Corona Conspiracy Theorists
Protests in Germany See Fringe Mix with the Mainstream
At demonstrations and on the internet, both the
far-left and the far-right have converged in their agitation against measures
taken to limit the spread of the coronavirus. In a disturbing development,
their conspiracy theories are also reaching the mainstream.
14.05.2020,
17.50 Uhr
By Maik
Baumgärtner, Felix Bohr, Roman Höfner, Timo Lehmann, Ann-Katrin Müller, Sven
Röbel, Marcel Rosenbach, Jonas Schaible, Wolf Wiedmann-Schmidt and Steffen
Winter
PEGIDA
isn’t marching these days. For almost six years, racists and disaffected
Germans, marched every Monday through Dresden’s city center as "Patriotic
Europeans” to stop the purported "Islamization of the West.” But last
Monday, the city’s Neumarkt square was empty. The local authorities were only
permitting the demonstration to take place within a small square delineated by
barriers, restrictions imposed because of the coronavirus. A maximum of 50
people could take part.
That was
too small for PEGIDA organizer Lutz Bachmann, who’s accustomed to larger
audiences. He has instead moved the protests to the virtual realm, inciting his
followers from home by video livestream, not a bad move given the torrential
rain that day. But Bachmann has also expanded his usual repertoire of political
issues: These days, he has turned his attentions away from migration and Islam
and toward the coronavirus lockdown restrictions imposed by politicians. Yet
the despite the flexibility in focus, the message has remained the same: Merkel
has to go.
In his
livestream on May 4, Bachmann called for civil disobedience. "There’s
nothing anybody can do about it if you just sit down, as long as you pay
attention to minimum spacing requirements," he said. The PEGIDA organizer
sees considerable mobilization potential in tapping the anger many Germans feel
about the restrictions on public life imposed as a result of the coronavirus as
well as the social and economic impact they are having. Something is stirring
in Germany, he shouted to his followers. And not just in the former East German
state, where most of PEGIDA’s energy has come from, but also in the western
states. "The people are slowly waking up over there,” he said.
In fact, a
growing number of people across Germany have been gathering to protest against
the government. And it’s not just the usual PEGIDA suspects who are taking to
the streets. The virus is uniting people in protest who previously had very little
to do with each other: right-wing extremists, anti-vaxxers, anti-Semites,
conspiracy theorists, left-wing radicals, old school anarchists and followers
of New Age beliefs. But also quite normal people who weren’t politically active
in the past.
Last
Wednesday, around 400 gathered in front of the German parliament, the
Bundestag, in Berlin. The past two weekends have also seen protests in
Stuttgart, where more than 4,000 demonstrated against the coronavirus measures
on May 2 and the largest protest to date took place in the city this Saturday,
with police estimating the size of the crowd at 5,000 people. Meanwhile, around
3,000 protested in Munich over the weekend, over 1,000 in Berlin, and similar
demonstrations were held in Frankfurt and Cologne. Recent days have also seen
protests in a number of smaller cities. In many places, the desire to resist
resulted in acts of aggression against police officers and journalists. In
Berlin, camera teams working for the public broadcasters ARD and ZDF have been
attacked. There are even efforts to start a new political party as an umbrella
body for the disparate groups of protesters. The official papers for the
"Resistance2020” party were filed last week.
”Infodemic”
At the same
time, conspiracy theories pertaining to corinavirus are spreading rapidly
through the internet. German celebrities like the singer Xavier Naidoo, star
chef Attila Hildmann and singer Senna Gammour have been helping to ensure that
fake news about the coronavirus reaches a mass audience by spreading it on
social media.
The World
Health Organization has warned of an "infodemic,” and German security
experts fear that a global information war is breaking out over the virus. In
an open letter to major technology companies, a number of leading doctors and
virologists like Christian Drosten of Berlin’s Charité University Hospital are
now calling for tougher action to be taken against fake news.
The odd mix
of fabricated news on the internet has been fueled by conspiracy theorists and
pro-Russian media who spread fake news as part of their efforts to destabilize
democracy. In addition, there are also elements from the left-wing fringe and
from the far-right orbit of the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany
(AfD) party. They are using the coronavirus as a means of building bridges to
reach people closer to the political mainstream. They may not be well
organized, but they have nonetheless succeeded in drawing an astonishing number
of people out into the streets to protests.
The
protests haven’t gone unnoticed to politicians -- and have actually had an
influence. The fact that the broadest steps yet to loosen the lockdown were
taken last week is linked in part to anger among the protesters and certain
segments of the population.
"The dangerous thing about this is that these
people are also reaching people who firmly believe in Germany’s constitution
with their crude theories,” says Berlin state Interior Minister Andreas Geisel
of the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD). "They can then be used
to further spread the conspiracy theories.”
Germany’s
state governors are also worried that the mood in the country is shifting.
That’s one of the reasons they pushed Chancellor Angela Merkel last Wednesday
for a further loosening of restrictions – changes that would have been
unthinkable only a week earlier.
But who are
the people driving the politicians to take these steps?
Stuttgart
is a good place for getting a better understanding of the phenomenon. Ten years
ago, massive protests were held in the city against a major infrastructure
project called Stuttgart 21, the far-reaching transformation of the main train
station along with major cosmetic changes to parts of the city. The anger over
the project and the ensuing protests attracted attention across the entire
country. It wasn’t left-wing radicals expressing their displeasure at the time,
but largely well-off people who believed their quality of life would suffer
through the construction of the station. There are a numerous parallels between
today’s protesters and those from a decade ago
The recent
protests in Stuttgart have been organized as "vigils for the
constitution,” a reflection of the incursions on basic freedoms that the
lockdowns have wrought, by a movement called Querdenken 711, which translates
roughly as "thinking out of the box.” It’s not just chronic Merkel-haters
or anti-vaxxers here, but also people who have lost their jobs as a result of
the pandemic. They’ve been attended by single mothers and even restaurant
owners who have had to close their establishments. They consider the
restrictions to be disproportionate and are protesting against "arbitrary
action taken by the government” and for the "restoration of fundamental
rights” or the for Stuttgart’s nightlife to be saved.
Hijacked by
Extremists
It’s
exactly this confluence of broader segments of society that is worrying
security officials. They have also observed extremist elements adopting the
issue. An internal situation report from the German Interior Ministry from last
week states: "Extremist groups are using the crisis to spread and
reinforce their respective ideological narratives."
Georg
Maier, the interior minister for the eastern state of Thuringia, says he is
seeing a shift in public sentiment. He says that although people welcomed the
rigorous lockdown measures taken at the beginning, they are now starting to
turn. Maier says he wants to address the issue at the next national meeting of
state interior ministers, a grouping that he currently heads. "Of course,
it’s OK for people to express criticism, this is about restrictions on basic
rights, after all.” But, he adds, "what is alarming to us is the attempt
by extremists to hijack the protests.”
Maier is also disturbed by how widespread the
coronavirus conspiracy theories have become. "The idea that the pandemic
was deliberately created to control the people, and that Bill Gates or other
supposedly sinister powers are behind it, reaches far into the center of
society," says Maier. "It doesn’t take much for the protests to steer
into anti-Semitism.”
Markus Kerber says we are observing a "global
information war” in the pandemic. Kerber is a senior official in the German
Interior Ministry responsible for societal cohesion, among other issues. His
team first began noticing a surge in disinformation and propaganda from abroad
at the onset of the pandemic, which was often spread by state media. But he
says the conspiracy theories have since begun circulating in Germany. "We
have to counter this with facts, transparency and by defending the science,”
Kerber says. He’s also aware that sustained periods of crisis are the ideal
breeding ground for conspiracy theories.
Pia
Lamberty, a social psychologist who wrote a doctoral dissertation on conspiracy
theories and is the author of the recently published book on the subject, has
an explanation. "A pandemic triggers a very large loss of control, which
is why some people take refuge in conspiracies,” she says. The effect is even
greater with an invisible virus that is spreading globally than it is with
terrorism or the sudden deaths of celebrities, events for which there have
always been conspiracy theories. "It’s easier for some people to imagine
evil people behind the scenes to blame for the situation,” Lamberty says. They
look for simple answers and then feel special because they have supposedly
recognized something that the masses have overlooked.
"The
Government Is Screwing with Us All”
A number of
political players have been deliberately exploiting this phenomenon during the
crisis. In many places, officials with the AfD party are either participating
in protests or are themselves registering the events. They include people like
local AfD politician Steffen Janich in Pirna, a small town located near
Dresden, who has been calling for "coincidental walks” on Wednesdays. And
there are people like Gunnar Lindemann, a member of the state parliament in
Berlin. Or Hansjörg Müller, a member of the federal parliament, who held up a
sign at a protest in Munich reading: "The government is screwing with us
all.”
The extreme
right-wing group Zukunft Heimat, which is led by an AfD member of the
Brandenburg state parliament and specializes in street protests is also taking
part in protests. And Martin Sellner of the right-wing extremist Identitarian
Movement has also called for support for the protests so that they can become a
"a large, broad and common alliance.”
A series of
weekly protests in Berlin began at the end of March, when Anselm Lenz called
for "the defense of civil rights against the spreading new
authoritarianism.” The Berlin dramaturge and journalist made a name for himself
in theater with pieces that are critical of capitalism. Now the 40-year-old is
the mouthpiece of a movement that believes that a conspiracy of power elites is
behind the global pandemic.
Lenz and
others connected with the Communications Center for Democratic Resistance
gather regularly on Berlin’s Rosa Luxemburg Square. At the protests, they
distribute a newspaper they produce themselves along with copies of Germany’s
constitution. But not all of the participants in these demonstrations are
prepared to adhere to that constitution. As the Berlin state Office for the
Protection of the Constitution, an agency responsible for monitoring political
extremism and terrorism, states in an internal paper, several dozen far-right
extremists, including Udo Voigt, the former head of the far-right extremist
National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD), attended one of the recent Berlin
protests. There has been little opposition to the influx of right-wing
extremists who oppose democracy within the protest movement surrounding the
coronavirus measures.
Instead,
organizers seem to be caught up in their own internal problems. For example,
over the purported partnership they had with the German Federal Agency for
Civic Education, which they alleged help print copies of the constitution. The
agency has denied any involvement. "We clearly refute this,” the agency
said in a statement. And famous Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben told DER
SPIEGEL: "I am not the co-editor of the Democratic Resistance newspaper.”
Kremlin
Propagandists
On the
other hand, there are three media in particular that have stood firmly on the
side of the protesters and have been very active in their reporting on the
so-called "Hygiene Demos.” They include the anti-establishment webzine
Rubikon as well as the two German-language offshoots of the Russian media
company RT and Sputnik.
It’s not
particularly surprising the Kremlin propagandists took an early interest in the
protests. Pro-Russian journalist Ulrich Gellermann, who is frequently
interviewed by the stations and websites and writes for both outlets, is part
of the core group in the Democratic Resistance group. Gellermann describes
himself as "one of the co-initiators” of the protests in Berlin, and he
says he advises the organizers and is still in regular contact today.
Gellermann
says he also has other "partners.” On his homepage, Gellermann has links
to "partners” KenFM as well as Weltnetz.tv, where he has been publishing
articles for years. Weltnetz.tv has deep ties to the far-left Left Party.
Diether Dehm, a federal parliamentarian for the Left Party, is one of the
website’s co-founders and still services as the treasurer of the association
that raises money to fund the site. He’s also a part owner of the company that
runs the site, as is Heike Hänsel, a Left Party member of parliament and a
ranking member of its parliamentary group, and Wolfgang Gehrcke, a former
member of parliament with the party. When contacted via his email address at
Weltnetz, Dehm answered from his personal email address.
Dehm claims
that he has nothing to do with the protests and that he considers the virus to
be very dangerous. But he added that it is also important that more people
protest and that they be allowed to express their opinions without
intimidation. "Everyone must be allowed to spread even the greatest
nonsense without being punished. Corona deniers aren’t Auschwitz deniers!"
In the leadership of his party, on the other hand, a different, very determined
line has been adopted. Left Party national chair Katja Kipping, for example,
speaks of a "lobby” for loosening the lockdown.
The Rubikon
website serves as a kind of in-house publication for the protesters.
"Hygiene Demo” protest organizer Lenz has been publishing his ideas since
the site’s launch. The Rubikon website was established in 2017 and is known for
its frequent publication of conspiracy theories. The site’s advisory board also
includes journalists who work for Weltnetz.tv and the German-language offshoot
of RT. Rubikon has also sought to establish ties with fake news influencers
like Ken Jebsen, who is profiting massively from the crisis created by the
coronavirus through his YouTube channel KenFM.
Jebsen
shows that stories based on conspiracy theories about the coronavirus are in
high demand. Last year, the former radio presenter gained around 5,000 to 6,000
new subscribers a month for his channel. In March of this year, there were
around 35,000 new subscribers, with as many as 75,000 subscribing in April,
around 20 times as many as last year. The number of video views is also
increasing, with 12 million views in April alone. Other YouTube channels with
links to the scene are experiencing similar growth.
Trouble
Keeping Up
One of the
reasons conspiracy theories have been able to spread as far as they have is
that the social networks have a lack of staff and are having trouble keeping
up. Facebook, Twitter and Google largely rely on external service providers to
handle content moderation. Employees search through postings and filter out
hate speech and incitement, depictions of violence and disinformation.
But since
the pandemic hit, many workers at Facebook Twitter and Google, of which YouTube
is a subsidiary, are also working from home. In Germany alone, hundreds of
moderators at service provider companies like Majorel, which provide their
services to Facebook, have been affected. For legal and data protection
reasons, moderators are often only able to do a part of their work from home.
"Since
not all the people who normally check content are able to work currently, we
are prioritizing certain content and are relying increasingly on automated
systems,” says a Facebook spokeswoman. But the automated filters are prone to
errors, especially when it comes to borderline cases, which many videos often
are. "Despite these measures, there can still be longer response times and
more mistakes in enforcing our rules,” the Facebook spokeswoman admits.
"Everyone
must be allowed to spread even the greatest nonsense without being punished.
Corona deniers aren’t Auschwitz deniers!"
Diether
Dehm, Left Party member of parliament
Facebook
emphasizes that despite the staffing shortage, warnings were displayed for
around 40 million posts in March alone. She says that 95 percent of users would
not have clicked on them. Facebook and Google have also tightened their rules:
At YouTube, officials say that calls for illegal gatherings as well as videos
doubting the existence of the coronavirus or recommending harmful remedies are
removed as soon as they are detected or reported.
In recent
weeks, for example, the company has removed numerous videos in which 5G mobile
technology is blamed for the spread of the coronavirus following attacks
against people and 5G masts, especially in Britain and the Netherlands. The
company also says that the astonishingly high number of views on some conspiracy
theory channels aren’t attributable to YouTube’s own algorithms. Instead, users
are searching for the channels by name.
The
conspiracy theorists have already reacted to the deletion of their content by
moving their business to "freer” platforms like Bitchut and, particularly,
the messaging service Telegram, where
they can continue to ramble on unhindered about the "bioweapon” or the
alleged "emergency regime” and dream about larger gatherings to "besiege
the Bundestag until the government resigns.”
Or dream
about the next time they meet on the streets. Right in the midst of ordinary
people.
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário