Interview by Bhaskar Sunkara

Sahra Wagenknecht is used to controversy. Beginning her political career in the chaotic period that followed German reunification in 1990, she joined the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) in her twenties and was for several years a prominent member of its Communist wing.

She moved from the European Parliament to the Bundestag in 2009 shortly after the PDS joined with a left-wing split from the Social Democrats to form Die Linke, and has served as cochair of the party’s parliamentary group since 2010. Though she has proven to be polarizing in Die Linke and the wider left, on a national level she remains the party’s best-known public figure and most popular politician, with one-quarter of German voters stating they would consider voting for an electoral list headed by Wagenknecht. Her position as parliamentary group co-chair and her frequent media appearances make her Germany’s most prominent left-wing politician.

She has attracted renewed controversy since 2016 by criticizing Angela Merkel’s refugee policy. She has argued that the government failed to provide the necessary funds and infrastructural support to prevent the refugee influx from overburdening local governments and labor markets, thereby exacerbating social tensions in an already polarized society. These statements have generated intense controversy within her own party as well as the wider political sphere, with many accusing her of making concessions to the right as part of a wider attempt to win back working-class voters who have drifted to the far right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD).

Last year, both Wagenknecht and her partner and political ally Oskar Lafontaine began publicly discussing the need for a broad, left-populist formation to counter the rise of the Right and cohere a center-left majority in German politics capable of shifting the balance of forces in parliament. The new formation, called Aufstehen (“Stand Up”), created its online platform in early August and made its official launch with a press conference in Berlin on September 4. Its main supporters beyond Wagenknecht herself include several left-wing Social Democrats, the sociologist Wolfgang Streeck and a number of personalities from media and culture. Since then, over 150,000 people have signed up to participate in the new “movement,” though its program has yet to be decided.

Aufstehen is a gamble, similar in some regards to Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s France Insoumise. It aims to stem the growth of right-wing populism, but it aims to reach alienated voters by circumventing the existing organizations of the Left, potentially jeopardizing institutions that took generations to build. Both initiatives bring up questions about the future of the Party of the European Left, the nature of left-populism, and how best to win over people that might drift into the hands of the Right, without compromising the core internationalist values of the Left.

Jacobin founding editor Bhaskar Sunkara was in Germany in September to promote the release of a German-language collection, Jacobin: Die Anthologie. He caught up with Wagenknecht to get her perspective on the Aufstehen initiative and the surrounding controversy.