dChan
Anonymous ID: 0daa77 May 28, 2019, 7:12 a.m. No.6608248   🗄️.is 🔗kun   >>8264 >>8344

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-politics-idUSKCN1SY1CT

 

Merkel heir faces widespread criticism after proposal to regulate online opinion

 

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s heir apparent faced criticism from across Germany’s political spectrum on Tuesday after she called for rules about expressing online opinions before elections in response to a YouTube video that criticized her party.

 

Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who replaced Merkel as leader of the ruling CDU last year, denied she was promoting censorship after her comments, which were prompted by a YouTube video by a popular 26-year-old blogger named Rezo.

 

Germany’s two main parties were both hammered in an election for the European Parliament over the weekend, with voters under the age of 30 in particular largely deserting the conservative CDU and its Social Democratic coalition partners, the SPD.

 

In the video, seen by millions ahead of the vote, Rezo called on voters to reject the two parties for betraying the young by not addressing the climate crisis.

 

“I asked myself what would be the response in this country if say 70 newspapers issued a joint appeal two days before the election, saying: ‘Don’t vote CDU or SPD.’” Kramp-Karrenbauer, widely known by her initials AKK, told reporters on Monday.

 

“That would have been clear propagandizing before the election, and I believe it would have unleashed a lively debate,” she added. “So the question remains: what are the rules from the analogue era and how do they apply in the digital era?”

 

She later defended her remarks: “It is absurd to assume that I want to regulate opinions,” she tweeted. “But what we have to talk about are the rules that apply during election campaigns.”