German conspiracists on trial.

Ann K

Senior Member.
Today Germany announced they are finally putting the leaders of a QAnon-type conspiracy group on trial, who have been plotting a coup that sounds much like the Jan 6 so-called "stop the steal" insurrection in the USA. Since they included a cooperative arrangement with Russia in their plans, it sounds as if Russia may be behind the thing in some way. I know no further details, but expect we will hear much more about this as the trial progresses.

The alleged leaders of a suspected far-right plot to topple the German government are going on trial in Frankfurt on Tuesday, opening the most prominent proceedings in a case that shocked the country in late 2022.

Nine defendants will face judges at a special temporary courthouse built to accommodate the large number of defendants, lawyers and media dealing with the case. About 260 witnesses are expected at a trial that the Frankfurt state court expects to extend well into 2025, one of three related trials that in total involve more than two dozen suspects.

The defendants include the highest-profile suspects in the alleged plot, among them Heinrich XIII Prince Reuss, whom the group allegedly planned to install as Germany’s provisional new leader; Birgit Malsack-Winkemann, a judge and former lawmaker with the far-right Alternative for Germany party; and former German military officers.

Most of them are charged with belonging to a terrorist organization that was founded in July 2021 with the aim of “doing away by force with the existing state order in Germany,” and also with “preparation of high treasonous undertaking.” Reuss and another suspect, a former paratrooper, are alleged to have been the group’s ringleaders.

Prosecutors have said that the accused believed in a “conglomerate of conspiracy myths,” including Reich Citizens and QAnon ideology, and were convinced that Germany is ruled by a so-called “deep state.” Adherents of the Reich Citizens movement reject Germany’s postwar constitution and have called for bringing down the government, while QAnon is a global conspiracy theory with roots in the United States.

Storming parliament and negotiating with Russia

The group planned to storm into the parliament building in Berlin and arrest lawmakers, according to prosecutors. It allegedly intended to negotiate a post-coup order primarily with Russia, as one of the allied victors of World War II.

The plotters allegedly had some 500,000 euros ($543,000) in funding and access to an arsenal including 380 firearms and nearly 350 weapons that could be used for stabbing, as well as equipment such as bulletproof vests and handcuffs. Federal prosecutors say they had drawn up several “lists of enemies” to be used in the takeover of regional and local authorities, and that the group’s members were “aware the planned takeover of power would be linked with the killing of people.”

Prosecutors say that Reuss tried to contact Russian officials in 2022 to win Russia’s support for the plan, and it isn’t clear whether Russia responded.

The defendants in Frankfurt include a Russian woman accused of supporting a terrorist organization, in part by allegedly setting up a contact with the Russian consulate in Leipzig and accompanying Reuss there.

Wider far-right worries

The alleged coup plot came to light with a slew of arrests in December 2022. But officials had long warned that far-right extremists pose the biggest threat to Germany’s domestic security.

That threat was highlighted by the killing of a regional politician and an attempted attack on a synagogue in 2019. A year later, far-right extremists taking part in a protest against pandemic restrictions tried and failed to enter the parliament building in Berlin.

In a separate case, five people went on trial in Koblenz a year ago over an alleged plot by a group calling itself United Patriots — which prosecutors say also is linked to the Reich Citizens milieu — to launch a far-right coup and kidnap Germany’s health minister.

In January, a report that extremists met to discuss the deportation of millions of immigrants, including some with German citizenship, triggered mass protests against the rise of the far-right.

Some members of Alternative for Germany reportedly attended the meeting. The party, which has enjoyed strong support over the past year, sought to distance itself from the event while also decrying the reporting of it.
Content from External Source
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/...leaders-trial-reich-citizens-qanon-rcna153215
 
Prosecutors have said that the accused believed in a “conglomerate of conspiracy myths,” including Reich Citizens and QAnon ideology, and were convinced that Germany is ruled by a so-called “deep state.” Adherents of the Reich Citizens movement reject Germany’s postwar constitution and have called for bringing down the government, while QAnon is a global conspiracy theory with roots in the United States.
I would describe the "Reichsbürger" as the German version of "sovereign citizens", their methods are similar in practice. The idea is that the pre-WW2 German Reich never ended, that the institutions of the post-war Federal Republic of Germany are therefore illegitimate, and that the laws don't apply to them. Some even issue passports etc.

Plotting to storm parliament and arrest lawmakers? It certainly does!
No support from the head of state, though... :p
 
I would describe the "Reichsbürger" as the German version of "sovereign citizens", their methods are similar in practice. The idea is that the pre-WW2 German Reich never ended, that the institutions of the post-war Federal Republic of Germany are therefore illegitimate, and that the laws don't apply to them. Some even issue passports etc.
The idea is that the pre-Jan-6-Electoral-College-count Trump reign never ended, that the coming institutions of the fraudulently-elected Biden regime are therefore illegitimate, and that the laws don't apply to them.
 
I would describe the "Reichsbürger" as the German version of "sovereign citizens", their methods are similar in practice. The idea is that the pre-WW2 German Reich never ended, that the institutions of the post-war Federal Republic of Germany are therefore illegitimate, and that the laws don't apply to them. Some even issue passports etc.
It should be added that the "Reichsbürger" movement is highly heterogeneous consisting of a multitude of small groups, many of them claiming to be the legitimate successor to the pre-WW2 German Reich. The internal beliefs of theses groups often hugely differ ranging from plain neo-Nazi ideologies to the reasoning that Germany is actually a corporation run by the Allies (See Bavarian information center against extremism). There exists no central organization of these groups as far as I am aware.

An example for @Mendel mentioning of issuing passports was one group regularly mentioned in the media, the "Königreich Deutschland" (Kingdom of Germany), founded by Peter Fitzek who proclaimed himself as "Imperator Fiduziar" and basically started his own government by issuing passports, offering health insurances and other services, even creating a bank with custom currency. At the trial it turned out that a lot of the investments by similar minded people were missing. So apart from the questionable legal reasoning regarding the legitimacy of our current government parts of the Reichsbürger scene seem also quite open to the idea of expanding their questionable legal reasoning to the financial side of things. Or plain old fraud in shorter terms.


that sounds much like the Jan 6 so-called "stop the steal" insurrection in the USA
It had a similar goal but the context was quite different. The "stop the steal" movement in the USA is supported by a relevant faction of the population to say the least where the borders between the movement and the political system are not always clear.

None of that is really the case for the "Reichsbürger" movement. For a long time the news about anything Reichsbürger related was for the most part mixed with a bit of amusement, portraying them as quirky but not really a threat. That has changed somewhat after a suspect started shooting at the police who tried to search his apartment. I should add that shooting at the police is something that is quite uncommon in Germany and usually leads to broad media coverage. After that incident politics and police started to take the topic more serious, highlighting the danger of actual violence coming from various Reichsbürger groups. The mentioned trial in Frankfurt against one of them is the current culmination of this process.

However the chances for the planned coup to succeed were actually quite small (maybe nonexistent) since the group amassed quite the number of firearms but had not many members or support in the population.


The "Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz" (Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution) has some numbers:
https://www.verfassungsschutz.de/DE...zahlen-und-fakten/zahlen-und-fakten_node.html

Im Jahr 2022 sind der Szene der „Reichsbürger“ und „Selbstverwalter“ deutschlandweit etwa 23.000 (2021: 21.000) Personen zuzurechnen.

Bei rund 1.250 (2021: 1.150), also etwa mehr als fünf Prozent davon, handelt es sich um Rechtsextremisten.

Das gewaltorientierte Personenpotenzial der „Reichsbürger“ und „Selbstverwalter“ umfasste 2022 2.300 (2021: 2.100) Personen. Dazu zählen gewalttätige Szeneangehörige sowie Personen, die durch Drohungen oder gewaltbefürwortende Äußerungen und entsprechende ideologische Bezüge auffallen.

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In 2022, around 23,000 (2021: 21,000) people can be attributed to the “Reich Citizens” and “self-administrators” scene across Germany.

Around 1,250 (2021: 1,150), i.e. around five percent of them, are right-wing extremists.

The violence-oriented potential of “Reich citizens” and “self-administrators” comprised 2,300 (2021: 2,100) people in 2022. These include members of the violent scene as well as people who attract attention through threats or statements in favor of violence and corresponding ideological references.
Content from External Source

These numbers are of course for all of the Reichsbürger movement. The group currently on trial is much smaller, probably in the low double digits.
 
I would describe the "Reichsbürger" as the German version of "sovereign citizens", their methods are similar in practice.
Even though it's not their flag, I think there's quite an overlap between those and the Gadsden flag wavers.
And even though it's not their flag, there's quite an overlap between MAGAts and the Gadsden flag wavers:
https://www.oregonlive.com/politics...flown-by-capitol-mob-has-complex-history.html
https://theconversation.com/yellow-...er-carries-a-long-and-shifting-history-145142
And yes, there are stories and images behind those links, but the URLs containing "dont-tread-on-me-flag-widely-flown-by-capitol-mob" and "gadsden-flag-prominent-in-capitol-takeover" make my point.
 
what's MAGAts? is that like MAGA + transphobes? MAGA+terrorists? MAGA+ traitors?

surely you can think of more alphabet letters to add on then just "t".
It's not about "thinking of letters to add" - I'm just using what I see in fairly common use nowadays. That's how language works.

You appear to have no objection to "MAGA" jumping from imperative sentence to noun (that's just metonymy, a common trope, I've mentioned it here in many different contexts), so you can't be intrinsically against language change. Some commentators say that the phrase and its acronym are /coded language/, well, it clearly is, but it seems that different parties have embedded their own diametrically different dog whistles therein, and therefore the term ends up without a particular bias. Any word used as a positive by an ingroup can be used as a negative by the outgroup, that also happens all the time. Time will tell what stays in the language, and in what form, but that might take a generation or two. It's unusual to see an actual acronym enter the language as a word with enough traction that it might stick, so often the supposed acronyms are just backronym fairytales ("posh", "pom", etc.).

EDIT: added the letters in bold above, as it's really important to the meaning of the sentence.
 
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Europeans arent allowed to dehumanize people. I think its like a LGBTQ thing except Phil forgot the Q, which is funny since Q is Qanon (or Queer).
There's certainly no such rule, and that's certainly not what I was doing.

The reduction of a person to a mere slogan associated with them is dehumanising. So "MAGA" as a noun is *already* derogatory. However, you didn't object to that.
 
so what does MAGAt mean?
I've not seen it in the singular like that.
However, from the context in which I've seen the plural, it clearly refers to the large mass of people who associate themselves staunchly with Ronald Reagan's "Make America Great Again" slogan. However, I might be wrong.
 
I've not seen it in the singular like that.
However, from the context in which I've seen the plural, it clearly refers to the large mass of people who associate themselves staunchly with Ronald Reagan's "Make America Great Again" slogan. However, I might be wrong.
why are you so scared to say what the "t" stands for? Clearly the site moderators are OK with your word, so just tell me.
 
why are you so scared to say what the "t" stands for? Clearly the site moderators are OK with your word, so just tell me.
You really are making things up here.

You appear to desperately desperately want the 't' to stand for something. It doesn't. As far as I know - this is just the term people on the internet use, whether you like it or not. That's how language works.

And this bizarre claim of "scared" - what's your evidence for that? I'm curious how the moderators permitted you to get away with that personal slur. (Simple explanation - they know I have a spine, so they don't need to protect me from someone getting in an illogical flap.)

The best explanation for the coinage seems to already have been presented, it seems to have an element of believability, but I can't say for certain because my RP doesn't follow exactly the same phonetics.
 
You really are making things up here.

You appear to desperately desperately want the 't' to stand for something. It doesn't. As far as I know - this is just the term people on the internet use, whether you like it or not. That's how language works.

And this bizarre claim of "scared" - what's your evidence for that? I'm curious how the moderators permitted you to get away with that personal slur. (Simple explanation - they know I have a spine, so they don't need to protect me from someone getting in an illogical flap.)

The best explanation for the coinage seems to already have been presented, it seems to have an element of believability, but I can't say for certain because my RP doesn't follow exactly the same phonetics.
According to Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magat...y_term,is_a_homophone_of_"maggot"?wprov=sfla1

"MAGAt", a derogatory term used for supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump, named for his slogan "Make America Great Again" (MAGA); the term is a homophone of "maggot"
As it is clearly a derogatory term please don't use it.
 
According to Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magat...y_term,is_a_homophone_of_"maggot"?wprov=sfla1

As it is clearly a derogatory term please don't use it.

Wasn't I the first person on the thread to actually say that it might be derogatory? That was never intended - I don't even pronounce the words the same way as you do.

Doing a site search indicates that there are 3 pages of search results for "MAGA" - why were none of those flagged for being against site policy?

Please clarify the rule.
 
As it is clearly a derogatory term please don't use it.
Some clarity, please - is using "a MAGA", or "the MAGAs", or nearby variations therefrom, is also derogatory? Was the "t" the problem? With "t" is more common - the internet says so. (Yes, I can back that up with search engine results, can you back up a counter argument with same?)

If we're language policing (well, I'm not, you are), we need to know the policy.
 
Some clarity, please - is using "a MAGA", or "the MAGAs", or nearby variations therefrom, is also derogatory? Was the "t" the problem? With "t" is more common - the internet says so. (Yes, I can back that up with search engine results, can you back up a counter argument with same?)

If we're language policing (well, I'm not, you are), we need to know the policy.
The policy has been provided. MAGAt sounds like maggot and is derogatory. This is the first time I ran across its use on this site. Please take discussions regarding this term to another place (thread or PMs). Further posts not discussing the topic here will be deleted and the user warned for being off topic.
 
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