BERLIN — For years, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany has been fighting to expand the digital skills of the nation’s work force and to get more youths engaged in politics.

This past week, a young, blue-haired German YouTuber known as Rezo showed how unsettling the right combination of digital savvy and political engagement could be to the establishment.

In a slick 55-minute clip, complete with a list of 247 references and citations of scientific literature, he attacked Ms. Merkel’s governing Christian Democratic Union for a range of sins: growing social inequality, pollution, war and internet censorship. As of Saturday morning, the YouTube video had been viewed more than nine million times, making it Germany’s most popular nonmusical clip in six days.

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The video has led to a storm of debate in a country that is just starting to come to terms with the outsize effect that independent journalists and activists on social media can have on the public discourse. The clip also became a public relations crisis for the governing conservatives just days before Germans headed to the polls on Sunday for the European Parliament elections.