Back to the 'Old Normal'? Swiss Daily NZZ posts op-ed suggesting Germany’s 'illiberal majority should apologise to the unvaccinated'

While this is an op-ed by a junior editor, it is further evidence that even legacy media appears to be learning, albeit at a glacial pace

You’ve gotta give it to (some of) the Swiss: they are quite different from their neighbours in Covidistan, both greater (Germany) and smaller (Austria): yes, in spring 2020—when I was still living among them—the Federal Council (Bundesrat, i.e., the government) was very, very much aligned with all other countries shutting down.

Yet, there were quite a few ‘oddities’: you see, Switzerland was among the last countries in Europe to go into ‘lockdown’, i.e., I recall myself commuting to teach into the second half of March 2020. And once in off-seasonal ‘hibernation’, one could still hear regular conversations on public transport or in (outside) supermarkets about how ‘odd’ if was that there were no shutdowns on construction sites and the like.

Still, spring and summer 2020 was also the summer of #BLM, which also affected Switzerland and showed the intersections of US cultural influence (which some might call ‘soft power’ or ‘imperialism’) and the oddities these entail in countries that don’t have a sizeable population of African-Americans protesting ‘fiery but mostly peaceful’, as that infamous CNN report once held.

Countries like Switzerland, you know. Still, there were protests in support of #BLM, and like elsewhere in the West, these were tolerated by authorities—‘despite’ the then-not-so-well-known dangers of Sars-Cov-2. What wasn’t tolerated, though, were much smaller early protests by those—like my former neighbour (a small business owner) and his wife (also a small business owner)—who were forced to cease working while bills and esp. rent were supposed to be paid nonetheless.

Care to guess how the authorities treated that kind of protest?

Fortunately, you don’t have to, as an older piece of mine from October 2021 will tell you:

The Kiss of Death for Free Speech in Central Europe

And now ‘the Swiss’ have done it again: they are clearly showing that this Covid-19 mindf****** must stop, as the below translation of an op-ed that appeared two days ago in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung—Switzerland’s leading NYT equivalent—shows.

Written by Beatrice Achterberg, the piece is entitled very aptly: I have the impression that, would a lot of German-speakers read it, it would perhaps cause a lot of introspection. Or angry refusal and continued accusations.

Without much further ado, here’s Ms. Achterberg’s op-ed (paywalled); as always, translation and emphases are mine, all my comments etc. are clearly marked as such.

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Germany Before the Third Corona Autumn: The Illiberal Majority Should Ask for Forgiveness

Last year, anyone in Germany who had doubts about vaccination was chastised by politicians and the media that they were terrorising the country and should thus be ostracised. History must not be repeated.

The German government’s plans for the third Corona Autumn should be available in the next few days. Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach (SPD) and Justice Minister Marco Buschmann (FDP) are still fine-tuning the bill to amend to the Infection Protection Act. According to reports, there will be no more school closures, lockdowns, and curfews. At least.

Yet—what about freedom of assembly, mask mandates, testing obligations, 2-G and 3-G rules [i.e., vaccine passports]? These questions still keep their explosive societal potential.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz was not just a little off, but he was completely wrong trying to deny deep societal divisions last winter. The truth is: Germany’s pandemic policy has divided society. The chasms opened up by the Covid mandates continue to run through public life today, through businesses, and sometimes through living rooms at home. And politicians are responsible for all of this, as they didn’t merely contradict the unvaccinated and vaccination sceptics, but branded them as scapegoats and culprits.

‘Get out of public live’

A few examples from last autumn: FDP politician Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann accused the unvaccinated minority of ‘terrorising’ the majority. Unvaccinated people should ‘get out of public life’, demanded CDU politician Tobias Hans (this was before he was voted out as Prime Minster [governor] of Saarland). And Friedrich Merz, now head of the Christian Democrats, pondered the introduction of the 2G rule in the workplace, i.e., access only for vaccinated and recovered people. This would also have denied healthy people access to the workplace. A transgression of many boundaries in a liberal society.

Media also unquestioningly joined in. One should ‘point the finger at them’, wrote RTL editor Nikolaus Blome. ‘Discrimination of the Unvaccinated is Ethically Justified’, was the title of a guest contribution at Zeit Online [although very despicable and full of errors and ‘disinformation’, you could click here to read this abomination of an op-ed by Thomas Beschorner and Martin Kolmar, both economists and professors of economic ethics at the University of St. Gall, no less; note, please, that I’m not against these or any other opinions, but given the dynamics of free speech, I’m of the conviction that those who enter the public sphere must face their critics, hence I think these two professors of economic ethics (Wirtschaftsethik) should be happy they’re making a lot of money in these positions but otherwise hide under a rock]. Accusations rained down in the commentaries of public media. The tenor: Germany’s unvaccinated and vaccination sceptics are to blame for the lockdowns and the continued transmission of the virus.

If one wanted to show understanding for this mania, one could say: the concerned citizens simply did not know any better. With common sense, they could have realised at the time that the so-called Zero Covid strategy was a dystopian mess, but one only knows with certainty now that the results are in of the failed large-scale experiments [of the failure of Zero Covid strategies] in countries such as China and New Zealand.

One particularly low point of the German Corona shaming was the media witch hunt of Joshua Kimmich. The FC Bayern München footballer had been hesitant about getting vaccinated citing missing long-term studies on possible side effects. Countless commentators, among them many top politicians, thus publicly berated him [redeten ihm deshalb ins Gewissen]. Sometimes Kimmich was reminded of his ‘role model function’, sometimes he was reprimanded for indirectly supporting the AfD [Alternative für Deutschland, Germany’s systemic right-of-the-CDU/CSU conservatives] with his stance. Karl Lauterbach, not yet federal minister [of health] back then, even wanted to personally vaccinate Kimmich. The freedom to decide about what goes into one’s own body seemed to have been completely forgotten.

[At that point, I’d also add a bunch of other ‘forgotten’—suppressed—things, including the freedom of expression and speech, the right to due process (no accusation outside a public courtroom), but then again: how is the intimated ‘support’ of a parliamentary party supposed to be ‘criminal’? I mean, one can reasonably argue that one dislikes this or that faction, but to slander a fellow citizen as supporting a party one doesn’t like without a shred of evidence is something I wouldn’t think is appropriate in any self-respecting democratic republic. Oh my, and now I’ve spilled the beans on this one, too, I suppose.]

Lost in the Depths of the Internet

As frightening as these clamours were, so was the silence of others. Take, e.g., the leading representatives of the Christian churches in Germany: no-one had the courage to defend those so denounced and called for proportionality. The spirit of health policy collectivism swept through the republic and strangled the doubters and sceptics. Yet, doubt is the oxygen of democracy.

[The silence of those who every Saturday and Sunday profess the Gospel while doing otherwise is particularly disturbing. Then again, if the Pope himself calls these experimental genetic injections ‘an act of charity’, what else could, or would, one expect?—Exactly: standing up for those on the margins of society, you know, like the Jesus is said to have done. Dear clergy: there’s but one Good Book for you, which is fine with me, but don’t you think that reading it aloud is enough? I don’t think so.]

As a result, many who felt that they were not being heard or treated unfairly took to the streets, as well as went to the depths of the internet where anti-democratic tendencies could grow. Slogans that placed the Covid mandates into the same category as National Socialism found favour and angry denouncements of ‘fake news’ [Lügenpresse in the original; I know, it’s not a good translation, but in this context, these denouncements by, e.g., Mr. Trump, resemble the sentiment conveyed by the author quite accurately, in addition to its conventional companions: those who reject ‘vaccination’ would also be ‘deplorables’ and the like] became louder all the while there was also rising hostility against virologists and attacks on politicians’ offices. All of this was and is completely beyond the pale. But the radicalisation of many self-declared ‘dissidents’ [Querdenker, another derogatory label used to call out those supposedly on the left who supported the anti-mandate chatter emanating from the presumed right, hence reaching ‘across’, or quer, the political aisle: it’s another none-too-subtle intimation of right-wing extremism, real or imagined, to discredit any criticism of one’s policies] did not just emerge out of the blue. It is also a consequence of the willingness on part of the illiberal majority to exclude and pass judgement on the other [die Konsequenz der Ausgrenzungsbereitschaft und des Erziehungsfurors der illiberalen Mehrheit; another one of these really problematic translations, in particular the second aspect, which literally translates into ‘the educational fury of the illiberal majority’, i.e., their almost pathologically obsessive behaviour to ‘educate’ those ‘mislead fellow citizens’ and to tell them publicly that ‘they’, i.e., ‘the unvaccinated’, are the problem, hence the need to ‘re-educate’ them].

Those who went along with it and know better today better admit: we excluded [the unvaccinated] and that was wrong. The third Covid autumn is a chance to at least not further deepen the division of society. That applies to both sides. Yet, due to the balance of power, this applies particularly to the majority in the country and, above all, to those who hold public offices and participate in open debates.

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Bottom Lines

Yes, this is a (tiny) step in the right direction, but it’s an opinion piece by a junior journalist, tucked away behind the paywall, and certainly not going to be read by many Germans. The NZZ, after all, is a Swiss newspaper, and it’s hard for bigger countries to take seriously criticism that emanates from smaller neighbours.

It’s also a deeply flawed piece that reveals Ms. Achterberg’s many biases and blind spots, as, e.g., evidenced by the allusion to ‘my body, my choice’ (full support here) while omitting the basic liberties that must go along with these lines, such as the freedoms of expression and assembly. Or the casual non-denouncement of the fact that right-wing protesters are also citizens, hence they do have the same rights to protest, boldily sovereignty, etc. as those left-of-centre, to say nothing about the frequent allegations and guilt-by-associations of calling all protesters ‘right-wing extremists’.

I particularly liked that Ms. Achterberg called out the Churches specifically, which stands in such stark contrast to, say, some of the men and women of cloth in North America who defied the mandates, continued to preach, and often suffered abuse and penalties. While I personally wouldn’t call myself a religious person, I do respect integrity and the willingness to lead by example, you know, like it’s told in the Bible.

In normal times, such a chastisement should be on the front page of all news outlets, not because it would be mandated (by me, muahahaha /irony), but because we humans have the cognitive capabilities to recognize our own mistakes and make amends. This will obviously take some more time before it comes to pass. If ever.

Apart from that, as I’ve said, I think it’s a step in the right direction. Here’s hoping many more will follow.