Staying on Twitter
Lübbers considered leaving Twitter but decided against it. “I decided not to do it and to carry on spreading information about pseudo-medicine and vaccination. I see this as necessary civic courage and will not give way to hate,” Lübbers tweeted.
As understandable as any departure is, “we must not surrender Twitter to the trolls and harassers. Who is still here? #Iamstaying,” wrote Flow. Others wrote, “I will stay on Twitter as a physician. With my real name, too. [...] We must not surrender it to the Querdenker, idiots, Nazis, and enemies of freedom.”
“We need people to share information, we need voices of reason, just as Kellermayr was. How can you say that it would be better to remain silent? Does everyone who is against idiocy, Querdenker, and conspiracy theorists now have to remain silent?” asked Janos Hegedüs, MD, in his podcast.
Hegedüs, who uncovers fake news about COVID-19 and vaccination, was and remains a frequent target of insults and threats. His attempts to take action against them has had only limited success. His conclusion is sobering. “If you decide to spread information, you should know: You are alone. You will get all of the hate and when you have a problem with it, no one will help you.”
Media attorney Chan-jo Jun, who for many years has taken a stand against hate and harassment, has deactivated his Twitter account. However, this is not a retreat, as he clarified in an interview with the German radio station Deutschlandfunk. “I do not intend to give up the fight against hate, harassment, and misinformation, but I will do it in a different place.”
He sees Dr. Kellermayr’s death as a turning point. “I thought that we had learned something after Lübcke [i.e., politician Walter Lübcke, who was murdered by a neo-Nazi]. But we are seeing that the death of a political opponent is not just the goal, but also a success for the other side. And that is shocking.”
The judicial means of taking action against hate are still not effective, said Mr. Jun. He also sees the platform operators as responsible, since they are not obliged to remove unlawful content. “German law and the German constitution hold no sway on Twitter.”
Right-wing extremism
What happened to Lisa-Maria Kellermayr is the same as targeted terrorism. An organized group set out to annihilate her. Social psychologist Pia Lamberty has spoken, in the context of COVID, about a pandemic of violence, the threatening nature of which has barely been recognized, both in the virtual and analog world.
In an article for the Jüdische Allgemeine, Dr. Lamberty criticizes the fact that “the mistakes made with Pegida [i.e., a far-right, Islamophobic political movement in Germany] are being made once again” in the classification of Querdenker and COVID deniers. From the very start, the protests against the COVID measures have been a rallying point in the mobilization of right-wing extremists. “The Querdenker movement is unifying radical, right-wing extremist elements. Antisemitism and racism were always welcome.” Still, the right-wing extremist motivation has not been clearly labeled as such.
The classification is not just a question of statistics. “It is also about analyzing the potential for danger and deriving political measures from this. And there is an urgent need for action here: The right-wing extremists will utilize the climate crisis, but also the war in Ukraine, attacks against refugees, and LGBTQ rights for further mobilization. Rather than the state, the focus of the attacks will be people who are labeled as the bogeyman. This also must be clearly labeled for what it is,” said Dr. Lamberty. She wrote on Twitter, “The COVID-related attacks that took place in the last two years will not simply stop, they will shift. If we do not want more and more people to stop expressing themselves publicly, something urgently has to happen.” She added, “Once more: The next few months will be very difficult. This will probably also be accompanied by an increased level of threat for socially engaged people. More protection is urgently required.”
A version of this article first appeared on Medscape.com.
This article was translated from the Medscape German edition.