Pacifists are the new opponents of vaccination. At least that’s what our columnist Rocko Schamoni fears
On Friday the weather in downtown Hamburg was good. When the weather is good, everyone comes from everywhere. Everyone wants to be there and stand around and point at something. Before Corona there were already a lot of people here, but now, after, there are many more. People like to get together in large groups and go where there are more of them and point at something, then they feel comfortable. Suddenly it gets a little louder.
A crowd of people is standing in front of the Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten, on closer inspection I realize that they are opponents of vaccination, a relatively small group, maybe 50, are standing there with posters and whistles. The posters say something about “mandatory vaccination” and “humanity”. The opponents of vaccination are excited, but their impulse does not want to spread, the sun is shining, spring is here, compulsory vaccination has been cancelled, Lauterbach has failed, but above all: Russia has invaded Ukraine.
That doesn’t stop the opponents of vaccination from chanting at the top of their voices, they insist on their right to be angry, to be able to express their displeasure, even if it is displeasure about something that has already happened, they are demonstrating against something that could only have happened in theory. Or maybe they just want to train their frustration muscle. Because it was so nice to be against something together in a group. Now, unfortunately, the war has gotten in their way, absorbing most of the attention. Excitement communities offer people a seemingly more meaningful way of being together in groups than simply “just strolling” around the Alster, because here you compete for or against something.
I know what I’m talking about, I also like to be in arousal communities that others probably make fun of. For example, excitation communities about arms production and arms trade. We pacifists with our naive, effeminate ideas may now appear to the rest of the world as yesterday and lost. All the people who, even in my youth, shook their heads at me when I got upset against the military and maneuver exercises. They all seem right – man is a wolf to man – and because the possibility of violence is always in the air, we must protect ourselves with arms against this potential danger.
A realization comes to me: we, who grew up as young punks in the early eighties, behaved in a socially critical manner, formulated ourselves politically, declared religion and the military to be definitively outdated, we, the children of the generation that dreamed of freedom, equality and worldwide peace 1968ff. created in a new form are now: a fading hippie dream.
In the spirit of that dream we were conceived and we grew up under its slogans, I would never have thought to doubt why either (“What’s So Funny About Love, Peace & Understanding,” sang Nick Lowe and later Elvis Costello), nothing seemed wrong about it and yet the dream is obsolete, dreamed, the hippies are dead, the punks have gray hair and otherwise more people than ever believe in some absurd gods and therefore kill each other, elect autocrats to power, and in the face of the climate change, the greatest task in human history, deluded potentates also think they have to wage wars in order to be able to live out their great power fantasies. It all seems completely crazy, grotesque and chaotic. And then 42 percent of the French vote for Le Pen! The French of all people! If Trump is then re-elected in the USA (and the probability is not small), I will stop immediately and finally surrender. Declare me a dream. I fizzle out.
It was all just a nice little hippie dream.
Author photo by Kerstin Behrendt