This election campaign is finally over from hell. But the hangover is twice as bad for this.
After all, one thing is certain: it’s finally over. And that’s good news: these super short ones, besides the row in our lap, was the worst that I have ever experienced. As deep as in the past few weeks since the government’s implosion was rummaged in the dirt in November, so dirty, so lying and so polarized so I have never experienced an election campaign. And I am relieved that this crap is at least over, at least for the time being.
“Team Merz”
And I am at least a bit relieved that Trump imitation in Germany does not seem to be caught: the “Team Merz” posters, which has embarrassed top gun aesthetics, let Trump aesthetics on election posters like the strange Berlin candidate Hansen (who was also not too embarrassing to publish a Ki hit called “Hoch his hands-ambeluing”) or direct Demands that you have to emulate Trump (CDU general secretary Carsten Linnemann) or Musk and Milei (still FDP chairman Christian Lindner). The FDP flew out of the Bundestag with the nonsense and the CDU transformed a result a few weeks ago after almost secure 33 to 35 percent into a result below the 30%mark. And oh yes, Sahra Wagenknecht’s egon number failed so crookingly that at some point she didn’t even stand in front of a camera on the election evening. That means something.
Copied right
In general, this CDU victory, which remains so far below the possibilities (only once in the history of the Federal Republic, the CDU won fewer: the last choice that Armin Laschet lost): If you wanted, you could learn from it. For example, according to the study, according to the study in political science, the study shows that when you copy the extreme rights, people choose the original and not the mainstream copy. I hope that Merz receives at least a thank you card and a bouquet of flowers from the AfD, after all, he really got a lot of effort into the doubling in the Bundestag. Its lack of impulse control and non -existent political
And the SPD and the Greens as government parties also had their share: Nobody forced Olaf Scholz to demand deportations on the front page of the mirror. And even fewer people have forced Robert Habeck to submit a “ten points plan” for migration policy, contrary to party programs and decisions, that can still be found on the Greens website. The impressive comeback of the left (Heidiiiii!) Preschings: If you deal with grass root work and appeal to the topics that really interest people out there, then they really listen. But of course the other parties will not understand and wonder why DJ Gysi picked up the young people in this way.
The learning
I have given up hope that someone will learn from anything. An SPD, for example, that does not burn their youngsters, their base and beliefs, should not burn them, because civic responsibility seems to mean completely subordinate to them under a CDU. Or Greens who remember who they are and why people actually choose (spoiler: no law-and-order plans and no posters that are the same as “We are not concerned with the climate”). Or an FDP that hits the meanings of the word “liberal” in the dictionary. After all, the FDP has a lot of time to go outside there. Maybe there is even something sensible with rum? I dare to doubt.
As a cultural journalist, with all cynicism, I am seriously afraid of what is coming up. An AfD that is number one in East German countries and that politics as a whole and media and cultural policy drives in particular. And a CDU that has already proven in Berlin that the cultural business means nothing to her.
On the contrary: the CDU parliamentary group leader in the Bundestag, Dirk Stettner, has stood on the red carpet of the Berlinale and theatrically torn his card to the final gala (and of course gave the press to be informed so that they also take a photo of him, otherwise nobody recognizes him). For him, the most important film festival in Germany should no longer be financed.
Where the CDU priorities in the past were simply different in cultural support, it now looks more like it is a good thing to make its contempt for cultural business as loud as possible – and then simply shorten everything that is not on the trees with three is or belongs to your own Boy’s Club.
Urania, a 137 -year -old cultural institution in which film screenings are running, experienced, readings are held in Berlin, there are readings, there are discussions on democracy, science, religion, it is a space for exchange. Certainly not an island of Wokeness, but an old cultural tanker that was once founded to make laypeople accessible to science and culture. The entire funding from the Berlin Senate should now be removed from her. Spaces in which people come together needs in these times when, in part, right -wing extremist parties come to 20 percent of the votes for the Bundestag, apparently nobody. And the SPD only watches.
This thinking could now also be implemented in cultural policy at the federal level – a new, anti -cultural CDU/CSU in small hack mode and an SPD that is no longer interested in cultural business. In addition, there is an AfD, which with twice as many deputies, twice as many employees, and twice as much money that has understood exactly what culture means. And therefore sees them as one of their most important enemies.
The next four years will be hard. But they are also an opportunity to convince the democratic parties to do their job again. A chance to make it clear to them that nothing works without cohesion, without culture and without rooms. And that in the case of right -wing politics only right -wing extremists only win.