Interview with the party’s main candidate ahead of local elections tomorrow.
Interview with the party’s main candidate ahead of local elections tomorrow.
Germany’s state of North Rhine-Westphalia heads to the election on September 14. With only a few days remaining before the election, parties are stepping up their campaigns.
One of these parties is the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht – BSW), which narrowly missed the threshold of minimum vote rate for the parliament in the last federal election.
The party is running in 46 of the state’s 400 local government units. One of these regions is the Ruhr area, home to more than five million residents.
On August 26, Can Çakır attended the party’s rally in Duisburg. At the rally, where the party’s founder Sahra Wagenknecht was the main speaker, BSW’s North Rhine-Westphalia State Secretary and lead candidate for the Ruhr Regional Parliament, Günter Blocks, answered Çakır’s questions.
Blocks’ responses shed light on the party’s election campaign, rising militarization and large sums allocated to weapons, immigration and migrant issues, and BSW’s approach to the AfD.
What is the importance of the local election in NRW for the BSW?
It is important are two reasons. The first is a party-political reason. We want to establish a strong local and regional presence through the local elections here in North Rhine-Westphalia. We are also running for the Ruhr Parliament, not just for individual municipalities.
The second reason is that there is a need for a new party in the parliaments that represents the interests of the majority of people. That means advocating for peace at the local level, for example opposing the “Operation Plan Germany,” which also affects municipalities. This, in turn, would ensure that the remaining funds are still available locally. This would mean these funds can be invested in infrastructure especially in socially deprived neighbourhoods like daycare centres and schools instead of armament.
Operation Plan Germany (Operationsplan Deutschland)
You mentioned Germany’s “Operation Plan.” Could you explain in more detail what it is?
The problem is that much of the “Operation Plan Germany” is classified. It is clear, however, that the 500 billion euros recently approved under the so-called “special fund” for infrastructure measures by the Black-Red-Green coalition in the previous Bundestag are intended, as much as possible, for infrastructure projects that are ultimately decisive for war. This is coordinated through secret agreements between the federal government and the Bundeswehr on one side, and the federal states and municipalities on the other. This means that civil protection is increasingly being oriented toward military purposes. Municipal investments, which already have very limited room for maneuver because many municipalities are financially strained, will be directed toward military-capable goods and infrastructure.
30,000 signatures for candidates
How do you assess your electoral work till now?
In general, in North Rhine-Westphalia, new parties that are not represented in the Bundestag must collect signatures for each constituency candidate. Across North Rhine-Westphalia, we had to gather around 30,000 signatures for our candidates to run.
Then comes another complication: the North Rhine-Westphalian municipal election law is structured so that a party can only receive votes for the list, the council, the district council, or the Ruhr Parliament in constituencies where it has direct candidates. In this way, the law contains many arbitrary obstacles that make it harder for new parties to compete.
We managed to field candidates in 32 out of 53 districts and major cities, but there were many municipalities where we couldn’t. NRW has over 400 municipalities, and if you include the smaller local communities, we ended up with only 46 entries statewide. Still, given the context I mentioned, we achieved a good result and I adopted this strategy from the beginning.
There is a positive aspect, of course: collecting signatures is already a form of campaigning. Before other parties even started their campaigns, we made contacts with countless citizens.
Migrant population in the Ruhr region
You are now the lead candidate for the BSW in the Ruhr Parliament. The Ruhr region is home to a significant population with a migration background. How is the response among the migrant population? We would like to hear about the Turkish-origin population especially.
I can say that there is strong support. Many of our candidates also come from migrant backgrounds. If you look at the Bundestag election results, we officially received just under five percent, though I am confident the actual support is higher if a proper recount were done. Among the Muslim population in Germany, for example, we received sixteen percent, far above the national average. This trend is also reflected, though less prominently, in other migrant communities.
Among Muslims, the BSW’s clear stance on the Gaza conflict certainly plays a role: ending arms deliveries, achieving a ceasefire, and moving toward peace in Gaza.
Reasonable integration vs. “open borders for everyone”
We often receive feedback from the migrant community like “We want a reasonable mix within the neighborhoods. We don’t want, for instance, ninety percent of children in a primary school to be refugees from Afghanistan or Syria, because that also makes it harder for our own children”.
So, we want to focus strongly on reasonable integration. At the same time, we believe immigration should be limited to some extent, not “open borders for everyone” as the Left Party demands, but rather immigration that still allows people, particularly in disadvantaged neighborhoods, to lead a reasonable life.
Support among the migrant population to AfD
Interestingly, there is also a trend among the migrant population toward supporting the AfD. For example, in Duisburg districts like Rheinhausen or Marxloh, we see growing support for the AfD among migrants. What could be the reasons for this?
I think it’s exactly what I just mentioned: the perception that uncontrolled immigration changes neighborhoods too much, making life harder even for those who have lived here a long time as migrants. This is compounded by increasing racism and xenophobia.
A small aside: if I myself had to live on Citizen’s Benefit (Bürgergeld), if I can barely pay my rent because only part of it is covered by the Bürgergeld, which is increasingly the case and will worsen further under the announced legal changes, and if I see my children struggling in school because there is not enough German spoken in their environment, this leads to growing racism and xenophobia. That naturally worries people who are already well integrated.
As a result, in my view, some of them mistakenly consider voting for the AfD, ignoring the fact that the AfD does not just want controlled immigration, they want no immigration at all. They would ideally expel as many people as possible, even if they are well integrated, unless they were born in Germany and have German ancestry.
This is also a misconception among economically precarious Germans. The AfD is not a party for the working class. It is a party that is even more radically neoliberal than the FDP, and therefore acts against the interests of the working population and large segments of the migrant community.
The war in Ukraine
On issues like dialogue with Russia, there is some agreement with the AfD. How would you classify this?
Yes, but out of completely different approaches. From the beginning, the BSW has repeatedly stated that Russia’s attack on Ukraine is a violation of international law. The AfD denies this. We do not consider it sensible to fight “to the last Ukrainian”. We want peace to finally prevail, so that people in both countries are freed from the war, with no more deaths or maiming.
Even if the two parties could vote in the same direction on specific motions, the overall orientation and intent are entirely different.
Arms deliveries to Israel
On August 10, AfD co-chair Tino Chrupalla expressed his support for the partial suspension of arms deliveries to Israel. How do you assess this?
These restrictions are a farce. The announcement in March stated: “We will no longer deliver weapons that can be used in Gaza.”
First, this only applies to new arms deliveries. Existing contracts are still supposed to be fulfilled. Second, no one can realistically determine which weapons can or cannot be used in Gaza.
We are firmly in favor of an immediate halt to all arms deliveries to Israel.
AfD and BSW: Is cooperation possible?
Is there any possibility of collaboration between the AfD and BSW in the coming period?
I mentionedthe key point: the AfD is a radically neoliberal party, and focuses on repatriation rather than controlled immigration. That said, it does not exclude the possibility of shared orientation in the parliament. But this doesn’t mean cooperation.
For example, in the last Bundestag, when the constitution was amended to free up 500 billion euros as a special fund, the BSW and the AfD both voted against it. But for completely opposite reasons: We opposed it because we did not want a war-oriented policy in Germany. The AfD opposed it because they are against lifting the debt brake. These were two entirely different motives, yet both parties voted no.
From a geostrategic perspective, there are two major differences between the AfD and the BSW: While the AfD also supports ending arms deliveries to Ukraine, it is by no means committed to an overall peace-oriented policy. The AfD clearly favors rearmament in Germany and, regarding Gaza, strongly supports arms deliveries to Israel. The BSW, on the other hand, clearly opposes all arms deliveries to war zones, including Israel, which is currently committing genocide in Gaza.