Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance
(Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht — BSW)
Many of the demands of the SSV and AfD are almost completely compatible. Both advocate rapprochement with Russia, which raises suspicions that they are financed by the Kremlin. However, this has not yet been officially proven. Therefore, both parties, despite a number of differences in their economic programs, can be called political twins, although formally they are in opposite camps of the electoral spectrum. While the AfD takes nationalist and xenophobic positions, the SSV emphasizes its tolerance for various ethnic and religious groups, but the common demand of both parties is to reduce immigration and close Germany's borders.
In the elections 01 September 2024 in two eastern German states – Saxony and Thuringia – right-wing and left-wing populists won, creating an unprecedented and very worrying political situation for supporters of liberal democracy. The left-populist Sahra Wagenknecht Union (SWV), which participated in elections of this level for the first time, won a double-digit number of votes right off the bat, ahead of all the parties in the FRG government coalition. Observers see its impending collapse, but the Social Democrats, the Alliance of the 90s/Greens and the Free Democratic Party are resisting calls to resign early.
The refusal to enter into a coalition with AfD has been voiced by traditional politicians for ten years, but the emergence of Sahra Wagenknecht's party on the horizon has made the formation of other coalitions incredibly difficult. To begin any coalition maneuvers, the SSV sets the main demand: a refusal to supply weapons to Ukraine and the beginning of peace negotiations with Russia. This was the main agenda when the party was formed. Wagenknecht herself is not interested in participating in the work of state governments. She would not like to take on responsibility - simply out of a calculation not to damage the party's reputation before the Bundestag elections in 2025.
The stunning result of the Sahra Wagenknecht Union cannot be ignored. Its leader herself stated that for the first time in German history, a newly formed party has won a double-digit percentage of votes in an election. Although Wagenknecht herself did not stand as a candidate in this election, her charisma undoubtedly helped the party. In addition to criticizing arms supplies to Ukraine, demanding negotiations with Russia and ensuring energy security, the Union scored points thanks to its skeptical position on immigration and support for social guarantees.
In Saxony, the moderates – the CDU, SPD and the Greens – did not have enough mandates in the elections to win a majority in the state parliament and form a cabinet. They will have to enter into a coalition with the Left Party or the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance. The alternative would be a minority government of three moderate parties, but it would be inherently unstable, and its existence would depend on the opposition – AfD and SSV. Under such conditions and with important decisions blocked, governing the land would be extremely difficult.
On 23 October 2023, Sahra Wagenknecht launched the “Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance – Reason and Justice” (BSW), an association which will lead to the creation of a new political party under the same name on 8 January 2024, ahead of the European elections on 8 and 9 June 2024. In a devastating party split, 10 MPs and over one hundred state parliament representatives left the party to join a splinter group led by the Left's most famous figure, Sahra Wagenknecht. Sahra Wagenknecht was born in 1969 in Jena, East Germany, to a German mother and Iranian father. She has founded a party combining conservative social values with socialist economic values.
Despite being only eight months old, the 'Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance' (Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht — BSW), by mid-2024 BSW was polling at around 9% nationally, while the Left Party is at 3%. Germany's new populist party, the BSW, is now seen as a challenge to far-right AfD after it gained over 6% of the vote in recent European Parliament elections. The BSW's platform focused on ending Russia's war in Ukraine.
The main point of difference with the new BSW remains migration — Wagenknecht's party wants more deportations of failed asylum-seekers, more border controls, and more restrictions on immigration. That is diametrically opposite to the Left Party's position, which pointedly chose ecologist and activist Carola Rackete, who once captained migrant rescue ships in the Mediterranean, as its main candidate for the 2024 European Parliament election in June. Though Rackete was elected to the European Parliament, the party took only 2.7% of the German vote — by far its worst-ever European election result.
In her youth, Sahra Wagenknecht was a communist. She grew up in the city of Jena during East Germany's socialist GDR dictatorship and after reunification went on to shape the image of what evolved as the Left Party. From 1991 to 2010, Wagenknecht was a member of the leadership of the Communist Platform (KPF), classified as extreme left-wing by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. This is a grouping of orthodox communist members and sympathizers within the Party. The Left Party’s reformist-dominated steering committee considered the “positive vision of the Stalinist model” publicly defended by Wagenknecht as KPF spokeswoman to be incompatible with the PDS program. Oskar Lafontaine, former Minister-President of Saarland and SPD and future husband of Sahra Wagenknecht, was the first chairman of Die Linke (together with Lothar Bisky). Lafontaine made no secret of the fact that he was closer to Wagenknecht’s ideological positions than to those of the PDS reformers. The resignation from the Party in March 2022 of Oskar Lafontaine, her husband since December 22, 2014, reinforced the hostility of the new Die Linke leadership. On June 10, 2023, Die Linke’s steering committee asked Wagenknecht to resign her Bundestag seat with immediate effect, on the grounds of anti- party activities. She left Die Linke in October 2023 due to the Ukrainian question, given her unconditional support for Russia. Die Linke split, and sh left along with several of her supporters. They founded her party "Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance — Reason and Fairness."
Germany's entire left-wing party spectrum is facing a downward trend and grappling to redefine itself. This applies especially to the opposition Left Party, which is struggling not to fall below the 5% threshold for representation in parliament, but also to the center-left Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and the environmentalist Greens, who form the current federal government together with the neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP).
In the first survey of 2024 conducted by pollster Infratest Dimap, the Left Party, SPD and Greens together garnered only 31% support, which put them on a par with the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party the Christian Social Union CSU. The far-right populist Alternative for Germany (AfD), meanwhile, has seen its support double since the last general election in 2021 to reach 22%.
According to political scientist Werner Patzelt, the main reason for the decline of left-wing parties is that they are perceived not to care enough about the so-called ordinary people. This part of the population, says Patzelt, is struggling at a time of price hikes and lack of affordable housing and has little to do with "woke," left-wing ideas championed by left-wing parties. The term "woke" has entered the German political jargon to describe those who claim a keen awareness of social justice and fight racism. Patzelt says these issues are primarily addressed by the left-wing academic elite. And if this does not change, Patzelt warns, the left should not be surprised "if ordinary people tend to pin their hopes on the right."
Sahra Wagenknecht's new party, however, is not openly hostile towards immigrants. "Immigration and the coexistence of different cultures can be an enrichment," reads her political platform, but it continues: "However, this only applies as long as the influx remains limited to a level that does not overburden our country and its infrastructure and as long as integration is actively promoted and successful."
Wagenknecht considers Germany's long-standing culture of welcoming refugees, initiated in 2015 by then Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU), to be "highly problematic." Not because these people do not deserve a better life, she emphasizes. "But because our country is simply overburdened as a result." Wagenknecht's party's manifesto contains skeptical and cautionary words about migration: "The price for increased competition for affordable housing, low-wage jobs and failed integration is not primarily paid by those who are well off."
Such sentiments remind political scientist Werner Patzelt of the Querfront — a term originating in the Weimar Republic before the far-right nationalists took over: Back then there were attempts at cooperation between the far-right and far-left to unite forces in an effort to gain power. The SPD and Greens have now also made a U-turn on migration policy and want to limit irregular immigration to Germany. At the same time, they are planning cuts in economic and social policy. "Reality is being forced upon these parties," says Patzelt.
He suggests that the SPD and the Greens should learn from governments in Denmark and Sweden. There, it has paid off for social democrats to adopt a restrictive migration policy. Germany's left-wing parties, he believes, should focus on "the little people whose familiar living environments are endangered by globalization and the migration that accompanies globalization, among other things."
The Left Party has strongly committed itself to a policy of open borders. This is symbolized by its lead candidate for the upcoming European Parliament elections, Carola Rackete, a climate and human rights activist who became prominent for her role in helping refugees in distress at sea. Her nomination is not yet paying off in the polls. Far-left splinter parties such as Germany's communist party DKP play no role in the political debate. The DKP, founded in 1968 in the Federal Republic of Germany, has less than 3,000 members whose average age is 60. All parties that position themselves on the left of Germany's political spectrum are likely to face an uphill battle in elections for the European Parliament in June 2024 and elections in three eastern German states in September.
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