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What the Far Left and Right Have in Common, in Germany and Elsewhere - a Surprising Link 8/18/2018 What the far left and right have in common, in Germany and elsewhere - A surprising link A surprising link What the far left and right have in common, in Germany and elsewhere Parties that combine economic statism and cultural conservatism are growing Print edition | Europe Aug 9th 2018 | BERLIN SITTING down with The Economist in her oce in Berlin, Sahra Wagenknecht is restless: “Do we think that anyone can just migrate to Germany and have a claim to social welfare?” asks the doyenne of the Left (Die Linke), a socialist party. “Or do we say that labour migration is more of a problem?” The party’s leader in the Bundestag worries about its direction. “If you concentrate more on hip, urban sorts of voters— on identity and lifestyle debates—you don’t speak to the poorest in society. They no longer feel properly represented.” Her answer, launched on August 4th, is a new, non-party movement called “Rise Up” designed to reach those who have switched Subscribe: 12 weeks for $12 https://www.economist.com/europe/2018/08/11/what-the-far-left-and-right-have-in-common-in-germany-and-elsewhere 1/4 8/18/2018 What the far left and right have in common, in Germany and elsewhere - A surprising link o from politics. It may point to a signicant realignment in both German and European politics. Each week, over one million subscribers trust us to help them The Left was formed in 200m5 wahkeen s leenftsisets o wf htoh eh awd oqrulid.t the Social Democrats (SPD) merged with the successor party to the former East German communists. It has Join them. Subscribe today and enjoy your rst always been an uneasy alliance o1f2 pr woeevkisn fcoira ol nlsoyc $ia1l2ists and urban left-libertarians. At last year’s election it lost sompelu 42s re0ce,i0ve0 a0 fr veeo ntoetresb,o oprk.incipally older ones in the former communist east, to the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, but or Sign up to continue reading three free articles oset that loss by gaining 700,000 from the SPD and 330,000 from the Greens, mainly in western cities and university towns. It now faces a choice: consolidate its new strength as a lefty alternative to the Greens (as Katja Kipping, the Left’s leader, wants to do) or prioritise winning back traditional working-class voters as a lefty alternative to the AfD? Get our daily newsletter Upgrade your inbox and get our Daily Dispatch and Editor's Picks. Email address Sign up now For several years now Ms Wagenknecht has Latest stories raised eyebrows by pursuing the latter How should the law deal with religious marriages? strategy. She has argued for limits on ERASMUS refugee numbers and blamed the Berlin The irresistible rise of internet dating GRAPHIC DETAIL terror attack in 2016 on Angela Merkel’s The aviation business is getting annoyed by open-border policies. She is Eurosceptic, growing passport queues critical of NATO and broadly friendly to GULLIVER Russia. All of this aligns her with aspects of See more the AfD, whose leader, Alexander Gauland, has praised her and said he wants closer co-operation. Though Ms Wagenknecht rejects the idea (“out of the question,” she declares rmly), the fact that the comparison can be made angers some in her party. In 2016 pro-refugee activists threw a chocolate cake at her at one of its conferences to protest against her supposedly “brown” (meaning far-right, a reference to the Nazis’ brownshirts) politics. When, at this year’s conference on https://www.economist.com/europe/2018/08/11/what-the-far-left-and-right-have-in-common-in-germany-and-elsewhere 2/4 8/18/2018 What the far left and right have in common, in Germany and elsewhere - A surprising link June 9th, Left party delegates voted in favour of open borders, it was seen as a defeat for Ms WagenknecEhat.ch week, over one million subscribers trust us to help them She presents her new movemmaenkte a sse an cshea nocfe t tho eb rwidogrel dd.ivisions within the left. Some suggest it may prepare the ground for a future SPD-Left-Green government, Join them. Subscribe today and enjoy your rst and its early supporters include 12g wureeesk sf rfomr o nlalyl t$h12ree parties and none. However, it is better understood as her bid tpol uds erevceilvoe pa fhreeer n otwebnoo bk.rand of economic statism and cultural conservatism. “The AfD does not represent poor people. But if they turn to or Sign up to continue reading three free articles the AfD nonetheless, I think we should not insult them but ask what we have done wrong.” Such voters and others “have not found their way to the Left party”, she adds, noting that polls show that she would win more votes as an independent than as a candidate representing the party. Unsubmissive France, a brand-new party set up to support Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s hard-left bid for the French presidency last year, has impressed her. If Rise Up evolves into a bridge between the anti-establishment left and right, it will not be an isolated case. The two ends of Germany’s political spectrum routinely rub shoulders at anti-NATO protests. Compact, a prominent right-populist magazine, has cheered on Ms Wagenknecht’s new movement. It is edited by Jürgen Elsässer, a former far-left activist who has switched to the pro-Putin right. The AfD has started to involve itself in workers’ protests—like those over the threatened closure of a Siemens factory in Görlitz, near the Polish border, this spring. Some form of AfD-Left co-operation in state politics is probably only a matter of time (the two parties may together win enough seats for a majority in Saxony’s parliament in the election due there next year). As the left-right divide gives way to an open-closed one, new alignments are taking place in European politics. Elements of the left are resembling the hard right: witness the British Labour Party’s anti-Semitism scandals and limp opposition to Brexit, or Mr Mélenchon’s diatribes against foreign workers, or coalition arrangements between the anti-immigrant populists and the anti-capitalist left in Greece and the Czech Republic. Meanwhile, elements of the hard right are borrowing from the left: once free-market but anti-migrant outts like Austria’s Freedom Party, France’s National Rally and the AfD are learning to love redistribution. A new space is opening up: Russia-friendly, anti-Atlanticist, https://www.economist.com/europe/2018/08/11/what-the-far-left-and-right-have-in-common-in-germany-and-elsewhere 3/4 8/18/2018 What the far left and right have in common, in Germany and elsewhere - A surprising link Eurosceptic, economically interventionist, sceptical of or hostile to immigration and trade. Watch out, cenEtraicsths. week, over one million subscribers trust us to help them This article appeared in the Europe smectiaokn eof thsee nprsinet eodifti otnh uen dwer othre lhd.eadline "The right hand talks to the left hand" Join them. Subscribe today and enjoy your rst 12 weeks for only $12 plus receive a free notebook. or SYigno upu to ’covnteinu e sreaedineg tnhre e tfrehe aerticles news, now discover the story Get incisive analysis on the issues that matter. Whether you read each issue cover to cover, listen to the audio edition, or scan the headlines on your phone, time with The Economist is always well spent. Enjoy 12 weeks’ access for $12 https://www.economist.com/europe/2018/08/11/what-the-far-left-and-right-have-in-common-in-germany-and-elsewhere 4/4.
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