[The recent coup attempt may have seemed farcical, but the growing
Nazi threat in Germany is very real,]
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HOW DANGEROUS ARE THE REICHSBÜRGER?  
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Phil Butland
December 13, 2022
The Left Berlin
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_ The recent coup attempt may have seemed farcical, but the growing
Nazi threat in Germany is very real, _

he recent coup attempt may have seemed farcical, but the growing Nazi
threat in Germany is very real, (Photo: Dirk Ingo Franke)

 

Recent police raids
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led many people to question the strength of the Reichsbürger, the
right-wing organisation which was accused of planning to overthrow the
German state. 25 people were arrested, including a prince, a former MP
for  Alternative für_ _Deutschland (AFD) and an opera singer, who
the Reichsbürger were planning to install as Germany’s new Minister
of Culture.

The _Reichsbürger’s_ beliefs are abstruse, and include the idea
that Germany is under occupation.
[[link removed]] They
believe that the last valid German state existed under the Kaiser and
call for a restoration of the monarchy
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Comparisons have been made to the pro-Trump demonstrators on 6
[[link removed]]th
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and QAnon
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A US-American friend recently contacted me in consternation. How can
any movement in the 21st Century call for a return to the monarchy?
Here is what I think: the _Reichsbürger_ represent a form of
reactionary anti-capitalism, which sees capitalism as a problem, not
because it exploits workers, but because it offers a limited form of
social mobility.

They blame the current instability on “new” capitalists, who come
from the wrong sort of families. Instead of moving forwards, they want
to return to a time when everyone knew their place, and your position
in society was determined at birth. Their love of the monarchy
dovetails well with fascist authoritarianism.

Many people first became aware of the _Reichsbürger_ during a Covid
demonstration in August this year. As 40,000 people took part in a
demonstration through Berlin on a protest led by right-wingers, a
group carrying imperial flags and Nazi symbols split off and marched
on the Reichstag
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As the Guardian reported at the time
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“The Reichstag building, where German MPs meet, has a powerful
symbolic role in the country. The domed building was burned down in
1933 in an act that enabled the Nazis to destroy what remained of
German democracy between the two world wars.”

In this article, I would like to argue against two problematic
reactions that I have seen on social media: some suggest that Germany
has returned to 1933 and the Nazis are about to seize power. Others
say that the Nazi threat is just something cooked up by right-wing
media to win support for the German state.

While we shouldn’t overstate the problem, the Left ignores the Nazi
threat in Germany at its peril. Particularly in the light of recent
far right gains in elections in Italy
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we should see that the attempted coup, apparently by a few
individuals, as the tip of a much more dangerous iceberg.

How strong are the German Nazis today?

At the moment, the main Nazi threat in Germany comes not from
the _Reichsbürger_ but the AfD. The groups are sometimes linked –
the arrested included not just former AfD MP Birgit Malsack-Winkemann
but also Christian Wendler, who has been an AfD local councillor in
Saxony.

Just over a year ago, the AfD was the official opposition 
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Bundestag to the SPD-CDU “Grand Coalition”. Although the AfD vote
dropped to “only” 10.3% at last year’s elections, they are
currently consistently polling at 14%
[[link removed]]. Some polls put their support as
high as 15% or even 16%

In Eastern Germany, these figures are much higher. The AfD are polling
at at least 20% in each of the 5 East German States, lying in first
place in three States or second in the other two. This is all
happening at a time when the AfD is moving rapidly to the right. While
the AfD was always a party with Nazis in it, the Nazis in “Der
Flügel” (the wing) around Thüringen leader Björn Höcke
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taking over the party.

At the same time, the far Right has been building a street movement.
In October, the AfD organised a march of 10,000 people through Berlin
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a demonstration against the politics of the German government. This
was largely unopposed with only 1,400 protesting against it
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One of the characteristics of many European Nazi organisations, such
as Marine Le Pen’s_ Rassemblement National_, has been their
concentration on populism and electoral politics. While they still
have their (often hidden) street fighting _cadre_, these do not (yet)
have the same strength of the SS and SA in Germany in the 1930s. We
are currently seeing signs that the German Right is starting to adopt
a slightly different strategy.

This is the lens through which we should see three recent protest
movements which have taken to the streets, particularly in Eastern
Germany – on Covid, war and inflation. In each case, the far Right,
aided by a divided Left, has tried to play a leading role. I will now
go into each movement in a little more detail.

Covid

The German government’s reaction to the Covid crisis was never the
roaring success depicted in memeland
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Most workplaces were never closed, and people were forced into
overcrowded trains to go into work. Meanwhile, playgrounds were
arbitrarily closed, and Germany’s death rate was, at best, similar
to in most other countries, despite a better-resourced health service.

Nonetheless, the default reaction of most Germans was to observe the
lockdown and respect the health of their neighbours. Demonstrations in
Germany effectively stopped (the first major left wing demo since the
Covid outbreak was for Black Lives Matter
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May 2021). This made it difficult for the Left to mobilise.

The far right had no such scruples. A movement developed, known
sometimes as “Querdenker” (alternative thinkers), elsewhere as
“Coronaleugner” (Corona liars). Tens of thousands of
“Querdenker” demonstrated against lockdown. The composition of
these demonstrations, and their organisers, was not the same in all
areas, but the far right was there from the start,

As Christine Buchholz, then a LINKE MP, argued at the time
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“Members of the AfD and NPD, as well as adherents of
the _Reichsbürger_ movement – and neo-Nazis – can all
participate in ‘Querdenken’ without objection. Fascism and racism
are styled as ‘opinions’ to be accepted. In a published manifesto,
‘Querdenken’ declares: ‘We are non-partisan and do not exclude
any opinion.’”

Protest researcher Peter Ulrich noted
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“it wasn’t just convinced Neonazis who were marching. But it was
people who are clearly not bothered that organised Neonazis were
regularly there.” Ulrich went on to say that this had the potential
to force people who are undecided or have no hard ideology towards far
right positions.”

Some of the Left, most notably LINKE MP and talkshow favourite Sahra
Wagenknecht argued that the _Querdenker_ demonstrations could be
co-opted by the Left. This followed Wagenknecht’s attacks on
refugees
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is part of a mistaken strategy to address AfD voters by adopting
reactionary politics. The truth is, though, that it was only the Right
who profited from the _Querdenker_ mobilisations.

War and the Ukraine

Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine initially provoked two
well-attended demonstrations in Berlin
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The problem was, that these demonstrations meant different things to
different people who attended them. Alongside anti-imperialist
banners, you could see home-made posters calling for more German
militarisation. Such a contradictory movement was never going to hold.

The “liberal” government tried to appeal to the latter faction.
One of its first acts was to double the military budget and pledge
an extra €100 billion to military spending
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an act which you could compare to SPD MPs voting for war credits
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1914. Yet there have been no demonstrations of a comparable size since
the first month of the war.

The Left – both inside and outside parliament – was unable to fill
the anti-war vacuum, and was split between (at least) 3 different
factions. One stream is sympathetic towards, even apologetic for
Putin. Of course, not everyone denounced by German media as a
“Putin-versteher” (Putin understander) actually supports the
Russian dictator, but some really do.

A significant part of the leadership of the German anti-war movement
has been soft on Russia. Some, but by no means all, see Putin as the
continuation of their old USSR allies, and have refused to condemn the
invasion of Ukraine. Some even argue that the invasion was necessary.
Because of the legacy of Cold War politics, this tendency is stronger
in Germany than in most other countries.

As a reaction to the first group, a second emerged, which included
part of the revolutionary left. This group quite rightly argued that
imperialism is a world system, and that anti-imperialists must oppose
Putin’s adventures. But, despite stating that there is more than one
imperialist country, they remained largely silent about imperialism in
their own country, with many of them calling for sanctions, and even
the delivery of NATO weapons.

Increasingly, these two parts of the anti-war movement have come to
mirror each other, spending increasing amounts of time and energy
attacking each other rather than the imperialist powers. This is not a
strategy which is able to win over people who are worried by the very
real threat of nuclear war. A third group – which opposed both
Putin’s invasion and NATO’s attempt to join the war by proxy, was
just not large enough to fill the gap.

This result was, as Albert Scharenberg reported
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that “the AfD has successfully linked up with widespread criticisms
of the German government’s sanctions against Russia — especially
in the eastern states. Economic ties to Russia are traditionally
stronger in eastern Germany, and in many areas, small- and
medium-sized businesses have been mobilizing to protests against the
sanctions.”

Inflation

All this has been exacerbated by rising inflation, which has stood
at at least 10%
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the last three months. The last time that German inflation went above
10% was following Currency reform in 1948
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If anything, perceived inflation has been even worse. At the beginning
of Autumn, every time you visited a supermarket, prices had gone up
again.

Building a campaign against inflation provides a twofold problem for
parts of the left. If you have been celebrating weapons shipments to
Ukraine, and holding banners which say that rising oil costs are a
price worth paying, you shouldn’t be surprised when people who can
no longer afford to heat their small flats do not see you as a natural
ally.

Furthermore, this is happening on the watch of a government which is
dominated by the “left wing” SPD and Greens. The LINKE strategy at
last year’s election was aimed at joining a coalition government, so
all serious criticism of its neoliberalism rivals was dropped.

In the East, where the far Right is doing particularly well, the
situation is exacerbated by die LINKE being part of a coalition
government in 3 East German States. In Thüringen, the home of Björn
Höcke, the state president, and deporter-in-chief is Die LINKE’s
Bodo Ramelow.

This means that many Easterners have more than one reason to see Die
LINKE as an establishment party. To some, it is the Stasi party of the
old DDR. To others, it is responsible for the current austerity
politics. This does not make it a natural partner in the fight against
capitalism and inflation. This allows the far Right to take a lead, as
it has in the fights against Covid and war._ Tagesschau_ described
the recent demonstration in Dresden against rising prices as a Pegida
comeback
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What has all this to do with the attempted coup?

The specific coup plot for which people have been recently arrested
was almost certainly the work of a few marginalised people. This does
not mean that it was not relevant. As LINKE leader Janine Wissler
tweeted: “even if the coup plans of the Reichsbürger sound
megalomanic, unfeasible and confused, this does not make them harmless
cranks. Remember the killers of Utøya, Halle and Hanau”.

Wissler is referring to three cases in Norway and Germany of murderous
gunmen who had links to neo-Nazi networks. Each attack was portrayed
in the press as the work of a “lone gunman”. These murderers were
not alone, nor are the _Reichsbürger_, who are estimated to have 2
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members
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Many are armed and 2,000 are described by state authorities as
“ready to commit violence”.

One of the arrested _Reichsbürger_ is a former army colonel
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This comes after reports that the German army has a Nazi problem
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In 2020, a whole division of the German special forces was dissolved
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reports of Nazi activity. This is not the basis for a Fascist coup,
but does show that we have more to worry about than 25 strange
individuals.

Added to this, there is the memory of the NSU
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Nazi cell which murdered 10 “foreigners” while receiving state
support. The police reacted by harassing the victims’ families,
while the press reported the killings as “Döner murders” and
blamed the victims. Under certain circumstances, the German State and
press are prepared to support violent neo-Nazis.

But we are not in 1933, when German President Hindenburg appointed
Hitler as Chancellor. Then the ruling class needed the Nazi
stormtroopers to crush the workers’ movement. This is not the
current situation. A better comparison is not 1933, but 1923, when
Nazis in Munich carried out the unsuccessful Beer Hall Putsch
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failure was an important step in the far Right building up the power
which they were to wield 10 years later.

History is made by individuals, and never exactly repeats itself.
Germany’s future depends on what we do, both as individuals, and as
part of the political Left. We can stop the far Right, physically if
necessary, but also by offering political alternatives which are more
attractive than those offered by the _Reichsbürger_, the AfD and
their fellow-travellers. For the sake of humanity, we’d better hope
that we are up to the task.

_Phil Butland is a socialist from Bradford, Northern England. He is
the founder and co-speaker of Die LINKE Berlin Internationals.
Alongside his political activities, Phil is the curator of the
CinePhil Berliner Film Blog [link removed]

_The Left Berlin is a community of international progressives in
Berlin. We run an online journalism project hosting a range of
left-wing perspectives in English, as well as collaborating on
progressive campaigns and events in the city. The site is run by a
team of volunteer editors, writers and translators.  We send out
regular weekly newsletters with a digest of leftist politics around
the city. It’s a great way to keep an overview of what’s happening
and how you can stay active regardless of what your cause is._

_This project emerged from the Berlin LINKE Internationals and
maintains close links but the site has editorial autonomy and attempts
to reflect a range of debate on the left._

* Germany
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* Alternative for Germany
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* neo-fascism
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