Die roten Socken, the red socks, have returned. While not quite 1950s McCarthyism, the Christian Democrat red sock campaign warned voters in the early 1990s that the Social Democrats and the Greens could do a deal with the former East German communists of the PDS party and, whoosh, communism would arrive via the back door to a newly united German state. To stop this happening they recommended, of course, voting for the CDU/CSU. A red sock symbolised this threat, and also served as shorthand for ‘left-wingers’ in general. The PDS no longer exists but their follow-on party, Die Linke (the…

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