The self-described “left conservative” rebel who outperformed her old allies believes Berlin should not support Kyiv amid Russia’s ongoing full-scale invasion and that Germany should be much less open to immigration.
For the German left, the elections in the states of Saxony and Thuringia have been a disaster — except for one months-old party.
The Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) managed to rank third in both states by getting 15.8% and 11.8% of the vote in Thuringia and Saxony respectively.
The success of the eponymous party’s leader was as shocking across Germany as the AFD’s victory in Thuringia.
But that’s not the only parallel drawn between BSW and the far-right party.
Hardliner, populist, or both?
Sahra Wagenknecht spent all her career at the far end of the left.
Born in Jena and growing up in East Berlin, she joined the Free German Youth and the ruling Socialist Unity Party of Germany before she was 20.
After the reunification of Germany, she went on to study philosophy, earning an MA for a thesis on Karl Marx’s interpretation of Hegel, published as a book in 1997.
She then received a doctorate in microeconomics of developed countries, all while pursuing a career in politics. After German leftist parties joined to form Die Linke in 2007, Wagenknecht became one of its most prominent but divisive figures and, eventually, one of its leaders in the Bundestag.
Following a lengthy divorce from Die Linke, resulting in over 50 Die Linke members calling for her expulsion, she formed her own party in January.
Wagenknecht’s split from the leading leftist party in Germany was rooted in her belief that left-wing parties no longer serve the working class, have loosened up too much on migration and have given in excessively to environmental policies — matters she vehemently opposes.
Too cozy with the Kremlin?
Wagenknecht’s economic model supports social spending, high wages, state benefits and state ownership. However, her domestic and foreign policy views radically differ from those of the mainstream left in the country.
In 2017, she called for the dissolution of NATO and a new security agreement that would bring Germany closer to Russia, the country’s biggest gas supplier.
Following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Wagenknecht opposed sanctioning the Kremlin and refused to back sending military aid to Kyiv.
In early 2023, she launched a petition to stop the delivery of weapons to Ukraine and try to bring about a diplomatic resolution to the conflict. Her “Manifesto for Peace” received around 700,000 signatures on the Change.org petition platform in less than a month.
Her stance on Ukraine has been lauded and supported by AfD and other far-right groups.
However, it also embarrassed her ex-party, Die Linke, prompting the resignation of two high-profile party members.
Harsh criticism of Merkel’s migration policies
Wagenknecht has been a vocal opponent of the migrant policies brought forward by former German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
She argued that Germany’s local authorities had neither enough money nor the necessary infrastructure to support them, which would lead to social tension and conflicts.
In 2017, she claimed that Merkel’s policies were partially responsible for the 2016 Islamist attack on Berlin’s Christmas market, which killed 12 people.
She also called for a limit on the number of refugees, a position not seen as highly controversial in Germany and was also expressed by German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier in 2023.
Aiming to explain her views on migration, she published a book called The Self-Righteous (“Die Selbstgerechten”) in 2021, where she argued that the current handling of migration is detrimental to the working class.
The book reached number one on the German domestic non-fiction chart, making her one of the highest-earning MPs in the country.
