The Duran Podcast
Sahra Wagenknecht and the new left in Germany
All right, Alexander, let's talk about the political situation in Germany. Olas Schulz's approval rating is as low as it can be. Well, maybe he can find a way for it to get even lower, but he's covering it like 20% approval rating. And they tried to go after the I have debt. They're still trying to go after the I have debt, but it looks like the I have debt is starting to to recover from some setbacks that that it had a couple of months ago. And we can talk about the rise of Sarah Wagenkacht, who has always been a prominent politician, but seems that she's she's getting more attention with each passing day. What's what's going on in Germany? Well, indeed, I think you've described the situation quite well. First of all, Olas Schulz, he is deeply unpopular. He is leading a government that is extremely fractious. The FPD, the liberals, in other words, are now showing signs of getting closer to the CDU, the main opposition party. In some respects, of course, politically, economically, in terms of economic thinking. Those two parties are closer. So there's already that going on. And Schulz himself just went to China. He met Xi Jinping there. Xi Jinping threw the book at him over Ukraine. That'll let me know you've got it all wrong. You should stop sending weapons. You should sit down and talk. You should give up this idea of trying to defeat the Russians. If you read the Chinese readout, it's fairly clear what Xi Jinping was saying. But in terms of German politics, the most interesting fact about this visit by Schulz to China is that we were told that large numbers of people from the business community would go with Schulz. Fewer did than many expected. And the Greens, Robert Harbeck and Anilina Behrbock, the one that economics minister, the other, the foreign minister, they didn't go with him. Probably in the case of Anilina Behrbock, Schulz wouldn't have wanted her there. But in the case of Harbeck, who is never, by the way, visited China throughout the time, but he's been economics minister. One gets the sense that he thinks that Schulz goes to China is wrong. And he wants conflict with China, just as he wants conflict with Russia. So you sense a dysfunctional government that is beginning to come apart at the seams. The problem is that the opposition party, the Christian Democrats, the CDU, CSU led by Friedrich Malth, see very much like the Labour Party in Britain wants to do exactly the same as the government, only to do it even more. They want to be even more anti-Russian, even more pro-Ukrainians, and even more weapons to Ukraine. They want to follow essentially the same economic policies in Germany, except with added insistence on maintaining preserving budget discipline, which many Germans would agree with. But as we've discussed, intensifying the economic more is ultimately in contradiction with that. So the CDU, CSU, are not providing alternatives. And what's starting to happen in Germany, again, as we've discussed, is that Germans are looking for alternatives. So Germans, especially working class Germans, who are inclined towards the right, and there are many of them, are now starting to coalesce around the IFD. And Germans, especially working class Germans, the SPD's old base, of whom there are also many, are starting to coalesce around the new left, which is Saravaganek's party. Now, if we can just explain what Saravaganek's party is, she has emerged out of Dilenko. Dilenko was a party that emerged in the 1990s. It was a union between the old East German Communist Party, which still has, you know, had residual support in East Germany. And various left-wing parties in the west of Germany, which joined it together and formed Dilenko. And originally, it was a classical socialist working class party, and hearing very much to the kind of politics that you associated with socialist working class parties. And it did quite well at one point in one election. I remember, it got as much as 13% of the vote nationwide, which is, you know, significant to an app for a party like that. And then, of course, they wanted to find their way into government. They began to water down their program. They went full on adopting the whole panoply of policies with identity issues. People, their working class base, didn't like that, and the party has collapsed. So out of that, Saravaganek has appeared. She says, we go back to what we originally were. Working class, socialist party, we're not interested in the identity issues. We're not going to go down that road. If anything, we stick with traditional values. We are also not keen on further immigration into Germany. We understand that our working class base doesn't like that. We have a different perspective to this from the IFD. But, you know, they don't like immigration. We don't like immigration slightly different reasons. And, apparently, she's starting to gain support. And the initial polling figures suggest that a party is going to do significantly well in the coming European Parliament elections. So the IFD came under enormous pressure earlier this year. Lots of talk that it was going to be banned, if you remember. A major attempt to try and play up a meeting that took place with some members of the IFD, attending it, talking about deporting, well, it was made out that it was all about deporting immigrants and all kinds of extreme, and, in my opinion, forced parallels were made with a plan that Nazis had had to sell people to Madagascar. I'm not going to get into all of that. Anyway, for a short time, that dented the IFD support. The IFD has been so criticized for so long that it's become bomb-proofed, in my opinion. It lost a certain amount of support. It's won it back. People have thought about the criticisms of the IFD. They've decided it doesn't hold. And, you see, the IFD getting stronger once more. So there we are. It's a complicated situation in Germany. We'll see what happens with the European Parliament elections that are due in May. But, unlike in Britain, which we've talked about many times, where the political class has managed to smash all political alternatives to itself, and where the might eventually be alternatives that they haven't really yet formed, in Germany, the Germans seem to be ahead. There are now challenges to the establishment, both from the right and from the left. And both the CDU, which has had a big working class vote in the past, now risks losing some of that to the IFD, and the SPD, which was historically a working class party, could start losing support from the left as well. So we'll see what happens. The elections in May are very much a referendum on the state of things in Germany, in every country that's going to be having the European EU elections. Will I have there be able to put up a good showing? This is the big question, and I think this is the other thing that one has to say. Both the IFD and Saavagan exparti, if they're going to get momentum, they need to do a good showing in these elections. So all the stops are going to be pulled to prevent them doing so. If they do put on a good showing, if they get a solid vote, and if the establishment parties do badly, or are seen to do less well than they should, then as I said, we could start to see more momentum shift towards these opposition parties. If they fail, if the results for both each of these parties, or for either one of them, is disappointing, then, given the realities in Germany, one can see how there might be again a consolidation around the centre, and in that case, we would be looking forward to a free rate match, CDU government in probably a few months time, with an even harder position than the one we have. So these elections are going to be very important. And it's far from a certain thing how they're going to go, just saying. If the IFD and Saavagan exparti do well in these elections as well, it has another effect because it could also change, to some extent, the political complexion of the European Parliament. So people like Claire Daly, for example, might not be as quite as isolated as they are at the moment. So a lot of hangs on these elections to the European Parliament. I mean, it's also a referendum of the conflict in Ukraine, the support for Ukraine, as well as what's happening in Israel and Gaza. Well, indeed, yes. So do you think the elections could, like in Germany, for example, if Saavagan and I have a good showing, do you think they could change the policies of the current government in Germany? And I guess this question carries over to every government in Europe, who's been very supportive of Project Ukraine. No, it won't. Do poorly the elections, will they change their stats? No, it won't. It will do the opposite. I mean, one way or the other, and I think this is an important thing to say, however well the IFD does, however well Saavagan act does, even if they win the maximum degree of support in the European Parliament elections that people say they might do, even if we have Bundestag elections, parliamentary elections in Germany, and they can win the maximum numbers of votes in those elections, so that these two parties together form a significant block. Let's say 25%, 26% of the representatives in the Bundestag. That will still leave 75% who are committed to the war and who want to continue the existing policies. What will in that case happen is that you will see a political consolidation in government on the part of the centre, probably a new grand coalition with the CDU, the CSU, the FBD, perhaps social democrats, who knows, I mean whatever, but a new government formed even more committed to the policies that we are seeing now, and what you will also have is an intensification of the attempts to discredit and to basically suppress these opposition voices. There's growing signs of insecurity in Germany. There was a pro-Palestinian conference, for example, that took place in Berlin a short time ago, which was dispersed by the police in a, I think, completely over the top way, choosing my words very, very carefully here. Completely unnecessary to do that. I saw no sign that anybody there was going to break any German law, but nonetheless they did that. We are going to have this again, all kinds of talk about disinformation. There's attempts to try and prove that they've been completely unsuccessful, by the way, that the IFDA has some kind of financial links to Russia. There's going to be all that kind of thing, and it's going to intensify. It's going to continue through the May elections. It's going to intensify in the Bundestag elections, on either the Bundestag elections. And if, as I said, these opposition parties do well, it's going to get even stronger afterwards, because the political establishment in Germany is totally committed now. It's completely invested in the current policies. It knows that it can't retreat from them, because if it does, it's credibility short to pieces. And they will pull every stop to suppress wherever they can, and however they can. But nonetheless, and in spite of that, it would still be a big event, because it would mean that within Germany, there is a critical mass of people who will have expressed their opposition, and who will have some degree of representation in the Bundestag. So one shouldn't discount the importance of it. It would be a major crack in the system, but it will not reverse the political realities. It seems like nothing can reverse the political realities. Well, no, I mean, I mean, what was it? Larry Johnson said in that live stream that it's the film and Louise approach to politics. You drive off the cliff, and you put it on the accelerator, because the difference with film and Louise is that they knew what they were doing. They made a choice. The political class in Germany, they're putting their foot at the accelerator as the abyss, you know, loom the cliff looms ahead. But of course, they don't see themselves as driving off the cliff. They see things in a completely different way. But they do feel insecure, and they do feel under pressure. And the more insecure, and the more under pressure they feel, the more they will double down. And well, you've lived in Cyprus. You know how vicious they can be. They really do feel. They really are, you know, when they really do feel that, you know, their back is against the wall. And the extent of the kind of things they can do. Sorry, Chris and Bruce. Yeah. And don't think they won't do those in Germany, also, if they have to. Yeah, exactly. The drad.locals.com, we are at rumble odyssey bitchy telegram rock fin and twitter x and go to the drad shop. Look for a limited edition merch. The link is in the description box down below. Take care. [Music]