European Eye on Radicalization
The German government arrested twenty-five people on 7 December in raids across eleven of Germany’s sixteen states. It was soon announced that a far-Right coup attempt had been thwarted. Untangling the evidence that has emerged in the days since, it is clear, on the one hand, that the far-Right retains a foothold in German public life, including within legal political parties that stand in elections, and, while there cannot be complacency about this, it is also clear, on the other hand, that these forces are not (yet) a serious threat to the state—indeed, that they are heavily surveilled and infiltrated, and able to be easily neutralized when they attempt anything that looks even potentially dangerous.
The Reichsbürger Movement
Among the twenty-five men arrested were former members of the military and various far-Right activists. If there was one identifiable element at the core of this coup conspiracy it was the Reichsbürger (Citizens of the Reich) movement. This outfit had largely been considered as a gathering of bizarre conspiracy theorists, but essentially harmless.
European Eye on Radicalization was among the first to publish in-depth analysis on the Reichsbürger movement as a security challenge. In 2019, Linda Schlegel wrote a report for EER that explained:
Reichsbürger cannot be classified as an organization … Because the movement is made up of various splinter groups, it is difficult to assess the actual number of Reichsbürger members. The BfV classified around 18,000 individuals as Reichsbürger in 2018 …
What unites the Reichsbürger is their shared system of belief. A large part of their ideological foundation revolves around the narrative that the Federal Republic of Germany does not exist and is not an actual state. To them, the German Reich did not perish in 1945 and remains the legitimate German authority, while the Federal Republic as an illegitimate creature of foreign occupation and exploitation. They believe that because there has never been an official peace treaty, the occupation continues until this day, with the Federal Republic an instrument of the Allied powers that allows Germans the illusion of independence and democracy.
Since the group perceives the official government as illegitimate, they naturally disobey state authority, down to refusing to pay taxes. Reichsbürger adherents also deem their personal property, such as their houses, independent entities, outside the authority of the Federal Republic of Germany. The group also rejects German basic law (the constitution) and other legal texts. It was in this context — of believing state agents are illegitimate pawns of foreigners — that a Reichsbürger member shot several police officers in 2016. ….
Several splinter groups have taken it even further, moving from disobedience to creating their own parallel, competing pseudo-state organizational structures. For instance, Alexander Schlowak, the self-proclaimed head of the ‘legitimate’ government-in-exile of the German Reich, and his supporters adhere to laws from 1867 or 1913 and issue “Reichspässe”, an alternative passport.
Schlegel noted at the end of her article in early 2019 that the disparate nature of the Reichsbürger movement made it less dangerous than it might otherwise be, but there had been an increase in gun ownership in Germany and there was an escalating online ecosystem where Reichsbürger and its ideas were spreading and radicalizing even further, opening the potential for a lone actor to be motivated by this ideological stew. Moreover, as Schlegel concluded, “conflict with authority is innate in the movement’s ideology”. Now it has come to pass.
Conspiracies All Around
The coup plot that Germany broke apart last week has some echoes of the January 6 insurrection in the United States: there was a strand of belief among those arrested that was influenced by the QAnon movement in the U.S., and had portrayed Germany’s government as being a hapless puppet of a mythical “deep state”. This belief obviously meshes easily with antisemitic ideas—it is only a small leap to say that the strings are pulled within this “deep state” by Jews—and with the Reichsbürger movement’s conception of the German state as an illegitimate imposition by foreigners and/or Jews.
So, there is some commonality here with international far-Right movements, above all to those in the U.S.—the attempt by people connected to Reichsbürger to kidnap the German Health Minister in April in protest at the lockdowns was even more clearly modelled off the U.S.-led coronavirus conspiracy theory movements—but the fundamentals of the conspiracy in Germany were distinctly German.
To the extent there was a plan, it was to await “Day X”, at which point the Parliament would be stormed, power would be seized, and Prince Heinrich XIII, 71, a descendant of the Royal House of Reuss that used to ruled parts of what is now the Free State of Thuringia in central Germany, would be installed as head of state.
In reviewing the evidence uncovered in the raids, The New York Times noted that Prince Heinrich had tried to reach out to the Russian government, which has been associated with subversive activities all across the West, often through disinformation and espionage, but sometimes more directly, such as the 2016 attempted coup in Montenegro. And there was a former official from the far-Right political party, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), Birgit Malsack-Winkemann, who was set to become the justice minister of the new regime if the coup succeeded. The Russia connection and the reach of the Reichsbürger types into “mainstream” far-Right circles around the AfD are concerning.
That said, the impression that spread widely on social media that the German government had blocked another Nazi takeover in the nick of time is wrong. Those arrested clearly had an ideological ambition to overthrow the current constitutional order in Germany, but the timeline for practical action on this front is not only hazy; it is unclear it ever would have arrived. As The Times also noted:
It is not clear how capable the plotters would have been at executing such an attack, nor how close they were to carrying out their plan: According to some intelligence officials, the group had twice missed dates when they had aimed to trigger their attack.
The rest of the evidence shows just how deeply the plot was infiltrated by the German security services.
Conclusion
It is difficult to assess how much impact these arrests will have since the Reichsbürger movement was already a distributed network, rather than a hierarchical organization: it is not clear, for example, how much damage will be done by arresting “leaders”. In many ways, this event shows that Germany’s system is working. Ironically, one consequence of all the publicity might be an increased interest in Reichsbürger from far-Right ideologues—and with the intrusive state surveillance the group is under, that outcome might not be wholly accidental. If Reichsbürger does become larger and more visible, it could moderate, relatively speaking.
We have previously noted at EER the importance of getting the far-Right threat in proportion, precisely because of its own impotence when it comes to concrete action and the very close oversight Western intelligence services—specifically in Germany—have over the far-Right groups. Both factors were on display in what happened last week.
As important as it is to maintain vigilance with all extremist movements, it is important that concerns remain fact-based. As a security challenge in the West, let alone a threat to state stability, far-Right terrorism remains low down the list of priorities, and the arrests in Germany last week are a reminder of why that is likely to be a lasting fact. The advances for the far-Right have primarily occurred in the political realm up to this point. Perhaps in time, the political gains will translate into a serious violent menace, but we are not there yet.
