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FDP Campaign: "Freedom instead of Socialism" (July 18, 2005)
In the lead-up to the 2005 Bundestag elections, the FDP chose a slogan that the CDU had already used back in 1976: “Freedom instead of socialism.” The party's goal was to emphasize the polarization between the “bourgeois camp” (i.e., the CDU/CSU and the FDP) and the alleged “left-wing camp” (i.e., the SPD, the Greens, the PDS, and the WASG [Wahlalternative für Arbeit und soziale Gerechtigkeit or Electoral Alliance for Labor and Social Justice]). On July 18, 2005, FDP general secretary Dirk Niebel (photo) unveiled the party's corresponding campaign poster, the design and message of which harkened back to the CDU’s “Red Socks” campaign of 1994. The poster mainly targeted the alliance between the Left Party/PDS and the WASG (represented in the poster by the dark red socks on the right), but it also warned of a possible “left-wing front” made up of the SPD and the Greens (the light red and green socks). Photo: Peer Grimm.