Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance | A rift in Wagenknecht's world

Sahra Wagenknecht tried almost everything and still lost. That's how it has to be said, because she was determined to assert herself against the leadership of the Thuringian BSW state association, which has no desire to dance completely to her tune. Tried almost everything means: The BSW founder and chairwoman didn't travel to the state party conference in Gera herself; perhaps because she sensed there would be no success to celebrate there. Instead, she sent her general secretary, who managed to thank the previous state association, "which is being voted out today."

Despite such bold demands, there are still enough people in the Thuringian BSW who believe that their party should operate democratically. The Berlin federal leadership demonstrated what this BSW democracy looks like in recent days when they put forward candidates to challenge the ministers and incumbent state chairmen Wolf and Schütz, and then used the media to stir up sentiment against the incumbents. Wagenknecht recently wrote a letter to the members. She miscalculated.

But with the decisive re-election of Katja Wolf and her team partner – the previous state chair, Steffen Schütz, had withdrawn under pressure from Wagenknecht – the ongoing conflict surrounding the Thuringian Federal Social Democratic Party (BSW) is by no means settled. At best, it has been temporarily put on hold. The issue is not so much whether ministers should also hold leading party offices. Wagenknecht and her team had only recently raised the issue to put Wolf and Schütz in their place; there is no provision in the BSW statutes regarding the separation of offices.

Rather, a battle is raging over two questions. Firstly: Who bears the main blame for the botched federal election ? Wagenknecht shifts the blame primarily onto Erfurt – too many compromises in the state government with the CDU and SPD. The idea that she herself may have scared off masses of voters when she tried to tighten immigration laws with the CDU and AfD at the beginning of this year never occurs to her. And secondly: Should the Federal Office of Social Affairs and Consumer Protection (BSW) participate in government at all, or should it continue to limit itself to declaring everyone else incompetent? Wagenknecht tends to be fundamentally opposed, although she has even flirted with ministerial posts in a federal government – ​​just one of the contradictions within the BSW. In any case, participation in government is seen as a threat to next year's elections – especially the state elections in Berlin, Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.

Therefore, the BSW Federal Executive Board will keep a close eye on the Erfurt state government and the Thuringian state association, with its unpopular leadership . The pressure from Wagenknecht and his colleagues will continue, as they have already done within the Left Party. Pressure simply because someone in Erfurt dares not limit themselves to parroting Wagenknecht's platitudes.

Politics, especially government policy, should always be viewed critically. This also applies to the Federal Social Democratic Party (BSV) in Thuringia, especially since it doesn't automatically become better or even progressive just because it has differences with Wagenknecht. But the BSW applies a double standard: The fury with which it deals with Thuringia contrasts with the fact that the BSW, which is also part of the government in Brandenburg, is allowed to support social cuts unchallenged and accepts the expansion of the largest air force base into a missile site – because the state association behaves well within the party.

The most outspoken criticism of Wagenknecht's leadership style to date comes from Thuringia. Among other things, it concerns the BSW's special-democratic membership policy. Even more than a year after the party's founding, according to its statutes, only the federal executive committee can accept members at its discretion; the state associations may only make proposals. This makes the election defeat of Wagenknecht's preferred candidate this weekend all the more remarkable. Steffen Schütz, who is now seeking a seat on the federal executive committee instead of the state chairmanship, calls this nationwide and borderline-legal process "attitude acquisition." The promise has been made that the state associations will eventually be allowed to accept members themselves. But then the BSW faces a very different set of challenges.