Germany’s far right seek revolution in farmers’ protests
Far-right groups have discussed toppling the German government as they seek to harness the anger of ongoing farmer protests over subsidy cuts.
A protest took place in Berlin on Monday amid fears extremists are infiltrating the agricultural movement.
Our team Germany has been working with BBC Verify to build up a picture both online and on the ground.
While the far right is piggybacking on the row, a “Germany first” narrative appears to be gaining wider traction.
As farmers blockade roads over planned subsidy cuts, there have been numerous reports of neo-Nazi or monarchist groups turning up at rallies.
Telegram channels reveal fervent posts about hopes of an emerging mass resistance that could help “dismantle” the government.
Small, fringe far-right groups such as the Free Saxons, The Third Way and The Homeland, have a very varied number of online followers.
But Chancellor Olaf Scholz warned this weekend that extremists were using social media to “poison” democratic debate as he described any talk of uprisings as dangerous “nonsense”.
A BBC team has been to five demonstrations in the past week and monitored several more.
While many farmers and Germany’s main agricultural union are eager to distance themselves from extremism, far-right imagery continues to appear.
In the eastern city of Cottbus, we saw a man being sent away from an official protest for allegedly wearing a symbol of the Reichsbürger; a disparate far right movement that rejects the modern German state.
A senior organiser of the Cottbus demo told the BBC they learned later that known far-right figures had remained within the hundreds-strong crowd, which was made up of a cross-section of people well beyond the farming community.
There are also examples of a flag, known as the Landvolkbewegung, linked to an antisemitic agricultural movement from the 1920s.
The vast majority of banners we saw do not carry overt far-right messaging but instead centre on anger at the treatment of farmers. —BBC
