If there was such a thing as a fun guerrilla among the “lateral thinkers”, Michael Bründel was their boss. During the peak phase of the corona pandemic, the Berliner staged himself as the self-proclaimed superhero “Captain Future” and repeatedly appeared with his supporters from the “Freedom Parade” at demonstrations by those who played down the corona.
However, the actions were anything but funny: When it had long been proven that distance and masks protect against infection, Captain Future walked through supermarkets with his people without distance and sang “A little Sars must be”. Apart from a yellow superhero mask in front of his eyes, he wore nothing on his face.
And after countless people had died of Covid-19 in the intensive care units, Bründel celebrated his 44th birthday with dozens of friends in his Friedrichshain apartment in autumn 2021, the people chanting “Peace, freedom, no dictatorship”.
A little later he himself reported that he had been in bed for a week with “flu-like” symptoms. “I don’t know if it was Corona,” he said in a video. He didn’t take a test. “I don’t care at all either.”
Apparently it doesn’t matter as much as the proximity to conspiracy ideologues and Reich citizens, through which the “Freedom Parade” attracted attention again and again. A Holocaust denier has traveled with Bründel in his entourage, his followers compared police officers to the SA and SS, he himself appeared alongside right-wing extremists or harassed and insulted the SPD politicians Olaf Scholz and Andreas Geisel during the election campaign.’
However, now that the corona virus has lost its greatest terror because of the omicron variant, Bründel should also celebrate again as if nothing had happened. On June 17th he was scheduled to DJ at one of Berlin’s most famous clubs, the KitKat Club on Köpenicker Strasse in Mitte, world famous for its fetish parties. After great excitement in the Berlin party scene, Bründel has now been uninvited again.
Bründel, who was already active in the party scene before the pandemic and organized fetish parties himself, was announced as DJ Captain Future at the “Mystic Rose” party, a psytrance event, in the club’s “Separee” from midnight. He should make music for five hours. Now Bründel has been uninvited by the organizer of the party. He announced this on Facebook.
The Mystic Rose organizer wrote: “The booking of Captain Future was MY idea, not KitKatClub’s! I booked him as a DJ, not as a political activist. Because I really like him as a DJ! Why are you beating up the KitKatClub? He, who calls himself Ananto, finds the reactions to the booking of Michael Bründel “intolerable”. The KitKat Club and its owner didn’t deserve that. “And Michael Bründel aka Captain Future didn’t deserve that either,” says the “Mystic Rose” organizer.
Ananto, whose real name is Ingo Damm, met Bründel “as a cosmopolitan and inspired person.” In his eyes, Bründel was “a freak, an anarchist, with more left-wing ideas.” Although he resorts to “means of protest, which one can find questionable”, there is one thing he is not: a Nazi, a right-winger, or even just open to the law, even if he lets himself be photographed with Nazis or AfD politicians.
The party organizer Damm respects that many “have a problem” that Bründel should hang up at his event. But the situation has escalated.
Reactions to Damm’s statement were divided: “Ananto has shown where he stands. Anyone who still goes to this party joins forces with anti-Semites and right-wing extremists,” wrote one user. Others expressed solidarity with Bründel: The “shitstorm” was a result of “propaganda”, the opponents of the corona measures with Nazis “in a sack”. would throw, commented a user.
At the weekend, the criticism of Booking Bründels was great: “Will he also have his big hits ‘A bit of Sars must be!’ and ‘Who brought the monkeypox? Who brought the monkeypox? I say: Mr. Lauterbach’ hang up?” asked a user on the club’s Facebook page. “Will everyone sway to ‘A little Sars must be’ and happily toast the superfluous 80-year-olds with Crimean champagne?” Another etched.
Another user wrote: “I would still book Attila Hildmann for catering” – Hildmann, who became known as a vegan chef, also turned out to be a conspiracy ideologist in the corona crisis and is now wanted by arrest warrant, but previously fled to Turkey.
KitKat operator Kirsten Krüger, who in this case is only the host but not the organizer of the party, commented on the personnel on Facebook on Friday evening. Bründel is “quite entertaining” in his superhero costume,” she wrote. “I don’t know him well, not really. He’s been to the club from time to time and has also hung up a few times. I don’t even remember which event, in ours never.”
In the past two years, Bründel had asked her whether the KitKat wanted to support him in his activities, Krüger reported. “No, we didn’t want to.” With the “Mystic Rose” he was “just a DJ, nothing else”. There are simply different opinions about Corona, you have to accept that.
She herself would “never book Captain Future, didn’t like him even before Corona,” assured the KitKat owner. She only found out about the current commitment on Thursday. “He doesn’t get a stage for his confused performances.” She would take care of that herself.
Then she spoke out against exclusion. “I also find it horrible that Russian artists are being unloaded everywhere just because they don’t explicitly speak out against Putin,” Krüger wrote. “It’s all difficult.”
This was met with great rejection from fans on Facebook. She was “very disappointed with the statement”, wrote one woman and announced that she no longer wanted to visit the KitKat – under these circumstances she would no longer feel as comfortable and safe “as I need for your shop”.
Others expressed similar sentiments, calling the statement “embarrassing” or even more severely critical of it. There was also some agreement. One user wrote: “Right decision. Techno should be non-political.”