cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2034700
As some of you may have heard, Sahra Wegenknect is a first generation Iranian-German MP and splitter from Linke in her own party known as Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (yes, its her own name). In the 90s, she was part of the successor party to the SED in its left faction known as Communist Platform. Unfortunately, she has yet to remove her brain from the mainstream 90s communist movement and has yet to advance on social issues. This has been glossed over on by many liberal commenters without any quotes from the devil-we-know, and I am going to discuss her most horrendous takes in depth here.
I will also be comparing her stance with Linke. Most quotes are from her own book 2021 Die Selbstgerechten: Mein Gegenprogramm - für Gemeinsinn und Zusammenhalt. (The Self-Righteous: My Counter-Program - for Community Spirit and Cohesion). It should be noted her book is not published for free online, which is suspicious for an alleged socialist. Other quotes are from her party, MP, or personal websites.
CW: Transphobia, Racism.
On Queer, Transgender, and Racial Issues
It should be noted that Sahra Wegenknect has in the past supported LGB rights. In 2017, she supported the gay marriage vote in Germany.
Excerpt 1:
New fashion words are constantly emerging, which of course one should know and use oneself as quickly as possible. In recent times, the terms “misogyny” and “cis-women” for female citizens who are not transgender have been added to the left-liberal vocabulary. Anyone who wants to participate in lifestyle-left discussions without being criticized therefore needs one thing above all: enough free time to stay up-to-date on questions of correct expression.
The typical lifestyle-left person lives in a big city or at least a chic university town, and rarely in places like Bitterfeld or Gelsenkirchen. He or she is studying or has a university degree and good foreign language skills, advocates for a post-growth economy and pays attention to biologically sound nutrition. Discount meat eaters, diesel car drivers and cheap Mallorca air travelers are anathema to him.
This does not mean that he himself does not drive a car or never gets on an airplane. He or she even loves to travel - with the exception of Corona times - and usually flies particularly far, because mobility and cosmopolitanism are part of his or her DNA. But these are not about Ballermann tourism, but about educational trips that help to get to know other cultures, to visit the last remaining wild orangutans or to get closer to the inner self in an Ayurveda hotel.
The fact that inner-city journeys are often made by bicycle or electric second car makes it easier on the conscience.
In the next excerpt, we can see a supposed socialist coming to the defense of a billionaire for the purpose of shitting on transgender people.
Excerpt 2:
One does not have to think conservatively, express oneself on migration problems, or defend the social survival of one’s home region in order to become the target of vehement attacks. Even the thesis that there are natural differences between women and men, and not just social role models, can lead to a veritable shitstorm, as Harry Potter author Joanne K. Rowling had to experience. To understand the background of the campaign, one must know that left-liberal gender theory seriously denies the existence of a biological sex. In the meantime, Rowling has even been wished death for alleged transphobia, and her latest book has not only been ostracized by the Twitter mob, but publicly burned, an act whose dark history did not seem to bother the actors in the least.
The way we deal with the no longer existing genders has also become more complicated. A well-intentioned compliment, addressed to the wrong person, can quickly make a man the object of rude accusations of sexism. The number of commandments and rules of conduct is growing at a pace that ordinary citizens - i.e. people who spend their days with other things than discursive awareness - have no chance of keeping up with. In the end, it is best for them to simply say nothing more. The fact that, according to a survey from 2019, more than half of German citizens are worried about expressing their opinions freely outside of their circle of friends, in light of the increasing intolerance with which such debates are conducted, is not surprising.
Not wanting to make anyone feel left out, she has decided to defend black face.
Excerpt 3:
Who is allowed to play Othello?
According to the guidelines of identity politics, it is now considered sacrilege in theaters, for example, for Shakespeare’s Othello, a black man, to be played by a white man. This follows from the aforementioned thesis that a member of the majority society is unable to empathize with the inner life of a member of a minority. If he tries to do so anyway, even as an actor, this aggressive act of appropriation must be rejected by all means of public campaigning.
For the same reason, the well-known American-Danish actress Scarlett Johansson received a fierce Twitter tirade when she announced her intention to play the role of pimp Dante “Tex” Gill in a movie. Gill is not only a Mafioso, but was initially a woman and later paid for his sex change with the money he earned in brothels. Such a role should definitely only be played by a transgender person, was the accusation, i.e. a man who was once a woman, or vice versa. In the end, Johansson apologetically canceled the role and publicly apologized. Nothing has been heard of the film project since then.
Even ordinary people can be guilty of cultural appropriation if, for example, they wear the typical hairstyle or clothing of a minority. If you are white and decorate your head with dreadlocks, you should better not get too close to the campus of some universities. Identity-political zeal also brought a kindergarten in Hamburg into the national headlines because it recommended to parents not to dress their children up as Indians for carnival anymore. For most people, such debates are likely to trigger exactly two reactions: astonishment and bewilderment.**
The debate over cultural appropriation is a complex one, and there are no easy answers. On the one hand, it is important to be respectful of other cultures and to avoid appropriating their traditions and symbols without understanding their significance. On the other hand, it is also important to be able to appreciate and learn from other cultures without being accused of appropriation.
Ultimately, it is up to each individual to decide what they feel comfortable with. If you are unsure about whether or not it is appropriate for you to wear a particular piece of clothing or participate in a particular activity, it is always best to err on the side of caution and avoid doing so.
On Palestine, Foreign Policy
Here, she is actually somewhat decent. She supports a hands off approach to Ukraine and Palestine. It should be noted that she has a myopic view of events here, the war started in 2014, but she says its been 3 years.
Excerpt 1, Ukraine, Published on JungeWelt:
The war in Ukraine is entering its third year. Every day, young men are killed or mutilated on the front lines, and large swaths of Ukraine are devastated. The World Bank estimates the damage to Ukraine at around 500 billion US dollars. But our future is also at stake in this proxy war, which has already cost us more than 200 billion euros in prosperity, according to German economic institutes.
The strategy of economically ruining Russia through sanctions and militarily defeating it through arms exports to Ukraine has failed miserably. The Russian military is on the offensive, while Ukraine is running out of soldiers. 600,000 Ukrainian men of military age have fled to the West because they do not want to be burned up in a preventable war that could have ended in a negotiated peace after a few weeks if the West had not interfered in a fatal way and nourished the false hope of a Ukrainian Siegfried.
Will we finally come to our senses and try to negotiate a ceasefire with Russia? There is no alternative - except for a total escalation with incalculable consequences. But not only the Union, but also large parts of the Greens and the FDP are beating the drum for the delivery of rockets with a range that reaches Moscow. “I am surprised that some people do not even think about whether it could lead to war participation by what we are doing” - with these words, Olaf Scholz has rejected the delivery of “TAURUS”. But can one rely on a chancellor who has previously drawn red lines and then crossed them, and whose olive green and “liberal” partners are already partly looking at a coalition with the Union?
The “TAURUS” missiles would not be a game changer either. In order to force Russia to withdraw militarily from the occupied territories, it would need a multiple of ammunition and ultimately also soldiers from NATO countries to fill the gaps in the ranks of the Ukrainian army. Following this fatal logic, French President Macron has now brought the deployment of ground troops into play. At the latest, this would set in motion a spiral that could lead to a third world war with the use of nuclear weapons.
“He who says A does not have to say B. He can also recognize that A was wrong,” Bertolt Brecht once said. Since neither the traffic light nor the Union can bring themselves to admit their own mistakes, all reasonable forces are called upon to increase public pressure and spread the realization: There is no military solution to this conflict! Whoever wants to carry the war to Russia with German weapons is carrying the war to Germany and is thereby recklessly gambling away our greatest asset: a life in freedom, peace and security.
Excerpt 2: Palestine
Linke Comment on Palestine:
The chairman of the Die Linke (the Left party) parliamentary group in the German Bundestag, Dietmar Bartsch, criticised this immediately, saying: “I distance myself in the strongest possible terms from the term ‘open-air prison’ used to describe the Gaza Strip at the Wagenknecht press conference.”
source: https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/f/meltdown-die-linke
Sahra on Palestine:
I strongly condemn the barbaric attacks on Israel, it is a big crime. Nevertheless, there is a need to de-escalate the situation now, one cannot do this with military means
The Middle East conflict cannot be resolved militarily, and of course, this conflict has a history. Gaza has been an open-air prison for many years
The Middle East conflict is again an example that shows that weapons and military actions will not bring calm to the tensions. On the contrary, there is a danger that many people will die, making the whole Middle East into a powder keg,
Summaries on the rest of her platform
I have also skimmed over the rest, and they are fairly well known. She does have some leftist stances on how to handle the economy, and has an anti-immigration platform, which could be construed as left wing in its framing (re: visas are ways to get what amounts to slave labor until citizenship). If there is further interest, I can do a deeper dive on this, but her social issues leave a lot to be desired and I feel people should be made more aware of that. I am currently trying to find her stances on homelessness, but all I can find are critiques of what leads to homelessness, not sponsorships of policies like Housing First.
Is critical support warranted? Maybe, if you are in a strongly AfD district. Her party is much better on foreign policy than almost any other german party, as they are balls deep on supporting Israel. But it should be known that she is strongly transphobic and has racist tendencies.
Die Linke has turned completely opportunist and has capitulated to the liberal consensus on a number of issues, but the worst of all is that a significant number of them have just gone along with the anti-Russia hysteria. With only a few exceptions they did not oppose the drive to send tons of weapons and vast sums of money to Ukraine and have not even tried to advocate against the insanity with the sanctions which completely backfired. So whether she siphons votes from them or from the AfD racists, both are good outcomes in which bad parties get less votes.
The fact that so far she is only on the ballot in Thüringen doesn’t mean her party can’t grow as a political force and become relevant in other Bundesländer too.
As for the Greens, they are not just arch-neoliberals they are also the biggest warmongers in Germany right now, it’s weird that you chose to omit that part.
Greens have a surprisingly good trans policy because they have two trans people writing it in government right now, but yeah they’re vast majority lib. Getting rid of nuclear is probably one of the worst takes to have in our time.
Germany is such a fucked place