Exclusive
Status: 09/21/2021 10:14 a.m.
A former federal police officer speaks of a coup, fanatical opponents of vaccinations believe they are in the “3rd World War”. Experts urgently warn against the radicalization of corona deniers.
Fanatical anti-vaccination opponents and corona deniers are evidently radicalizing themselves further and increasingly relying on militant rhetoric. A suspended federal police officer spoke of a “coup d’état” in the “Corona Committee” regarding the Corona measures. There is a violent overthrow by the government. The police are being used for this coup.
He feared firearms could be used against demonstrators. For this, violence could be initiated during protests – as a pretext, according to his conspiracy legend.
Self-appointed committee
The so-called committee is a self-appointed body that disseminates sometimes crude theses about the pandemic in meetings lasting several hours. The videos of the “meetings” will be disseminated on the net. The “committee” is promoting, among other things, videos by the conspiracy ideologist Rainer Fuellmich, who claimed in the spring, for example, that 25 percent of those vaccinated would die immediately. Another 36 percent would have such severe side effects that you don’t know whether they would make it. There was talk of an “organized mass killing”. Accordingly, with a vaccination rate of more than 60 percent, there should already be millions of vaccine deaths in Germany.
The Russian state broadcaster RT reported extensively on the committee’s “meetings”.
Experts warn against radicalization
The publicist Karolin Schwarz has been observing radicalization processes in social media for years. Most recently, she contributed an analysis to an investigation into conspiracy legends and anti-Semitism on behalf of the American Jewish Committee. Schwarz clearly sees a radicalization in the video from the “Corona Committee”: “Many ‘lateral thinking’ influencers keep talking about a ‘Third World War’ that they are currently in.” While the mobilization for demonstrations is going rather poorly, “at the same time, however, it is being rhetorically upgraded”. This is particularly dangerous because it could also serve as a defense against acts of violence: “They then say that they just had to defend themselves,” explains Schwarz.
The appeal to alleged self-defense had surfaced again and again in the context of refugee policy. There was talk of protecting the country from an enemy invasion, that it was legitimate and necessary to defend oneself. The targets of the attack also included alleged migrants pulling the strings. This was the ideological basis for a whole series of terrorist attacks – such as in Christchurch, but also on Utöya and later in Hanau and Halle.
New movement
The researcher Andreas Zick warns in an interview with tagesschau.de before violence-oriented corona deniers. In the pandemic, “new groups of anti-vaccination opponents have formed who have now linked their opposition to vaccination with political ideologies”.
In Germany, as in other countries, there have always been vaccination opponents and vaccination critics. “But they were focused on vaccination or the pharmaceutical industry,” explains Zick. “With the pandemic, many of the vaccine opponents identified with the ‘lateral thinkers’ movement and this identification goes hand in hand with the adoption of conspiracy narratives, ideas of resistance to the state and radicalization.” Radical groups and cells then formed in such movements, explains Zick. Police, security forces and the media are being “attacked more and more aggressively”.
There is no prevention concept
To make matters worse, the self-declared resistance groups stimulate each other and often only move one in their own reference group. Zick criticizes the lack of a “good prevention concept for the early detection of radicalization in the context of these new conspiracy groups”. “A reservoir has long since formed, from which new radical and action-oriented cells are constantly being formed”.
The phenomenon of individual people radicalizing themselves largely unnoticed through digital propaganda has already been observed in the context of Islamist attacks, but also in the case of racist violence against refugee shelters. During the corona pandemic, individual people now seem to feel called to act against the supposed “dictatorship” and the allegedly dangerous vaccinations. A DRK employee in North Frisia is said to have sabotaged vaccinations. Calls are being spread in messenger services to chase away mobile vaccination teams.
“Make a mark”
In Idar-Oberstein, a 49-year-old German is said to have shot an employee at a gas station. The alleged perpetrator testified that he rejects the corona measures. As for the motive, he stated that the situation of the corona pandemic was a heavy burden on him. He “saw no other way out” than to set an example. The victim, a 20-year-old man, seemed to him “responsible for the overall situation because it had enforced the rules”.
Parts of the “lateral thinking” movement have been observed nationwide by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution since the spring.
Facebook recently deleted numerous pages and groups of the “lateral thinking” movement. A spokesman said at the request of tagesschau.de, it is about “harmful misinformation, calls for violence, bullying, harassment and hate speech”. He spoke of a “coordinated social harm campaign” to “systematically violate our policies and cause damage on or off our platform.” Since May 2021, the company “has seen a significant increase in related activities”. Analyzes of data had shown how digital propaganda can act as a kind of fire accelerator.
“Here we go!”
After the homicide in Idar-Oberstein there is a lot of horror at the crime, but there are also people who approve of the crime, like the “Daily mirror“first reported. In various telegram channels of well-known conspiracy ideologues, the act of violence is celebrated either as a self-defense, a logical step or the beginning of a long-awaited liberation struggle against the alleged” Merkel dictatorship “.
Commentators also mock the victim under the Telegram contribution by a well-known right-wing extremist from Halle. In the channel “Free your mind” it is exultantly: “Let’s go!”