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Musk accused of ‘politicising’ rape of young girls in UK to attack Starmer
Musk
accused of ‘politicising’ rape of young girls in UK to attack Starmer
Ex-health
worker who exposed paedophile ring says billionaire’s triggering of row ignores
plight of survivors
Rajeev Syal
Home affairs editor
Fri 3 Jan
2025 12.17 EST
Elon Musk
has “politicised” the rape of young girls in the UK in an attempt to attack
Keir Starmer, a former health worker who exposed a major paedophile ring has
told the Guardian.
Sara
Rowbotham, who gathered evidence that led to the imprisonment of nine men in
Rochdale, said the tech billionaire had launched a “political swipe” at the
prime minister that overlooked the plight of abuse survivors.
The Tesla
owner, who will have a key role in Donald Trump’s incoming administration, on
Friday called on King Charles to step in and dissolve parliament after Labour
rejected a call for a national inquiry into child grooming.
Musk
triggered the row on Thursday over Starmer’s handling of child abuse in Oldham
after he suggested the prime minister had failed to bring “rape gangs” to
justice when he was director of public prosecutions.
Elon Musk
walks through a US government building, wearing a suit and holding a disposable
coffee cup
Trolling the
UK: the issues enraging Elon Musk, world’s richest ‘pub bore’
Read more
Rowbotham,
who made hundreds of referrals detailing the abuse and sexual grooming while
working for the NHS in Rochdale between 2005 and 2011, said: “What is [Musk’s]
motivation for interfering? It seems very political. The person he is trying to
go after is Keir Starmer – it is a political swipe that is nothing to do with
the women and girls who have been abused time after time.”
Musk, who
owns X, formerly Twitter, has used the social media site to post or repost
about child grooming in the UK more than 40 times over the past 24 hours.
Several
posts are from UK MPs including Reform UK’s Rupert Lowe and the Tories’ Robert
Jenrick, while others include a video featuring the far-right activist Tommy
Robinson, who in October was jailed for 18 months for contempt of court.
On Friday,
Musk shared a post asking whether the king “should dissolve parliament and
order a general election … for the sake and security” of the UK. He retweeted
the X thread with a one-word comment: “Yes.”
The
safeguarding minister, Jess Phillips, previously said in a letter to Oldham
council that instead of the government leading an investigation, Oldham must
follow in the footsteps of other towns such as Rotherham and Telford and
commission its own inquiry into the historical abuse of children.
A national
inquiry by Prof Alexis Jay concluded in 2022, and investigations into Greater
Manchester police’s handling of child sexual abuse cases in Manchester, Oldham
and Rochdale have also been carried out.
Rowbotham,
who was played by Maxine Peake in the award-winning BBC drama Three Girls,
dismissed Musk’s calls for another public inquiry, but said the UK still needed
to get to the bottom of the motivations of paedophile rings, which she said
were often dominated by Asian men.
“We need to
discover the motivations, not just sexual, behind this abuse, if we are going
to prevent it from happening again and again,” she said.
In a further
intervention, the father of a woman who was a main prosecution witness against
the Rochdale paedophile gang said it was “strange” that a US billionaire was
attempting to intervene in the UK.
The man,
whose eldest daughter was known as Girl A during court proceedings, said: “It
is strange that the richest man in the world has got time to start getting
involved in UK politics.”
Girl A was
groomed and abused in Rochdale by at least 50 men from the age of 12. Her
family discovered the abuse after she smashed up a restaurant at the age of 14.
While being interviewed by police, she told detectives how she and other girls
had been plied with drugs and drink and repeatedly raped and trafficked around
nearby towns and cities.
The comments
follow criticisms of Musk from two other key figures in the Rochdale inquiry.
Asked about
Musk’s comments on Friday, Wes Streeting, the health secretary, told ITV News
the criticisms were “misjudged and certainly misinformed”.
“Some of the
criticisms that Elon Musk has made, I think are misjudged and certainly
misinformed, but we’re willing to work with Elon Musk, who I think has got a
big role to play with his social media platform to help us and other countries
to tackle this serious issue.
“So if he
wants to work with us and roll his sleeves up, we’d welcome that,” he said.
Unease as Russia-friendly ‘queen of the elections’ aims for more German poll success
Unease as
Russia-friendly ‘queen of the elections’ aims for more German poll success
Some see
Sahra Wagenknecht’s brand of ‘left conservatism’ as a bulwark against AfD but
others see reasons to be wary
Kate
Connolly
Kate
Connolly in Brandenburg an der Havel
Tue 17 Sep
2024 05.00 BST
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/17/sahra-wagenknecht-germany-elections-bsw-afd
Sahra
Wagenknecht is not even on the ballot in the upcoming state election in
Brandenburg. But her face is plastered on billboards across the sprawling,
largely rural northern state that surrounds Berlin.
There she
hopes her fledgling Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) will repeat the successes
it enjoyed in polls in Thuringia and Saxony earlier this month, where it came
third with vote shares in the double figures, performing so well that it is now
a kingmaker for any possible coalition in either state.
The
centre-right is grappling with how it can keep the far-right Alternative für
Deutschland (AfD) party out of the governments in those two states, where the
AfD took more than 30% of the vote in each, coming top in Thuringia. With the
latest polls showing the AfD ahead in Brandenburg, the same scenario could be
repeated on Sunday.
So it is
that Wagenknecht, a former communist who once stood on the periphery as a
protest politician, has been thrust into the limelight as a core player
advocating a distinctive brand of “left conservatism”. And while some see her
eponymous alliance as a potential bulwark against the AfD, others point to its
anti-migration rhetoric and Russia-friendly foreign policy as reasons to be
wary.
Acknowledging
the power she holds, Franz Josef Wagner, the long-serving columnist of the
tabloid Bild, recently referred to her as a “queen of the elections” who could
become “Queen of Darkness” or “Queen of Light”, depending on which direction
she takes.
“I’m pinning
my hopes on her,” said Regine Hirsch, 80, a retired chemical laboratory
technician, who had left a weekly game of cards with some girlfriends in order
to come and hear Wagenknecht speak at the BSW’s first election rally in the
riverside city of Brandenburg an der Havel.
“Whether
everything she says is to be believed, I cannot say,” she said, rubbing her
hands against the chill of an autumn breeze. “But I’ve always quite liked her,
and anything to keep the Nazis out will be my motto when I go to vote on 22
September,” she added, in reference to the AfD.
In a
passionate 35-minute address to a crowd of about a thousand people gathered on
Brandenburg an der Havel’s market square, Wagenknecht made brief reference to
the BSW’s success “from an almost standing start” in Thuringia and Saxony,
where governments without it are now almost impossible.
Brandenburg
voters could ensure a similar result, she said, “and in so doing, send a signal
to the unspeakable government in Berlin”, which, she mocked, lived in its own
detached capital-city “bubble of organic food shops, lattes and cargo bikes”.
Laughter and
applause rippled across the square. Then Wagenknecht launched into one of her
big campaign themes: Ukraine and the defence policy of the chancellor, Olaf
Scholz.
Speaking to
the crowd, Wagenknecht derided the government’s decision to cut off supplies of
Russian gas, blaming the move for Germany’s cost of living crisis. If she were
given the chance, she added, she would push for a diplomatic solution to
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. She suggested Vladimir Putin was no more of a
warmonger than the United States.
To many,
such claims are deeply disturbing, redolent of reactionary anti-western,
anti-Nato propaganda. For the historian Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk, the BSW and the
AfD are “siblings in spirit” – both populist parties that reject western
values. Calling the former “Putinists” and the latter “fascists”, the author
said a vote for either was an expression of the ancient proverb “the enemy of
my enemy is my friend”.
“Not since
reunification in 1990 is democracy and freedom in such danger as it is now,” he
told the Süddeutsche Zeitung.
In
Brandenburg an der Havel, however, the message was going down well with
Cornelia Pelzer, a self-employed businesswoman from a nearby town who had
travelled to hear Wagenknecht speak.
“I’m 150%
behind her insistence on pushing for peace,” she said. “She reflects the
consciousness of many other Germans on this score, which is why she’s so
successful. She’s a complete counterpoint to our war-mongering government,” she
added, in reference to the continued military support the government has given
to Ukraine.
Pelzer said
she had long been a Wagenknecht fan and had chosen to follow her when she broke
away last year from the leftist Die Linke party – “who were mired in trench
warfare” – with a band of her supporters to form the BSW.
Manfred
Köhler, 67, who spent 45 years as a shift worker at the local steelworks,
admitted he was unconvinced by Wagenknecht and was more likely to vote for the
AfD. “But I live in hope that her lot, despite what they say, and the AfD will
band together,” he said, sitting on the edge of a flower bed and drawing on a
cigarette after the rally.
Wagenknecht
has, like the established parties, ruled out a coalition between her party and
the anti-migration, anti-Islam AfD, although she has been less insistent about
refusing any cooperation whatsoever, suggesting the two could work together
where their party programmes align. She has been eager to show empathy towards
AfD supporters in the hope of luring them to her BSW, saying many chose to vote
for the party “not because they’re far-right but because they are furious”.
Obvious
overlapping goals include limiting migration, increasing the deportations of
rejected asylum seekers and tightening controls at Germany’s borders (a step
already taken by the government on Monday). Wagenknecht has said Berlin needs
to send the message to the world that “Germany is overwhelmed, Germany doesn’t
have any more room, Germany is no longer prepared to be destination number
one”.
Köhler said
that, as a Brandenburg voter, overwrought public services, a lack of
integration and security were among his main concerns. “My granddaughter is in
the second year of school and over half the class is not able to speak German,”
he said. “All I know is that this situation can’t continue, and that the
established parties have to be ousted.”
But did he
trust parties that had never before held positions of political responsibility?
“If they’re no good, they’ll be out after five years,” he said. “But you have
to give them a chance. They can’t do any worse than the current lot. And you
can’t label me a Nazi for suggesting it. That’s a cheap shot – that was 85
years ago.”
Is Germany’s rising superstar so far left she’s far right?
Is
Germany’s rising superstar so far left she’s far right?
Sahra
Wagenknecht’s brand of “left conservatism” is upending German politics ahead of
critical elections in the east.
August 26,
2024 4:00 am CET
By James
Angelos
https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-superstar-sahra-wagenknecht-far-left-far-right/
BERLIN —
Listening to Sahra Wagenknecht, Germany’s hard-left icon, you could be forgiven
for coming away with the impression that the greatest threat to democracy is
“lifestyle leftists” nursing lattes in reusable cups while shopping for organic
kale at a Berlin farmers’ market.
Such
well-off, eco-friendly urban bohemians hold what they deem to be “morally
impeccable” views about everything from Ukraine to climate change, she says,
and then impose those beliefs over regular people with draconian zeal.
Wagenknecht
— whose recently formed populist party is polling in the double digits ahead of
critical state elections in eastern Germany on Sunday — also believes there are
too many asylum seekers coming to the country, claiming there’s “no more room.”
She reserves much of her ire for Germany’s Greens, blaming their clean-energy
push for the country’s deindustrialization, and favors closer relations with
Russian President Vladimir Putin.
One of
Germany’s most well-liked politicians, Wagenknecht started out in politics as a
member of East Germany’s communist party and has long been the face of the
country’s hard left. Of late, however, she often sounds positively far right.
Her views
and scathing attacks on the mainstream left have, in fact, won her many
far-right admirers. Björn Höcke, one of the most extreme politicians in the
far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the party’s leader in the eastern
German state of Thuringia was so impressed with Wagenknecht — particularly over
her position on Putin — that he once called upon her to enlist in the AfD’s
ranks. “I implore you, come and join us!” he said last year during a speech in
Dresden.
Instead,
Wagenknecht has forged a new political force defined by a seemingly oxymoronic
ideology she dubs “left conservatism.” In the process, she is upending German
politics by chipping away at the crumbling dominance of the country’s
mainstream parties and further scrambling the left-right divide that
characterized Western politics for most of the 20th century.
As
established parties lose sway across Europe, the fractured political landscape
makes it easier for political entrepreneurs like Wagenknecht to stake out new
territory. That’s increasingly true in Germany too, which has long served as
Europe’s anchor of stability — where politics were long relatively staid and
predictable.
Long gone
are the days when the Volksparteien — big-tent parties — could virtually alone
determine Germany’s political course. Upstarts like the AfD and Wagenknecht’s
party — dubbed Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) — are fomenting a revolt
against the political mainstream.
That
rebellion is particularly strong in the region that makes up the former East
Germany which — despite the more than three-decade effort to absorb and
integrate the formerly communist state after the fall of the Berlin Wall — is
increasingly following its own parallel political reality.
With three
state elections to be held in eastern Germany — in Saxony and Thuringia on
Sunday, and in Brandenburg on September 22 — the AfD is leading or close to
leading all the contests. Wagenknecht’s new party is polling between around 13
and 18 percent, a striking result for a party that just formed several months
ago.
I met
Wagenknecht earlier this year backstage at a theater in Berlin, where she was
scheduled to answer questions from a reporter from Germany’s left-leaning
newspaper Die Tageszeitung before a live audience. Wagenknecht sported her
signature look — a jacket with padded shoulders, a knee-length skirt and pumps
— a style so invariable she’s often asked about it by reporters. (“Ultimately
you get the feeling that it’s a kind of uniform,” the Tageszeitung journalist,
Ulrike Herrmann, told Wagenknecht on stage later that night.)
Wagenknecht
is far from alone in blurring the traditional left-right spectrum. In the U.S.,
former President Donald Trump has embraced some traditionally left economic
policies on trade and tariffs, partly explaining his appeal to working-class
voters. France’s far-right leader, Marine Le Pen, has co-opted economic and
welfare policies from the traditional left, attracting, in the process, many
former French Communist Party voters.
When I asked
Wagenknecht if she saw any similarities between herself and Le Pen or other
radical-right parties, a hint of shock seemed to break through her cool,
composed countenance. Such parties, she told me, do not truly represent the
“so-called little people.” Rather, she said, her brand of politics does — a
left that focuses on fighting economic inequality while, as she put it, also
embracing social policies that foster “traditions, stability and security.”
That’s
territory, she said, the left has mistakenly ceded to the right. “These are
quite legitimate human needs, and at some point the left was no longer
interested in them,” Wagenknecht told me. She then blamed the rise of the far
right on German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his left-leaning coalition’s
“arrogant” approach to governing.
“This is the
direct result of an incredible frustration and indignation about wrong
policies,” she said. “And the indignation is justified.”
Wagenknecht
is accustomed to standing apart. She was born in 1969 in East Germany to an
Iranian father who had come to West Berlin to study and a German mother who
worked as an art dealer and lived on the other side of the Berlin Wall, making
it impossible for the couple to maintain regular contact.
When
Wagenknecht was just three, her father left for Iran and never came back. She
was raised by her grandparents in a small village in Thuringia, where, she told
me, other children teased her for her black hair and dark eyes. “It was
actually not so nice for me as a child,” she told me. “I was relatively alone
there. There were no children with foreign parents.”
As she came
of age, much of her character seemed to be defined by resistance to change. At
the age of 19, just before the fall of the Berlin Wall, she joined the East
German communist party out of a desire to help prevent the state’s collapse due
to what she considered to be “counterrevolutionary forces.” After the wall
fell, she joined the party’s successor, the Party of Democratic Socialism, and
served as the youthful face of the old-guard “Communist Platform,” the wing of
the party that represented the views of the former East German leadership.
Due to her
youth and the calm, coolness with which she peddled radical ideas, she became a
German media phenomenon. As her party tried to move away from its East German
roots, she continued to defend the old regime, maintaining her opposition to
the West, NATO and capitalism. “Better East Germany with the wall than the
societal conditions we have today,” she said in a 1996 interview on public
television.
Wagenknecht’s
hardline views began to moderate after she met another leftist icon, Oskar
Lafontaine, a man 26 years her senior. Lafontaine was the powerful leader of
the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in the 1990s, but left after a bitter power
struggle with then-Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, believing the SPD to have
turned against the working class and welfare state.
In 2007,
Lafontaine’s SPD splinter party merged with the PDS to form Die Linke, or the
Left Party, with Wagenknecht joining the executive committee. He and
Wagenknecht later married. After Lafontaine took a lower political profile in
2009 due to health reasons, Wagenknecht became one of the party’s leading
voices.
Yet, in
subsequent years, Wagenknecht became an increasingly controversial figure
within the Left Party, including when, amid the refugee crisis of 2015, she
became a critic of then-Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to allow in
hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers, using the mantra “Wir schaffen das!”
(“We can do it!”). In 2016, after a spate of terror attacks perpetrated by
migrants, Wagenknecht released a statement that read: “The reception and
integration of a large number of refugees and immigrants is associated with
considerable problems and is more difficult than Merkel’s frivolous ‘We can do
it.’”
Members of
her own party sharply criticized her, arguing that no true leftist should
attack Merkel from the right on migration. That year, at a Left Party
gathering, a man from a self-described anti-fascist group threw what looked
like a chocolate cake topped with whipped cream in Wagenknecht’s face.
Relations with many members of her own party grew more strained after
Wagenknecht became a sharp critic of the government’s “endless lockdowns”
during the Covid-19 pandemic and after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine,
with Wagenknecht frequently appearing on German television to offer takes that
echoed Kremlin propaganda.
Finally,
last year, she announced that she and a group of Left Party allies would leave
to form their own party, with Lafontaine, her husband, also later joining. “We
live in a time of global political crises,” she said in Berlin. “And in this of
all times, Germany probably has the worst government in its history.” Many
people, she added, “no longer know who to vote for, or they vote out of anger
and despair.” The choice led to the unraveling of the Left Party, which was
forced to dissolve its parliamentary faction, liquidate assets and fire staff.
Wagenknecht
has since grown adept at finding a leftist angle for what are commonly rightist
stances. Her skepticism of immigration is due, in great part, to her support of
the welfare state, which, she says, requires a certain degree of homogeneity to
function.
“The
stronger the welfare state, the more of a sense of belonging there must be,”
Wagenknecht told me in Berlin. “Because if people have no connection to those
who receive social benefits, then at some point they will refuse to pay for
those benefits.”
Another
example was Wagenknecht’s vote against a bill passed by the German parliament
earlier this year to make it easier to change one’s legal gender — a law, she
said, that would “just be ridiculous if it weren’t so dangerous.” But she found
a traditionally left line of attack for that view, targeting the profit-seeking
pharmaceutical industry as the main beneficiary of the bill. “Your law turns
parents and children into guinea pigs for an ideology that only benefits the
pharmaceutical lobby.”
She has also
repeatedly called for an end to German military aid for Ukraine and
negotiations with Putin — a view prevalent on the far right, but for her, an
anti-war stance rooted in the leftist tradition.
That she
sounds like the right on these issues brings to mind the “horseshoe theory” of
politics, often attributed to the French author Jean-Pierre Faye and his 1996
book “Le Siècle des ideologies,” which holds that political extremes bend
towards each other, in the shape of a horseshoe, so that the far left and far
right ends are closer together than they are to the center.
But a more
concrete explanation for her policies is that Wagenknecht sees a representation
gap — a space for people with socially conservative views who are uncomfortable
with migration and progressive politics, but are also wary of the AfD’s
extremism. Wagenknecht, in other words, seeks to provide a more palatable,
anti-establishment alternative.
Wagenknecht,
like leaders of other parties, has ruled out governing with the AfD in a
coalition. At the same time, she has not, like others, ruled out cooperating
with the AfD to pass what she deems to be sensible legislation.
“If the AfD
says the sky is blue,” her party “will not claim that it is green,” she
recently told German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
There are
numerous theories for why so many voters in the east of the country are prone
to supporting populist and radical parties. One is that the wage gap between
eastern and western Germany has driven resentments in the east, where employees
on average earn about 15 percent less per hour.
Another is
that loyalty to mainstream parties and trust in institutions runs less deep in
the eastern states because they only became part of a reunified Germany 34
years ago. In that sense, the parties that dominated West Germany’s postwar
history — the center-left SPD and center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU)
— are a lot less entrenched.
When we
spoke in Berlin, Wagenknecht had another explanation for why she’s doing so
well in eastern Germany, saying it had to do with the legacy of resistance to
authoritarianism. People in the east, she told me, just don’t like being told
how to think. They were, in other words, less susceptible to the indoctrination
that lifestyle leftists impose through their grip on mainstream politics and
the media.
“East
Germans are particularly sensitive today when they realize that you want to
educate them, that you want to lecture them, that you want to restrict their
freedom,” she said. “That’s also a bit of the legacy of East Germany, the
legacy in the sense of a certain resistance and renitence that people acquired
back then.”
Many eastern
Germans — even those born long after the end of the Cold War — maintain a
strong sense of identity as “Ossis” (Easterners). Voters in the east also tend
to be more wary of immigration, more socially conservative and increasingly
nostalgic toward Russia. That later trend has perplexed even some of the people
who know the politics of the region best.
“Suddenly,
over 30 years later, there’s this nostalgia, but it’s a strange nostalgia
because it doesn’t differentiate between Russia and Putin,” Bodo Ramelow, the
current premier of Thuringia and a member of the Left Party that Wagenknecht
abandoned (and no fan of hers), told me earlier this month. “A collective
forgetting seems to be playing a role.” People no longer realize what it means
that Soviet forces crushed an East German uprising in 1953. Rather, he said,
the West is increasingly seen as the oppressor. “So, it’s really a reversal, a
reversal in terms of substance.”
Wagenknecht
appears to be both fomenting and capitalizing on those pro-Russia sentiments.
“The central issue in Ukraine is: Will Ukraine become a staging area for
American military bases and American missiles?” she said at a press conference
the day her party was founded. She has also condemned a plan to deploy U.S.
long-range missiles on German territory, and when Ukrainian President Volodymyr
Zelenskyy came to Berlin to speak in the Bundestag, her party — along with AfD
parliamentarians — refused to show up. Russian media outlets, unsurprisingly,
love to quote Wagenknecht.
It’s partly
because Germany’s Greens — a party that emerged from the pacifist movement
during the Cold War — have become so hawkish on military support for Ukraine
that Wagenknecht holds them with particular contempt. “The Greens are the most
hypocritical, most aloof, most mendacious, most incompetent and, measured by
the damage they cause, also the most dangerous party we currently have in the
Bundestag,” she once said in a video message.
That’s a
message that is resonating with eastern German voters. The Greens have seen
their support plummet so much in the three states going to the polls in
September that they risk not winning seats in any of the state parliaments. The
two other parties that make up Germany’s three-party ruling coalition — the SPD
and the fiscally conservative Free Democrats — are also struggling.
With the AfD
and Wagenknecht’s new party rising, forming viable coalition governments that
exclude populist and radical parties across the east is becoming increasingly
difficult — if not impossible.
After the
eastern elections, both parties hope to strengthen their influence in the rest
of Germany. Should they be successful, ahead of a general election next year,
what’s happening now in the former East Germany may only be a prelude.
Can Europe’s new ‘conservative left’ persuade voters to abandon the far right?
This
article is more than 10 months old
Can
Europe’s new ‘conservative left’ persuade voters to abandon the far right?
Cas Mudde
Sahra
Wagenknecht’s new party aims to transform German politics – but like its peers
across western Europe, it may struggle
Tue 16 Jan
2024 07.00 GMT
Germany’s
favourite “firebrand politician”, Sahra Wagenknecht, has finally launched her
long-awaited new party, the awkwardly named Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) –
Reason and Fairness. After years of speculation, the German and some of the
international media went into overdrive, predicting that the “leftwing
conservative” party (Wagenknecht talks about combining job security, higher
wages and generous benefits with a restrictive immigration and asylum policy)
would “shake up” the German party system and “could eat into the far right’s
support”.
But is a
party led by Wagenknecht, a former member of the far-left Die Linke (The Left)
party, really the “miracle cure” for the far-right Alternative für Deutschland
(AfD)? Based on what we have seen in neighbouring countries such as Denmark and
the Netherlands, the chances seem slim that the so-called icon of the German
left will rescue working-class voters from the claws of the AfD. In fact, it is
more likely that she and her new party will strengthen the far-right agenda.
Sure,
Wagenknecht has launched her new party at a perfect time. Germany is heading
for its first two-year recession since the early 2000s its national statistics
office warned this week. The current three-way governing coalition led by Olaf
Scholz is deeply unpopular, with broad resistance building to an expected new
round of austerity policies. Scholz’s party, the centre-left SPD, and the
Greens are polling just 28% – combined!
The Left,
Wagenknecht’s former party, consistently polls about 4%, (still) under the
electoral threshold to enter parliament, while the AfD has recently won many
new supporters, not least from The Left. Finally, the election calendar this
year is extremely favourable, with three state elections in the east of the
country in in autumn, and European elections in June – where Germany uses a
proportional system without an electoral threshold and parties need only 1% of
the national vote to gain a seat in the European parliament.
The German
media are also desperate for a new “populist” party that they can cover more
favourably than the still largely ostracised AfD. And, despite the fact that
she was relevant for only a few years in German politics – as co-leader of the
opposition from 2015 to 2017 – Wagenknecht has enjoyed an outsized media
presence throughout her career. In fact, you could even say that she has become
mainly a media phenomenon. Although distrusted and eventually marginalised by
her own colleagues in The Left, and having later led a failed “collective
movement” – Aufstehen (Stand Up), the (unsuccessful) predecessor of her new
party – Wagenknecht has remained one of the most prominent and popular
politicians in the German media.
Probably
most importantly, there is significant electoral potential for this new party.
In September 2023, a poll found that one in five Germans “could imagine” voting
for the (not yet founded) party. In fact, as the German political scientist
Sarah Wagner recently argued, a significant part of the German electorate
combines leftwing economic views with rightwing cultural views, but no German
party offers such a “leftwing authoritarian” (or “leftwing conservative”)
programme. Unlike other far-right parties in western Europe, such as the French
National Rally (RN) or the Dutch Party for Freedom (PVV), the AfD has not (yet)
made the switch from a pro-market to a welfare chauvinist agenda.
But,
although Wagner and her colleagues found that Wagenknecht “has the ability to
build bridges between left and right”, they were less sure “whether current AfD
voters would be willing to turn their backs on the AfD and vote for a
Wagenknecht party instead”. Leaving aside that leftwing authoritarians tend to
be less likely to vote, they also tend to vote rightwing more often than
leftwing, particularly when cultural issues such as immigration dominate the
political agenda, as they have been doing for most of the 21st century so far.
And given
that such issues continue to dominate, Wagenknecht’s “anti-immigrant” and
“anti-woke” discourse will only strengthen the mainstreaming of far-right
talking points. In most cases, this leads to more, not less, electoral support
for the far right – as in the the most recent Dutch elections, in November
2023. The Dutch Socialist party (SP) campaigned on an “old left” platform
combining traditional leftwing economic positions, for example on healthcare,
with demands for a temporary stop on migrant workers and a popular leader,
Lilian Marijnissen, attacking “identity politics”. But it lost yet again, while
the (combined) far right won a postwar record number of votes. In some
countries this “leftwing conservative” approach has led to a fall in far-right
support: for example, it benefited the Danish Social Democrats. But even this
was mostly because of internal problems in the far-right party, and eventually
gave way to a successful new Danish anti-immigrant party.
So, while
the Wagenknecht party will undoubtedly gain some good electoral results in
2024, it is very doubtful that it will transform the German political system.
True, her split from The Left caused the disbanding of its parliamentary party.
But rather than actually causing The Left’s demise, Wagenknecht simply hammered
the final nail into its coffin. And rather than “saving democracy”, as she has
vowed to do, she is more likely to help to weaken it, by further mainstreaming
and normalising far-right narratives and policies.
Trump aims to crush legal curbs on his climate rollback – but it may not be easy
.jpeg)
Trump
aims to crush legal curbs on his climate rollback – but it may not be easy
The
president-elect said he will ‘stop the wave of frivolous litigation from
environmental extremists’ but the ability to block suits will be limited,
experts say
Dharna Noor
Tue 31 Dec
2024 09.00 EST
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/31/trump-climate-policy
Donald Trump
has promised to deregulate the energy sector, boost fossil fuels, dismantle
environmental rules and otherwise attack climate progress. However, experts and
advocates say that lawsuits that aim to hold the fossil fuel sector responsible
for deceiving the public about the climate crisis still “have a clear path
forward”.
“The
overwhelming evidence of the industry’s lies and ongoing deception does not
change with administrations,” said Richard Wiles, president of the non-profit
Center for Climate Integrity, which tracks and supports the litigation. There
are more than 30 accountability lawsuits active around the US brought by states
and municipalities accusing fossil fuel interests of covering up the climate
risks of their products or seeking damages for impacts. “Climate deception
lawsuits against big oil have a clear path forward no matter who is in the
White House.”
On the
campaign trail, Trump pledged to “stop the wave of frivolous litigation from
environmental extremists”.
But the
administration’s ability to block the suits will be limited, Wiles said.
Since the
federal government is neither plaintiff nor defendant in any of the suits,
Trump’s election will not directly affect their outcome. And since each case
was filed in state court, the president cannot appoint judges who will oversee
them.
However, if
any of the cases are sent to the federal courts – something oil companies have
long pushed for but have not achieved – Trump’s rightwing appointees could rule
in favor of fossil fuel companies.
“The most
important impact that Trump will have on the climate accountability litigation
is the justices he has appointed to the supreme court,” said Michael Gerrard,
the faculty director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia
University.
In his first
term, Trump appointed three justices to the high court, including two with ties
to the fossil fuel industry.
In early
December, Joe Biden’s solicitor general urged the supreme court to reject
requests from fossil fuel interests to quash two climate accountability
lawsuits, after a July call from the court for the administration to weigh in.
Experts say Trump’s White House could attempt to politically tip the scales in
favor of the oil companies.
“The views
of the federal government tend to carry weight with the supreme court, so if
Trump did that it would give a bit of a boost to the oil companies,” said
Daniel Farber, who directs the University of California, Berkeley’s Center for
Law, Energy & the Environment.
But that
doesn’t guarantee that the court would agree with the administration, he said.
“The court doesn’t always listen to the government’s view, and it would really
depend on how persuasively they were able to argue the point,” Farber said.
Trump’s
justice department could also file influential “friend of the court” briefs in
the cases, said Gerrard.. The Biden administration filed such a brief in
support of the plaintiff last year, whereas Trump’s previous administration
reliably supported the defendants and is expected to do so again.
These can
have a significant impact on the outcome of a case, but similarly do not
guarantee an outcome.
Another
possibility advocates are preparing for: Trump could work with Republican
majorities in both houses of Congress to attempt to offer legal immunity to the
fossil fuel industry from the lawsuits.
But such a
measure is unlikely to succeed, even with a Republican trifecta, said Farber.
“You’d need
60 votes to break the filibuster in the Senate, and that means they would need
to pick up seven Democrats,” he said. “I just don’t see that happening.”
The firearms
industry successfully won a liability waiver in 2005 which has successfully
blocked most attempts to hold them accountable for violence. Fossil fuel
companies have pushed to be granted the same treatment, but have failed so far.
The Trump
administration’s pledges to roll back environmental regulation and boost fossil
fuels could inspire additional climate accountability litigation.
“If they
feel like other channels for change have gotten cut off, maybe that would make
the legal channel more appealing,” said Farber.
Climate
accountability suits filed by cities and states have gained steam in recent
months. In December, a North Carolina town launched the nation’s first-ever
climate accountability lawsuit against an electric utility. In November, Maine
also filed a suit against big oil, while a Kansas county sued major fossil fuel
producers, alleging they had waged “a decades-long campaign of fraud and
deception about the recyclability of plastics”.
Even amid
Trump’s expected environmental rollbacks, the suits are a way to “secure some
measure of justice and accountability for big oil’s climate lies and the
damages that they’ve caused”, said Wiles.
Investigators abandon attempt to arrest South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol
.jpeg)
Investigators
abandon attempt to arrest South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol
Officials
entered the presidential compound to find themselves blocked by troops under
the control of the presidential security service
Justin
McCurry in Osaka, Raphael Rashid in Seoul and agencies
Fri 3 Jan
2025 03.32 EST
South
Korea’s political crisis took a dramatic turn on Friday when investigators were
forced to abandon an attempt to arrest the impeached president, Yoon Suk Yeol,
after a tense standoff with his security forces.
Hours after
they entered the presidential compound in Seoul, anti-corruption officials said
they were halting their attempt to execute a warrant to detain Yoon over
allegations that his martial law declaration in December amounted to an
insurrection.
“Regarding
the execution of the arrest warrant today, it was determined that the execution
was effectively impossible due to the ongoing standoff,” the Corruption
Investigation Office said in a statement. “Concern for the safety of personnel
on-site led to the decision to halt the execution.”
The
investigators’ office said it would discuss further action but did not
immediately say whether it would make another attempt to detain Yoon. The
warrant for his detention will expire on Monday.
The US
Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, is set to arrive in South Korea the same
day for talks between the two allies.
The
confrontation unfolded on a freezing winter’s day in Seoul, as an estimated
1,200 Yoon supporters gathered outside his official residence while police and
other officials inside attempted to execute an arrest warrant – the first for a
sitting South Korean president.
Local media
reports said anti-corruption officials – who are leading a joint team of police
and prosecutors – entered the compound to find themselves blocked by troops
under the control of the presidential security service.
The Yonhap
news agency said the team comprised 30 people from the anti-corruption office
and 120 police, 70 of whom were initially waiting outside the residence
compound.
Having
managed to find a way past the troops, officials were confronted by other
security service staff, raising doubts over whether Yoon, who was impeached in
mid-December over his short-lived declaration of martial law, would be arrested
on Friday.
The warrant
was issued on Tuesday after Yoon again ignored a court order to submit himself
for questioning over the insurrection allegations.
Investigators
released a statement saying they had “started executing” the arrest warrant,
but Yoon’s lawyers later said they would take immediate legal action to block
it, describing it as “illegal and invalid”.
The lawyers
said the warrant could not be enforced at the presidential residence due to a
law that prevents locations potentially linked to military secrets from being
search without the consent of the person in charge – in this case Yoon.
Seok
Dong-hyeon, one of the lawyers, said the anti-corruption agency’s efforts to
detain Yoon were “reckless” and showed an “outrageous discard for the law”.
If he is
eventually detained, Yoon, who was impeached by parliament last month, would
become the first sitting president to be arrested. The anti-corruption agency
would then have 48 hours to investigate him and either request a warrant for
his formal arrest or release him. He would be held at the Seoul Detention
Center, Yonhap added.
Yoon’s
defence minister, police chief and several top military commanders have already
been arrested over their roles in the martial law declaration.
While the
country’s constitutional court decides whether to uphold the impeachment vote –
a move that would trigger an election for a new president – Yoon appears ready
to continue defying anti-corruption officials over his martial law edict.
He declared
martial law on 3 December in an attempt to root out what he described as
“anti-state, pro-North Korean” forces – a reference to opposition MPs in the
national assembly. He did not provide any evidence for those claims, however.
He was
forced to lift the order six hours later after lawmakers forced their way past
troops into the parliament building to vote it down.
The criminal
allegations against Yoon, an ultra conservative whose two and a half years in
office have been marred by scandal and policy gridlock, are serious.
Insurrection
is one of the few crimes from which South Korean presidents do not have
immunity, and comes with penalties that can include life imprisonment or even
the death penalty.
Fears that
protesters would physically block the investigators were not realised, but the
raid took place amid a huge security presence. The broadcaster YTN reported
that 2,800 police had been mobilised in the area, along with 135 police buses
that have been positioned to create a barrier.
Protesters
have maintained a round-the-clock vigil outside the residence and the
atmosphere was charged.
A makeshift
stage hosted impassioned speeches, with one woman appearing to break down in
tears when describing Yoon’s situation. Another declared: “Ladies and
gentlemen, President Yoon is truly remarkable... I love President Yoon Suk
Yeol”.
Supporters,
mostly elderly though with some younger faces present, gathered around tables
offering tea and instant noodles. Many in the crowd insisted Yoon’s martial law
declaration had been constitutional and justified.
One pro-Yoon
protestor was heard saying to fellow demonstrators that they had to block the
investigators “with our lives”. Others chanted: “President Yoon Suk Yeol will
be protected by the people,” and called for the head of the corruption office
to be arrested.
Pyeong
In-su, 74, said the police had to be stopped by “patriotic citizens” – a term
Yoon has used to describe people standing guard near his residence.
Holding a
US-South Korea flag with the words “Let’s go together” written on it in English
and Korean, Pyeong said he hoped Donald Trump would come to Yoon’s aid after he
becomes president later this month.
“I hope
after Trump’s inauguration he can use his influence to help our country get
back on the right track,” he said.
Extra
edition newspapers are displayed at a subway gate in downtown Seoul on December
4, 2024, after martial law was lifted by South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol
Yoon, who
has been holed up inside his residence since his impeachment, had previously
told supporters in a letter he would “fight until the end”.
“I am
watching on YouTube live all the hard work you are doing,” he wrote late on
Wednesday.
“I will
fight until the end to protect this country together with you,” he said in the
letter, a photo capture of which was sent to the media by Seok Dong-hyeon, a
lawyer advising Yoon.
Even the
country’s traditionally conservative media have taken an unusually harsh
stance. The influential Chosun Ilbo’s editorial condemned Yoon’s behaviour as
“deeply inappropriate for a president with a prosecutor background”.
Meanwhile,
the Dong-A Ilbo delivered a scathing critique, describing the situation as
“beyond embarrassing and reaching a deplorable level”, and criticised Yoon for
continuing to rely on extreme supporters rather than taking responsibility for
what it called “a month that has left the country in tatters” following his
martial law declaration.
Yoon has
refused to back down from his uncorroborated claims that some members of the
national assembly were pro-North Koreans determined to bring down the South
Korean state, describing his martial law declaration as a legitimate “act of
governance”. He has also aired unsupported allegations of election tampering.
What happens
next is unclear, with several options available to investigators before the
arrest warrant expires on 6 January. The anti-corruption office could attempt
another arrest, seek a warrant extension, or pursue a pre-trial detention
warrant that would require less immediate physical enforcement. Meanwhile,
police have filed obstruction of justice charges against the head and deputy
head of the presidential security service, who have been summoned for
questioning.
A second
constitutional court hearing in the impeachment case, which is separate from
the criminal investigation, was scheduled for later on Friday.
New Details Emerge in Cybertruck Explosion, but Motive Is Still Unclear
New
Details Emerge in Cybertruck Explosion, but Motive Is Still Unclear
Officials
said they used data from Tesla charging stations to chart the driver’s dayslong
journey from Colorado to the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas.
Jacey Fortin Jesus Jiménez
By Jacey
Fortin and Jesus Jiménez
Jan. 2, 2025
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/02/us/las-vegas-cybertruck-explosion-details.html
It was
difficult, at first, for the authorities to identify the driver of the Tesla
truck that exploded outside the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas on
Wednesday morning. By the time the flames were extinguished, he had been burned
beyond recognition.
But as
investigators pored over the charred remains of his ruined rented vehicle, a
2024 Cybertruck, they discovered some clues to the driver’s background and his
intentions: some guns, a military ID, fuel and many fireworks.
And on
Thursday, the authorities said that they had found something else: The cause of
death was a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the driver’s head, the county
coroner ruled.
“Am I
comfortable calling it a suicide mission?” Sheriff Kevin McMahill of the Las
Vegas Metropolitan Police Department said in response to a reporter’s question
at a Thursday news briefing. “I’m comfortable calling it a suicide, with a
bombing that occurred immediately thereafter. I’m not giving it any other
labels.”
The
authorities identified the driver as Master Sgt. Matthew Alan Livelsberger of
the Army and a soldier with the 10th Special Forces Group.
At the
briefing, the authorities provided the most detailed glimpse yet into Sergeant
Livelsberger’s actions in the days before the truck burst into flames. But they
have yet to uncover a reason for the explosion, which left seven people with
minor injuries.
“It’s a
bombing that certainly has factors that raise concerns,” said Spencer Evans,
the special agent in charge of the Las Vegas field office of the F.B.I. “It’s
not lost on us that it’s in front of the Trump building, that it’s a Tesla
vehicle.”
Elon Musk,
the chief executive of Tesla, has cultivated a close relationship with
President-elect Donald J. Trump. He was a top donor to the campaign to help Mr.
Trump win the White House, and he has been a strident supporter of Mr. Trump on
X, the social media platform Mr. Musk owns.
Mr. Trump,
who is set to take office on Jan. 20, has selected Mr. Musk to serve as a
co-leader of a new government efficiency commission.
Mr. Evans
said that it was too soon to say anything about the driver’s ideological
leanings. “The motivation at this point is unknown,” he said.
Sergeant
Livelsberger was a 37-year-old man from Colorado, according to Sheriff
McMahill. But he was based in Germany, where he was serving on active duty. He
had served in several other countries, too, including Afghanistan. His
decorations included a Bronze Star for valor.
Sergeant
Livelsberger’s LinkedIn profile, which was taken down after the explosion,
indicated that he went to Norwich University, a military college in Vermont,
and graduated in 2019. Records show he bought a four-bedroom home in Colorado
Springs in 2020.
He was
visiting the United States on an approved leave. And he rented the Tesla truck
in Denver on Dec. 28, Sheriff McMahill said.
Over a few
days, Sergeant Livelsberger drove from Colorado through New Mexico and Arizona
— a route that officials traced using data from the Tesla charging stations he
had visited.
On the first
morning of the new year, surveillance videos showed the truck making a couple
stops elsewhere in Las Vegas before pulling up to the glass doors of the Trump
International Hotel, a 64-story tower on Fashion Show Drive, not far from the
Las Vegas Strip.
At about
8:40 a.m. local time on Wednesday, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department
received a report of an explosion. Witnesses said they saw the Cybertruck
engulfed in flames as it sat in front of the hotel.
After
firefighters extinguished the blaze, they found at least two pieces of
identification that seemed to confirm Sergeant Livelsberger’s identity.
Also in the
Tesla were two semiautomatic handguns, which Sergeant Livelsberger legally
purchased on Dec. 30, and a trove of fireworks and fuel enhancers — things that
are fairly easy to find in stores.
“The level
of sophistication is not what we would expect from an individual with this type
of military experience,” said Kenneth R. Cooper, the assistant special agent in
charge of the San Francisco field division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco,
Firearms and Explosives.
On Thursday,
the Trump Hotel appeared to be largely unscathed.
Officials
are still trying to determine whether the explosion might be linked to another
fatal incident: Hours before the Tesla exploded in Las Vegas, a man drove a
pickup truck into crowds celebrating the new year on Bourbon Street in New
Orleans, killing 14 people.
The driver
of that truck rented it on the peer-to-peer rental app Turo, according to the
company, and the Tesla truck was rented the same way. Additionally, both
drivers had served in the military, including stints at Fort Bragg, N.C., and
in Afghanistan.
But it was
not clear whether they had ever been in the same place at the same time, and
the authorities said that they had not yet found any signs of a link between
the men.
Reporting
was contributed by Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs John Ismay, Emmett Lindner,
Alexandra E. Petri, Dave Philipps, Eric Schmitt, Shannon Sims, Eli Tan,
Pashtana Usufzy and Jenny Vrentas. Kitty Bennett contributed research.
Jacey Fortin
covers a wide range of subjects for the National desk of The Times, including
extreme weather, court cases and state politics all across the country. More
about Jacey Fortin
Jesus
Jiménez covers breaking news, online trends and other subjects. He is based in
New York City. More about Jesus Jiménez
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