by Johannes Sarcher, January 18, 2023

It was the dominant news story in Germany at the beginning of December: According to security authorities, a group of members of the Reichsbürger movement and conspiracy theorists was planning an armed coup d'état. 

News reporting at the beginning of the raids and arrests was primarily driven by sensationalism. Now, more than a month later, the group is increasingly being downplayed as a collection of absurd freaks. This misconception must be refuted.

In order to understand the danger that emanates from the suspects and their milieu, it is worth taking a closer look at the ideology of the Reichsbürger: Racism, antisemitism and an aggressive rejection of liberal democracy come together with an affinity for weapons and years of calling for a coup on a long-awaited “Day X”. The result is a mixture that inherently compels violence. As a result, experts have cautioned for years against ignoring or underestimating the danger.

In the current case, the threat is being trivialized through an emphasis on the group’s inability to actually carry out a coup d'état. The fact that the German state cannot be unhinged by one attack is a banality – but it serves to disregard the perspective of potential victims of right-wing terror.

Correlating the purported absurdity of the group with its potential danger (or lack thereof) mainly demonstrates lack of knowledge concerning the conspiracy ideology milieu. A worldview does not have to appear logical from the outside for it to be dangerous. The manifestos of the assassins of Halle and Hanau have shown one thing: They were most consistent when it came to their racism, antisemitism and sexism.

The threat posed by this milieu should not be assessed on the basis of its ability to stage a successful coup d'état, but rather on its capacity for acts of violence. And there can be no doubt that here, the potential is considerable. Victims of right-wing violence cannot afford the luxury of trivializing the threat of terrorism. Over 200 deaths from right-wing violence since German reunification are tragic proof of this fact.

This article was first published at Jüdische Allgemeine.