There is an election coming up in Germany, and both the Free Democrats and die Linke are polling at under 5%, which means they’re out. The BSW is seen as Left Populist, with a lot of focus being put on their position on immigration. This article i.e. mine, starts with a look at an interview she conducted in the NLR in the spring of 2024 before the European Parliament elections.
On my diigo, I wrote as the description,
An interview with Sahra Wagenknect, held in the spring of 2024; after the split with Die Linke but before the European Parliament elections in which they won 6 seats. I have made a number of annotations. She ain’t Oswald Mosely. Much of the first part of the interview, which I did not annotate, discusses the neo-liberal capture of Germany’s Overton window and parties, and she blames the Schroeder government for its implementation as state policy, but she argues that the populism with the CDU has also been driven out. Despite location of the analysis within the context of Germany, much of her criticism we i.e. Britons would recognise but her identification of past generations social forces as anti-neoliberal maybe uniquely German. (Not really, she does talk about the British unions in the 70’s and the Miners’ strike bit there are differences.) Also her identification of the intergenerational divorce from poverty and hardship is recognisable in much of Europe.
The following list, is my annotations from diigo
- … the spd has completely lost its old personality and has now become a kind of war party. What is frightening is that there is so little opposition within the party.
- The AfD has won support on three issues: first, migration—that is, the number of asylum seekers in Germany; second, the lockdowns during the pandemic; and third, the war in Ukraine.
- Die Linke itself had changed. It now wants to be greener than the Greens and copies their model. Identity politics predominates and social issues have been pushed to one side.
- … voters who want decent pensions, decent wages and, of course, equal rights. We are in favour of everyone being able to live and love as they wish
- in my book, Die Selbstgerechten, as ‘conservative-left’, other words: socially and politically, we are on the left, but in social-cultural terms, we want to meet people where they are—not proselytize to them about things they reject.
- Aufstehen achieved an overwhelming response when it was founded, with well over 170,000 interested people. The expectations were huge. My biggest mistake back then was that I didn’t prepare for it properly. I was under the illusion that the structures would form once we got started;
- Like Podemos and Syriza? Certainly, possibly Podemos. DFL
- … [The Party] has four key planks. The first is a policy of economic common sense. … a sensible energy policy, a sensible industrial policy, that is the first priority.
- For years now, Germany has had a very low investment ratio, because a lot of money is paid out, due to the pressure of global financial groups. As a proportion, Mittelstand companies invest significantly more.
- The second plank is social justice. … A strong welfare state is vital. … The German health service is under tremendous strain. You can wait months before you even get to see a specialist.
- The third plank is peace.
- The fourth plank is freedom of expression. … Our general goal is to catalyse a fresh political start and ensure that discontent does not carry on drifting to the right, as it has done in recent years.
- We will put it to the voters that the eu’s democratic member states should be principally responsible for dealing with the problems of Europe’s societies and economies, rather than the Brussels bureaucracy and juristocracy. I say, but have they thought about Citizen’s Assemblies.
- Conservatism at the time meant protection of society from the maelstrom of capitalist progress, as opposed to adjusting society to the needs of capitalism, as in neo-liberal (pseudo-)conservatism.
- .. we believe we are entitled to consider ourselves the legitimate heirs of both the ‘domesticated capitalism’ of post-war conservatism and the social-democratic progressivism, domestic as well as foreign, of the era of Brandt, Kreisky and Palme, applied to the changed political circumstances of our time.
On the destruction of the accountability of other Party Politicians
- … we would be on the same wavelength as any left-wing party that was strongly oriented towards social justice but not caught up in identitarian discourse.
- A new, university-educated, professional class has expanded massively over the last thirty years, relatively unscathed by neoliberalism because it has a good income and rising asset wealth, and doesn’t necessarily depend upon the welfare state. Young people who have grown up inside this milieu have never known social fear or hardship, because they were protected from the outset. This is now the main milieu of the Greens,
- … we are dealing here with a strong and growing social milieu, one that plays a leading role in shaping public opinion. It’s predominant in the media, in politics, in the big cities where opinions are formed. These are not the owners of big companies—that’s a different layer. But it’s a powerful influence and it shapes the players in all political parties.
- The parties used to be broad-based, genuine people’s parties—the C DUthrough the churches, the SPD through the trade unions. That’s all gone now. The parties are much smaller and their candidates are recruited from a narrower base, usually the university-educated middle class. Often their experience is limited to the lecture hall, the think tank, the plenary chamber. They become deputies without ever having experienced the world beyond professional political life. I say, it would seem equally true in the UK, and arguably Macron is another example of this.
On her inspirations,
- Rosa Luxemburg has always been an important figure for me, her letters, in particular; I could identify with her. Thomas Mann, of course, certainly influenced and impressed me. When I was young, the writer and playwright Peter Hacks was an important intellectual interlocutor. Marx used to be a major influence on me and I still find his analyses of capitalist crises and property relations very useful.
- I’m interested in exploring third options, between private property and state ownership—foundations or stewardships, for example, that prevent a firm from being plundered by shareholders; points I discussed in Prosperity without Greed.
- We need a different economic system that puts people at the centre, not profit.
Elsewhere
- Within the interview when asked about [German] coalitions, she replies, “As to coalitions, let’s not share the bear’s fur before it is killed, as we say.” I doubt that a Green would say this, it reminds me of Borat talking about Bear hunting at an animal rights demo in London
The European Parliament
There was an election for the European Parliament in June 2024 and the BSW won six MEPs. They sought to create a new Left group in the European Parliament but failed, and they now sit as unattached MEPS. I wonder whether the half-split in the Left in the European Parliament, was a factor; from my reading, BSW would have expected Die Linke to go with the European Left Alliance, which might have made BSW more comfortable in the Party of the European Left.
While it’s very easy to suggest that BSW is occupying the same space as the Communists and some parts of the Workers’ Party in the UK, a study of BSW’s words suggests there’s much more to them than that.