Attempted coup: German law enforcement's right-wing extremism problem
A thwarted coup by a right-wing terror group has led to the largest anti-terror operation in Germany's post-war history. Law enforcement agencies need to finally tackle the extremists in their midst.
Violent dreams of an empire long gone: Today, Germany saw its biggest anti-terrorism operation carried out by the police in its post world war II history. 3000 police officers searched 130 sites this morning in connection with a plot to overthrow the government. 25 people in total have been detained by law enforcement, on suspicion of an attempted violent coup. The group includes former and current law enforcement members, members of special forces units of both the police and military, as well as (former) soldiers. The group has strong ties to the “Reichsbürger” movement, the German version of the “sovereign citizen’s” movement. Its members don’t believe that Germany is an independent country, and believe that it is still governed by the United States, and not a country but a company (I won’t go into the absolutely unhinged “reasoning” behind this claim). In short: They wanted to overthrow our current government and establish a new “Reich”.
Amongst those taken in by the police was a former colonel of the Bundeswehr and a former member of parliament (belonging to the right-wing AfD). The terror group is believed to have planned the overthrow of the current government (including the storming of parliament) and apparently wanted to renegotiate the Germany’s post-second world war settlement. The suspects are connected to conspiracy theories of the QAnon-kind - once again proving that right-wing radicalization is a global phenomenon, and does not stop at borders - and the Sovereign Citizen movement. Two other suspects were arrested in Kitzbühel, Austria, and Perugia, Italy.
The ringleader of the group was a man who had dreamt of becoming the new emperor, Heinrich XIII Prinz Reuß zu Köstritz.
He belongs to the former ruling family of Thuringia - meaning that his “hunting castle” near Bad Lobenstein was searched as well as his other properties. According to information obtained by the MDR Thüringen, the terror group used to meet in the castle on several occasions. Interestingly, Reuß had made headlines earlier this year when he attended a summer party with the Bad Lobenstein mayor Thomas Weigelt, who then proceeded to physically attack a reporter who tried to film there.
The terror group seems to have followed prominent QAnon beliefs of the “Deep State”. According to reporting by Die Zeit, one of the suspects posted in a telegram channel on Wednesday morning (shortly before the raid): “Everything will be turned upside down: the current public prosecutors and judges, as well as the heads of the health departments and their superiors will find themselves in the dock at Nuremberg 2.0.” This, of course, is hinting at mass executions, inferring the Nuremberg trials, which led to the sentencing and executions of prominent Nazi war criminals. “Nuremberg 2.0” has become a popular cipher during the pandemic amongst Covid-deniers, who use it to both relativize the Holocaust and threaten their perceived enemies - doctors, politicians, public health officials, hospital staff, journalists - at the same time. German speakers can find an extensive report on the “Nuremberg 2.0” narrative by CeMAS here. The Think Tank notes an immense increase of the term in monitored Telegram channels since 2019, reaching a peak in April 2021 with 1280 messages that contained mentions of “tribunals” or “Nuremberg”, which is closely related to the Sovereign Citizens’ movement:
You may ask yourselves, how could this have happened? Especially from an international perspective, which might see Germany’s attempts to come to terms with and remember their horrific history and the horrors of the Holocaust as impressive, this might seem especially bizarre.
However: German law enforcement has long had a problem with right-wing extremism, which tends to get played off by conservative to centrist politicians as “singular incidents”, the famous “Einzelfälle”. Within the last three years, security agencies have counted 327 instances of right-wing extremism within the police, the military and the Verfassungsschutz (Federal office for the protection of the constitution) - a number three times higher than under the last administration’s report. The report also details ties to the Sovereign Citizens’ milieu.
Experts attribute the stark rise in numbers to a higher awareness and the agencies attempts to lower the number of unreported cases. The conservative Minister of the interior of the previous Merkel administration, Horst Seehofer, had always refused a study of right-wing sentiments in the police and military, in spite of the urgings of social scientists to commission one. For years, Seehofer claimed falsely that there was no “structural problem” with right-wing extremism within law enforcement, although the “singular instances” kept mounting.
The head of the MAD (Militärischer Abschirmdienst) of the Bundeswehr had warned in 2020, that the military had been infiltrated by right-wing extremists, naming 600 pending cases where suspicion of right-wing sentiments was being investigated. Especially the military’s special operations unit, the “Kommando Spezialkräfte”, had been under investigation: 20 soldiers were und investigation recently, the total of suspected cases amounts to 50 within the KSK.
Be it Nazi-symbols on police seats, right-wing extremist messages in secret chat groups, swastikas, or Hitler imagery - again and again, politicians claimed, that German law enforcement and the military had no structural problem with right-wing extremism. Journalist Dirk Laabs warned of future terrorist attacks by highly trained soldiers two years ago. In an interview with the Deutschlandfunk, he said:
“There have been early warnings, since the 1990s. Back then, the MAD, who is supposed to make sure that no extremists join the ranks of the Bundeswehr, said: Particularly special operations are attractive to right-wing extremists, they feel safe there, because they have a structure, because they can live out their thoughts, that they are better than everyone else. It makes sense to check closely that you don’t attract the wrong people for this. But there is another problem when you look at a unit like the KSK: You’re asking the people in it to do extreme things - not everybody is up for that. Officers told me ‘you can’t be surprised that there are unstable people amongst them, that’s what we want: people who do what normal people wouldn’t.’ Meaning: constantly risking your life under extreme circumstances abroad. That means that for years, no one looked closely when it came to the selection of candidates for the unit.”
The terrorists were, according to the latest reporting, willing to use violence to achieve their goals, including murder. Their “military wing” seems to have been led by a former colonel who used to belong to the Fallschirmjägerbattalion 251 in Calw, which changed from an elite group of paratroopers to the KSK in 1996. According to the Süddeutsche Zeitung, he had been suspended from the Bundeswehr after a violation of gun laws.
The former member of parliament, who was part of the terror group was not just that, a former MP - she had also just been reinstated as a sitting judge (!) by the Berlin Verwaltungsgericht, after she had been suspended over her right-wing remarks while serving as an MP by the Berlin Justizverwaltung. The terror group had already distributed important government positions for the time after their coup amongst themselves: Birgit Malsack-Winkemann was supposed to lead the new Department of Justice after the coup. She is an avid markswoman, according to media reports, and own several guns. As a former MP, she also has intimate knowledge of the insides of parliament, which would have been crucial in an attempted storming of the Bundestag. According to the Tagesspiegel, Malsack-Winkemann urged the group to act soon. The Landgericht Berlin has now suspended her permanently today.
The public debate in Germany during the last couple of weeks had been dominated by conservative, right-wing and centrist politicians trying to whip up a fear of radical, but peaceful climate activists belonging the the group “Last Generation”. Conservatives had warned of what they called an emerging “climate RAF” - referencing the “Rote Armee Fraktion”, a left wing terror group which killed in the 1970s. While teenagers were glueing themselves to the street in a desperate cry for climate justice, right-wing terrorists were plotting the overthrow of the German government and the execution of their enemies. Their preparations took at least a year - and included the establishment of a secure IT infrastructure, shooting exercises, procurement of weapons and the recruitment of members from the ranks of police and the military.
Germany has a right-wing extremism problem - and is is essential that law enforcement agencies finally take it seriously. Because this was a warning shot. And it was pretty darn close.