++ Corona protests: “Lying press” slogans in front of the ZDF studio – escalation in several cities
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Isabel Wetzel
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Delia Friess
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Katja Thorwarth
Nationwide, tens of thousands again demonstrated allegedly against corona measures on Monday evening. Sometimes this just seems like a pretext.
Update from January 4th, 2022, 6:25 a.m .: The slogan is reminiscent of the extreme right-wing “Pegida” movement: an elevator with several hundred opponents of the Corona policy held an interim rally on Monday evening in front of the ZDF capital city studio and shouted slogans such as “lying press”. A Tagesspiegel reporter published a video on Twitter, in which the slogans of the protesters could be heard.
According to the police, there were no violent incidents. At around 8:30 p.m. the registered elevator ended at Alexanderplatz in Berlin, where it had started. The German Association of Journalists spoke on Twitter of a “small radical minority of vaccine opponents, lateral thinkers, corona deniers, media haters and anti-democracy” who were in front of the ZDF capital studio. The solidarity of the association applies to the colleagues on site and in the building.
Corona protests: riots in “lateral thinkers” marches in several cities
+++ 10:35 p.m .: After escalations in Frankfurt and Fulda, the Corona protests in Magdeburg also broke out on Monday evening. The police inspection of the state capital spoke of broken police chains, bottles thrown at officials and pyrotechnics. According to initial findings, none of the police officers were injured. According to the police, there were around 2500 people in the state capital. The gathering, like most in the region, was not indicated, it said.
In total, thousands of people in Saxony-Anhalt and all of Germany again took to the streets in protest against the state Corona measures. An exact overview of all protests was not yet available in the evening.
Corona demonstrations: riots in Fulda – police attacked
+++ 9:55 p.m .: The year 2022 starts again with numerous protests against the state corona measures. In several cities across Germany, more than 20,000 people took to the streets on Monday (January 3rd, 2022). Sometimes there were also counter-demonstrations. Meetings, demonstrations and “walks” or “chance meetings” also took place in Hesse, including in Frankfurt, Kassel, Fulda and Gießen. In addition to riots in Frankfurt, the Hessian police are particularly concerned with the corona protests in Fulda.
The officers deployed triggered a meeting here on the evening. Shortly after 6 p.m., around 1000 people in the Heinrich-von-Bibra-Platz area had to take a lift through the city center, as the Fuld police reported on Monday evening. Despite repeated requests, the demonstrators did not adhere to the requirements of the city of Fulda. They did not wear masks and did not keep their distances.
When the officers stopped the elevator around 6:40 p.m., one of the participants attacked a police officer. This defended itself against the attack with the use of pepper spray. The police officer was slightly injured in the arm. The 35-year-old attacker was provisionally arrested.
Lateral thinker demonstration in Frankfurt escalates: Witnesses report arrests
+++ 8:25 p.m .: A demonstration against the corona measures is escalating in Frankfurt. According to several testimonies that have not been confirmed so far, there were violent clashes between the police and demonstrators in the area of the Liebfrauenberg in the city center. Numerous people are said to have been arrested. Apparently 50 to 100 people took part in the riots.
In the coming days, representatives of the “lateral thinking” movement in Frankfurt announced a protest against the corona measures. Via the messenger service Telegram, some people called for a whole “long-term protest week” against Corona in Frankfurt *.
Corona protests in Frankfurt on New Year’s Day: 300 lateral thinkers in the city
Update, 6.30 p.m.: On New Year’s Day, around 300 lateral thinkers had already roamed Frankfurt am Main. They declared the anti-corona protests “walks”. The police broke them up because the demonstrations were not registered. This is also reported by “Tag24”. Thorsten Stolz (SPD *), District Administrator of the Main-Kinzig-Kreis, has now appealed to the citizens to stay away from the events of the “lateral thinkers”.
What is harmlessly declared as a “stroll” or “chance meeting” is “nothing more than an attempt to circumvent or overturn the right to assemble” and has led in many places to violent attacks, verbal attacks and other attacks against security and law enforcement officers as well as political mandate holders , Proud on Monday (January 3rd, 2022) in Gelnhausen.
Lateral thinker protests no harmless “walks” or “random meetings” – district administrator warns
“Here people take to the streets, die, use all the freedoms and opportunities of our democracy and at the same time talk about a dictatorship,” said Stolz. He does not want to accuse everyone who participates in the “lateral thinker” events that they want to abolish democracy.
But it must be clear to everyone that opponents of democracy are part of this movement. “The mixture of vaccination opponents, corona deniers, Reich citizens, right-wing extremists and conspiracy theorists makes the composition of this movement so dangerous.”
Corona protests: “lateral thinkers” gather in several cities
First report from Monday, January 3rd, 2021, 3 p.m .: Frankfurt / Mannheim / Rostock – At the beginning of the new year 2022, the first people took to the streets against the Corona measures *. On January 2nd, several hundred people will gather in the city center in Schweinfurt, Lower Franconia, according to a police spokesman. In Saarbrücken, several thousand opponents of the mandatory vaccination have marched through the city center. The police estimated their total number at around 5,500 people.
The police are actually registering in many places a surge of protests*. While there were still 36 registered meetings in Brandenburg in the first week of December 2021, the number more than doubled to 95 at the end of the month. According to the police, most of the protest marches are not registered. On the last Monday in the old year 2021 * alone, a total of 19,000 people took to the streets at 75 gatherings in 62 locations. In Saxony-Anhalt – where there are no numerical restrictions on demonstrations – there were around 16,700 at 37 gatherings on the same day.
Protection of the Constitution: AfD wants to start corona protests
Observers agree that parts of the scene are becoming more and more radical and that the AfD * is also trying to profit from the anti-measures protest. Even if the AfD is trying to tie in with the content of the “lateral thinker” scene as early as 2020, the Baden-Württemberg constitutional protection agency is now making increased efforts by the AfD to attract new followers at demos against the corona measures in the south-west.
“As part of the demonstrations, the extremist AfD sub-structures are trying to open up new target groups and to advertise their own agenda,” said the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of the Interior to the editorial network Germany (Monday editions). In the south-west, the “Junge Alternative” (JA) and the formally dissolved so-called “wing” are observed.
Protest against Corona measures on Monday, January 3rd
In fact, a radicalization of the “lateral thinkers” * can be observed on Telegram in such a way that the corona measures can only be used as a pretext to attack the state apparatus. There is a text circulating there that implicitly calls for violence against “politicians and employees of the FRG”.
Protests against the corona measures have also been announced for Monday, January 3rd. In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, for example, people in Rostock and Schwerin want to take to the streets from 5 p.m. An event labeled as a “walk” is planned for Mannheim, where a counter-protest has also been announced. (ktho)* fr.de is an offer from IPPEN.MEDIA.