For some time, the German government has been dealing with the phenomenon of the “Reichsbürger” [meaning: “Reich Citizens”] movement – a movement that is based on the theory that Germany is actually still occupied by the US and NATO, because the Federal Republic of Germany is identical to the “German Reich” which has lost WWII and has been occupied ever since.
According to the federal government and state-affiliated media this movement is allegedly conspiratorial and filled with crazy people who have drank the Q-anon kool-aid, because they believe in the crazy theory that the current German government is actually the political and legal descendent of the German Reich in the context of international law.
Reichsbürger have a claim to fame, because of the recent “attempted coup” by German Nobleman Prince Reuss which was widely publicized in the global media. This ‘attempted coup‘ partially stemmed from the Reichsbürger movement, according to German media, which has Reuss at the very center of an evil ring of power trying to wrestle control of the country away from the benevolent government of the Federal Republic of Germany. An opinion cited globally in the ensuing media frenzy feeding the conspiracy theory of the imminent destruction of the Federal Republic of Germany at the hands of a bunch of pensioners that plot to dominate the world.
The state-affiliated media in Germany was quick to paint Reuss as a dangerous right-wing extremist playing on the prejudices of the Reichsbürger movement, conspiring with others to overthrow the government in an “attempted coup”. Like all corrupt press-institutions in the West, the usual libelous statements were widely publicized as facts before any trial took place or formal charges were filed and therefore one can safely assume that most of the words that was written amount to little factual information. (The scientific term is called: “bullshit“).
Despite the usual brain-dead drivel of the state affiliated media painting random people with no apparent involvement in any coup as the next Hitler, there are some interesting observations that one can make based on official government sources pertaining to claims asserted by the Reichsbürger movement, such as Bundestag.de website.
Long before any ‘attempted coup’ event like the one allegedly perpetrated by Prince Reuss could have ever been anticipated by the German media, the LINKE – a party of the German parliament had already expressed some interest in dispelling the Reichsbürger movement theories, because of the worrisome and “conpiratorial” motives common in that movement. This happened all the way back in 2015, so long before Prince Reuss was even allegedly planning his coup to overthrow the Nazi-regime in Berlin as the Linke feared the Reichsbürger movement inevitably would.
However, the LINKE’s plan to publically dispell any theories perpetuated by the Reichsbürger movement to prevent precisely that which the state affiliated media accused Prince Reuss of doing – a right-wing extremist coup against the German government as a result of the Reichsbürger movement, seems to have been entirely unfruitful.
Among other things, the deputies had inquired about the “thesis of the continued existence of the German Reich” and asked whether the federal government would publicly reject this as untenable, “so that this claim is not used by neo-Nazis and the so-called Reichsbürger’ movement for their territorial revisionism towards the EU -neighboring countries can be exploited”.
To achieve the diminished dispension of conspiracy theories in the German public – the LINKE formally filed a petition with the Parliament which ended up going to a Sub-Committee of the Parliament before eventually going to the German Supreme Court (The Bundesverfassungsgericht) in 2015. The result of the subsequent investigation and verdict of the Supreme Court were likely not what the LINKE had in mind.
In the Parliament’s words: “The Federal Constitutional Court has consistently rules that the “German Reich” as a subject of international law has not perished and that the Federal Repuplic of Germany is not its legal successor, but is identical with it as a subject of international law“. This is a verbatim translation from the webarchieve of the German Parliament and was not the result the LINKE was expecting when they filed their petition.
So who’s right? The conspiratorial “Reichsbürger movement” or the conspiratorial state affiliated press that thinks every old guy with a noble title and zero military support is engaged in a coup against the country somehow? It’s hard to tell, but likely the answer won’t be found in any state-affiliated media, which has portrayed Prince Reuss as a chin diaper wearing diabolical genius overthrowing the entire German Federal Republic without any military support which seems hard to pull off and untenable – unlike the notion that the Federal Republic of Germany is identical with the German Reich which is the position the German Supreme Court hold.