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Every citizen in Germany has the right to deny the coronavirus.
It is stupid, it has no basis, but the denial of our reality is not criminally relevant.
The freedom of expression corridor offers a lot of space in this country.
Saxony's Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer (CDU) recently had this experience once again.
Almost 30 people gathered in front of his house to confront Kretschmer with their displeasure with the corona measures.
The politician only broke off a discussion when a woman - apparently demonstratively - pulled a scarf in the colors of the Reich War flag over her face.
Other protesters did not wear masks but carried signs.
“Genocide,” they accused Kretschmer.
He forfeited his own "right to life".
"Resign and arrest immediately!"
Kretschmer says he did not feel threatened.
However, he was concerned that the people in front of his house “show such an unwillingness to take notice of realities”.
A thoroughly euphemistic description.
Bavaria's Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) expressed himself more drastically in WELT AM SONNTAG.
He warned of a "Corona-RAF", a radical core of deniers who could form a terrorist cell.
At some point, “bad words” would become “bad deeds too”.
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The people Söder refers to represent a new form of extremism: “conspiracy extremists”.
They are people who get to know each other in open or closed chat groups in large networks and who rock each other up.
Their anger is fueled by two anti-democratic ingredients: lies and conspiracy theories.
They sense a plot by the government or the “elite”, rant about the “great exchange” or “forced vaccinations”.
This remoteness makes supporters of alliances like QAnon the most dangerous enemies of our democracy today.
The question is whether constitutional protection officials and politicians take action against them decisively enough.
You can have your doubts about that.
It is a misconception that this is only a temporary phenomenon of this pandemic.
Long before Donald Trump's conspiracy-driven mob stormed the Capitol, right-wing extremist conspiracy theorists from the digital world carried out attacks - including in Germany.
The right-wing extremist assassin von Halle adhered to anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
Jews strived for world domination in his madness.
Not only the US Federal Reserve, but also the Greens are in their hands.
Jews also caused the refugee crisis.
That's why Stephan Balliet wanted to kill her.
Radicalized in the depths of the internet
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The racist assassin from Hanau - male, white and single, just like Balliet - sensed a major conspiracy.
Before he shot nine people in and in front of hookah bars, and later also his mother and himself, he had given insights into his thoughts in confused farewell messages.
Secret powers have the United States under control, said Tobias Rathjen in a video.
In a letter, he claimed that Donald Trump had adopted his ideas.
He also took up another narrative among conspiracy theorists: An “elite” is selling the rest of humanity for stupid.
What Rathjen and Balliet had in common: Both addressed an (imaginary) American audience in their speeches.
And both apparently radicalized in the depths of the Internet.
Balliet, for example, found like-minded people on a conspiracy-theoretical anonymous imageboard.
He broadcast his attack on the Internet via live video.
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Parts of the Capitol strikers also recorded their deeds in real time for their online community.
The mob raged because people suspected a conspiracy.
The US election: stolen.
Your country: infiltrated by child molesters.
Your mission: rescue.
Many of them really thought all that.
It's the fictitious narrative that holds their entire movement together.
Hundreds, thousands of people belong to it.
Terrorism researcher Peter R. Neumann warns that parts of this movement around QAnon could become the greatest terrorist threat for the USA in the coming years.
"A greater danger than jihadism," writes Neumann on Twitter and gives several reasons for his thesis.
The conspiracy movement unites more people, more weapons and at the same time fights against an opponent in their own country.
That increases the polarization.
In addition, the researcher assumes that QAnon has already infiltrated the police and the military.
Storm on Capitol was picked up
QAnon already has thousands of followers in Germany.
They believe in a clandestine network of pedophiles that infiltrates society and kills children.
In their delusion, they think they are in a kind of "deep state".
So far, supporters of conspiracy theories have not been observed by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV).
Unless they already fall under one of the established extremism categories.
In response to a WELT inquiry as to whether the office is sticking to it with a view to QAnon, it was announced that “it is currently being examined how the connections to Germany are represented and how the following is composed”.
It was found that conspiracy theories around the storm on the Capitol were taken up within the "lateral thinking" movement.
"With some of the central protagonists of the scene, the theory was spread that the attack on the Capitol was carried out under a false flag by forces of the Antifa", so the BfV.
For several months the federal and state governments have been analyzing the protests against the corona measures and the groups that are forming around them in a working group.
The warnings are clear.
The State Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Baden-Württemberg, for example, classifies “the widespread conspiracy myths”, “which are in part linked to the goal of a (political) overthrow”, as a great danger.
The words of the intelligence agencies should be followed by deeds as quickly as possible.
The conspiracy extremists live among us.