Is the CDU still a Christian party?
After the deadly knife attack by a mentally ill person in Aschaffenburg, the lack of cooperation between the police and the judiciary should have been discussed in this country – as it was after the attack in Solingen.
Instead, we experienced a week in Berlin in which the firewall in the German Bundestag against the AfD’s xenophobes got more and more holes and bigger and bigger holes. Friedrich Merz’s breach of promise, “Never with them” from the AfD, is bringing the protest culture back to the barricades: in many cities this weekend, tens of thousands are on the streets, not only against the AfD, but now also against the CDU, prominent CDU members are leaving the party, Angela Merkel sharply contradicts her successor and considers his policy “wrong”. Both major churches are protesting against the new Merz policy.
Just two weeks ago, Merz had told journalists: “If you get a snake around your neck, it will eventually bite you to death.” He was referring to the AfD as a snake, which he has now recklessly “got around his neck”. This should not happen to a leading politician. “Not with these people, once 33 is enough… when the firewall crumbles, the existence of the CDU is endangered,” the CDU/CSU chancellor candidate still knew recently in the “Tagesthemen”. How can you forget or repress that in a few days?
Is Merz the right candidate for Chancellor?
Merz was certainly right about the last sentence in the Tagesthemen. That is why half of Germany is now wondering why he brought “the viper to his neck”? Is he the right candidate for Chancellor? And even worse, why does he still defiantly say even after his defeat in the Bundestag: I would do it exactly the same way again?
Merz is now proving to be the AfD’s best election helper shortly before the federal election. In 2020, the same politician had said about the AfD: “If I can help to make this rabble disappear again, then I want to do it.” Firstly, AfD people are not rabble either, but people, and secondly, we now know what this “help” looks like: It has made the AfD the winner of the week. This xenophobic party has every reason to celebrate.
The CDU leader himself has destroyed the essence of his Christian party: a party that calls itself Christian must never lose its Christian and humanist memory. In the time of the great refugee crisis in 2015, Angela Merkel, as Chancellor, still said: “We can do it.” Today, her successor is making common cause with the xenophobic AfD.
In December 2015, Angela Merkel justified her refugee policy “with the God-given dignity of every single human being” and declared it a “humanitarian imperative”. Last week, with the crumbling firewall, may have been “historic” – as many believe – but it was not good for Germany.
Because, fundamentally, foreigners enrich our country and our economy.
