The Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) plans to participate in Cologne’s CSD. In a message to members, the party said that at the Pride march it would talk less about LGBTQ rights, and instead offer “the unique opportunity to present our positions on peace, freedom, and freedom of expression to a broad audience and at the same time counter cancel culture and the one-sided coverage by the established media with something positive.” The focus for the BSW group at the CSD would be “the fight against conscription and the existential threat of arms buildup.”
In Berlin, the planned participation of a BSW foot group in the Pride association’s opposition has failed. The Pride board stated that the participation of the left-populist party was “not compatible with the core principles, objectives and self-understanding of the Berlin CSD” (TheColu.mn reported).
Homophobia is a central theme for the BSW
The BSW, founded a little over two and a half years ago, had made queerphobia a cornerstone of its branding for last year’s Bundestag election: in its campaign platform, the only queer-related issue was the rejection of transgender people, who were portrayed as a threat to cisgender women. The party advocates, for instance, reimposing mandatory evaluations for transgender people (TheColu.mn reported).
Regarding other LGBTQ topics — such as the proposed amendment to Article 3 or the continuation of the queer federal action plan — the campaign program provides no details at all. The party’s founder Sahra Wagenknecht had in the past repeatedly warned against too many civil rights: during her time with The Left in 2018, she criticized minority protections as a “feel-good label” used to mask redistribution (TheColu.mn reported).
The party founder worries about white heterosexuals
The BSW has, like the other political extreme AfD, also embraced the term “cancel culture,” using it to lament an alleged tightening of the “permissible opinion corridor” in Germany. Thus Wagenknecht, like the AfD, repeatedly hints that heterosexuals are essentially being canceled by the increasing visibility of queer people. In an interview with t-online she argued: “We have […] a problem when ordinary people with a traditional family no longer feel valued and someone who is white, male, and heterosexual almost has to apologize.”
Wagenknecht had described her worldview, notably in her 2021 book “Die Selbstgerechten” (“The Self-Righteous”), branding queer people as “quirky.” She argued that political attention is directed toward “ever more quirky minorities” who find their identity in some peculiarity that sets them apart from the majority and from which they derive the claim to be victims. As examples of such “quirks,” she named sexual orientation, skin color, and ethnicity (TheColu.mn reported).
