They call themselves “Querdenker”, those who think differently.
But for the German intelligence service, these virulent opponents to the measures put in place to fight the Covid-19 pandemic are above all individuals who think dangerously.
Too dangerously for the well-being of German democracy, concluded the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution which decided, Wednesday April 28, to put this movement under surveillance at the national level.
From now on, intelligence agents will be able to wiretap these “Querdenkers”, recruit informants into the movement, spy on their exchanges on social networks or even do research on their funding networks.
A heterogeneous movement
All “Querdenkers are not going to find themselves overnight in the crosshairs of the intelligence services,” insisted the Minister of the Interior.
This surveillance will only concern those whose “activity can effectively be considered as unconstitutional”, specifies the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
The tapping of this movement was not easy. First of all, because it came from a very legitimate movement. “Originally, the demonstrations in early April 2020 in Germany were the expression of the recognized right to protest against provisions that some people could find infringing on their freedoms,” recalls Johannes Kiess, sociologist and deputy director at the Else Institute. Frenkel-Brunswik for Democracy at the University of Leipzig, interviewed by France 24.
Secondly, because this gathering of discontented people is difficult to define. There is no established group or party to which one can join to claim one's membership. “There are several ways to assess the importance of the 'Querdenker'. We can first of all look at the number of people participating in the demonstrations, which represents around 10,000 individuals. Then there are newsgroups on the Telegram messaging service, which can bring together up to 100,000 Internet users. Finally, opinion polls have shown that between 10 to 20% of the German population say they 'understand' their demands ”, lists Boris Holzer, sociologist at the University of Constance working on social movements in Germany. , contacted by France 24.There is therefore a small hard core around which a large number of more or less involved individuals gravitate.
And it is above all a very "heterogeneous gathering of individuals from various backgrounds", note the German media.
“Some of these demonstrators have the only demand to return more to the pre-pandemic situation as quickly as possible, but they do not question the system,” notes Boris Holzer.
It is the obscure part of this movement that interests the Office for the Protection of the Constitution and increasingly worries German public opinion.
“Very quickly, there were elements of the extreme right who joined the 'Querdenker' and tried to take control of the movement,” says Johannes Kiess.
Bridges have been established - in the streets and on social networks - between the “Querdenker” and neo-Nazi small groups or addicts to conspiracy theories with strong anti-Semitic overtones, such as the QAnonists. ”The emblematic figures of the movement are, for the Most, clearly from the far right fringe of the German political landscape ", recognizes Boris Holzer. For Johannes Kies," if the most extremist elements have not succeeded in fully appropriating the movement, they have been able to impose symbols of the extreme right in the demonstrations: anti-system slogans, signs against immigrants or to denounce the existence of supposed plots ”.
A radicalized movement
For its part, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution is particularly attentive to the promiscuity which has developed between the “Querdenker” and the “Reichsbürger” (“citizens of the Reich”, in German).
“We quickly realized that the links between the two groups are much stronger than we thought,” said a spokesperson for the Ministry of the Interior, questioned by the Süddeutche Zeitung.
For him, it is the sign of “a strong questioning of German democratic institutions”.
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The “Reichsbürger” constitutes, in fact, “a small group which goes very far in the theory of the conspiracy since these members are convinced that the government has no legitimacy, and that the Reich has never been abolished. For them, Germany is still at war with the Allies and all of Angela Merkel's decisions are dictated to her by the United States ”, explains Johannes Kies.
This infiltration of the “Querdenker” by extremist elements has contributed to “a strong radicalization of the movement in recent months,” said the deputy director of the Else-Frenkel-Brunswik Institute for Democracy.
Journalists were attacked on the sidelines of rallies and demonstrators violently opposed the police.
This increase in violent acts is also “due to 'pandemic fatigue' which makes protesters more aggressive,” he admits.
This radicalization has pushed the intelligence services to crack down.
In a 37-page report justifying their decision, they counted over 1,000 incidents at the gatherings, ranging from provocations to physical assaults.
But the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution found itself facing a bone.
The movement does not fit, in fact, in any of the three big boxes - extreme right, extreme left or extremist Islamism - allowing it to put the “Querdenkers” under surveillance.
“Their definition of extremism was too narrow for this movement,” notes Johannes Kies.
The agency therefore took an unusual decision: it invented a new category called “deligitimation of the rule of law and the Constitution”.
A sign that the intelligence service does not intend to be interested only in the extreme right elements in the traditional sense of the term within the “Querdenker”, estimates Boris Holzer.
For the University of Constance researcher, “this new category seems tailor-made to monitor the most radicalized conspirators, who cannot be lumped together as Hitler's self-proclaimed heirs or anti-immigration people, but whose speeches call for the overthrow of the rule of law ”.
If the experts interviewed by France 24 agree that the Office for the Protection of the Constitution was right to take the threat of the “Querdenker” seriously, they recognize that the decision to extend the field of extremism in this way can make you uncomfortable.
“It's a much more vague category and the Office for the Protection of the Constitution has a lot of latitude to decide what goes into it.
This can be institutionally dangerous, ”notes Johannes Kies.
According to him, German intelligence's conception of what is dangerous for democracy may be ill-suited to the reality of the day.
“These services are based on the principle that the threat can only come from the fringes of society,” he emphasizes.
However, the rise of the “Querdenker” has clearly shown that at a time of the pandemic, extremists no longer have a monopoly on virulent anti-system discourse.
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