Why aren’t left-wing anti-immigration parties called fascists?

It is almost six years to the day since the charismatic German left-wing politician Sahra Wagenknecht launched a new movement to counter the rise of the far-right in her country.

What distinguished ‘Aufstehen’ (Stand Up) from the rest of the left was its negative view of mass immigration. Wagenknecht’s movement was greeted more with curiosity than animosity by the left-wing European press. Under the headline, ‘The emergence of an anti-migrant left in Germany’, the French paper, Le Monde, said it might herald ‘the start of a promising adventure, which could profoundly shake up the country’s political life’.

The Guardian described Aufstehen as ‘a voice for dissatisfied voters that would take a tougher approach to migration’. Wagenknecht remained an MP in the left-wing Die Linke but her anti-immigrant stance created a rift that deepened following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.