CDU state leader Redmann criticizes the Potsdam Mittelstand Union after the “Jewish question” post

The criticism of a post by the Potsdam SME and Economic Union (MIT) continues. In response to the red-green-red exploratory results in Berlin, the economically liberal association from Brandenburg posted an AI-generated image of the Red City Hall.

"Jewish question" clarified, now expropriation takes place. This means that the "firewall" has come down!" was written on it. After criticism from the ranks of the Brandenburg Greens and the youth organization of the Christian Democratic Workers' Union, the CDU state chairman of Brandenburg and the interior minister there, Jan Redmann, also distanced themselves.

“The necessary level of sensitivity was not taken into account in this post,” said the CDU politician to the German Press Agency. At the same time, the MIT post was “not an anti-Semitic post.” “I don’t think you can make that assumption,” he said. “However, you have to be very sensitive about this topic in particular.”

The Potsdam SME Union and its chairman Jan Jacobi complained in the attached text that the SPD and the Greens had torn down the firewall in the capital. "When dealing with left-wing extremists and Islamists, the last taboos fall. This means that in the future all instructions to the CDU will be banned. When it comes to grabbing the Chancellor's office, any means seems acceptable. Greed for power instead of morality!"

The SPD's youth organization expressed harsher criticism. "With the anti-Semitic term 'Jewish question', the Mittelstandsunion Potsdam is using the language of the persecution and extermination of European Jews as material for its social media propaganda. This is a disgusting border crossing," said its Brandenburg chairman Leonel Richy Andicene. “Where is the unequivocal condemnation, the demand for an apology and the consequences for those responsible?”

Andreas Büttner, anti-Semitism commissioner for the state of Brandenburg and a former member of the state parliament, also clearly criticized the MIT post. “I do not assume that those responsible have anti-Jewish sentiments, but the post uses anti-Semitic language and has an anti-Semitic effect,” he explained when asked by the “Märkische Allgemeine”. The expression “Jewish question” is “inextricably linked to the Shoah.” This trivializes the genocide. “Anyone who uses the term as a slogan, headline or punch line adopts its logic and gives it an everydayness that it should never have.”

Büttner also criticized the imagery of the online article to the Evangelical Press Service. “Minarets in the colors of the Palestinian flag above a town hall, hammer and sickle, a gloomy, threatening sky: a mood of doom is created here that plays on resentment against Muslims,” he complained. At the same time, anti-Semitism in parts of the left must be identified. “This debate is necessary and it must be conducted seriously.”

"I am far from accusing the CDU of having an anti-Semitism problem - they don't have that. They are relatively stable," commented ARD correspondent Moritz Rödle in the podcast "Apocalypse & Filter Coffee". "But where they have a problem is that they sometimes overstep the mark in these discussions. And this is exactly an example where they overstepped the mark, where they use a formulation that just doesn't work, that you can't do, and for which they should apologize."

As the Evangelical Press Service reported on Thursday, the Potsdam public prosecutor's office has now received a criminal complaint for incitement to hatred. The Cottbus public prosecutor's office is now examining the matter.