For several weeks Bonn’s Monday evening is under the sign of Corona protests. The resentments behind those protests are against the ongoing measures of the national, federal and communal governments and administrations to curb the pandemic. But there are several signs and proof that those protests are organised and operated by groups and individuals from the right-wing extremist spectre.

Mentioned groups and individuals represent the first row of those protests; banners and slogans are carried on by discernible fascists. So is their substance: The protection of the homeland, protection not for all but for those who follow the protest leaders with no sign of constructive criticism. It seems that the organisers of the Monday protests take the pandemic and its measures as pretext.
It is ovbious that the protests are about fascist hegemony on the streets. The call for protest is explicitly made to be held in Bonn, the former capital, where historically fascists, conspiracy believers and other misanthropes hardly had any public platform in the past.
Recent events must not be uncommented.

We don’t accept that public protests are dominated by right-wing enemies of life and encourage all citiziens and inhabitants who also don’t accept that those people have any space and platform in this city to take part in the rallys against those protests, next on Monday 03.01.22 (as well as 10.01. & 17.01. and the maybe following Mondays) at 17:30h (4:30pm) on Bonn Market Square.
Please wear a mask and get tested (not obligatory).

We, as emancipatory union, stand in tradition of societal participation and basic democratic together. There is a lot of legitimate dissatisfaction with Corona policies. Necessary demands are articulated too less such as deprivatisation of the health sector along the massive expansion of it as well as improving working conditions. Also the liberalisation of vaccine patents and actual reduction of risky contacts through a massive economic lockdown instead of regulations of privacy. In the second year of this pandemic it’s still obvious that policitcs and the market have failed. No major changes have been made. But we are promised and fooled that we can go back to normal very soon if we just accept this or that restrictional measurement. The promise to get back to “normal” has been a lie all along, a lief in which its propagators probably believed themselves.

Humanity won’t get rid of a virus with this dangerous characteristics neither easy nor fast. We demand a long-term strategy, binding assurances, liberalisation of vaccine patens and real social securities of those who suffer by the Corona measurements.

Those demands could only be met by policies who put their money where their mouth is and who respect human rights. Fascists taking the streets followed by thousands is no improvement in democratic participation in the pandemic.

Freie Arbeiter*innen Union
December 2021