They wanted to overthrow the German Parliament and restore the Empire. This Wednesday, December 7, German justice arrested a vast terrorist and far-right conspiracy network, scattered throughout the territory. According to the authorities, these individuals planned to carry out several attacks against the democratic institutions of the country, to “free the German people” from an alleged “manipulation”.
Presented by the authorities as one of the most important anti-terrorist operations ever carried out in Germany – 130 searches, 3,000 police forces mobilized – this crackdown illustrates the proximity between the different movements and conspiracy theories that emerged during the crisis of the Covid-19. These arrests also underline how conspiratorial ideas, sometimes taken lightly because of their whimsical nature, can fuel the formation of violent groups.
According to the press and the prosecution, 25 people were arrested. All were affiliated with the German conspiracy group “Reichsbürger” and followers of the theories of QAnon, an American conspiracy movement. Among these individuals are a descendant of German nobility, former soldiers, a Russian national and a former member of the far-right AfD party. So many singular characters, who at the end of 2021 would have formed an action cell intended to “overcome the existing state order in Germany and replace it […] ” by force.
“Reversal fantasies and conspiratorial ideologies”
According to the German government, it is conspiracy that fueled the terrorist inclinations of the arrested. “Driven by fantasies of violent overthrow and conspiratorial ideologies”, according to German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, the arrested individuals would have “made concrete preparations to violently enter the Chamber of Deputies in Berlin, with a small armed group “, said the prosecution in a press release. An action directly inspired by the attack on the Capitol, in Washington (United States), on January 6, 2021.
Also according to the prosecution, the suspects would be convinced of the veracity of the conspiracy theories of the QAnon movement. This far-right conspiratorial group from the United States notably argues that American elites are stealing children’s blood to extract a rejuvenating substance from it, and is convinced that the United States is in fact run by members of a so-called Deep State.
But, far from simply importing their ideas, the suspects arrested mainly subscribed to a German conspiratorial current, called “Reichsbürger”, an ideological negationist movement with 20,000 followers in Germany. Founded in the 1980s, it considers that the German population would be the victim of a gigantic conspiracy; that the end of World War II and the occupation would never have happened; that the German leaders would be puppets manipulated by the Freemasons, the Jews or the Illuminati.
A negationist movement… And antivax
Like QAnon, Reichsbürger has been particularly active and visible since the Covid-19 crisis. Its members have regularly been identified during protests against the vaccine or health restrictions. On this occasion, they were able to affirm their existence and meet other militant groups, the most extreme of which share the conviction that power must be brought down. “The pandemic and the state intervention it has necessitated have put gas in the engine of those who think that the state is a kind of illegitimate totalitarian enterprise, which tries to enslave the citizens”, underlines Jean -Yves Camus, political scientist specializing in far-right groups.
The investigation will have to clarify if the planned attack foiled this Wednesday was linked to the attempted intrusion into the Reichstag – the building of the German Parliament – of a hundred demonstrators during a mobilization against the Covid-19 restrictions. , August 29, 2020. It will also have to clarify whether the terrorists were in contact with those who were arrested for planning the kidnapping of German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach on April 14, 2022.
Still, the protests against vaccines and restrictions were a pivotal moment in the trajectory of those arrested. “If the large health gatherings generated connections between the various extremist and conspiratorial movements, they also allowed the intelligence services to identify the actors of these groups”, summarizes Jean-Yves Camus.
The most extremists want “secession”, the “uprising”
Arrested individuals included some popular antivax conspiracy theories in their plans to restore the empire, as the German daily reports. Die Zeit, who was able to view a Telegram message posted by one of the suspects minutes before the arrests. “Everything will be turned upside down: current prosecutors and judges, as well as heads of health departments and their superiors will find themselves in the dock at Nuremberg 2.0,” it reads.
The Nuremberg 2.0 is a trial project defended by the main Covid-19 conspirators, who compare those responsible for health policies… to dignitaries of the Third Reich. To all these apparently contradictory conspiratorial influences, Jean-Yves Camus points to a common root: “during the pandemic, a degree of hatred of the power in place emerged, which goes so far as to deny their legitimacy. The solution for these people is secession and uprising. »