BSW was formed by half-German half-Iranian Sarah Wagenknecht in just January of 2024 as a "non-woke" and pretty hardline anti-immigration party but with a leftist bent whereas AfD has a very strong right-wing histoy and culture.
Wagenknecht made comments against immigration starting in 2015/2016 while still a member of the rabidly anti-White "Die Linke" (The Left) Party which she eventually split from. She called Merkel's immigration policy a complete failure of the state, said that foreigners abused their 'right of hospitality' in Germany, said that importing refugees was pitting the foreign poor against Germany's poor, spoke of how immigration undermined the German working class, criticized Western governments for enabling mass migration and quite a bit more.
Because of this she was attacked by anti-fascists who threw cake at her during a party conference while still a member of Die Linke. Over the years she would continually point out that violent attacks against Germans like COlogne or Ansbach were the result of immigration policy and Die Linke leadership would condemn her each time.
Eventually she left the party and eventually she formed BSW.
Her book titled "The self-righteous" is really rather interesting as she blames mass immigration on the Wests elite class who profit from social unrest, lowering wages, and the general labor market disruption mass immigration causes. She views keeping migration low as necessary to protect wages and keep Germans from emigrating from the country.
She also lambasts identity politics in that book as having replaced serious questions and concerns of real natural communities (say those of a nation) with issues of recognition for certain minorities such as the LGBTQ etc etc community, immigrants, women and so on.
To quote Ms. Wagenknecht: Identity politics does not want "equality, but inequality, it blows up the differences between ethnic groups or sexual orientations into bombastic contradictions".
While Wagenknecht is generally pro LGBT, she was one of the first parliamentarians to support same sex civil unions and subsequently non-traditional marriages, she does appear to robustly oppose anything to do with transgenderism and in 2023 spent a while combating a bill to allow children and parents of 'trans' children to change their sex on government documents.
She also shares the AfD positions on not being very keen on NATO membership, rolling back European Union power, restoring a national German currency, and wishing to put an end to the war in Ukraine without lavishing that country with more German taxpayer resources.
She was a critic of corona policies and is no friend of Israel.
Many of these positions are quite good, but she is also a leftist and it shouldn't be forgotten. Wagenknecht has a long history of defending by the genocidal Soviet Union and the almost laughably oppressive East German state. She wrote for several communist magazines and was a member of a few communist internal and external groups that moved within Die Link party circles.
All in all she publicly presents a fairly decent leftist alternative to the neoliberal postwar left in Germany and that is likely why she and her party have seen such an instantanous rise. It gives an opportunity to those millions of ex East Germans who still want something like state ownership of certan industries and better welfare benefits but only for Germans and not for foreigners.
The performance of the BSW seems odd. Who are they, really?
BSW was formed by half-German half-Iranian Sarah Wagenknecht in just January of 2024 as a "non-woke" and pretty hardline anti-immigration party but with a leftist bent whereas AfD has a very strong right-wing histoy and culture.
Wagenknecht made comments against immigration starting in 2015/2016 while still a member of the rabidly anti-White "Die Linke" (The Left) Party which she eventually split from. She called Merkel's immigration policy a complete failure of the state, said that foreigners abused their 'right of hospitality' in Germany, said that importing refugees was pitting the foreign poor against Germany's poor, spoke of how immigration undermined the German working class, criticized Western governments for enabling mass migration and quite a bit more.
Because of this she was attacked by anti-fascists who threw cake at her during a party conference while still a member of Die Linke. Over the years she would continually point out that violent attacks against Germans like COlogne or Ansbach were the result of immigration policy and Die Linke leadership would condemn her each time.
Eventually she left the party and eventually she formed BSW.
Her book titled "The self-righteous" is really rather interesting as she blames mass immigration on the Wests elite class who profit from social unrest, lowering wages, and the general labor market disruption mass immigration causes. She views keeping migration low as necessary to protect wages and keep Germans from emigrating from the country.
She also lambasts identity politics in that book as having replaced serious questions and concerns of real natural communities (say those of a nation) with issues of recognition for certain minorities such as the LGBTQ etc etc community, immigrants, women and so on.
To quote Ms. Wagenknecht: Identity politics does not want "equality, but inequality, it blows up the differences between ethnic groups or sexual orientations into bombastic contradictions".
While Wagenknecht is generally pro LGBT, she was one of the first parliamentarians to support same sex civil unions and subsequently non-traditional marriages, she does appear to robustly oppose anything to do with transgenderism and in 2023 spent a while combating a bill to allow children and parents of 'trans' children to change their sex on government documents.
She also shares the AfD positions on not being very keen on NATO membership, rolling back European Union power, restoring a national German currency, and wishing to put an end to the war in Ukraine without lavishing that country with more German taxpayer resources.
She was a critic of corona policies and is no friend of Israel.
Many of these positions are quite good, but she is also a leftist and it shouldn't be forgotten. Wagenknecht has a long history of defending by the genocidal Soviet Union and the almost laughably oppressive East German state. She wrote for several communist magazines and was a member of a few communist internal and external groups that moved within Die Link party circles.
All in all she publicly presents a fairly decent leftist alternative to the neoliberal postwar left in Germany and that is likely why she and her party have seen such an instantanous rise. It gives an opportunity to those millions of ex East Germans who still want something like state ownership of certan industries and better welfare benefits but only for Germans and not for foreigners.
Thank you. I can see why Wagenknecht's group has caught on. Her non-Germaness gives the White German the moral 'cover' to stand up for themselves.