This sounds a lot like a Nazi era or cold war story but it happened just a few days ago in Germany. As the antismoking disease spreads its grotesque madness becomes clearer every day.
Hanspeter Müller is a Swiss pensioner, 66 years of age. He lives on the border with Germany. For years, about four days in each week, he has crossed the border to the nearby city of Constance, to visit a favoured beer parlour. A recent day was typical: Hans visits the pub, he sips his beer and chats with old pals, while smoking his usual cigarettes.
The old fellow has not paid attention. There is something new and ominous in the air: smoking prohibition. Fraud and hatred have landed in Constance. Hanspeter has not yet smelled its stench. Now it will assault him.
Two cops walk into the barroom. They see him smoking and they approach him. They ask for his papers. They order him to put his cigarette out. Hanspeter is flabbergasted: his tobacco has been with him for uncounted years, and with his forebears for much longer than that. It is part of his culture, his life, his personality. Hanspeter, outraged, refuses to obey.
Then the incredible happens — something that should make all smokers think hard about how long they are willing to tolerate fraud and fanaticism turned into law. The handcuffs click around Hanspeter’s wrists, and a forty euro ticket is foisted on him, because he refused to obey the orders of the new German Gestapo. The police wear green, public health wears white, but in spirit and action, the brownshirts are back.
The business owner and the other patrons of the locale are also flabbergasted, in a mix of anger, surprise, disgust, incredulity, and contempt for the “public health” bastards: perhaps a feeling similar to what their fathers and grandfathers may have felt when the cousins of these “public health” operatives entered, maybe that very same locale, 70 years ago.
The landlord starts a collection of money there and then, to pay Hanspeter’s €40 fine, but more importantly, to launch a message to the health bastards: we are all with Hanspeter, what he is, and the way of life he represents. The message comes through loud and clear, and human solidarity blooms: 400 euros, not just 40, are collected: the crowd is with Hanspeter not one time, but ten times.
The fine is paid promptly. The remaining cash, the patrons decide, shall go to a poor children’s institution. A message has been delivered to the bastards, and especially to what they represent, while the evil done by “public health” is turned this time into good for disadvantaged children.
The “public health” Gestapo knows not shame. It cannot turn the other cheek. It has to show who is in charge. It has to set an "example" that others are supposed to fear. It must be shown that there are consequences when you disobey its fascist law, so, still handcuffed, Hanspeter gets deported out of Germany, escorted by the officers in shackled humiliation to the border with Switzerland.
The case hits the papers. The police spokesman says what all the Nazis said in Nuremberg: the officers did their duty, they were executing orders; if the smoker did not smoke, nothing would have happened. Yes, right. If gypsies, and Jews, and homosexuals, and ideological dissenters had kept themselves outside the Reich they would have been okay too. There are times when people of good conscience can and must disobey orders. This was one of those times.
The protest and the contempt for law spreads. The landlord joins the German fight against the “public health” Gestapo. Ninety percent of his clientèle are smokers. Some of his customers are old enough to remember the war — and episodes just like this one. Then as it is now, there was only one real issue on the table: whether our bodies and souls belong to the state or to ourselves.
Thanks to the “public health” bastards and their sick ideology, the issue is open once again.
Link to the original story in German below.
0 Comments