Branch Covidian Advent Calender, 2 Dec.

Meet Prof. (retired) Heinz Bude, who called for 'the unvaxxed' to be 'deported to Madagascar'

Who is Prof. Heinz Bude, you might ask? He’s a retired Prof. of Macrosociology who held a professorship at the University of Kassel’s Social Science Faculty: official university bio here, see also his Wikipedia entry.

He’s quite renowned in establishmentarian circles, as evidenced by a rather nice review (op-ed) based on one of his books, Society of Fear, which was considered by Miranda Green in 2018 (Ms. Green was the FT’s deputy comment editor back then).

Prof. Bude is also a very angry, self-righteous, and, above all, freedom-hating person, as the below quote shows:

Source: Ortwin Rosner, ‘Dynamik des Hasses: Zur Metamorphose der Medien unter dem Corona-Regime’, in Schwerer Verlauf, ed. A. Urban (Promedia, 2023).

The German sociologist Heinz Bude regrets that it is a pity that they [the unvaccinated] ‘cannot be shipped to Madagascar’.

Now, for those not ‘in the know’, as per Wikipedia, that is a reference to ‘the Madagascar Plan…a plan proposed by the Nazi German government to forcibly relocate the Jewish population of Europe to the island of Madagascar.’

Please don’t ask me where the juste milieu got the idea that anti-mandate protesters felt, at times, like hunted vermin by the Pfizer/Moderna fan boys and girls.

Note that Ortwin Rosner is a quite known personality among the anti-mandate crowd in Covidistan, so we should cross-reference the above-statement, shall we? Here’s the link to the German-language podcast he made these statements, and here’s how the above-cited German Wikipedia entry recounts this episode:

[Orig.] Im Interview mit Michael Bröcker erklärte er am 7. Dezember 2021, dass Impfgegner ‘fühlbar Nachteile haben müssen’ und man sich ‘im Grunde nicht länger mit denen beschäftigen’ könne, ‘die kann man nicht nach Madagaskar verfrachten’, aber nach Gründen zu suchen habe keinen Sinn. Man ‘muss einen Schnitt machen und damit leben, dass es 20% oder 15% gibt, die sich nicht überzeugen lassen’.

[My translation] In an interview with Michael Bröcker on 7 December 2021, he explained that opponents of vaccination ‘must have tangible disadvantages’ and that ‘basically you can no longer deal with them’, that ‘you can't ship them off to Madagascar’, but there was no point in looking for reasonable exchange. You have to ‘make a cut and live with the fact that there are 20% or 15% who cannot be convinced’.

You be the judge.

Epilogue: Heinz Bude on ‘Freedom’

For a reference, see the above FT piece, but credit for the below comment belongs to Miranda Green:

The negative emotional and mental health byproducts of freedom and autonomy, may be, in the argot of online mockery, first world problems. But consider that this slim volume, newly translated for the English-speaking market, was originally published in German in 2014 when the seeds of current tumult were perceptible but the political fruits not yet fallen—and that in this Bude resembles the pioneering Freud: Civilisation was published in 1930 just as the world was about to undergo a period of havoc. It may be salutary to notice, in Bude’s words ‘where the flashpoints are’.

This Prof. Bude guy, he sure didn’t like freedom and individual autonomy ten years ago, and it’s hardly surprising his stance has hardened when he got the opportunity during the Covid Mania.