The foiled attempt of a far-right group to overthrow the German government shows that secret societies such as those described by the master of esoteric conspiracies, Dan Brown, exist and can be dangerous.
German law-enforcement forces arrested on Wednesday 25 members and supporters of a far-right group that the prosecutor’s office said was preparing a violent overthrow of the state to install as national leader a prince who had sought backing from Russia.
Investigators suspect individual group members had concrete plans to storm the Bundestag in Berlin with a small armed group.
Prosecutors said the group was inspired by the deep state conspiracy theories of Germany’s Reichsbuerger and QAnon, whose advocates were among those arrested after the storming of the US Capitol in January 2021.
You may not have heard of the Reichsbuerger before, and that’s normal because they like secrecy.
The German secret services estimate their number at 21,000, 10% of whom are ready to use violence to reach their goals. Lately, the Reichsbuerger has grown as a rising number of protesters against anti-COVID measures joined its ranks.
Members of the Reichsbuerger (Citizens of the Reich) do not recognise modern-day Germany as a legitimate state. Some are devoted to the German empire under the monarchy, some are adherents of Nazi ideas, and others believe Germany is under military occupation.
The plot envisaged German Prince Heinrich XIII of Reuss, a descendant of a 700-year-old noble family that once reigned over a tiny state in eastern Germany, to be the leader of a future state.
Another suspect, identified as Ruediger v. P. under German privacy laws, was to be the head of the military arm, to build a new German army, prosecutors said.
Connections to Germany’s far-right are obvious. A former parliamentary lawmaker from the far-right Alternative For Germany (AfD), Birgit Malsack-Winkemann, was among those detained, according to German prosecutors.
Another detained suspect was a Russian woman identified as Vitalia B., suspected of facilitating unsuccessful attempts to make contact between the so-called Prince Reuss and Russian officials. Russia has denied any involvement.
Still, at a time when Moscow is suffering setbacks in the war, it started in Ukraine, internal mayhem in Germany could perfectly serve the interests of Vladimir Putin.
It’s too early to guess what the German investigation will unearth, but we already have all the ingredients for a larger-than-life Dan Brown-style thriller.
The 6 January 2021 Capitol attack in the US had already signalled that even the strongest democracies are not immune to coup attempts by far-right forces organised in the US, not necessarily in a secret way.
And it is not a secret that in France, the far-right has a power base in the army, as a 2021 investigation by Mediapart has shown.
Our societies must counter the plans of the far right to violently overthrow democracy and install Nazi-type regimes. One obvious prerequisite is to treat all these groups as terrorist organisations and devote all necessary efforts to crack down on them.
But more concerning is the power base of the prospective tyrants.
There is a growing number of people who believe in conspiracy theories, such as QAnon, who reject science by claiming that the Earth is flat or by becoming militant anti-vaxxers. Some of them vote for extremist parties, and many simply don’t vote because they despise democracy.
It is the duty of the traditional political parties to address this challenge. The Reichsbuerger case has revealed that the problem is pressing.
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Views are the author’s.
[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic/Alice Taylor]
Source: euractiv.com
