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The expanding German “anti-mask” movement, whose last demonstration in Berlin on Wednesday resulted in police repressed incidents, is striking in its heterogeneous nature.
From neo-Nazi militants to pacifist activists and the LGTB cause, they were among the 10,000 opponents of the restrictive measures imposed to fight the covid-19 pandemic.
The only point in common is the minimization of the danger of a pandemic and the distrust of the institutions.
The mobilization scheduled for this weekend in Leipzig (east), in which a previous demonstration in early November ended with clashes with the police, finally brought together only a few hundred people.
Other similar demonstrations also took place in this country with a few thousand people, while on Sunday 5,000 “anti-masks” are expected again in Berlin.
On Wednesday in front of the Brandenburg Gate in the capital, the flags of the LGBT community, the emblem of the pacifist Gandhi and also that of the American conspiracy movement QAnon were mixed.
Protesters, wearing caps with the “Trump 2020” slogan, marched alongside supporters of communal ecology, esotericism, evangelists or hippies.
Most of the protesters focus on refusing vaccination, minimizing the dangers of covid-19.
“Mortality is no higher than during flu spells,” Ina Meyer-Stoll, a protester carrying a banner with the message, “Even people on the left are against it,” told AFP.
However, scientists and the WHO have shown that the “death rate” of covid is much higher than that of seasonal flu.
– New conspirators –
Together with her, Achim Ecker, in his fifties and a loyal voter of Los Verdes, explains that he had “lost faith in political parties” which, according to him, were promoting “a vaccine with a sloppy control process”.
Bonny, a student with a floral sticker on her forehead, denounces the restrictions that “steal her youth”.
In her harmless grandmother, Birgit Vogt, 75, denies the existence of the pandemic and does not hesitate to draw a parallel between the restrictions and the takeover of power by the Nazis in Germany in 1933. “Fear and panic allow control of the masses, as in Hitler’s time ”, he assures.
“Like after 9/11 [de 2001, fecha de los ataques suicidas en Estados Unidos], which has inspired numerous conspiracy theories, I fear that we are seeing the same phenomenon with the pandemic, ”Miro Dittrich, of the Antiracist Foundation Amadeu Antonio, told AFP.
According to him, “the number of adherents increases significantly and many are newcomers. The confinement has done its part, with people isolated from their social environment and who spend a lot of time on the Internet ”.
– Against an elite –
There are also some right-wing extremists, close to the AfD party, or neo-Nazis in the sights of the secret services.
On Wednesday, in front of the police, a group of a dozen people sang “Sieg Heil” at the end of the demonstration, giving the Hitler salute, an AFP reporter confirmed. Previous protests were studded with anti-Semitic slogans.
Officers used water cannons to disperse the Berlin demonstration and 365 people were arrested.
“The link between the conspiracy and the far right is, unfortunately, logical, as they share numerous theories. Thus, for both, a small elite secretly controls the events at the expense of the “Germans”, controls all the information of the “general press” and the “truth” is found only in the alternative media ”, Dittrich analyzes.
The radical right would also count on the epidemic to gain new adherents among vaccine opponents, warns an international study commissioned by the German government and released on Friday.
“The changes induced by the pandemic reinforce the influence of all those who, even before the virus appeared, considered themselves opponents of the mainstream,” summarizes this report.
Behind the demonstrations in Germany is the “Querdenkers” (“Freethinkers”) movement.
Founded in Stuttgart at the beginning of the year, it calls itself a “peaceful and non-sectarian” “freedom movement” and claims more than 100,000 supporters, including personalities such as former international footballer Thomas Berthold.
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