A planned mass rally in Berlin by radical opponents of the government’s anti-COVID measures was disbanded by the police today, when its participants disobeyed the requirement to wear masks and maintain social distancing, which was a condition of the permit granted by the government. The regional Berlin court had ruled last night against a police ban of all rallies because of safety concerns, because the march organizers had promised that they would follow all of the anti-pandemic requirements.
At Brandenburg Gate, the Querdenken 711 movement and other right-wing groups had gathered with the hope of bringing some 22,000 people to the protest. Notorious racist Björn Höcke of the AfD was scheduled to address the rally, too. Another featured speaker was anti-vaccination activist Robert Kennedy, Jr., who had announced yesterday in a hyped up tweet: “In #Berlin launching @ChildrensHD Europe. Tomorrow, I will speak to largest crowd in #German history. We are expecting 1 million+ people protesting Bill Gates’ bio security agenda, rise of authoritarian surveillance state + Pharma sponsored coup d’etat against liberal democracy.” He threw in the one-liner for which Existentialist Albert Camus is remembered “The welfare of Humanity is always the alibi of tyrants,” which his co-thinkers in Germany and Europe use to bolster their claim that anti-pandemic measures are leading towards tyranny (when it’s not used by everyone else for every single issue for which they have nothing to say).
Kennedy’s appearance is advertised by propagandists as a remake of his uncle President John F. Kennedy’s 1963 “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech before an audience of 300,000 in Berlin, as a strong signal for freedom and democracy.
The similarly right-wing “Identitarians“ group staged their own rally at the statue of Prussian King Frederick the Great, and numerous smaller left-wing and greenie rallies, also including anti-vaccine activists, protested against the Querdenken 711 appearance. Authorities deployed 3,000 policemen, including anti-riot squads, to prevent any violent clashes.
