The CDU and CSU are calling for tougher penalties for the “last generation” activists who stick to the streets and throw mashed potatoes at paintings. With their advance, the Union is about points in a culture war that creates more problems than it solves.
Anyone who has ever been stuck in a traffic jam because climate activists are glued to the street may react with satisfaction to the Union’s initiative: In a motion in the Bundestag, the CDU and CSU are demanding that “road blockers and museum rioters” be punished more severely in future. With all understanding for the anger of motorists: The advance is highly problematic.
So that there are no misunderstandings: anyone who blocks traffic, even obstructs rescue workers or damages works of art and thus makes themselves punishable, should be held responsible. But that’s been happening for a long time.
The Union faction is not outraged by road blockades, but by the “ruthless acts of self-proclaimed climate protectors,” as their motion states. The Union is not concerned with the deed, but with the motives of the activists. That’s quite reminiscent of “woke” identity politics, just turned conservative. No Union politician would think of assessing tractor protests by farmers in a similar way or even punishing them. And yes, the tractor demos are usually registered, the adhesive campaigns are not. But if blockages are generally evil and dangerous, then that difference doesn’t matter.
The reference to the terrible death of a cyclist in Berlin, which was repeatedly brought up in the debate in the Bundestag, also seems like an instrumentalisation. Anja Umann, the twin sister of the killed cyclist Sandra Umann, rightly said in a very touching interview to “Spiegel” that she was hurt by how ignorant some climate activists were about her sister’s fate. Anja Umann doesn’t think much of a call for tougher penalties or the warnings of a “Climate RAF”, as they came from the CSU: “I have the impression that drastic reactions are drastic – something extreme is coming up, from which I’m not sure I support.”
Drastic on drastic, that’s a good thing. The activists of the “last generation” must have been happy: Their actions are considered so important by politicians that even the Bundestag is debating them. And the Union is also hoping for a political dividend from the application. The CDU and CSU do not want to compensate for imbalances in criminal law, but instead want to score points in a culture war in which everyone loses in the end.
