COVID-19 protests in Germany

Government, media and public analyses[edit]

In response to a parliamentary request from the Left Party, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) advised in early September 2020 that extreme-right spokespersons had been present at over 90 protests against coronavirus-related restrictions since the end of April 2020. The BfV said further that the mobilization calls of right-wing extremists had broadened and intensified for the Berlin 29 August rally as compared to the Berlin 1 August rally, but had met with very limited success in their goal of "connecting with democratic protests". It considered such a success at future rallies possible, though, and would continue its monitoring with a view to such developments.^[82]


The Baden-Württemberg State Office for the Protection of the Constitution began to observe the core administrative layer of Querdenken in December 2020; at that time, Minister of the Interior Thomas Strobl justified this step with the presence of radical tendencies (fostering extremist and conspiracy-ideological narratives) within the movement. He emphasized that the observation did not include the participants at rallies.^[1] Later on the Bavarian Office for the Protection of the Constitution began also to observe the movement. From at least April 2021 the Berlin State Office for the Protection of the Constitution targeted radical fractions of the movement with intelligence methods.^[135] On 28 April, the BfV announced that it had placed parts of the Querdenken movement under countrywide observation in a newly created category, due to its questioning of the legitimacy of the state.^[13]


In an interview in May 2020, law professor Oliver Lepsius said that peaceful dissent always had to be allowed in a democracy, and that violations of the law by single individuals were a well-known phenomenon and could not be used to prohibit demonstrations. In his view, basic rights had "definitely" been endangered in the first months of the pandemic, but that the freedom of speech had been upheld throughout the crisis. Comparisons of government corona policies to Nazi-era policies, as made by some of the protesters, were in no way appropriate.^[136]


In May 2020, media professor Bernhard Pörksen told the dpa press agency that labeling the protesters as "paranoids", "hysterics", or similar wholesale attacks would only antagonize them and only serve to make it more difficult to reach the important goal of cooling down the debate. There should, he said, be no tolerance towards antisemitic or radical far-right views.^[137]


An article in the Tagesspiegel from May 2020 pointed out that the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party was trying to capitalize on the protests, but that in doing so it was entering a difficult balancing act, as it did not want to be seen as overtly supporting conspiracy theorists.^[138]


In a commentary published by Deutschlandfunk on 30 August, journalist and jurist Heribert Prantl expressed the view that the basic right to demonstrate guaranteed by the German constitution was not diminished by the pandemic situation, and that even "abstruse" demands by Querdenken protesters such as the immediate resignation of the German government had to be tolerated. Violence and Volksverhetzung were however not to be tolerated. Prantl expected from and demanded of the peaceful demonstrators, their organisers, and the police, that they confer and consider concepts and strategies to separate the peaceful demonstrators from unpeaceful people or volksverhetzende Rechtsextremisten (far-right inciters of hatred against segments of the population).^[139]


In an interview with Deutschlandfunk in late December 2020, Josef Schuster, President of the Central Council of Jews in Germany said, when being asked why a small but vocal part of the population believed that they were living in a dictatorship – exemplified by Querdenken protests where protesters were wearing yellow stars resembling the Star of David to suggest that they were being persecuted, and a recent case of a protester who had likened herself to resistance fighter against Nazi Germany, Sophie Scholl – that complete ignorance on history was the only reason he could conceive. He further said that while he would "in theory" understand those who demonstrated against a curtailing of basic rights – which he considered minor –, he would consider it beyond the limits of what he could accept if they were infiltrated by proponents of extreme-right views and anti-semitic conspiracy theories.^[140]


The advance of protesters to the German parliament building entrance at the demonstration on 29 August 2020, and the storming of the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, were seen in an opinion piece in The New York Times to have parallels, crucially a deep distrust in officials and a belief in conspiracy theories, in particular QAnon.^[141]


A joint study by ZEW and HU Berlin, published in February 2021, concluded that between 16,000 and 21,000 coronavirus infections could have been prevented by Christmas if two large rallies in Berlin and Leipzig in November 2020 had not taken place.^[142] The methodology of the study and its conclusions were criticized by two academics as not solid.^[143]


In an interview published in April 2021, author and expert on far-right movements Karolin Schwarz stated that Querdenken was exhibiting cognitive dissonance insofar as the movement readily adopted those reports from mainstream media that fitted its narrative, even though it considered the same media as uncritically reporting whatever the government wanted them to report. She said that attacks on journalists had become "standard" at Querdenken protests. She opined that the movement was justifying these attacks through espousing the notion that it was them, not the media, who stood for freedom, or through narratives – which she dismissed as false – that there had been agent provocateurs at rallies. She said that police was falling short in fulfilling its legal requirement to protect journalists at Querdenken rallies, and that no attempts were made by the movement to exclude right-wing extremists from demonstrations. She further said that the stories propagated at Querdenken rallies were at least in contravention of the German constitution, a recurring theme being the intention of the protesters to have the people in power be ousted in a putsch; and that, while rallies did not feature classical narratives of the extreme right, antisemitic conspiracy stories were being disseminated.^[7]


Broadcaster Bayerischer Rundfunk cited in May 2021 from an interview with historian Jens-Christian Wagner. In it, Wagner pointed to a social dimension of the Querdenken protests, arguing that since the protesters had not lost "really important basic rights" such as the freedom of speech and the right of vote, it was more likely that they were concerned by consumer rights such as going to restaurants, going shopping or flying for tourism. He considered this to be plausible on the grounds of many protesters belonging to the well-earning middle class. He further said that the protesters' understanding of basic rights was directed primarily "against the fundamental idea of societal solidarity" and further against the government which they, due to being under the influence of "conspiracy legends", considered to be a fascist dictatorship.^[144]


On 16 September 2021, Facebook moved to delete nearly 150 accounts and groups connected to Querdenken on Facebook and Instagram, including those of Michael Ballweg, the movement's founder. Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook's head of security policy, called it the first action worldwide against a group that is causing a "coordinated damaging of society".^[145][146]