Author: An analysis by Stefan Reinhart
03.10.2024, 10:04
We see Sahra Wagenknecht on stage. Her party, her alliance, is named after her. Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht. In East Germany, after the state elections in Thuringia, Saxony and Brandenburg, she could soon co-govern with the SPD and the CDU. Your party needs it to keep the AfD out of the state chancellery. Although Wagenknecht represents pretty much everything that the CDU or SPD reject. Wagenknecht became a mega power factor within months.
Wagenknecht’s election success is based on positions according to which the West is a “warmonger”, NATO is an aggressor, and people should therefore have understanding for Russian President Putin. In eastern Germany, their alliance and the AfD together achieved over 40 percent – with very similar pro-Putin and anti-Ukraine positions. Today Wagenknecht is meeting with her supporters for a “peace demonstration”.
Cheers when criticizing NATO plans
So we see Sahra Wagenknecht on the stage, who is on her way to power. But who is this woman? Born in 1969 in the former GDR. After (!) the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, he joined the declining GDR state party SED. In 2004 the statement: “Compared to the Federal Republic of Germany, the GDR was, whatever one might criticize it in detail, in every phase of its development the more peaceful, more social, more humane Germany.” She had kind words for the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, as well as for Fidel Castro in Cuba and Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.
So now the demo in Berlin. Of course there is nothing to be said against when people demonstrate for peace, for freedom. On the contrary. On stage, Wagenknecht says how wrong the Ukraine policy is, how senseless the West’s arms deliveries, how naive the policies of Chancellor Scholz or Foreign Minister Baerbock. Putin recognizes them as the aggressors in the conflict – but the West’s reaction to them castigates them with the harshest words. After all, Putin was provoked. She probably received the loudest cheers from the audience when she criticized NATO’s plans to station new medium-haul routes in Germany. Wagenknecht says nothing about the fate of Ukraine after any deal with Putin.
Nervousness in government Berlin
With her positions on Russia’s war against Ukraine, Wagenknecht is entirely in line with the AfD. And clearly on the other side than the government parties in Berlin and the CDU. NATO as a supporting element of European security, Germany’s traditional ties to the West, the commitment to the EU – and to a free Ukraine that must not lose out on Putin’s war of aggression. Federal Republican Common Sense, so far.
At the same time, nervousness can be felt in government Berlin. Many people are tired of war and can no longer see the images, the violence. Added to this is the crisis in the Middle East – it feels like things are getting worse in the world every day. The longing for peace is understandable. And well managed by Wagenknecht, for example.
And it is precisely now in these times that word is leaking out of the Chancellery: Chancellor Scholz wants to speak to President Putin on the phone again for the first time since December 2, 2022. Explore. Let’s listen, have a conversation. There is no date yet – but the Kremlin announces that there are “at first glance no common topics” but that they remain open to dialogue.
Sounds contradictory – but diplomacy takes place on the backstage. Not on the front stage, where Sahra Wagenknecht is standing.
