With the approach of the German legislative elections of September 26, The world keeps the campaign log. A daily update, with events, images, polls, clips, slogans, figures and keywords that allow you to follow and experience this electoral competition at the end of which Angela Merkel will leave power, after sixteen years in the chancellery.
It’s only seven seconds in the middle of a clip that lasts two and a half minutes. But these seven seconds were enough to create a controversy that hit the strategy of the last days of Armin Laschet’s campaign (CDU-CSU).
The clip in question is a classic CDU-CSU campaign clip. But one passage caught our attention: an excerpt from a scene that dates back to September 3, in Erfurt (Thuringia). That day, Mr. Laschet was giving a speech when an angry man, an activist of the Querdenker movement (“free-thinkers”), radically opposed to the measures of health restrictions, appeared on stage and questioned the candidate by criticizing the policy of vaccination.
In the clip from the CDU, the footage of this scene is accompanied by this commentary: “First think, then discuss. Talk to those who have a critical attitude. Yes, with them, absolutely. “
The publication of this video in particular provoked a strong reaction from the former chairman of the German ethics committee, Peter Dabrock. “Hello, CDU. After the terrible assassination of Idar-Oberstein, do you continue to broadcast such a campaign clip, in which Mr. Laschet prides himself on chatting with a Querdenker of the worst kind? Is it serious? Where is the limit of what is defensible in a democracy? “, he was indignant on Twitter, referring to the murder of a young man of 20 years in a service station of Idar-Oberstein, in Rhineland-Palatinate, Saturday, September 18. A crime recognized by a 49-year-old man who explained to the police that he had shot the young employee of the gas station because he refused to cash his purchases for not wearing an anti-mask. -Covid.
If the membership of the assassin of Idar-Oberstein in the Querdenker movement has not been clearly established, the fact that the CDU uses the extract from the Erfurt meeting to celebrate the capacity for dialogue of its candidate for the chancellery provoked severe reactions, because the man who had arrested Armin Laschet in Erfurt is known as a close friend of the identity right, which he hit the headlines by one day forcing a group of children to remove their masks on the school bus he was driving, and which he recently shared a call to “Make clear” a bus used as a mobile vaccination center.
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