Sahra Wagenknecht speaks like a pianist playing the keys, knowing in advance which music will please the audience in front of her the most. The leader of the young BSW party (Bündnis Sarah Wagenknecht or Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht) gives a speech in the centre of the Saxon city of Chemnitz, called Karl-Marx Stadt by the German Democratic Republic, the defunct socialist Germany.
A few days before the regional elections in the states of Saxony and Thuringia, during which the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) threatens to strike a new blow, Wagenknecht delivers an effective speech in front of nearly a thousand people on the main themes with which he wants to lead his party to enter with force into the two regional parliaments of East Germany.
Each sentence, a slogan: “In Ukraine, young men die every day on both sides of the front”; “Not only did Putin start an illegal war, but the Americans have also illegally attacked seven countries in the last 30 years”; “with sanctions against Russia, we are not harming Putin, we are harming our economy”; “we want diplomacy and more arms deliveries”; “there are politicians who are trying to teach us what to say, what to think, what to eat”; “Two years ago, I said that we have the stupidest government in Europe and since then it has not become any smarter”; “It is not possible that in our country there are people dying at the hands of people who should not be here.”
BSW’s election manifesto, which addresses what has long been called the “red party” in Spain, is four pages long and polls show it as the third force in both states, far ahead of Scholz’s Social Democratic Party.
Wagenknecht has read the anti-elitist and populist moment that is being felt in large sectors of German society. With a war in the heart of the European continent, less than 1,000 kilometers from the German border, an economy on the verge of recession, inflation affecting a working class already impoverished before the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and prospects that do not particularly inspire optimism about the future, the former deputy of the post-communist Die Linke and former leader of the Communist Platform – a Marxist-Leninist guild existing within Die Linke – has understood that a simple, direct and partly simplifying message of the problems that Germany is experiencing is the perfect formula for electoral success, at least in the short term.
The great asset is the same figure of Wagenknecht who, with an aura of messianic leader, a strong attraction in the traditional media and a constant and effective strategy on social networks, gives meaning and also the name to a party officially founded last January and whose presence in the next federal parliament is assured by all the polls.
After becoming an uncomfortable voice for years within his former party, Wagenknecht knew how to wait for the precise moment to launch BSW with the necessary time to enter the institutions, but without the pressure to give more details about his political proposal. The main weapon of the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance is Sahra Wagenknecht herself.
The Lost Republics
The discourse and political offer of BSW resemble an invitation to return to the past: to the West, to the golden decades of the 1970s and 1980s of the Western Federal Republic, its economic miracle and its commitment to détente with the Soviet Union through trade; to the East, to the feeling of security offered by the real socialism of the GDR, a nostalgia for the lost republic called “ostalgie” in German.
Even though Wagenknecht does not advocate the division of the two Germanys in Chemnitz, he does slip in references to the history of the GDR that touch the emotional and identity fiber of the East German population: “Those who lived through the final phase of the GDR have already experienced How From there, they achieve nothing, they have no vision or plan, they have realized that something urgently needs to change.” Wagenknecht draws a historical parallel between that time and today: the era of change that was announced at the end of the 1980s in the GDR is similar to what is felt today in reunified Germany, he says.
Grita, 62, is one of the participants in Sahra Wagenknecht’s election. The sign he came with stands out above the heads of the audience: “Kriegstreiber NATO” (“NATO, warmonger”). “I spent my childhood in the GDR, I was socialized in the GDR and, with all the mistakes that were made, I think that they should have been revised after 1989 and that the GDR should never have been abandoned,” he says. “From today’s perspective, I know that without the GDR, we would certainly have had a war again. Thanks to its pacifist foreign policy, the GDR avoided that.”
Among the audience, the presence of elderly people stands out, especially those of retirement age. “After 40 years of contributions and after raising three children, as well as my granddaughter, I still have a pension of 800 euros,” says Conny, visibly moved by the speech she has just heard from Sahra Wagenknecht. “He says things that I feel too, especially about migration. It is not possible that we have criminals, who should not be here and who do not respect our rules,” explains this pensioner who admits that he has to continue working to make ends meet.
Among the participants there are also some immigrants or Germans of foreign origin. Antonio is one of them, a Nicaraguan mechanical engineer who arrived in the GDR before the fall of the wall and has lived and worked in Germany for more than three decades: “The standard of living has dropped a lot. And migration and crime have increased. I hope this party will bring about changes. And if not, I will not choose it again.
Before betting on the BSW, Antonio voted for the Greens and the Social Democrats of the SPD. Something that is no longer considered “never again”. Asked about the “uncontrolled immigration” that his current political option denounces, he replies: “In the GDR there were Cubans, Algerians, there were also immigrants, maybe even more than today. But in the previous system there were no social benefits. Today there are social benefits. These people come here, receive money and do not adapt to the country’s standards. And the current government does nothing,” denounces the Nicaraguan immigrant. Meanwhile, in the background, the public address system of the poll invites participants to approach the stage to get a selfie with the chief.
Four pages of program
The election program is divided into four major blocks that shape Wagenknecht’s election discourse in Chemnitz: economic sense, social justice, peace and freedom. The program combines the commitment to the redistribution of wealth with the defense of the social market economy, the traditional model of the founders of the Federal Republic of Germany. That is, capitalism with state corrections and support for medium-sized family businesses with regional implantation.
His economic program is actually more in line with the social-democratic discourse of the last century – and even with a conservative party with social sensibilities – than with a communist or Marxist-Leninist party, an ideology in which Wagenknecht’s political roots lie. This economic policy, which could have come decades ago from the social democrats of the SPD or the Christian democrats of the CDU, is today peppered with proposals unacceptable to the considered political center of Germany: negotiations with Putin, an end to sanctions against Russia, the revival of Russian gas and oil, which for years allowed German industry to produce competitively in an economy heavily dependent on exports.
With the “peace” bloc, the same thing happens: the BSW is recovering concepts from the last century marked by a Cold War that Sahra Wagenknecht herself experienced as a young citizen of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). “Our foreign policy is in the tradition of Chancellor Willy Brandt and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, who opposed the logic of the Cold War with a policy of détente, balance of interests and international cooperation. “We fundamentally reject the solution of conflicts by military means,” reads a program that reads current geopolitics from the perspective of the 20th century.
Wagenknecht knows that weariness with the war in Ukraine and its consequences is growing among the German population, especially in the east of the country, whose economy is more dependent on trade with Russia and whose population views the people and culture of the Eurasian giant with greater sympathy and empathy for cultural, historical and geographical reasons.
The final bloc, that of “freedom,” is a mix between positions that a liberal-conservative party like the FDP might represent: a latent rejection of immigration, which BSW sees as “uncontrolled,” and an explicit rejection of “cancel culture” and the “narrowing” of freedom of opinion, a narrative also cultivated by the far-right AfD.
