During the so-called pandemic, the “Spiegel” was perceived by many citizens as the supreme state hate speech against government critics: Hardly a day went by without railing against the ultimately evil “lateral thinkers” and “opponents of vaccination”. The image of the enemy had to be stirred up and society split up by all means, it seemed, because otherwise the federal government would hardly have been able to enforce its dictatorial measures. Now, of all people, a Spiegel journalist is sharply criticizing the lack of control of the federal government during the Corona crisis by the “fourth estate”.
It seems strange that the column hidden behind the payment barrier with the title “Wir Coronaversager” only appears in “Spiegel” around three years after the start of the so-called pandemic – a long, long time after the ineffectiveness of the anti-constitutional measures had been proven. As a reminder: As early as 2021, it could be assumed for certain that the measures had devastating consequences for the economy and the population, but did not save any lives (see here and here). Further studies later confirmed the ineffectiveness of the corona measures (see, for example, here and here). What critical experts and not least alternative media denounced from the beginning was largely ignored in the mainstream for a long time or hidden behind the paywall in individual articles. Instead, in the interest of the government, critics were agitated, criminalized, and portrayed as stupid, right-wing extremists and anti-democratic.
In this respect, the entry into the “Spiegel” column about the “ban excesses in the pandemic” is probably the understatement of the century: “We now know that many pandemic measures were nonsensical, excessive and illegal,” it says. In the following, the author criticizes how “easily the rights to freedom were suspended in our supposedly liberal society” and that the very authorities responsible for controlling the government failed.
Too few disagreed?
“Not enough people objected when politicians first ordered school closures three years ago and then repeatedly extended them for months,” he continues. This is of course wrong, because there were critics from the beginning – but media such as “Spiegel” generally preferred to portray them as “slobs” and pseudo-scientists and to massively damage their reputation, so that the people would not give them any be believed.
In the following, the columnist notes that the media – “including us at SPIEGEL” – failed: “I’m afraid the dictator in us was pretty strong,” he states. This criticism of his own medium is certainly to be credited to him, and it is not for nothing that he receives a lot of encouragement for his text on social networks.
However, the question arises as to when this form of self-criticism will appear quite officially (and not just in the form of a single comment behind the paywall) in all those media that have carried out government propaganda almost exclusively without criticism in recent years: the legal processing, which is so urgently demanded by the citizens, explicitly also includes media professionals who pushed ahead with the division of society and the criminalization of critical citizens whose only “crime” was the demand for the preservation of democratic principles.