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Election posters in North Rhine-Westphalia: »The dimension of targeted media influence is new for a German election campaign«
Photo: Oliver Berg / dpa
In connection with the state elections in North Rhine-Westphalia, a heated argument broke out over a document that reads like instructions to hijack the political debate on Twitter.
The four-page letter, which is available to SPIEGEL, is part of the election arena, which will be broadcast on WDR on Tuesday evening at 8:15 p.m. and in which the five top candidates from the CDU, SPD, FDP, Greens and AfD will debate with each other.
The letter contains pre-formulated suggestions for tweets that are to be published during the TV debate and that put the CDU Prime Minister Hendrik Wüst in a good light – and the SPD top candidate Thomas Kutschaty in a bad light.
Kevin Kühnert, the SPD general secretary, commented on the letter on Tuesday afternoon.
According to Kühnert, it comes from the agency The Republic.
The campaign platform has set itself the goal of making conservative values more heard.
"We stop the political drift to the left in Germany," says the website.
Kühnert speaks of "troll campaigns"
A logo very similar to that of the agency can be seen on the document.
Kühnert demands from Wüst and the NRW-CDU that they "unmistakably distance themselves from the troll campaigns in their environment and ensure that the political competition is carried out with arguments and not with Trump methods".
One of the sample tweets listed in the document reads: "Hendrik #Wüst seems very self-confident and confident." Another: "Mr #Kutschaty from the SPD seems very unsympathetic to me." The letter goes on to say: "If you don't want to use your private account, use another account, if necessary a new one, where you can tweet/spam/like anonymously."
In a statement by Nadja Lüders, Secretary General of the NRW-SPD, there is talk of a "conservative dirt campaign".
"The dimension of targeted media influence is new for a federal German election campaign," Lüders said.
The manager of the agency denies
When asked by SPIEGEL, The Republic denied having anything to do with the controversial document and the sample tweets.
The instructions do not come from the agency, writes Armin Petschner-Multari, the managing director of the campaign platform.
"Unfortunately, I can't contribute to clarifying the authorship," he says.
On the part of the NRW-CDU it is said with a view to "The Republic" that one does not work "with this group".
"We reject anonymous troll campaigns," says a spokesman for the party.
A spokesman for the Junge Union in North Rhine-Westphalia said on Tuesday that the Twitter instructions were not known and that there was also "no cooperation with 'The Republic'".