Police raid
Preparing for “Day X”: What drives the citizens of the Reich – and why so many are more than “harmless weirdos”.
In the major raid against Reich citizens, police officers lead Heinrich XIII Prince Reuss (M) away after a house search
© Boris Roessler / DPA
Secret alliances and sinister conspiracies: For outsiders, the world view of the citizens of the Reich often seems like flourishing nonsense. But the members of the scene are serious. And some are flammable.
A gray-haired man in a tweed jacket, a lawyer, several former officers of the Bundeswehr: The current investigations and arrests in the so-called Reichsbürger milieu show that conspiracy stories and anti-state ideologies are not a fringe group phenomenon. Some of the men and women who have now been arrested at the behest of federal prosecutors legally owned weapons, for example because they were marksmen. They are people with a job and wealth, what is often referred to in political jargon as the “middle of society”.
The conspirators were well organised, met in small groups, communicated via a messenger service and had already thought carefully about which of them should take on which task after the overthrow they were aiming for. What was frightening for the investigators: The members of the group, which grew like a snowball system, spoke to a number of people in the past few months who they wanted to win for their plans.
Every tenth citizen of the Reich is considered violent
Many of those approached declined, but none of them came forward to warn authorities about the group. Rather, the fact that the security authorities became aware of the conspirators has to do with earlier investigations into members of another group with whom there were connections.
“Reichsbürger und Selbstverwalter” not only deny the legitimacy of state institutions, they also often spread crude ideas. These ideas usually seem so crazy to outsiders that they perceive these people as harmless crackpots. The security agencies don’t do that. Last year, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution estimated the potential of the scene in Germany at 21,000 people. This year, that number has increased again. About one in ten is considered violent.
This development coincides with a finding from science. The authors of the Leipzig Authoritarianism Study state in their current publication that right-wing extremist attitudes are taking a back seat, while other “anti-democratic motives” are gaining in importance. The corona pandemic and the protest milieu that arose during the phase of state-mandated measures to contain it acted like a fire accelerator. The study states that like “xenophobia, anti-feminism and anti-Semitism”, the “conspiracy narratives associated with the pandemic are a bridging ideology that connects different anti-democratic milieus”.
Enemies of the state are preparing for “Day X”.
For the security authorities, who have to decide in each individual case whether they are just sofa revolutionaries and bullies or whether there are concrete terrorist plans, it is always a question of how the extremists view the so-called Day X.
“Day X” denotes an expected collapse of state order. Anyone who fears such a scenario and therefore builds up large stocks of food and petrol, for example, may be harmless. Procuring weapons and preparing to bring about an overthrow yourself is not.
The arrests and searches have shown “the enormous danger that right-wing extremists and citizens of the Reich can pose,” says Green Party leader Omid Nouripour. In recent years, the self-declared Reich citizens in particular have often been dismissed as harmless cranks, “which was a big mistake”. The raid shows “that our democracy and the rule of law are well defended”.