With the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party under investigation by the national security services and the formation of the new Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW), the 2024 European Union elections were particularly interesting in Germany and served as a provisional mood board before the 2025 national elections. Much has been written about the AfD, and while the formation of the BSW spurred an impressive amount of punditry, questions about its character remain. What is its political agenda, and how can we contextualize it within debates about illiberalism? What effects could BSW’s establishment have on the German and European political landscape?
Origins and Platform
As the name indicates, BSW was established by and orbits around the German politician Sahra Wagenknecht. Born in 1969 in the East German federal state of Saxony, she grew up in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR). As Germany approached reunification in 1989, Wagenknecht began her political career, believing there was still a chance to save socialism in the GDR. The failure to do so, and the victory of reunification and West German capitalism, was experienced by Wagenknecht as a “unique horror.”
In the 1990s, her political agenda was informed philosophically and theoretically by Hegel and Marx, of whom she wrote about in her doctoral thesis. Practically, her political career has been spent in various leftist and socialist parties, most notably Die Linke (“The Left”). However, even as early as the mid-1990s, her values stood out from the left norm, and her former party leader in the Party of Democratic Socialism, Gregor Gysi, described her as “rather conservative,” but in a very particular way. According to Gysi, she wanted to return to the days of the GDR and to a “Stalinist model.” Today, she is described—and indeed labels herself—as conservative, but in a very different way. She claims now that, while she still gets something from Marx, she has mostly moved on from him, and now takes inspiration from the old center-left Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD) and the center-right Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschlands (CDU). In this vein, on January 8, 2024 she founded the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht – Vernunft und Gerechtigkeit (translated Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance – Reason and Justice).
In its program for the 2024 European elections, BSW advocated for a less integrated European Union, the revoking of sanctions against Russia, more independence from US Big Tech, Big Pharma, and Big Finance, and measurements to stop “uncontrolled migration into the European Union.” The party calls the EU an “Eldorado of lobbyists…who covertly close up backroom deals, without democratic legitimation, and with a steadily rising EU-bureaucracy.” A vote for BSW, the party declares, “is a vote for a better Europe and a red card against the current coalition in Germany: for economical reason, social justice, peace, freedom of speech and democracy.”
BSW advocates for a less integrated European Union, the revoking of sanctions against Russia, more independence from US Big Tech, Big Pharma and Big Finance and measurements to stop “uncontrolled migration into the European Union.”
Characterizing BSW
Populist
Sahra Wagenknecht and her political party can be easily categorized as populist using both the “minimal definition” preferred by some academics—wherein populist politics are characterized by the antagonism between the “pure people” and the “corrupt elite” (with populists speaking in the name of the former)—and more thoroughgoing definitions, such as that which sees populism as a “discursive and stylistic repertoire” with several distinct features. As Mudde and Kaltwasser point out in their overview of approaches to populism, populist strategies can employ a charismatic leader who fosters a direct connection to the masses, usually by disrespecting norms around language and manners.
As the name suggests, BSW orbits around Wagenknecht as its face and guide. She is charismatic, often uses colloquial speech in her Instagram videos, and calls out the current coalition and the EU for corruption and lobbyism. Her Telegram channel promises regular updates and Q&A sessions on a more personal level. Even on her YouTube and Instagram accounts, she interacts with users, directly answering their questions with a referral to their username, creating a feeling of intimacy and closeness between her and her audience. In one of her Instagram posts, she answered a question about whether she could imagine cooperating with the German Green party—which is part of the current ruling coalition—with a clear “no,” calling it the “most incompetent, hypocritical, mendacious and dangerous party in the German parliament.” It is through such examples that we can see both the ideational and stylistic core of populism shining through in the behavior of Wagenknecht: ideational in its opposition to “the elite,” and stylistic in the way this opposition is presented. Empirical analyses back up these assertions of Wagenknecht’s populism, with one study finding that she employed populist communication more than any other member of her former party and that BSW’s founding document heavily employs populist framings.
Illiberal
In this framing of the elites and of the populist politician (who consider themselves the true representative of “the people’s” will) lies the germ of something thicker than the “thin-centered” ideology of populism. Namely, illiberalism. Populism here functions as a way of legitimizing ambitions to power. As Mudde and Kaltwasser put it, “Because populism implies that general will is not only transparent but also absolute, it can legitimize authoritarianism and illiberal attacks on anyone, who (allegedly) threatens the homogeneity of people.” Other scholars have drawn more direct links between populism and illiberalism by pointing to three tendencies: the rejection of checks and balances in favor of a government run only by “the people”; the opposition to intermediaries between the people and their representatives; and the monolithic conception of the “will of the people,” wherein people with different values are Othered.
Thus, if we put BSW in dialogue with more familiar examples of illiberalism, we can draw some parallels, e.g., between BSW and Viktor Orbán’s illiberal democracy in Hungary. Plainly, Orbán and Wagenknecht are distancing themselves from the current norms of Western European politics and its values. Orbán advocates a Christian ideology and traditional conservative values, evident in his government’s ban on gender studies degrees in higher education, for instance. Wagenknecht is not explicitly promoting a certain religion or a conservative lifestyle, although in her criticism of certain movements, she seems to be, implicitly, heading in a similar direction. She actively criticizes cancel culture, wokeness, and the so-called “lifestyle left,” consisting of media, young scholars, and the middle/upper classes, claiming them to be intolerant and oblivious to the working class. Opposing the idea of multiculturalism, Wagenknecht has, according to certain observers, accused minorities such as queer people and migrants of threatening social cohesion by not recognizing the “superiority of common rules.” This example efficiently highlights the close relationship between populism and illiberalism, with the obvious difference that Orbán has the state at his disposal and thus the power to actually implement these tendencies, while Wagenknecht and BSW remain far outside the halls of power.
Wagenknecht is generally associated with left-wing parties and speaks to and for the “traditional left”…As of late, however, she’s begun advocating for the so-called Mittelstand, the small and medium-sized (often family-owned) enterprises in Germany that stand counterposed to the big corporations.
While the parallels and connections of the two cases are evident, Orbán is easily classified as a right-wing conservative. On the other hand, Wagenknecht is generally associated with left-wing parties and speaks to and for the “traditional left,” focusing on the working class, the unemployed, and class politics more generally. As of late, however, even her economic leftism has been injected with a dose of pragmatism, as she’s begun advocating for the so-called Mittelstand, the small and medium-sized (often family-owned) enterprises in Germany that stand counterposed to the big corporations. This move rightward is also evident in BSW’s aforementioned clear stance against cancel culture, in her promotion of a more nation-centric European Union, and in her discourses against so-called parallel communities with Islamist tendencies that are subject to limited law enforcement despite their allegedly growing disapproval of German culture and traditions and more. All of this tends to clash with the common values of modern left-wing parties.
However, in all of this, and by criticizing the current liberalist features of the EU and Germany and American behemoths such as the tech industry, Wagenknecht and BSW count themselves as part of a new—growing—tendency on the left that offers a political alternative to liberalism, part of what Eklundh categorizes as left-wing illiberalism. Eklundh emphasizes that this break with liberalism does not have to be antidemocratic, but rather, that left-wing illiberalism is possibly “the best safeguard” against democratic erosion.
BSW’s illiberalism is convoluted and paradoxical and, while similar in valence to other kinds, has a more democratic spirit than might otherwise be assumed by labeling it “illiberal.”
Eklundh challenges a common assumption: that liberalism and democracy are deeply intertwined, and illiberalism and democracy are opposed. She debunks this by pointing out that “liberalism has more often than not advocated for nondemocratic politics” and that many democratic breakthroughs are, while credited to liberalism, actually the efforts of socialist politics. Integral to this argument is the idea that liberalism, when left unchecked, can degrade democracy, and push it towards elitist oligarchy and technocracy. When Sahra Wagenknecht and her party point to the rise of lobbyism and the lack of transparency in the EU, the development of a small rich elite, or the fact that the EU’s liberal features such as freedom of movement and opportunities to go abroad for schooling are only available to wealthier people, they are essentially making the claim outlined above: that liberalism without democracy leads to an oligarchic state of affairs. Thus, BSW’s illiberalism is convoluted and paradoxical and, while similar in valence to other kinds, has a more democratic spirit than might otherwise be assumed by labeling it “illiberal.”
Liberal?
All that being as it may, BSW’s program is also littered with liberal tendencies and beliefs: solidarity with Julian Assange, support for a free and independent press over national security, free speech, and reversing the Digital Services Act (intended to monitor internet platforms and their content), etc. With regards to the Covid-19 pandemic, BSW heavily criticized the European vaccination policies which denied unvaccinated people access to public venues, claiming that there was no medical reason (especially among young people) for such an exclusion. She also opposed lockdown measures. For states, these measures were an attempt to minimize infections and subsequently, the amount of life-threatening cases, protecting the functionality and efficiency of medical establishments during that trying time.
From this angle then, states were protecting their infrastructure and their citizens and acting in the public interest. Wagenknecht’s opposition to these measures, when not straying into outright conspiracism, was often cloaked in the language of civil liberties and relied “on a reified middle-class concept of ‘freedom’ which frames it as an individual right rather than a social project.” Given this reliance on civil liberty and freedom (classically liberal notions), the ostensibly illiberal Wagenknecht was paradoxically speaking in defense of liberalism itself, or at least ostensibly so, a tactic that is not uncommon among liberalism’s opponents. Peering at these contradictions, one clearly sees the fragile relationship between liberalism, illiberalism, and democracy that Eklundh describes on display, lending credence to the idea that these tensions characterize modernity.
BSW’s Voters and Electoral Prospects
Wagenknecht’s anti-vaccination stances are part of her success and play an important role in her success with right-wing voters. In fact, her critique of the Covid-19 policies, paired with her anti-immigrant discourses, gain positive attention from supporters of the nationalist, far-right, AfD. In fact, early modeling suggests that the majority of those who would support Wagenknecht and her new party come from disaffected factions of not only Die Linke but AfD. While the anti-vaccination stance was not in the manifesto, Wagenknecht was always open about her opinion, and at a rally hosted by her in 2023 at the Brandenburg gate, there were also members of the radical anti-vaccination and anti-establishment “Querdenken” movement in the crowds. Her disapproval of the pandemic policies has since then been included in the BSW’s 2024 election program.
Wagenknecht’s critique of the Covid-19 policies, paired with her anti-immigrant discourses, gain positive attention from supporters of the nationalist, far-right, AfD.
Also looming large on Wagenknecht’s agenda—and also in opposition to many of Germany and Europe’s other left-wing parties—is her efforts to lift the sanctions imposed on Russia and her advocation for a “diplomatic solution” to the war in Ukraine, which she considers a proxy war between the United States and Russia. In its program for the European elections, BSW argued that the sanctions hit Europe harder than Russia, implying that they were counterproductive. The party also opposes efforts to grant EU membership to Ukraine, naming a lack of democracy, a weak economy, corruption, and discrimination against the Russian-speaking minority (even before the invasion) as their reasons. In an Instagram reel, Wagenknecht criticized foreign minister Baerbock’s meeting with Zelensky in May 2024, where Germany promised Ukraine additional financial support. She mocked Baerbock’s claim that, in defending itself, Ukraine is also protecting Germany and the EU, before naming articles in which Putin is presented as open to diplomatic negotiations. Wagenknecht concludes with the snarky remark that “Mrs. Baerbock apparently does not read newspapers.”
Additionally, while emphasizing that she does not want to generalize, Wagenknecht has labeled some Ukrainian refugees as “social tourists” who are exploiting German welfare. Like her critiques of the Covid-19 response and immigration, these foreign policy positions have the effect of making her personally, and potentially her party, attractive to right-wing voters, especially nationalists ones previously attracted to the AfD. This was especially evident in the anti-NATO rallies she organized, where both she and her husband Oskar Lafontaine dismissed concerns about the participation of AfD supporters.
Thus, if we look at who may vote for the BSW, the aforementioned mix of voters from the left and the right is very present. While Die Linke and the neoliberal Freie Demokratische Partei (FDP) are both at risk of falling short of the 5% threshold for parliament seats at the next election, the AfD has consistently been the second-strongest party in the country. The FDP is part of the current coalition and has an agenda that is heavily focused on traditional economic liberalism. Their collapse, stark even when compared to the fall of the ruling coalition’s other two members, shows a potent disapproval of liberalism, at least in the zealous form characteristic of the FDP.
The “traffic light coalition” (made up of the SPD, The Greens, and the FDP) has lost its majority and the overall attitude towards the government is bad. The German public’s disapproval of the liberalist parties, plus the investigation of the AfD and recent controversies surrounding the party, are a strong indicator that BSW could gain in strength and gain representation at the next national elections, to be held in 2025. At the European elections, BSW secured 6.2% of the vote, beating both Die Linke and the FDP, but falling well short of the percentages scored by the Greens, the SPD, AfD, and certainly the government-in-waiting CDU, which secured 30%. Most polls have BSW faring better at the 2025 national elections, with their score hovering between 8-9%.
The shortcomings of the German reunification process increases demand for new illiberal and populist parties, and BSW will certainly try and take advantage of this situation.
Elections at the local and state level will likely see the party perform better, especially in the East. Wagenknecht’s appeal in the former GDR states can be traced to the struggles of reunification, as many of these states have faced challenges when integrating into the German Federal Republic. Even now, after over 30 years, post-GDR states are still underrepresented in German leading positions, have lower wages, and an overall weaker economy. The shortcomings of the German reunification process increases demand for new illiberal and populist parties, and BSW will certainly try and take advantage of this situation.
In September 2024, voters will elect a new Landtag (state-level assembly) in the eastern German state of Thuringia. The outgoing government is led by Die Linke and also features the SPD and Greens, but the AfD (also a prominent presence) has recently surged in the state. The creation of BSW and its new spot on the ballot papers has complicated matters and appears to be disproportionally hurting Die Linke. Recent polls show BSW capturing 20% of the vote and, while their numbers has fallen from last year’s highs, the AfD still looks set to make gains on their 2019 score. The same is not true for Die Linke, which will likely see its figures halved. BSW is also set to do relatively well in the elections for the Saxony Landtag, another former GDR state, held on the same day as those in Thuringia. Polls have BSW at 15% and forecast a likely collapse of Die Linke.
Wakeup call
Dissatisfaction with the current coalition, the delegitimization of Die Linke as a force, and the new case against the AfD will provide a lot of citizens who are unsure of their next vote or uncommitted ample reason to support BSW. Sahra Wagenknecht’s charisma, populist rhetoric, and East German background position her well to capitalize on people’s dissatisfaction. However, while she is still perceived as a left-socialist politician, her discourse and agenda also consist of authoritarian and right-wing elements. Considering the amount, and diversity, of support she has managed to accrue in just over six months since BSW’s founding, it is clear that Wagenknecht strikes a chord with many German citizens and has succeeded in speaking to their fears and disappointments related to years of pandemic, inflation, and war.
BSW is a wake-up call that business-as-usual is not working…As both left-wing and right-wing voters seem to be drawn to BSW, it is imperative that the current coalition provides solutions, as the dual rise of AfD and BSW carries with it the great risk of a more thoroughgoing right-wing authoritarian turn in Germany.
BSW’s rise might form a much-needed opposition to mainstream parties within the current government and outside it (like the Christian Democrats), as well as to the far-right AfD—all of whom will easily pass the 5% threshold and therefore enter parliament. BSW, its voters, and its policy agenda remind the German mainstream of the tensions inherent in liberal democracy, between its constituent parts: liberalism and democracy. But the dangerously divisive, populist, methods of Sahra Wagenknecht, combined with her and her party’s right-wing authoritarian tendencies cannot be ignored.
Nonetheless—like the rise of the AfD—BSW is a wake-up call that business-as-usual is not working in Germany and that mainstream German politicians need to assess their focus and their communication to voters. As both left-wing and right-wing voters seem to be drawn to BSW, it is imperative that the current coalition provides solutions, as the dual rise of AfD and BSW carries with it the great risk of a more thoroughgoing right-wing authoritarian turn in Germany, and the building of a new authoritarian consensus.
Svenja Hiesgen, from Germany, holds a Bachelor’s degree in Literary and Cultural Analysis from the University of Amsterdam and is set to commence a Master’s degree in Public and Cultural Diplomacy at the University of Siena, with a profound interest in political discourse analysis and the interplay of religion within modern cultural and political contexts.
Image made by John Chrobak using “Linke Abgeordnete bei Friedensdemo in Berlin,” by Fraktion DIE LINKE. im Bundestag licensed under CC BY 2.0.; “Kunstevent “Anything to say?” am Brandenburger Tor,” by Fraktion DIE LINKE. im Bundestag licensed under CC BY 2.0.
