There’s a lot we’re used to from Bavarian election campaigns, no question about it. But if everything isn’t wrong, they now mostly take place at fairgrounds. The Prime Minister hangs around there about twice a day, if you can believe the wrongly called social media, across Bavaria. At lunchtime on the Gillamoos, in the evening in Schnepfenreuth in Knoblauchsland. And the same text everywhere: malice and ridicule about gender-changing vegans and, of course, a completely incompetent traffic light. Nobody needs it, says the Prime Minister. Certainly not him, because he has his free voter. What a lovely couple.
Now you have to admit that all other politicians also like to appear close to the people and are by no means just hanging around in philosophical salons. On the contrary. The trend is clearly going in this direction: the stupidest message wins. Things used to be different. The talented demagogues Franz Josef Strauss and Peter Gauweiler wanted to show that they were the smart ones, quoting aphorisms in Latin or presenting financial policy theories. Gone: In the election campaign you now need statements that are so flat that you should actually be able to perceive them even with an IQ just above freezing point. “Kreuzberg is not Germany, Gillamoos is Germany”: Friedrich Merz summed up nonsense succinctly here.
In view of these developments, reasonably well-read Bavarians will certainly be reminded of the writer Ludwig Thoma, who – take note: Latin! – the beautiful phrase “Vox populi, vox Rindvieh” is always attributed. Currently, when it comes to Thoma, people think more of his fictitious state parliament member Josef Filser and his “Briefwexel”. Even some ministers now talk the way Filser once wrote, and not just in the marquee. Do you know that the Filser letters were satire? Incidentally, Thoma developed very much in the direction of his Filser, becoming an arch reactionary and a disgusting, anti-Semitic agitator. In his case, however, this was not a sin of his youth, but quite obviously the stupidity of old age, which lasted until his death. Others, however, will one day put aside their anti-Semitism, it is said – millions of Germans even managed to do this within a single day on May 8, 1945. So is there still hope?