Nemčija ima velike gospodarske težave. Ki pa so bile povzročene z napačnimi politikami zadnjih vlad in z bolečo nekompetentnostjo sedanje mavrične vlade. Zato ne preseneča populistični politični odziv v Nemčiji s krepitvijo desnega in levega populizma. Pri čemer pa ta prihaja predvsem iz “novih dežel”, iz nekdanje socialistične Vzhodne Nemčije. Prebivalci nekdanjih socialističnih držav so, kot je pokazala tudi raziskava, ki sva jo nedavno naredila s kolegom na vzorcu OECD držav, bistveno manj tolerantni tako na ekonomske kot na kulturne (migracije) dejavnike.
Glede Nemčije je seveda lahko biti zgrožen ali vsaj neprijetno vznemirjen z meteorskim vzponom zelo desne AfD, sploh če si naredimo miselne projekcije evolucije protitujskega elementa v smeri fašizma. Toda Sahra Wagenknecht (voditeljica BSW – Zavezništva SW) je bistveno trši oreh. Wagenknechtova je zanimiv fenomen eklektičnega politika, ki odlično dojema aktualne težave in frustracije navadnih ljudi in jih nadgradi s strateškim razmislekom na ravni države. Wagenknechtova je na eni strani socialistična levičarka s posluhom za socialne težave ljudi, na drugi strani pa zagovornica tradicionalnih vrednot, skupnosti in nacionalne suverenosti. Je zanimiva mešanica socialistične levičarke in kulturne konzervativke, zato okarakterizacija kot “levičarske konzervativke”.

Zanimiva je njena kritika levičarskih strank (SPD in njene bivše Die Linke): pravi, da so se leve stranke odmaknile od problemov navadnih ljudi in delavskega razreda, da so postale zagovornice moderne potrošniške družbe in kulturnih in moralnih vzorcev ter zahodne kulturne hegemonije. Še več, pravi, da so se leve stranke iz nekdanjih liberalnih strank prelevile v avtokratske stranke s forsiranjem lastnih kulturnih in moralnih vzorcev.
Wagenknechtova je tudi kritična do nemške vladne “zelene” politike (pravi, da samo z OVE in brez jedrske energije ni mogoče izvesti zelenega prehoda) in politike glede spolne afirmacije. Prav tako je Wagenknechtova za premirje z Rusijo.
No, s temi političnimi vrednotami in programom bi bila Wagenknechtova zanimiva opcija tudi za Slovenijo. Jaz bi k njenemu miksu dodal še element podjetnosti. Za socialno, podjetno in suvereno Slovenijo.
Spodaj je dober komentar Thomasa Fazija.

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.
…
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.
…
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.
…
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?

Vir: Thomas Fazi, UnHerd