05.09.2024

Government parties rejected

Alternative für Deutschland was the clear winner in state elections and the establishment has been rattled. But what to make of former ‘official communist’ Sahra Wagenknecht and her BSW? Carla Roberts investigates

Regional elections in the east German states of Saxony and Thuringia on September 1 have gone about as badly for the governing parties as they had feared. It is telling that chancellor Olaf Scholz expressed “relief” that his own Social Democratic Party “held it together”.

It is all a question of perspective, clearly, considering that the SPD polled a derisory 7.3% in Saxony and 6.1% in Thuringia - which is admittedly down only marginally from the last elections in 2019. In fact, all three government parties got a smacking, with the Greens at 5.1% and 3.2% respectively (down around 2% in both states), with the Free Democrats losing 4% in both regions, getting barely1% of the electorate to vote for them.¹

The rightwing Alternative für Deutschland is the clear winner, coming a convincing first in Thuringia with 32.8% (up 9.4%), with the conservative Christian Democratic Union in second place (23.6%). In Saxony, the AfD finished a close second with 30.6% (up 3.1%), just behind the 31.9% polled by the Christian Democrats.

Nationally the picture is not quite as dramatic. A recent poll has the CDU on 32%, SPD and AfD on 16%, the Greens on 12%, BSW on 7%, FDP at 5% and Die Linke on 3%.² Nonetheless, the success of the two ‘fringe parties’, the AfD and BSW, might change the picture in the run-up to the national parliamentary elections in September 2025 and certainly in time for the September 22 regional elections in the east German state of Brandenburg. The 74% turnout showed that people really wanted to ‘stick it’ to the extremely unpopular ruling coalition parties.

Wagenknecht

Before we turn to the character of the AfD, let us take a look at the new party on the block. The BSW, whose full title is Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht - Vernunft und Gerechtitgkeit (‘Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance - Reason and Justice’). As the name suggests, it is entirely focused on the rhetorically talented Wagenknecht.

As an ‘Ossie’, the former leader of the Kommunistische Plattform within Die Linke is particularly popular in eastern Germany. It was no surprise really that she had become frustrated by the failure of Die Linke to make any political headway. It was constantly being outmanoeuvred by the right in the shape of the AfD. In October 2023, Wagenknecht and eight other Die Linke MPs resigned their membership, forming instead the BSW parliamentary group.

BSW polled 11.8% in Saxony and 15.8% in Thuringia, reducing Die Linke to 4.5% in Saxony (down 5.9%). In Thuringia, Die Linke polled 13.1%, which sounds a lot. Until you know that in 2019, it was the strongest party with over 31% of the vote. The ‘realo’ Linke politician, Bodo Ramelow, had been leading the regional government in coalition with the SPD and - while he is personally quite popular in Germany, with half the national electorate recently declaring that they would “vote for him if they could”³ - Die Linke is now very much seen as part of ‘them’. Part of the establishment, that needs to be punished.

Under the leadership of the ‘neutral bureaucrat’, Janine Wissler, formerly of Linksruck, the German section of the International Socialist Tendency, Die Linke has become increasingly pro-Zionist and pro-imperialist.⁴ Instead of being a strong party of opposition, it has been keen to compromise and, whenever it has come to office in any of the 16 federal states, it has been eager to show how ‘responsible’ it is by slashing budgets, closing libraries and generally being a reliable manager of capitalism. Even without the BSW breakaway, Die Linke would have struggled to cross the 5% threshold to get back into parliament in September 2025. Now it looks like an impossible task.

There is certainly considerable space to the left of Die Linke, but that is not the direction that Wagenknecht has chosen. Yes, the BSW takes a far more critical approach to Israel and the war in Ukraine, and Wagenknecht has led peace demonstrations of tens of thousands, which were stupidly shunned by her former comrades (because Die Linke feared that AfD members and supporters would show up).

But the main character of the BSW is ‘populist’, deeply nationalist and shares a lot with George Galloway and his Workers Party of Britain: anti-imperialist, but conservative on social issues, while spouting nonsense about being ‘tough on crime’ and ‘uncontrolled immigration’. Just like Galloway, Wagenknecht has been ranting about the “lack of police on our streets”, the “threats to our national security”, etc.⁵

BSW is also not a hundred miles away from the AfD: Both organisations have been campaigning pretty much on the same issues - one from the right, the other from left. Like the AfD, BSW appeals particularly to the ‘little people’, those who see themselves as having been ‘left behind’ - not just by the German unification of 1991 and an economy in the doldrums, but also, chiefly, over the Ukraine war, which is becoming increasingly unpopular.

Nord Stream

According to a recent poll, 82% of people do not believe that Ukraine can win the war.⁶ Both parties demand that German military, political and financial support for Ukraine should be ended. Germany has officially given €41 billion in support of Zelensky’s government, while also helping to train the Ukrainian army and spending another €22 billion on supporting Ukrainian refugees - second only to the US, which has given an official total of around €71.25 billion.⁷

Both parties have been outspoken about the need to stop “counterproductive” sanctions on Russia and have called on the government to facilitate peace negotiations with Russia. AfD has organised a demonstration for October 8 specifically to demand the urgent repair of the Nord Stream gas pipeline, which was blown up in September 2022. It is unclear if the BSW will join, but it would not be surprising.

It is an open secret in Germany that the attack was almost certainly orchestrated, if not actually carried out, by the CIA in order to cut off Russian revenues - and in all likelihood with the active cooperation of the German government, which has made a huge sacrifice by foregoing cheap Russian gas. Energy prices have soared, with all the negative effects that has on profitability.

Sahra Wagenknecht has used her position as an MP to call for an official investigation into Nord Stream: “Should it emerge that German authorities had advance knowledge of the attack, we would have the scandal of the century,” she has said.⁸

However, the German establishment and the media continue to parrot the script written for them by the US administration, blaming Ukrainian freelancers for the sabotage - specifically a Ukrainian diving instructor named publicly as Volodymyr Z. A warrant for his arrest was issued in August, with a huge media fanfare.

You do not have to be a nutty conspiracy theorist to smell this absolutely massive rat (though the AfD in particular does indeed attract a lot of oddballs, including plenty of anti-vaxxers). This scandal will have played a significant role in people sticking two fingers up to the German establishment on September 1.

BSW and AfD also sing from the same hymn sheet when it comes to immigration. Wagenknecht has been going on about the dangers of “uncontrolled” migration and, while the party’s programme is not the rabid anti-immigration rhetoric of the AfD, it is unpleasant enough, warning that “immigration and the coexistence of different cultures can be enriching”, but only “as long as the influx remains limited to a level that does not overwhelm our country and its infrastructure”.

The AfD shouts about the danger of the “Islamification” of Germany and the August 23 knife attack in the city of Solingen, in which three people were killed, could not have come at a better time for it. The alleged perpetrator is a failed asylum-seeker from Syria who had evaded his planned deportation.

In 2015, ex-chancellor Angela Merkel had opened the door to more than a million refugees from Syria - and most definitely not because of “my concern for human dignity”, as she has claimed. Firstly, at the height of the Syrian civil war, she wanted Germany to be seen as a key political player once again. It also served German capital, which was seriously short of cheap, exploitable labour - similar to the 1950s, when millions of Gastarbeiter (guest workers) were invited in. Most of the refugees from Syria were allowed to work after three months and indeed, over 75% soon had steady full-time employment.⁹

That was, however, before the Ukraine war, the arrival of lots more refugees and the decline of the German economy. In 2015, almost everybody celebrated Merkel’s move. Now, almost everybody thinks it was utter madness. The government coalition too has jumped on the bandwagon, promising deportations.

Officially, the AfD demands the immediate “remigration” of 250,000 people, but numerous leading figures in the party have publicly talked about up to “20 to 30 million” people who could and should be expelled, “including more than 15 million people with German citizenship”, as Maximilian Krah, the AfD’s top candidate in the June European elections, said to much furore in the German media.¹⁰ This and similar such statements have led to the party’s expulsion from Identity and Democracy, the rightwing group in the European parliament led by none other than Marine Le Pen.¹¹

The AfD is not a “fascist” party, but it certainly is full of dodgy types like Krah. Its leader in Thuringia, Björn Höcke, has been convicted twice for using the banned phrase, “Alles für Deutschland” (‘All for Germany’, the rallying cry of the Sturmabteilung, the paramilitary wing of the German Nazi Party). In his first court case, the former history teacher claimed not to have known about the past use of the phrase - and then went on to repeat it at a demonstration, where he was filmed by the German media.

Attractive

Clearly, those convictions - which came with a fine of €13,000 each - have done nothing to stop the rise of the AfD. Quite the opposite. It will have made it look more attractive to many of those who want to give the ruling class a bloody nose. Add to that the official characterisation in 2021 of the AfD as a rechtsextremistischer Verdachtsfall (‘suspected rightwing extremist organisation’) by the German Verfassungsschutz (Office for the Protection of the Constitution) - and you have the makings of what to many disgruntled people look like true martyrs.

As has the fact that none of the mainstream bourgeois parties will allow the AfD into government locally, regionally or nationally, opting instead to form the shakiest of coalitions to uphold what is called the Brandmauer (firewall).

Sahra Wagenknecht too rejects forming a coalition with the AfD - but has no such qualms about participating in government coalitions, even with the conservative CDU: “Of course we want to be part of a government coalition. We have always said that we want stable governments.”¹² She is currently negotiating for the BSW to become junior partner to the CDU in both regions. It does not take a genius to work out that it probably will not be very long before Wagenknecht and the BSW go the way of Die Linke and the many, many ‘socialists’ who help manage capitalism as junior partners: into oblivion.

Renewed calls by outraged mainstream bourgeois politicians for the AfD to be banned will just add fuel to the fire and add to the party’s popularity. Communists should stay well clear of calls for such bans, even when it comes to allegedly ‘neo-Nazi’ parties. We are, after all, interested in overthrowing the capitalist system, including the ‘oh so democratic’ constitutions. It is no coincidence that the last time the German government was successful in implementing such a ban was in 1956, when the Communist Party of Germany was declared illegal.