Sahra Wagenknecht, the new star of Germany’s red-brown left

Brussels – There is a political theory about a horseshoe. The idea is that the extremes of the political spectrum are closer together than they are distant from the centre. The further one moves away from moderate positions, the more difficult it becomes to draw a clear distinction between the right and the left. To the point of trespassing from one side to the other. Sahra Wagenknecht, the enfant prodigy of the German left, seems to confirm this theory, embodying a political current —the so-called “red-brownism“—that combines some elements of the progressive tradition with other typical conservative warhorses. But who is the new “star” of the radical left in Germany, and why will we continue to hear about her in the coming months?

Wagenknecht was born in Jena 55 years ago when Thuringia was under Soviet occupation in what was Eastern Germany. She formed politically in the circles of Soviet-inspired German communism, joining the FDJ, the youth section of the SED, the Unified Socialist Party of Germany (the hegemonic political force in the former GDR), in what was then East Berlin. After SED merged with the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) following the fall of the Wall, she was elected to the party’s National Committee in 1991. She entered the Europarliament in 2004 with the PDS, affiliating with the Confederal Group of the Left (GUE/NGL).

In the federal elections of 2009, she won a seat in the Bundestag in the ranks of Die Linke (The Left), the main party of the radical left that stood in opposition to the Social Democrats of the SPD and which had emerged in 2007 from the merger of the PDS with another progressive political force called Labor and Social Justice (WASG). Since then, Wagenknecht has never left the German Parliament. In 2010, she was elected vice-chair of Die Linke, and from 2015 to 2019, she was group leader in the Bundestag. However, relations with the party leadership became increasingly strained until they finally broke down in October 2023. At that point, Wagenknecht founded an association bearing her name—Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (“Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance,” abbreviated to BSW)—and was officially established as a political party in January of this year.

What has irreparably divided the most iconic figure of the German left from the party that has historically represented the demands of radical progressivism have been, above all, some of Wagenknecht’s so-called “unorthodox” positions. Although on economic issues she continues to advocate typical left-wing claims (such as the minimum wage and higher pensions), on issues such as immigration, climate policies, and foreign policy, the Thuringian leader defends views that traditionally lie to the right of the political spectrum. The phenomenon is usually called red-brownism: left-wing welfare policies and right-wing social policies. And, quite often, a wink to the Kremlin.

As for migration policies, Wagenknecht criticized harshly the “welcoming policy” of former Chancellor Angela Merkel (the fateful “Wir schaffen das” that secured the entry into Germany of some one million Syrian refugees in 2015), which she felt was lax and which she said contributed to aggravating the condition of the working classes—as well as increasing crime. According to her, the country has been “overburdened” with migrants and asylum seekers: a rhetoric that echoes the most classic workhorses of conservatives of all latitudes but which perhaps one would not expect from someone born of Iranian mother as precisely Wagenknecht. Regarding foreign policy, the new icon of Germany’s radical left has always advocated a rapprochement between Berlin and Moscow and the disbanding of NATO. After arguing in late 2021 and early 2022 that a Russian invasion of Ukraine would not be in the Federation’s interest, in September 2022, she opposed sanctions against the Kremlin, accusing Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government of bringing the country to the brink of economic war with its main energy partner. Subsequently, she repeatedly called for a stop to sending arms to Kyiv and the opening of peace negotiations; all positions shared with the extreme right-wing Alternative für Deutschland (AfD).

According to a Washington Post’s investigation, the Kremlin allegedly drew up plans to create a cross-party axis between Wagenknecht, the far left and the AfD’s ultra-right to row against Berlin’s pro-Ukrainian position. Still, no actual contacts between German politicians and Russian strategists were ever proven. One concrete fact, however, was leaving the parliamentary chamber by BSW and AfD deputies when, last June, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was giving a speech at the Bundestag.

The rise of the BSW—which appears strongly personalized around its leader, one of the most popular political figures at home—has been prodigious, especially given that the party is not even nine months old. On a national scale, the red-brown left is given around 8 per cent, but the situation is very different between the regions of what used to be East and West Germany. In the eastern states, support for Wagenknecht’s list is between 12 and 17 per cent: the highest figure, 16.9 percentage points, comes from Brandenburg, where regional voting will take place on September 22. The BSW came in third in both elections held on Sunday (September 1), with 15.8 per cent in Thuringia and 11.8 per cent in Saxony. In both regions, the radical right wing of the AfD exceeded 30 per cent of the vote, ranking first in Thuringia and second in Saxony. Results that speak of a deep rift between the east and west of the country never really reunified since the Cold War years, and which will probably deliver precisely to the BSW an unhoped-for centrality when it comes time to create government coalitions since all parties have refused to ally with the AfD.

Finally, on the European stage, the BSW also looks set to gain the spotlight soon. Rumours have been churning for months in the EU Parliament in Strasbourg about an attempt by the six elected members of the German party to form a new parliamentary group further to the left of The Left (or further to the right of the Europe of sovereign nations, where the AfD sits if we want to refer to the horseshoe theory). For now, they have failed to muster enough MPs to meet the formal requirements (23 MPs from seven member countries), but the alchemy in the Parliament is variable, and it is not certain that the game will fail at some point in the 10th legislature. What is certain is that the Thuringian leader will continue to remain in the limelight of national and European political news.