Opinion: "Court jester" statement: This term could cause enormous damage to Scholz

STERN Opinion: "Court jester" statement: This term could cause enormous damage to Scholz Article by Miriam Hollstein • 17 hours • 3 minutes reading time Under pressure: Olaf Scholz (SPD) has to justify a comment Olaf Scholz is said to have made derogatory comments to CDU politician Joe Chialo at a private party. Details are disputed, but the incident has the potential to be a disaster. One of the most frequent speculations in political Berlin in recent weeks has been: Will Friedrich Merz make a huge mistake just before the finish? After all, the CDU leader and Union top candidate is known for his limited impulse control. Now that seems to have happened to Olaf Scholz. According to a report in "Focus", he is said to have referred to Berlin's Senator for Culture Joe Chialo as the CDU's "court jester" at a birthday party for businessman Harald Christ in the presence of many political celebrities. Chialo is the son of a Tanzanian diplomatic family. Scholz himself wrote on the short message service X about a "private birthday party" in which a conversation with a journalist was about the "joint voting behavior of the CDU/CSU and AfD in the German Bundestag". In response to the objection that there were also liberal voices in the CDU, he replied that very few of these liberals had opposed the CDU leader Merz. The term he used "does not have racist connotations in everyday language and was never intended that way by me". He did not specify which term he had used exactly. A spokesman for Joe Chialo also confirmed "an incident". Numerous Union politicians reacted publicly with great indignation and solidarity for Chialo. "Black is beautiful" tweeted CDU Vice President Julia Klöckner with a picture of the Senator for Culture on X. SPD General Secretary Matthias Miersch, on the other hand, accuses "Focus" of "targeted campaign work in the interests of the CDU". Incident with Joe Chialo: Olaf Scholz is not a racist Olaf Scholz is not a racist (just as Friedrich Merz is not a fascist). If he had even the slightest tendency to do so, this would have been noticed earlier in a career in which almost every step has been accompanied by the public for a long time. It also does not suit Olaf Scholz's nature. Nevertheless, he could have fallen into the trap of unconscious racism. Which, without wanting to, is compatible with centuries-old derogatory patterns and images. The court jester is someone who is far below in status. Whose existence is tied to keeping the rulers happy. A joke figure, a useful idiot. The term is designed to evoke entire chains of associations with racist representations. The "black man" as a showpiece that colonial conquerors brought back from their travels to show off in their homeland. As a constant supporting character in the film's history, he was allowed to be the advisor or critic of the white hero, but was always assigned to him in a subservient, lower role. Would Olaf Scholz have called a woman "court jester"? Scholz certainly never had any of this in mind. But the question must be allowed whether he would have called the CDU's vice-chairwoman, Karin Prien, a "court jester" for example? Or whether he had not considered that such a description could be interpreted as sexist? And should he not have considered that people with a migration background repeatedly experience racism and that ambivalent terms are particularly inappropriate in connection with them? Scholz has now called in the famous media lawyer Christian Schertz. He is now supposed to capture what no longer seems to be captured. This at least shows that Olaf Scholz knows how much his remark can damage him. The incident is reminiscent of Armin Laschet's laughter during an appearance in the flood area during the 2021 federal election campaign. The only difference is that this marked a turning point for the Union's top candidate at the time. Scholz, on the other hand, has been trailing Friedrich Merz in the polls for weeks. However, the current incident could make the SPD's expected defeat even more massive. The fact that this did not happen to an irascible Friedrich Merz, but to the cool and controlled Hanseatic Scholz, shows how much pressure he is under in these final stages of the election campaign.