TheGermanyAngela Merkel at the forefront is taking more and more seriously the “corona protests” that will again rally on Saturday across the country from leftist, identity right-wing or conspiracy activists opposed to the remaining restrictions.
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“There should still be several thousand on Saturday to pave the way in Berlin, Stuttgart, where 5,000 people gathered last weekend, Munich or in small localities of the former GDR.
Large gatherings of this type are in principle prohibited, but the municipalities have authorized them under conditions and with a strong police presence.
Opponents of vaccines
The demonstrators, a heterogeneous assembly of militant extremists, defenders of public freedoms, opponents of vaccines, even anti-Semites, protest against the wearing of masks or the restrictions of movement which remain after the deconfinement. Some even claim the right to be infected.
Slogans like We are the people
or Freedom, Freedom!
refer to the protests that preceded the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
Other protesters are from more recent xenophobic movements, demanding that Merkel is leaving
or denouncing the lying press
. They are supported by the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which hopes to surf these mobilizations. One in four Germans say they understand these protests, according to a Civey poll.
Authorities taken by surprise
Violence has already punctuated certain gatherings. On May 1 in Berlin, a team from the ZDF channel was violently attacked by a dozen people close to it, according to the leftist police. In Prina, Saxony, a policeman was injured on the sidelines of a parade.
The Chancellor herself judged these marches alarming
, to his party leaders, and accused Russia of being behind disinformation operations that would feed them, according to the popular daily Bild.
These mobilizations seem to have taken the authorities by surprise, especially since they are gaining in intensity at a time when Germany, whose record is at this stage less dramatic than its European neighbors, has begun a significant lifting of the restrictions.
“High level of aggression”
Angela Merkel’s team does not hide its concern about the high level of aggressiveness
in these protests, in the words of government spokesman Steffen Seibert.
In the political class, these corona manifestations
awaken the memory of the German Islamophobic movement Pegida.
Weekly marches had brought together a few hundred people from late 2014 in Dresden, before the procession grew from week to week when Angela Merkel decided to open the borders to Iraqi and Syrian refugees.
These marches served as a breeding ground for the emergence of the AfD, which made an unprecedented entry in 2017 to the Bundestag.
Antisemitic theories
Besides the violence against the police and journalists, two aspects are of particular concern to the authorities. From the first demonstrations in Berlin, anti-Jewish messages were seen, accusing for example Rockefeller and Rothschild of having invented the coronavirus
or comparing mask and yellow star ports.
These events constitute a reservoir in which anti-Semites, conspirators and negationists can find themselves
, warns Felix Klein, government commissioner for combating anti-Semitism.
For Felix Klein, it’s no surprise that anti-Semitic theories are flourishing again in the current crisis
. Jews were blamed for plague epidemics, accused of poisoning wells
, he recalls in everyday life Süddeutsche Zeitung.
Aluminum hat
The other component is the success of conspiracy theories with a sharp rise in conspiratorial groups on Telegram or Youtube.
Antivaccine theses are in vogue, as are fears linked to the development of 5G.
Unfortunately, we are witnessing an often rapid radicalization of these people (….) Who no longer believe any information from official sources and quickly immerse themselves in online communities, losing touch with reality
, Miro Dittrich, specialist in this area at the Amadeu-Antonio Antirascist Foundation, explains to AFP.
These excesses worry to the top of the state: the President of the Republic, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, left his reserve Thursday to warn that it was worth better to wear a mask than an aluminum hat
, traditionally associated in Germany with conspirators.
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