{"id":9620,"date":"2023-11-04T16:32:22","date_gmt":"2023-11-04T16:32:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/infundpros.com\/business\/new-german-party-defies-conventional-labels\/"},"modified":"2023-11-04T16:32:22","modified_gmt":"2023-11-04T16:32:22","slug":"new-german-party-defies-conventional-labels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/infundpros.com\/?p=9620","title":{"rendered":"New German party defies conventional labels"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Welcome back. Germany is to have a new political party \u2014 and it will be unusual in two respects. First, it takes its name from its founder, Sahra Wagenknecht. In a country famous since 1945 for its generally cautious, unflamboyant brand of politics, that makes it stand out.<\/p>\n

Second, the party defies conventional categories by combining some traditional leftwing policies with an overt appeal to hard-right voters. What are the prospects for the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance \u2014 for Reason and Justice (BSW), which will be officially launched in January? I\u2019m at tony.barber@ft.com.<\/p>\n

First, here are the results of last week\u2019s poll. Asked if the EU can become a true geopolitical power, 53 per cent said no, 28 per cent said yes and 19 per cent were on the fence. Thanks for voting!<\/p>\n

What\u2019s in a name?<\/h2>\n

To kick off, a quick survey of European political parties named after individuals. Is this a formula that brings electoral success?<\/p>\n

Sebastian Kurz, a Wunderkind<\/em> conservative Austrian politician, won his country\u2019s 2017 elections after relabelling his party the \u201cSebastian Kurz List \u2014 the new People\u2019s party\u201d. But he fell from power in 2021 and is now embroiled in cases of alleged corruption and lying to parliament \u2014 accusations he denies.<\/p>\n

At the start of this century, the populist Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn also named a party after himself. Days before national elections in 2002, Fortuyn was assassinated. His party came second in that vote but, deprived of its founder, soon faded into irrelevance.<\/p>\n

In eastern Europe, a Bulgarian party led by former king Simeon II and named after himself stormed to electoral victory in 2001. Simeon served as prime minister for four years, but by the end of the decade the party\u2019s moment in the sun was over.<\/p>\n

In other words, European parties named after prominent personalities can make an impact, but it doesn\u2019t seem to last. Will it be different in Germany?<\/p>\n

Joachim K\u00e4ppner, writing for the S\u00fcddeutsche Zeitung (here in German), observes: \u201cCreating political parties tailor-made for one person is a strategy that has little tradition in the Federal Republic \u2014 and has so far been unsuccessful.\u201d<\/p>\n

Judge Merciless comes a cropper<\/h2>\n

As K\u00e4ppner points out, Wagenknecht isn\u2019t the first German politician to name a party after herself. Anyone remember the short, turbulent political career of a judge named Ronald Schill in the northern city-state of Hamburg? Schill earned such notoriety for his draconian sentences that he was known as Richter Gnadenlos, or Judge Merciless.<\/p>\n

In 2000 Schill formed a rightwing party, named after himself, which did so well in local elections the following year that he was catapulted into power as Hamburg\u2019s deputy mayor and interior minister.<\/p>\n

But he caused such controversy that he was removed from office. He later emigrated to Latin America, popping up occasionally on little-watched German reality shows (known in German as \u201cTrash-TV\u201d).<\/p>\n

Who is Sahra Wagenknecht?<\/h2>\n

Wagenknecht, 54, is not an oddball like Schill, but she is certainly a distinctive public figure.<\/p>\n

Brought up in the German Democratic Republic, or former East Germany, she was an orthodox communist in her youth. On the night the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, she stayed at home reading Immanuel Kant\u2019s Critique of Pure Reason<\/em>, as the FT\u2019s Guy Chazan wrote in a wonderful 2017 profile.<\/p>\n

Wagenknecht is half-Iranian and the wife of Oskar Lafontaine, a former Social Democratic party candidate for chancellor (1990) and finance minister (1998-1999). Lafontaine\u2019s radical leftwing views led him to abandon the SPD and join Die Linke, a party with roots in East German communism of which Wagenknecht herself became a leader.<\/p>\n

BSW isn\u2019t Wagenknecht\u2019s first attempt at forming a new political movement. As the FT\u2019s Frederick Studemann wrote in 2018, she responded to a widespread mood in Germany of Politikverdrossenheit (\u201cbeing fed up with politics\u201d) by setting up a movement called Aufstehen (\u201cstand up\u201d). But that flopped.<\/p>\n

Wagenknecht has stayed in the public eye with regular appearances on TV talk shows and by writing bestselling books such as Die Selbstgerechten<\/em> (\u201cThe Self-Righteous\u201d), an attack on trendy leftwingers who, in her view, put identity politics ahead of defending the working class.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s sometimes compared with Rosa Luxemburg, the Marxist revolutionary who was murdered by extreme-right paramilitaries in the 1919 Spartacist uprising in Berlin.<\/p>\n

Not left or right but anti-mainstream<\/h2>\n

What do Wagenknecht and her party stand for? Marcus Colla, writing for the Lowy Institute, sums it up well:<\/p>\n

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In addition to the conventional-left emphases on wages, pensions, infrastructure and education, Wagenknecht\u2019s agenda combines a handful of radical left-populist essentials (attacks on Nato and big corporations, some nostalgia for the German Democratic Republic) with some classic motifs of the right (tough restrictions on migration, a return to cheap gas and nuclear energy, and routine attacks on \u201ccancel culture\u201d and \u201cidentity politics\u201d).<\/p>\n

Throw into the mix a degree of Euroscepticism, hard criticism of Covid lockdowns, demands to end sanctions against Russia and weapons exports to Ukraine, and a rhetoric that rails against the disconnection of the Berlin political class from \u201cordinary people\u201d, and you have an outlook that is more defined by its anti-mainstream impulse than by any \u201cleft\u201d or \u201cright\u201d orientation.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u2018Nutcases and extremists\u2019<\/h2>\n

Wolfgang M\u00fcnchau, writing in the New Statesman, warns us not to underestimate the new party:<\/p>\n

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I disagree with virtually of Wagenknecht\u2019s policies, but I take her seriously because she is well prepared, has a clear agenda and a team in place\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009This is not a bunch of old Trots fighting their last political battle.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Mathieu von Rohr, a journalist with Der Spiegel magazine, adds:<\/p>\n

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There could be a gap in the market for her mix of anti-Americanism, Putin apologism, socialism [and] migration scepticism as well as openness to conspiracy theories.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

However, Wagenknecht herself seems to anticipate trouble ahead. In a rather startling comment on her new party\u2019s prospects (here in German), she said: \u201cIt\u2019s a mammoth task to keep out nutcases and extremists.\u201d<\/p>\n

Go east, young party<\/h2>\n

If Wagenknecht\u2019s party is going to get anywhere, it will probably do so by stealing votes first and foremost from the far-right Alternative for Germany party, and by focusing its efforts on eastern Germany, where AfD is strongest.<\/p>\n

According to a poll last month by the Civey research institute, some 20 per cent of Germans could imagine voting for a Wagenknecht-led party \u2014 but the figure rises to 32 per cent in the east, and drops to 17 per cent in the west.<\/p>\n

<\/source><\/source>\"Bar<\/picture><\/figure>\n

In this analysis of Wagenknecht\u2019s prospects in the Politische Vierteljahresschrift<\/em>, a political science journal, Sarah Wagner, Constantin Wurthmann and Jan Philipp Thomeczeck say their research shows that she is attractive to \u201cindividuals who are more socioculturally rightwing, critical of migration and dissatisfied with democracy\u201d.<\/p>\n

That fits the profile of AfD voters in the east. And Wagenknecht\u2019s denunciation of \u201cblind, haphazard eco-activism\u201d may play particularly well in eastern Germany, but perhaps with some western voters, too.<\/p>\n

The popularity of the ruling three-party coalition of the SPD, Greens and liberal Free Democrats has suffered nationwide from a political and public backlash against its initially ambitious climate change policies.<\/p>\n

Implications for German party politics<\/h2>\n

Taking the long view, I am struck by the way that BSW\u2019s launch will be the latest illustration of the fragmentation of Germany\u2019s party political landscape.<\/p>\n

Once upon a time, West German politics was exceptionally stable, characterised by two big parties \u2014 the Christian Democrats (and their Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union) and the SPD \u2014 plus one smaller party, the FDP. Then came the Greens and, after Germany\u2019s reunification in 1900, Die Linke, AfD and now BSW.<\/p>\n

So a three-party system is turning into a seven-party system. All seven parties are capable of gaining seats in state assemblies as well as in the Bundestag after the next national elections due in 2025.<\/p>\n

Katja Hoyer, writing for UnHerd, comments:<\/p>\n

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With many small parties distributing the vote between them, it will be increasingly difficult to form coalitions, especially while keeping the AfD out of them.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

She may well be right, but let\u2019s not get ahead of ourselves. The first tests for Wagenknecht will be next year\u2019s European parliament elections, as well as three votes in the eastern German states of Brandenburg, Saxony and Thuringia.<\/p>\n

If her party does well in these elections, the pressure on Germany\u2019s ruling coalition, already rising, will become very intense indeed.<\/p>\n

More on this topic<\/h3>\n

Is the firewall still standing? \u2014 A commentary by Luisa Latella for the American-German Institute on mainstream parties\u2019 attitudes to AfD<\/p>\n

Tony\u2019s picks of the week<\/h2>\n
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  • \n

    The support for Israel voiced by Marine Le Pen and her French far-right party forms a striking contrast to the views of her father, once the movement\u2019s leader, and is part of a wider strategy to detoxify France\u2019s radical right, the FT\u2019s Leila Abboud reports from Paris<\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  • \n

    Antisemitic disturbances in Russia\u2019s mainly Muslim north Caucasus region have exposed the risks posed by President Vladimir Putin\u2019s efforts to make political hay out of the Israel-Hamas war, Robert Coalson writes for Radio Free Europe\/Radio Liberty<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

    Europe\u2019s search for tech leadership is the big theme at the FT-ETNO Tech and Politics Forum 2023 on November 7 at the Square in Brussels. Find out more and <\/em>register for a free online pass \/ apply for an in-person pass here<\/em>.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n