World View

At a press conference in Berlin she announced that she and nine other Left MPs were quitting and forming the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) before converting it into a formal political party in January 2024 and targeting voters who, as she put it, "no longer know who to vote for". In some countries, parties of the hard right have discovered a new welfarist vocation, most notably Poland's Law and Justice party (which appears to have lost power at the country's recent election after eight years in control). First is Wagenknecht the Theorist, who sets out a broadly ideologically consistent vision of what she calls Linkskonservatismus (left-wing conservatism). The last few years, and especially the double whammy of the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia's war in Ukraine, have seen a flourishing of what is known as Querpolitik, "diagonalis!" politics fusing elements of populist left and right, particularly prominent in German anti-establishment circles but echoed in the English-speaking world by YouTube stars such as Russell Brand and Joe Rogan. [...]Wagenknecht has made her own well-watched clips railing against lockdowns and cancel culture, as well as an array of other totems of Western policy orthodoxy including net-zero provisions such as heat pumps, support for Nato and Ukraine, and Covid-19 vaccines.