August 29 Berlin protest on COVID-19 lockdowns brings huge numbers of people to the streets

The following article published by DW on August 29, 2020 reports on the Berlin protest which drew in a huge number of attendees from all over Germany. It shows us that though some of the attendees of the event were from far-right groups, many others were regular citizens – parents, children, and the elderly – who came to protest against coronavirus measures which, according to them, are already impinging on their constitutional rights. 

The planned march was called off after the police came to disperse the crowd for failing to follow health protocols – the same ones the protesters were rallying against. The protest was generally peaceful, but escalated at around 7PM when the police arrested people who, according to them, were “wearing colors and flags associated with the far right, [who] attempted to storm Germany’s parliament building.”

Editor’s Note: We have read around 15 articles from different websites about the August 29 Berlin protest and all of them carried the same themes – how the protest was organized by conspiracy theorists, and how it ended violently. This shows us that either the authors of these articles were copying each other, or there is a collective decision not to cover this event. It also prompts us to ask why mainstream media is not covering the activity properly, the way it would other social movements.

To give credit to DW, however, their article is different because it offered to us a glimpse of the group who came to the protest. In fact, it even included a quote from a protester saying that the extremists were the minority, which meant that a majority of those who came are regular citizens who came simply wanted to protect their civil liberties.  We have included a video below showing the huge crowd of protesters gathered at the Brandenburg Gate. (We shall add in a separate article a video of the speech given by Robert Kennedy, Jr. so you can get an idea on the issues being tackled by the protest).

It is also notable that there are various estimates of the number of protesters vary according to the source. DW says that there were 18,000 protesters, while Reuters says its 38,000. Protesters at the event estimate the crowd to be at hundreds of thousands. ¹https://www.insideover.com/events/germans-flood-the-streets-of-berlin-to-protest-covid-19-lockdown.html. Why is media deliberately downplaying the widespread support for the protest?

The number of protesters who attended the Berlin protest is significant because it means that more people have been awakened and have decided that their rights are more important than their personal safety [to understand why the protection of our civil liberties must hold precedence even during a pandemic, read Ramesh Thakur: I am concerned that a majority of people can be terrorized into surrendering their individual freedoms. Also read END THE LOCKDOWNS! Stop it outside by ending the lockdowns inside us].

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