On Aug. 29, 38,000 people amassed in Berlin for Europe’s largest protest against COVID-19 safety measures and lockdowns. The eclectic mix of right-wing extremists, conspiracy theorists, anti-vaccine activists, club kids, and New Age esoterics blurred political messages. Signs with “We are the Second Wave” and “Fight the Corona Dictatorship” filled the streets, coupled with a motley potpourri of “Free Assange” banners, QAnon signs, and American, rainbow, Russian, German, and Wilhelmine Imperial War flags. The Reichsbürger—a group of far-right revisionists who reject the legitimacy of Germany’s post-World War II federal republic—enacted a symbolic storming of the Bundestag and trotted out a “Peace Treaty” to the Russian and U.S. embassies. Robert Kennedy Jr. railed against vaccines and Bill Gates just miles from where his uncle John F. Kennedy gave his famous 1963 “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech.
The Berlin government tried, but failed, to ban the protests on public safety grounds. But the demonstrations may have a positive, if unintended, effect: they are already jolting Germany and Europe awake to a new wave of political disinformation aimed right at the heart of European democracy.
