bne IntelliNews – BALKAN BLOG: Bulgarian parliament’s attempted storming by self-proclaimed ‘nazguls’ inspires memes and mockery

Leaders of Bulgaria’s far-right Vazrazhdane party may have hoped to inspire fear with their poster of the ‘nazguls’ – the evil black riders from the Lord of the Rings movies – to summon supporters to a protest against coronavirus restrictions on January 12, but for many Bulgarians it was just another reason to tune in and laugh at the holiday.

Shortly before the protest, which culminated in a failed attempt to storm parliament, a bTV investigation found that four of Vazrazhdane’s 13 MPs are fully vaccinated against COVID-19, despite members’ grim descriptions of the party of coronavirus vaccines as “experimental liquids”. ‘ and a ‘monstrous’ experience.

In Bulgaria, Facebook commenters said, even the anti-vaxxers are fake. The situation even inspired a song by song from LGBTI performer Angelina Letnikova (Angelica Summer). Then, in a move that no doubt offended the staunchly homophobic party members, online critics quickly dubbed them “trans-vaxxers.”

“Trans-vaxxer. You are vaccinated but you define yourself as unvaccinated, ”wrote on Facebook the famous director and author of satirical collages Valdes Radev.

One of Radev’s supporters, Vasil Todorov, responded with a similar comment: “Trans-unvaccinated – fully vaccinated person, generally a supporter of Vazrazhdane, who is against vaccines and does not believe in them.”

Bulgarian Democrat MP Teodor Mihaylov continued in the same vein in a Facebook post reposted by Offnews media. Mihaylov wrote that there are at least six types of “vaccine orientation”, a reference to Vazrazhdane’s homophobic rhetoric. Of the six types, he defines “homovaxxinal orientation”, placing Vazrazhdane in this category.

“Homovaxxinal – these are people who are vaccinated but pretend they aren’t so others don’t see them as fools or cowards. They have a green certificate but don’t show it to anyone,” he wrote.

Not to be discouraged, politicians in Vazrazhdane have doubled down on their anti-vaccine stance at a time when Bulgaria is reporting a record number of new cases as the Omicron variant of the virus spreads in the region. Currently, only around 30% of the Bulgarian population is vaccinated, the lowest level in the EU.

“Vaccines, scientifically honestly, do not meet the definition of vaccines. Right now we’re talking about a monstrous socio-engineering experiment in which people’s health is on the map in a geopolitical game of socio-engineering. It’s my opinion, but it’s also that of the group [opinion]said party secretary Nikolai Drenchev in an interview with bTV.

He added: “until I have a gun to my forehead, I will not get vaccinated.”

“For all the vaccines that have been produced in the last decade that have not gone through a long process, I would not recommend anyone to apply them. But this, I repeat, is everyone’s personal decision,” Drenchev concluded.

When asked directly what he meant as he had been vaccinated in August, Drenchev said he could choose for himself and could not recommend anything to anyone.

Colleagues Ivo Ruschev and Stoyan Taslakov have also sought to defend their decisions to get vaccinated, with the latter saying he received the vaccine under pressure from his family to protect his 94-year-old grandfather and following the advice of experts from the UK where he lived. for six years.

Such explanations did not sit well with commentators like renowned PR and communications expert Lubomir Alamanov, who wrote in a detailed Facebook tally: if and how much they have been vaccinated.

He then took aim at the nazgul poster, commenting on the importance of reading books and suggesting that Vazrazhdane members apparently hadn’t read JRR Tolkein’s classic trilogy and didn’t know who the nazguls were – although he let hear that they may have inadvertently hit on a powerful metaphor for Bulgaria’s corrupt politics.

“The heroes shown in the photo are nazguls. Powerful people who sold their souls for gold and power,” he wrote. “Hmm, is there any political force that seriously brags about it?”