New Juso boss Turmer: abolish the debt brake, expropriate companies

For months, the German Chancellor’s party has only been able to keep the centrifugal forces at work under control with great difficulty. The left wing around parliamentary group leader Rolf Mützenich and party leader Saskia Esken is only keeping quiet because otherwise Olaf Scholz would blow up the government coalition. The election of the new Juso chairman Philipp Türmer on Friday showed what internal disputes the Social Democrats will face in the future. They have the potential to further increase the already huge divisions in the government.

The “Jusos” are the youth organization of the Social Democrats. Every party member is automatically a “young socialist” until they reach the age of 35. Olaf Scholz was also once a Juso, when the Wall still existed and the GDR, whose communist youth officials Scholz enjoyed visiting. However, the Chancellor did not have time for his “descendants” on Friday. Turkish President Erdogan came to dinner, which was probably no more enjoyable than visiting the Juso party conference in Braunschweig would have been for Scholz.

Both candidates for the Juso chairmanship worked on Scholz as if he was on the side of his political opponent. The 27-year-old Philipp Türmer addressed Scholz directly and explained that if Scholz doesn’t make the fight for distributive justice a top priority, the Chancellor won’t have to come here next year, “when you’ll definitely need us to support your election campaign again.” 31-year-old Sarah Mohamed complained that the “racist agitation” was taking on “unbearable proportions” and quoted Scholz’s statement that deportations should finally take place on a large scale.

They celebrate him as the new Kevin Kühnert

Even though both candidates pursued the same thrust in their speeches, their application divided the delegates of the 70,000-member youth organization. The election of the chairman was very close for Türmer with 54 percent – ​​and 30 votes more. His supporters are already celebrating him as the new Kevin Kühnert, who, as the former head of Juso, drove the Social Democrats in the grand coalition from 2017 to 2021. Philipp Türmer also wants to be a “torturer” like Kühnert, the current general secretary of the Social Democrats, once was.

Even before his election as Juso chairman, Türmer, who was born in Offenbach (Hesse) in 1996, attracted attention with radical left-wing slogans. He said at the state delegate conference of the Jusos in Baden-Württemberg in September, If necessary, companies would also have to be nationalized, they should not approach climate transformation with the necessary seriousness. Türmer studied economics and switched to law – and apparently considers expropriation to be an effective means of combating insubordinate companies in the market economy.

There are other statements that give an impression of what can be expected from Türmer in the future. After the Federal Constitutional Court declared the 60 billion special fund in the climate and transformation fund to be unconstitutional this week, it told the traffic light government that it should “not even dare to think about recouping these 60 billion through social cuts”. Instead, it should abolish the debt brake, which is likely to meet with approval from the comrades.

No political mandate, just unrealistic

In his application speech in Braunschweig, he reiterated this point. Above all, the liberals in the “Traffic Light” prevented any social progress. The Social Democrats should not allow themselves to be rubbed against by a “small party”. “There can’t be a green zero with a black zero,” said Türmer. “And if the yellow zero in the Ministry of Finance has to go for this.”

It is positions like these that have always shown that the Jusos are out of touch with reality. Philipp Türmer has no political mandate, not even in his hometown of Offenbach. He doesn’t have to take anyone into account and therefore doesn’t have to be able to explain what should happen to the Scholz government if “the yellow zero in the Finance Ministry” actually works. He presumably means Finance Minister Christian Lindner and his liberal party. The Chancellor would then lack a parliamentary majority.

Turmer obviously doesn’t care about that any more than he cares about security policy developments. The fact that Scholz has had to deal with two threatening wars for months and that Germany urgently needs to be able to defend itself plays almost no role in Türmer’s speech in Braunschweig. Instead, he speaks of the fight against poverty and for distributive justice, which the Chancellor must finally make a top priority. “If something still reaches you in your castle, in your Berlin chancellery, if you still remember which party you ran for, change your course,” said Türmer. It appalls him how little Scholz does for those who so deserve his respect.

Jusos want to make their voices heard again

This probably refers to the part of German society from which Türmer’s rival for the presidency came. While Türmer comes from a good middle-class family (his mother was a senior public prosecutor), Sarah Mohamed is the child of a single mother Hartz IV recipient from North Rhine-Westphalia. She reported on this in her very personal application speech, but was unable to convince the majority of delegates.

With their new chairman, the Jusos want to make themselves heard again in German politics. The times when Kevin Kühnert took on this role and was a darling of the media were not that long ago. His successor Jessica Rosenthal was a member of the Chancellor’s parliamentary group as a member of the Bundestag and held back from criticizing Scholz. As general secretary of his party, Kühnert has now been confronted with the realities of governing for two years. Criticism of the Chancellor has not been heard from him since.