Claim and reality – the BSW in the election campaign in Brandenburg

In a few days, on September 22, 2024, there will be elections in Brandenburg. In the run-up to the elections, the parties standing for election are doing everything they can to mobilize their supporters. This includes the BSW – the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, which was founded six months ago.

René Zittlau

Introduction

For a long time, regional elections in Brandenburg have not been as important for federal politics as they are this year. The reason for this is obvious to everyone: the reputation of the federal government is in free fall. In times like these, regional elections can certainly shake up federal politics.

The regional elections in Thuringia and Saxony on September 1, 2024 confirmed this trend in a dramatic way for the Berlin coalition. For the established parties of the CDU, FDP, SPD, Greens and Left Party, the results were even worse than hoped for: the political muckrakers AfD and BSW are tipping the scales in both federal states when it comes to forming a government. If you want to form a majority government, you have to come to terms with at least one of the two political pariahs.

The upcoming regional elections in Brandenburg will complete the misery for Berlin, as it is highly likely that the AfD will win the most votes there too and that the old parties will only be able to form a government against the AfD with the BSW led by Sahra Wagenknecht.

This constellation has certainly been played out in the considerations of the party headquarters and partly explains the behavior of the BSW towards the old parties and vice versa.

The election trend in Brandenburg on 13.09.2024 – the pulse of the Greens, FDP and LEFT is barely measurable

A look at the election trends illustrates the dramatic situation for the old parties:

For the FDP, the worst-case scenario is already a reality before the election. A few days ago, FDP leader Lindner was on tour in Cottbus, the second largest city in Brandenburg. A total of 50 people wanted to hear what he had to say.

The LEFT are in a state of collective decay without resistance.

Since the GREENS see no prospect in Brandenburg, as they do in Saxony and Thuringia, Foreign Minister Baerbock moved her election campaign appearance in Cottbus on September 13, 2024, to a very small room.

In view of this overall scenario, the SPD called on Green Party sympathizers to vote SPD in the local Cottbus press on 14 September 2024. Not only comprehensible from an SPD perspective.

Today’s reality has been years in coming

The following official trend figures make it clear that voter sentiment in Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg is the result of many years of trends. Only the AfD and, logically, the newly founded BSW recorded significant growth compared to the last election in 2019. All the old parties lost ground, in some cases massively.

BSW – Power claim and reality

As no one from the “establishment” wants to have anything to do with the AfD “quite democratically”, political interest in Brandenburg is focused on the Sahra Wagenknecht alliance.

On September 12, 2024, the lead candidate of BSW Brandenburg, Robert Crumbach, and Sahra Wagenknecht, as the federal chairwoman of the party named after her, called for their election campaign finale on Berliner Platz in Cottbus.

Social and economic issues

The BSW’s demands are reminiscent of SPD policies from years gone by: higher pensions, more housing, affordable rents (rents in Cottbus have risen by an average of 70 percent in the last 10 years). Those present also heard Wagenknecht call for more police officers to improve internal security.

With the demand for a functioning healthcare system that is based on need and not on the profit rate, Wagenknecht & Co are knocking down open doors with the audience. The latest plans from the Lauterbach ministry for hospital closures, particularly in Brandenburg, suggest that even worse is to be expected in the near future.

In addition, there are demands on the subject of migration: controlled migration and the deportation of those who try to enter the country against the law, say Crumbach and Wagenknecht in Cottbus. Katja Wolf, the BSW’s top candidate in Thuringia, on the other hand, said that we need migration.

The huge problems in the education system, which have become almost unmanageable as a result of migration, took up a lot of space. A large proportion of teachers are no longer trained teachers and there is no improvement in sight.

Wagenknecht and Crumbach also commented on economic issues, both on the restructuring of the economy in East Brandenburg – an ongoing topic since 1990 – and on the level of wages. In this context, both spoke of wrong decisions in German politics, but without offering any solutions of their own. They limited themselves to saying that other countries are solving the problems better.

Their economies are growing, investments are being made and energy and food are significantly cheaper.

Who can pay for it…?

All these social benefits, against which nobody has or can have any objection and whose solution is essential for social peace in the country, cost money. A lot of money. We are talking about tens of billions of euros, conservatively calculated, that are needed to get the social ship halfway back on course.

Neither Crumbach nor Wagenknecht said a word about how it would be financed. And this is certainly no coincidence. It is not only the reputation of the German government that is in free fall. The completely new interpretation of the terms “economic and foreign policy” has now caused incredible damage to the German state, the German economy and the country’s reputation throughout the world. So much damage that the realization of social promises on the scale of what the BSW outlined in Cottbus seems unimaginable in the light of day.

In the article Germany, your zero hour, we named a few examples. And there are more every day.

The capacity utilization of the five largest car manufacturers in Europe is at a disastrous level. So disastrous that, for example, the German public broadcaster SWR writes cryptically about Mercedes: “Plants not working to capacity, Mercedes is weakening”.

All car companies are affected, to an extent that stretches the imagination as to the compelling consequences of the crisis. In an analysis of the five largest vehicle manufacturers (BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Stellantis, Renault, VAG),Bloombergcame to the following conclusion: 14 of the 31 largest car plants in Europe are operating at less than 50 percent capacity. None of the manufacturers have even come close to returning to pre-pandemic levels. Mercedes has not been able to increase production levels at all since 2022.

The news about the termination of the job guarantee for VW employees and the simultaneous announcement of mass layoffs, which became public a few days ago, must be seen in this context. The core sector of German industry is dying before our very eyes. And the figures from the chemical and mechanical engineering industries show a similar trend.

So where will the tax revenue come from to pay for statutory social obligations and to deal with the social imbalances that (not only) the BSW is talking about in the election campaign?

The litmus test

We are living in very heated political times. At the fairground of promises called the election campaign, there are two big elephants in the room of every political debate. The discussions on these topics divide the parties, the country, society and the people. These issues are war and peace and democracy.

War and peace

Sahra Wagenknecht was not afraid to take a stand on the Ukraine conflict. On the one hand, she unequivocally called for diplomacy and a willingness to compromise in order to end the war.

She said verbatim:

“Yes, of course this war is a crime. And of course politicians who start wars are criminals, I say that clearly. But I think that if you say that, then you have to do so with the consequence that it doesn’t just refer to Putin.

What about the many wars that were started by Western presidents, in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, what about the many drone killings that were carried out by the US. These were all wars that violated international law. … This hyper-morality that some people carry in front of them when they tell us that we shouldn’t negotiate with Putin because he started a terrible war. Yes, he has started a bad war. But that’s precisely why we have to negotiate to end the war.”

With this basic statement that Russia started the war, Wagenknecht represents an opinion that not even the NATO Secretary General holds. He already said in February 2023 that the war began in 2014. And so it could not have been Russia.

Democracy and political fire walls

The other big elephant in political Germany is the relationship with the AfD. In other words, the relationship to democratic behavior, the relationship to the Basic Law.

Wagenknecht and Crumbach left no doubt that any kind of communication with the AfD is out of the question for the BSW.

In an article in the Berliner Zeitung a few days ago, Robert Crumbach provided clear insights into his thought process regarding his relationship with the AfD:

“The AfD is not a peace party. It has as little problem with armament as it does with war as a means of politics. It is in favor of NATO’s two-percent target. In the Bundestag, the AfD regularly votes in favor of tax giveaways to billionaires and against inheritance tax.” For this reason alone, the AfD is “out of the question for us as a discussion partner”.

Another interview with Katja Wolf shows that the BSW’s leadership as a whole does not differ significantly from the level of all other old parties when it comes to understanding democracy, i.e. it has a lot of catching up to do. This woman’s pride in the exclusion of the AfD even at local level is unmistakable (from minute five).

As a potential 15 percent party, the BSW only has a chance of implementing its political ideas in a coalition or cooperation with others. Voters can therefore expect the parties vying for their favor to apply democratic standards and respect the law, above all the Basic Law.

Conclusion

“Without peace, everything is nothing.” That’s what Sahra Wagenknecht said in Cottbus. Willy Brandt put it like this: “Peace is not everything, but without peace everything is nothing”

Sahra Wagenknecht is also trying to tie in with old social democratic traditions in her program with the BSW. This is not only legitimate, but a party with such an orientation is absolutely necessary in the Germany of 2024. After all, the party that bears the name social democracy has irretrievably betrayed its traditions, its origins, its voters and itself.

It is worth taking a look back to the time of Willy Brandt. From today’s perspective, reading his 1969 government declaration seems like a future worth striving for:

“… We want to dare more democracy. We will open up our working methods and satisfy the critical need for information. We will work to ensure that every citizen has the opportunity to participate in the reform of the state and society, not only through hearings in the Bundestag, but also through constant contact with the representative groups of our people and through comprehensive information on government policy.”