German Chancellor Merkel recently decided to run again for the post of Chancellor in the 2017 national election, so she continues to be the headliner at the annual party convention this week.
As such, she gave a speech, which you can watch in all its glory on Youtube. The normally taciturn physicist and former member of the East German socialist Free German Youth has weathered many a crisis and has many admirers and detractors.
The blogster has not followed her path closely and won't claim expertise on all things Merkel. It* would like to say a few things about the convention speech, though.
Historical ignorance
Just after minute 5:30 in the speech, she refers to events after "the dissolution of the two blocks" following the collapse of the Iron Curtain.
Whoever wrote the speech seems to embrace the post-truth paradigm we have been hearing so much about.
This is so patently false that the blogster repeated the sequence several times to make sure it had heard correctly.
The speech contains many other "lego blocks" of conservative German politics, for example the claim of Christian values, the "socially tempered" market economy, criticism of Russia, and more. Obligatory support for a burqa ban and opposition to "Sharia" were included, too.
The Deplorables
The speech contains two nice examples of ways to attack your citizens without calling them deplorables. The first one has riled up people because of its simplicity: "Some who have been living here forever could also use an integration course".
Integration courses are, of course, the German way to integrate foreigners, especially refugees, into society.
The statement is gorgeous in its condescending simplicity straight out of a stand-up comedy routine. Note that she does not specify the nationality or the ethnicity of those "some".
While this dig takes aim at anti-refugee views, Ms. Merkel can do better. She manages to accuse opponents of the trade agreement TTIP of cynicism, selfishness, and callousness without using any of these labels.
Here is how it is done: To be honest, when a free trade agreement with the United States gets hundreds of thousands to protest in the streets but the cruel bombing
of Aleppo stirs hardly any protest, then something is wrong with the political standards.**
See, nothing is wrong with the opponents - only with their political standards. Her audience understands this very well because they reward the statement with sustained applause.
And so does a commentator in Frankfurter Allgemeine, who calls it "Merkel's most important sentence". The gentleman continues: The chancellor gave an important lesson in cynicism.***
The blogster agrees!
It is utterly cynical to conflate opposition to TTIP with Aleppo.
As in so many other cases, some reader comments under this supremely stupid little OpEd are as mature and as insightful as it gets.
No, it is no consolation that the speech is not really addressing you or me but a venue full of party heads.
* Gender neutral the blogster writes.
** Our translation of the segment following the 5:30 intro.
*** Die Kanzlerin hat eine wichtige Lektion in Zynismus erteilt.
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