Neo-Nazis at Corona demos – “‘Resistance, resistance’ is a neo-Nazi code” – News

According to media reports, the demonstration against the Corona measures in Bern last Saturday was led by representatives of right-wing extremists. In Germany, this is happening more often now, as Christian Fuchs, a journalist with “Zeit”, has investigated.

Christian Fuchs

Christian Fuchs

Investigative journalist “Die Zeit”


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Christian Fuchs is an author in the investigative research and data department of “Zeit” and “Zeit Online”. He mostly reports on extremism and the New Right, but also on lobbying and sexual abuse. He has been with “Zeit” since 2014, before that he was a reporter in the research network of “Süddeutsche Zeitung” and NDR. Fuchs also writes books about right-wing terrorist cells in Germany.

SRF News: To what extent do right-wing extremists influence the demonstrations against the Corona measures?

Christian Fuchs: In Germany, around 200,000 people now take part in these protests against corona measures over a weekend. Very few of them are right-wing extremists. But what the right-wing extremists do well is that they quickly put themselves at the head of a demonstration and network these protests on the Internet in order to effectively appropriate the demonstration for themselves.

On social media, it seems like they and their groups are in charge there. They do this, for example, by loudly chanting certain ideological slogans such as “resistance, resistance”. This is neo-Nazi code. It was on a poster in Bern at the weekend.

For the demonstration on Saturday in Bern


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More than 2,000 opponents of corona measures gathered in Bern on Saturday afternoon for an unauthorized rally. The police stood by but held back. She carried out identity checks, dismissed individual demonstrators and filed a complaint. A spokesman for the Keystone-SDA news agency said that individuals were assigned to the right-wing extremist environment by the Bernese cantonal police.

The “Berner Zeitung” reported on Saturday evening of “30 to 40 right-wing extremists” who “hijacked” the rally. The neo-Nazi group Junge Tat was in charge, supported by members of the National Action Front (NAF), Blood & Honor and the Hammerskins. Kapo Bern did not want to comment on this. No criminally relevant activities had taken place.

Trychler were not there. Banners of the group Massvoll were carried in the field. Moderate President Nicolas Rimoldi also marched.

The German right-wing extremists publish maps where they list over a thousand events and pretend to be a broad movement. You can now find all the rallies and walkers in Switzerland on it.

Which groups are we talking about?

The one that is massively trying to hijack the protests in Germany is the so-called Identitarian Movement. She is also active in Switzerland. There are also small neo-Nazi parties like The Third Way in Germany or representatives of the Junge Tat group in Switzerland. They appear at demonstrations.

Legend:

One of the posters contained the keyword: “Health tyranny”.

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The demonstrations against corona measures are therefore partly undermined by right-wing extremists. For what purpose is this happening?

The theme of the demonstration is entirely interchangeable. In Germany it started ten years ago with protests against the euro. Then, five or six years ago, the issue of migration came up. Now it’s the pandemic and the upcoming vaccination requirement.

The German Office for the Protection of the Constitution says that right-wing extremists want to reach a critical mass and are planning a system overthrow. Personally, I don’t see the danger at the moment. You have to keep in mind: 200,000 people in Germany are only 0.2 percent of the population. In Bern, too, one has to say: 2,000 people are a small, manageable group given the size of this city.

I see the danger that people at these demonstrations become radicalized and violent: The murderer of the politician Walter Lübke radicalized himself at AfD demonstrations – at that time still on the subject of migration.

Why do you think these groups are not a threat?

Because they just don’t manage to get other people behind them beyond their own milieu. This can of course change, for example with the introduction of even tougher measures. But the danger that I see more at the moment is that people become radicalized at these demonstrations and become very violent. We’ve seen that in the past too. The murderer of the politician Walter Lübke radicalized himself at AfD demonstrations – at that time still on the subject of migration – and then murdered a person.

You mentioned the German Office for the Protection of the Constitution. What are the German authorities doing?

They have started to expand their monitoring of the Telegram service in Germany. A lot of the organization of these protests, but also calls to murder those who think differently, take place on Telegram. Other social networks now block criminally relevant things, such as Facebook.

The conversation was conducted by Sandro Della Torre.

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