For years, the pugnacious politician meandered in her course. She is not alone in this. The old left-right scheme no longer wants to fit into this complicated world. What is amazing, however, is the nonchalance with which Sahra Wagenknecht deals with advances from the AfD and approval from the neo-Nazi scene.
As of October 2014, when demonstrators in Dresden warned Monday after Monday that the Occident was going down as a result of uncontrolled mass immigration, a debate raged about whether politicians should talk to Pegida supporters. She revolved around the still unresolved dilemma: if you approach people, you take them seriously and give them the feeling of being heard. Or do you refuse dialogue and thus devalue people. Variant one is definitely the better one.
Sahra Wagenknecht also saw it that way and decided on verbal cooperation. She didn't want to reduce the protest to contempt for Islam and racism alone, but thought it was outrage "about precarious jobs and lousy pensions". As so often with Wagenknecht: Behind the analysis - not wrong, but only a small part of the truth - was the attempt to impose right-wing theses on their Marxist world view. She explained that Pegida "looks for scapegoats in immigrants and Muslims instead of naming the guilty and the profiteers", namely "the recipients of corporate profits".
Consequently, Wagenknecht denied having "intersections" with Pegida, only to confirm them in the same breath. "Right-wingers have always taken up issues that are popular with the population," she told the "Frankfurter Rundschau" at the time. "And of course it's right to criticize the German government for its wrong policy on Russia." By then, Putin had already annexed Ukraine's Crimea.
Wagenknecht, at the time leader of the Left parliamentary group in the Bundestag, declared the "fight against racism and xenophobia" to be one of the "biggest challenges" of 2016. A few months later, she shocked her party with the statement, unlike ex-Chancellor Angela Merkel "wanted to persuade us last fall" that "we can do it" is not possible.
It can be seen and interpreted in this way. This also applies to their thesis of the "lifestyle left", who would have dedicated themselves solely to "wokeness", no longer interested in the socially disadvantaged, but only making sure that they were on the right side. But at least they are on one side - which can no longer be said about Wagenknecht. She is certainly not alone with her zigzag course, which has to do with the fact that the world has become complicated and there are hardly any clear answers that fit the old left-right pattern.
What is amazing, however, is the naturalness with which Wagenknecht managed to form a cross-front with herself and at the same time adamantly cling to being a far-left politician who has nothing to do with the right and doesn't want to have anything to do with it. It's a gigantic balancing act that she's doing there. From what is known, Wagenknecht has not left the communist platform within the Left Party, which is something of a melting pot for supporters of Stalinist-style socialism.
Nevertheless, the politician does not seem to have self-doubt. Wagenknecht obviously doesn't feel stupid either when she acts as if nobody noticed that the AfD has been appealing for years to join her. The woman nonchalantly overlooks the fact that the publisher of the right-wing extremist "Compact-Magazine", Jürgen Elsässer, the convicted Holocaust denier Nikolai N. and Q-Anon crooks are cheering her on. A clientele who have lost rationality, who put Annalena Baerbock and Olaf Scholz on a par with Kaiser Wilhelm and Hitler, which fits with Wagenknecht's talk of the alleged "war drunkenness" of the Germans, as if the federal government would not deliver weapons to Ukraine, but call citizens to arms.
Wagenknecht explained that "right-wing extremists who are in the tradition of a regime that started the worst world war in human memory have no place at a peace demonstration". According to their own understanding, AfD members and supporters are out. Because she doesn't see herself as a disguised NSDAP, and the Office for the Protection of the Constitution wouldn't go that far either. So they should come, cheer the AfD sympathizers and you, the angel of peace, but better without the Russian flags in hand, because that wouldn't be good for the image. She can never get enough applause, as her blissful smile on stage - surpassed only by Alice Schwarzer - shows, as if her rally wasn't about war and peace, but about the announcement of an election victory.
She welcomes anyone who, like Wagenknecht - thinks Russia is great and America sucks - whether it's a war of aggression or bombs on hospitals. Of course, neo-Nazis and Reich citizens don't. "But that goes without saying, I thought," she said in her speech. In the world of Sahra Wagenknecht "everything goes without saying", which requires her to position herself to reduce the number of her fans. A transparent move to talk about responsibility and to delegate the decision to participate in a demo to those who might classify themselves as neo-Nazis and citizens of the Reich. Otherwise all are welcome who are "honest in heart" for peace and for negotiations. Who, please, isn't for peace and negotiations?
If you listen to Wagenknecht with what icy coldness she talks about the Ukrainians, you can't think of anything but an honest heart. Self-forgetfulness and arrogance tend to stand out. "You shouldn't make such a stupid debate out of the transverse front discussion. It annoys me at what level the discussion is now taking place in Germany," said Wagenknecht. She certainly doesn't count herself on this subterranean level, but rather belongs to the elite of the discussants. The woman is just bursting with (exaggerated) self-confidence - actually a great quality, if it didn't lead to the question: Why actually?
Four days before the start of the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine, she explained to an audience of millions on "Anne Will" that Putin would not attack the neighboring country, he was not a "crazy Russian nationalist who gets drunk on moving borders". It is astonishing that Wagenknecht, after this grandiose error, which she - hats off - publicly admitted just one day after the beginning of the war, ignored all warnings from Eastern Europe about the Kremlin's desire for military expansion a year later and continued to see the USA as the evil under the sun , because that's the only way their worldview allows it.
Wagenknecht's pronounced self-confidence and the number of her TV appearances are fundamentally opposed to her political importance. This is not zero though. But women cannot organize political majorities. Their platform "get up" was a non-starter. The fact that the left missed the five percent hurdle in the federal election and only stayed in parliament thanks to direct mandates also has to do with the one-woman cross-front, which repeatedly forces her party to either stand up for her or break away from her to distance.
The newspaper "Welt" asked Wagenknecht at the end of 2019: "How narcissistic are you?" The answer: "A real narcissist lacks empathy for other people. But those who are not on the sunny side of life were and are the reason for me to get involved politically." That doesn't explain everything, but a lot.
