Traffic light on the wrong track: Ferda Ataman calls Germans "potatoes" - and is supposed to fight discrimination

Created: 07/06/2022, 11:05 am

By: Georg Anastasiadis

The publicist Ferda Ataman is to become anti-discrimination commissioner at the suggestion of the federal cabinet.

A commentary by Merkur Editor-in-Chief Georg Anastasiadis.

© Jörg Carstensen/dpa/Klaus Haag

Publicist Ferda Ataman, known for her noisy moralism, is to become an anti-discrimination officer.

The traffic light is going astray, comments Georg Anastasiadis.

On Thursday, the Bundestag will determine the new anti-discrimination officer.

At the suggestion of the Green Minister for Family Affairs, the traffic light majority nominated the publicist Ferda Ataman.

One way or another, the election will not end well: If Ataman fails due to resistance from the liberals, the coalition will have its first big quarrel.

If the 43-year-old prevails, which is more likely, the government will embark on a fatal socio-political aberration.

Traffic light on the wrong track: Ferda Ataman stands for a divisive identity politics

Ataman stands for a divisive identity politics that divides people into groups and systematically plays them off against each other.

She belittles opponents and has proven throughout her work that she is not looking for balance and differentiation, but discord and riots.

She sometimes calls Germans “potatoes”, the concept of homeland used by the former CSU Interior Minister Seehofer, she put under suspicion as a Nazi.

The left-wing culture fighter has nothing but scorn for journalists who report on clan crime.

In the end, she herself doubted whether all of this was conducive to applying for the new position she was striving for.

In any case, she deleted a large part of her Twitter statements.

Ampel brings back class society – between migrants and organic Germans

With Ataman, the traffic light coalition, which actually wanted to dare more progress, falls back into a class society that was believed to have been overcome: whoever defines people on the basis of their external characteristics and carefully divides them into migrants and bio-Germans, into blacks and whites, into Muslims and Christians, whereby victims - and perpetrators are clearly assigned from the outset promotes a new form of racism.

In the end, there is a particular cruelty in this especially towards migrants, whom one pretends to want to protect: Ataman's noisy moralism keeps them captive in the role of victim forever without the chance of being judged by their achievements like everyone else in liberal society.

George Anastasiadis