Enlarge image
Not an easy pandemic winter
Photo: Roland Weihrauch / dpa
The unpleasant events of this second corona year include evening torchlight procession in front of the private homes of women politicians.
Recently, for example, the apartment of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania's Prime Minister Manuela Schwesig was the target of angry demonstrators after an angry crowd protested in front of the house of the Saxon Health Minister Petra Köpping a few days earlier.
Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania's Interior Minister Christian level, like Köpping and Schwesig a member of the SPD, assessed the process in Schwerin as an attempt to "bring about Saxon conditions". The 400 demonstrators had hardly come from Grimma and Görlitz that evening, and neither demonstrations in general nor torchlight procession in particular are Saxon inventions. Of course, Interior Minister level said a few more sentences about the matter, but the rhetorical trick with the "Saxon conditions" stood out - because it sounded as if the real problem was a good 300 kilometers further south, at least far from Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania .
The Thuringian Interior Minister Georg Maier (SPD) used a similar narrative, who claims to have recognized "a certain tourism" in the protests, namely from "demonstrators from other federal states who are obviously prepared to use violence."
Dangerous reflexes take the place of dialogue
Saxony's Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer (CDU), in turn, expressed indignation at the protests, which were often organized online, "that the operators of Telegram from Dubai are idly watching as death threats are spread in their network."
According to Kretschmer, you have to take action against this agitation.
"Otherwise the EU, the federal government must, Apple and Android must restrict their use."
With this statement, Kretschmer achieved a feat: He not only blamed people outside of Saxony for the radicalization in the anti-vaccination scene, but also demanded a solution from people outside of Saxony at the same time.
The hut is on fire in the Free State - but it's Dubai's fault, and Berlin has to deliver now.
Oh, if only it were that easy.
What can be said about the rescue of Kretschmer's honor: He tried it for a long time with dialogue, even listened to extremely right-wing angry citizens and sometimes fought extremely bravely in the process.
This strategy is likely to have failed - but that does not mean that the self-sacrificing listening should be replaced by a blanket "It's the other's fault!"
These “others” are everywhere: in Bruchsal, strangers recently stuck “Jewish stars” in Nazi optics on shop windows, along with the slogan “Unvaccinated people are not wanted here”.
In Hanover, the police reported regular clashes with rule breakers "up to and including rustic acts of resistance."
In Schweinfurt, the authorities reported up to 2000 demonstrators, some of them violent, and ten arrests.
A rally for 14 emergency services with injuries ended in Greiz.
Anyone looking for Schweinfurt and Greiz, Hanover and Bruchsal on maps will quickly see that the situation is not all Saxon.
The problem is particularly pronounced in parts of East Germany, but it affects the entire republic, the whole of society.
All of us.
Even people who act as role models stand out with questionable requests to speak. The Freiberg CDU boss and building mayor Holger Reuter compared coronavirus measures with the genocide of the Armenians. The mayor of Teuchern in Saxony-Anhalt, Marcel Schneider, stood at the microphone at an anti-vaccination demonstration and said: "I no longer see democratic conditions." Such incidents, but also the debates about celebrities like Joshua Kimmich and Volker Bruch show how widespread the diffuse mixture of skepticism and anger is now.
A banal insight is all the more essential: not all unvaccinated people have something to do with “lateral thinkers” or right-wing extremists, not everyone who hesitates welcomes riots or takes part in torch-lit marches themselves.
And even the thousands of people who are currently demonstrating every week alongside enemies of the constitution against all kinds of things are still far from representing the majority of the population.
Accordingly, it is questionable if, in parallel to the debate about dangerous radicalization in the “lateral thinker” milieu, all those who have not been vaccinated are pilloried.
The Saarland Prime Minister Tobias Hans recently did that, the CDU politician spoke on ZDF of a clear message to the unvaccinated: "You are now out of social life."
Yes, from an epidemiological point of view, particularly strict rules of conduct should apply to unvaccinated people.
But the impression should never be created that more than ten million people are now outside the door of troublemakers who have to spend the rest of the lesson in the school hallway.
“Get out of social life”, that is also part of the truth, were quite a number of the unvaccinated before: low-wage earners can hardly afford cultural participation, migrants are excluded from language barriers, many East Germans feel themselves to be second-class citizens for a variety of reasons anyway.
So what to do
First: we have to differentiate, not between regions, but between problems.
It is right to take consistent action against extremists and criminals and to stop the rampant spread of hatred, for example on Telegram.
At the same time, there must be offers and real dialogue with those who are insecure and frustrated, but have not yet slipped into delusional worlds or fantasies of violence.
Second: Anyone who bears responsibility can no longer get away with pushing the problem on - neither to Saxony or Dubai nor to other parties and politicians.
Many people will probably already experience at Christmas that the unvaccinated are not a radical sect somewhere in the East German mountainous region, but part of our community everywhere.
Then you might meet your grandmother, who fears supposed "long-term consequences", or your uncle, who wants to arm his immune system against the approaching omicron wave with vitamin capsules alone.
Olaf Scholz recently said that he also feels like the Federal Chancellor of those "who are skeptical or who have not yet gotten around to it or were not yet convinced that they will be vaccinated".
This concept can be summarized as follows: Remaining in the conversation instead of marginalizing it, as exhausting as that may be.
If this attitude also comes to the living room of the republic, the Christmas peace can be saved in many places.
