Threatening gestures with the pitchfork
CDU Saxony outrages farmers’ protest with “disturbing” poster
January 5, 2024, 8:14 p.m
Farmers in Germany are very angry after announced subsidy cuts. The CDU in Saxony imagines this vividly and posts a kind of election poster with a defensive farmer on Facebook. The idea backfires.
On Monday, farmers across Germany took their frustration to the streets over planned subsidy cuts. There should be roadblocks, but without becoming aggressive. A Facebook post from the CDU parliamentary group in the Saxon state parliament, presumably intended as a show of solidarity, has aged accordingly poorly.
The photomontage shows a farmer armed with a pitchfork and appearing to threaten his counterpart with an aggressive look. “Traffic light government wants farmers on the tank” is the slogan on the picture and below it: “Hands off agricultural diesel!” The post is from December 13th. At this point in time, the federal government had not yet backed down in its effort to make agricultural diesel more expensive and to abolish the vehicle tax exemption for farmers in one fell swoop. All of this should now happen gradually.
Given the impending protests, the Facebook post, which is still online, is having an impact – and is even causing a stir within the CDU. “The aggressive imagery of this poster is disturbing,” writes former Economics Minister Peter Altmaier. “It harms the concerns of farmers and also the culture of political debate. It would be good if the authors would clearly distance themselves from it.”
Green politician Jürgen Trittin goes even further. “The CDU in Saxony, which is actively calling for violence with pitchforks, is the same CDU that wants to persecute passive sit-blockers as ‘terrorists’. Because of firewalls against the right.” Health Minister Karl Lauterbach called on the CDU to take action in view of the poster. “Such a poster is not possible. The CDU has to stop it. The calls for violence against the traffic lights are attacks on people. Nobody should provoke attacks,” he writes on X.
The issue is fueled by the incident with Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck. According to police reports, around 100 farmers blocked a ferry pier at the North Sea port of Schlüttsiel with their tractors on Thursday afternoon and prevented Habeck from leaving the ferry. Despite the advice of his bodyguards, Habeck had tried to talk to the farmers, but they rejected this. According to the shipping company, the ferry with Habeck was just able to drive up the hydraulic bridge and set off again when farmers tried to storm the ship.