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The assault on the Reichstag on August 29. Photo by Deutsche Welle
Yesterday in Germany the crown-Maidan began: tens of thousands of people demonstrated against the tightening of the quarantine in the country.
The protests turned out to be extremely colorful: they were supported by both the extreme right, LGBT and the left. In the crowd that ran towards the old Reichstag were the flags of the Kaiser’s Germany, the “rainbow”, Russia and also the “RPD”.
But the main thing is that the actions were repressed quite harshly: the police arrested hundreds of people. All of this took place in the context of Berlin’s concern over the violence against the opposition in Minsk.
We find out what the German anti-quarantine movement is and why representatives of various political tendencies rally around it. Including those who consider the current German power to be occupational and recognize only Germany during the Second Reich.
They were the ones who yesterday suddenly went to storm the Reichstag.
Why did the protests start?
In early August, Germany announced the threat of a second wave of coronavirus. And recently they began to tighten quarantine measures: a fine of 50 euros (1,636 UAH) was introduced for showing up without a mask in public places.
At the same time, the ban on public events, which expired in October, was extended until the end of the year.
The authorities also initiated a bill according to which people who went to countries in the “red zone” of infection will not receive hospital payments if they fall ill with covid.
In addition, returnees from dangerous countries want to toughen mandatory self-isolation for 14 days starting in October. You can leave it alone after a negative PCR test, performed no earlier than five days after returning (you can now stop the isolation in 48 hours).
And one more restriction for people traveling to higher risk regions: They plan to cancel free trials for them in September.
In other words, the emphasis of the restrictions fell on those who frequently travel abroad. It is the massive holidays in Germany that are considered the main reason for the new coronavirus outbreak.
After German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced these plans, anti-quarantine activists began organizing a demonstration in central Berlin. In addition, they were able to nullify the right to assemble for a mass event through the court, despite the quarantine and the ban from the authorities.
However, this did not save them from the “vintilov”. The police began to suppress the demonstration due to the fact that the activists did not wear masks and did not maintain a distance of five feet.
What happened in the center of Berlin?
So yesterday, in the center of the German capital, a Maidan of tens of thousands of people gathered. It was called the Assembly for Freedom.
The official organizer is the public group Querdenken 711 from Stuttgart.
It is positioned as an apolitical organization for the preservation of all constitutional freedoms, despite the pandemic.
Three thousand policemen were detained in government buildings. People demanded to abolish not only the quarantine, but also to remove the authorities.
“The government is completely illegitimate, everything is illegal. And the coronavirus is just a severe flu. The pandemic is being used to enslave the people,” the Euronews channel said, citing one of the protesters.
The activists came out with portraits of German ministers, who were dressed in prison uniforms and carried a “Guilty” sign. In other words, the demonstration was not so much antiquarant in character as a political demonstration.
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Another poster read: “Man-made pandemic + Merkel’s dictatorship = end immediately.”
Some of those gathered held the flags of Russia and the United States, appealing to Trump and Putin as “liberators” from the covid hysteria. They were German conservatives and far-right who often supported both politicians.
Some even arrived with the flag of the “Donetsk People’s Republic”.
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But there were many more LGBT flags.
There were many symbols. The black, white and red flags of Kaiser’s Germany (the so-called “Second Reich”, which existed until 1918) attracted particular attention. They were brought by the so-called “Reichsburgers”, people who do not recognize the FRG and consider themselves citizens of the German Empire (we will return to them later).
At the rally at the Victory Column, the nephew of President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated in the United States, spoke, Robert Francis. He said that “Berlin is today at the forefront of the fight against totalitarianism.”
Kennedy spoke English and the announcer translated into German. That is to say, the protesters had sound equipment and even a large screen in which all the speakers were shown.
It is already clear from the video that this was the largest action by opponents of the quarantine in history. In Germany, they are already called “covid dissidents”. According to the police alone, there were more than 40 thousand of them.
In addition, they drew conclusions from the previous action, which the police dispersed on August 1: they did not accumulate in one place, but spread through the streets of Berlin for several kilometers. Sound equipment was installed from Brandenburg Vorods to Tiergarten underground station.
Volunteers kept order almost everywhere. Except Unter den Linden street, where the riots started.
There is, among other things, the Russian embassy, near which Putin’s supporters of the German right have gathered.
The rally, according to the police, turned out to be unauthorized and they began to disperse it. Stones and bottles were thrown at the police, two hundred people were arrested, including the organizer, vegan chef Attila Hildman.
The German police treated people unceremoniously: one of the videos shows how the “astronaut” pushes the father with his daughter sitting on his shoulders.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aj24BIU45fk
Skirmish in the Reichstag. Who are the Reichsburgers
Another point of tension was the Reichstag building, which the protesters tried to enter.
As it turned out, the attack was led by the “Reichsburgers” movement. They continued to attack with the flags of the German Empire (a state that existed from 1871 to 1918).
They tried to break the police cordon at the entrance to the Reichstag, the former imperial parliament, but were brutally expelled from there. About a hundred people were detained here, bringing the total count to three hundred detained during yesterday’s protests.
The Reichsburgers are translated as “citizens of the Reich” or “citizens of the empire”. They do not recognize a state like the Federal Republic of Germany, which arose after the Second World War. And they are considered residents of the German Empire that existed before the defeat in World War I (which was ruled by the Prussian monarchs of the Hohenzoller dynasty).
According to estimates by the German authorities, there are already about 20 thousand of them, and some of them officially possess weapons. A small but apparently active part of this community is made up of the extreme right: numbers of up to 1,500 were named.
The “Reichsburgers” movement emerged in the 80s of the last century. They call the FRG a territory occupied by Western countries, and therefore it does not have its own statehood. Therefore, the “bourgeois” refuse to pay taxes to Berlin and print its documents, which indicate citizenship of the Second Reich, that is, Germany during the time of the Kaiser.
Germany for them is a state within the borders of 1937, that is, before the annexations and occupations carried out by Hitler. But these borders include the western part of Poland, as well as the Kaliningrad region of Russia (East Prussia). Also, the Reichsburgers are supporters of greater independence for the federal states, calling them kingdoms.
In recent years its activity has increased.
They have known several encounters with those they consider representatives of the State, for example, with the installers who installed the electricity meters, or with bailiffs. And in the land of Saxony-Anhalt (by the way, the only one where there will be no fines for showing up without masks), the “Reichsbürger” organized a shootout with the soldiers of the special police unit who were evicting him from his home.
In Bavaria, a Reich supporter killed a police officer in 2016 who came to him to confiscate weapons. They decided to take the rifle because the “Reichsbürger” had radical views. As a result, after the murder, he received a life sentence. It was the loudest scandal involving the “Reichsburgers”.
In addition, the prosecution service of the Federal Republic of Germany accused them of planning terrorist attacks. Their homes and offices are searched regularly. But for the moment these accusations have not been proven and the “Reich bourgeois” cannot be called terrorists.
I mean, it’s safe to say that the anti-quarantine protests are becoming a catalyst for the fight against German authorities in general. And in this the anti-system groups play a prominent role, from the extreme right to the imperialist imperialists.
By not constituting the majority of the “crown-maidan”, they play an active role in it and in fact become the “face” of the movement. In which, of course, there are many more currents – including the ultra-left.
All of this creates an explosive mix on the eve of the second wave of coronavirus, which the German authorities promise.
Furthermore, the movement of dissidents from the crown has already spread to other European countries. Her demonstrations took place yesterday in London and Paris.
