Germany’s coronavirus restrictions have sparked pushback from an eclectic legion of citizens. And although there weren’t notable infractions against Germany’s three-week coronavirus lockdown in March, it was the Germans who, with a massive rally in late August, led Europe in speaking out against coronavirus restrictions as a perceived assault on civil liberties.
“It was a great display of freedom and democracy from a cross section of society that will not conform silently to totalitarianism, whose political power we are now experiencing. A sign of hope,” wrote Silke Schroeder, a politically active real estate agent in Berlin, on her Facebook page.
Schroeder was among the approximately 38,000 attendees who marched to Berlin’s iconic Brandenburg Gate to protest Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government’s coronavirus restrictions, even though they are fewer and looser than those in other places, such as Los Angeles and Israel.
In Germany, masks are required in retail shops and on public transportation. Large gatherings, including Oktoberfest, are banned. But schools, restaurants, playgrounds and bars are open — albeit with precautionary measures taken. Organizers of the rally, a group called Querdenken, whose website says its mission is to protect Germany’s “Bill of Rights,” lawyered-up to win its right to assemble amid a pandemic.
Schroeder was determined to counter the German media’s characterization of the rally as a rowdy hodgepodge of social misfits: far-right agitators, neo-Nazis, conspiracy theorists and anarchists.
“It took place: with an impressive number of participants, calm, peaceful and, in most cases, while maintaining the safety distance,” Schroeder continued in her post.
“We copied China instead of Sweden and Japan. Does anything else need to be said?” — Phil Assouline
Two normally opposing crowds intersected in the Berlin streets. On the right were Merkel critics, who believe she trod on their rights upon welcoming hundreds of thousands of Muslim migrants. On the left were the “Green” anti-vaxxers who believe world leaders, such as Bill Gates, are lying in wait to force a global vaccine. Attorney and leading anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was the marquee speaker.
“Governments love pandemics,” he said to the cheering crowd at Berlin’s Victory Column landmark. “They love pandemics for the same reason they love war. Because it gives them the ability to impose controls on the population that the population would otherwise never accept.”
Israel is in its controversial second full lockdown, restricting citizens’ movements to travel to a protest to 1 kilometer (about two-thirds of a mile) and shutting down “nonessential” businesses. Los Angeles is in its sixth month of a partial lockdown that has seen most schools converted into “summer camps” and restaurants not allowed to serve customers indoors. Unlike Germany, however, anti-lockdown protests in California and Israel largely have been grassroots, and in California, sporadic.
At the height of #StayHomeStaySafe, Los Angeles attorney and conservative media personality Barak Lurie wrote an article titled “War? This Is the Opposite of War,” arguing that during a war, people put their lives on the line to save liberty; to fight COVID-19, governments are encouraging the opposite. Lurie believes the lockdown is politically motivated; he believes there are double standards for Black Lives Matter protesters and church or synagogue attendees.
“I’m very disappointed and I’m wondering: Why aren’t we fighting back? Why aren’t we standing up? We’re Americans after all,” he said from his L.A. office in an interview with the Journal.
With the easing of restrictions, he thinks Americans simply have become complacent. “It’s just barely tolerable enough here, so you say to yourself: Do I really need to protest?” Lurie said.
In Israel, American-born videographer Daniel Sass would have joined protests against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if they were explicitly opposing coronavirus restrictions. (Every Saturday night for more than three months, tens of thousands of people have gathered in Jerusalem calling for Netanyahu’s resignation in the wake of his indictment on corruption charges and amid allegations of his mishandling of the coronavirus.) A self-professed right-winger, he sees the protesters as an unfocused group of left-wing agitators. All that’s left for people who oppose the lockdown, he said, is to fume on social media.
“Why worry about terrorism anymore when we have become our own most dangerous enemy?” he wrote on Facebook before the Rosh Hashanah lockdown, which forced him to relocate his son’s bar mitzvah from the Kotel to a nearby forest.
“There isn’t data to support the complete economic closure, and every single day, you’re seeing more and more leaders come out and say the lockdown wasn’t necessary,” he told the Journal via telephone. Several Israeli hospital directors and Israel’s coronavirus “czar” Ronni Gamzu, have called a nationwide lockdown unnecessary.
“We copied China instead of Sweden and Japan,” Phil Assouline, a disgruntled Israeli political communications consultant and researcher, wrote on Facebook. “Does anything else need to be said?” When he spoke to the Journal via a video call, Assouline showed off the black flag hanging on his Tel Aviv window — a symbol of discontent with Netanyahu.
Assouline, who considers himself right-wing, said he fears Israel is devolving into totalitarianism, evidenced by recent legislation limiting protests against Netanyahu. “It brings history into a new perspective,” he said. “Governments have power no tyrant in history has ever had — keeping people locked at home indefinitely — all because of one word: virus.” Israel, he said, should have invested in expanding ICU capacity.
Schroeder, who is involved in conservative, pro-Israel groups, also was surprised Israel, under a right-wing government, took the lockdown route, which she considers a method of control favored by globalist, left-leaning politicians. “I think there was a certain expectation that certain countries, being more independent from a global agenda, would deal with [the coronavirus] differently, but on the financial level and power level, they have the same problems as politicians here,” she told the Journal.
So what explains the difference between German civil disobedience, and Israeli and Californian compliance when it comes to COVID-19 lockdown measures?
“There’s still that subconscious, ‘I don’t want to do anything that will harm my neighbor,’ ” Sass suggested. Law enforcement also deters people: In Israel, fines for violating restrictions range from 500 to 5,000 shekels ($145 to $1,450).
Assouline blamed Israelis’ lack of appreciation for civil liberties, given the Jewish state was founded in large part on religion and fear for survival. He believes other Western populaces are more politically sophisticated. “Israelis are not intimidated by rockets, but three weeks of news from Italy and we all give up?” he said. “It’s terrifying. Rights are not a given. It took so much blood and misery for humans to earn them.”
Lurie has drawn another conclusion: “The reality is that Germany and many European countries are taking this much more realistically than America, but they don’t have an election coming up.”
Orit Arfa is a Berlin-based journalist. Her second novel is titled “Underskin.”
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