Sahra Wagenknecht | The similarities between BSW and AfD are growing

A social media tile in the typical layout of the Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) coalition, featuring the portraits of Friedrich Merz (CDU), Alice Weidel (AfD), Anton Hofreiter (Greens), and Lars Klingbeil (SPD). The caption reads: "Right-wing extremists fight against right-wing extremists." The author of this Facebook opinion piece is none other than Oskar Lafontaine, the former leader of the Left Party and the current eminence grise of the BSW.

What prompts Lafontaine, formerly known as an astute analyst, to conclude that they are all "right-wing extremists," and that Alice Weidel is essentially the same as Hofreiter, Merz, and Klingbeil? The reason for Lafontaine's assertion of the de facto existence of a right-wing extremist unity party is the classification of the AfD as "confirmed right-wing extremist" by the domestic intelligence service.

What Lafontaine considers right-wing extremist

But, according to Lafontaine, right-wing extremism isn't even known. He himself, however, knows it perfectly well: "But the spread of hatred and incitement against Russians is also right-wing extremism. Why doesn't the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution criticize the Bundestag parties that spread hatred against Russians on a daily basis?" The demand for the delivery of Taurus missiles to Ukraine amounts to the preparation of a war of aggression and is "right-wing extremist." Finally, he says, one cannot "ban right-wing extremism from German politics with right-wing extremist measures." If everyone is right-wing extremist, no one is.

Sabine Zimmermann, state and parliamentary group leader of the BSW in Saxony, seconded this: "We do not need such debates about bans , because they are counterproductive." This is complemented by the mantra-like repetition of the statement that "the AfD must be challenged on its substance."

What does this look like in Zimmermann's state association? The Süddeutsche Zeitung, in any case, already saw "movement on the cross-front" in the fall and stated that the AfD and the BSW were working together in the state parliament. The BSW had approved an AfD motion "Peace instead of missiles," criticizing it primarily for "copying it from our election platform."

»Movement« at the local level

The "movement" is even more evident at the local level than in the state parliament through the actions of leading officials. André Liebscher, former office manager of former AfD chairwoman Frauke Petry in Pirna, Saxony, has been serving in the same position for Lutz Richter, parliamentary manager of the BSW parliamentary group, since November 2024. He does not yet know whether he wants to become a party member.

But the emerging cross-front is most evident on the streets. Jens Henschel-Thöricht, a member of the BSW (Free Saxony) state parliament, spoke at a rally in Görlitz organized by a voters' association close to the far-right Free Saxony movement. He was joined by fellow activist Marcus Fuchs. Nico Rudolph, a member of the Chemnitz BSW state parliament, also spoke at the Monday demonstration of the mixed right-wing scene, from coronavirus deniers to Free Saxony, and praised the AfD and Free Saxony in the Chemnitz city council, who were the only ones there to treat the BSW with normality.

During the founding phase of the BSW, a number of social scientists assumed that it could act as a kind of bulwark against the further strengthening of the AfD, at least in eastern Germany. The party's "left-conservative" orientation made this possible. The BSW could thus be attractive to a segment of the AfD clientele for whom the party had become too radical. Even if it failed to penetrate the AfD's core electorate, it was at least possible that the alternative offered could prevent the AfD from growing further. Both Sahra Wagenknecht's popularity in the east and overlaps in the social structure of the voter potential of both parties made this assumption seem reasonably realistic.

Instead, we are now witnessing a BSW that increasingly overlaps with the AfD. There is cooperation on core party issues, such as peace policy, promoting close relations with Russia, and the "processing" of the coronavirus pandemic. BSW protagonists simply consider the firewall to be harmful.