted to make a statement that they were not just another party coming in but an anti-democratic party,’’ said Bonk, who became the youngest state parliamentarian in German history, 
having left school just three months earlier.
The Left party is a month-old merger of the reform communist Party of Democratic Socialism, for whom Bonk stood in Saxony, and left-wing defectors from Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s Social Democrats (SPD).
It hopes that even though she isn’t standing herself for the national parliament, Bonk will win over young voters, especially in the pivotal eastern battleground, and win back thousands whose protest votes helped the NPD in Saxony last year.
The far-right has to be tackled head on,'' she said. Articulate arguments, abundant confidence and an ability to advocate her party's policies belie her age and helped make Bonk a regular guest on a number of heavyweight political talk shows. It’s right and also important that the leftist forces in Germany are coming together now,’’ she said. She is studying history and political science at the University of Dresden alongside her full-time state assembly job.
It's an exciting time for the left in Germany ... When two separate worlds come together there are some areas where not everything matches up the way it should,'' she said. Nicknamed Red Julia’’ by German tabloids and called Socialism's prettiest face'' by the communist Neues Deutschland’’ daily, she got swept into one summer storm between the PDS and west German leftists who fused to make her party.
She was with ex-SPD chairman Oskar Lafontaine at a rally when he used a loaded term for foreign workers (Fremdarbeiter'') that is widely shunned because it was used by the Nazis. Bonk and many others in all parties accused Lafontaine of fishing for far-right voters. He denied this and even apologised to the Left party congress on Saturday for misunderstandings’’.
I was there in Chemnitz with him and I told him I found his word choice not good,'' she said. It was not only the word but the idea that the Left doesn’t exploit foreigners as an election issue. We had a discussion. I think he understands now.’’
Bonk has had communication problems herself. Last year she said drugs should be decriminalised, creating an uproar that only abated after her party noted it was part of their platform.
She has no plans to move to a national stage and wants to earn her degree, even if it is strange listening to lectures on political theories when she’s working in its real world.
It's funny that a lot of people expect politicians to know the answers to everything,'' she said. It’s not the case.’’