What they set up in Ahrweiler is emergency aid at its best, says Nikolai N. as he points the camera at himself. Mud sticks to his skin, clothes and rubber boots. The fact that he and his followers shovel mud in the flood area is "a measure from the people following the need" and has nothing to do with instrumentalization by "lateral thinkers" and right-wing conspiracy ideologues. But what Nikolai N. is hiding from the people in Ahrweiler: He is a right-wing extremist and anti-Semitic video blogger. In December 2019, the activist known as the “Volkslehrer” was sentenced to a fine for sedition - he had previously denied the Holocaust in the Dachau concentration camp memorial in February.After a visit to the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp Memorial, he also questioned the number of victims of the Shoah in a video that has since been published and described Anne Frank's diary as a “child's fantasy product”. He defamed the victims of the racist attack in Hanau as criminals, which is why the city of Hanau reported the right-wing extremists in February of this year.

The police headquarters in Koblenz do not want to comment on the issue at the request of the FAZ. But such activities in the crisis area are not unknown to the authorities: According to a tweet from the police in Koblenz, right-wing extremists are currently on the road as "carers on the ground". It intervenes as soon as the law is violated and the situation is used for political purposes. In Nikolai N's Telegram group, which has almost 35,000 followers, he was and is never apolitical: In addition to videos about the clean-up work, he recently also praised the photo of a man from the right-wing extremist scene who, according to the print on his T-shirt, is apparently involved in the imprisonment of a Holocaust denier bothers.Women from the environment of the identity movement also present themselves in the disaster area as the rubble women of modern times and pose on social media in front of what was left after the flood. As in right-wing extremist marches, the disaster tourists are placed in the front row in order to give a less militant impression. In the comments under such a post on Instagram, however, a man writes: "Germany above everything."

One man writes: "Germany above everything."

With the flood disaster, the conglomerate of “lateral thinkers” and neo-Nazis apparently discovered a new topic for themselves, which it combined with right-wing extremist ideology and misinformation. Some of them even traveled with their own buses, in which corona deniers were driven to demonstrations in the past. The organizers of those bus trips took part in a demonstration of the neo-Nazi party “The III. Weg ”, which is observed by various agencies for the protection of the constitution in the federal and state levels. The President of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Thomas Haldenwang, recently stated that the corona protests had declined. However, certain protagonists have not disappeared, not least from the spectrum of “Reich citizens and self-administrators”.These rejected democratically made decisions and aimed at "permanently shaking trust in state institutions and their representatives".

The right-wing extremists claim on social media that the flood disaster was a “deliberate failure of the state”. Merkel let the people drown, it is said in her remote diagnosis, "the media" is hiding this. The anti-Semite and Attila Hildmann, who fled to Turkey on the basis of an arrest warrant, said the flood was created artificially: “It's war”. The aid action from the right cannot do without agitation. “We help where the state fails,” says the NPD-affiliated initiative “Youth grabs”. It is also about playing off one suffering against the other: Merkel pays money for refugees, but not for the flood victims. The frustration and grief of the people in Ahrweiler, who are standing in front of the ruins of their own existence, are being exploited and politically charged.