Status: 04.07.2021 11:23 a.m.
After the change at the top of the Union of Values, more and more state associations are turning away in protest. The course of the new federal chairman Otte meets with resistance. Radicalization is feared.
The rifts in the politically divided union of values of particularly conservative members of the CDU and CSU are getting deeper and deeper. After the controversial election of the economist Max Otte as the new federal chairman, several state associations are now showing signs of dissolution.
Kämpf: union of values like a “dead horse”
The Baden-Wuerttemberg deputy head of state Oliver Kämpf told the dpa news agency that the union of values founded by Mitsch practically no longer exists. “The name is destroyed.” In a letter to the federal executive committee, it is said that an “rapprochement with ethnic and nationalistic issues” can be observed. This runs counter to the conservative and economically liberal course of the state board members.
According to Kämpf, the union of values is slowly dissolving, especially in southern Germany there have been numerous withdrawals and resignations. “The union of values is like a dead horse that you have to dismount from,” he said. According to him, the organization still has about 3700 members. The CDU has a total of around 400,000 members, the CSU has around 140,000.
New name for the association in Bavaria
The Bavarian Union of Values left the federal association on Saturday, as the newly elected state chairwoman Juliane Ried said at a general meeting in Pöttmes. In Bavaria, the group is now calling itself – as it was when it was founded in 2014 – “Conservative departure for values and freedom”. In 2019 the association merged with the Union of Values. “We want to concentrate on the CSU again,” said Ried of the dpa on the grounds for leaving.
The separation is hoped for greater political clout in order to “counter a more than dangerous left turn in the CSU”. Its leadership has led the CSU “with green-left issues such as ‘climate taxes’, ‘quota’ or the ‘fight against the right’ in a dangerous crisis and alienated many loyal members and regular voters”.
Scholze: There are fears of radicalization
In the Rhineland-Palatinate Union of Values, the board had already resigned from office in June with immediate effect. The reason is Ottes “toxic” effect on the perception and acceptance of the union of values, explained the previous chairman Peter Scholze.
After Otte’s election, a further increasing “bunker mentality” and radicalization are to be feared. “A target-oriented political work in the sense of our founding idea has become impossible from our point of view under these circumstances”, it says in the declaration of Scholzes, his two deputies and three assessors from June 6th. The Union of Values sees itself as a representative of the conservative current in the Union, but is not an official party division.
In Baden-Württemberg, too, the state executive announced its resignation almost completely in protest against Otte’s election.
Big dispute after Otte’s election
At the end of May, Otte succeeded the CDU man Alexander Mitsch, who had announced his retirement, in the position of chairman. Within the union of values, Otte’s close election sparked a great dispute. The fund manager was chairman of the board of trustees of the AfD-affiliated Desiderius Erasmus Foundation until January 2021.
At the beginning of June, Otte said that four years ago he announced that he was personally voting for the AfD, because he was unable to vote for Chancellor Angela Merkel. But that was four years ago and Merkel was no longer running. The topic is closed.