How the pandemic helped far-right extremists in Germany to grow their platform
Through participation in ‘Anti-Covid‘ protests and their fast-growing online presence, these conspiracy-fed groups are raising concerns about the increase of far-right violence in Germany.
Art by Flynn Klein
The spread of Covid-19 has heavily challenged governments all around the world and put pressure on pre-existent political tensions. In the case of Germany, the pandemic has become a fertile soil for far-right extremists to assert themselves on the public ground.
Despite the international praise Angela Merkel and the German government have received for the way they dealt with the outbreak of the pandemic, strong criticism from domestic groups did not hesitate to arrive. This appears as quite surprising when one considers that the German government has currently lifted most of its bans and its citizens enjoy a fair amount of freedom compared to other countries. This criticism exploded in a series of “Anti-Covid” demonstrations all over Germany.
According to officials, tens of thousands of people participated in the most recent demonstration on August 29, in Berlin. On the other hand, organisers said that up to 1.3 million people took part - a figure that the police denied. On this occasion, right-wing extremists were able to overcome the barriers of the Reichstag building and stood on the stairs. They did so while holding Reichsflaggen (flags of the former German Empire), which Reichsbürger - a revisionist group which rejects the legitimacy of the post-war Federal Republic - have adopted as a symbol in place of the banned Swastika flag. This group’s participation in the protest was a known fact: days before the demonstration, POCs and Black people in Berlin shared messages on social media to advise each other not to leave the house on the day if not necessary.
Another protest had already taken place on August 1. However, in this instance the right-wing presence was not as large. Reichsbürger and representatives of Alternative for Germany (AfD) - Germany’s fast-growing, far-right party - blended together with New Age fanatics, families and anti-vaccine activists. The element that brings together such a non-homogenous group of protesters is great disinformation and a tendency to appreciate conspiracies, which are spread by these groups through social media.
All over the world the management of the pandemic has been challenged by a spread of “fake news” and conspiracy theories that see the virus as a creation made to take away people’s liberties. In the case of far-right movements in Germany, their engagement with these theories and participation in the protests is a blatant expression of phenomena that have developed months before the pandemic outbreak.
As told by the sociologist and expert of far-right extremism Matthias Quent in an interview to DeutschlandFunk, what has been seen in these protests is nothing new. He says “...we've been seeing (these images) since April this year. We see tens of thousands, up to 200,000 people in right-wing extremist Telegram groups gather around precisely these narratives. There has been a storm on Berlin for months...”
In recent years, far-right nationalists have been maximising their online presence, especially through Telegram groups, to spread their ideas and to connect with each other. But it is only in the last months that they were able to give their anti-government efforts a new form by joining the anti-Covid protests. Even though many demonstrators claim to not support the nationalists' message, far-right representatives have become the most vocal elements during these events.
Conspiracy theories are a central element that has shaped the rhetoric and forms of action of these groups. One example is the organisation Querdenken 711. Its supporters believe that the world’s elites have conspired to manoeuvre the corona crisis; they particularly attack Bill Gates, who they believe has been working with pharmaceutical companies against the people.
They were also present at the protest on August 1. On that occasion, the leader of the group Michael Ballweg gave a speech in which he referenced the American group QAnon - a far-right conspiracy group. This highlights a growing phenomenon that sees Germany as having the second highest number of QAnon believers after the United States. On YouTube, Facebook and Telegram, accounts dealing with the QAnon conspiracy have over 200,000 followers in Germany alone. In Germany, Telegram channels related to QAnon have gone from 10,000 to nearly 200,000 followers combined in the past five months.
The growth of these groups on digital platforms is not unknown to the government, as these groups are violating Germany’s limitations on anti-democratic and pro-Nazi speech. Bavaria’s Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann pointed at QAnon’s use of anti-Semitic images. Vocabulary associated with QAnon-adjacent conspiracies was adopted by the right-wing terrorist responsible for the Hanau shisha bar attack in February 2020. The German government has partly recognised the dangerous potential of the growing presence of these groups on social media, but they have yet to take action.
The German government is known for regulating television, newspapers and the radio, which always sparked criticism among right-wing groups. However, private companies owning social media outlets are more difficult to tackle. It is a fairly new territory and governments all over the world have tried to take action to limit the dangers that stem from these far-right online groups, with different degrees of success. However, this has not been enough and the risks of violent actions targeted at minorities and the government can be seen already.
Moreover, despite the newness of the online phenomenon, the real life presence of far-right ideas in Germany has been raising concern for years. Since 2017, the AfD has been the largest opposition party in the Bundestag. They have used their platform to verbally attack immigrants, political opponents and social institutions; they also supported the recent demonstrations.
As reported by Der Spiegel, cases of right-wing sympathies in the German armed forces have been reported for years; their research found that German states and the federal police force have recorded at least 400 suspected incidents of right-wing extremist, racist or anti-Semitic activity in recent years among police officers or trainees. Having the armed forces engaging with violent ideas, as much as the numbers are currently low, poses a further problem to deal with for the German government.
It would be dangerous to underestimate the power that these groups have and the recent demonstrations showed how far-right organisations are able to spread their ideas at a fast pace and to a wider audience thanks to the social media. A recent study published by the Bertelsmann Foundation shows that populism in German politics is on the decline after peaking in 2018; however, the study has been based on the opinion of registered voters only. The German government needs to find means to tackle online media outlets and lead investigations to stop these groups from spreading hate and violent rhetoric. A result has to be achieved quickly, in order to prevent the endangerment of democracy and the further harm of minorities in Germany.
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