Van Ranst does not hide his opinion, they now also know in the Netherlands. For example, he does not enter into a debate with extreme right-wing people and virus deniers, the virologist recently said in a statement interview met The Financial Times. Van Ranst believes that someone like Willem Engel, who fights against the corona measures with his virus truth action group, is given too much space in the Netherlands, ‘while his knowledge of the virus is nil’.
The comment about the extreme right now yields Van Ranst an indictment for slander and libel, it writes ADwho has seen the report.
Engel thinks that the virologist puts him and his movement Virus Truth in a bad light and wrongly portrays him as an extremist. Engel and his followers deny, among other things, the seriousness of the coronavirus and the effect of measures and vaccines. Engel, who ran a dance school in Rotterdam before the outbreak of the corona crisis, calls himself a skeptic and not a virus denier.
Salsapandemie
The declaration follows a polemical period. The two have been crossing swords for some time on Twitter. Engel accused Van Ranst of frightening people with his warning messages about the virus. Van Ranst wrote back, among other things, that Engel ‘is not the sharpest sharpened pencil in the pen box’.
He also tweeted: ‘If we are ever faced with a salsa pandemic, I will be happy to listen to what you as a dance teacher have to say. However, at the moment I do not give flying fuck because of what you’re spouting, and the Netherlands shouldn’t do that either.’
Let’s call a cat a cat, Willem: you’re a freak. You can write all your knowledge of virology, immunology and epidemiology on the back of a postage stamp and even have room left. But at the Wappie fair you will have a very large and ostentatious booth.
— Marc Van Ranst (@vanranstmarc) May 19, 2021
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This is where internet entrepreneur Alexander Klöpping took off. According to him, the interaction between Van Ranst and Engel deserved ‘the largest possible audience’. He started a crowdfunding campaign to get the tweets on waiting booths across the country. He amply succeeded in this and the joke about the salsa pandemic spread throughout the Netherlands.
Incidentally, dance plagues, also called choreomania, were a recurring phenomenon between the 14th and 17th centuries. People danced incessantly, resulting in exhaustion and sometimes death. Some historians think that such forms of mass hysteria were responses to famine and disease.
‘You can go outside again’
After the commotion about the salsa pandemic, the internet quarrel between the two had not cooled in the least. Engel received strong criticism with a tweet in which he joked that he had called the fugitive soldier Jürgen Conings. “You can go outside again,” he told Van Ranst, who is still in hiding after threats by Conings.
Even now that he is in hiding, Van Ranst still shows the back of his tongue. This week the virologist caused a stir on the chat app Telegram in a discussion between compatriots who support the extremist military. ‘Nil level, but yes, what did we expect from a group of terrorist supporters’, Van Ranst wrote in the group ‘As 1 man behind Jürgen’.
That came under heavy criticism. Moreover, it is dangerous to challenge those people, some thought. ‘Not wise’, he concluded himself afterwards. But he brushed aside arguments that he should keep his mouth shut for safety reasons. “I won’t be silenced or the intimidation will win.”
Cassant communication
Van Ranst’s polemic attitude comes as a surprise to the Dutch. Unlike us. ‘When Marc Van Ranst speaks, the blood pressure of many Flemings peaks‘ the newspaper headlined earlier. In that article we discuss the ‘cassante communication’ that is so typical of the virologist and with which he also chased Flanders on the right before the corona crisis. As now, his outspoken opinion resulted in death threats, especially from the extreme right, according to the virologist.
When Van Ranst was a guest on the Dutch talk show last July On 1he told about it. ‘In Belgium I also oppose racism and xenophobia. Some people don’t like that attitude of me.’
Due to the pandemic, the dynamics are now different. Van Ranst and other experts demand the freedom ‘to both advise and criticize policy as soon as a political decision has been made’. A double attitude that sometimes generates aversion and frustration.
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