“Vaccination makes you free” is written on one poster, the “Great Reset” is mentioned on another. You can read about the “war against corona terror and the pandemic of the hypnotized” and hear about a “position of strength” in which those gathered see themselves. According to the police, up to 3,700 people followed another demonstration call by the group “Munich stands up” on Wednesday evening in Munich’s Maxvorstadt, opponents of mandatory vaccination, pandemic deniers and supporters of conspiracy ideologies.
At first it was quite peaceful. But after the official end of the rally, the situation escalated in the evening: the police could not prevent around 500 demonstrators from moving in forbidden demonstration trains towards the city center, as they announced during the night. The demonstrators shouted slogans against what they saw as a threatening “dictatorship” and waved an upside-down flag of Germany, a symbol of the citizens of the Reich. Another group of around 500 people who were moving to Theresienstraße could be stopped. In the evening, there was initially talk of up to 2,000 corona deniers who had moved away from the stationary meeting. According to the police, the leader of the meeting is now being investigated for holding a meeting that has not been reported.
The originally approved rally in Ludwigstrasse ended around 8 p.m. A total of 28 people were arrested in the evening, among other things for insults or assault. More than 18 protesters were reported for violating the mask requirement.
The debates had already been heated beforehand: should one put up with the city’s requirements or not? Because this time the demonstrators were not allowed to march through the streets, but had to gather stationary on Ludwigstrasse. According to the city, the applicant had accepted a rally in the middle section of Ludwigstrasse, apparently grudgingly.
On his Telegram channel, he first fanned his followers’ displeasure against the “official puppet theater”, only to row back the next day and call on the participants to hold back and hold a “masked ball”: “If you are too desperate, too angry to be there to participate, it might be better not to go. ” For him it was obviously a question of the right tactics: “This is about low-threshold protest that as many as possible can join,” wrote Melchior I. on his Telegram channel. “The Wednesday parade is only part of the protest and protest is only part of the resistance.”
On Monday, according to observers, supporters of the obscure “SHAEF” Internet sect had mingled with the participants of an unregistered meeting on Marienplatz. Its leader, an alleged “Major Jansen” arrested in Baden-Württemberg at the beginning of December, had published “enemy lists” on the Telegram messenger service and pronounced death sentences.
“The mood in the relevant chat groups is getting sharper”
Supporters of right-wing conspiracy theories also take part in the discussions about the Wednesday demonstrations, among other things with the slogan “Let’s go, Brandon”, a symbol of militant Trump fans. “As long as the chives are calm,” wrote a user about the Munich police in the run-up to the rally, they will do that too. “But as soon as there is imminent danger and they attack you for no reason, it is over and an attack takes place.” A speaker from the podium said they did not want to cause any inconvenience to the police.
The Munich police were initially on duty with almost 400 officers in the evening, but reinforcements were available. They had the task of monitoring compliance with the requirements for the registered rally: distance, FFP2 mask compulsory, no demonstration, ban on yellow stars labeled “unvaccinated”. During the rally, the organizers distanced themselves from anti-Semitic slogans, which could also be seen on posters that evening, next to various national flags and the rainbow flag.
The scene, which has also emerged in Munich since May 2020, is currently making people as mobile as it was last autumn, emphasized the specialist information center for right-wing extremism Munich (Firm), which is funded by the city, in a statement published on Wednesday a few hours before the rally. The hard core of the scene is happy about the new “rank and file”, as it was recently called in one of their videos, meaning the participants who have recently appeared at the meetings. “The mood in the relevant chat groups is growing,” said a Firm spokesman. “There is also talk of illegal and violent actions.”
Those who went to Ludwigstrasse in Munich on Wednesday evening, on the other hand, cheered themselves as “a civil rights movement the likes of which the world has never seen”.