The crisis on the left is at its peak. Sahra Wagenknecht and her colleagues want to split off. A program for the new party is not yet available, but the political direction is clear.
Sahra Wagenknecht is a complete professional when it comes to attracting the public spotlight. Even before the planned press conference on Monday, at which the left-wing politician wants to comment on her plans for a new party, the PR engine is running at full speed.
In Halle she comments on the project at a book reading. The website for it is already online and appears just in time for the appointment on Monday under the mysterious heading “What is Sahra W. planning?” a detailed interview with Alice Schwarzer in her magazine “Emma”.
Weapons deliveries, migration, organic, gender
The 54-year-old, who has fallen out with the Left Party, does not reveal a party program. But it becomes clear with what content her “Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht” will try to compete with other parties.
In the interview, Schwarzer goes over their favorite topics with Wagenknecht. These are exactly the ones with which she has repeatedly imposed painful debates on the left in recent years, be it in talk shows, with her bestseller “The Self-Righteous” or with the peace demonstration at the Brandenburg Gate organized by her and Schwarzer in February:
– “You don’t end a war with weapons, we need negotiations. Something doesn’t mean something is wrong just because the AfD says it,” says Wagenknecht. She rejected arms deliveries to Ukraine from the start, as well as economic sanctions against Russia – just like the AfD.
– When it comes to migration, Wagenknecht speaks in “Emma” about the infrastructure being overwhelmed, a lack of daycare centers, teachers and housing. It is not the wealthy who suffer. “This doesn’t happen in their neighborhoods.” There needs to be talk about limiting immigration. “It was huge stupidity to leave this to the AfD for years.”
– She rejects gender (“But I don’t believe that the situation of women depends on gender”). She accuses the Greens, SPD and “leading parts of the left” of “thinking in their own bubble” and “indifference towards those who have to do the math.” Every person should live as they please, eat vegan, buy things at the health food store, ride a cargo bike, but no one should think of themselves as a better person because of that.
They are all well-known Wagenknecht positions. She tries to distance herself from the AfD in economic and social policy and accuses it of standing for more privatization and a dismantling of the welfare state. In addition, “the West’s shared responsibility” for the situation in the countries of origin of refugees is not an issue for the AfD, “instead, racist resentments are being served.”
Club as a precursor to a party
How does it go from here? On Monday, Wagenknecht and his colleagues want to present the recently founded association “BSW – For Reason and Justice” in Berlin. This is considered a preliminary step to founding your own party.
The association’s statutes, which are available to the German Press Agency, state that it does not aim to take part in state elections with its own candidates, but can support the activities or establishment of political parties “and also through the use of the association’s material resources support financially”.
Wagenknecht wants to fill the “vacancy”.
In his own words, Wagenknecht wants to fill a political void with her project. “I feel that there are a lot of people who no longer feel represented by any party,” she said on Thursday evening at a reading in Halle/Saale. It’s time to create something new. “At some point I didn’t want to have to say: There was a window of time when you could have changed something and you didn’t do it.”
Party founded in January?
It is unclear how many members of the Left follow Wagenknecht and who will support the party. “Of course, all full-time mayors and all district administrators will remain on the left. The governments in which we bear responsibility will remain stable,” said the chairman of the left-wing faction in the Bundestag, Dietmar Bartsch, on Deutschlandfunk.
The “taz” quoted Sascha Wagner, the co-state leader of the Left in North Rhine-Westphalia, as saying: “We are fighting to ensure that as many people as possible stay in the party and, as the state executive, we are campaigning for this in all district associations.”
Bartsch assumes that the actual Wagenknecht party will not be founded until January. He called the plans “wrong and irresponsible, because at the end of the day conservative and right-wing forces in particular will clap.”
But he doesn’t just see responsibility for the spin-off at Wagenknecht: “It’s like a marriage failing,” he said. It is never just one side that is responsible. “Just as I find it completely wrong that Sahra Wagenknecht postulates that only the left does something wrong, it is also just as wrong when others say that only Sahra Wagenknecht made mistakes.”