German Left Party convulsed by efforts to expel internal critic

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If there was a competition for Germany’s most opposite politician, Sahra Wagenknecht would easily make the final round and possibly win the top prize.

After a lively 30-year career, however, she risks being kicked out of her political home, the Left Party, for her claims in a new book that it and the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) betray their traditional voters.

The Holier-Than-Thous argues that German left-wing politics were co-opted by a middle-class academic elite with little interest in the concerns of today’s working class, from precarious employment contracts to a growing crisis. housing.

Behind their professions of solidarity, she sees an evangelical obsession with identity politics, political correctness and the well-being of minority groups and a rabid intolerance of those who see things differently.

An important claim of liberalism is tolerance. . . while the left saw itself as engaging for those with more difficult life, she writes. But for many people, the label of the left no longer represents the pursuit of social justice but rather distant academic debates that bypass people’s needs.

In its analysis, Germany began its descent during the 2015-2016 refugee crisis, accelerated in the climate debate and, with the pandemic, hit a political low point.

What unites the three debates, she suggests, is a reflex in the German media and political classes to deny criticisms of dominant positions rather than engage and constructively challenge their concerns.

She attributes some of that aggressive atmosphere to the rise of Trump-era populism, but says her new far-right has found an unlikely ally in the new liberal left-wing milieu. Together, she argues, these two camps need each other, amplify and experience each other with a shared love of rituals of emotional outrage, moralized slander and hatred. open to those who think differently.

Cancel culture

The book picks up on the international debate on the so-called cancellation culture and a recent survey in which 44% of Germans, the highest number on record, said they felt unable to express their point of view in public, especially on immigration.

His warning that the Left Party is heading towards self-imposed extinction loomed over election night earlier this month in Saxony-Anhalt.

The Eastern State was once a stronghold of the Left Party, but this time it only got 11% support, with the SPD faring even worse at 8.4%. Meanwhile, more than a fifth of voters backed the far-right Alternative fr Deutschland (AfD), making it the second most popular party.

As his party fights for survival ahead of the September federal election, Wagenknecht was nominated with the support of two-thirds of the constituency party members as a candidate for the Bundestag.

Among her harshest critics is Left Party co-leader Susanne Hennig-Wellsow. She accuses Wagenknecht of leftist populism and of causing enormous damage to party efforts for a more progressive and emancipatory leftist politics that embraces feminist, queer and migrant concerns.

But even the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation of Left Parties is not convinced, warning that this political orientation has resulted in an inability to retain voters, which has led former voters to orient themselves in new and colorful ways.

Sensing growing divisions and an upcoming electoral disaster, Hennig-Wellsow attacked the push inside the party to expel Wagenknecht as being counterproductive.

What Wagenknecht’s rivals hoped was an open and closed case against her was complicated by her top spot in the rankings for non-fiction and rave reviews. The liberal weekly Zeit, in a deliberate nod to its party critics, noted: Wagenknecht doesn’t push emotional buttons, she argues and analyzes.

The daily Sddeutsche said the book was convincing. . . not as a counter-program to the electoral manifesto of the Left Parties, but to a leftist policy that it thinks is bad.

Even the conservative daily Frankfurter Allgemeine (FAZ) called the book spectacular. A century after the German left lost its voters to far-right fascism, with catastrophic results for Europe and the world, the FAZ urged the Wagenknechts party to heed its warnings.

Rather than shoot the messenger, he urged a radical rethink of 21st century leftist politics for the benefit of the lower social half of the population in Germany.

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