Mesut Bayraktar on Merz's Social Reforms and Working-Class Rage

Mesut Bayraktar, who grew up in a working-class family in Wuppertal, writes about Friedrich Merz's planned social reforms. He describes his upbringing among factory closures, temporary work, and the Agenda 2010, and questions what can be opposed to Merz's 'class violence.' Bayraktar recalls being sixteen, in his final year at a Realschule in Wuppertal, an old industrial city, with no thoughts about the future. He assumed he would work in a metal factory in three shifts like his father and brothers, or in elderly care or cleaning like his mother. Wage labor, he knew, would not make him rich but was necessary for survival. This knowledge was not based on verified fact but felt like an axiom: an unquestionable truth requiring no proof.