So there he is on a mobile stage on Munich’s Königsplatz, in front of a red heart with the imprint “Healthy without compulsion”. A rally at the beginning of March against the Corona policy, registered by the AfD Bavaria, and in the middle of it was the former state head Petr Bystron. “Vaccinations don’t protect at all,” the member of the Bundestag states, even if “the enraptured political caste” claims this. Bystron often says everything “lies” in his speech about the pandemic, and the audience choruses “lies, lies”. Once he chants a slogan for people to repeat: “We are more.” Of course, that’s an extremely bold thesis that day, the police report only counts 130 participants – and many times that number of emergency services.
The spring spectacle would probably not be worth considering if Bystron – wearing a blue high-visibility vest, his hands usually clasped on his stomach – didn’t suddenly shout: “We are the true friends of democracy, we are the AfD.” And then his right arm shoots up.
A wave to the guests, a somewhat artificial declaration of war? Or a hand gesture, which according to the Criminal Code means “using symbols of unconstitutional organizations” – a Hitler salute? Courts in Germany have to deal with it again and again, sometimes the evaluation even involves mathematics: the angle, how many degrees of stretching of the arm? In any case, Bystron was reported during the meeting, and the public prosecutor’s office then investigated; Officials also went to the AfD headquarters near Munich to secure material. The staff there were cooperative, so there was no forced search. Later, the public prosecutor’s office issued penal orders against Bystron, whose immunity was lifted by the Bundestag. Accordingly, he “consciously” held his outstretched right arm in the direction of the rally in the Hitler salute; Exact practice is not important if the “great form of National Socialist tyranny” is clearly recognizable as such for an objective group of people.
The district court of Munich, however, shared this view according to information from the Süddeutsche Zeitung not and now rejected the penalty order. When looking at Bystron from the side, one could “quite” agree with the public prosecutor’s office, it was said in justification. Viewed from the front, however, this is not tenable, it can be seen “that the outer surface of the hand is pointing outwards and not upwards and the thumb is not laid out either.” Also from the context of the speech, a Hitler salute or a deliberately confusingly similar movement is “inconclusive”. So it could have been a “merely accidental gesture during the speech”, nothing else could be proven.
The public prosecutor immediately lodged a complaint
The case is not over yet. As a spokesman for the court said when asked, the public prosecutor’s office lodged an immediate complaint: The decision was “therefore not final”, the files will be submitted to the regional court as the competent complaints court for a decision. Bystron himself had denied the accusation that he thought it was “intimidating members of the opposition”. He sees the district court’s decision as a “disgrace for the public prosecutor’s office”.
The regional court is on the train. Maybe it’s all just a misunderstanding. In the career of the AfD politician, coincidences and nonsensical moments are conspicuous. A selection: A photo of Bystron with well-known neo-Nazis in a beer garden a few years ago? Pure chance acquaintances when you couldn’t get admission to an event next door. A selfie with an activist from the “Identitarian Movement” observed by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution at the Wiesn? Similar circumstance. The scandal surrounding Bystron’s taxpayer-financed trip to South Africa, where he is said to have held target practice with racist paramilitaries? An organization of “civil society” in his eyes, a few shots only because he himself is a hunter. Or the affair about disruptors in the Bundestag 2020, including an activist who mobbed MPs and was on Bystron’s invitation list? Got on the list without his knowledge, sort of an accident.