Sahra Wagenknecht: “I consider the firewall to be undemocratic stupidity”

However, you yourself initiated the debate after your party's closed meeting in Berlin, when you advised the CDU to tear down its firewall against the AfD. In Erfurt, during the BSW parliamentary group's visit to the state parliament there, you took up the topic again.

Of course, I've been saying this for a while now: I consider the firewall to be undemocratic stupidity that has contributed to the radicalization and current strength of the AfD. It is the CDU's great failure that it did not include the AfD in a state government when it was still a conservative professors' party. The greatest programmatic overlaps are demonstrably between the CDU and the AfD, not between the BSW and the AfD. Of course, the CDU decides with whom it forms a coalition. We can only say for ourselves: We will no longer participate in faceless all-party coalitions whose sole common denominator is to keep the AfD out of power. However, integrating the AfD is not our task.

Could you please clarify this sentence? Why isn't this the responsibility of the Federal Office for Social Affairs and Health (BSW)?

It would be the responsibility of the parties that made the AfD strong with their poor policies. There are two ways to shrink the AfD again. Either you finally make good policies for the people. There is not the slightest will for that in the old parties, as can be seen in the Merz government. Or you make bad policies together with the AfD. The idea that fascism will break out if the AfD joins a state government under the CDU is a myth cultivated by the SPD and the Greens, which they use to stay in power despite poor election results. In a coalition, the AfD would have to prove its capabilities, and the people would be better able to judge whether it really benefits them. I doubt it.

Instead, the BSW was brought into the state governments, at least in Brandenburg and Thuringia.

Yes, and that put us in a real dilemma. On the one hand, we were naturally pleased with our good election results, and most voters expect that we won't shirk government responsibility. At the same time, we were hardly prepared for coalition negotiations and couldn't have been. That was a real problem. Our voters chose change. We entered into coalitions with parties that fundamentally didn't want change.

Looking back, what do you consider a strategic mistake?

We had no chance to really prepare the coalition negotiations thoroughly. Our party was only nine months old; we hadn't been in the state parliament before, and we didn't have any advisors or an apparatus like the other parties. In Thuringia in particular, the launch was therefore quite unsuccessful and disappointed many voters. That doesn't mean we haven't achieved anything. In both states, our finance ministers prevented cuts in healthcare or in cities and municipalities and even created additional leeway in the budget. But something like that doesn't initially register with the public as a fundamental, tangible improvement.

What were your party's specific mistakes? Let's stick with the example of its participation in the government in Erfurt.

In Thuringia, we already played along with the game when the state parliament was constituted, with a supposed bloc of democratic parties, and the AfD standing alone on the other side. But we don't belong in a bloc with a party like the CDU, which is militarizing our country, pushing forward an insane rearmament program, and actually increasing the threat of war for Germany. And of course, the question arises: How democratic are parties that restrict freedom of expression and send the police to the homes of citizens critical of the government? We have thus made it easy for the AfD to smear us as part of a cartel of old parties.

What conclusions did you personally draw from this?

Of course, when people vote for us, they want to see tangible change. People who are happy with the way things are going won't vote for us. In the future, we should only enter into a coalition if we can truly fulfill this expectation.

Your party, Ms. Wagenknecht, has suffered voter support losses due to these investments. Would the AfD also suffer the same fate if it were involved in a state government?

Yes, of course. Even the AfD will change little in a coalition with the CDU, especially if it is the smaller coalition partner, and in some cases will even push through worsening measures. Since the AfD wants to radically reduce new debt, but there is little scope at the state level to cut senseless spending, it will have to advocate for painful cuts. The fact that the AfD has so far been spared from seeing people in government is a key reason for its steady rise. If the CDU doesn't come to its senses, the first state parliament in the East will soon be formed in which the AfD can govern without a coalition partner.

Within the AfD itself, the debate surrounding the party's foreign and defense policy profile is causing unrest. Do you see this as an opportunity for your party to win new voters if the AfD were to develop into a nationwide CSU, strictly transatlantic and critical of Russia? That the AfD is not truly a peace party has been apparent for some time. Alice Weidel was one of the first in Germany to publicly support Trump's dictate to invest five percent of economic output in armaments. However, we are currently experiencing a kind of Melonization of the AfD: Like the Italian Meloni, it is strongly transatlantic and oriented towards the US. When Trump drops bombs on Iran, the AfD does not utter a critical word. The majority of the AfD also supports arms deliveries to Israel, despite the horrific war crimes in Gaza. Only on Ukraine policy does it deviate from the CDU – like Trump – and advocates a negotiated solution and a halt to arms deliveries. But if Trump changes his mind here, that too could be the end of it. Especially in the East, the AfD has so far been voted for primarily as a supposed peace party. We'll see what effect this has when people realize that the AfD is just the next transatlantic legacy party that gets its guidelines from Washington.

Thank you for the interview.

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