Facing a barrage of criticism over her “third gender joke,” the new head of the Christian Democratic Union, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, has shown no remorse. Instead, she attacked Germany’s overzealous political correctness.
In an unusual outburst, the leader of one of Germany’s major parties and hand-picked successor of Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is known for her liberal stance towards migration and multiculturalism, has assaulted Germany’s ‘sacred cow’ – political correctness.
“If we’re so rigid, as has been the case in the past few days, then a piece of tradition and culture in Germany will be lost, and we shouldn’t allow that,” she said, adding that “it just cannot go on like this.”
The joke then sparked a wave of outrage from LGBT activists as well as from politicians from virtually all sides of the political spectrum. The opposition Green and Left parties’ members, as well as pro-business Free Democrats and even CDU’s coalition partners from the Social Democratic Parties, all competed in devising increasingly ingenious ways of slamming the fresh conservative leader.
Berlin’s Deputy Mayor Klaus Lederer called her words a “travesty” and a senior member of the Left Party, Dietmar Bartsch even said it was “another reason to fight against this woman becoming chancellor.”
Support came from where it was least expected as the co-chair of the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD), Joerg Meuthen, suddenly came to AKK’s defense, even though his party is traditionally known for its sharp criticism of the Christian Democrats.
“Relying on her residual conservatism …Kramp-Karrenbauer dared to target the idiocy of the so-called ‘third gender,’” he wrote in a Facebook post in early March, adding that “it could not, of course, be tolerated in the Left-Green madhouse of Germany.”
The speech police of the permanently offended ones should have been, of course, immediately deployed. Whether it is carnival time or not, it cannot play any role in such an important case.
We do not need any instruction as to what equality means.
What happens here is ‘madness’
In a stark deviation from the course pursued by Angela Merkel, who rarely allowed herself to diverge from the mainstream pro-multiculturalism line and was usually reserved in her statements, her successor seemingly set out to continue her crusade against political correctness.
This is all sheer madness what happens here.
The CDU head said she wants to see a Germany “where children can just be children” and can dress up as cowboys or Indians or anyone else “without anyone telling them at the age of three that they have to be culturally sensitive.” The issue already unleashed a wave of criticism from politicians and apparently still occupies the minds of at least some of them.
Most recently, the leader of the CDU’s Bavarian allies, the Christian Social Union, Markus Soeder, mocked the whole debate about political correctness in kindergartens by saying that it turns Germany into a laughing stock.
If the world knew about what nonsense we are quarrelling about, the world would have lost all fear of and respect for us. We should again come to our senses.