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Corona’s demonstrations in Berlin over the weekend were mainly organized by Stuttgart’s “lateral thinking 711” initiative, but the neo-Nazi “III. Way” party, NPD and AfD also called for participation. Open far-right and populist right-wing groups only made up a small portion of the crowd that gathered at the rally against the crown’s policy. To understand the variety of symbols from the rainbow to the German flag and the “Q”, it is worth taking a look at the network around “lateral thinking 711”.
The Stuttgart initiative was founded in April by business economist Michael Ballweg. It has already organized several demonstrations against crown policy in Stuttgart, which drew some 10,000 participants at its peak in May; afterwards, the influx had drastically decreased.
Ballweg routinely distances himself from left and right extremists on stage with a sentence or two at the start of each event. However, he does not explicitly object to participants with Reich flags, which are used by neo-Nazis and Reich citizens as a symbol of legal identification, standing in the crowd and is indistinguishable from right-hand corner politicians who they seek its proximity. Ballweg was a proponent of the Basic Law in previous demonstrations, now he wants to abolish it and replace it with a new one, as he explained in Berlin. He is not a friend of representative democracy, as was made clear in his speech on Saturday.
Since the beginning of the demonstrations, organized by “lateral thinking 711”, several speakers have spread the assumption that the government was using the pandemic as a pretext to repress the people. Often a collaboration with Microsoft founder Bill Gates and the Pharmaceutical Industry Relies.
One of them was former radio host Ken Jebsen, who spreads various conspiracy myths. One of his theses is: Bill Gates bought governments to implement vaccination programs around the world through Corona, from which he benefits financially. His YouTube channel KenFM with 500,000 subscribers has become a streaming platform for the Corona protest. The “lateral thinking 711” initiative was also linked to the Jebsen channel.
In terms of content, it is not far from the group QAnon or “Q” for short. The letter was seen on several protesters’ posters on Saturday. Supporters of the conspiracy fantasy, which is particularly popular in the United States, believe, among other things, that a global elite is holding children captive to obtain from them a life-prolonging serum.
In this country, the relevant websites inform readers of the German-speaking countries willing to conspire that the “old elites” would try “with the help of the (supposed) crown pandemic to lead the world into the economic abyss and into slavery. final”. Videos of the demonstration in Berlin are enthusiastically linked on the site.
Michael Ballweg expressed his sympathy for the Berlin conspiracy myth in early August: “To me, the Q stands for the English word question, a group of interrogators that inspires us to think and investigate “.
Two founders of the “Resistance 2020” party, who at the beginning of the crown restrictions probably dreamed of being as well known as the Stuttgart protest initiative is today, are closely linked to the “lateral thinking 711” initiative. Board member Ralf Ludwig from Leipzig is the lawyer for “Quer Think 711”. The co-founder is Bodo Schiffmann, an otolaryngologist at Sinsheim in Baden, who calls the measures against the spread of the coronavirus excessive on his YouTube channel with more than 150,000 subscribers and warns against vaccination.
After some time he left “Resistencia 2020” and founded the “Wir 2020” party, which he also left since then. Schiffmann also invented the “lateral thinking” ball, a ball made of aluminum foil crumpled into tape that many protesters carry with them.
With “Honk for Hope” to Berlin
Skepticism about vaccination is the connection with a part of the audience that often dresses in a colorful way. Stuttgart is considered a bastion of anthroposophy, a world view that dates back to Rudolf Steiner.
With several anthroposophical training centers, the first Waldorf school, and the Rudolf Steiner House as the headquarters of the Anthroposophical Society in Germany, Stuttgart occupies an important position among Steiner’s followers.
Tübingen vaccination skeptic Christoph Hueck, also a speaker at the “lateral thinking” rallies, gave a lecture there in late June that illness and physical suffering are important for mental development.
Another actor is the “Honk for Hope” initiative. Bus companies have organized across Europe under this name to draw attention to their financial difficulties in the pandemic. Individual representatives of “Honk for Hope” have provided transportation for the demonstrations in Berlin.
