German COVID Demonstrators
Who are they and what do they want?
At 7pm every Monday evening 150 or so people gather in front of the City Hall in a small town just outside of Ulm, Germany. To stumble upon them one might be forgiven for thinking they are some local walking club. If these were normal times one might even think a tour bus had just dropped a large group for a walking tour of the city. That’s because of how unremarkable the group looks. Every demographic is represented from small children in strollers to octogenarians. There are labourers, kindergarten teachers, engineers and pensioners. They embrace strangers as though they are meeting old friends and the mood is jovial. And yet, according to local media reports, this group are far-right infiltrated agitants and conspiracy-theorists who don’t care a whit for the pain and suffering of COVID’s victims. It seems hard to believe. Could this seemingly wholesome slice of German society really be so adept at hiding such hateful and extreme sentiments? I wanted to find out who they are and what they want.
Since before Christmas groups of ‘Spaziergänger’ or walkers have been gathering in cities, towns and villages across Germany to protest against state-imposed COVID measures, mandatory vaccinations and a perceived lack of transparency about the pandemic from the government and the media. In most corners of the media these walkers are treated, at best, with derision and at worst they are portrayed as violent, far-right, anti-democratic and cruelly indifferent to those who have suffered from or lost loved ones to COVID. What is missing from almost every report is an analysis of who these people are and why they march.
I have been accompanying the walkers in the Ulm region for four weeks and I attended one major walk in Ulm in their company. These are just some of their stories.
Paul (all names changed for privacy) is a middle-aged man and an engineer who works in Ulm. His family no longer talk to him because he is unvaccinated. He is divorced, rarely sees his adult children and seems somewhat isolated. He is upset that his children took the vaccine and is deeply worried that they will suffer serious side effects in the future. He told me his passion is competing in triathlons and he was an enthusiastic member of his local triathlon club. He hasn’t been able to train with his team for some time because of his vaccination status. The swimming pool will not let him in and the organiser is strongly pro-vaccine. He is despondent and talks about emigrating to South America, somewhere there are less restrictions. There is nothing for him here. He has little social contact and his main outlet, sport, which I feel is an essential mental and emotional health management tool for him, has been taken away. Paul is just one of many here who has had their entire social network taken away from them for the past two years. Maria, a woman in her 70s, says that she can no longer attend her weekly African drumming group, sauna sessions and Zumba classes — all of which keep her fit and balanced in her advancing years. She worries about the physical, emotional and mental impact that COVID restrictions are having on other older people.
Alina is a middle-aged kindergarten teacher. She is originally from Romania and moved to Germany after the fall of the Ceaușescu dictatorship but says that what is happening in Germany now is worse than anything she personally experienced in Romania. Her primary reason for walking is for personal freedom. She is concerned at how German laws or ‘grundsätze’ regarding individual freedom are being swept aside. She is not alone. This reference to ‘grundsätze’ is a recurring theme among walkers, especially those who are old enough to remember the fall of Communism. Martin, an 82-year old, says that he is walking because he feels that the fear being generated by the media and government reminds him of what his parents experienced in 1930s Germany. He is concerned that such recklessness can only serve to foster hate for the unvaccinated and divide the nation. His fear is, perhaps, well founded.
Week after week journalists from the local Südwest Presse have written negative headlines about the walks. The most recent print headline states “Walkers Harshly Criticised” quoting the head of anaesthesiology at the local hospital. He claims the walkers lack respect for the families of COVID victims. The framing is a hard stretch and reports little on what is happening on the ground. It makes no mention of who the walkers are and what they want.
I witnessed the journalist who wrote that article at work that night. From her article, one could get the feeling that she did not attend the walk so little understanding of it was on display in her reporting. And yet, she was intimately involved in the walk. Throughout the night she provoked the walkers, weaving in and out through them, taking hundreds of photos, many of them close up photographs of their faces. As I walked with Alina, the journalist came up to us in a confrontational manner at least six times. She took very intrusive pictures. Alina, fearful for her job, pulled her hood up and placed her hand before her face each time, which seemed only to encourage the reporter. An elderly lady before us politely asked the reporter to stop taking photos of her which the journalist provocatively dismissed: “I can do what I want”. Nobody at the walk that night needed to wait for the print edition the following morning to get the gist of her story. Her intimidation tactics — confronting walkers with the threat of being shamed in the press — were a clear attempt to instigate crowd trouble for headlines, something which has been a recurring tactic used by Südwest Presse reporters over the four weeks. Despite having failed to stir up confrontation each of these four weeks, their headlines have been relentlessly negative and reliant on narratives parroted from the national press — agitant protestors diminishing the pain of Covid victims and their families, as mentioned above, being just one example.
Alina, Martin and those who join the walk away from the bright lights of the city centre are justified in their mistrust of the media. Many of the younger people walking say that they have zero faith in the media to report honestly on CORONA statistics or to report fairly on their marches. They have a point.
At the end of my second week with the walkers I am approached by a group of 5 students: two girls and three boys. They are all from the same local trade school. They say that the pressure from their teachers to get vaccinated is overwhelming. In Germany, students from the age of 12 can be vaccinated and there has been a strong government and media push for all students to do so. The students say that they feel they have no voice against the vaccine. One girl says that they are required to write a graded ‘argumentation’ (debate) for and against the vaccine. However, every student knows that their teachers are heavily pro-vaccine so they dare not take an anti-vaccine stance for fear of getting a poor grade. One girl says her teacher explicitly stated that if they want a good grade they must take a pro-vaccine stance. As they tell their story, Diana, a retiree from Biberach, tells them that they are brave to be here despite the peer pressure and the pressure from their teachers. She empathises with their position at school and reassures them that attending the walk is an admirable display of the critical thinking they are being deprived of in school. Diana is articulate and reasoned. She does not condone or encourage reactionary feelings and doesn’t foster resentment against the school. She just encourages them to come back again and walk. This balanced and open attitude among walkers is common. In no case did I see vocal ideologues let alone far-right extremists at these walks.
These walkers are not the angry crackpots and extremists that many in the media portray them to be. To be sure there are a some who peddle conspiracy theories. Stefan, a middle-aged man who I met on my first night tells me he believes that the COVID vaccine alters people’s genes so that “big Pharma” or the government can trigger a kill-switch and depopulate the globe in three years’ time. He tells me a lot about how 5G is a population control tool and that there are metallic particles in the vaccine designed to harm the vaccinated. I have seen all of these theories floating around on the fringes of social media and Stefan gives me links to several telegram channels with advice from doctors with advice on how to purge the vaccine from your system. Stefan is very far down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole but he’s also a very nice man and, believe his theories or not, his argument, stripped to its core, is that he doesn’t trust the vaccine and has a right to refuse it without being marginalised by his government. Indeed, it seems entirely likely that excluding the likes of Stefan from society will only increase their anxieties and push them further into the fringes of the internet. That can only have disastrous consequences.
It must be pointed out that Stefan is an absolute minority among the walkers. While he radiates paranoia, the vast majority who do not want to get the vaccine for medical reasons are able to articulate thoughtful concerns with the most common being that this is a new vaccine rushed to the market and there is no way of knowing the short- and long-term side effects associated with it. Several in their twenties mention their fear of developing heart conditions (myocarditis) which BionTech themselves admit can be a side effect of their vaccination seen most often in males under 40. For fit, healthy sports-orientated men this is a legitimate concern. Others simply did not want to have a vaccination because they are young, fit and would rather be infected with the mild Omicron variant and build a natural immunity than have their immune system artificially manipulated through a vaccine.
Whatever one thinks of the reasons that these people are out on the streets, it is essential to remember that they are people. This is a diverse group of citizens who represent every age group and social class in the city. They are not violent. They are not far-right. They are not conspiracy-driven. Their reasons for marching are myriad and need to be addressed. They are grandmothers, grandfathers, mothers, fathers, sons and daughters. They are the family member and neighbour too afraid to open their mouth when table talk inevitably turns to current events. Efforts by some in the press to dehumanise and harass them is fomenting hate against these people and that will eventually lead to violent actions against them. This cannot be allowed to happen. Instead of steamrolling these people with compulsory vaccines, the government needs to address their grievances and if no agreement can be reached, the government needs to find a different way out of this pandemic. The current approach of dehumanisation and compelled vaccination under the threat of social and economic ruin for large swathes of the population will yield no solution.
