From ABC News
The German police have confiscated guns, swords, and night vision equipment and made arrests after they broke up an alleged plot to overthrow the government.
From the New York Times
Far-Right Group Suspected in German Plot Gained Strength From QAnon
The Reichsbürger movement accused of plotting to overthrow Germany’s government picked up momentum from conspiracy theories that grew during the pandemic.
By Katrin Bennhold and Erika Solomon, New York Times
Published Dec. 8, 2022Updated Dec. 9, 2022, 10:09 a.m. ET
BERLIN — A ragtag band that had been dismissed as wacky and harmless gadflies, the Reichsbürger, or Citizens of the Reich, has tilted at windmills on Germany’s far-right political fringe for decades.
But after the authorities accused members of plotting to overthrow the government and kill the chancellor, a sharply different view of the obscure group emerged Thursday: as a serious terrorist threat, supercharged by conspiracy theories about the coronavirus and vaccines.
Among the 25 members of the cell arrested this week were a judge, a doctor, a cook, a pilot, a classical tenor and three police officers, officials said. At least 15 had links to the military, including former or current soldiers and two reservists with access to weapons. The arrests put Germany on high alert and, after months of surveillance, set off one of the biggest anti-terrorist crackdowns in German postwar history.
From NBC News
Germany arrests dozens in suspected pot
By Andy Eckardt and Patrick Smith
MAINZ, Germany — Authorities in Germany arrested 25 people Wednesday who are suspected of planning to violently overthrow the government in a far-right extremist plot.
More than 3,000 police officers, including special forces members, made 130 early morning searches across 11 of Germany’s 16 federal states in one of the biggest counterterrorism operations in the country’s history.
Suspects from the so-far-unnamed group include a nobleman with a historic royal title and various armed forces veterans. It is centered on the so-called Reichsbürger, or Reich Citizens, movement, which is motivated by conspiracy theories about the role and the legitimacy of the modern German state.
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