Austria’s Herbert Kickl exposes government’s corona lies

[Herbert Kickl is leader of Austria’s FPÖ party (“Freedom Party of Austria”), the third largest in that country. Below is my translation of his speech at a press conference on 22 October 2021. My translation has evened out much of the repetition common to free-flowing speech, to make the written text flow more speedily and smoothly. In other words, the translation is fairly free aesthetically, but tightly loyal to the original in meaning.]

Austrian federal government goes on the rampage

The reason for today’s press conference is what I call the Austrian federal government’s recent rampage, but first and foremost the rampages by the Federal Chancellor and the Minister of Health. Rampages in our country against freedom and human dignity under the guise of public-health policy. I use the term “rampage” deliberately. I could also say that this is a frontal attack on the fundamental rights and freedoms of the entire population, especially on the unvaccinated.

What fundamental rights and freedoms are being attacked here? The right to individual freedom, the right to physical integrity, the right to work and the right not to be discriminated against. All of it is being trampled on by Mr Schallenberg and Mr Mückstein, to force free people, who have chosen not to take an experimental vaccine, onto its needle. In the end, that’s what we are witness to; a brutal regime of mandatory vaccination being established in Austria.

It is nothing more than mandatory vaccination

It doesn’t matter whether we are now talking about the package of measures called “3G” in the workplace [Geimpft (vaccinated), Genesen (recovered), Getestet (tested): in Germanic countries, entry to work, businesses, events, etc. (it varies from country to country) is permitted only if you can demonstrate you are one of those three things], or whether we’re talking about continued progression along the “step-by-step plan” by two further steps, levels 4 and 5: It is nothing more than mandatory vaccination, even if the Austrian federal government is too cowardly to call it by its right name. I put it to you: What kind of sadistic person do you have to be to subject unvaccinated, healthy, symptomless people to mandatory testing, every day, just so that they can go to work, so that they can feed themselves and their families, so that they can earn money to cover their living expenses, so that they can pay taxes to the state, so that they can pay their social-security contributions from which, among other things, our health system is financed?

To subject these unvaccinated, symptomless, healthy people to a compulsory test that is deliberately designed so that many of them cannot even fulfil it, is an act of political cynicism. I have been travelling around the country a lot in the last few days, talking to the people concerned. They explain their situations to me in palpable despair. Their despair at the problems they face from the government’s implementation makes a deep impression. The worst thing about it is that this is precisely the situation the government desires. This so-called alternative of the third G [Gestestet (tested)] is designed in such a way that it is simply inaccessible to many people.

An act of cynicism, an act of blackmail

It is a pure act of cynicism when you consider, for example, the problems faced by shift workers who have irregular work schedules that change every week. They cannot adapt to test-facility opening hours, and such facilities are not even available in more rural areas. When you consider people who often have to drive 20 or 30 kilometres to the nearest test facility, when you consider people who start work so early that nothing is open and finish so late everything is closed, you see that a very, very sinister game is being played here, played on the backs of the population. This is what Mr Mückstein means when he says testing will be made inconvenient, and when Mr Schallenberg says that things will get uncomfortable for the unvaccinated.

What is happening here, in fact, is nothing more than an act of blackmail. Get vaccinated or lose your job. That is the truth behind this regime: 3G in the workplace. I ask you: How cold do you have to be, what kind of a heartless doctor, to disallow unvaccinated, symptomless, healthy people, in this level 4 situation, from visiting their loved ones in the nursing home, for example, from visiting them in an old people’s home, when you know perfectly well these old people suffer from loneliness more than anyone else? You know they need closeness and affection. How cold and heartless do you have to be to set up something like that for level 4?

Bottom-of-the-barrel people treat others like work slaves

And what a bottom-of-the-barrel character you have to be to blackmail healthy, unvaccinated, symptomless people into getting vaccinated by telling them that, for level 4, ”You’re only allowed to have a family member visit your children, acquaintances or friends in hospital if they are vaccinated.” Imagine a car accident, or anything of that severity, and a family member of yours ends up in hospital. We’re dealing with a government that tells them, “If you’re not vaccinated, then you can’t visit them.” This is scraping the bottom of the barrel at its very worst, ladies and gentlemen.

Allow me to ask you something else: What kind of human being do you have to be to treat unvaccinated, healthy and symptomless people – here I’m talking about lockdown for the unvaccinated – almost like work slaves. You are granted the right to go to work, granted the right to pay taxes. Maybe you’re allowed to go to the supermarket, but that’s it. Otherwise you’re locked up. That’s what awaits us in level 5 of the government’s emergency plans.

Is vaccination effective, or not?

Then listen to the explanations as to why all these measures are apparently required. There’s Governor Schützenhöfer. Admittedly, he’s not the brightest candle on the cake, but the explanation he gave is grotesque: He said: “We will not allow the unvaccinated to infect the vaccinated.” Only to say two sentences later, “Only vaccination protects.” Which is it? Governor Schützenhöfer: Which is it? Is vaccination effective, or not?

And the other explanations that have been presented are almost as weak. The second version is that we are to protect the healthy unvaccinated from the vaccinated, from the “fully immunised”. Excuse me? What does fully immunised mean then? It makes no sense. The third version is that you protect the healthy from the healthy by locking them up. Do you not see how absurd, how deranged the whole thing is, the circus that’s underway in our country?

Useless and counterproductive health policy

Ladies and gentlemen, what we are witnessing is constitutionally and morally indefensible. It is deeply reprehensible, and furthermore, completely useless as health policy. It is completely useless health policy, not to mention counterproductive. And we must not forget that all these attacks are not only directed against the wholly unvaccinated, they are also directed against all those who only have a first vaccination but do not want the second “jab”. It is also directed against those who have had two vaccinations and are now hesitating about taking the third. And it is also directed against all those who have recovered and whose reprieve – as I like to call it – granted them by the government, has expired. And that is a very, very large number of people.

Now I will explain why the federal government is doing this. The federal government has an enormous problem. With this government, all those who have pushed the Corona measures in unison with and in support of them over the past months have this problem too. And this problem is called: They are trapped in a dead end.

The plan was to make the greatest possible profit from the crisis

The plan was quite simple. First: You spread fear and panic. That done, you go out and try to herd people into this vaccination experiment so that, later, you can present yourself as the saviour and garner the greatest possible political profit. The problem is that reality does not obey government propaganda. Reality cannot obey a redemption script certain parties penned for themselves. Reality, in fact, works the other way around. Reality supports critics of the script penned by the ÖVP, the Greens and the SPÖ. The true findings are quite different; this vaccine therapy, or “vaccination” as it is called, is not a game changer. Nothing like it. The game-changer story is fake. It is a clear untruth. Yet another on the government’s appalling record of untruths.

Second: Vaccination works, but doesn’t work well enough. You can read about this in the relevant scientific publications. Third – and this is the crucial point: We do not have a pandemic of the unvaccinated. What we have is a major deficit in the effectiveness of the vaccination. And that is why the vaccinated also belong to the group that I call “the deceived” of this government, in connection with its corona policy. And anyone who continues to rely entirely on vaccination, as this government does, those who continue to propagate vaccination as a panacea to the pandemic, are committing a continuing fraud against their own population. This policy will lead us into a health disaster.

The numbers expose government failure

Let’s take a look at a few numbers together. We’ll start with infection rates. The number of so-called ‘cases’ one year ago on 22.10.2020 was 21,835. Today, the 22.10.2021, we have 36,298 cases. That’s significantly more this year, even though we know only unvaccinated people are currently being tested. And the government is deliberately, I say deliberately and knowingly, drawing the wrong conclusion from this data, that we are dealing with a pandemic of the unvaccinated, and building their scapegoat strategy on that. No doubt they will admit their error long after the fact.

Let’s turn to the number of hospitalisations: One year ago, on 22.10.2020, 841 people were hospitalised, and 161 were in intensive care. This makes a total of 1,002 hospitalised. Today, on 22.10.2021: 795 people in hospital, with 220 in intensive care: a total of 1,015. This means that the total number of covid patients in hospitals has increased slightly and that we have seen a significant increase in the number of intensive care patients since last year.

Numbers have worsened after vaccination

And what is the difference between then and now? Ladies and gentlemen, what is the difference? The difference is that in the meantime between 62 and 65 percent of the population, the vaccine-eligible population, is “fully immunised”. That is the difference. One year ago, not a single person in Austria had been vaccinated. Now, common sense tells us that in light of a continuing “full immunisation” programme, this data, the infection numbers, just like the hospitalisation numbers, should actually be declining. They should be declining, but the opposite is true.

I know the government is saying: It’s the unvaccinated. This is the pandemic of the unvaccinated. But that’s not true either. What we are seeing is something quite different. For that you have to examine the number of so-called “vaccine breakthroughs”. Again, this is a trivialising term; vaccine breakthroughs are supposed to suggest that this phenomenon is an exception and not a mass phenomenon. So here, too, there is deliberate language manipulation. Let’s take a closer look at this. In the last four calendar weeks, that is weeks 38 to 41, there were 30,270 symptomatic, laboratory-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 cases. So, those are the vaccine breakthroughs. 30,270. Of those 30,270, 10,189 are fully vaccinated. That's 33.66 percent, and that's across all age groups.

Vaccine breakthroughs in older people: predominantly vaccinated

Now we turn to the high-risk group, the 60+. These are the people for whom the government always said vaccination must be particularly thorough, these are the highly vulnerable people. Here we have a proportion of fully vaccinated people in these vaccine breakthroughs of 65 percent. 65 percent; that’s close to two-thirds of this group. And this despite the fact that we have the highest vaccination rate of all in this age group. There we have reached a vaccination rate of well over 80, almost 90 percent. There should really be no more vaccination breakthroughs at all, if vaccination protects as well as the government repeatedly claims.

These figures do not come from the Freedom Party of Austria, but from the health agency, the federal government, the AGES. And the AGES itself says something very important about these figures: it tells us vaccine breakthroughs are being reported, but we can be confident that nowhere close to all breakthroughs are reported. This phenomenon is called “underreporting”. This means we have to assume that the number of actual breakthroughs is significantly higher. And there is something else. You should also know that only those who have been vaccinated and infected twice, and who also develop symptoms, are recorded as vaccine breakthroughs.

International scientific findings are ignored

So people who have the virus but no symptoms are not counted as a breakthrough. This means that you can add a considerable number of people. Only then you can clearly see how ineffective this vaccination is. And all of this completely confirms what the CDC announced in August of this year after investigating the Massachusetts cluster. You can read about it on the CDC’s homepage. They investigated the outbreak there in fine detail and reported that fully vaccinated people can still be infected, and that vaccinated infected people are just as infectious as unvaccinated people. That is the current state of knowledge of the most important health authority in the world. But this fact is completely ignored by the Austrian federal government.

Mr Schallenberg and Mr Mückstein act as if none of these facts exist. Instead of taking these findings into account, an apartheid system, a caste system I would almost say, is being enforced in Austrian society, in which the lowest of the lowest castes is the unvaccinated. They are denigrated and disenfranchised without justification. This is public-health policy in Austria in 2021, entirely evidence free.

Israel: More and more clusters and diseases despite vaccination

Ladies and gentlemen, not long ago I pointed out in a press conference that we can see from the example of Israel that a high vaccination rate offers no protection against high infection rates. I discussed Israel referencing their scientists’ statements – which you can read in Science – to demonstrate that of the high hospitalisation rates, which include particularly severe and critical progressions, a high percentage so affected are double vaccinated. It was not so long ago that I made this announcement to you in a press conference. This data comes from August of this year, in Israel. It is precisely this development that is now catching up with us.

Israel was just a few months ahead. What has already happened there is now coming to us. The number of clusters of the fully-immunised is constantly growing. You know what it’s like: bus trips of some senior-citizens group, in which only vaccinated people are included, and yet a cluster occurs. They’re finding more and more cases of this kind as the vaccine breakthroughs increase. And, of course, the number of hospitalisations and severe disease progressions are also increasing.

There is no science behind the claim that vaccination makes illnesses milder

I already know people will say: “Yes, yes, but the severe progressions and death rates are down in the double vaccinated.” I would like to hear what the primary source for this claim is. I would like to know. Perhaps you know? What is the primary source for this claim, made repeatedly by our political leaders? What studies back this up? I would really like to know! And the second thing is: Which studies tell us that people are better protected from severe disease progression by vaccination than by appropriate drug treatment? Which studies back that idea up? I would like to hear about them. 

I believe these studies do not exist, ladies and gentlemen.

And because we shouldn’t talk about Israel alone, we should also look at Singapore. A very recent example: Singapore has one of the highest vaccination rates in the world, well over 80 percent. But Singapore is currently rushing headlong into a fourth wave; the infection rates there are going through the roof. I can quote Alex Cook, an expert on infection models at the University of Singapore: ”Singapore shows that even high vaccination rates don’t help that much.” So we’re seeing this sort of thing in Singapore, too. And in Denmark, a country where they said they would let people go about freely because the vaccination rate is so high; there, too, the numbers are going up. You see the same thing in Germany. The Robert Koch Institute recently published some data: 60+ [age group]: 55 percent of those who fall ill are double vaccinated. In the Robert Koch Institute’s weekly report, they find around 100,000 vaccine breakthroughs in just one week. The Robert Koch Institute itself is now talking about an overestimation of vaccine effectiveness.

Without any measures, Sweden is better off than Austria

It’s very interesting, what’s happening here. You’ll understand that I’m happy that in another country – which has now disappeared from the radar a bit – the development there is a very, very positive one. I’m talking about Sweden. They took a completely different path from the very start and have a similar proportion of fully-vaccinated people in the total population as Austria. If you look at their current figures, they have 29 people in intensive care as of 22.10. In Austria, as I said, there are 220. If you look at the mortality figures, since 1 July 2021 we have 332 deaths in Sweden and 480 in Austria.

In Sweden, mere suggestions to the population have been in force since 29 September. In our country, the federal government is interfering with a programme of injustice, in which fundamental rights and freedoms are trampled underfoot, and unvaccinated people are stigmatised as scapegoats. Ladies and gentlemen, all this means that while vaccination has some effect, it is by no means the game changer that can end this pandemic.

Has the government always known about low vaccine efficacy?

Vaccination is far less effective than claimed, and is effective for far less time than claimed. And this fact won’t change when, after the third jab, they get a fourth and a fifth and a sixth. The fundamental problem will remain. I believe the Austrian government knows this. If you look at the fact that 41 or 42 million doses were ordered for 2022 and 2023 and do the maths on that figure, you come to the conclusion that you can actually vaccinate seven million Austrians three times a year. They must have already known that the effectiveness lasts a few months at most.

There’s no victory to be had by following this strategy. At the same time, we have a growing side-effects or vaccine-damage scandal. Incidentally, here too we also have the phenomenon of underreporting. Not every event that should be reported is being reported, and by a significant margin. It frightens me when I talk to internists who tell me, for example, that the number of myocarditis cases, especially among young vaccinated people, is very high. This is actually an alarming development, which should immediately lead to an end of the vaccination programme in this age group.

Number of deaths from vaccination damage will increase

The number of deaths by vaccination will also continue to rise. This, too, is something that is completely taboo, about which we hardly hear or read anything. And, of course, we continue to face this problem of medium- and long-term health consequences, where frightening results in connection with tumour growth have now come to public attention, i.e. where there is quite obviously a connection between vaccination and tumour growth.

So, ladies and gentlemen, there is no pandemic of the unvaccinated. Anyone making that claim is spreading government propaganda. The government needs it to be true because it builds all its horrors on top of that claim. What we actually see is an ineffective vaccine and thus rapid spread of the virus among and through the vaccinated. That is the problem we face. That is the real problem. And I don’t blame the vaccinated here. The vaccinated are people who feel protected because of what the government tells them. They are people lulled into a feeling of safety by statements from the Minister of Health, as from all those who have participated in this campaign.

People are being deceived by the government

The vaccinated have been deceived. Deceived , lied to and lulled into a false sense of security. The mendacity continues to this day. This fact is particularly reprehensible. You only have to look at the core claims made in the government’s current vaccination campaigns. The government, in concert with the Red Cross, is running a major vaccination campaign. In addition to the coercive regime being rolled out, this campaign is, as it were, an auxiliary strategy for manipulating people into participating in this vaccination experiment.

So let’s take a look at the core messages from these vaccination campaigns. People are being told – funded by their own tax money by the way – that vaccination will make the pandemic go away. That is one of the posters from the campaigns. Its slogan reads: "So that the pandemic will pass". Hogwash and lies!

Untruths are propagated in garish ads

People are also told that if they get vaccinated, older people will no longer be infected by younger people and children. That’s in those malicious commercials, where we see old people in front of a microphone saying: “Now my grandchildren can finally come and visit me again.” There is no evidence supporting this ad, either.

People are being told as part this vaccination campaign that full protection is provided after the second vaccination. Not even the pharmaceutical companies makes this claim. And yet the Austrian government, in concert with the Red Cross, makes exactly this claim in their vaccination campaign. People are being told that if they don’t get vaccinated, they will get sick. As if there were no symptomless disease progressions. As if there were no T-cell immunity. As if there were no cross-immunity.

Young people are misled about the current legal situation

Yet another message from these vaccination campaigns is evidence free, and particularly ‘creative’ in catching the attention of the young. The campaign aims to exploit young people’s need for entertainment, in the form of discos and clubs. The government misinforms the young by telling them: “You can only get into a club if you’re vaccinated.” That’s not actually the current legal position, but on the poster we see, “Everybody went to the club but Irene, who says ‘vaccination gives you migraines’." That is classic misinformation. This messaging does not accurately depict the current state of the law. What this poster claims is not true.

Unscrupulous and criminal

There are other such examples. “Everyone went to the club but Jochen. He hasn’t been jabbed." Ladies and gentlemen, this is evidence-free manipulation of one’s own population to drive people onto the needle. I think it is disgraceful behaviour. It is unscrupulous and criminal.

It is for this reason that we are filing a complaint with the Federal Office for Safety in Health Care in accordance with paragraph 6 of the Medicines Act. Paragraph 6 of the Medicines Act concerns deception. If what is being disseminated here by means of the vaccination campaigns is not determined to be misleading, when the floodgates will be opened for every form of manipulative misinformation in the field of medicine and vaccination.

Health-budget cuts during humanity’s ‘deadliest’ pandemic

Ladies and gentlemen, the government’s strategy is leading us into disaster. I predict the following: We will crash into a fourth wave. Cases will rise dramatically and the health-care system will face huge difficulties. One reason for this is that it has been cut to the bone and not upgraded these last two years … one and a half years. Please think about that. Cuts in the health budget and not a single intensive-care bed left, despite a pandemic that is allegedly the biggest humanity has ever faced.

Who is responsible for this? And then you get into a situation where a few hundred intensive-care patients cause a modern society to topple over, leading to fundamental rights and freedoms being eliminated in that country. Where have we arrived? Where are we, ladies and gentlemen? This is a total failure! And all this simply because the government continues to rely on vaccination as a panacea.

Public menaces who have human lives on their conscience

Anyone who fails to change course now is a reckless danger to public health. Those who fail in this regard will have human lives on their conscience. I choose my words carefully here. They will deliberately divide society. Whoever fails to change course now will be trampling on fundamental rights and freedoms. Such people will lead our country into the next lockdown. A lockdown not only for the unvaccinated – that will be of no use – but also for the vaccinated. That’s where this will end. And with that we have the next attack on prosperity in this country, which generations have built up and which is now being put at risk by an irresponsible and stubbornly closed-minded federal government.

WHO Director: Vaccination will not end pandemic

Ladies and gentlemen, I suspect the European Director of the WHO won’t be labelled a tinfoil-hat wearer, not even our government would do that. He is Dr Hans Kluge. This particular Director of Health of the WHO said the following: Vaccination will not end the pandemic. Governments need to change their strategy to deal with the spread of the virus.

So what is our government doing? Our government is doing the exact opposite. Our government is betting the farm on vaccination. They risk a reckless gamble, with the population’s health, fundamental rights and freedoms on the line.

The Freedom Party of Austria call for a Plan B

What we Freedom Party members want is the immediate implementation of a Plan B. A Plan B without reprisals. 

Our Plan B has the following essential points. Firstly, an immediate end to any kind of compulsory vaccination. There must be no disadvantage, no reprisals for anyone who does not want to undergo vaccination, for whatever reason. Those who want to be vaccinated should do so. Preferably after detailed consultation with their doctor on the basis of their own medical history. That would be the sensible approach. But not at the supermarket checkout, not on a vaccination bus in front of the school. Not in front of a disco at night, like when whalers used to “shanghai” drunk sailors in the harbour pub. This is similar to what is done now with vaccination, when they try to entice young people outside discos.

Immediate use of medication to aid the infected

The second item is: Immediate use of medication for the infected. Immediate use of medication to prevent severe disease progression. Ladies and gentlemen, you know that existing medicines have been used successfully against covid19 for a long time, that new medicines are being tested and developed. Using these medicines has a major advantage: There’s no need to vaccinate the whole population. Medicines are targeted at those people who have an infection and have been diagnosed with a disease. This means we don't have to expose the entire population to the risk of side effects. That is a huge plus, especially when we know that, statistically speaking, large parts of the population under 60 have zero risk of a severe course of the disease, including death.

If you argue that medication doesn’t work or that you absolutely have to vaccinate: please, ladies and gentlemen, HIV was not fought with vaccination. HIV is fought with medication. This is so important to me, because our government has staked its lot on the claim – I’m referring to those manipulative vaccination campaigns – that only vaccination can protect us. That’s just not true. We know that covid19 is easily treatable with medication. We also know that if these drugs are administered early on, we can prevent severe disease progression and significantly reduce mortality. We know that if we administer these drugs early, we can prevent severe cases, reduce mortality, reduce hospitalisations, prevent overloading vaccination units, that we can prevent all the negative effects currently being triggered.

We know more about administering medication than about third-dose vaccination

You are probably aware that one of 2021’s most read scientific publications is by Professor Peter McCullough. It is an overview of the drugs administered in connection with the fight against covid19. This is in the US, but there are other studies on all these drugs. There are scientific publications and there is real-world experience. And that is much, much more than we can say of the third jab. We don’t have rich experience to draw on here. We don’t have that at all. The crucial point is that these drugs are administered at an early stage and not only in hospital. Then it is too late. Then we find ourselves in the middle of a severe progression.

You also know that American medical associations have established a drug regimen. And there are very, very good doctors in Austria, as in other countries of the European Union, who have adapted this course of medication to European conditions. The main thing is that you do not need intravenous treatments, and you do not need house calls from doctors; you can basically handle everything with tablets. It would be enormously liberating if this course of drugs were applied. So that is one of our central demands, to immediately introduce these drug regimens and launch a broad information campaign to the population, telling them that this is possible, and to promote this form of therapy appropriately.

Record and research population immunity

Ladies and gentlemen, another element of our Plan B is the detection of antibodies throughout the population. This should in fact be a matter of course for a decent health policy; it is incredibly positive news for people to know they themselves are actually better protected from any infection by an immunity they could never attain via vaccination. Sadly, this just doesn’t fit government strategy.

That’s why they also claimed: “Immunity from defeating a disease is over after six months.” That’s a whopper! There is no medical evidence natural immunity lasts only six months. But if we did things differently, people would realise that it can be advantageous to have already been infected, because then you have long-lasting immunity. But then the government would be stuck with all those vaccine doses, a troublesome outcome that obviously has to be prevented at all costs.

Another essential element of Plan B is that vaccinated people are also tested, if relevant symptoms present. Otherwise, we can’t compile a comprehensive dataset.

Solidarity among all those deceived by the government

Ladies and gentlemen, in conclusion, the Freedom Party of Austria believes there must be solidarity among all those who have been deceived by the government in connection with its corona policy. And this solidarity of the deceived is the exact opposite of the societal division Schallenberg and Mückstein promote.

To repeat: the deceived include the unvaccinated, who are now being scapegoated without any evidence, and who are being vilified and disenfranchised. The deceived include those who have recovered, who are told that their natural immunity only applies for a few months after they have been in quarantine, then they have get vaccinated. The deceived include those who had an asymptomatic progression, who have antibodies but have did not quarantine. That makes no sense whatsoever. They have also been deceived.

The deceived are also the vaccinated

The deceived are also the vaccinated, simply because they have been led to believe that after two jabs they would be safe, that there is no longer any danger to themselves and others. And no one mentions side effects, they don’t even happen! They are mentioned in every advertisement for sore throat tablets, but not when the government promotes these gene vaccines. Then you hear nothing about dangerous risks and side effects.

We want to foster this solidarity politically. We are fighting for it. Therefore, at the next opportunity, we will table be a motion of no confidence in the Minister of Health. We are preparing a ministerial indictment against Mückstein, just as we did against his predecessor, Anschober. I have already mentioned that we will file a complaint with the Federal Office for Safety in Health Care because of misleading information in connection with all these vaccinations. And I believe that the point will be reached again where the Freedom Party will also bring its protest to the streets.