“clowns” and “cult followers”
Wagenknecht supporters verbally distribute against Linke-Spitze
08/09/2023 10:52 am
In the debate about a possible split in the Left Party, Klaus Ernst pours oil on the fire. Sahra Wagenknecht’s supporter insults opponents within the party and accuses them of having lost touch with simple work. A party newly founded by Wagenknecht could count on him.
In the debate about a possible split in the Left Party, former chairman Klaus Ernst has sharply criticized it. There is “a large group of politically incompetent clowns in the party,” he told Bayerischer Rundfunk. By that he means parts of the board, but also the base, the report said. He was also quoted as saying: “There are people in the party whose contact with work is limited to the fact that they once gave up a shelf at Aldi as a schoolboy or student.”
The trained electrical engineer and former trade unionist from Bavaria is considered a supporter of the camp around the member of the Bundestag Sahra Wagenknecht, who is toying with the idea of founding her own party. In that case, it could drag so many parliamentarians with it that the left-wing faction in the Bundestag would lose its status.
According to the report, leaving the parliamentary group is “currently not an issue” for Ernst, who later studied social economics. However, he confirmed that he would support Wagenknecht if she founded her own party. On the other hand, Ernst shows understanding for the decision of the parliamentary group leader, Amira Mohamed Ali, not to want to run for the post again at the beginning of September. He regrets the decision, but “expected that she might no longer feel like it” to continue as group leader, Ernst told BR.
Dagdelen calls critics “cult followers”
Bundestag member Sevim Dagdelen jumps in Ernst: “The party leadership relies on the exclusion of all those who advocate policies for the majority of the population instead of a shrinking group of sectarians,” Dagdelen told the newspapers of the Funke media group. With a view to founding a new party, she is convinced: “Such a political offer would also have the potential to decimate the AfD.” Like Ernst, Dagdelen is a supporter of Wagenknecht.
Vice party leader and Upper Bavarian member of the Bundestag Ates Gürpinar made the opposite statement in the BR. The fact that the federal executive asked Wagenknecht to resign from the Bundestag was “necessary and understandable” in view of the consideration of founding her own party.