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Politicians and security agencies are increasingly concerned about the growing influx of conspiracy theorists in the crown crisis. “We should not underestimate this under any circumstances,” Saxony-Anhalt’s interior minister Holger Stahlknecht (CDU) told Tagesspiegel on Sunday. Propaganda against state measures to contain the pandemic “is also represented by the bourgeois people, sometimes with pathological characteristics.” This is used by right-wing extremists and Reich citizens.
Stahlknecht warned that the policy should “counteract and argue more strictly.” Credibility suffers “when there is competition to alleviate, even though the virus has not weakened.”
Perplexity creates an “explanatory void”
A senior security expert told Tagesspiegel that, given many people’s helplessness over the progress of the crown crisis, there was “an explanatory gap.” Right and left extremists pressed there. Security authorities attempted to “give politicians arguments against conspiracy theories.”
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Minister Stahlknecht, however, does not believe that the fight against conspiracy theories is a rapid success. Dietrich Bonhoeffer had already said that “stupidity is an enemy of good more dangerous than evil.” The Protestant theologian was involved in the resistance against the Nazi regime, and in April 1945 he was executed in the Flossenbürg concentration camp.
Deniers of the Crown, citizens of the Reich, extremists of right and left and insecure citizens demonstrated in Berlin, Stuttgart, Frankfurt am Main, Cologne, Munich and other cities on Saturday against state restrictions.
In Berlin over a thousand people gathered, in Stuttgart there were thousands in the Cannstatter Wasen. Slogans such as “postpone the snout”, “traitor” and “we are the people” were chanted.
In Gera, former Thuringian Prime Minister Thomas Kemmerich (FDP) participated in a protest event, which also included right-wing populists.
Protests could escalate as in the refugee crisis
The security expert interviewed by Tagesspiegel warned that the sometimes irrational resistance to state protection measures could intensify “like protests in the refugee crisis.” Right-wing extremists, but also many ordinary people, had reacted to the growing influx of refugees in the late summer of 2015 with hate statements and attacks on accommodation for asylum seekers. The Federal Criminal Police Office discovered in 2016 that many perpetrators had not previously been known as extremists.
A base of hatred
Hate, which the AfD also benefited from, “still exists as a base,” said the security expert. Conspiracy theorists could build on this by agitating against the state. The scope is enormous, “Millions of publications on alternative platforms on the Internet are read by millions.”
Another risk factor in protests in the crown crisis are “prominent drivers like Xavier Naidoo,” said the expert. Its popularity would accelerate the spread of irrational opinions.
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Security officials looked closely at conspiracy theorists, the expert said. He called the association “Resistencia 2020”, which now pretends to be a party and claims to have 100,000 members. “This is cottage cheese,” said the expert, “but the 2020 resistance has a stronger impact on the protests.”
He also mentioned the “Constituent Assembly” of the Reich Citizens Group. She is particularly active in crown protests. The “Constituent Assembly” considers the Federal Republic to be an “American company” and defames officials as “traitors”.
Secretary of the Federal Ministry of the Interior argues as deniers of the crown
Meanwhile, the Federal Interior Ministry has described an employee’s critical document on government crisis management as “private opinion.” The speaker had expressed himself in the 80-page letter similarly to the deniers of the crown. He called the handling of the virus a “global false alarm,” the danger was no greater than that of many other viruses.
The speaker spread the paper on the letterhead of the Home Office. The ministry said Sunday it was not acceptable. The man was released from his duties.
