With a quote from a football anthem, Olaf Scholz made it clear that his government would help citizens in need. But in the song “You’ll never walk alone” there is no mention of the state or “society” helping. Rather, no one should lose faith in themselves.
When things aren’t going so well down on the pitch, will they soon be shouting for the Federal Chancellor from 38,000 voices on the legendary south stand of Borussia 09 e.V. Dortmund? After all, Olaf Scholz promised help for everyone and support for everyone from the state, true to the footballer’s anthem “You’ll never walk alone”?
The head of government has now found himself in a classic dilemma. For some, the help doesn’t come quickly and not plentifully enough – that’s the social lobby, which often comes from the Left Party, is called Ulrich Schneider and can hardly be missing from any talk show that talks about “poverty”. And since Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, the threat of poverty in Germany has become more and more common.
With the extra-parliamentary social lobby on board is the social wing of the SPD and the Greens, together a “pressure group” of considerable size. The faster and faster agreement on their two enemy images. One is called Friedrich Merz, the other Christian Lindner.
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If one of them then also flies to the wedding of the other in his, according to himself, small, energy-saving private plane to a legendary island millionaire’s paradise, you have everything together: the swanky Porsche fan from the FDP, who doesn’t give the poor that Blacks under the nails, and the old, white, anti-feminist man from the high-income CDU party.
When social lobbyist Schneider, with his sprawling chops, demands a narrow doubling of the Hartz IV rates, he does what he is paid to do. If Christian Lindner wants to prevent that, he does what he was elected to do. That makes a certain difference. And a federal finance minister who doesn’t sit on the till would be almost as superfluous as a defense minister who doesn’t have tanks to shoot at.
The SPD is coming up with a whole lot right now so that nobody has to feel like they’re walking through a storm alone, according to the bawling anthem with the cheesy lyrics, which was said to have been first sung by the football crowds in Liverpool.
She wants to protect the tenants so that they are no longer threatened with eviction if they can no longer pay the utility bill. But she also wants to protect landlords who depend on the income of the tenants because they own the apartment, the additional costs of which the tenants may no longer be able to pay.
Kevin Kühnert wants to change the equity rules at banks so that those who can no longer afford houses, and in view of the increased prices for raw materials and craftsmen, can still afford houses. Isn’t that how the Lehman bankruptcy started in the USA – with the government convincing the voters that they were entitled to a house and the banks then talking people into millions of loans that they could no longer service?
Social Democrat Hubertus Heil is striving to increase the Hartz rates, soon to be called “citizen money”, an act of “social washing” – it is, as a reminder, an income that is not matched by any value-adding service – by an immodest ten percent . The Minister of Labor no longer wants to demand more, like VW man Peter Hartz, Gerhard Schröder and Frank Walter Steinmeier at the time. Heil only wants to promote. The former Verdi boss and current Greens MP Frank Bsirske applauds; an applause that speaks for itself – unionists like him worked on the Hartz laws for 20 years before they become history again.
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Finally, just to round off the picture, Bundestag President Bärbel Bas, who hails from Duisburg, is calling for the return of wealth tax – she calls it a “luxury tax” – and higher inheritance taxes for private individuals. It’s the old social-democratic social envy issues that have been known from the Ruhr area for decades.
It almost goes without saying that social democrats have long since taken the “debt brake” under artillery fire – always ignoring the fact that this is a constitutional requirement, from which exceptions are of course possible – in the event of an imminent emergency. In Berlin, there are bets on how long Lindner can withstand the pressure, especially from the people from the Scholz party.
Speaking of the chancellor: the “you’ll never walk alone” that Olaf Scholz intones is a case of “cultural appropriation”, which is otherwise frowned upon in left-wing circles. But the transfer from the soccer field to the political arena doesn’t even work on closer inspection.
This anthem dates from the end of World War II. We don’t know how it was intended, but we do know that women in particular, whose husbands were still at the front, found it a great comfort and therefore stormed the performance of the musical “Carousel” on Broadway in New York in droves, where the song was sung twice. The piece could be played 890 times, so great was the demand for consolation from 1945 onwards.
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Nowhere in this rant (John Lennon called the song a “fat piece of lard”) is there any mention of “society” standing together to help individuals in times of need. Nowhere is there a government that sends umbrellas when the storm is raging and the rain is pelting. The message of “You’ll never walk alone” is utterly individualistic, not to say neoliberal.
Anyone who gets into trouble should not forget to believe in themselves. The hope for a happy ending, a “golden sky” and the “sweet silvery song” of a lark. One is not alone in this way only because one has not given up trust in oneself and not because a welfare state is there to support one in all situations.
Scholz has therefore socially democratized this fan song. Perhaps the chancellor, personally under pressure from those who were willing to spend and those who were keen to save, wanted to console one person above all: himself.
Olaf, you just have to believe in yourself and keep walking, just keep walking, then you will never walk alone…
