Pirate in Meme Storm: Germany’s Scholz Spotted Sporting Eyepatch After Jogging Accident

Just a day before a new opinion poll dropped showing that support for his traffic light coalition government had sunk to an all-time low, the chancellor suffered a major jogging accident.

Scholz took the incident in stride, posting a photo of himself wearing an eyepatch to the German chancellery's official X page. Scholz thanked Germans for their well wishes, assuring that his injuries look worse than they really are, and quipping that he “looks forward to the memes.”

The government said Scholz suffered injury to his face while jogging on Saturday, leaving him battered and bruised, and forced to cancel some appointments on Sunday. Scholz has a well-known passion for exercise, saying he and his wife try to “make time” for activities including “jogging, rowing or hiking,” as well as biking, at least “two or three times a week.”

Scholz’ followers accepted his meme-making challenge, copy-pasting his eyepatch-clad face into a series of photoshopped images, portraying him as one of the “Avengers of Nord Stream II,” a politician from the “Pirate Party,” the pirate from the intro to Spongebob Squarepants, a German Captain Jack Sparrow, or even a doppelganger to the late Israeli military commander Moshe Dayan.

All jokes aside, Germany’s coalition government is currently in its worst state since its formation after parliamentary elections in 2021, with Scholz’s Social Democrats, the Greens and the Free Democrats enjoying a combined 38 percent support in the opinion polls, compared with a combined 53 percent for the opposition Christian Democrats, Alternative for Germany and The Left.

The German economy sunk into a recession in May, soon dragging the rest of the Eurozone along with it, with German business confidence plummeting amid high energy costs, a shortage of skilled workers, excessive government regulation, and dilapidated infrastructure.

Germany’s recession is directly linked to its decision last year to drastically scale down purchases of Russian energy, with Moscow warning a year-and-a-half ago that the short-sighted move would cause Europe’s competitiveness to plummet and threaten the region with the hitherto unimaginable prospect of deindustrialization.

In addition to economic concerns, some opposition lawmakers in the Bundestag have expressed concerns about the Scholz government's blind support for NATO's proxy war with Russia in Ukraine, expressing fears that Berlin may be dragged into a full-on hot war in Europe.