Appearance on “Anne Will”
Dispute in the left: This is how MPs position themselves on Wagenknecht’s statements
Different views: Dietmar Bartsch distanced himself from Sahra Wagenknecht’s statements.
© Britta Pedersen // Picture Alliance
The truce on the left is over: After the controversial statements made by Sahra Wagenknecht on “Anne Will”, politicians keep their distance from the former parliamentary group leader.
With her crude theses on the TV show “Anne Will”, Sahra Wagenknecht caused head shakes not only among the other guests of the show around SPD health expert Karl Lauterbach, but also with most TV viewers: inside. Above all, however, their group colleagues are likely to have followed with horror the appearance at which Wagenknecht rejected a vaccination with reference to the lack of solidarity behind it. The parliamentary group leader Dietmar Bartsch distanced himself from Wagenknecht’s statements on Monday morning and called for a vaccination, precisely because this was in solidarity.
Daphne Weber, a member of the Left Party Executive, also called for a vaccination. “To stop the pandemic, as many people as possible have to be vaccinated,” wrote Weber on Twitter. The arduous work of the left would be dismantled by the proven misinformation. “Sahra Wagenknecht has completely lost contact with the party, positions and activists,” Weber said.
Wagenknecht’s comments on Long Covid also caused anger in the party. The 52-year-old accused Karl Lauterbach of throwing alarmist numbers around and said that Long Covid was controversial. Niema Movassat, a former member of the Bundestag and member of the party executive, attacked Wagenknecht for these theories. To contest Long Covid is a “slap in the face of thousands and thousands of people,” wrote Movassat on Twitter. He was ashamed that Wagenknecht made such statements on behalf of his party.
Luigi Pantisano, member of the left state executive in Baden-Württemberg, wrote on Twitter that Wagenknecht would not speak for the party, but would only represent their own opinion. At the same time, he criticized the fact that the two party leaders Janine Wissler and Susanne Hennig-Wellsow are not invited to talk shows.
With Wagenknecht’s appearance, an old dispute in the party breaks out again. In the past weeks and months there had been repeated discussions about and with the former group leader. In April, the 52-year-old published her book “Die Self-Righteous”, in which she accuses her party of alienating the party’s core voters by debating gender and climate change. She also chose the term “lifestyle leftists”, who are more fixated on questions of consumption and morality than on social and political problems. Some members of the Left Party subsequently spoke out in favor of Wagenknecht’s elimination process because they had harmed the left with the book.
Even after the general election, in which the left only managed to get back into parliament thanks to three direct mandates it had won, Wagenknecht again acted as an internal critic. In a “Welt” interview, she accused her party of having strayed from the principles and thereby lost regular voters. Sahra Wagenknecht also showed physical distance from her party. Although she had entered the Bundestag, she stayed away from the left election party in Berlin.
source: World