The far-right group suspected of a German plot has gained strength thanks to QAnon

BERLIN – The Reichsbürger (Reich Citizens), a gang of ragged men once dismissed as harmless and fractious, have been battling the windmills of Germany’s far right for decades.

But after authorities accused its members of plotting to overthrow the government and assassinate the chancellor, a very different view of the dark group emerged on Thursday: as a serious terrorist threat, overloaded with conspiracy theories about the coronavirus and vaccines.

Among the 25 cell members arrested this week were a judge, a doctor, a cook, a pilot, a classical tenor and three police officers, according to authorities.

At least 15 had it ties to the military among them former or current soldiers and two reservists with access to weapons.

The arrests put Germany inside maximum alert and, after months of surveillance, unleashed one of the largest counter-terrorism offensives in postwar German history.

The group, which does not recognize the modern German state, has seen its ranks grow from 2,000 to about 21,000 since the first confinements, according to government estimates.

He has established himself as the biggest far-right danger in Germany, through the pandemic,” said Miro Dittrich, senior fellow at CeMAS, a Berlin-based research organization focused on far-right extremism and conspiracy theories .

“It is dangerous not only that there are armed and trained members of the military and police in the group, but that the number of permits for weapons has increased and several people in this group had such permits,” he added.

In 50 of the 150 houses searched on Wednesday, military material was found, such as guns, ammo, tasers, night vision goggles, crossbows, knives, combat helmets, and even swordsaccording to federal police and intelligence services.

There was also a significant cash reserve of over €100,000as well as gold and silver.

Among the objects found there was also a list with 18 names of politicians and journalists considered enemies, including the Foreign Minister Olaf Schoelz and his Minister of Foreign Affairs, Annalena Baerbock.

Further arrests are expected once the seized material has been examined.

There are currently 54 people under investigation.

In addition to the plot unveiled this week, the Reichsbürgers were also behind a failed attempt to raid the German capital during a vaccine protest two years ago, and are believed to have inspired a plot to kidnap the health minister and trigger a coup earlier this year.

“This scene in the Reichsbürger has often been downplayed, even by the security authorities. Well, not anymore,” says Hajo Funke, a political scientist at the Free University of Berlin who specializes in the far right.

The Reichsbürger movement believes that the postwar German republic is not a sovereign country, but a corporation created by the allies after the Second World War.

It is believed that the founding father of the movement was Wolfgang Ebel, a West Berlin railway worker fired after participating in a strike in the 1980s.

When his attempt to gain civil servant status in a series of legal proceedings failed, he began calling himself out reich chancellor and at his home the imperial government’s police station.

Apparently, he sold Reich ID cards and passports to his followers.

Increase

For years, members of the movement have made headlines primarily for refusing to pay taxes and hand over their passports, instead demanding a certificate identifying them as citizens of the German nation and often noting their place of birth as Kingdom of Prussia or Bavaria.

But since the start of the pandemic, they have become the main channel for violent and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, in particular QAnon.

The mythology and language that QAnon uses — including claims of a “deep state” of globalist elites running government and revenge fantasies against those elites — evoke ancient anti-Semitic tropes and coup visions that have long animated the German far right.

Like QAnon, the Reichsbürger has used the pandemic to appeal to an ideologically incoherent mix of vaccine skeptics, fringe thinkers, and ordinary citizens who said the pandemic threat was exaggerated and government restrictions unwarranted.

Lorenz Blumenthaler, who studies the German far right, calls the Reichsbürger a “gateway ideology” because the movement attracts many disenchanted disparate groups with the government.

Like other far-right groups, the Reichsbürger was able to capitalize on anti-immigrant hostilities following an influx of refugees and migrants in 2015 and 2020, amid frustration over coronavirus lockdown rules.

The pandemic It has allowed the group to find new support, beyond those that tend to gravitate to the right, and tap into a deep vein of increasingly powerful conspiracy theories.

“It’s taken on a whole new level of radicalization,” Blumenthaler said.

QAnon conspiracy theories dovetailed with those of the Reichsbürger themselves.

The cell detained this week had planned to overthrow the German government, which it called a “deep state,” and then negotiate a peace treaty with the United States, according to authorities.

In the US, QAnon has already grown from a fringe internet subculture to a mass movement that has in some cases become a political force.

But the pandemic has supercharged conspiracy theories far beyond America’s shores.

The ignition switch for QAnon’s deployment in Germany was “Defender-Europe 20,” a large-scale NATO exercise, which was curtailed due to the pandemic.

QAnon supporters claimed the German government had used a “false pandemic” to thwart what they considered a secret release plan spearheaded by the president Donald Trump that would restore the German Reich.

The Reichsbürger got into QAnon trafficking online to give their conspiracy theory more exposure.

That spring, the two movements merged into a common Facebook group, followed a week later by a channel on the Telegram messaging app, amplifying both.

One of those arrested on Wednesday was Birgit Malsack-Winkemann, a judge and former MP for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

He had posted regularly on Telegram using the tagline “WWG1WGA”, which stands for QAnon’s motto, “Where one goes, we all go.”

For a long time, the authorities did not take the Reichsbürger seriously.

It wasn’t until 2016 – when a heavily armed supporter of the Reichsbürger, cornered in his home during a raid, shot and killed four policemen – that things changed.

“It was a game changer,” recalled Konstantin von Notz, a lawmaker and intelligence oversight board member.

“Before that, they were considered little suspects.”

The undone plot on Wednesday, which included plans to storm the German capital and install a new government led by the Prince Henry XIII de Reuss, scion of a 700-year-old German noble family, seemed far-fetched.

But German officials said the storming of the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, in which QAnon followers figured prominently, meant any such plot, no matter how outlandish, had to be taken seriously.

“They had very specific acquisition plans,” von Notz said.

“After January 6, we cannot take any risks. We must take this risk very seriously.”

Germany had its own version of January 6, albeit unsuccessful and much less far-reaching. In August 2020, dozens of Reichsbürger members and other far-right supporters broke away from an anti-vaccine protest to try to force their way into the Reichstag, the historic parliament building.

The police stopped them.

But a few months later, far-right activists and others posting videos on social media gained access to the building, aided by an AfD MP, and berated the then finance minister, but did him no harm.

Few believe that the cell arrested this week or other similar groups have the real capacity to carry out a coup.

But that doesn’t diminish their willingness to attempt to commit deadly terrorist attacks in the process, extremism experts say.

“The probability of a coup is very low, but the probability of terrorist attacks and deaths has increased,” said Dittrich of CeMAS.

“Over time this is a threat to democracy,” he added.

“It shows that a part of the German population is moving away from democracy and is willing to commit violent acts.”

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