Stern editor-in-chief - Merkel's farewell and the danger posed by Trump - Gregor Peter Schmitz on the new stern
Olaf Scholz can give great speeches and inspire people after all. This was heard and read in reaction to the Federal Chancellor's passionate performance at the SPD party conference. However, this only seems to apply with restrictions. Scholz is able to carry people away when he tells the people in the room exactly what they want to hear: No social cuts with the SPD, period! And when he virtually refrains from impositions. Austerity, was there something? He was one of them, SPD party leader Saskia Esken whispered to him afterwards. This gives rise to two problems: "them", i.e. SPD supporters, are only 14% of voters according to the latest polls. Many doubt that he is a strong leader of the traffic light coalition. Scholz is clinging to his party. His predecessor Angela Merkel was mostly able to build on her popularity ratings, although she was at odds with her party. The former chancellor has now resigned from the party-affiliated Konrad Adenauer Foundation. Will Merkel also leave the CDU soon? It would be logical.
Years ago, the US publicist Robert Kagan wrote that Europeans come from Venus and Americans from Mars, which is why they rarely think together in terms of foreign policy. This upset many Europeans, but has since been proven by reality. Now Kagan is predicting with similar force that a dictatorship is imminent in the USA, as Donald Trump can hardly be prevented as a presidential candidate and his election is very likely - and he will no longer accept any barriers afterwards. Anne-Marie Slaughter, head of planning in the US State Department under President Barack Obama and one of the most influential American thinkers, also sees this danger and is also very worried about Joe Biden's re-election due to the Middle East conflict. My colleague Steffen Gassel's interview with Slaughter doesn't put anyone in a good mood, but it does provide a good overview of fear in the USA.
After 20 years, the Forsa Institute has repeated a major study on the prevalence of anti-Semitic attitudes in Germany for stern magazine. The good news: the proportion of Germans with latent anti-Semitic attitudes has fallen from 23% to 7% since 2003. At the same time, however, Germans have the impression that the mood towards Jews has worsened in recent years: 53% say that attitudes towards Jews have become more negative. Only 30 percent felt this way in 2003. Almost one in four (24%) agree with the statement "Many Jews are trying to take advantage of the Nazi past today and make Germans pay for it" (2003: 38%). Almost one in two (45 percent) no longer want to talk so much about the persecution of Jews under National Socialism and want to draw a line under the past; however, this figure was still 61 percent in 2003. Despite falling figures, experts see no reason to sound the all-clear. The Federal Criminal Police Office registered a significant increase in anti-Semitic crimes in the weeks following the Hamas attack on October 7. Samuel Salzborn, Berlin's contact person for anti-Semitism, told my colleague Jan Fedders: "The hard core of anti-Semites is becoming more radical, more brutal and possibly more violent."
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Despite the significant decrease in Germans with latent antisemitic attitudes since 2003, as reported by the Forsa Institute, there's a growing perception that the mood towards Jews has worsened. Notably, Gregor Peter Schmitz, the editor-in-chief of Stern, interviewed Berlin's contact person for anti-Semitism, Samuel Salzborn, who expressed concerns about the radicalization of the hardcore antisemitic group. Additionally, during Angela Merkel's tenure, there were periods where her policies were at odds with her party, much like the current Chancellor Olaf Scholz faces criticism for his potential party-clinging tendencies.
Source: www.stern.de
