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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