Yes, they are.
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I needed groceries. Went out. When packing my bags, a woman in her fifties returned her shopping cart. She was wearing a t-shirt with the Star of David, white outline on black, with a sentence declaring she was exempt from wearing a mask due to a doctorâs prescription. I stared in disbelief and my knees started shaking. Adrenaline rush. She wore some kind of fashionable parka over it - but not to conceal the shirt. On her arm, she had a yellow band, again with a star and writing I couldnât see clearly. She returned the cart and left in her silver Audi TT cabriolet. When I left the parking lot, she drove past, cigarette in her hand, a plastic flower chain in black-red-yellow dangling from her mirror.
My knees stopped shaking only several minutes later. I should have said something. Which I couldnât have, since I would have yelled.
I am sad I didnât.
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Shit. Iâm sorry. 
What would you have said, though?
(But I really hope you donât have another opportunity, bc I hope you donât see such an asshole IRL againâŠ)
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I dont think anything you said would change the mind of a person like that. To wear those things she must be extremely selfish and full of her own misplaced self-righteousness. No amount of explaining how wrong it is to use the star of david that way would penetrate. At best, you would have been even more upset and at worst, she may have assaulted you or gotten you in trouble with the management or police.
Iâm sorry you had to experience that.
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Arenât you in Germany? That kind of shit seems like it would carry a lot more weight there in light of the history.
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In addition to the tweets the article mentions, there was apparently also one claiming the vaccines contained nanobots that could make you time-travel. Honestly, that would be awesome.
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Thatâs what Iâm thinking. Holocaust denial is illegal in Germany; that seems to either cross the line or skate close enough to need a judge to make the call.
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Good. One of her earlier covid-related tweets was to claim their had been a âcoupâ in Australia because the federal, state and territory governments had formed a ânational cabinetâ.
Basically all governments promised to work together to fight covid (which was partly successful), and thus was described as a âcoupâ. I could only guess the notion of governments cooperating to face a common challenge was so alien to a US citizen that it must be seen as harmful. 
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THERE, in Germany?
I can imagine you were in too much shock and horror to respond in the moment.
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Fox News is really stepping up their attacks on Dr. Fauci. About half the stories on the top page of their website are calls for Fauci to be fired. They love making a mountain out of a molehill when itâs not one of their guys.
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I canât look at Fox today. What are the reasons they claim Fauci should be fired?
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But his emails. And also something about how money was spent to fund some kind of research at the lab in Wuhan. I canât bring myself to actually read much beyond the headlines.
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Ah, thanks. I figured it was some made up thing, but sounds even lamer than I expected.
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Ice hockey world championship final Canada v Finland.
And
Spike is coming.
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IDK. I was really feeling my legs shake.
Maybe one of the best ways to deal with stuff like this is addressing such people in a polite tone, telling them:
âIch finde Sie so richtig ScheiĂe.â (I think you are full of shit) and walk away without further reaction to anything they say or do.
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I split my reply because this is going borderline OT and I would think if we are diving in after this, someone will need to split this from the main topic.
Correct.
This kind of referring to oneself as the victims of government overreach and comparing oneself to Jews in Germany during the 3rd Reich is blurring the distinction between outright neofascists Holocaust denial and political expression stupidity.
Those asshats are - at least up front, and in this instance of arguments - denying the Holocaust, which is indeed illegal in Germany. They are trivialising the Holocaust. This is, in a way, a IRL equivalent of pulling a Godwin, and doubling down on it.
In this case, I noticed that she had a flag-coloured flower garland on her mirror, and had taped over the European stars on her number plate (just BTW, illegally), so I am quite sure sheâs from the right-wing spectrum. That the people who went to demonstrations where such shirts and banderoles were seen are from diverse backgrounds. I am quite certain that most of them would be appalled by Holocaust denial, and would not see this kind of thing as a pathway which leads there.
I would invite everyone to take quite some time to read this long piece from the Boston Review.
http://bostonreview.net/politics/william-callison-quinn-slobodian-coronapolitics-reichstag-capitol
While analysing the development in Germany in regard to the so-called Querdenker with much detail (and a lot of helpful links), the article is a broader analysis
- aimed at understanding what happend on Jan. 6th, before, and what happens now in the US.
The pandemic is catalysing a political process in Germany which seems to be following and interacting with the bullshit the UK and the US are dealing with since quite some time. The interesting bit is: these are not the disenfranchised voters who turn to extremists. The author argues that (a part of) the Mittelstand drives the anti-democratic developments both in the US, and Germany.
(NB: Germans colloquially use the word âMittelstandâ both for middle class and a certain type of entrepreneurs. Click through for Wikipediaâs page on that. The colloquial fits rights in with the facts on political inclination reported in that piece, which I believe to be correct from personal observation.)
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