Safety-first anarchists + Taurus latest + one-man Stasi

Photo by Alekon pictures on Unsplash

Dear Reader,

A stopped clock tells the right time twice a day. And the odd prediction made in this newsletter comes true, too.

In an old edition, I scoffed at the fact that German authorities had made it obligatory to wear face masks at protests. That rule wasn’t just one of the silliest “health interventions” of the pandemic (whose main effect was to enrage the Querdenker scene), it also undermined a law requiring people to show their faces at protests.

When I enquired at the time, Berlin’s interior ministry assured me that: “Those people who wear a mask to protect against infection will have no problem taking it off briefly or handing over their personal details if necessary.”

Well, even though face masks haven’t been required at public events for over a year, there are some protesters who still seem to be very concerned about spreading their germs - and they also don’t seem to be as cooperative as German authorities hoped.

At the weekend, around 600 p…