Published
Mon, Jun 6, 2022, 18:20
- "I was unaware that his booking would trigger such a wave of hate and negativity," wrote the promoter, Ananto, on Facebook.
Berlin psy trance party Mystic Rose has cancelled the DJ booking of controversial activist and Querdenken member Captain Future (AKA Michael Bründel) at KitKatClub on June 17th.
After news of the booking was met with fierce backlash online last week, Mystic Rose promoter Ananto took to Facebook yesterday, June 5th, to confirm Bründel's removal from the lineup.
"Booking Captain Future was MY idea not the KitKatClub!," he wrote. "I booked him as a DJ not a political activist. Because I fucking like him as a DJ! Why y'all fighting the KitKatClub? And [KitKat cofounder] Kirsten [Krüger]? She didn't even know I booked him! In the last 27 years, Kirsten has not instructed me a single time who to book or who not to book."
He added: "This is why I will withdraw my booking from Captain Future so I don't hurt the club any further. I was unaware that his booking would trigger such a wave of hate and negativity."
Though Ananto took full responsibility for the booking, Krüger, in a post on Facebook last Friday, June 3rd, called Bründel "quite entertaining" and agreed that to Mystic Rose "he's just a DJ nothing else." Her post has received more than 1,000 comments.
"This 'DJ' ran during the peak of Covid-19 infections with his Querdenker friends without a mask in department stores and subways and intentionally sang to bystanders," Berlin-based guitarist Johannes Thielmann wrote under the post. "This 'DJ' is responsible with his behavior for the event industry closing down for so long and now you give him a stage? Unfuckingbelievable..."
Bründel himself commented on Krüger's post, after he had received news of the cancellation. "The club was my favorite club before Corona and I would have loved to perform there again [...] But the shitstorm was huge and I don't want to do any more damage to it. Of course, I can completely understand the decision of the organizer of the Mystic Rose Party not to let me play. I'm not mad at him either. I am sure that the truth will prevail in the end and we will all be able to celebrate together again soon."
Bründel, who has been DJing since the early '90s, rose to prominence during the pandemic as a Covid-19 skeptic and vocal critic of Germany's lockdown laws. He's a member of the Querdenken movement, or "lateral thinkers," which "encompasses far-right extremists but also anti-vaxxers who historically have aligned with the left," according to Deutsches Haus at NYU. Bründel was regularly seen at anti-lockdown and anti-vaccination protests in his signature yellow cape and eye mask.
Bründel is also the founder of Freedom Parade, a protest group set up in May 2020 that, according to Tagesspiegel, shares "conspiracy theories" and "tolerates right-wing extremists in its own ranks."
Since the start of the pandemic, 139,386 people have died of Covid-19 in Germany, according to John Hopkins University. In December 2020, when clubs nationwide were closed, KitKat reopened as a pop-up testing centre, offering PCR tests for €25 a go.
Read Ananto's post in full.
Maya-Róisín Slater contributed additional reporting to this article.