The Covid Crackdown

Protests, Propaganda, and the End of ‘Mainstream News’

As is well known (and documented by me here and here), the situation in Austria is overly dynamic but not in a good way. Like elsewhere, the people are protesting government overreach and the loss of civil liberties. Like elsewhere, the government appears to be quite indifferent to the opinions of a sizable chunk—about a third in the Austrian case—of the population.

Today’s post is to provide and update from the absurdities I’ve related last Sunday, which chronicled, in a way, what happened last week by exemplarily juxtaposing two media reports.

This post is, then, about the huge demonstration that took place in Austria on 20 November. In this, the Austrian experience is not an outlier, for there are so many protests against self-identifying ‘democratic’ governments virtually all over the (formerly) ‘free world’, from Australia to Italy, and from Croatia to France. Here’s a brief snippet from a recent piece that appeared in Forbes on 20 Nov. 2021:

‘Amid rising numbers of Covid-19 cases in Europe, tens of thousands took to the streets in Vienna on Saturday to protest the nationwide lockdown Austria is imposing from Monday, while violence erupted at a protest in the Netherlands.’

In keeping with the spirit of the age, Forbes doesn’t provide much more than a handful of bullet points, but this piece is as good an example of propaganda as any. The brief paragraph is its topline and note that it was ‘written’ (if that’s the right word) by Lisa Kim, the piece was ‘updated…01:02 p.m. EST’, i.e., published around 7:02 a.m. local time in Vienna—by which is meant about five hours before the protests were starting around noon last Saturday.

Notice, too, that this is a quite effective, if very insidious, way of conveying propaganda: around five hours before the protests began, its ‘author’ intimated that there may be clashes like the ones in Rotterdam, which turned violent, with Dutch police opening fire on 19 Nov. 2021. Here’s The Guardian on this, in a piece published on Saturday, 20 Nov. 2021, at 22:20 GMT:

‘Three people were being treated in hospital in Rotterdam on Saturday after they were seriously injured when police fired shots during a demonstration against Covid-19 restrictions.

In what the Dutch city’s mayor described as an “orgy of violence”, crowds of several hundred rioters torched cars, set off fireworks and threw rocks at police during the protests on Friday evening. Police responded with warning shots and water cannon.’

It was later revealed that police had aimed at the protestors before opening fire instead of firing warning shots, according to the Badische Zeitung (my emphasis):

‘According to their own account, the police first fired warning shots and then also took aim at protesters. According to a spokesperson for the police union, this happened in at least two cases. “Police officers were cornered and trapped by a larger group of rioters”, Jan Struijs of the union told TV station NOS about the first case. In the second case, he said, officers came to the aid of the fire brigade, which had been attacked. The officers were aiming at the legs of the attackers. In the Netherlands, police rarely use firearms during riots.’

The Guardian, though, doesn’t mention it, instead continuing like this:

‘There were further violent scenes around the Netherlands on Saturday, when largely peaceful daytime protests turned ugly as night fell. Rioters pelted police with stones and fireworks in The Hague, while officers in riot gear charged groups of demonstrators. Five police officers were injured and at least seven people arrested.

(…)

The Dutch justice minister, Ferd Grapperhaus, condemned the events. “The riots and extreme violence against police officers, riot police and firefighters last night in Rotterdam are disgusting to see,” he said in a statement.

“Protesting is a great right in our society, but what we saw last night is simply criminal behaviour. It has nothing to do with demonstrating.”’

Admittedly, an investigation into the shootings was opened, but the simple notion that the protests on Saturday were a reaction to police shooting protestors on Friday never crossed the Guardian’s mind.

Speaking of the Netherlands, here’s Austrian media ‘reporting’ on the fact that protests continued for the third night after the Rotterdam shootings (my emphases):

‘Again riots at Corona demonstrations in the Netherlands and Belgium. A state of emergency was declared in Enschede [Netherlands], and police in Brussels [Belgium] used water cannons and tear gas because of riots in the government district.

In the Netherlands, protests against the Covid-19-related requirements turned violent for the third night in a row. In Groningen, Leeuwarden, Enschede and Tilburg, rioters set off fireworks and caused property damage on Sunday night, according to police and media reports. In Enschede, the authorities declared a state of emergency. There were also riots in the Belgian capital Brussels on the fringes of a demonstration against the Corona restrictions.

In the Netherlands, a partial lockdown has been in effect again for a week because of rising Corona infection numbers. Citizens are only allowed to meet with a maximum of four other people in their homes, employees are supposed to work in their home offices if possible. Shops have to close earlier. In addition, a 2G regulation is being planned for some places. This would mean that only people vaccinated against Covid-19 and those who have recovered from it would have access.

(…)

According to the police, about 35,000 people took part in the demonstration in the Belgian capital. They protested against the tightening of the Corona rules announced by the government on Wednesday. Their anger was mainly directed against the fact that unvaccinated people are no longer allowed in restaurants and bars.’

Note two things: first, Austria is (rightly) chastised, in part, for cracking down on ‘the unvaccinated’ third of its population; and, second, this is a trial balloon: if the Austrian government gets this done, others will follow, citing this very example.

Finally, note that Rotterdam’s mayor has called the anti-Covid protests an ‘orgy of violence’, which was apparently of such great propagandistic value that virtually all major ‘mainstream media’ outlets repeated it. Take, say, a quick Google search as an example, which revealed 13.6m results:

Admittedly, Google, although quite ‘untrained’ by me (I use duckduckgo.com: if you don’t, go and get it), also threw in a couple of dictionary entries for good measure.

Speaking of ‘other’ search engines, DuckDuckGo shows this quite clearly, too:

Funny enough, it’s not ‘just’ a matter of performing English-language searches, as a brief search (on DuckDuckGo) with the German translation ‘Orgie der Gewalt [orgy of violence]’ illustrates:

Go ahead and try this one yourself.

And here I thought that all the journalists worldwide—surely, they number in the hundreds of thousands across the ‘west’ alone—would perhaps lead with a different editorial subject. It turns out that I was quite wrong about this.

So, I started this post intending to write about last Saturday’s protests in Vienna, but I was side-tracked for a moment. I’ll update you on that particular topic and its aftermath in a few hours.