The Story of the european's united march for freedom: On the ground at europe's largest anti-vaccine rally
By Stefan Anderson
Author's note
The following piece is my personal account of the Europeans United March for Freedom that took place in Brussels on the 23rd of January, 2022. Billed as the event of the century, the protest was to bring together the entirety of Europe’s anti-lockdown movement on the European government’s doorstep. It was to be a day that would be etched in history: citizens from around the continent, shoulder to shoulder, rising up against the tyrannical order brought upon us all by the Covid pandemic.
The intention of the chosen format is to provide a full, live perspective of what the day was like on the ground, and a comprehensive account of the views expressed by the keynote speakers. Keep in mind the videos are central to the piece’s narrative, and frequently referenced by the text.
While the organisers can be held accountable for the views expressed by those they intentionally invited to speak, I do not aim to paint the attendees of this rally as ideologically cohesive. In fact, anti-lockdown rallies are one of the only places where you can find pride flags waving beside Nazi symbolism, hardcore anarchists beside a family with three small children, Christian fundamentalists beside someone apolitical who simply lost their job. I will do my best to break down the different elements present, but do not intend these analyses as a broad brush for any one individual.
So, did the revolution succeed? Here’s how the day went down.
Chapter 1: let's make history
Gare du Nord, 11:45am. Though a bit cold, the day was nice enough. The march got moving a bit ahead of schedule as everyone acquainted themselves with their newfound friends and allies of the revolution. Telegram chats on the eve of the demonstration were filled with excitement, rage against the machine, and people kindly offering carpools from nearby cities like Lille, Ghent, and Paris.
“2022 will be the year we reclaim our freedom, democracy, and human rights!”, read the march’s GoFundMe page, which raised 4,270€ of its 50,000€ goal, “at first, 560 organisations from Europe joined, but by now there are many more. All together, especially thanks to your support, we will write history and realise the biggest demonstration in Brussels ever! UNITED WE STAND!”.
As I started taking my first pictures, a group of men in hi-visibility jackets ran past the line of observers I was standing with, “Thank you all for being here, the world needs you!”. The atmosphere was pretty convivial. At this point, everyone seemed excited: history was in the making.
Speaking of history, it didn’t take me long to find my first reference to Nazi Germany. One can play a sort of bingo game at these rallies with the varying types of references to the rise of the reich: Nuremberg 2022, we are living in 1930s Germany, Vaccinazi, and so on. This particular sign read “REMEMBER 1930s GERMANY, YOU ARE LIVING”.
The primary reason the anti-vaccine movement has latched on to these parallels is because of the Nuremberg code, a set of research ethics for human experimentation that came out of the Nuremberg trials after the Second World War. Brutal human experimentation was undertaken by Nazi physicians like Dr. Josef Mengele, also known as the Angel of Death, on helpless Holocaust victims, and these rules emerged as a basic guideline to prevent such atrocities from ever happening again. The stories are far too grim to delve into here, but safe to say: this is not, at all, the same. At best, it is a completely tone-deaf false equivalency flavoured by the incontournable irony of the premise that a life-saving medicine is inhumane.
Nevertheless, I find it is useful to be aware of the background of beliefs if you wish to better understand them. The opening clause of the code reads:
“1. The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential. This means that the person involved should have legal capacity to give consent; should be so situated as to be able to exercise free power of choice, without the intervention of any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, overreaching, or other ulterior form of constraint or coercion; and should have sufficient knowledge and comprehension of the elements of the subject matter involved as to enable him to make an understanding and enlightened decision.”
And there you have it. Those utilising this argument will say:
I do not give my consent, therefore this violates the Nuremberg code.
These vaccines are experimental, I do not have sufficient knowledge of how they work, therefore this violates the Nuremberg code.
Down with the globalist cabal, because… because.
The imagery is inappropriate, but not ‘pro-nazi’, as it is often framed. The protestors see themselves as decrying fascist policy, using shock value (or the only historical analogy anyone seems to be able to think of these days) to warn of a perceived slippery slope to tyranny. Small aside, but an important one. We will be delving much deeper into this symbolism later on.
Back to the march. By the time we reached the turn leading to the Madou tunnel, I’d tried to take stock of the variety of signs and views present. “Stay away from our children” was a big theme I would continue to pick up on throughout the day, “they are not an experiment!”. Many people brought their children along, perhaps as a way of drawing attention to this point, or maybe out of a sense of duty to make sure their kids didn’t miss out on a day that would rewrite the course of their futures. I can only speculate.
After the tunnel, I was approached by a friendly older woman handing out free newspapers for an independent outlet called Kairos. “We are trying to gather signatures”, she explained, “the Belgian committee of journalists has informed us they will not renew our press pass!”. A quick glance at their home page reveals this to be altogether unsurprising: the headline “Italian Apartheid” placed beneath a link to a pre-march live stream by (and we will get to these guys later) Children’s Health Defense Europe. Youtube seems to agree with the Belgian press association, and has banned the Kairos channel for Covid-19 misinformation.
As the protest merged onto Rue Belliard, Europeans United organisers leading the charge, everything had proceeded pretty calmly. There were loud bangs, firecrackers, and some graffiti, but nothing out of the ordinary. Ahead of me I noticed a group of four girls, no older than 14, seemingly there on their own, smiling, having a great time.
As we made our way into the heart of the European quarter, a line of men and women dressed in military garb, likely veterans or current service members, had formed shoulder to shoulder in front of the crowd. As I tried to get past, one signaled to me, “stay back for now, we want to be sure it is safe”. He had a reassuring, calm air to his voice. “Huh, how thoughtful”, I remember thinking. They proceeded, rank in file, as if on a mission.
I got my first laugh of many as we arrived at the foot of the park to what would quickly become one of my favourite recurring themes. Today, I realised, was going to be a huge win for Big Ice Cream Truck. As soon as the crowd arrived, a dozen or so people, ‘truth will set us free’ signs in hand, got in line for some waffles and ice cream. “A true entrepreneur”, I thought.
Upon entering the park, a woman approached and handed me a book. “It’s free”, she said in English. Titled “The Great Hope”, back-cover promising “answers to our tortured epoch”, the book immediately struck me as religious, but was it related to the protest? Well, no. Turns out, Seventh Day Adventists are just as enterprising as Big Ice Cream. I soon noticed two entire stands, filled to the brim with copies of the 500 page book: they had spotted fertile ground, and were on the hunt for new recruits.
The first faint signs of the chaos to come emerged as the masses approached the park entrance. “Don’t go in!”, one lady said over a bullhorn, “it’s a trap!”. Confused, the crowd briefly split in half, those continuing on the street quickly finding their way blocked by police officers charged with keeping them away from the EU’s nexus at Schuman roundabout. The plan was always to coalesce under the arch at the centre of the park, so it’s unclear to me why this misunderstanding occurred: there was an entire stage set up there, after all. Though it didn’t appear so at the time, it would turn out our anonymous woman’s warning was not entirely misplaced.
Arriving at the main event, I couldn’t help but chuckle at the banging anti-system metal music blaring over the surprisingly well-tuned speaker system. Soundtracks are a theme of rallies and protests I have a tendency to forget about, but have always found very entertaining. Glancing around the main assembly spot, I noticed something else thoroughly amusing: three more ice cream trucks. Like the one at the entrance, protestors immediately queued up as the crowds flooded in. They would remain extremely busy for the rest of the day.
Chapter 2: Into the rabbit hole
I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect from the speaker line-up. I knew the organiser, a Belgian lawyer named Tom Meert, would likely be making an appearance (he turned out to be the MC), but other than that I had no preconceptions about what this would be like. Even if I had, there is no way anyone could have predicted what would happen next.
As Meert took the stage to kick off the rally, he excitedly announced that marchers were still just beginning the route from Gare du Nord. I have no way of knowing whether this was true, but it became a big theme for all the speakers, who progressively decided on the arbitrary consensus that this must mean there were at least 500,000 people in attendance. Official figures put the march at 50,000, which seems about right to me. As you can see on this aerial footage, the organisers’ figure has more of a “Trump insisting on crowd size at his inauguration” vibe than that of a true revolution.
“I’m going to repeat myself, there are toilets in the back left!”, Meert said, “we paid for them ourselves, they were quite expensive, so please use them and consider supporting us at the shop! You can buy beanies, hoodies, or even a coffee!”. Tom is the president of Europeans United, and clearly a true believer in his mission and movement. He is also, as the coming speakers would soon make clear, a pretty weird and deceptively problematic guy.
The first speaker, also a Belgian lawyer, was introduced only by his first name, which Tom did not say very loud and I did not hear. “Give a very warm hand to the man who organised this demonstration as the biggest success in Europe, ever! MR. TOM. MEERT!”. The crowd broke into chants of “Tom, Tom, Tom!” as he made an awkward hand heart at the camera, clearly blushing a little.
Tom Meert, right, head of Europeans United.
“Today good people of Europe, we stand here. Today we go, shoulder to shoulder, men and women alike, from across Europe and beyond. Affected by the measures, or not affected by the measures. Affected by the virus, or not affected by the virus. Vaccinated and unvaccinated. People who are from the left, and people from the right of the political spectrum. Men and women each with their own views on what caused the current maddening situation in this world. Diverse, and yet so alike. Because all of them have one common belief: this covid policy has failed.”
Right off the bat, an interesting and clearly intentional choice of words by the opening speaker. In taking less than thirty seconds to emphasise the supposed alliance of the vaccinated and un-vaccinated present, the public relations astroturfing had already begun… only to be immediately undercut by abstract references to “they” not caring about vaccine side-effects, or if you drop dead.
Coded “they’s” are a staple of all conspiracism, generally referencing a shady cabal of financial and political elites with a cohesive yet paradoxically undefined agenda who hold ultimate control over the world. Abstract enemies are powerful concepts in the hands of conspiracists, enabling audiences to project their individual prejudices onto them; while a crowd may cheer in unison, their perceived enemies can often be entirely different. This is also an oft used codeword for “Jewish banker/financier” tropes prevalent in the anti-semitic undercurrents of most all conspiracy discourses, though many partaking in such movements are not overtly aware of how harmful this rhetoric is. Tame for now, but this theme will sadly resurface in a big way down the line.
“Today we face a fundamental choice. Are we going to subordinate humans to systems? To systems of our failing governments? Are we going to let ourselves be subject to failing scientists? To a few failing billionaires? To a few failing politicians? Are we going to subordinate people to technology, and computer models? To badges, and QR codes? We do not need your social credit system! We do not need big brother in our bedroom! Governments of Europe, give us back our humanity, set us free! Freedom, now!”.
There’s a lot to unpack here. First is the incredibly problematic analogy of QR codes to “badges”, a reference to the Star of David that the Nazis made the Jewish people wear as identifiers as they established control over greater Europe. This misguided analogy is intended as a critique of vaccination and testing requirements for public spaces and travel, and has unfortunately become ubiquitous to anti-vaccine symbolism worldwide.
The central thread of technology leading us to algocracy (government by algorithm) is a fair concern. Indeed, mainstream discussion around the strength of algorithms and lack of individual data-privacy rights reflect similar worries. Ones which, ironically, have almost certainly contributed to many of the views expressed by the man giving this speech and those of his audience. The equivalence that is understood here though, is that of the Chinese social credit system that began trials in 2009, and, according to the Chinese government, achieved full implementation in 2020.
In short, China’s social credit system is an initiative closely linked to the country’s mass surveillance systems. The initiative aims to utilise the state’s surveillance apparatus, Skynet (which incorporates facial recognition, big data analysis, and AI), in combination with comprehensive monitoring of the country’s centralised internet to track the activities of businesses and individuals on, and offline. Corporations and private individuals are then assigned scores based on their adherence to what the government views as good “social behaviour” and ” traditional moral values”, which in turn determine rewards or punishments they receive.
The system is incredibly Orwellian, and very scary. As Ross Andressen puts it in his analysis for the Atlantic: “Xi wants to use artificial intelligence to build a digital system of social control, patrolled by precognitive algorithms that identify dissent in real time”. The government’s most recent surveillance program, “Sharp Eyes”, had the synergistic aim of monitoring 100% of public space by 2020. Whether on the internet or in real life, Xi has given his citizens nowhere to hide. China has already begun exporting this totalitarian apparatus abroad, and if you would like to read more, I highly recommend you check out Andressen’s piece, “The Panopticon Is Already Here”.
As may be apparent, this is absolutely not what is taking place in Europe. But the equivalency does give us some insight into the very first world nature of the anti-lockdown, anti-vaccine movement. “Tyranny”, is not being advised to wear a mask on public transport. “Dictatorship”, is not bars closing at 12pm. “Apartheid”, is not being disallowed from going to a movie theatre in the name of public health. Europe today is not “Nazi Germany”. Sadly, true tyranny, dictatorship, and apartheid still exist in our world, but the idea that this is what we are living through in Europe is naive, callous, and insensitive.
The next speaker caught me off-guard with his introduction. After greeting the audience, he proclaimed, “I am Callan Correo, and I am, or should I say was, an international, Oscar-nominated tango dancer!”. Facts, as it turns out. He explained how he is no longer allowed to pursue his passion due to vaccination requirements for travel (though it seems he owns a chocolate company now?), and that he has taken to working with Europeans United, alongside fellow “freedom fighters”.
“In Belgium, we have one great freedom fighter”, he paused for suspense… “HANS, FROM BRUGGE!”. Hard not to laugh, but I managed. I’d later find out he was referencing Hans Blanckaert, founder of anti-lockdown group Belgians for Freedom, and owner of a local snooker bar in… well, Brugge. He has been covered a few times in the Flemish press for organising rallies in his home city, and almost disobeying lockdown measures by staging a protest opening of his bar, which never materialised. Hans is also, apparently, the inventor of a Maori ceremonial dance. Callan continued, “and [hans] made this Haka, and it would be phenomenal if we could all do this together. Send a shockwave through Brussels, damn, through Europe! Let us all awake the world together!”. And off they went:
The display was pretty impressive, but I was stuck with two main thoughts. One, that is not the haka. It is the viking chant popularised by the Icelandic national football team fans at Euro 2016. I should know, as my favourite American football team, the Minnesota Vikings, stole this chant for their own, and use it every game. Second, and this may come as a shock, I do not think Hans from Brugge invented it.
The next speaker was introduced by Tom simply as “Fiona from London”. Fiona Hine, a 36 year old former events manager, is one of the forces behind the UK’s “mass non-compliance” movement headed by anti-vaxx nurse Kay Shemirani. Shemirani, 56, lost her nursing license for peddling the views that vaccines are poisonous, that public health restrictions are comparable to the Holocaust, and a variety of 5G related conspiracies. Hine, for her part, has made a smaller name for herself under the online pseudonym “Fiona Rose Diamond” promoting her own host of conspiracies, and calling the vaccine rollout “a genocide”.
Her speech was brief, and not all that interesting. After opening with a dramatic, “this right here, is freedom!”, she went on to discuss the “criminalisation of peaceful protestors all over the world”, her arrest record, and recent conviction in the Westminster Magistrates court for violating UK lockdown rules at the height of the pandemic in 2020.
I have no idea who the next speaker was, but he was very loud. As he was translating his sentences from French into Dutch and English, it seems pretty safe to assume the person is Belgian. He began by shouting our now favourite refrain into the mic: “You should know there are still people starting the march at Gare du Nord as we speak! We are over 500,000 people!”.
Next, he announced the launch of a petition to “unseat the corrupt Belgian government”, which is – get this – not a thing. As I wondered to myself how they expected this to work, I remembered an eccentric old man with a megaphone running around the entrance to the speaking grounds when I first came in. I would come across him later on, too, as you can see in this video:
In it, he says, “One million signatures and we will have citizen rule of Belgium! It is all well and good to shout ‘freedom’, but you actually have to do something about it! Three white tables are set-up just over there!”. Interestingly, this seems to be some kind of Belgian sovereign citizen movement. Originally an American phenomenon crafted by aspiring tax-avoiders, the idea that citizens can declare themselves exempt from their country’s laws on the grounds of their own “sovereignty” has gained global adherence during the pandemic. In Scotland this August, a group of anti-lockdown sovereign citizens attempted a historic “siege” of Edinburgh Castle, which is open to the public, to reclaim it for the people, predictably and inconsequentially resulting in failure. The movement is different everywhere, but invariably centers around some form of psuedolaw; in our case, the petition.
After some more shouting by our previous speaker, including a very angry “it is not the virus they imported from China, it is dictatorship!”, Tom gives the word to our next guest, Brecht Einhardt. Aside from Tom’s mentioning that he too is Belgian, I have no other information on who exactly this is. Like our petitioning friends, Brecht had a novel concept to present: “biological sovereignty”. The way he does this is quite incredible, so I will leave you to absorb this for yourself:
Woohoo! Remember your parents had sex to make you! Thank you to all papas for putting the “material” of winners into our mamas! Regardless of where we all stand on this rally, the fact he made everyone cheer “thank you papa” for inseminating their mothers is unobjectionably amazing. Further credits to the guy in the background at the end of the clip for pointing out, “we already knew that!”. After elucidating his champion sperm-based political worldview, Brecht continued:
An admittedly hard to follow fifteen minutes of the meandering Brecht put the next speaker, introducing herself as Tabitha, who had written a poem in Dutch to read to the crowd, in an incredibly awkward position. “There would be a translator, I heard”, she said shyly, “but we will see”. As she read the poem out to a deafening silence, we all simultaneously learned the painful reality: there would be no translator.
In a way, Brecht and Tabitha embody what the organisers want to present the movement as being. Brecht is eccentric, and his love based arguments that spin business, political, and world leaders into power-hungry, neglected children in need of love and affection come off as relatively harmless. Tabitha, who had written a poem no one seemed to care to listen to, soldiered on nevertheless. But if the previous speakers had not made this facade easy enough to see through, the glass was about to become much clearer.
chapter 3: piercing the veil
As I hadn’t caught his name in Tom’s introduction, I asked one of the stewardesses to identify the next speaker for me as they loaded his pre-recorded message onto the flatscreens. After struggling through a couple failed exchanges due to the loudness of the musical intermission, I was finally able to hear the name she was speaking in my ear: “Sacha Stone”.
To put it lightly, Sacha is… mental. Or, is he? As with other conspiracists of the same breed, it is hard to tell if the Bali-based British New Age influencer best known for his promotion of 5GBioShield, a 350$ “anti-radiation” USB stick that’s just a normal USB stick (3 for just 999$!), actually believes what he espouses, or simply follows grifting opportunities where he sees them. While many true-believers pick their causes and stick to them religiously, Stone’s resume is absolutely jam-packed with tidbits from all over the conspiratorial world. From anti-Semitism, to high placed anti-vaccine allies, to 5G, to Q-anon, Stone’s got it all.
Flag with key Q-anon slogan “The Great Awakening” spotted at the rally.
Before we delve deeper into Stone’s links to the shadowlands, let’s have a listen to what Europeans United invited him to say. This being pre-recorded, it is only fair to posit the messaging was pre-approved by the organisers. In the interest of piercing the veil, let’s give this speech a full breakdown.
After a brief intro saluting the frontline warriors present at the Brussels march for Freedom, he launches into his main arguments.
“The wheel is broken, the political wheel is broken, it is a hack! It must now be completely reformatted and reforged. And it must not be predicated on the same fundamentals that have led us into this era of covidiacy which is one of systemic poverty, war, and disease proliferating all around the world.”
“Covidiacy” aside, so far, standard anti-system stuff I guess; if a bit light on details. What fundamentals? Is disease a reference to the virus? Or something, perhaps someone, else?
“I think over 85 countires today are theatres of war, in fact I’d suggest that every single country on earth compacted to the United Nations Treaty is today, at war!”.
Ok, starting to sense some global cabal vibes. It should be noted here that Stone has posited that “hidden masters”, which he refers to as “the illuminati”, control the world, and that the current Covid crisis is to be attributed to “Sabbatian Zionist Lurian Kabbalists”.
“What is citizenship? We have to look at the etymology of all of these words. We have to reconsider what citizenship is, or should mean. How about fellowship? We ought to be moving freely about the surface of the earth, friends, make no bones about that.”
Shoutout our sovereign citizen friends, but moving on.
“We were natural born, free-born, we must get out from under the yolk of civilisational dystopia as it relates to idolatry, essentially. The religious idolatry [of the past] is simply supplanted now by the idolatry of government. We idolise government, we look up to parliaments, and congresses. We look at our political leaders as if they are Caesars of Rome… but they are nothing of the sort.”
Now, as a student of the history of ideologies, I can certainly get behind the need to reject idolatry in all its forms. Ironically, Sacha’s own business model relies on his self-elevation to the status of guru, guardian of hidden knowledge, and New Age prophet in the eyes of his followers. But more importantly, Sacha has yet to get to what, exactly, we should be rejecting. He continues in generic, yet increasingly coded terms:
“They are frail brothers and sisters. Invariably driven by greed, and coerced by invisible agendas, that is the fact of the matter! … The wheel is broken, do not make the mistake of trying to get that broken wheel patched up, we must reformat entirely.”
Finally, after three minutes of misdirecting groundwork, we get to the abstraction underpinning everything Sacha has said thusfar:
“We must do so predicated on fellowship in the absence of usury. Usury is the root of all ill in this world.”
The point? It’s the Jews. Everything wrong with the world he’s just enumerated: all the Jews. Outside of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the Russian fictionalised document responsible for mainstreaming belief in an international Jewish conspiracy, it would be difficult to find a clearer example of flat out, unapologetic anti-semitism. Usury, as many may know, is a reference to the collection of interest on monetary loans, historically associated with the financier role the Jewish people were pigeon-holed into playing in early-modern Europe due to legal barriers placed on their entering of traditional, non-money related professions, and is undoubtedly the single most well known trope of anti-semitic discourse.
This kind of rhetoric is extreme by any standard, but par for the course for Sasha. There is zero chance the organisers were unaware, and it turns out Mr. Meert and Europeans United are no strangers to allying with extremists. Through the Telegram channel of French Catholic-nationalist party Civitas (beyond Le Pen’s RN on the extremism spectrum), I discovered that the Belgian-born far-right militant Alain Escada, the party’s leader, was scheduled to speak later in the day. Though he never got that chance, for reasons we will soon get to, he posted this message decrying the agents provocateurs from ANTIFA who had once again foiled their designs:
While his current views include the retro-active illegalisation of gay marriage, opposition to same-sex couple adoptions, and “remigration” (i.e. forced expulsion of migrants), his “Christian” branding is a transparent attempt to obfuscate his past as one of the most influential figures in the history of the Belgian far-right. In 1995, Alain founded Polémique-Info, the only Francophone publication to represent the country’s extreme-right wing at the time. In it, one could find tracts from the wings of neo-nazism, Catholic fundamentalism, New Right neo-paganism, and every other extremist undercurrent in the same orbit. Alain and Civitas have been key allies of Europeans United from the get go, and despite being denied his chance to take the stage today, it was not his first invitation:
Though I do not wish to spend much more time sifting through Sacha’s shit, the second half of his speech shines a helpful light on the circle of conspiratorial elites he runs in.
“None of us imagined we would be walking through the valley of death as we have been. Where governments are weaponised against humanity. Where the biosphere is weaponised against humanity. Where the central remit and agenda of government today is to stick a lethal cocktail into the arms of our babies. Experimental, DNA altering cocktails of synthetic molecules. How the devil did we get to this.”
As the rhetoric may indicate, Stone is a bona-fide cornerstone of the anti-vaccine world. He has previously stated that the vaccine is a conspiracy to implant a “nanochip” in the human body so that “the beast” can “take control of their soul”, and has been influential in the movement since at least 2019.
Of particular interest is an event he organised and hosted in January of 2021, titled “Focus on Fauci”. The event featured anti-vaccine icon Judy Minkovits, the discredited biochemist featured in the blockbuster Covid-conspiracy film Plandemic, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., founder of Children’s Health Defense and, yes, nephew of JFK.
Robert Kennedy Jr. (RFK) and his organisation are the largest international players in the anti-vaccine arena. Unlike many of his counterparts who zero-in on the Covid vaccine-specific mRNA technology, RFK is a long-standing opponent of all types of vaccines, as well as a major promoter of “research” into the links between vaccination and autism. His international influence is vast, going as far as to lobby against the use of the MMR measles vaccine in Tonga, leading to an outbreak that paralysed the recently devastated island nation in 2019. He is a prolific ally of the European chapters of the movement, with Children’s Health Defense being responsible on the day for organising the international pre-protest livestream linked by Kairos, and the ultimate leaders coordinating the “worldwide” marches on the 23rd of January. Robert Kennedy Jr. held his own simultaneous rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC, where he explained how our current situation is worse than during the Holocaust:
“Even in Hitler’s Germany, you could cross the Alps into Switzerland, you could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did. I visited East Germany in 1963 with my father, and met people who had climbed the wall and escaped, so it was possible. Many died, but it was possible. Today, the mechanisms are being put in place to make it so none of us can run, and none of us can hide.”
In an attempt to expand his reach in Europe, RFK founded a European chapter of his organisation entitled Children’s Health Defense Europe. The Brussels based proxy is headed by Belgian anti-vaccine activist Senta Depuydt who, despite keeping a low public profile, has been a key figure of the Belgian and Europe wide-protests since Kennedy’s speech at a Berlin rally in 2019. This speech is key to anyone seeking to understand the origins of the European anti-vaccine groundswell, and is often referenced by Europe based activists as the “legendary”, historic start of the continental revolution (a tad grandiose given the video sits at just over 7,000 views). While she seems to make a conscious effort to keep her opinions away from the press, her rhetoric is much the same as her superiors: New World Order, mainstream media controlled by the cabal, vaccines are totalitarianism, autofill here.
In a rare public appearance at a Bois de la Cambre rally over summer, she explained how “just like his uncle, the ex-American president, Robert Kennedy Jr. came to Berlin to defend democracy against a totalitarian menace. That day, I felt very happy. The German people have carried the weight of Nazism and its awful legacy on their shoulders. They fought against Communism, and this time, dictatorship will not prevail.”
The closing speakers were two Polish activists, founders of the anti-vaccine group calling itself Guardians of Freedom. Their website is a hodgepodge of New World Order educational materials, anti-vaccine lectures, and other oddities (anyone up for a long-form piece on ties between the makers of the Astra-Zeneca vaccine and the British eugenics movement?). They have proud associations to the organisers of the major anti-lockdown protests across Poland which, in line with the political state of the country, feature vast far-right ties. Their members were equally responsible for organising a small but menacing rally targeting the mayor of the small Polish town of Walbryzch at his home, with guardians dressed in military garb screaming abuse through bullhorns and waving banners comparing him to Josef Mengele, the Nazi death camp physician.
Assessing the darkness
Despite the opening themes of love and acceptance, ‘vaccinated and unvaccinated unite’, the choice of keynote speakers and vast spider-web that makes up Europeans United’s international network are far more objective criteria on which to assess what they stand for and propagate.
Ultimately, the views elucidated above are strictly the responsibility of Tom Meert and his organisation. The line-up was not released before the rally, nor has it been published in any form since, likely due to the fact that he knows it would be torn apart by local media organisations for its blatant platforming of known anti-Semites, and otherwise ridiculous characters. Despite his almost endearing outward appearance, Tom is not an actor who should be treated lightly.
Though many in the crowd surely share in the beliefs presented by the speakers, simple attendance of the rally does not mean any individual subscribes to the entirety of what was said on stage. The crowd was a huge mixture of people, difficult to pin down to any one demographic: young and old, men and women, of every race, class, and sub-culture. As English was the chosen language, many of the people in the crowd didn’t even understand half of what was being said; as one guy behind me shouted to much laughter at the conclusion of Sasha’s talk, “mec, on a rien compris!”.
This said, the messaging of the talks made one point very clear: Europeans United is not a grassroots organisation. Its aims, goals, key figures, and message are no different than what you would find in the US, Australia, or the UK. Wittingly or not, the organisation has been completely removed from any local context, subsumed into the increasingly globalised world of the conspiracy tent.
A recent report by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) found that just 12 online personalities are responsible for the vast majority of vaccine misinformation, generating 73% of all anti-vaccine content on Facebook. For all their bluster, no speaker at today’s march presented any novel concepts (bar perhaps Brecht, credit papa for originality), simply regurgitating the same talking points spread by international ‘alternative thought leaders’. While all these minds may speak of ‘thinking for themselves’, it feels both telling and paradoxical that independent thinkers all over the world seem to think the same thing.
Chapter 4: The star
The great Bill Gates once said, “only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars”. Though this quote is misattributed, I have never seen a star shine through so brightly as the one that was about to illuminate the prevailing ideological darkness. After an odd lip-sync segment by a group of twenty-somethings to a Dutch song about authority (snore), she appeared. I had come across her before the speeches began, taking an Insta-boomerang with her Danish flag, but had figured she was just a very enthusiastic protestor. How wrong I was.
Behold, the headliner. Flown in from Denmark for the rally, I present to you: Upside Up!
If you wish to skip her intro (not recommended), song starts at 1:00.
I have looked and looked, but cannot for the life of me figure out who this anti-vaxx cosmonaut is. Judging by her energy and demeanour, this was the performance of a lifetime, and luckily for us, she wasn’t about to let a dweeb like Tom Meert take her off stage just yet.
Tom awkwardly concedes, but to be fair, who could’ve said no? Our superstar was determined to hold the limelight for an encore. TAKE IT AWAY ROBBINS!
Favorite lines:
“They tried to deleeete our facesss”
“Is there anything more sexy… THAN PEOPLE HAVING A BRAIN?!”
“Ughhhhh, yeahhhh!”
“Take it away Robbins!
Needless to say, I was absolutely blown away by this performance. I had come in expecting a lot of things, but this was not one of them. Though a bit out of breath, an icon was born.
Chapter 5: beware antifa
As our new favourite superstar left the stage, I noticed the organisers convening in a small circle near the back stairs, appearing frantic. As they spoke to one another, the sound of flares, firecrackers, and tear gas grenades in the distance started to illuminate the reason for their concern: the chaos had begun.
A new face had appeared on stage at the onset of the panic, seeming to have assumed the role of messenger from the frontlines. He identified himself as Markus Heinz, another lawyer, this time from Germany. Urging calm, he had a message for the crowd: some couple hundred idiots, in their peaceful crowd of “500,000”, had been paid-off by the deep state.
Echoes of “fuck ANTIFA!”, a catch-all term for the decentralised anti-fascist movement often used interchangeably with the idea of agents provocateurs described by Markus, rose from the crowd. While anti-fascist cells certainly exist, some even openly present at this protest, ANTIFA is neither a real organisation nor a coordinated phenomenon. There is also an obvious irony here, as so far as I can tell, the entire point of this rally is to stand against tyranny and prevent a new reich… so, fascism.
Anti-fascist protestors on Rue Belliard earlier in the march
Blaming an abstract “ANTIFA” is a trope that has been popularised in recent years through American right-wing coverage of racial justice protests in particular, with Fox News and psuedo-journalists like Andy Ngo leading the charge. The most absurd example of this now classic misdirection manifested itself in the conservative media-sphere during and after the January 6th siege of the US Capitol, where everyone from small-time local radio hosts to Laura Ingraham took to blaming Black Lives Matter and ANTIFA for the attack, claiming it to be a false flag.
A review of telegram channels involved in the protest later showed the clashes on the Schuman side of the park had been brewing for several hours by the time the organisers were forced to act. Time stamps from video EXIF data show police and black-clad protestors in gas masks fighting throughout the speeches. ANTIFA or not, the fuse had been lit:
Videos lifted from various Telegram channels of groups participating in the clashes.
Like with any protest, it is always a pointless exercise to attempt to differentiate between people taking advantage of an opportunity to fight, and true believes of the cause at hand. While various speakers continued to intermittently grab the mic in futile attempts to get the crowd to disengage, they had also spent the better part of three hours rallying the crowd against the very “deep state” and “tyrannical government” that had begun to make its presence known.
This is a classic ‘have your cake and eat it too’ kind of moment, all too typical of the keyboard warrior revolutionaries heading modern disinformation infused movements. How do you expect your audience to react if you take your own message seriously? If the “genocide”, “global take-over”, “tyranny”, and “apartheid” you have just described are all realities, then would forceful civil disobedience not only be justified, but necessary?
Chapter 6: vacate the park
Around 3pm, the organisers had officially lost control, and their truck-mounted soap-box quickly gave way to the clashes with police that would dominate coverage of the protest over the coming days. Tensions had been simmering at the back of the park for some time now, and with the speeches officially over, the floodgates had opened. A last announcement was made by Tom before he disappeared for good: “Everyone, do not go towards that end of the park! Please exit calmly in this direction!”. Ignoring him, the crowd went into the fray, booing the next speaker asking them to leave:
The rest of the day would be full of absurd contrasts. While the police closed in and violence escalated on one side of the park, the stage continued to feature a variety of haphazard appearances by increasingly strange characters. As the ice cream trucks continued to clean up the cash, unfazed by the explosions erupting around their waffle adorned vans, a woman claiming to be an MEP took the stage for one of my favourite moments of the day. She had interrupted a man’s song about human sacrifice, and he was none too pleased. Human sacrifice is the central theme of Q-anon, so this was of course very important business.
This dark yet comical contrast would continue for about the next hour. The police had begun to slowly take over the park in a pincer movement, progressively blocking off exits one by one as they funnelled people back towards the arches. True to his word, our friend Markus had returned to the frontlines with his loudspeaker to bravely call out the “several hundred idiots” to their faces, but no one seemed to pay him much attention:
Back at the stage, a mandatory “we are the world” recital took place (for what is a protest without a terrible rendition of this song), “the day of the people” was declared, and lookers-on kept buying ice cream. By this point, no effort from the stragglers on stage, no matter how strange, would change the course of the protest’s devolution.
Telegram footage spliced with original shots; must see "We Are the World” recital at 1:10.
We are now at around 4pm, and in the moment, I could not shake how odd this all felt. Moments of comedic absurdity interspersed with getting tear gassed, hot rage just 200 meters away from a bunch of people who cannot sing for the life of them, unable to let go of their own contorted version of the limelight. It was just very, very weird, and seemed by now that people had completely lost sight of why they were even there in the first place.
The park segment of our story closes in dramatic fashion on a shot spanning a salsa class, water-cannons, and children hit by tear gas being carried out from the fray.
With the police having successfully cleared the park, clashes continued in the surrounding neighbourhood. Those remaining can safely be considered the hardcore of the bunch, and it was at this time of the day that all meaning had officially been lost. Maybe these were the idiots Markus had spoken of, maybe they weren’t. In any case, it was starting to get truly messy, and after shooting the following footage, I decided the time had come to call it a day.
Original footage spliced with more Telegram shots.
A small fire was set inside the Merode metro station, a gabber dance party broke out across the intersection, and police were vans encircled as the smell of weed started to waft through the air amid the smoke emanating from the piles of trash set on fire.
Maybe these guys had something to do with it? I guess we’ll never know.
So this is how it ends.
For all the chaos, official reports cite only 15 injuries, a few of which were police officers. 60 people were also detained, almost certainly on the tail end of the day when the protest was, for all intents and purposes, over.
Chapter 7: reflections at curain call
the world as they know it
As the day drew to a close, chaos gave way to an air of solidarity and joy. Bars in the neighbourhoods surrounding the park filled with protestors cheerfully celebrating what they had accomplished. Crowds on the terraces broke out in song, echoed chants of ‘freedom’, and convivially gathered with friends and strangers for worldview reinforcing conversations over pints of draft beer admirably delivered by the masked, and clearly not in the mood, waiting staffs.
There is an unmistakably strong sense of community to these movements, a feeling that those standing beside you are your comrades in arms in a war society deems unimportant, dumb, and imaginary. They see what you see, believe what you believe, and are awake to the same dark realities those around you in your day to day life ignore. Like cults, conspiratorial belief systems develop their own lexicons and conceptual frameworks that effectively preclude people unfamiliar with the vocabulary of the echo chambers from understanding the world as adherents see it. The strain this puts on social ties, especially those as close to home as family and friends, exacerbate feelings of alienation in people sharing their often very genuine beliefs with the outside world, in turn strengthening the bonds between those that ‘speak the same language’.
It is in this light that the siloing effect mainstream social media bans have had on Covid conspiracy theories should be reflected upon. By siphoning people into smaller and smaller groups on insulated platforms like Telegram, where channels active 24/7 send hundreds of ‘bombshell’ updates about the global cabal every day, it can become very easy for participants to forget the existence of an entire world beyond the chat that doesn’t frame things the same way they do. The power of the psychological effect resulting from an impression that ‘everybody’ around you thinks the same thing is immense, escapable only through an admission that you and your compatriots might be wrong, about everything. Once lost in these imaginary realities, the only escape requires adherents to flip everything they know about the world upside down.
It is this totalising nature of extremist and conspiratorial beliefs that form the crux of the de-radicalisation challenge writ large. They are comprehensive frameworks that give definite structure to a world that has none, all while affirming people’s innate desires to be protagonists in a universe far too vast to be orbiting around them. Draped in shadows by the pandemic, the last few years have been a time where “we don’t know” has often been the most informed answer to questions that have fundamentally altered how our world works, and the lives of those living in it. Uncertainty breeds a desire for answers, and it is precisely when there are none that totalising belief systems are at their most powerful.
Hanna Ardent wrote, “[totalising] ideologies are concepts describing the world and people in it, as ‘isms which at least as far as their adherents are concerned, can explain virtually every event and norm in social life by deduction from a single premise”. In resisting the urge to condescend the inhabitants of Conspiracyland, it is helpful to remember that there are very common versions of this same phenomenon at which no one bats an eye: religion and nationalism. They are worldviews that collapse nuance and contradiction, tell people who is good and who is bad, and are defined by a totalising belief in the right-ness of their particular ideology. Is it any more absurd to have doubts about the vaccine than to discard decades of literature to hold on to the belief that immigrants are to blame for your economic situation? Is it any more irrational to believe the earth is flat than that your specific God is real, everyone else be damned?
Conspiracies are imaginary belief systems like any other, but we classify them as ‘irrational’ because their beliefs fall beyond the scope of accepted societal norms and political discourse. At the end of the day, they are just another manifestation of a very human truth: in times of crisis, simplicity always wins out in the town square.
The revolution that wasn't
Heading home that night, I was far more overwhelmed than certain of what my take-aways from the day would be. In the moment, I could only draw one conclusion: this revolution was wack.
For an event that was supposed to unite the continental anti-lockdown movement and shake the foundations of EU tyranny, this was a pretty embarrassing effort. There were nowhere near 500,000 people at the rally, let alone the absurdly ambitious “one million” figure in the march’s original title. If we take the official count of 50,000 attendees, we get 0.005% of the Belgian population. For an ostensibly international event, this turnout puts a few things into perspective.
First, there is a significant difference between your average person making an individual choice to not get vaccinated and the movement’s conspiratorial, activist wing. Discounting age groups under the age of 18, 90.1% of Belgians have received at least one dose of the vaccine at the time of writing. Not only does this data paint anti-vaccination in general as a niche proposition, it also illuminates that from a potential pool of approximately 920,911 Belgian adults who have not received the vaccine, barely 5% of them showed up (not accounting for international arrivals, which would put this figure even lower). These figures highlight the dangers of painting anti-vaccine sentiment with a broad brush, and make a strong argument for holding back on pre-judgement of those who have made this a decision of individual conviction.
Second, while the views and agenda propagated by the organisers is dangerous – chiefly to their own followers – the cast of weirdos we met today are not revolutionaries. Their rally represents the views of a niche within a niche, and though they may view themselves as freedom fighters on the frontlines of a war to defend civilisation as we know it, no one else seems to believe that war exists.
Third, that in an odd way, the impact establishment media coverage had on the protest was the opposite of what its proponents, attendees, or organisers might think: it legitimised it. Despite their will to steer clear of violence, I can’t help but feel the “idiots” Markus described did them a favour. The images that reached the press conveyed a primal anger, frustration, and genuine resistance to the vaccine, and what remains of government safety measures at a time when more and more people are sympathetic to the idea that it is time to move on.
After the rally, RTBF uncritically parroted a word for word transcript of a text sent by Tom Meert in response to their questions about the day’s events:
“It is necessary to have freedom because we no longer have any. Love is our religion. Truth is our life and our freedom, it is our right… For me, vaccinated or unvaccinated, I dislike nobody.”
After the absurd spectacle of the march, these are the words Tom gets to go out on. All things considered, not a bad outcome for our main man.
the evidence based reality myth
‘Disinformation’ is a trendy culprit for the present moment. What else could be responsible for an era where at protests across the world, from the Canadian trucker convoy, to the Belgian freedom march, to the November storming of Italy’s parliament, placards declare the familiar findings of those who have “done their own research”: that we are being surreptitiously implanted with 5G tracking devices by our illuminati overlords, who are themselves but the traitorous cat’s paws of the shape-shifting aliens from another dimension who secretly manipulate human destiny.
There is a societal consensus that disinformation is the sole cause of belief in these odd parallel realities, and that this surely must be a new phenomenon. Conveniently, if the problem is new, then it follows that it must have recent – therefore isolable and solve-able – causes. But recency bias is powerful if left unchecked, and as with most things, the reality of our situation is much more complicated.
If we take a step back, the idea that social media is the single sinister, omnipotent corruptor responsible for all ill in society is incredibly short-sighted. It relies on the flawed assumption that our information stream was somehow ‘pure’ to begin with, and rejects one very simple truth: people always have, and always will, believe super weird stuff.
What the internet has done is lower the barriers of entry to these niche belief systems, allowing people to stumble across them courtesy of algorithms rather than having to arduously seek them out. This feeling of having ‘discovered’ new information by oneself is empowering, and a big part of the great irony I see in the current conspiracy era. People “doing their own research” are kindly escorted on their ‘individual’ journeys by algorithms, in effect granting them the feeling that they are “thinking for themselves”, when in actuality their thoughts are being guided by machines.
But the internet itself is not responsible for the existence of the views it propagates. Opposition to vaccines has existed as long as vaccination itself, 5G conspiracies trace their lineage back to the 1970s, and ‘fake news’ has existed since people with power have sought to influence society to their advantage; so, forever. In short, as Joseph Bernstein puts it in his analysis for Harper’s Magazine, we have become “overly dependent on anecdata about ‘rabbit holes’ that privilege the role of novel technology over social, cultural, economic, and political context”. The internet is a mirror held up to our lived society, and though algorithms distort the digital world, we must take care not to lose sight of the real world contexts they refract.
This is not to say that social media cannot be dangerous, especially when synergising with volatile political, cultural, and ethnic movements. In a perfect storm, the reach platforms provide to leaders seeking to stoke conflict can be extremely deadly. Significant blame for the Rohingya genocide has been placed on Facebook, and similar worries are beginning to crop up in India as genocidal, anti-Muslim rhetoric leaves the fringes for the mainstream.
The problem we face in Europe is ultimately one about privacy rights. Algorithms gain power the more data-points they are allowed access to, and we must continue to push along the data-privacy regulation axis with the aim of effectively ‘seat-belting’ social media companies by legislating the extent to which they are allowed access to data about our lives, social circles, day to day movements, and interests.
I do not believe it wise to trend in the direction of ‘de-platforming’ or legislating the limits of what is ‘real’ prior to exhausting far more logical solutions at our disposal. Before we throw away principles that ensure rights on the internet, we should first try restoring rights to privacy online.
Luckily, Europe is trending in the right direction, and its leaders effectively telling Meta to fuck off when they “threatened” to pull Instagram and Facebook out of Europe if they couldn’t sell their citizens’ data abroad is a heartwarming sign.
closing credits
In the historical annals of revolution, the Europeans United March for Freedom and Democracy will take its rightful place among the wackest footnotes ever entered into the record. As the continent slowly begins its transition to an endemic approach to Covid, their furor will become increasingly irrelevant, but the movement will go on.
Though there is no war, their fight will continue. Though there is no tyranny, they will continue to struggle for freedom. As the banality of evil stares them in the face, our brave keyboard warriors will continue to fight their invisible, but far cooler enemies. For, as J.G. Ballard once wrote:
“The suburbs dream of violence. Asleep in their drowsy villas, sheltered by benevolent shopping malls, they wait patiently for the nightmares that will wake them into a more passionate world.”