This is Sahra Wagenknecht’s newsletter. In it, I provide regular updates on my activities and current political issues.

Merz is the most unpopular Chancellor of all time! According to a recent poll, 87 per cent of citizens are dissatisfied with the work of the federal government. A majority would like to see an early end to the coalition between the CDU/CSU and the SPD. Merz was even booed on stage at the DGB [German Trade Union Confederation]. No wonder: the divided federal government can’t even manage to protect citizens from skyrocketing fuel prices. Whilst inflation is at its highest level in two years, Merz and his team are simply sitting on their hands following the embarrassing failure of the €1,000 bonus[Germany’s proposed €1,000 tax-free employee bonus (known as the Entlastungsprämie) is currently stalled. While the German parliament initially approved the voluntary scheme, the Bundesrat vetoed the legislation. Employers are not currently legally authorized to pay this specific tax-free relief].

 We urgently need policies that make life affordable for citizens again! Yet instead of seizing the opportunity to deploy former Chancellor Schröder to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine and the resumption of cheap energy imports from Russia, the federal government prefers to travel to Kyiv to broker new arms deals with the corrupt Zelenskyy government at the taxpayer’s expense. It is high time to put an end to this madness!

Merkel is right!

Even Angela Merkel is now calling for negotiations to end the war in Ukraine. What a damning indictment of the self-appointed ‘Foreign Chancellor’ Merz, who has done absolutely nothing diplomatically in his first year in office! Why Europeans should not leave the negotiating to Trump, and why the German government must stop prolonging the war with billions in handouts to the corrupt Zelenskyy government – I discuss these and other questions in an interview with WELT TV [WELT TV is one of Germany’s most popular private news channels.].

Take to the streets against Merz!

The economy is in freefall, the cost of living is rising, people have less and less money in their wallets – and the best the government can come up with is to cut pensions and healthcare? If this government carries on for another three years, Germany will be almost beyond saving! That’s why we’re taking to the streets: on Thursday, 28 May, at 5 pm in Berlin on Lucie-Leydicke-Platz. Joining us will be our leading Berlin candidates for the House of Representatives, Alexander King and Michael Lüders. Come along and make a stand with us: for a different kind of politics at federal level and in the capital. Merz must go!

No to pension cuts!

Merz wants to wreck the state pension scheme. Allegedly because, given Germany’s age structure, there is no alternative. The question is: how does our neighbour Austria, with a similar age distribution, manage to ensure that someone who has paid into the scheme for many years receives, on average, 800 euros more in pension than in Germany? Could it perhaps be because everyone there – including civil servants, the self-employed and politicians – pays into a pension fund? Or because the state subsidy for pensions in Germany has been shrinking for years relative to economic output, as the money is apparently being channelled into weapons and the corrupt Ukraine instead?

Firewall fiasco

{The ‘firewall’ is the notion that there should be no dialogue or contact whatsoever with extremist groups (meaning AfD) ]

There is great commotion in the Saxon state parliament: a motion by the Greens to support small slaughterhouses has secured a majority with votes from the BSW and AfD. Does anyone who votes in favour of a motion they believe to be right destroy democracy? And is anyone who stands with the Greens for greater animal welfare a right-wing extremist? With this crazy logic, the saviours of ‘our democracy’ have thoroughly made fools of themselves…

Time for peace!

Saxony-Anhalt is at a turning point: rising prices, job insecurity and growing uncertainty are shaping the state. At the same time, people are being asked to make sacrifices, whilst a misguided foreign policy is increasing the risk of military escalation. Why Germany needs peace and how a consistent peace policy can be implemented in practice in the state parliament – I will be discussing this next Wednesday in Halle with Claudia Wittig, the BSW’s lead candidate for the state election, and Johannes Varwick, a political scientist and member of the BSW’s Core Values Commission. All information about the event can be found here.

End EU sanctions against journalists!

For the past year, the German journalist Hüseyin Doğru has been subject to sanctions imposed by the European Union. His only ‘crime’ is that he has carried out his work as a journalist and reported critically. The result: drastic restrictions that threaten his and his family’s livelihood. This attack on freedom of expression must be stopped! An international alliance of journalists, artists, politicians and public figures has now issued an appeal [https://free-dogru.com] to the German government, calling for the immediate lifting of the EU sanctions. I have signed the petition and would be delighted if you would also support this cause.

From 7^th May Newsletter

One year of Merz: Nobody voted for this sort of politics!

Friedrich Merz has been in office for a year, and one can only hope that the public is spared a second. Merz and Klingbeil are pursuing policies that nobody voted for and which are ruining the country and its people. Who would have thought that Merz would even outdo Olaf Scholz in terms of incompetence and unpopularity? The Chancellor is now even regarded as the most unpopular head of government in the world. No wonder: from the historic electoral fraud involving special debts for rearmament, through the billions in handouts to the corrupt Zelenskyy clique in Kyiv, to the planned cuts in healthcare, pensions and care – never before has a government mishandled taxpayers’ money so badly! The federal government can’t even get a grip on the exorbitant fuel prices. Instead, it’s making a fortune by ripping off citizens at the petrol pump. An end to this botched coalition would be the best thing for Germany, before the damage it is causing becomes irreversible. All the more reason to hope that the Federal Constitutional Court will soon uphold our election review appeal and order a recount. Then the BSW would most likely enter the Bundestag and the Merz government would be history!

The state offers no protection

Michael Kyrath’s daughter Ann-Marie was brutally stabbed to death at the age of 17 during a knife attack on a regional train between Kiel and Hamburg. Her boyfriend Danny and other passengers also fell victim to the attack near Brokstedt. The perpetrator: a rejected asylum seeker who had already been convicted of violent crimes on several occasions. Why was this man still allowed to remain in Germany? How is it possible that the same perpetrator profile keeps cropping up? Why are politicians failing to get a grip on the problem of knife violence? In a new episode of “Sahra meets”, I speak to Michael Kyrath about how uncontrolled migration, failed integration and the failure of the authorities lead to terrible fates such as Ann-Marie’s – and why he is campaigning to ensure that his daughter’s death does not go unpunished.

Germany in Crisis

Germany is in the midst of a deep economic and energy crisis. The social market economy’s former promise of upward mobility – that one could improve one’s standard of living through hard work and diligence – no longer holds true. Exclusion, cancel culture and ‘firewall’ debates fundamentally call freedom of expression and democracy into question. What is going wrong in Germany? What responsibility does the federal government bear? And what might the way out of the crisis look like? I discussed these and other questions with Saxony’s Minister-President Michael Kretschmer at a panel discussion in Dresden.

A government on the wrong track

Overpriced energy, crumbling infrastructure, excessive bureaucracy – Chancellor Merz has no strategy to halt the deindustrialisation of the German economy. In my interview with Kontrafunk, I discuss why we urgently need to move beyond the federal government’s ideology-driven economic and energy policies, and why Germany cannot survive as an industrial nation in the long term without imports of cheap oil and gas from Russia.

Chancellor Clueless

The Chancellor has once again demonstrated that he has no idea about real life. In an interview with Caren Miosga, Merz claimed that a shop assistant has to pay less than 144 euros a month in health insurance contributions. What nonsense! Even full-time minimum-wage earners currently pay around 200 euros a month. The Chancellor clearly does not realise that it is primarily low-income earners and the middle class who fund the social security systems. But this is not just a matter of a false statement. After one year in office, it would be best for our country if there were no second year. Merz is pursuing policies that nobody voted for and which are leading our country into decline. Merz must go! A genuine defence of democracy would be to replace this botched coalition with a competent government of people-oriented experts who seek their majorities in Parliament on the merits of the issue and do not exclude any parliamentary group in the process.

From the 28 May Newsletter

The Truth Complex

Why is it that the media increasingly seem to be singing from the same hymn sheet? How does the state-organised suppression of unwelcome opinions work? And what role do NGOs, influencers and journalists play in this? For anyone seeking answers to these questions, I can highly recommend the recently published book “The Truth Complex: How NGOs Combat Unwelcome Opinions on Behalf of the State” by Norbert Häring – business journalist and member of the BSW Commission on Fundamental Values. Further information on the subject can be found on this accompanying page for the book.

Urgent letter to Merz

“By calling for ever more weapons, ever greater military capabilities and ever louder displays of ‘resolve’, and by signalling that Germany is preparing for war rather than working to end it, you have turned Berlin into a catalyst rather than a brake on a Europe-wide war.” In powerful terms, economist and diplomat Jeffrey Sachs calls on Chancellor Friedrich Merz in an urgent letter to begin talks with Russian President Putin without delay in order to establish peace in Europe and halt Germany’s industrial decline. This text should be required reading for every single member of the cabinet!