Yellow badge to be forbidden in anti-vaxxers' protest
Yellow badge. Photo RD, Anton Dommerholt
Central Europe
If it’s up to Felix Klein, the yellow Star of David will be forbidden during anti-Covid protests. The German commissioner against anti-Semitism has asked cities in his country to take legal action against this.
Anti-Semitic stereotypes have become a common pattern during anti-lockdown protests in Germany. The protesters compare the Covid limitations with the oppression during the Second World War. Some of them are clothed like concentration camp prisoners and carry yellow badges with the text “Ungeimpft” (unvaccinated). During the Nazi period, there was the text “Jew” instead. Anti-vaxxers also used other Nazi symbols.
During the 1940s the German occupier made the yellow star mandatory, dehumanising Jews by marking them out as different. Anyone found without one faced a fine, prison or death. The star is still a very well-known and recognisable figure, that’s easy to be used in demonstrations.
In an interview with the German newspaper, Tagesspiegel Felix Klein said that wearing the Jewish star at a protest equates the Corona lockdown with the Holocaust. “Action should be taken against” this, so Mr Klein.
The Bavarian capital Munich has forbidden the use of the yellow star last year already. “I hope that other cities will follow Munich’s example”, Mr Klein said in the interview.
He warned against the people’s indifference as “our greatest enemy.” Only the state would not be able to fix this. “We need a vigilant, defensible, courageous civil society.”
Last month the German intelligence agency BfV acknowledged that some parts of the anti-vaxxers' movement had been placed under special observation amid fears that they were a threat to the state.
Mr Klein said that not all the Covid protesters were anti-Semitic. But the anti-Semitism was at least the “cement that binds them together”, according to Mr Klein in the Tagesspiegel.
