Germany's homegrown Q menace

While Germany's Querdenker movement cannot be considered right-wing, its parallels with America's QAnon show that the potential for radicalization is rising. The only effective way to counter this trend is to address the anxiety and alienation fueling it.

Police arrest a demonstrator at an unauthorised Querdenker demonstration in Berlin last Sunday. The movement was launched in April 2020 by a Stuttgart-based software engineer, Michael Ballweg, to promote one cause: the end of Covid-19 lockdowns. Photo: Fabian Sommer/dpa via AP

On August 1, 2020, about 30,000 people gathered in Berlin to protest against Covid-19 lockdown measures. Although the event, organized by the Stuttgart-based Querdenker movement, defied a ban on public gatherings, it was ultimately a relatively peaceful affair. That was not the case with the next anti-lockdown demonstration in the capital, on August 29, 2020.

Most of the 38,000 participants in the August 29 rally – which took place after an administrative court in Berlin overturned a police ban on the demonstration – did behave peacefully. But a splinter group of 450-500 protesters, many from the far right, attempted to storm the Reichstag.