Monday, August 9th, 2021
Union sees taboos being broken
SPD warns of “arch-Catholic Laschet confidante”
Nathanael Liminski is considered conservative. The head of the NRW State Chancellery is a close confidante of Chancellor candidate Laschet and is now the target of an SPD election advertisement that alludes to his arch-Catholic views. For the Union, this is a below-the-belt attack.
The SPD has brought in a commercial for the election campaign before the federal elections, fierce criticism from the ranks of the Union and the Greens. The Social Democrats presented a video over the weekend in which leading CDU politicians and their alleged mistakes were denounced. Matryoshka figures printed with likenesses of the politicians could be seen, starting with Chancellor candidate Armin Laschet.
The speaker begins with “Whoever chooses Armin Laschet from the CDU …” and counts among the Russian box dolls by Hans-Georg Maaßen and Andreas Scheuer their misconduct. In the figure, which shows the head of the NRW State Chancellery Nathanael Liminski, the spokesman continues: “Whoever elects Armin Laschet from the CDU … elects arch-Catholic Laschet confidants, for whom sex before marriage is a taboo.” The statement aimed at religious views is seen by the Union as a taboo break in the election campaign.
“This is a double break in taboos, which I would not have thought possible among democrats,” said Günter Krings, chairman of the CDU state group NRW in the Bundestag, the “Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger”. “The fact that highly personal issues and religious beliefs are made the object of political attacks has never happened before in the post-war period,” continued Krings. “I would not have believed the SPD would violate the consensus among democrats in this way. But it shows that the SPD is running out of arguments.” With the term “arch-Catholic” a whole denomination should be pushed “into a certain corner”. This is not acceptable.
There was also criticism from the Greens. “Attacking people because of their religious affiliation is exactly as underground as attacking them because they do not belong to a religious community. We live in a plural and liberal constitutional state,” wrote the Bundestag member Konstantin von Notz on Twitter.
SPD defends Spot
The statements about Liminski are based on a quote from 2007 by the now 35-year-old. Liminski is considered to be very conservative. His father Jürgen Liminski, who died in 2021, was a member of the ultra-reactionary Catholic association “Opus Dei”. His statements on homosexuality, also made in 2007, were also controversial: “I know many homosexuals and I feel sorry for some of them. The state must promote the natural form of marriage and family out of pure self-preservation.”
With reference to these statements, the SPD defended the commercial. “In the direct political environment of the CDU chancellor candidate, arch-conservative positions are represented, including the statement that he is sorry for homosexuals. It is not about private decisions, but about the representation of a societal wishful thinking. We clearly oppose such political statements,” said one Spokeswoman for the “Bild” newspaper.
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