German Election

Many bloggers and mainstream media have commented on the impact of Socialist (SDP) Prime Minister Schroeder's anti-American posturing in last week's German election, which enabled him to beat Christian Democrat (CDU) Stoiber, but damaged German-US relations. But here's comment on the election that's even more disturbing, from an article about the Jew-hating Free Democrat (FDP) politician Juergen Molleman:

"[T]he real problem...is that 25 percent to 30 percent of the German population holds anti-Semitic beliefs,” he said. “We had an election campaign that was anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist and anti-American.”

Molleman resigned b/c his comments about Friedman, Jews, and Israel hurt the FDP and, b/c the FPD would have been Stoiber's CDU/CSU ally, contributed to Schroeder's victory since the CDU/CSU and SDP polled basically the same numbers, but the Greens, the SDP ally, won more seats than the FDP. Now, Molleman's resignation may be a positive sign, since he had to take responsibilty for his Jew-hatred. In fact, in the article this quote comes from,

Paul Spiegel, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, said Monday he is pleased with Mollemann’s resignation. He was “thankful that the attempt to win with anti-Semitic slogans has failed,” Spiegel said in a statement “The voters showed clearly that German democracy is healthy.”

Still, the Friedman quote is scary and does not bode well for Jews, Germany, or Jews in Germany.

As an aside on German politics, I was surprised to read about Molleman, an FDP politician. The FDP, the Free Democrats, also called the Liberals, are a classical libertarian party, with a commitment to civil liberties and the free market, wary of government restrictions on privacy or capitalism. They have generally been popular with well-educated young professionals. When I was in grad school in 1994s, for example, all the German students I knew voted for the FDP. Not who I expected to produce a Jew-hater.