(New York, N.Y.) – Following the arrest of 25 suspected members of the far-right Reichsbürger (“Citizens of the Reich”) movement by German police on December 7, Counter Extremism Project (CEP) Senior Director Dr. Hans-Jakob Schindler gave background on how the group organized and context to its motivations, which allegedly included attacking the Bundestag, overthrowing Germany’s government, and replacing it with their own. The operation against the cell was, as Dr. Schindler observed, “one of the largest counterterrorism operations on German soil since 1945.”

Dr. Schindler, a former Coordinator of the United Nations Security Council’s ISIL (Da’esh), al-Qaeda and Taliban Sanctions Monitoring Team, told BBC World News’s “The Context with Christian Fraser” that all of the groups “primary planning was done online and this means messenger services and social media, which really don’t have the controls in place to really hinder” misuse of their platforms, and observed that “this particular group believed that there was a deep state that was about to intervene in Germany to change the political system and that they wanted to support this … ‘alliance’ of deep state elements in their efforts to take over the state.”

Among those arrested in the raid was Birgit Malsack-Winkemann, a judge and former lawmaker with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. AfD leaders denied any knowledge of the plot and called for “a swift and comprehensive investigation.” In March 2020, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency (BfV) labeled a faction within the AfD, Flügel (Wing), as an extremist organization and a threat to Germany’s democratic order. The AfD responded by dissolving Flügel in April 2020.

German intelligence reported in June 2022 that Reichsbürger had approximately 21,000 followers across Germany, approximately 10 percent of which it considers violent, and that it regards the group as a growing security threat whose ranks include neo-Nazis, conspiracy theorists, gun enthusiasts, and former soldiers united by a “deep rejection” of German state institutions. Reichsbürger is also linked to an alleged April 2022 plot to kidnap German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach and cause a nationwide power outage by destroying power facilities.

However, as Dr. Schindler told the CBC’s “Canada Tonight,” “this is not the only violent cell that has been discovered from the broader violent right-wing extremist spectrum in Germany over the last couple of years. Since 2019, the Federal Ministry of Interior has consistently judged that violent right-wing extremism is the largest domestic threat against security and this [operation] really brought home that point again.”

Watch & Listen To Additional Analysis:

• BBC Scotland’s “The Nine” | Germany arrests 25 accused of plotting coup
• BBC World Service’s “Newshour”  | Police in Germany have arrested twenty five suspected far right extremists
• WTOP’s “Global with JJ Green” | Failed German Coup
• WTOP’s “The Hunt” | Dozens arrested in suspected plot to overthrow German government

To read CEP’s resource, Germany: Extremism and Terrorism, please click here.