By FOIA Research - October 1, 2020
Neo-Nazis storming the Reichstag building in the course of the Querdenken
demonstration. Source: . (August 29th, 2020) [Source: zdf.de]
August 29, 2020, will be remembered by Berliners as the day when a bizarre
crowd of almost 40,000 Corona deniers came together from all over the
country, among them hardcore neo-Nazis, Reich Citizens (Reichsbürger),
Identitarians, anti-vaxxers, adherents to the QAnon conspiracy theory, and
other proponents lured into the crossfront under an anti-scientific and
conspiracist umbrella.
Under the loose slogan of Demonstration for Freedom and Liberty the rally
was directed against the current Corona measures in Germany, but ultimately
ended in some hundreds of neo-Nazis trying to storm the Reichstag building,
home of the German parliament.
The demonstration is a perfect example that a red-brown alliance can be
nothing but brown at heart, which is confirmed by a closer look at the key
people behind the organization of the demonstration, who have a consistently
far-right and conspiracist background.
A portrait of Ghandi among a sea of Reich Flags. [Source: twitter.com]
The demonstration was mainly organized by Querdenken (Lateral Thinking),
an initiative that brings together Corona deniers from different political
and pre-political platforms to protest against the current Corona
restrictions imposed by the German government. Querdenken had already
organized a mass demonstration in Berlin on August 1, 2020, which made
international headlines. Around 30,000 people from seemingly various walks
of life had gathered alongside obviously far-right proponents to protest
against the anti-Corona measures of the German government, refusing to wear
masks or follow the current requirements for social distancing (1.5 meters
distance).
The success of the demonstration led the organizers to plan a follow-up
event on August 29, 2020. The Berlin Senate decided to prohibit the event,
because of the transgressions of the Corona regulations in the previous
demonstration. But the organizers challenged the verdict by opening a
constitutional court case, where they invoked the right to demonstrate,
which they won. This ultimately allowed for a second mass demonstration of
Corona deniers in Germanys capital, whose participants again rejected to
wear masks and to keep the necessary distance to each other.
The legal haggling in the run-up to the demonstration had given the
initiative free publicity and further heated up the tempers of the
Querdenken crowd. With an all the more now mindset, neo-Nazi parties, such
as the NPD and Der III. Weg, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD)
party, the Identitarian Movement, as well as influential far-right
publishers, such as Götz Kubitschek and the right-wing extremist Compact
magazine, have called for a participation in the protest.1
While the police estimated that around 38,000 people had attended the
demonstration,2 the far-right peddled numbers of over one million. Many
circulated aerial pictures from the Berlin love parade, which in the end of
the 1990s to the early 2000s had gathered over a million visitors, grossly
inflating the outreach of the demonstration.
The word Quer in Querdenken means across or diagonal in German, and evokes
the term Querfront. i.e. the cooperation of (ostensibly) left and right
forces or the mixing of (ostensibly) left and right positions (Third
Positionism) in order to establish cross-camp action alliances opposed to
existing political positions (mostly the political center). The National
Socialists initially pretended to combine the opposing ideologies of
nationalism and socialism to lure workers sympathetic to socialism into the
Nazi party, ultimately to gain political power. No less treacherous and
opportunistic seem the endeavors of the Querdenken organizers, who are
obviously ruthless enough to pretend that Querdenken is an apolitical
anti-establishment umbrella initiative, while it is clearly a far-right
project. This enables them to instrumentalize gullible and confused forces
that do not identify themselves with the right or far right, but rather
consider themselves centrists or left-wingers.
That Querdenken is a far-right initiative becomes clear when looking at the
background of its leading figures. The founder of Querdenken, the IT
entrepreneur Michael Ballweg, flirts with the QAnon conspiracy theory and
has been promoted on far-right platforms, such as Tichys Einblick3 and
Compact magazine.4 According to the Süddeutsche Zeitung:5
During the demonstrations he organized, the Stuttgart-based Ballweg
initially presented himself as an advocate of basic rights, but also
polemicized against the wearing of masks and an allegedly coercive
vaccination plan. In the meantime he has also expressed sympathy for the
conspiracy group QAnon, which is particularly well-known in the USA.
Stephan Bergmann, press spokesman of Querdenken 711 is a hardcore racist,
according to the Tagesspiegel,6 although in the meantime he has gotten rid
of the most revealing of his social media posts:
Stephan Bergmann repeatedly posted content in which he warns of a mixing of
the races. In one instance he warns against the breeding of a light brown
race in Europe. By genetic intermixing the intelligence quotient of the
white population would go down. In order to understand the great
connections of world events, Bergmann also recommended a video describing
how the German people are supposed to be systematically wiped out by the
import of tribal warriors from Africa and masses of Muslims.
The Querdenken initiative has been organized along the lines of the Gilets
Jaunes movement in France: numbered regional cells with their own social
media presence, and ostensibly no centralized organization or team. The
Gilets Jaunes movement, infused by far-right proponents from the start,
looked like having spontaneously emerged after an upped gasoline tax on the
surface, but in fact was a continuation of the Macron Dégage campaign,
directly attacking President Emmanuel Macron. Analogously, Querdenken is a
continuation of the Merkel has to go (Merkel muss weg) trope that unifies
a heterogenous right and a gullible center/left. The August 2020
demonstration in Berlin was organized by the cell Querdenken711, managed
by Ballweg.7 The uniform Querdenken logo, which for the purpose of maximum
inclusion does not bear any symbols or colors, shows that the various local
groups are working in a coordinated way.
(Left) Gilets Jaunes groups on Facebook, numbered according to the
associated districts. [Source: facebook.com].
(Right) Querdenken accounts on Twitter. [Source: twitter.com]
The most prominent speaker at the event was Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., son of
Robert F. Kennedy and nephew of former president John F. Kennedy, a
selective anti-vaxxer. He is head of Childrens Health Defense, which is
currently in the process of branching out to Europe. Kennedy started his
speech with the statement that, opposite to what he has been told, he is not
speaking to a crowd of 5,000 neo-Nazis, and then embarking on a conspiracist
anti-establishment rant of why governments love pandemics. R.F.K., Jr.
goes on to say that Bill Gates and Anthony Fauci, who had planned the
pandemic, had done a very good job of using the quarantine to bring 5G into
all of our communities, and to begin the process to shift us all to a
digital currency, which is the beginning of slavery, according to Kennedy.
Not surprisingly, in his speech he made reference to the famous Ich bin ein
Berliner slogan of his uncle.
Anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. giving a conspiracist speech on August 29,
2020, denying that there are any neo-Nazis among the crowd. [Source:
youtube.com]
Far-right figurehead Christian Bouchet has noted that there was an
explicitly pro-Trump crowd at the protests,8 and also among the neo-Nazis
who stormed the Reichstag American flags were waved side by side Reich
flags.
[Source: facebook.com]
(Left) [Source: facebook.com] (Right) [Source: facebook.com]
The August 29 demonstration was publicized by various far-right media, for
example by the magazine Compact, which offered the whole front page of its
September 2020 issue to tie together Querdenken with the Q of Qanonthe
absurd conspiracy theory popular in the US, claiming that (democratic)
politicians are kidnapping children to extract a rejuvenating substance
(adrenochrome) from them, which also has fallen on fertile ground in
Germany. The headline reads:4 Q Querdenker Will the freedom movement
topple the Corona dictatorship? Compacts editor, Jürgen Elsässer appeared
together with a prominent figurehead of the Austrian Identitarian Movement,
Martin Sellner.
(Left) Identitarian figurehead Martin Sellner (blue t-shirt) and publisher
of the far-right Compact magazine (white hair) arriving in Berlin one day
before the large Corona Denier demonstration. [Source: twitter.com]
(Right) The team of the far-right Compact magazine held up a flag which tied
together the Q of Qanon with Querdenken, the organization behind the
demonstration. [Source: twitter.com]
One of the main Qanon promoters in Germany, Attila Hildmann, a vegan cook
and (former) TV celebrity, who has earned the nickname of Avocadolf.
According to Deutsche Welle The vegan chef claims Adolf Hitler was a
blessing compared to Angela Merkel, accusing her of preparing a global
genocide.9 He had been detained by the police in front of the Russian
embassy during the August 29 demonstration. According to a report by the
local public broadcaster RBB24:10
Senator of the Interior Andreas Geisel (SPD) declared in a press conference
in the evening that there had been fierce, violent clashes in the area of
the Russian embassy. He said that 2,000 to 3,000 right-wing extremists and
Reich citizens had gathered there and that this group had thrown stones and
bottles at the police. Seven policemen and -women were injured. About 200
people were arrested, including Hildmann.
About a dozen politicians of the far-right AfD party were present among the
demonstrators, including Ulrich Oehme (AfD Bundestag MP); Rüdiger Imgart
(AfD Weilheim-Schongau); Hansjörg Müller (AfD-Fraktion); André Poggenburg
(AfD MdL); Hugh Bronson (AfD Berlin); Robby Schlund (AfD MP); Thomas Rudy
(AfD MdL); Gunnar Lindemann (AfD Berlin); Markus Frohnmaier (AfD MP); Björn
Höcke (AfD MdL) and Steffen Kotré (AfD MP).
Also the forrmer head of the neo-Nazi NPD party, Udo Voigt, was present,
giving his thumbs up in front of a Gandhi quote: The future depends on what
we do today.
Former NPD leader Udo Voigt giving his thumbs up in front of a Ghandi quote
at the Brandenburg Tor in the course of the August 29-30, 2020, Querdenken
demonstration. [Source: facebook.com]
Among the right-wing extremists on August 29 was also the neo-Nazi Mike
Sawallich, a known companion11 of the alleged murderer of the CDU politician
Walter Lübcke, Stephan Ernst, who is currently in pretrial detention.12
Mike Sawallich (white shirt), a comrade of Stephan Ernst, currently in
pretrial detention for the alleged murder of the CDU politician Walter
Lübcke. [Source: twitter.com]
Since many demonstrators had traveled to Berlin from afar, they were staying
over the weekend, and extended the demonstration into Sunday. Since the
Sunday demonstrations were not officially announced, during the day, a cat
and mouse game between police and demonstrators went down, with several
attempts by neo-Nazis to reach the Reichstag building. When the
demonstration drew to a close on Sunday evening, a die-hard remnant of
demonstrators gathered in front of the Brandenburg Tor, who all stood up
when the speaker proclaimed that Europe is rising (Europa erhebt sich),
accompanied by triumphant orchestral music.13
In the course of the demonstration, the Querdenken organization had
distanced itself from the neo-Nazi riots. But it did not shy away from
offering them a stage on Sunday evening, for example when the microphone was
handed to a visceral rabble rouser in camouflage outfit and Reich flags
painted on his cheeks. Neo-Nazis use the black-white-red Reich flag, from
1871 to 1919 the flag of the German Empire, as substitute for the Nazi flag,
which is forbidden in Germany.
Speaker on the Querdenken demonstration in camouflage outfit and Reich flags
painted on his cheeks. [Source: twitter.com]
That Reich flags, even just for a brief moment, were waved in front of the
Reichstag again, many may have deemed an impossibility, and the incidence
will hopefully serve as a wake-up call for the German public. It should not
come as a surprise that the most nasty forces are being unleashed amidst the
ongoing Covid-19 crisis, which has severely slowed down the German economy
and threw many people into unemployment.
When capital is in crisis and social unrest is on the horizon, a resort to
fascism has to be reckoned with, which tends to serve a twofold purpose:
when push comes to shove being able to mobilize a militarized mob, while
keeping the floodgates closed for a growing precariate to demand for true
political change. That people, who are not necessarily neo-Nazis would march
side by side with them, without any attempt of demarcation, for the greater
cause of sacking the powers in be, is a truly dangerous liaison from which
all progressive forces should clearly distance themselves and stand their
ground, to not once more loose a disoriented mass to the demagoguery of a
dangerous few.
