Berlin: A German YouTuber's hour-long rant against Chancellor Angela Merkel's CDU party has gone viral, attracting close to five million views by Thursday and putting politicians on the back foot.
In the online video called "The destruction of the CDU", Rezo, who has more than a million followers, accused the CDU-led government of making policies "for the rich" while failing to act on crucial issues like climate change.
Posted on May 18, just over a week before European Parliament elections, the clip swiftly went viral, spreading Rezo's message of "how the CDU is currently destroying our lives while ignoring expert opinion".
"Go to vote ... Otherwise, the pensioners will decide your future, and that won't be cool," said Rezo, appealing to his mostly young audience.
The YouTuber with a trademark blue fringe poking out from under a baseball cap charges that the Christian Democratic Union is "destroying its reputation, election result, and finally itself".
In a message to the ruling coalition, Rezo said: "You say that young people should be political, then you have to handle it when they think your politics are sh**."
CDU heavyweights have hit back against the 26-year-old online star.
Party chief Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who is poised to succeed Merkel when the veteran leader steps down by 2021, dismissed the wide-ranging attack, saying: "I asked myself why we're not also being held responsible for the seven plagues in ancient Egypt."
The party's general secretary Paul Ziemiak accused Rezo of "false claims" and "making things seem easier on the Internet than they actually are".
But the 33-year-old former chief of the CDU's youth wing conceded that his party was struggling to reach younger generations online.
"We need to be more present online," said Ziemiak. "We must use the Internet more to make complex questions more understandable."
Compared to the reach of Rezo's video, a televised debate between the leading election candidate of the centre-right EPP bloc Manfred Weber and his Socialist challenger Frans Timmermans drew 1.68 million viewers in Germany.
