For the first time in six weeks, opponents of the compulsory vaccination and state health measures discussed in the Bundestag on Wednesday, but also pandemic deniers and conspiracy believers, are meeting at a registered stationary rally on Munich’s Königsplatz. The group “Munich Stands Up” has called for this, which in recent weeks has often canceled its meetings itself after they were moved from the city to the Theresienwiese.
Demonstration trains and unannounced meetings on the topic of Corona are still prohibited in Munich on Wednesday – administrative courts have confirmed the city’s general decree. With around 1000 officers, the police want to check compliance with the regulations in the evening.
Melchior Ibing, the spokesman for “Munich Stands Up”, also called on his supporters – around 3,000 were expected – in a video not to violate the conditions and also to put on the FFP2 masks hated by many activists, “if you see the city want to annoy”. This triggered heated discussions within his group in the run-up to the rally.
In the messenger service Telegram, the organizers of the rally had to be dubbed “systematics” who only wanted to “play pop stars on stage”. A “trap” was the stationary rally on Königsplatz, some believed.
While some participants in the online discussions were happy to have a registered and therefore legal opportunity to show their protest, others announced that they would under no circumstances wear “slave masks”, “muzzles”, “torture and humiliation instruments”. Many wanted to use the event to leave Königsplatz for illegal demonstrations. The police announced at noon that they were prepared for such scenarios. “Trying to walk” will be prevented and punished with ads.
Five speakers are registered for the evening
The stage program announced for the evening was reminiscent of an event by the scene party “Die Basis”: Three out of five planned speakers had run for the Bundestag as direct or list candidates for the smallest party in the autumn, including Ibing himself.
According to “Munich is getting up”, only one of the speakers should speak about the “vaccination campaign and compulsory vaccination”, the others about “the political situation and the obviously enforced division of society”, about the city of Munich and “about the state of democracy and that for a long time smoldering crisis of the party system”.
According to the announcement, a GEZ refuser should use his appearance to demand “multipolar” public broadcasting. According to his homepage, by this he means the inclusion of right-wing populist, conspiracy ideological and Russian-based media.
Counter-demonstrators on the Odeonsplatz
In the evening, up to 500 counter-demonstrators from “Munich Solidarity” wanted to gather on Odeonsplatz and demonstrate for the corona vaccination. You shouldn’t look on, she said in her call on Twitter, as “Schwurbler” on Königsplatz “play down Nazi crimes by walking side by side with fascists and comparing themselves to victims of the Nazi dictatorship”.
Leading activists from Pegida Munich, the NPD and the neo-Nazi party “The Third Way” had mingled with the unannounced rallies by corona deniers in the past few weeks.
In the run-up to the rally on Königsplatz, sentences such as: “You won’t get any further with this system. Demand that the Federal Republic of Germany has to go!” and “Once that’s over, the groups should remain and renamed to: Now it’s tidying up… in the federal government”.