The designated AfD candidate for chancellor met the BSW founder on television. It was a rather harmonious show, but only one of the two women scored points.
Only about ten minutes had passed when Alice Weidel said a sentence that summed up the program, which was advertised as a “duel,” quite precisely: “Ms. Wagenknecht is absolutely right.” Because the chairmen of the AfD and BSW agreed on a lot this Wednesday evening, whether when considering energy policy, migration or the war in Ukraine.
Of course, of course, the two women’s views differ here and there, which Sahra Wagenknecht in particular points out again and again. She is clearly trying to defend the “Peace Party” copyright and torments Weidel with Björn Höcke for quite a while. But when the debate comes to an end after an hour, the question arises, as in the finale of the film “Casablanca”: Is this the beginning of a wonderful friendship?
But from the beginning. It is 6 p.m. when the two combatants present themselves in the Berlin studio of Welt TV in their traditional professional uniform: Wagenknecht appeared in a costume, Weidel in a suit, both with their hair neatly pinned up. Her appearance is decidedly civil and her tone is authoritative. And there is a lot of smiling.
Wagenknecht says: “I think Ms. Weidel represents conservative positions.”
Weidel says: “I think it’s very good that Ms. Wagenknecht sees the matter in a very differentiated way.”
Wagenknecht says: “I am someone who is committed to dealing fairly with the AfD.”
At times it seems like a joint rally
When the moderator – World TV editor-in-chief Jan Philipp Burghard – asks Wagenknecht what the alternative to Israel’s war of self-defense is, both women shout in unison: “Negotiate!” It almost seems as if they were organizing a joint rally.
The fact that Welt TV invited the two women this evening is probably mainly due to the prequel from April. The speech duel between the right-wing extremist Thuringian AfD state leader Höcke and his CDU opponent Mario Voigt set a viewership record for the small station.
With “Wagenknecht contra Weidel” this ratings success is now to be repeated – although in this constellation not only is the extremism of the AfD given space, but the political center is also left out. Because as different as the two women may be, they are very similar in their radical populism.
Different paths to power
Looking back, it seems as if they had approached this moment on different biographical paths and from different political directions. Wagenknecht spent the first two decades of her life in the GDR, whose downfall she publicly regretted. As a self-declared communist, she rejected the capitalist system of the Federal Republic. Even though she sometimes held high positions in the PDS and later in the Left Party, she always remained an outsider. The result was the founding of her own party, which she even gave her name to.
Weidel’s biography was the opposite. She, who was born ten years after Wagenknecht in North Rhine-Westphalia, took advantage of the advantages of Western democracy: high school diploma, economics degree, analyst at Goldman Sachs, state scholarship abroad, management consultant.
She entered politics in her mid-30s when she joined the newly founded AfD. It only took her two years to be elected to the federal executive board and another two years to become the head of the parliamentary group. She has stayed there ever since, also took over the party chairmanship and is now the clear number one in the party as the designated candidate for chancellor for the federal election.
But the parallels between the two women are just as evident. Both had to assert themselves in a male-dominated political world. And both have experienced exclusion, albeit for different reasons. While Wagenknecht already felt alienated in the GDR because of her Iranian father, whom she barely got to know, Weidel lives with a Swiss woman from Sri Lanka while she leads a German nationalist and latently homophobic party.
And: Both show little interest in creative power, but rather engage in fundamental opposition. Their rhetoric is equally radical, and the quotes sometimes seem interchangeable. Both simultaneously complain about the “de-industrialization of Germany” or speak of “loss of control during migration.” It’s hard to tell who is talking about the “stupidest government” or who is accusing the Chancellor of “destroying wealth.”
The stirrup holder accusation
The politicians’ formulations are also the same on Welt TV. Both criticize “green politics” and flounder in sync when she asks Burghard whether they took part in a memorial event for the victims of the Hamas massacre this week. “I reflected on my Jewish friends,” says Weidel.
The apparent harmony is of course a danger for Wagenknecht, whose BSW is currently negotiating coalitions against the AfD with the CDU and SPD in Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg. “We are the alternative to the alternative,” the party leader declared during the election campaign.
That’s why Wagenknecht repeatedly attacks Weidel specifically. The fact that the AfD chairwoman described her alliance as “useful idiots” and “stirrups” of the “old parties” was probably a disgrace, she said. She also believes it is “irresponsible” to stir up resentment and frighten well-integrated immigrants with calls for millions of “remigration.” And when she read the books by Höcke, whom Weidel himself once wanted to throw out of the party, she felt “sick”.
The AfD chairwoman’s reaction to this was defensive and even unsettling. She relativizes her attacks on Wagenknecht as “exaggerated language in the election campaign” and, with regard to the Thuringian AfD leader, says that the BSW is also “sitting in a glass house”, without, however, elaborating on this. At some point she complains: “It’s not Mr. Höcke standing here, it’s me.” It only occurs late that she can annoy Wagenknecht with her communist past.
“I’m not a communist!”
The BSW chairwoman, on the other hand, is once again sending her familiar message: If Weidel separated from the right-wing extremist wing, she would no longer have a problem working with the AfD. It is, she says, “a tragedy” that there are already parliamentary majorities in East Germany that want “a different policy” – but unfortunately that didn’t work because there are people like Höcke in the state parliaments.
In doing so, the BSW boss simply turns Weidel’s stirrup accusation around: the AfD is to blame for the fact that her party has to talk to the SPD and CDU about governments. This point also goes to Wagenknecht.
At this point, the moderator is just busy working through his script, although the two politicians, as throughout the entire program, don’t say anything that they haven’t already said many times.
At least the audience gets confirmation of what Wagenknecht no longer wants to be: “I’m not a communist!”