Opinion
Liberals are urgently needed – but no one needs this FDP
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The FDP’s lying affair is not over with a resignation. The Christian Lindner Party is now doing more harm than good to liberal ideas.
FDP General Secretary Bijan Djir-Sarai spoke for 50 seconds on Friday morning, then he was gone. Failed because of the traffic lights, the FDP secret plan and their own alternative facts.
Resignation was inevitable, at least enough liberals apparently realized that overnight. But that’s what you can credit the FDP with these days.
Blame for the misery? The media!
What kind of gruesome spectacle is this that the party is currently putting on? The rest of the party leadership is trying to save their jobs and their reputation with lies. Blame for the misery? It should be the media that unfairly attacked the party with “tendentious reporting”. This is how it echoes from the party.
Do the liberals want to completely fool us?
One by one: “Zeit” and “SZ” recently researched that the FDP had deliberately prepared the breakup of the traffic light coalition, while it was still publicly asserting that it wanted to save the alliance. The name of the plan: D-Day.
Any alleged impudence was obviously the truth
After its publication, the research was discredited by the party leadership as a fairy tale, tendentious and untrue. The boss, Christian Lindner, portrayed the secret planning as a harmless process. The word “D-Day” was never used, said his general, and these claims were an “insolence.”
The party leadership is fleeing into its own reality, into an alternative truth. Donald Trump couldn’t have done it better
Now it turns out that every detail was right. Lindner’s former office manager even wrote down a plan at the party’s federal headquarters – this was also now available to journalists.
When they confronted the party about it, the FDP leadership decided to publish the plan themselves. Controlled demolition is what crisis PR calls it. The problem is: At the same time, the party leadership convicted itself of lying.
Christian Lindner’s troupe sticks to their fairy tales
Nevertheless, Christian Lindner’s group sticks to their fairy tales that the Liberals are victims of a media campaign. The party leadership is fleeing into its own reality, into an alternative truth. Donald Trump couldn’t have done it better. A breach of taboo in the country’s democratic culture.
Especially since the whole thing is just the culmination of a months-long series of intrusions, untruths and calculated delays. This is not how a state can be made.
The lying affair is now becoming an existential crisis for the FDP itself. It’s about trust and decency. Who should believe these men anymore? Who is supposed to believe that they are concerned with liberal values and not just with saving their own skin?
The FDP’s behavior must hurt every liberal
Her behavior must hurt every liberal. There is an urgent need for a liberal alternative capable of governing in the next parliament. This traffic light government has also shown that, despite all the controversy.
It was liberals who protected citizens from massive digital surveillance by the state. It was liberals who were the first to put a stop sign on even more bureaucracy. It was liberals who made social majorities for “marriage for all” possible.
At its best, liberalism struggles over where to draw the boundaries of democratic rule. Where freedom must come before equality.
And it was liberals who stood against the “presumption of knowledge” during the pandemic, i.e. the one incontrovertible truth. Today we know that their doubts about the state’s actions were not unfounded.
It takes those who fight for freedom over equality
Fundamentally, they are liberals who, despite striving for equality, do not lose sight of the freedom of the individual. At its best, liberalism struggles over where to draw the boundaries of democratic rule. Where freedom must come before equality. Such a party is needed more than ever in an increasingly authoritarian world.
Christian Lindner, the current leader of the FDP, once described himself as having a “skeptical friendship with the state”. In fact, that is the central point of liberalism: skepticism. It now affects the party itself. We no longer know whether words from the party leadership are still worth a cent.
The resignations can only be a beginning
The resignations of General Secretary Bijan Djir-Sarai and Lindner’s federal managing director can only be a beginning. The face, brain and ruler of the Liberals is Lindner himself. It seems inconceivable that he doesn’t want to know anything about this and is not a significant part of the alternative truths at the party leadership. Who should trust him anymore?
For liberalism in Germany, a party headed by Christian Lindner is no longer a representative, but a burden. Above all, it strengthens those who already reject liberal ideas.
The FDP must now decide what it wants to stand for.
Source: Stern

I have been working in the news industry for over 6 years, first as a reporter and now as an editor. I have covered politics extensively, and my work has appeared in major newspapers and online news outlets around the world. In addition to my writing, I also contribute regularly to 24 Hours World.