When the corona pandemic was at its peak in winter 2020/2021, more than 20,000 new diseases were reported every day and thousands of people had already died in connection with the virus, some lateral thinkers ran through Berlin supermarkets and shops in grotesque costumes and without face masks . A video shows the self-proclaimed “Freedom Parade” dancing without a mask through an LPG supermarket in Prenzlauer Berg while singing “A little Sars must be”. Their particularly crazy leader is Michael Bründel, who likes to present himself to the public in a yellow superhero outfit and under the name “Captain Future”.
“A bit of SARS must be” – the conspiracy ideological Freedom Parade was on the road again yesterday and paid a maskless visit to the LPG supermarket in PBerg, among other things. “Actions” like this have been carried out by the group for months. pic.twitter.com/U4k5NntDQr
— Julius geiler (@glr_berlin) December 17, 2020
The world-famous fetish club KitKat invited exactly this bold lateral thinker and Corona trivializer to the “Mystic Rose” party on June 17, 2022, which triggered a huge outcry in the Berlin club scene. First, the club operator Kirsten Krüger defended the invitation in a Facebook post. Captain Future was not invited to the party as a political activist, but exclusively as a DJ. Therefore, the invitation is also unproblematic.
Organizer invites Captain Future out again
In the meantime, however, the organizer of the event has also changed reported to speak – and Captain Future unloaded again. However, not because he came to the conclusion that conspiracy-ideological corona trivializers have no place in the KitKat Club, but because he wants to avert even greater damage to the club’s image. Captain Future is an “agent provocateur, an enfant terrible of the Berlin scene” and uses “means of protest that one can find questionable”, but is definitely not right-wing extremist.
The problem is that Bründel, like so many corona deniers, also attracts people who are on the right side of the political spectrum. A Holocaust denier once ran in his entourage. In addition, his supporters have repeatedly compared police officers with members of the SA and SS – a popular method among “lateral thinkers” to project their own views onto the opposing side.
According to the party organizer’s statement, Captain Future was just “too stupid or naive to be photographed with Nazis or AfD members”. Aha.
How does the KitKat Club feel about conspiracy theorists?
How did the booking come about? Simon Thaur, who founded the KitKat Club together with his partner Kirstin Krüger, has repeatedly shared posts on Facebook with conspiracy theory ideas, including from KenFM, RT Deutsch and Sarah Wagenknecht. However, the club founders probably had no part in booking Captain Future, the organizer alone emphasized in his statement that he came up with the idea of booking the lateral thinker for the party. Kristin Krüger would not have known anything about the booking.
Incidentally, Captain Future is still fighting the alleged corona dictatorship. At the end of May he walked through Pankow with his entourage, continued to spread conspiracy theories and proudly sang with his followers: “We are unvaccinated, we are unvaccinated”. And Captain Future also seems to sense a new reason for his provocations in a superhero costume: monkeypox. According to the supporters of the “Freedom Parade”, the Federal Minister of Health, Karl Lauterbach, is responsible for them.