Photo: dpa/Stefan Sauer
Not only since last year has the question been persistently asked: Does the average FDP member actually just have foam in the brain? Of course, that doesn’t justify physical attacks on Christian Lindner, the chief lobbyist for impoverished dentists and lawyers with existential fears. During an election campaign appearance in Greifswald, the dishonorably dismissed finance minister was attacked with a cake baked with love and shaving cream. The terrorist, whom eyewitnesses identified as a left-wing violent criminal, pushed it into his face and said words that came to all of our minds when we saw this politician: “I think that’s enough for now.”
As much as one may share the need to counter the verbal frothing from the world of neoliberalism with a tangible equivalent, one has to ask oneself whether this could not have been a tactical error. Doesn’t such an act make Lindner a victim? But no. Probably no professional politician has ever managed to be attacked physically from an ambush and still appear to be the least likeable.
If someone pushes foam into Christian Lindner’s face, he won’t miss the chance to smear some of it on the attacker. Educators know this kind of behavior from dealing with small children in daycare centers. And it sounds familiar to us too and is reminiscent of Lindner’s demolition of a traffic light government of which he himself was a member.
After the counterattack, he first wiped the dirt from his face, not without licking his finger to identify what his skin had come into contact with. The FDP may be a political and economic problem (albeit one that seems to be solvable with the magic word five percent hurdle), but many have not yet recognized the aesthetic catastrophe that is the FDP. There is a party leader and former federal minister looking for him. D. his stage and then licks himself in public? This is no less disgusting than what his party calls the “debt brake.”
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