The SPD wants to attack in the hot phase of the election campaign.
The target of the attacks is the Union.
A promotional video in which parts of the CDU are defamed causes criticism.
Berlin - The SPD has presented its election campaign for the final spurt to the federal election.
The Social Democrats are fully concentrating on the candidate for Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
Under the motto “Scholz tackles it”, the SPD wants to remain part of a government.
In addition to the focus on the candidate for chancellor, the party with the largest number of members in Germany is also planning to increase attacks on the competition.
With an anti-laschet video, however, the SPD is now breaking a taboo.
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Bundestag election: SPD relies on attack department - anti-Laschet video polarized
SPD General Secretary Lars Klingbeil announced that he wanted to target the Union in the next few weeks. "Those who vote for Laschet and the CDU are choosing a policy that makes the rich richer and the poor poorer," says an SPD campaign video. A recent comparison of the election programs showed that rich people would benefit most from the Union. The SPD presented a clip in which, in the style of Russian matryoshka dolls from a Laschet figure, further, smaller and smaller figures with faces of other CDU politicians appear. The post is accompanied by negative comments about the relevant people.
After Armin Laschet, Friedrich Merz is shown first.
He is an expert on economic and financial policy in the CDU election campaign team.
This is followed by the former head of the constitutional protection and CDU Bundestag candidate Hans Georg Maaßen, who, according to the SPD, stands for "candidates who move the CDU to the right."
According to Maaßen, the SPD shows Nathanael Liminski, head of the State Chancellery in North Rhine-Westphalia and one of Laschet's closest employees.
He is one of the "arch-Catholic Laschet confidants for whom sex before marriage is taboo." This passage in the video is now causing criticism.
germany deserves more than this cdu.
pic.twitter.com/TSpQwJJYnP
- toto (@josefheynckes) August 4, 2021
Bundestag election: criticism of SPD spot - "double taboo violation shows that the party is running out of arguments"
Günter Krings, chairman of the CDU regional group in North Rhine-Westphalia, condemned the video clip sharply. "This is a double break in taboos that I would not have thought possible among democrats," he told the
Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger
. “In the post-war period, there was no such thing as a situation in which highly personal issues and religious convictions are made the subject of political attacks,” said Krings. “I would not have believed the SPD would violate the consensus among democrats in this way. It shows, however, that the SPD is running out of arguments. ”With the term“ arch-Catholic ”, an entire denomination should be“ pushed into a certain corner ”. This is not acceptable.
According to party researcher Uwe Jun, the SPD clip is "a rather drastic form of 'negative campaigning' that is reminiscent of American role models," as the political scientist
explains
to
Tagesspiegel
. "Negative campaigning" tries to defame the (political) opponent. In this century he is "not aware of any such aggressive statements with regard to religious content by the established parties".
Criticism also came from the Greens - a party that does not always defend the Union.
The Bundestag member Konstantin von Notz wrote on Twitter: “Attacking people because of their religious affiliation is exactly as underground as attacking them because they do not belong to a religious community.
We live in a pluralistic and liberal constitutional state. ”Religious freedom is“ constitutive ”and a“ promise for tolerance and freedom ”that needs to be preserved.
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Laschet with his State Secretary Nathanael Liminski.
(Archive photo)
© Michael Gstettenbauer / Imago
Nathanel Liminski: Who is "Laschet's right hand man"?
Liminski is considered extremely conservative.
His father, who died in 2021, was a member of the ultra-reactionary Catholic association Opus Dei.
In his youth, Liminski was a supporter of the group known as the “Pope Fan Club”, “Generation Benedict”.
In the TV show “Maischberger”, the now 35-year-old campaigned for the credo “no sex before marriage”.
The Bonn native now has four children.
The godfather of one of the children is CDU General Secretary Paul Ziemiak.
In the course of this election campaign, the focus on certain statements by Liminiski picked up speed.
He once described abortions as "ethically unjustifiable".
He said of homosexuals in 2007: “I know a lot of homosexuals and I feel sorry for some of them.
The state must promote the natural form of marriage and family out of pure self-preservation. "
(As)