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Who’s afraid of Sahra Wagenknecht? Germany's 'left-conservative' has redefined populism

(Seyboldt/ullstein bild via Getty Images)

(Seyboldt/ullstein bild via Getty Images)


August 31, 2024   9 mins

Few would have predicted that Germany, long known for having the continent’s most boring politics, would become the epicentre of Europe’s new populist revolt — let alone one coming from both the Right and the Left. And yet, that is exactly what is happening.

In the recent European elections, as amply expected, the Right-populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party overtook the centre-left SPD for the first time, becoming the country’s second-largest party after the centre-right CDU/CSU alliance. Meanwhile, the two major parties between them gained less than 45% of the votes — down from 70% just 20 years ago. It was the biggest collapse of the German political mainstream since reunification.

The real surprise, however, was the impressive performance of a new Left-populist party launched a few months prior by the icon of the German radical Left: the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW). Overall, the party won 6.2% of the vote; but, just like the AfD in previous elections, it performed much better in the country’s east, scoring double figures in all those states, but only 5% in the west. More than anything, the elections revealed that post-reunification Germany remains neatly divided along its former border: while western Germans are also signalling growing dissatisfaction with the current SPD-Greens-FDP coalition, but remaining within the bounds of mainstream politics, eastern Germans are revolting against the political establishment itself.

Thus, with state elections taking place in three eastern states over the next month — in Saxony and Thuringia this weekend, and in Brandenburg on September 22 — it’s no wonder the German centre is bracing itself for collapse. But while it’s a foregone conclusion that the AfD will make massive gains, with the party leading the polls in two of the three states, the real surprise may prove to be, once again, Sahra Wagenknecht’s new party, which is currently polling between 11% and 19%.

For now, Wagenknecht has ruled out forming regional coalition governments with the AfD, as well as with any party that supports arms deliveries to Ukraine (which means most mainstream parties). But her mere presence on the ballot will further erode support for the ruling coalition — and make it very hard, if not impossible, for the latter to form centrist coalition governments at the state level.

The Wagenknecht phenomenon is fascinating — and unique — for several reasons. Not only has she managed to establish the BSW as one of the country’s major political forces in a matter of months, but she’s also running on a platform that is unique in the Western political panorama, at least among electorally relevant parties. Though Wagenknecht tends to avoid framing her party in tired Left-Right terms, its platform can best be described as left-conservative.

In short, this means it mixes demands that would once have been associated with the socialist-labour Left — interventionist and redistributive government policies to regulate capitalist market forces, higher pensions and minimum wages, generous welfare and social security policies, taxes on wealth — with positions that today would be characterised as culturally conservative: first and foremost, a recognition of the importance of preserving and fostering traditions, stability, security and a sense of community.

This inevitably entails more restrictive immigration policies and a rejection of the multiculturalist dogma, in which minorities refuse to recognise the superiority of common rules, threatening social cohesion. As the party’s founding text reads: “Immigration and the coexistence of different cultures can be enriching. However, this only applies as long as the influx remains limited to a level that does not overburden our country and its infrastructure, and as long as integration is actively promoted and successful.” What this looks like in practice became clear in 2015, when Wagenknecht strongly criticised then-Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to allow in hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers, invoking the mantra “Wir schaffen das!” (“We can do it!”). A year later, after a series of terror attacks perpetrated by migrants, Wagenknecht released a statement that read: “The reception and integration of a large number of refugees and immigrants is associated with considerable problems and is more difficult than Merkel’s frivolous ‘We can do it!’.”

More recently, following a fatal knife attack in Mannheim, Wagenknecht again lashed out at the government’s immigration policies: “We basically financed [the migrant attacker’s] radicalisation as well. He lived off us, off the money of the citizens.” Her focus on benefits here is crucial. For Wagenknecht, the promotion of social cohesion, including by restricting immigration flows, shouldn’t just be seen as a positive end in and of itself, such as for reasons of public safety, but also as a precondition for the pursuit of economically redistributive policies, and even of democracy itself. Only a political community defined by a collective identity — a demos — is capable of committing itself to a democratic discourse and to a related decision-making process, and of generating the affective ties and bonds of solidarity that are needed to legitimise and sustain redistributive policies between classes and/or regions. Simply put, if there is no demos, there can be no effective democracy, let alone a social democracy.

The inverse, of course, is true as well: the social cohesion necessary to sustain the demos can only flourish in a context where the state intervenes to restrain the socially destructive effects of unfettered capitalism (including the push towards the free flow of labour). There is, in other words, no contradiction between being economically Left-wing and culturally conservative, says Wagenknecht; rather, the two things go hand in hand. Neither is the concept particularly new, she adds: this was basically the (winning) platform of most old-school European socialist and social-democratic parties.

This is also why Wagenknecht places a strong emphasis on the importance of national sovereignty, and is highly critical of the European Union: not only because the EU is fundamentally anti-democratic and prone to oligarchic capture, but because it cannot be otherwise, given that today the nation-state remains the main source of people’s collective identity and sense of belonging, and therefore the only territorial institution (or at least the largest) through which it is possible to organise democracy and achieve social balance. As she has said: “The call for ‘an end to the nation-state’ is ultimately a call for ‘an end to democracy and the welfare state’”.

In short, Sahra Wagenknecht is anything but your typical Western Leftist. Now, this is partly to do with the fact that she was born on the other side of the Iron Curtain, in former East Germany in 1969. She became interested in philosophy and Marxist economics as a teenager, but the end of the socialist GDR, in 1989, was, according to her biographer Christian Schneider, “the moment in time when the politician Wagenknecht was born”. She experienced it as a “unique horror”: like many East Germans, she believed in a reformed socialism, not in embracing West Germany’s capitalist path.

“In short, Sahra Wagenknecht is anything but your typical Western Leftist.”

That same year she joined the East German communist party, shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall, and then, following reunification, became one of the leading figures of the party’s successor, the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS). Even back then, she stood out as being both more radical and more conservative than her communist peers. “There was now this young woman who desperately wanted to go back to the old days” of the GDR, as one former leader of the PDS put it.

When, in 2007, the PDS merged with a splinter of the SPD to give birth to Die Linke (The Left), Wagenknecht quickly emerged as one of the party’s leading voices — and the face of the German radical Left. Die Linke’s support rocketed to 12% of the vote in 2009’s elections to the Bundestag, and remained close to there for nearly a decade. Wagenknecht also became a key figure in the German parliament, serving as parliamentary co-chairwoman of her party from 2015 to 2019 and as leader of the opposition (against Chancellor Angela Merkel’s grand coalition) until 2017. It was there that she earned a reputation for her powerful rhetoric and ability to challenge mainstream political narratives.

Her relationship with Die Linke, however, grew increasingly strained over the years: while the party became captured by the kind of “progressive neoliberalism” that has infected, to one degree or another, all Western Left-wing parties, Wagenknecht remained true to her old-school socialist roots. Her views on immigration and other issues — which would once have been completely non-controversial in socialist circles — were quickly becoming anathema on the Left. Eventually, in November 2019, Wagenknecht announced her resignation as parliamentary leader, citing burnout. Two years later, in the federal elections, Die Linke garnered less than 5% of ballots and lost nearly half its seats — its worst result ever. For Wagenknecht, this was not a surprise.

In a widely discussed book published that same year, Die Selbstgerechten (“The Self-Righteous”), Wagenknecht explained the reasons for her growing estrangement with the mainstream Left. “Left”, she argues, used to be synonymous with improving the lives of ordinary people forced to support themselves through their (often backbreaking) labour; however, today’s progressive movement has come to be dominated by what Wagenknecht calls the “lifestyle Left”, whose members “no longer place social and political-economic problems at the centre of Left-wing politics. In the place of such concerns, they promote questions regarding lifestyle, consumption habits, and moral attitudes.” She further notes that, far from being liberal, today’s Leftists tend to be viciously authoritarian.

For Wagenknecht, this new movement’s authoritarian shade became clear during the pandemic. Unlike virtually all her colleagues — and most of the German Left — Wagenknecht became a sharp critic of the government’s “endless lockdowns” and coercive mass vaccination programme (she refused to take the vaccine herself). Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Wagenknecht has also emerged as the most vocal critic of Germany’s military support for Ukraine and the sanctions regime. This escalated her rift with Die Linke, which voted in favour of economic sanctions against Russia.

At that point, their break-up became inevitable — and finally, late last year, Wagenknecht announced the launch of her new party. The choice led to the unravelling of Die Linke, which was forced to dissolve its parliamentary faction, and has now virtually disappeared from the political map, receiving only 2.7% of the votes in June’s European elections.

Since the launch of BSW, Wagenknecht has put the question of détente with Russia at the centre of her party’s platform. On several occasions, she has highlighted how Germany’s subordination to the US-Nato proxy war strategy in Ukraine, and refusal to engage in diplomatic talks with Russia, is self-defeating from an economic as well as a geopolitical standpoint. Not only is the oil and gas embargo against Russia the main reason for Germany’s collapsing economy, but the government is, she told the Bundestag, “negligently playing with the security and in the worst case the lives of millions of people in Germany”. More recently, she has strongly condemned the government’s plan to deploy US long-range missiles on German territory and, perhaps most dramatically, challenged the omerta surrounding the Nord Stream attack. Indeed, following recent revelations about the German government’s possible cover-up of Ukrainian involvement, she called for a public inquiry, saying that, “should German authorities have known in advance about the attack plan on Nord Stream 1 and 2, then we would have the scandal of the century in German politics”.

It’s important to note that Wagenknecht views opposition to the proxy war against Russia as part of a much deeper rethinking of Germany’s geopolitical strategy. Its aim, as Wolfgang Streeck has written, is to “free it from the geostrategic grip of the United States, guided by German national survival interests instead of Nibelungentreue, or loyalty, to America’s claim to global political domination”. This necessarily entails re-establishing long-term political and economic relations with Russia, which could potentially lay the groundwork for a new Eurasian security architecture, and even a Eurasian community of states and economies.

Elsewhere, Wagenknecht has criticised the government’s “green” and gender-affirming policies, arguing that “Germany’s energy supply cannot currently be ensured by renewable energies alone”, and voting against a bill passed by the German parliament earlier this year to make it easier to change one’s legal gender. “Your law turns parents and children into guinea pigs for an ideology that only benefits the pharmaceutical lobby,” she said.

If that seems blunt, that’s because it is. But taken together, Wagenknecht’s old-school leftist economics, pro-peace and anti-Nato foreign policy, and conservative cultural outlook is resonating with voters. And as a result, she now finds herself in the crosshairs of both the establishment and her populist competitors. Indeed, on the Right in particular, the common criticism levelled at her is that, by drawing voters away from the AfD, she is weakening and dividing Germany’s populist front.

Yet the evidence for this is somewhat shaky. Rather, opinion polls show that the emergence of the BSW does not seem to have overly affected the AfD, which continues to maintain a 30% vote share in several eastern German states and 20% nationally. In fact, according to a recent study by the Hans Böckler Foundation, the BSW is actually drawing voters mostly from the centre and the Left — Die Linke and the SPD — rather than the AfD. The BSW’s staunchly Left-wing economic agenda, which puts it at odds with the neoliberal economic policy of the AfD, would appear to be key here: the study shows that the BSW draws support mainly from socially marginalised and low-income groups — traditionally, the classic target group of social-democratic parties. It also explains why she enjoys much stronger support in eastern Germany, which has significantly lower GDP per capita and wages, and higher unemployment and poverty rates than western Germany.

This suggests that Wagenknecht’s left-conservative agenda is filling a political space that was previously vacant, hoovering up German voters who are disillusioned with mainstream politics, and even very critical of immigration, but nonetheless feel uncomfortable voting for a party that has undeniably xenophobic or racist traits. The BSW, by contrast, represents a much more palatable “non-extremist” option for these would-be populist voters. This is further confirmed by the fact that, despite its tough stance on immigration, the BSW appears to be winning over an above-average number of voters from migrant backgrounds, a demographic that has traditionally voted for centre-left parties. In short, the evidence suggests that Wagenknecht is actually broadening the populist front rather than simply crowding out the existing populist pool.

It is this, along with the fact that Wagenknecht is among the top three most popular politicians in Germany, that explains why the establishment has decided to go on the attack. In recent weeks, the media there has launched a relentless campaign against Wagenknecht and the BSW, predictably focused on claims that she is a “Russian propagandist” — or “Vladimir Putinova”, as one article called her. Even more desperately, some have attempted to paint Wagenknecht, a literal communist, as a “far-Right extremist”. Only this week, Politico, which is owned by German media titan Axel Springer, unironically asked: “Is Germany’s rising superstar so far-Left she’s far-Right?”

The answer, of course, is a boring nein. And no doubt a far more interesting question will be thrown up by this weekend’s results: with a general election scheduled for next year, has Germany finally found a politician capable of breaking through its ideological wall?


Thomas Fazi is an UnHerd columnist and translator. His latest book is The Covid Consensus, co-authored with Toby Green.

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Andrew
Andrew
1 month ago

A solid overview. She, and the results she’s been getting, give me hope. I don’t need to agree with everything she’s said or done to feel this way. She’s a breath of fresh air.

I first learned of Sahra Wagenknecht via an April 2024 video interview by Glenn Greenwald:

https://rumble.com/v4qg6nb–system-update-260.html

Kevin Mahoney
Kevin Mahoney
1 month ago
Reply to  Andrew

It seems to me that George Galloway’s Workers’ Party offers something quite similar to voters in the UK.

Tyler Durden
Tyler Durden
1 month ago
Reply to  Kevin Mahoney

No, Galloway is pre-Islamist.

Oliver Butt
Oliver Butt
1 month ago
Reply to  Kevin Mahoney

George Galloway was the first thought that sprung to mind for me, even if the base of support for him is Muslim voters.

Ian Johnston
Ian Johnston
1 month ago
Reply to  Andrew

I can’t think of a single policy position of hers I disagree with.

Stephanie Surface
Stephanie Surface
1 month ago
Reply to  Ian Johnston

Guess, you must be a Marxist, to agree with all her position. Her economic policies would ruin the country. She has red tinted glasses

Kathy Hayman
Kathy Hayman
1 month ago

You mean like the current crop of corrupt politicians haven’t ruined it! Wake up. We need a radical change of direction.

Stephanie Surface
Stephanie Surface
1 month ago
Reply to  Kathy Hayman

Yes but not to the left. East Germany was such a successful model with Communism. Eh? But if you want to be taxed to the hilt, then move to a country which has a Wagenknecht government. When her husband was in charge of Finance, Germany had a huge unemployment crisis. More of this?

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 month ago
Reply to  Ian Johnston

Wow. Celebrating a new German springtime…

Stephanie Surface
Stephanie Surface
1 month ago
Reply to  Andrew

Stephanie Surface
Stephanie Surface
1 month ago

Hahaha. A vote down for nothing. Great debate!

Vesselina Zaitzeva
Vesselina Zaitzeva
1 month ago

Indeed… And not only great, but highly principled, I would add… 😉

Andrew F
Andrew F
1 month ago
Reply to  Andrew

She joined communist party when Berlin Wall was about to fall and other slaves in GDR were protesting against communist regime.
Communism is genocidal criminal enterprise.
How can anyone seriously espouse communism in 1990s with all the historical evidence of its crimes?
She is either stupid, unlikely, or Russian agent like Merkel, most likely.

Vesselina Zaitzeva
Vesselina Zaitzeva
1 month ago
Reply to  Andrew F

While, understandably, I do not know SW’s motives, being myself from Eastern Europe, I think I can offer a possible explanation for her joining the communist party in 1989.
Then, at the height of Perestroyka, which was frowned upon in the DDR and some other communist countries, many people hoped wholeheartedly that it was possible to transform the communist regime into a more democratic and more prosperous society, without it being a classic capitalist society.
Mr Fazi says this passingly in his article (an excellent article, by the way!).
In 1989 SW was 20 years old – the age when people are idealistic and usually strongly left-leaning. So, she might be willing to change the stiff and suffocating regime of the then-DDR and turn her country into a better version of socialism.
As for your oh-so-easily labelling her a Russian agent, I would just say that her anti-war position is very typical of the classical left indeology: the left have traditionally believed that wars are aimed against the working calss, that it’s always the poor people who suffer, including men who are used as cannon fodder. The left have always denounced wars as imperialistic endeavours, enriching capitalists and pitting working class people fram different countries against each other.
Despite all my strong aversion to leftist thinking, I find it difficult to disagree with the general thrust of the above-described stance.

Zaph Mann
Zaph Mann
1 month ago

If only other countries (UK & USA for starters) had a similar option – I have tried in vain to explain to my political friends of the ‘left & right’ that I don’t fit into either of their camps. I do fall about 95% into this agenda and I feel that with better information and options many other people would also.

Lancashire Lad
Lancashire Lad
1 month ago
Reply to  Zaph Mann

That’s a good point; i suspect you’re right. And left, of course! Which demonstrates the limitations of these labels.

Don’t know where you reside, but It’s often said that the natural demeanour of a majority of UK citizens is culturally conservative yet economically left-leaning, i.e. keen on social welfare and comfortable with a tax system to pay for it. That’s why there’s a genuine feeling of being widely disenfranchised by our political party alignments.

Norfolk Sceptic
Norfolk Sceptic
1 month ago
Reply to  Lancashire Lad

Culturally conservative, and economically patriotic: you don’t have to lose your compassion or empathy to be on the right, just acknowledge that there’s no money tree, and money doesn’t fix everything.

Andrew F
Andrew F
1 month ago
Reply to  Lancashire Lad

You must be joking about economically left leaning.
Remember Margaret Thatcher?
She won few elections.
The main reason for feeling disenfranchised is mass immigration of 3rd world savages and pushing woke agendas down people throats.

Rosemary Throssell
Rosemary Throssell
1 month ago
Reply to  Zaph Mann

RFK and Nicole Shanahan are trying.

0 0
0 0
1 month ago

RFK is a libertarian! That’s something completely different.

Melvin Backstrom
Melvin Backstrom
1 month ago
Reply to  0 0

No, he is most definitely not a libertarian as anyone of serious intelligence who follows him knows. He has argued for decades for government regulation of the economy in order to protect the health and well-being of people and the environment, which is hardly compatible with libertarianism.

Stephanie Surface
Stephanie Surface
1 month ago

I think he flip flopped in his policies too. Huge taxes and red tape will only make things worse. Look at Argentina! We need somebody with a chainsaw like Milei…

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 month ago

….shhhh….”Trump”…..

Vesselina Zaitzeva
Vesselina Zaitzeva
1 month ago
Reply to  0 0

Libertarians do not want to imprison people who disagree with green agendas. Or, generally speaking, people who express whatever opinions.
There’s an interview with R. Kennedy where he says that people who are against renewables belong in prison.
This alone shows how totalitarian his thinking (hmmm… “thinking”?) is.

RA Znayder
RA Znayder
1 month ago
Reply to  Zaph Mann

Many ‘populist’ movements do sneak in some left wing, anti-neoliberal rhetoric and welfare state nostalgia. Even Trump has done this. But then on the other hand they are more libertarian, warning against government overreach. So often it seems they’re a bit split, it’s not always clear and coherent where they actually want to be economically. Also, especially in the US, it’s simply a bridge too far to openly state that such a movement is left wing economically, let alone “socialist”. That is simply a no-go right now.

0 0
0 0
1 month ago
Reply to  RA Znayder

Socialists were repressed out of existence there years ago. There aren’t real political economic alternatives in the US, hence they get overexcited about small differences.

0 0
0 0
1 month ago
Reply to  Zaph Mann

The French Communist Party has been heading in this direction since Roussel took charge. Hasn’t saved him his seat though.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 month ago
Reply to  0 0

Because the French see through the bs.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 month ago
Reply to  Zaph Mann

Germany tried this before, in the first half if the 20th century. Now Germans have already out in place political censorship, shutting down political opposition, using the state to impose insane demographic changes. And here emerges a “former” hard-core communist, focused on German nationalism, with elaborate rationalizations for an even stronger repressive German state….

Stephanie Surface
Stephanie Surface
1 month ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

There seems to be such a desire to pay things with other people’s money today. Government knows best, I guess…

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 month ago

The last time populism merged with “conservative socialist values” in Germany, the results were rather poor.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
1 month ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

False equivalence.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 month ago
Reply to  Hugh Bryant

Nope. Spot on.

Jürg Gassmann
Jürg Gassmann
1 month ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

You misunderstand the programme of the NSdAP – its official ideology was radically modernist, with a firm belief in science (though science had to serve the ideology – as we’ve seen over the last four years, that never turns out well).
In political ideology, the NSdAP rejected the Enlightenment, the Renaissance, the Middle Ages, and Antiquity, to reconnect with a (constructed) pre-Roman Germanic past. That past alone could provide a solid foundation for a root-and-branch reconstruction of the German Volk, purged of all the deleterious accretions visited on it in the intervening history. In doing so they realised they’d have to move fast and break things.
Himmler’s morbid fascination with medievalism and the occult was in terms of official party ideology an aberration, though one that gained prominence since the party put ideology on the back burner once they had gained power.

0 0
0 0
1 month ago
Reply to  Jürg Gassmann

Worth rereading the above until it makes sense. Right on the money.

Jim Veenbaas
Jim Veenbaas
1 month ago

Good essay. Don’t agree with her economic policy, but she appears committed and consistent with her principles.

Martin M
Martin M
1 month ago
Reply to  Jim Veenbaas

That she does. I disagree with every single one of them, of course, but that doesn’t invalidate the statement.

Brett H
Brett H
1 month ago

Another good essay. Keep them coming.

”Since the launch of BSW, Wagenknecht has put the question of détente with Russia at the centre of her party’s platform. On several occasions, she has highlighted how Germany’s subordination to the US-Nato proxy war strategy in Ukraine, and refusal to engage in diplomatic talks with Russia, is self-defeating from an economic as well as a geopolitical standpoint.”

Interesting comments in relation to the other Unherd story about the Russian reset. But America must have her way and continues to work on tensions.

Martin M
Martin M
1 month ago
Reply to  Brett H

Yeah. Russia on the other hand is a land of flowers and butterflies and newly born lambs, all presided over by kind old Uncle Vladimir.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
1 month ago
Reply to  Martin M

That’s the best expression of classic neo-con deflection I’ve read for a while. Well done.

You don’t have to be a fan of Vlad to regard the Ukraine war as futile and US policy in relation to it as incompetent at best.

Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Gaza … So many lessons but nothing gets learnt.

0 0
0 0
1 month ago
Reply to  Martin M

Russia is a large country with more natural resources than they can ever exhaust. They’ve no need to expand territorially. Those rapacious interests that rule the US and part of Europe think they’re short of lots of things on Russian soil and want to have access to them on their terms. So they’ve conspired to tear up the possibility of normal trade with Russia to create a conflict they believed they could make Russia lose. But what goes round can come round.

Duane M
Duane M
1 month ago
Reply to  Brett H

The damage done to Germany’s economy (and the other economies in Europe) by cutting off the flow of Russian natural gas and oil is an intentional effect of the Ukraine war, not an accidental side effect. The US felt threatened by the rise of the EU economy and also by the links between that prosperity and trade with Russia. The US had previously announced its disapproval of Nord Stream 1 and had signaled that it would seek to block the completion of Nord Stream 2. And all of that in advance of the outbreak of the war.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
1 month ago
Reply to  Duane M

The US felt threatened by the rise of the EU economy
The size of the EU economy has been shrinking steadily relative to that of the US for the past decade at least – and every year the gap widens.

alan bennett
alan bennett
1 month ago

The war in Ukraine is about a West prepared to do the right thing.
That it took the UK through Boris Johnson to kick start the US to take its obligations to the Budapest Memorandom, does not auger well for the future of Nato or any supranational organisation.
That there is no organisation that politicians will not corrupt tells you the West as a civilising concept is dead.
That they are prepared to sacrifice the nation state tells you the Westrn corpse is not only dead it is putrfying and nothing can resurrect it.

0 0
0 0
1 month ago
Reply to  alan bennett

The current Russian government ticks a lot of Wagenecht’s boxes, social democratic jobs NT private and public sector growth, defense of traditionsl values, restrictive immigration policies. Maybe Western values are better embedded there than elsewhere.

Ian Johnston
Ian Johnston
1 month ago
Reply to  0 0

I’m thinking increasingly along the same lines, friend.

Jürg Gassmann
Jürg Gassmann
1 month ago
Reply to  0 0

For me, there is a mystical, religious (or at least quasi-religious) component to Russian identity which I don’t think sits well with the European context. Europe is too diverse, with too many forceful national identities. Europe will always have to navigate between rational, administrative common ground and bewilderingly diverse national identities.
Having said that, there is absolutely no reason why Europe and Russia could not get along.
The 1975 Helsinki Final Act (now the OSCE) provides a solid template and foundation.

Andrew F
Andrew F
1 month ago
Reply to  0 0

Russian government is murderous, corrupt, genocidal dictatorships.
But then Vladimir, Russians were always serfs in their own country.

Simon Blanchard
Simon Blanchard
1 month ago

Good informative piece. She ticks all my boxes. She’s figured out what most reasonable people want. Why can’t the UK have politicians like her?

Norfolk Sceptic
Norfolk Sceptic
1 month ago

They can but, in the past, voters have preferred ‘the lesser of two evils’, and then continue to complain.

Why risk voting for someone without a track when you can have the certainty of managed decline, without the risk of failure, or success, or the need to think.

0 0
0 0
1 month ago

Labour Together seemed to be going there. Certainly culturally conservative and supposedly social democratic. But Starmer seems joined at the hip with Washington Neocons, so this Labour government won’t be able to deliver anything like Wagenecht would.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 month ago

Hmmmm….
There is a song, “Springtime for Hitler” that comes to mind. Shevticks all the boxes. This is a remake, recast with a woman in the lead.

Stephanie Surface
Stephanie Surface
1 month ago

As one commentator said, you’ve got George Galloway in U.K. He has same foreign and economic policies

Andrew F
Andrew F
1 month ago

Because in uk there was never any demand for communist policies?
I am sorry but most reasonable people don’t want her economic policies and her appeasement of genocidal Russian imperialism.

Jürg Gassmann
Jürg Gassmann
1 month ago

Thank you for this.
BTW, Nibelungentreue is not just “loyalty” – it is loyalty to a cause that is doomed to fail and will inevitably end in your own destruction.
Nibelungentreue was the reason given by Germany’s politicians to stand with Austro-Hungary in the Serbian Crisis 1914, and so turned the Balkan imbroglio into a world war.

A Robot
A Robot
1 month ago
Reply to  Jürg Gassmann

A UK example is Tony Blair’s Nibelungentreue to George Bush when Blair chose to participate in the invasion of Iraq.

Jonathan Nash
Jonathan Nash
1 month ago
Reply to  Jürg Gassmann

Is the “Nibelungen” bit to do with dwarves?

Jürg Gassmann
Jürg Gassmann
1 month ago
Reply to  Jonathan Nash

That’s part of the saga – the dwarf’s ring, part of the Nibelungen Treasure, has magical properties, the use of which weaves the Nibelungen into a web of deceit that will eventually bring them down.
Nibelungentreue is more relevant to the “downfall” part of the saga. And if that recalls the film of the same title, that is no coincidence.

Jürg Gassmann
Jürg Gassmann
1 month ago

If in a very model of a modern democracy being a “populist” politician is a “bad thing”, what is the “good thing”? The logical antonym for “populist” would be “elitist”.
Just asking.

Gordon Black
Gordon Black
1 month ago
Reply to  Jürg Gassmann

‘populist’ (adj) describes the exploitative unscrupulous adoption of policies known to be popular with the electorate: the opposite might be ‘principled’, e.g. Thatcher, who was highly ‘unpopular’ but somehow kept winning elections.

0 0
0 0
1 month ago
Reply to  Gordon Black

Until it became clear enough how bad her high sounding neo liberal ‘principles’ were for the country. Still haven’t recovered the damage.

Lancashire Lad
Lancashire Lad
1 month ago
Reply to  0 0

Revisionist history. It’s convenient when posting such tired tropes to forget the utterly broken state the UK was in prior to her first election victory. But for Thatcher, it’s almost unthinkable to consider where we’d be now. The electorate then had another two chances to evict her and chose to do precisely the opposite.

Stephanie Surface
Stephanie Surface
1 month ago
Reply to  Lancashire Lad

Don’t understand why capitalism has become such a bad word except in Argentina recently. What is neo liberalism anyway.

David Morley
David Morley
1 month ago

Most of us have moral, even spiritual, qualms about capitalism, but so long as it delivers the good life, and does so (if unevenly) for all, then we are willing to put our qualms aside. But when it fails to even deliver on the crass materialism of its promise then we start to see its flaws.

Stephanie Surface
Stephanie Surface
1 month ago
Reply to  David Morley

There is no successful country in the World without Capitalism. Even the one Party State China, which calls itself communist, has now a capitalist structure. Compare the poverty rate before and after they changed. Moral qualms? The citizens in every socialist/communist country are poorer off. Best example is West Germany/East Germany before reunification or North Korea/South Korea.

David Morley
David Morley
1 month ago

Too black and white. Capitalist countries lean socialist to greater and lesser degrees. Scandinavian countries, for example, do a good job of including socialist elements within a capitalist framework.

Andrew Dalton
Andrew Dalton
1 month ago

Neo-liberalism is idealogical capitalism. Initially, there were limitations to the free-market, Adam Smith would refer to this as the public good.
In response to the ideoligical, fully centrally controlled soviet system, the notion of a ideological capitalism came into being which strove to remove all limitations of the market (if the free marketisation is good, more marketisation is better and everything on the market is best).

Vesselina Zaitzeva
Vesselina Zaitzeva
1 month ago
Reply to  Gordon Black

“Populist” also denotes someone who communicates directly with and appeals directly to the population at large, bypassing democratic institutions and checks and balances. Sometimes even undermining them.
Now “populism” has become a lazy label, largely meaning “a bad guy”.

Bruno J. De Cordier
Bruno J. De Cordier
1 month ago

“ Populism is opposed to elites. But make no mistake: it does not in itself denounce the fact that there are elites, it denounces elites who have failed. It aspires to replace elites who want to govern without the people with elites who would govern with and for the people.” ‒ Alain de Benoist

Vesselina Zaitzeva
Vesselina Zaitzeva
1 month ago

Thank you.
Indeed, there are many facets of what could be qualified as “populism” and not everyone agrees on all the possible aspects that make up the definition.
Yesterday I did not have much time to elaborate further, but my underlying idea was that often we see politicians/political parties being labelled “populist” by politicians/parties, esp. in power, who themselves neglect democratic mechanisms.
E.g., embracing the “green agenda” because “young people have taken to the streets demanding that we save the planet” or “because NGOs who represent civil society want us to become green”, instead of holding a referendum or having a thorough parliamentary debate and listening to the dissenting voices.
Or opening borders for uncontrolled migration without any consultations, let alone any proper democratic procedures and even contrary to national law on border controls, but labelling anti-immigration parties as “populist”.
One could give a lot of examples… Unfortunately…

RA Znayder
RA Znayder
1 month ago
Reply to  Jürg Gassmann

The connotations depends on who you ask but people usually know what you mean. I think ‘populism’ simply has to be used for lack of a better word for now.

Bruno J. De Cordier
Bruno J. De Cordier
1 month ago
Reply to  RA Znayder

Indeed. It flutters all over the place yet fewer and fewer know it’s actual meaning. Pretty much like ‘fascist’ or even ‘woke’.

0 0
0 0
1 month ago
Reply to  Jürg Gassmann

That’s why elitists invented the disparaging term ‘populist’.

b blimbax
b blimbax
1 month ago
Reply to  0 0

So who invented the (appropriately) disparaging term ‘elitist’?

Graham Cunningham
Graham Cunningham
1 month ago

BSW’s combination of state economic intervention with social conservatism is in fact also a feature of recent Right-wing populist thinking across the Western world. At the end of the 80s, with the collapse of utopian socialism in the Soviet Union, laissez faire capitalism – undergirded by a humane but limited welfare safety net – seemed the only way to go. But thirty years on – despite my pessimism about their ability to do anything effective about it – I do think that populists of both Left & Right have a strong case to argue that our recent history of internet- turbocharged globalisation has taken laissez-faire down a wrong track. I think Adam Smith – widely seen as the father of laissez-faire capitalism – would, if he were alive today, have agreed….probably. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/globalism-vs-national-conservatism

Dawud Islam
Dawud Islam
1 month ago

Thomas, this is a good portrait of Wagenknecht and acurately portrays her positions. However I would question your assertion that she is the only ‘electorally relevant’ politician in Europe holding these views. Apart from their positions on the conflict in Gaza, George Galloway and his Workers Party of Britain hold almost identical views to her on all major policy positions, including Ukraine. Having previously had an MP, plus securing over 200k votes at the recent General Election, the WPB are clearly electorally relevant. I should also add that William Clouston’s revived SDP, whilst not as electorally dynamic yet, also share a majority of the BSW agenda.

Jeff Dudgeon
Jeff Dudgeon
1 month ago
Reply to  Dawud Islam

Is Marine Le Pen not in there too?

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 month ago
Reply to  Jeff Dudgeon

And Marine is not a communist wearing democratic costume.

Ian Johnston
Ian Johnston
1 month ago
Reply to  Dawud Islam

Wagenknecht believes mass immigration screws the working class and despises multicultiralism as anathema to a cohesive polity. This is nothing like the position of the WPB.

My own party, the SDP, is sadly pro-Ukraine, pro-Atlanticist and pro-NATO.

I can literally think of no other Western politician with her policy mix.

Andrew D
Andrew D
1 month ago

Interesting article, hadn’t heard of Wagenknecht. I suppose she’s a product of post-war Germany, but like many I can’t help wishing we had someone comparable in the UK, combining social conservatism with leftist economics. Maybe the SDP? Maybe George Galloway, but he’s blotted his copybook by getting into bed with the mad mullahs.

b blimbax
b blimbax
1 month ago
Reply to  Andrew D

Glenn Greenwald has interviewed her. You might find it interesting.

Simon Phillips
Simon Phillips
1 month ago
Reply to  Andrew D

SDP is the place to go. Economically leftish, patriotic, pro Brexit. Just where the Labour Party should be.

Christopher Barclay
Christopher Barclay
1 month ago

Sounds like she is getting the same MSM treatment as Farage.

0 0
0 0
1 month ago

Though her policies and personality are very different from his.

Ian Johnston
Ian Johnston
1 month ago
Reply to  0 0

Immigration, lockdown and the EU are about the only 3 areas of policy cross-over between Wagenknecht and Farage.

They are diametrically opposed on pretty much everything else.

Andrew D
Andrew D
1 month ago

I’m not a robot

RA Znayder
RA Znayder
1 month ago

A fascinating article. However, I like to remind the author that in Denmark too, the social democrats have made a somewhat similar transformation. As far as I know, they have actually been ruling with the support of the local ‘right wing populist’ party, maintaining one of Europe’s toughest migration policies while also being openly anti-neoliberal. However, it should be noted that they can also do this because Denmark negotiated several opt-outs from EU-policy under the Treaty of Maastricht.
It seems to me that economic policy is somewhat of an Achilles heel for movements that actually want to change the status quo. Neoliberalism appears fundamentally incompatible with some of these ‘populist’ conservative demands. Also core neoliberal structures – such as financialization and the deregulation of global capital – are likely always going to negatively impact the working class and increasingly also the middle class. This could explain why conservative parties like the Tories, once in power, don’t deliver. The underlying neoliberal power structure and big corporate interest are at odds with some of their conservative rhetoric. Mainstream left wing parties have a similar problem: they cannot truly build something like a stable social democracy on top of neoliberalism. This has been tried in the 90s under the banner of “the third way”. In the end they had only limited impact on welfare and so they focused more cultural progressivism. This alienated their working class voters. What all of this indicates is that it is very hard to truly change something without seriously challenging the most fundamental economic power structures of the West. So it will be interesting to see if more anti-establishment parties will openly advocate for this.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 month ago
Reply to  RA Znayder

All roads lead to a certain point in plain sight…

Göran Rosenberg
Göran Rosenberg
1 month ago

Nato’s proxy war? Am I missing something here? Like a full-scale military invasion of an independent nation?

0 0
0 0
1 month ago

You need to read more backstory there. Start with the fact that the government of that so called independent nation had been overthrown by a foreign sponsored coup d’état, breaking it’s treaty obligations to neighbours and then starting systemic ethnic cleansing on its territories. Thank God someone finally stepped in to put an end to that.

Andrew F
Andrew F
1 month ago
Reply to  0 0

Your backstory is a lie.
Yanukowych was elected on the programme of close cooperation with EU and was about to sign treaty with EU when under Russian pressure he switched side thus causing public revolt.
Treaty obligations?
That is Russia which is signatory to Budapest memorandum guaranteeing territorial integrity of Ukraine.
So they are in breach.
So learn true history, Vladimir.

Jürg Gassmann
Jürg Gassmann
1 month ago
Reply to  Andrew F

A very one-sided narrative – Ukraine did want a deal with the EU, but the deal the EU offered obliged Ukraine to abandon its lucrative market for industrial goods in Russia, but for which there was no market in the EU. At the same time, the EU severely limited Ukraine’s agricultural exports to the EU. Yanukovich wanted a three-way deal (including Russia) to sort this out, and Russia was open to exploring the possibilities, but the EU’s position was “take it or leave it”.
It was obvious to Yanukovich that the EU treaty would lead to an impoverishment of Ukraine … which is indeed what happened.
Treaty obligations: The Minsk Accords were binding in international law. Ukraine – according to former president Petro Poroshenko – never had any intention of implementing them, and saw them only as an opportunity to prepare for an armed attack on Donbas and Russia (in Crimea).
Incidentally, if Ukraine wants to join the EU, it would have to implement the very minority protections set out in the Minsk Accords.

Ernesto Candelabra
Ernesto Candelabra
1 month ago

I share your complete bafflement at such a proposition.
I am anti-lockdown, anti-net zero, anti-woke, anti-immgration, economically and culturally conservative but I strongly support what we are doing in Ukraine and cannot see Putin’s invasion of Ukraine as anything other than an unprovoked and morally unjustifiable act of barabarism that violates the principles of the Peace of Westphalia as understood by Henry Kissinger.
I admit we mishandled Putin diplomatically, but that is quite another question. It does not give us reponsibility for what has happened.

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
1 month ago

Am I missing something here?
A lot of things that predate February 2022. But that’s okay. A media and Western govt cabal has worked feverishly to ensure that you miss it. Still, there is an Internet and all sorts of material on a sitting Ukrainian govt being overthrown, the relentless push to make the country a NATO state, etc.

Ernesto Candelabra
Ernesto Candelabra
1 month ago
Reply to  Alex Lekas

That is what you think about this war but what does the Ukrainian public feel about the invasion of their country?
Or are the opinion polls rigged as well?

b blimbax
b blimbax
1 month ago

Whenever I see a reference to “the Ukrainian public” it occurs to me that the term at one time also applied to the Russian-speaking residents of the Donbas and of Crimea. Don’t they get a say? Well, apparently not. In 2014, the government a large majority of those people voted for got overthrown by a Western backed coup, as Mr Lekas points out above.
Western interference has continued unabated. Consider the charade perpetrated by the West in the case of the Minsk agreements, the West’s refusal to consider Russia’s stated concerns in late 2021/early 2022, the scuttling of discussions between Russia and Ukraine in early 2022 that seemed poised to end the fighting.

Jürg Gassmann
Jürg Gassmann
1 month ago

You make a fair point, and in the current state of total censorship and control (not unusual in times of war), we cannot reasonably rely on opinion surveys.
Two solid data points stand out:
(1) Zelensky was elected by a landslide on the basis of a platform that he would implement the Minsk Accords, and seek normalisation with Russia. The majority he won was so large that it implied support both in the Ukrainian-speaking west as well as the Russian-speaking east of Ukraine. It was only after the elections, after Zelensky “was shown the instruments”, that Zelensky swung back to the social nationalist (their own description) policies of Azov, Kraken, Right Sector, etc.
(2) Pre-2022, a consistent complaint within NATO was that popular support in Ukraine for NATO membership was lukewarm at best, in the range of 20-30% support in the population.
It bears remembering that the reason Yanukovitch put the signing of the EU Association Treaty on hold was because the EU required Ukraine to break off all of its (very lucrative) trading ties with Russia, where Russia bought a large part of Ukraine’s manufacturing output. This manufacturing output had no market in the EU, and at the same time, the EU severely restricted Ukraine’s ability to export to the EU its only other major export, agricultural produce.
Yanukovitch tried to persuade the EU to discuss a three-way agreement including Russia, but the EU said the deal was take-it-or-leave-it. Yanukovitch correctly saw that the EU deal would lead to a deindustrialisation and impoverishment of Ukraine (which if fact materialised), and refused to go along. So the West did what it always does in these situations – a “colour revolution”.
By the Ukrainian constitution, there should by now have been presidential and parliamentary elections. Those would have given us a feeling for the political winds.

Michael Cazaly
Michael Cazaly
1 month ago
Reply to  Jürg Gassmann

Yes, a perfect summary of the background to this totally Western constructed disaster…for Ukraine and Germany but certainly not the USA which has profited greatly.

Hugh Bryant
Hugh Bryant
1 month ago
Reply to  Michael Cazaly

Well, the Biden family business certainly seems to have done OK out of it.

Ernesto Candelabra
Ernesto Candelabra
1 month ago

A wise woman.
When we did we last have one of those in Europe?
Now let me think….

Michael Clarke
Michael Clarke
1 month ago

An excellent piece about, for once, an interesting German politician, who has real leadership credentials. Germans are worried about the word “leader” for obvious reasons but they have to get over that and move on. No country, large or small, can be run by nonentities like Scholz, who collapsed under pressure February 2022, or mediocrities (at best) like Merkel, who was feted by the media but only made one good decision as Chancellor – dumping nuclear, which she made as a scientist on safety grounds and not as a politician. Wagenknecht, being half Iranian, might not be as concerned as most Germans are about the idea of leadership. She reminds me of Helmut Schmidt, who was partly Jewish (but fought in the German army in WW2) and wasn’t afraid of leadership. Neither was Willy Brandt, a dodgy character in his personal life, but who was not afraid to lead having been part of the ant-Nazi resistance. Likewise, Adenauer, a fairly unique character, didn’t shirk the challenge of putting West Germany back on its feet in the most difficult circumstances. So there is no reason for Germans to fear being properly, i.e. democratically, led.

Andrew F
Andrew F
1 month ago
Reply to  Michael Clarke

Dumping nuclear on safety ground was based on science?
Yes, like covid policies were.
Merkel was Russian stooge, just research her family biography.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 month ago

Germans + “conservative values” + “socialism” = ????
and don’t delete me this time, cowards.

Stephanie Surface
Stephanie Surface
1 month ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

That’s also LePen …

B. Timothy S.
B. Timothy S.
1 month ago
Reply to  UnHerd Reader

I love what you’re doing but I hate to burst your bubble:

She’s the one not for sending tanks into Eurasia, remember.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 month ago
Reply to  B. Timothy S.

Peace in our time

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
1 month ago

Perhaps an atypical leftist, but a leftist nonetheless. How else to describe redistributionist schemes and the idea that manna flows from govt. Either way, nothing happens without social cohesion. That much is evident not just in Germany but also in large chunks of Europe, Canada, and the US.
A govt that ignores its constituents and frequently works against their interests is not going to be popular. The right/left horse race mentality misses the point. Whether that’s through oversight or intent is debatable, but the point stands. When people from either side are motivated by what they see as govt failure on a key issue, perhaps the divide is less important than that issue.

Stephanie Surface
Stephanie Surface
1 month ago

The article painted over Sahra Wagenknecht’s extremely left wing economic philosophy, which would ruin Germany as much as the Greens are currently slowly deindustrialising the country with their crazy NetZero Agenda. When I am in Germany, I often listen to panel discussions with Wagenknecht, and I am always bewildered by her extreme Marxist policies, very much like her husband’s Oskar Lafontaine, who resigned in 1999 from Schröder’s SPD government, which tried to sort out the huge unemployment problem in Germany at the time (Schröder eventually resolved the issue with his successful welfare reform).
Lafontaine founded a new left wing party WASG and later merged it with the former East German Communist Party PDS, which they named the “Linke”. Here he met the young East German Sahra Wagenknecht, and they eventually got married. Wagenknecht is an attractive and likeable person, and her speeches in the Bundestag are powerful, when she discusses immigration and speaks out against the new Green Agenda. But as history proves , Marxists policies will always lead to the ruin of a country.

Andrew F
Andrew F
1 month ago

So, at the moment, 8 people downvoted you for pointing out that Marxism always fails.
It is especially laughable in context of Germany where we had experiment of capitalism versus Marxism.
That German politician who grew up in failed part of Germany still proposes failed economic policies is moronic.
I agree with her stance on immigration and cultural issues.

Dr E C
Dr E C
1 month ago
Reply to  Andrew F

I don’t think people are objecting to the idea that Marxism ruins a country (unless Champagne Socialist is one of the downvoters), more the idea that SW’s policy proposals are Marxist.

Ingbert Jüdt
Ingbert Jüdt
1 month ago

To call BSW’s economic concepts “extreme Marxist” only shows how extreme Liberalism (in its doctrinal form of neoliberalism) has become itself. For BSW stands for nothing more than a solid ordo-liberalism, which stands in no contradiction to medium-sized enterprises, while Big Business and Big Money, especially in the context of globalization, have soundly proven to hijack governments and international organisations as well as unhinge any democratic control of their own machinations.

As to the question what “Neoliberalism” is: that’s the old and empirically disproven fundamentalist superstition that unregulated markets would provide for the common good, plus (distinguishing neo- from old laissez-faire liberalism) the conviction that the primary duty of the State is to protect unregulated markets, and to do this also at the price of sidelining or outright abolishing democracy, if nececessary. So Neoliberalism at its core is market-radical fundamentalist religion.

(It took me 40+ hours to post this comment because of the UnHerd Captcha clusterf*ck)

Dr E C
Dr E C
1 month ago
Reply to  Ingbert Jüdt

Worth it though. Brilliant summary.

Berndt H
Berndt H
1 month ago

BSW ran a massive campaign for the European election in May. Must have cost millions. I wonder where the funding came from since the party is only a few months old.

Andrew F
Andrew F
1 month ago
Reply to  Berndt H

Yes.
Let’s think who is she appeasing and who has got money?
Simple really.

Daniel Lee
Daniel Lee
1 month ago

“…demands that would once have been associated with the socialist-labour Left — interventionist and redistributive government policies to regulate capitalist market force…”
IT’S NEVER REALLY BEEN TRIED!

B. Timothy S.
B. Timothy S.
1 month ago

““Your law turns parents and children into guinea pigs for an ideology that only benefits the pharmaceutical lobby,” she said.”

My God, this woman just keeps getting better and better the more you learn about her!

All of Americas mainstream lefty’s have been taken by the multicultural, anti-nation state, anti-humanist ideology. We need her!

Kathy Hayman
Kathy Hayman
1 month ago

Good luck to Wagenacht. I’ve seen her interviewed, she’s clever, clear headed and ethical, a rare creature in the cesspool of current incumbents.

Kathy Hayman
Kathy Hayman
1 month ago

The UK cannot have people like her because we have a two-party system. the good thing about Europe is they’ve mostly got proportional representation of some Kind which allows the smaller parties to finally get in if only in coalition. I cannot see that changing here, we’ll have to 2 party state for ever!

John Galt
John Galt
1 month ago

> interventionist and redistributive government policies to regulate capitalist market forces, higher pensions and minimum wages, generous welfare and social security policies, taxes on wealth — with positions that today would be characterised as culturally conservative

That’s what we call a Clinton era Democrat, that’s what was considered left wing before the crazies in wigs started parading people around in dog leashes nude and attempting to saw off the private parts of minors.

Andrew Holmes
Andrew Holmes
1 month ago

In response to Wagenknect’s disputing the logic recognizing the appropriate acknowledgement of US security leadership, I paraphrase the Communist Joseph Stalin. He asked how many divisions the Pope had. I ask how many divisions Germany has. Diplomacy means little forwarded by the weak
Putin has clearly stated his objective is to reinstate the dominance of Eastern Europe that the USSR enjoyed. Does she believe that Ukraine is the last bite Putin intends? As a Communist, what is the source of her faith?

Brett H
Brett H
1 month ago
Reply to  Andrew Holmes

“Putin has clearly stated his objective is to reinstate the dominance of Eastern Europe”
Thats quite a big bite. Can you give us some source for Putin’s plan to dominate Eastern Europe?

Jürg Gassmann
Jürg Gassmann
1 month ago
Reply to  Brett H

We are witnessing a Schrödinger-like set of conundrums.
If Ukraine had been part of NATO, “Putin” would not have dared to attack, but if “Putin” wins in Ukraine, he will sweep through NATO.
Also, “Putin’s” troops have for over two years been running out of missiles (kept in the air only by raiding microwaves and washing machines for semiconductor chips), artillery shells, tanks, and all other manner of kit, and have been annihilating themselves in endless meat assaults to pathetically paltry territorial gain, yet if Ukraine loses, “Putin’s” hordes will sweep through Europe to the very Atlantic.

Brett H
Brett H
1 month ago
Reply to  Jürg Gassmann

Beautifully put.

UnHerd Reader
UnHerd Reader
1 month ago

What is ‘liberalism’ and ‘neoliberalism’? In the 19th century liberalism was for laissez-faire home economics as against price fixing by the state and for ‘globalisation’ meaning no tariffs on imports. Especially important was the price of bread which depended on the market price of wheat (anti-corn laws &c.). The ‘cultural’ aspect such as free speech (J.S. Mill &c.) was somehow a consequence of the economic stance. Recent UK liberalism has been pro-EU and pro-globalisation which has had a curious effect culturally: the necessity to shut down free speech and enquiry because the majority of the public seem to be pro-British thus by implication insular and ‘protectionist’, the sin for which there is no forgiveness. Hence the contradictory nature of ‘neo-liberalism’ in this country. It seems to me that the relation between the state control of the economy and the state control of culture especially free speech is by no means clear. Lib-Lab are ferociously global and anti-protectionist — to the extent of being anti-British — and ferociously anti-free speech. This is a weird combination apart from being extremely distasteful, to me at any rate. Robert Mules

Jürg Gassmann
Jürg Gassmann
1 month ago

This comment took me a bit longer to research, and I’m not quite sure whether I’m getting it right – it relates to the concept of “nation-state”.
Anglophone commentators do not differentiate between “state” and “nation-state”. But in European terminology, there is a huge difference between the two, both conceptually and ideologically.
A “state” (Staat) is the political entity founded on a constitution, having a legal personality, and disposing over the monopoly of force within its remit. A “nation-state” (a Nationalstaat) is a Staat where the people (the Staatsvolk – not Volk in the national socialist terminology, but as an ethnicity) are coterminous with the Staat – i.e. all ethnic Germans are citizens of the Staat Germany, and all citizens of the Staat Germany are ethnic Germans.
It is only the Staaten who have the legal instrumentarium to safeguard citizens’ constitutional rights and freedom, and to protect them against the depredations of corporates. Speaking of Nationalstaat in this context is wrong and a distraction, the National- has nothing to do with the argument.
So far as I can trace Wagenknecht’s statements, she consistently refers to Staat, not Nationalstaat. She is absolutely correct in her assessment that the EU is structured on a foundation of strong Staaten (not necessarily Nationalstaaten). The EU’s “democracy deficit” is a feature, not a bug – the EU’s bureaucracy is meant to be a service agency to the council of ministers, the assembly of the representatives of the member Staaten – it is certainly not meant to be a policy-making organ, it totally lacks any legitimation for such a function.

Ingbert Jüdt
Ingbert Jüdt
1 month ago

UnHerd comment function s*cks, especially on the weekends, iterating ad infinitum through the Captchas. If this sh*t continues, this year will be my first and my last subscription.

Brett H
Brett H
1 month ago
Reply to  Ingbert Jüdt

Yes,generally it’s a pretty poor site.

Konstantinos Stavropoulos
Konstantinos Stavropoulos
1 month ago

If the left has any ground on reality, Sahra Wagenknecht is probably its very best expression in the West at the moment..!

John Hughes
John Hughes
1 month ago

Sahra Wagenknecht’s memorable description of the legislation allowing gender change treatment for children quoted in the article:
“Your law turns parents and children into guinea pigs for an ideology that only benefits the pharmaceutical lobby” 
can be seen at the end of this 2½ minute clip of her adddressing the Bundestag in April 2024. Switch on the transcript in auto-generated German and you can follow what she says more easily…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxMllVtVZ_o
This clip by itself shows why she is an effective politician and communicates well.

John Hughes
John Hughes
1 month ago

Here is a new Sahra Wagenknecht youtube clip – about Scholz and Germany’s policy on Ukraine and Russia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lXMP0RUy5A

Gregory Sims
Gregory Sims
1 month ago

On the whole, a solid, convincing portrait of Wagenknecht, who – intellectually – is without doubt immeasurably beyond all other Federal politicians in Germany, especially the members of the current pitiful government. My only criticism of Fazi’s piece is that he’s far too dependent on mainstream German sources, especially the notoriously woke-leftist, pro-government Deutsche Welle. Terms such as “centre-left” to describe the current SPD and “centre-right” to describe the CDU are laughably out of touch with the actual political positions of both these parties, both of whom are unable to conceive of coalitions without the Greens, the ultimate, most radical, woke-leftist, pro-illegal-immigration, pro-Islam German political party.

Tyler Durden
Tyler Durden
1 month ago

Vital that the anti-globalist movement in Europe prioritises a critical engagment with neoconservative NATO objectives alongside a critique of the immigration disaster.
That’s why this lady is interesting. I disagree with her socialism – even with some tenets of her social democracy – but she’s assumed a valuable position here on Washington geopolitics as well as giving conservative nativism a left-wing slant.

Richard Craven
Richard Craven
1 month ago

“Who’s afraid of Sahra Wagenknecht?”
Ukraine.

Martin M
Martin M
1 month ago
Reply to  Richard Craven

….and the rest of the EU.

Stephan Quentin
Stephan Quentin
1 month ago

An interesting biographical detail about Miss Wagenknecht is that she had an Iranian father who met her mother while a student in West-Berlin. Since her early childhood he is presumed missing after a visit to his home country. Miss Wagenknecht’s first name was originally spelled “Sarah” in the German way. She later changed it to the Iranian spelling “ Sahra”.

Gordon West
Gordon West
1 month ago

The SDP actually offers something far more similar to voters in the UK: socially and culturally conservative, left-leaning economically, committed to the nation state as the upper limit of democracy and taking a firm stand against the “progressive authoritarianism” of our new Labour government.

Martin M
Martin M
1 month ago

I read somewhere that Ms Wagenknecht once wrote an article praising Stalin’s Russia. If that is true, it must surely invalidate everything she says on any political topic until the end of time.

mac mahmood
mac mahmood
1 month ago

The two Germanys should not have been united. Left on its own East Germany had the potential to become the South Korea of Europe.

Dee Harris
Dee Harris
1 month ago

“Immigration and the coexistence of different cultures can be enriching. However, this only applies as long as the influx remains limited to a level that does not overburden our country and its infrastructure, and as long as integration is actively promoted and successful.”
100% agree with that for the UK. If you love your country vote Reform.

James LS
James LS
1 month ago

Finally it seems like a sensible politician.