FreiVAC

Yesterday again, two demonstrations took place in downtown Freiburg. There was the usual march of the anti-vaxxers. They plan to march every weekend until politics change course and the government caves in on obligatory vaccination. 

Mayor Martin Horn had criticized last Saturday's demo on Facebook, "Yes, we are all corona tired! Yes, everyone is allowed to demonstrate in our country and express their own opinion. But when I see signs comparing police forces to concentration camp guards, it's disgusting and unbearable."

We were all behaving well.

Thus the tone was set for the contra demonstration of FreiVAC, the newly formed Freiburg Alliance against Conspiracy Ideology (Verschwörungsideologie), Anti-Semitism & Corona Trivialization.

Around 3000 participants assembled at the Square of the Old Synagogue while - well separated - the anti-vaxxers met on Friedrichstraße. Organized by FreiSeinFreiburg (Be Free Freiburg), they formed their march for "Freedom, Humanity and Reason" with about 7000 participants.

FFP2 masks and distances were mainly kept.

Hendrik Meyer, the FreiVAC organizer, immediately rolled out the heavy artillery against the anti-corona demonstrators, "They have the infinite audacity to claim they live in a dictatorship. With their lies, they mock the pandemic victims and their relatives. They insult the clinic medical staff and deride the people whose lives got off the rails because of the pandemic."

Spokeswoman Anna Schmidt harped on the anti-Semitic attitude of some Corona trivializers by showing posters with concentration camp motifs but above all in the anti-Semitic narrative of the pandemic planned as a "global world conspiracy," allegedly organized by Jews.

Chantal Kopf, a member of the Green Party elected to the Bundestag, referred to the Square of the Old Synagogue, "We say no, here in this place. Dissent in a democratic constitutional state is not the same as resistance in a dictatorship." She continued, "This pandemic has cost the lives of more than 100,000 people and changed families, so vaccination against the coronavirus is an act of practical solidarity."

Silvia Schliebe of the association "Jewish for All" came down hard on protesters for their closeness to fascists, "We don't care if you think you're good people. If you're marching with the right-wingers, you're not. It's up to all of us to push back this brown plague."

Why does her harsh statement let me think of Louis Armstrong's version of the Whiffenpoof song? In his text, Louis refers to Dizzy Gillespie playing bebop and condemning Dixieland music at the Birdland in New York, "They are poor little lambs who've lost their way, bye-bye bebop, they are little sheep who've gone astray, bye-bye bebop."

Note the heart-shaped balloons carried mainly by children (©ARD)

They were on national television (©ARD)

Initiator Malte Wendt of the anti-vaxxer demo said the march at Freiburg should convey an image quite different from the one portrayed in the media, "Anyone who sees our heart posters will no longer believe the media afterward."

©ARD

Again: Are they just innocent followers, or should one resist brown beginnings?

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