Sahra Wagenknecht: The Party Crasher

The Washington Post just published a piece on Russia's efforts to orchestrate a "peace movement" in Germany which features Sahra Wagenknecht - Germany's most famous left-wing politician - who is considering forming a new political party.  The piece began with a scene from several weeks ago.  Wagenknecht had summoned thousands of her admirers to Berlin for a massive "peace" demonstration where she spoke out against NATO and the coalition government of Olaf Scholz for their military support of Ukraine.  

"When 13,000 demonstrators gathered at the Brandenburg Gate on Feb. 25 to call for an end to weapons supplies to Ukraine, the protest was led by Sahra Wagenknecht, a member of parliament for Germany’s far-left Die Linke party and a firebrand with national ambitions. Wagenknecht decried the prospect that German tanks, soon to be delivered to Ukraine, could once again be used to shoot at “Russian women and men.”“We don’t want Germany to be drawn deeper into this war,” she said, as she called for the creation of a new peace movement and condemned the bloodshed in Ukraine, without mentioning Russia’s invasion."

But it wasn't just Wagenknecht's traditional left-wing supporters who enthusiastically cheered her message of 'peace'.  Also in the audience were neo-Nazis and supporters of the far-right AfD party:

"Among the crowd in Berlin was Jürgen Elsässer, editor of a far-right-wing magazine, and dozens of members of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party who cheered Wagenknecht’s calls to cut off Ukraine. Elsässer’s Compact magazine had recently declared on its cover that Wagenknecht was: “The best chancellor — a candidate for the left and the right.”"

There is a tradition in Germany dating back to the Weimar Republic of far-right and left-wing dissidents joining forces in a Querfront ("Cross-Front") in order to fight against democracy and capitalism in favor of some sort of ne0-fascist authoritarian order. The Querfront of the Weimar Republic was eventually subsumed into the national- socialist NSDAP, which used a combination of populist economics and hyper-nationalism to attract working class voters. What a new Querfront-party led by Sahra Wagenknecht would look like an stand for is unclear, but initial polling indicates it could conceivably attract up to 20% of the electorate - and potentially much more in eastern Germany, where Sahra enjoys strong support.

Last week Der Spiegel published a profile of Sahra Wagenknecht and outlined what a Wagenknecht-Querfront political party might look like:

"Wenn alles gut für sie läuft, will Sahra Wagenknecht Ende des Jahres eine eigene Partei gründen und möglicherweise das erste Mal bei der Europawahl 2024 für sie antreten. Die Partei soll Wähler einsammeln, die sich nicht mehr gehört fühlen: nicht von den Linken oder den Grünen, nicht von der Union oder der SPD, Leute, die gegen die Fokussierung auf das Gendern sind und für die Enteignung von Wohnungskonzernen, gegen die Waffenlieferungen an die Ukraine und eine offene Flüchtlingspolitik, für flächendeckende Tarifverträge und eine liberale Coronapolitik. Es wäre eine Partei jenseits der alten Milieus, von der der Politikwissenschaftler Benjamin Höhne sagt, sie »würde den Nationalstaat als entscheidenden Raum betonen, um soziale Gerechtigkeit durchzusetzen«, politisches Neuland also,"

 

(If everything goes well for her, Sahra Wagenknecht wants to establich her own party at the end of the year and possibly stand as candidate for the first time in the 2024 European elections. The party should attract voters who no longer feel heard: not from the Left or the Greens, not from the Union or the SPD, people who are against the focus on gender and for the expropriation of housing groups, against the arms deliveries Ukraine and an open refugee policy, for nationwide collective agreements and a liberal corona policy. It would be a party beyond the old milieus, of which the political scientist Benjamin Höhne says it "would emphasize the nation-state as a decisive area for enforcing social justice", in other words new political territory.

One aspect of Sahra Wagenknecht was mostly left out of the Spiegel profile: her animosity towards America (and NATO).  For Wagenknecht and her followers on the left and right, Germany is a vassal state of the United States.  In her view, in terms of culture and values, Germany has much more in common with Russia.  Putin and the strategists in the Kremlin see an opening here:

"In early July, Putin declared that “even in the countries that are still satellites of the United States, there is a growing understanding that their ruling elites’ blind obedience to their overlord, as a rule, does not necessarily coincide with their national interests, and most often simply and even radically contradicts them.”

If Sahra Wagenknecht does follow through with her idea of establishing a new Querfront party it could become overnight the largest opposition force in the Bundestag - surpassing the AfD and the Left Party (Die Linke). How this would impact Germany's position in NATO and its strategic alliance with the United States is unknown