The conservative CDU base is undoubtedly capable of suffering. I’ll even go so far as to call the grassroots members part-time political masochists. And yet, for many members and upstanding bourgeois, the party congress in Hanover was an unreasonable demand.
After all, in the exhibition hall one witnessed a political course set that was shaking up the liberal-conservative self-image in the long term. In Hanover, the CDU capitulated to left-wing identity politics and gave in to illiberal forced happiness.
The first gossip was on Friday, when the delegates decided in favor of the women’s quota after a long and heated debate. Because a quota cannot be reconciled with bourgeois values. A victory for the sprightly ladies of the Women’s Union, fought at the expense of the party’s young, up-and-coming women. A quota now degrades them to a collective in need of help, reduces them to their gender.
Parts of the CDU obviously find it impossible to evade the temptations of left-wing identity politics. As often as one could hear the word “parity” at the party conference, one had the impression at times of being with the Left Party in Brandenburg, not with a bourgeois people’s party.
The quota contradicts the liberal idea of performance. Especially when you consider that the CDU has a proportion of women of around 25 percent, but that half of the management positions are to be filled by women in the future. This circumstance has to be described as a grotesque intra-party distortion of competition.
In the end, however, the delegates did not seem to care about the absurdity of this fact. Forced feminist happiness, coldly pushed through by older women whose political careers are coming to an end, and not without good reason.
The second earthquake of the party congress then happened on Saturday morning. The CDU now wants to be not only a quota party, but also the party of “equality”. At least that’s what it says now in the charter of fundamental values passed by the party congress for the new basic programme.
Equality as a socio-political approach starts with the collective and not with individuals. A deeply anti-bourgeois thinking underlies this. Gender equality is also to be understood as heavy state interventionism in all areas of life.
As a bourgeois political force, one should clearly oppose ideological approaches that actively interfere with private life plans. But the party congress decided differently here too. The “freedom with responsibility” evoked in the charter became obsolete thanks to a party congress resolution. Party prose that some in the CDU deliberately do not want to fill with life. encroachment as a party program.
For the youngest there was a very special treat at the end of the party congress – a compulsory service. After the youth had suffered particularly from the Corona measures during the pandemic, the mostly older delegates decided on another serious intervention in freedom.
Parts of the CDU apparently think that we know better what is good for parts of the youth than the young people of our country do themselves. Paternalism disguised as civic duty.
In general, the party congress shows the ideological inconsistencies and the liberal-conservative gaps in the CDU. Anyone who rejects gender language must also reject the other instruments in the toolbox of encroaching gender ideologues.
Anyone who commits to “freedom and responsibility” in their new program must also concede these values to young people. As a free-minded conservative, you are left at a loss after this extremely annoying weekend and also a bit politically homeless.
The author is a CSU member and managing director of the conservative campaign agency The Republic.
