The following essay originally appeared in German at Tichys Einblick. Translated by Russell A. Berman, who has written a separate note on the topic here.
At the outset I want to make clear that I view the stipulations of the governments for containing the corona pandemic as appropriate and that it is necessary to obey them.
Yet this is not the central issue. Instead, the central issue is that the BLM demonstration against racism was widely praised and tolerated, while the demonstration of August 1 [against corona restrictions—trans.] was widely condemned, despite posing identical dangers.
The most valuable good for a government is its credibility. One does not need it in a dictatorship, as long as the arguments come from the barrel of a gun. In a democracy, however, credibility is one of the foundational conditions for domestic peace.
