Inside Alliance Wagenknecht – a lesson in political attention economics

You can read it on their faces: shaking up the party landscape and at the same time blowing up the Left Party is very strenuous.

Photo: ZDF/ Thomas Riedel

Armor gives the feeling of impregnability. Even if it is not made of medieval metal or modern Kevlar, but rather makeup, blazers and pearls, the facade becomes a fortress. Armored in this way, Margaret Thatcher smashed England’s civil society with grim determination. Angela Merkel looked friendlier than the Iron Lady; Behind the diamond, however, the Chancellor was just as difficult to storm as her new counterpart: Sahra Wagenknecht.

For 30 years, she has remained an unchanged part of the political establishment, but in her armor she rails against the latter and acts as an external attacker of the stronghold of parliamentarism. And you can now experience how much success she has had in the talk show republic of Germany in the ZDF documentary series “Inside Alliance Wagenknecht”. Without the first name Sahra in the title, but she is in the associated party, better yet: she is that party.

Andrea Maurer and Christiane Hübscher accompanied the Sahra Wagenknecht alliance for twelve months on the way from the founding plan to the Brandenburg election. BSW rushes from triumph to triumph for five episodes. However, three hours are primarily about the currently – apart from Markus Söder of course – the most self-confident alpha animal in representative democracy and its three-fold operating principle. According to the subtitle: “Rebel, realist, populist.” Only real with a question mark attached.

Whenever Sahra Wagenknecht entered a room, the temperature in it “dropped by five degrees.”

Michael KretschmerPrime Minister of Saxony

Because what exactly Wagenknecht wants, can, may, must: All of this remains vague even after the last of 180 minutes, where she announces, for once, wearing trousers instead of a skirt in the middle of blooming landscapes, that she will “change politics from the opposition” with a “strong force” to want. What becomes clear from the first second: Sahra Wagenknecht is the embodiment of the political attention economy.

Her armor is already in place in the bathroom in the morning: a monochrome two-piece suit, pearl earrings, up-do, and that mocking, superior smile with which she even looks at her own reflection in the mirror. At no point in this fascinating long-term study does Sahra Wagenknecht leave the PR mode of strict situation control – no matter how much the experts, reporters and analysts of the media society complain about her “contempt for politics”, which Martin Machowecz (“Die Zeit”) characterizes in her, complain.

From the departure of the new party at the beginning of September 2023 to the pulverization of the old one in Brussels, Dresden, Erfurt, Potsdam and possibly soon also Berlin, the author duo accompanies the right-wing ex-Marxist through a year that would be described as eventful and almost lethargic. Never before has a politician from the parliamentary fringe in this country gained such rapid influence and even power as this one, which is why no one, not even Alice Weidel, was under such meticulous observation.

No wonder that irregularities are exploited in real time. While the first part of the documentary – prominently represented by journalists such as “Spiegel” deputy Melanie Amann or “Bild” reporter Paul Ronzheimer – deals with Wagenknecht’s offensive, erratic peace rhetoric in addition to the march through the institutions, the second part highlights the discrepancy between Kleine -People’s fetish and rich people’s donations become clear, before the third deciphers the hierarchical BSW system as a personality cult.

Everything is right, everything is important, but everything is a little irrelevant in view of Wagenknecht’s winning streak “with almost nothing,” as Dunja Hayali recently said in the “Heute-Journal” after the next overwhelming election victory, “hardly any staff, hardly any members, hardly any content.” . Maybe so. Nevertheless, Wagenknecht’s BSW holds the keys to three state governments in its hands. ZDF gets to the bottom of this natural event without leading questions, voiceovers, or a manipulative soundtrack and simply lets everyone talk: enemies and fans, competitors and voters, left and right, academics and passers-by, Oskar Lafontaine and Gregor Gysi or even Saxony’s visibly exhausted Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer.

After his election victory, when asked about conceivable BSW collaborations, he uttered a sentence that will probably remain in the public’s mind for a long time: Whenever Sahra Wagenknecht entered a room, the temperature in it “dropped by five degrees.” However, this coolly calculated striving for power doesn’t just make you shiver; it makes for an extraordinary portrait of an extraordinary face of an extraordinary party in an absolutely extraordinary time.

Available in the ZDF media library

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