Friedrich Merz's bid to become Germany's 10th chancellor unexpectedly fails in first round of voting
Mr Merz, the conservative leader, needed a majority of 316 out of 630 votes in a secret ballot.
He only received 310 - falling short by just six votes.
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The Guardian
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The Guardian has identified the self-described 'national socialist' behind an openly extremist YouTube channel that in just over two months has accumulated 50,000 subscribers, seen more than 2.3m views, and likely made thousands of dollars from YouTube's revenue-sharing monetization program. Johnathan Christopher 'Chris' Booth, 37, lives in the unincorporated community of Coral, a part of Maple Valley Township in Michigan's Montcalm county and is married to a senior local Republican official. Booth has published more than 70 YouTube videos since May on his Shameless Sperg account, whose graphic design elements feature stylized SS bolts. Titles of his videos-generally a recording of him delivering his views direct to camera-include: 'Why I Dislike Jews. It's not complicated', 'Black Crimes Matter: Never Relax', and 'Jews and FBI hate you and your free speech'. Typically the videos attract hundreds of comments from like-minded YouTube users. His channel has seen such remarkable success that it has drawn apparently baseless allegations from other far-right creators that he is a 'fed'. On an X account that frequently advertises his videos, his posts include antisemitic comments and in one response to a post about actor Jim Carrey he writes: 'All of them deserve rope. I advocate for national socialism though, under which idiots like this would not fare too well.' Despite YouTube's stated policies against hate speech and content that promotes violence against individuals or groups based on race, religion, or other protected characteristics, Booth's channel appears to be monetized through the YouTube Partner Program. The channel displays ads and Booth has thanked subscribers for their financial support through the platform. YouTube's community guidelines explicitly prohibit content that 'promotes violence or hatred against individuals or groups based on race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, age, nationality, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or other characteristic that is associated with systemic discrimination or marginalization'. A YouTube spokesperson said: 'Upon review, we terminated the channel for violating our Community Guidelines. Content that promotes violence or hatred against individuals or groups based on their ethnicity, nationality, race or religion is not allowed on YouTube.' According to YouTube, another account associated with Booth was terminated, and creators are no longer entitled to earn any revenue if their channel is terminated. The terminations happened after the Guardian reached out to YouTube with questions about Booth's activities. Also according to YouTube, content that promotes violence or hatred against individuals or groups based on their ethnicity, nationality, race or religion is not allowed on the platform. In the wake of the ban, Booth took to X to say that he would move his content to 'alt-tech' platforms like Odysee. Booth is married to Meghyn 'Meg' Booth, the Republican treasurer of Maple Valley Township. Meg Booth has liked several posts with extremist themes on Chris Booth's Facebook account with her personal account. Chris Booth's Facebook page also features extensive racist propaganda along with iconography often employed by neo-Nazis. The revelations raise questions about the extent to which YouTube, whose parent company Alphabet also owns Google, Waymo, and other tech companies, has backslid on monitoring extremism on its platform. Jeff Tischauser, a senior research analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Center, said Booth's operation across YouTube, X, and merch platforms was a 'boilerplate Nazi grift'. 'He may be earning money from YouTube, as well as hawking these racist and antisemitic items on his website like cups and T-shirts,' Tischauser added. He said that YouTube is 'the premier site that these guys look to in order to expand their following and to make money off of that following'. The Guardian retrieved a Coral, Michigan, street address from EU-mandated General Product Safety Regulation compliance information on the Shameless Sperg merchandise page on the merchandising platform Printify. The property at that address is owned by Meg Booth, according to property records. Data brokers indicate that Chris Booth lives at the same address. Sites including show exterior views of the house at the property. The property's color and cladding match those visible in videos published to YouTube on 14 and 15 May. Chris Booth appears to have made some efforts to remove photographs of himself and other potentially identifying information from his own social media accounts and other online spaces. However, he is visible in 'shorts' style videos posted by Meg Booth to Facebook. This video of Chris Booth depicts the same person visible in Shameless Sperg videos. The Guardian emailed both Chris and Meg Booth for comment. In an email, Meg Booth appeared to repudiate her husband's views. 'I am not involved in my husband's content or political views, and I do not share or support any form of racism, antisemitism, or hate speech', she wrote, adding: 'My values are my own and are grounded in respect, inclusion, and service to the community.' Meg Booth concluded: 'As an elected official, I've always acted independently, with integrity, and in line with the expectations of my office. I respectfully decline further comment.' Chris Booth did not directly respond, but in the day after the email he took to X to reaffirm his views, including a post in which he wrote: 'I've come to believe fascists are born, not made. Discovering real fascism in my early thirties was like looking into a mirror and finally realizing why commies have called me a fascist for so long. They spotted it before I could, but then I wholeheartedly embraced it.' In his videos and on X, Booth explicitly embraces neo-Nazi ideology and promotes antisemitic conspiracy theories. On his Shameless Sperg X account, Booth writes: 'I am the Shameless Sperg, I am a National Socialist, and I do sperg rants here,' with a link to his YouTube channel. On the YouTube channel, he writes: 'This channel is a collection of sperg rants and commentary on the news & issues of the day, or whatever else is on my mind, from an autistically dissident and NS perspective.' 'Sperg', an abbreviation for Asperger syndrome, is used pejoratively in far-right circles for those whose obsessive and open extremism might put off normal people or draw unwanted attention. 'NS' is commonly used as an abbreviation for 'national socialist' in far-right circles. His videos almost all contain neo-Nazi perspectives, enunciating conspiratorial antisemitism, anti-Black racism, and claims that white people are superior to all other races. In a June video titled 'There is no Anti-Semitism without Semitism,' Booth states in relation to interwar Germany: 'Extreme sadism and humiliation towards Gentiles is a Jewish tradition … Now, you might begin to understand why, after 14 years of seeing their people tormented by the Jews, millions of Germans organized, gained political power, and broke the chains of Jewish tyranny in Germany.' The video continues with Booth arguing that antisemitism is a just response to the behavior of Jews, and sarcastically dismisses the idea that it is 'just some ancient mental pathogen in the minds of the goyim. It just springs to life for no reason just to make things harder for the Jews'. In a July video, Booth defended recent attempts to create a whites-only community in Arkansas. He said: 'White people are allowed to congregate together without being accompanied by some fucking Black person or some Jew.' In another July video Booth said: 'Black people oppress themselves. I don't do it. I have no interest in it. I, you know, I just want them away from me. You know, I want them away from me, my community, my state, my country. I don't know. Just I don't know, get the fuck away from me.' In a May video supporting Trump's program of allowing Afrikaner refugees into the country on the basis of a fictional 'white genocide' in South Africa, Booth said: 'You know, I'm hoping that they don't completely lose South Africa to the black plague, but um but in any event, uh things are going to fall apart for them and go shit sideways.' Tischauser, the SPLC analyst, said that the themes of Booth's videos mix 'crass racism, basic historic white power talking points' and 'pseudo-academic kind of takes on Black criminality or Black behavior'. Meg Booth, Chris Booth's wife, was in November elected as the treasurer of Maple Valley Township running as a Republican. Her public social media profile does not feature the kind of extremist messaging that Chris Booth offers on his platform, though she has interacted with posts on his Facebook account, which is also freighted with racist messaging and neo-Nazi imagery. Chris Booth also liked posts in which she discussed her candidacy.
