Sahra Wagenknecht’s Party Is a Bad Example for the Left

The good scores for the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) in the recent German regional elections have attracted left-wing attention internationally. Headed by the former Die Linke spokeswoman of the same name, the BSW took over 10 percent support in the states of Saxony, Thuringia, and Brandenburg, and may now even enter government in these three eastern regions.

But if this new self-defined “left-conservative” party is achieving relative electoral success — outcompeting its former Die Linke comrades — is it a good example for left-wing parties elsewhere? In a word, no. BSW copies both the political framework and the key policy proposals of the far right and the Right, especially on migration but also in areas such as economy, climate, and freedom of speech.

There is no doubting the electoral advance itself. June’s European elections saw the BSW running for the first time, scoring 6.2 percent — better than both Die Linke and the neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP), the smallest party in Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s national government.

The BSW’s leader, Wagenknecht, was once one of the most visible figures in Die Linke, but she often criticized its leadership. She especially chided the party’s ecological turn, its support for Angela Merkel’s open immigration policy in 2015–16, and its stance on the pandemic, as Wagenknecht instead echoed skepticism about vaccines. After the failure of the short-lived Aufstehen “movement” promoted by Wagenknecht in 2018, the veteran politician eventually broke with Die Linke, taking with her a good…