Sahra Wagenknecht is losing ground and seeking the support of the AfD

Berlin. The first signs had already appeared back in 2024. In January of that year, Sahra Wagenknecht formalised her (much-heralded) departure from Die Linke, the German social-communist party historically strong in the eastern Länder, to found a party in her own image. Thus was born the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance for Reason and Justice, or more simply the Bsw. A socialist yet nationalist, with little inclination to welcome refugees and foreigners – “Germans (the poor) first” – pro-Russian and anti-vaccine, Ms Wagenknecht had immediately aroused the curiosity of the AfD, which suddenly found itself under threat from the left. For a couple of years, the former parliamentary group leader of Die Linke in the Bundestag resisted the siren call of sovereignty, forging her own path: in the European elections of June 2024, the fledgling red-brown party secured 6.4 per cent of the vote and six MEPs, who were, however, considered too right-wing to be admitted to The Left group in Strasbourg. In September 2024 came the big breakthrough: the Bsw became the third-largest party in Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg, achieving double-digit results. The party, however, narrowly missed out on entering the Bundestag in February 2025, falling just short of the 5 per cent electoral threshold.

Today, however, it is election time once again in the east, with votes taking place in September – first in Saxony-Anhalt, then in Berlin and Mecklenburg – and the firebrand of the German left is back in the spotlight, veering towards the right. Speaking at a rally in Dessau, in Anhalt, Ms Wagenknecht described the cordon sanitaire drawn around the AfD as “nonsense”. Because the country needs “a fresh start” and “nobody wants another CDU regional premier”. The BSW has not ruled out supporting the AfD in Magdeburg. A rather far-fetched scenario, given that, according to the polls, with 4 per cent of the vote it would not currently clear the electoral threshold even in the regional parliament. Her words, however, were enough to send the party into turmoil: “Sahra Wagenknecht has crossed a line,” declared Thuringia’s Deputy Minister-President, Katja Wolf, from Erfurt. As the regional leader of the BSW – the alliance that bears Sahra Wagenknecht’s initials – Wolf reminded her that the AfD is a “highly dangerous” party, which “does not pursue policies for ordinary people” and acts in a “racist and misogynistic” manner. It is certainly no coincidence that it was in Erfurt that the BSW agreed, in December 2024, to form a coalition with the Christian Democrats and Social Democrats (giving rise to Germany’s first ‘black-red-purple’ alliance): the idea was to keep the AfD out. A plan that Wagenknecht threw out the window a year and a half later, not ruling out – and this is the real twist – that the far-right’s leading candidate, Ulrich Siegmund, could become regional premier on the third ballot, when a simple majority in the Magdeburg parliament will be enough to take power. The Bsw’s top leader is essentially saying “no” to the coalition of other parties speculated about in the press as a means of blocking the far right once again.

His openness towards the AfD contains, in theory, the seeds of democracy: as already pointed out by the former Social Democratic Vice-Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel, merely sounding the anti-Nazi alarm cannot be the only solution to tackling the rise of a party that has 40 per cent support in the east and nearly 30 per cent nationally. Sahra Wagenknecht, however, does not make this a matter of principle: the point is that the BSW and the AfD are so very similar.