Ramelow
© Reuters / Fabrizio Bensch; Reuters / Christian Mang(L) Bodo Ramelow; A group of protesters scuffling with police in front of the Reichstag building during a mass anti-lockdown rally in Berlin in August.
The ongoing protests against Covid-19 restrictions threaten "internal security," Thuringia PM Bodo Ramelow told German media, suggesting terrorism and pogroms were taking shape at the hands of a right-wing/'anti-vaxxer' alliance.

The massive demonstrations against Berlin's tightening pandemic control measures are starting to resemble "terrorism," Ramelow told Tagesspiegel on Thursday, insisting the protests - and the fringe interests they brought together - were "a threat to internal security in our country."

Ramelow, who is a member of The Left (Die Linke), pointed to a protest in which some marchers carried large photos showing Chancellor Angela Merkel and virologist Dr. Christian Drosten in concentration camp uniforms and chanted for them to be hung from lampposts as evidence the opposition to Merkel's coronavirus regime was getting out of control.

Especially dangerous has been the way in which the demonstrations bring together far-right "Reichsburgers" (a fringe group of German monarchists) with "lateral thinkers" (Querdenken, a reference to a free-thinker group that has organized numerous protests against lockdowns) and "corona-deniers" with "anti-vaccination activists," Ramelow continued.


Comment: The lockdowns are also subject to growing criticism from the general public, made of people not affiliated with any of these groups mentioned above, and does that not highlight that perhaps there's a reason for their coming together?

For an idea of just what some protesters are saying, below a Spanish worker at a protest in Barcelona decries the fact that his family, who work in hospitality, are going hungry - there's nothing conspiratorial in what he has to say:



The volatile mixture, he said, was "very dangerous." He dismissed the notion that Germans would be vaccinated against their will and seemed disturbed that anyone would even consider the idea that Microsoft founder and billionaire vaccine evangelist Bill Gates was "now trying to force-vaccinate us."


Comment: Citizens throughout the planet are already subject to quarantine restrictions that go against their will and that are against the laws of the land so is it such a stretch for people to conclude that forced vaccinations are possible? That said, it's more likely that, since governments have been quite openly talking of 'vaccine passports' that citizens will instead be coerced - an illegal act in itself - by the restrictions they will face for not complying.


"I observe pogrom-like moods in all these networks and conspiracy myths."

In the interview, Ramelow attempted to link last weekend's arson attack on the Robert Koch Institute, Germany's federal disease control agency, to the anti-lockdown movement. However, the attackers - who were seen by security guards throwing molotov cocktails at the facility - have not been caught and no evidence has been produced to indicate a political motive. The facility was reportedly targeted with a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack by hackers several days before the firebombing.

The leftist politician also sought to link the anti-lockdown protesters to a bizarre act of vandalism earlier this month on Berlin's Museum Island, a crime German media strove to pin on conspiracy theorists and the QAnon movement. Dozens of artworks and artifacts, including a reconstruction of an ancient Greek Pergamon altar, were defaced with an unknown "oily substance."

Ramelow claimed the beliefs of the anti-lockdown protesters were part of an insidious undercurrent of "irrationalism" which was responsible for wild stories about the island.


Comment: Ramelow is projecting because it's clear that the lockdowns are one of the most irrational actions in play at the moment.


"They say the Pergamon Altar is the Witches' Sabbath," the politician pointed out. Indeed, "they" say much more than that - former vegan celebrity chef Attila Hildmann has claimed that the altar is actually the nexus of the "global satanism scene," even accusing Chancellor Angela Merkel of performing "human sacrifices" on it with her globalist pals. It is unclear how all this is related to the anti-lockdown protests, however.


Comment: It's easier for Ramelow to smear the protests with the theories of a few than to address the many mainstream professionals calling out the blatant and baseless lies used to justify the lockdown.


German officials have sought to label anti-lockdown protesters as security threats before, in particular after the August incident in which a small faction of protesters marching in Berlin leaped over metal barricades and evaded riot police to "storm" the Reichstag building. To add to the political outrage that followed, some of the intruders were brandishing the imperial German flag popular with the Reichsburgers.

While the splinter group received the lion's share of media attention, including grandstanding denunciations from Merkel's Christian Democratic Union and its political allies, this happened during a much larger demonstration. Tens of thousands more protesters massed near the Brandenburg Gate to show their opposition to the strict controls placed on Germans amid the pandemic, and mass protests mostly went without incident.

While Merkel pledged late last month not to enact a second economy-destroying nationwide lockdown, her government has steadily been applying more pressure as cases creep up. A partial lockdown is set to take effect next week, with restaurants, theaters, gyms, and swimming pools closing and private gatherings limited to 10 people. Schools will remain open.


Comment: That Merkel and Macron both announced that they would not enforce a second lockdown, only to do so a month or so later, hints that perhaps neither of them are calling the shots: Macron orders France under de facto house arrest following Germany with new lockdown orders


Berlin has pointed to a steep uptick in Covid-19 cases to justify the crackdown, even though the rise has not been accompanied by a surge in deaths as happened during the initial wave of cases. A Bavarian testing lab was found to be churning out a stream of false positives earlier this week, with 58 of 60 tests wrongly diagnosed as infected. Economic Minister Peter Altmaier downplayed the issue, suggesting it was only a problem at that one facility.