The Daily Beast
The New Q: How COVID Conspiracy ‘Querdenken’ Infiltrated Germany’s Mainstream Politics
GettyThis story was produced in partnership with Coda Story.On a bitterly cold Monday afternoon, four days into the New Year, a small band of protesters commenced their weekly campaign against the Robert Koch Institute. They blared a steady stream of rock music at the organization’s stately red-brick building, which stands in stark contrast to its surroundings in the working-class Wedding district of Berlin.Every few minutes, they paused to deliver speeches accusing the scientists inside of deliberately manipulating data in support of the German government’s approach to the global coronavirus pandemic.The demonstrators present were part of the Berlin chapter of the Querdenken movement. Roughly translating to “lateral thinking,” Querdenken emerged in April, just weeks into Germany’s first lockdown, and has grown rapidly. Its adherents are united in the belief that federal COVID-19 restrictions are wildly disproportionate and part of a broader plan to strip citizens of their basic rights and freedoms.The Robert Koch Institute is a respected body responsible for the monitoring and control of contagious diseases in Germany. Despite receiving state funding, it maintains fully independent status and its research has formed the foundation of the government’s approach to testing and quarantines during the coronavirus crisis. Some people, however, disagree vehemently with its recommendations.“This is one of the centers of the policy,” explained Eckhard Schäfer, a regular speaker at the Monday demonstrations. “It’s very dangerous and evil, pushing all these corona measures.”German QAnon Groups Now Claim Trump’s Election Boogeyman Is Behind Coronavirus TestsSchäfer, a 57-year-old psychologist who has lived in Berlin for nearly 30 years, has been skeptical about the risks posed by COVID-19 since the very outset of the pandemic. After a couple of months, he came to the conclusion that the threat was entirely manufactured and that scientists were producing and disseminating a “kind of manipulated information,” designed to prop up an ailing capitalist system. These views quickly led him to Querdenken, which casts the denial of scientific fact and expert opinion as an act of political opposition.“I felt like this before, but now my ambitions are higher,” Schäfer said. “If I want to overcome this capitalism and its injustices, I really have to do something.”While the movement’s followers believe themselves to be on a righteous mission, exposing hidden truths to an unaware public, others warn that Querdenken may be setting its followers on a path toward extremism and dragging German politics at large further to the right.Though it appears to slot within a broader resistance to coronavirus regulations—including January’s anti-lockdown riots in the Netherlands and the persistent protests in the United Kingdom—Querdenken is uniquely positioned for broader political and social impact. Its ties to right-wing parties could enhance their fortunes in Germany’s forthcoming federal elections in September. Some also believe that the embrace of conspiracy theories rooted in anti-Semitic ideas—including the belief that a secret cabal is prescribing the COVID-19 response—has emboldened neo-Nazi networks that cling on at the country’s political fringes, waiting for a mainstream foothold.The Querdenken movement was founded in April 2020 by a tech entrepreneur named Michael Ballweg from the southwest German state of Baden-Württemberg. Within weeks, thousands of people were turning up at weekly rallies in Stuttgart, the state capital. As followers took to channels such as Facebook and Telegram, chapters began to spring up across the country, numbered according to each area’s telephone code.It achieved notoriety over the summer, when—alongside an assortment of far-right groups—its…
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