Merkel’s Government Faces Backlash Over Proposed Carnival Festival Ban After Backing Large BLM Protests
After backing massive BLM-style rallies across Germany, Berlin considers ban on traditional carnival festivities.
After allowing weeks of ‘anti-racism’ protests in line with the U.S. Black Lives Matter movement, German government is considering a ban on traditional carnival festivities. Country’s “Health Minister Jens Spahn wants to cancel the carnival season for 2020-21 in light of the coronavirus pandemic,” German newspaper Südwest Presse reported Tuesday.
Government is expected to announce a ban to this effect in coming days, news reports say. Some organizers have already started cancelling carnival events in anticipation of an official announcement, German newspaper Münchner Merkur confirmed.
“I come from a carnival heartland. So I know how important carnival is for many millions of Germans,” Minister Spahn said. “But I simply cannot imagine carnival taking place in this winter, in the midst of a pandemic. It is extremely disappointing, but that’s the way it is.”
The German carnival, rooted in country’s catholic tradition, takes place six weeks before Easter which follows the 40-days of fasting or Lent. The festivities are the biggest cultural event in northern Germany, specially in the Rheinland and Ruhr region.
The Bavarian daily Münchner Merkur reported the backlash over Berlin’s proposed move:
After [German Health Minister] Jens Spahn hinted the cancellation of Carnival 2021, the carnival clubs have began responding. Some have criticized the views of the health minister, while others have already cancelled their events. The comedian and TV presenter Bernd Stelter raised an important point. Could the cancellation of carnival spell a ruin for many artists? (…)
“I won’t go bankrupt because of this, but the young colleagues who have been there for one, two or three years or the technical [acoustic, logistics] companies as a whole; for them this looks very year bad,” [Stelter said]. For some colleagues the cancellation of carnival will threaten their livelihood.
Therefore Stelter says: “You can’t cancel the carnival.” (…) The carnival means zest for life and “we really have very little of it right now.” [Translation by the author]
The German carnival is not the only casualty of its kind in wake of the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic. Germany has already called off this year’s Oktoberfest, the world’s biggest annual beer festival held in Munich.
While culture and tradition have been one of the biggest victims of the coronavirus lockdown, the left-wing activism is given a free-pass in Germany. Massive BLM-style protests were not only allowed by the authorities, but celebrated by German politicians and country’s mainstream media.
In Munich alone, the home of now-cancelled Oktoberfest, 20,000 showed up for a BLM-style march. “Germany held the largest demonstrations over the death of George Floyd outside the US,” German broadcaster Deutsche Welle reported in early June.
Berlin and other major German cities witnessed large protests, with politicians and media acting as their cheerleaders. Germany is “shocked” by the incidents in the U.S. and “it is good if people take to the streets in Germany as well with a clear statement against racism,” Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said at the onset of the protests.
In Hamburg, more than four thousand self-proclaimed “anti-racism” protesters gathered outside the U.S. consulate on June 5. The demonstration was registered under the slogan: “Justice for Floyd – stop killing blacks – stop the racial terrorism in the USA.”
The protests were not driven by a genuine desire to fight racism but German Left’s unhinged hatred of U.S. President Donald Trump. As London’s Financial Times admitted: “Anti-Trump feeling fuels Germany’s Black Lives Matter protests.”
In recent years, the carnival festivities, too, have been hollowed out to peddle Left’s political agenda. While carnival float processions have been cheered for making fun at President Trump in any obscene way possible, criticism of Chancellor Merkel can land you in big trouble.
In 2017, when the small German town of Bad Bergzabern in its float parade showed Merkel behind prison bars for her open borders immigration policy, the State Attorney opened an investigation against organizers. Same year, a float in Düsseldorf depicted Lady Liberty beheading President Trump and another one showed him violating the Statue of Liberty. “Crowds were cheering when the floats passed by in the parade,” Rheinische Post newspaper reported.
[Featured Image Credit Vijeta Uniyal]
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Comments
It’s hard to drink beer with a mask on.
Or the burqa. Very much in trend.
That’s why they invented beer helmets.
We are all going to have to declare ourselves to be “peaceful” rioters if we are ever going to get our civil rights back. We need to start organizing big things in a big way and damn the permits. Invite the “motorcyclists for Trump” groups to these events. Hundreds of thousands of us at the same place at the same time celebrating without masks. Whatever happens happens.
Are we still free or aren’t we? It would really help for Trump to get real about the Wuhan flu hoax. It’s not the flu itself that is the hoax but the “scientism” solution that has everything backwards and upside down that amounts to a POLICIAL solution for “we can’t say… yet… you’ll have to elect us to find out.”
If the government can take away fasching, Germany is done. This is their political free speech celebration.
Don’t F*CK with Fasching!
But Angela, commie that she is, couldn’t care less about a Christian tradition.
Let’s see if she cancels Ramadan or Eid-al-Fitr celebrations.
I understand now that Adolf Hitler did have some children……….
Within the last couple of years, Karneval/Fasching has rather become a virtue signalling contest, taken over by the ‘PC’ people. And guess what: the most hated person in recent Karnival events to date is Donald J. Trump… 😉
Germans take ‘Karneval’ (or ‘Fasching’) seriously: it starts 11/11 (November 11th) at 11:11 am, ending on ‘Aschermittwoch’ (Ash Wednesday), February 17th 2021 – transitioning directly into ‘Fastenzeit’ (Lent). And to be frank, there weren’t many BLM protests in Germany, it was just kind of a fad really – but yes, those few protests weren’t controlled by German authorities in regards to social distancing, mask mandates etc…
Thanks for the background. I thought of including that but decided to stick to the current debate. But thanks indeed.
For whatever it’s worth, the biggest BLM protests outside US did take place in Germany (referenced in the post above). That says something about the dominating zeitgeist in Germany.
“That says something about the dominating zeitgeist in Germany.”
Unfortunately it does. And you’re correct: those German BLM protests were the biggest – with pretty much zero Black people attending, of course… 😉
It had nothing to do with the black people, and everything to do with being woke. Plus they got a chance to bash America, the old euro-leftist pastime.
Then President Trump pulled troops out!
Me go Eufaula.
They are Germans. They will do whatever a totalitarian dictator tells them to do. Deutschland, Deutschland uber Alles!
Ja ja, da da…..
Ha! I’ve figured out how this virus works: if you’re angry, you’re immune; if you’re happy, you die! March in angry protest = safe! March in joy and celebration = death!
It is well known in medical circles that boneheaded stupidity produces antibodies. That is how the Antifa/BLM brownshirts stay healthy.
If the people bring BLM banners, can they do the rest?
Conservative chancellor Angela Merckel.
HAHA.
Merkel is playing with a double-edged scalpel. She can’t abort the baby and let her live, too. That’s a Roe mode of thinking under the Progressive Church, and a progressive legacy of Planned Parenthood et al.
The BLM protests are understandable. After all Germany has such a long and glorious history supporting human rights.
Viyeta, you say that Carnaval takes place 6 weeks before Easter which is incorrect; it begins 6 weeks before Ash Wednesday, which is the beginning of Lent, a time of fasting and prayer before Easter. The last day of Carnaval is Fat Tuesday, when traditionally the household would use the last of the oil, dairy, and eggs. The meat had already been eaten by then and Catholics were historically on a much stricter fast than the Ash Wednesday and Good Friday fasts currently in place and the meatless Fridays during Lent.