Germany’s New Political Party Takes on the Greens and the War Party
The BSW (Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht), initiated by former Linke politician Sahra Wagenknecht, held its official founding convention on Jan. 27 in Berlin. Some 400 delegates discussed the programmatic priorities, which are: an end to weapons deliveries to Ukraine and an instant ceasefire there; restoring cooperation with Russia, together with the lifting of sanctions and the resumption of natural gas imports from Russia; a reform of the European Union, replacing it by an “independent Europe of sovereign democracies” freed from the Anglo-American dictate and NATO; disarmament and a security architecture including Russia; a climate protection policy that is “open to technology”, and affordable for average citizens, while not carried out at the expense of necessary investments on social and infrastructure development.
The new party will oppose all other parties, particularly the Greens, which Sahra Wagenknecht in her speech to the delegates called “Germany’s most dangerous party”, a symbol of utopian ideologies and “arrogance in politics”, typified by the “value-driven” feminist foreign policy of Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, which is just another name for regime-change projects outside of Germany.
As for Ukraine, Wagenknecht denounced the “inhumane policies” of the EU and the German government, corresponding to the cynical principle that “Ukrainians should continue to suffer and die for our freedom”. In that context, Wagenknecht attacked the FDP’s lead candidate for the June European Parliament elections, Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, whom she dubbed “Marie-Agnes Strack-Rheinmetall” (in reference to defense giant Rheinmetall) because of her intense relation to the military-industrial complex.
The brutal militarization of narratives on the Ukraine issue, Wagenknecht stressed, has opened the door to an “encroaching political authoritarianism” against the freedom of expression, a demilitarization of political discussions is therefore most urgent.
The Berlin convention elected as chairpersons Sahra Wagenknecht and Amira Mohamed Ali, both former members of the Linke party group in the Bundestag. The new party’s top two candidates for the European Parliament are former Linke Bundestag member Fabio De Masi and former Mayor of Düsseldorf Thomas Geisel (SPD). The elections in June will be the first electoral test for the new party. Sections in the various states will be formed in the coming weeks, including in the three eastern states of Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia, where state parliament elections are to be held in September of this year. The BSW has already come in third in recent opinion polls, after the AfD (Alternative for Germany) and the CDU (Christian Democrats).
