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Comment by skummetmaelk | Hacker News Reader

A few countries in Europe ban face coverings in public. Mainly driven by fear of people wearing burkas.

At the start of this, I saw a claim that New York failed to repeal their no-face-coverings requirement when making the new masks-are-mandatory requirement.

(No idea if this was accurate or a colossal misunderstanding of how things work, but the claim was made).

I'm only aware of a small subset of laws existing in Europe, but every single example of restrictions to face hiding I can think of predates Muslim presence by many decades. No, those are not driven by fear of people wearing burkas.

Denmark introduced a ban in 2018.

https://outline.com/BUzZLq

Netherlands 2019 https://www.government.nl/topics/ban-on-face-coverings-refer...

France 2011 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_ban_on_face_covering

Denmark 2018 https://www.dw.com/en/denmark-bans-full-face-veils-in-public...

Austria 2017 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-41457427

etc

I was thinking about the german Versammlungsgesetz and requirements to stay identifiable while operating dangerous machinery in public ("driving"), but apparently I was completely wrong about their age (actually late 20th and late 2010s, I was assuming "possibly leftover from some reich"). Still, those two were not motivated at all by rejection of imported culture, but in terms of timing they might very well have been.

'predates Muslim presence by several decades'?

When exactly do you think 'Muslims appeared' in Europe?

711 if we ignore the failed siege of Constantinople. But I don't think that's in any way related to what gp was talking about?

Correction: no, the examples I was thinking of are much younger than I thougt (but nonetheless not aimed at burkas at all, aimed at leftist protesters and at reckless drivers)

This does not apply to surgical or ffp2 masks generally.

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