Morning Briefing: Members of Far-Right ‘Reichsbürger’ Movement on Trial
Morning Briefing: Members of Far-Right ‘Reichsbürger’ Movement on Trial
This week, the trial began for members of the far-right ‘Reichsbürger' movement, who prosecutors allege conspired to 'topple the German government.'
Morning Briefing: In Germany, the trail began for the nine individuals “charged with terrorism in connection with an alleged far-right plot to topple the German government,” and government prosecutors will argue that the defendants conspired to orchestrate a “violent coup to install minor aristocrat Heinrich XIII Prince Reuss as Germany’s leader and imposing martial law.”
The network of alleged conspirators, which are adherents of far right ideologies and conspiracies including QAnon, is so expansive that “for a mixture of logistical and security reasons, the 27 people due in the dock have been split into three separate groups.”
In Greenwich, Connecticut, members of the Nationalist Social Club (NSC-131), the White Supremacists neo-Nazi group, reportedly staged a march outside the Town Hall, and reportedly “chanted and held up banners that said, ‘New England Is Ours – The Rest Must Go,’ and ‘Anti-Whites FAFO.’”
Robert Rundo, the founder of the White Supremacist fight club network Rise Above Movement (RAM), was granted bail by a federal judge, however, the order will reportedly “not take effect for at least four days pending a review by a higher court.”
U.S. Border Patrol agents allegedly used racial slurs when referring to undocumented immigrants and reportedly made jokes “about killing or beating them,” according to emails and text messages obtained by the Huffington Post.
Must Reads
Gaby Del Valle writes that “in recent years, various factions of the old and the new right have coalesced around the idea that babies might be the cure for everything that’s wrong with society, in the United States and other parts of the developed West. It’s not a new argument. Natalists made similar claims in the early 20th century, when urbanization drove birth rates down and European immigration kept the U.S. population afloat. Then, too, people attributed the drop in fertility rates to endemic selfishness among young people. Throughout it all, some religious conservative cultures have continued to see raising large broods as a divine mandate. White supremacists, meanwhile, have framed their project as a way of ensuring ‘a future for white children,’ as declared by David Lane, a founding member of the white nationalist group The Order. More recently, natalist thinking has emerged among tech types interested in funding and using experimental reproductive technologies, and conservatives concerned about falling fertility rates and what they might mean for the future labor force of the United States and elsewhere in the developed world.” [Politico Magazine]
Taylor Lorenz and Gus Garcia-Roberts write that “local police and the FBI say they have yet to determine who is behind the threats, which in some instances have forced the evacuation, police say, not just of Planet Fitness locations but of businesses nearby. But the pattern is familiar to LGBTQ+ activists, who link the wave of threats to far-right influencer Chaya Raichik, who runs the social media account @libsoftiktok. She has made Planet Fitness the object of critical posts since early March, when Planet Fitness revoked the membership of a woman in Alaska who complained about ‘a man shaving in a women’s bathroom’ and posted a photo of the person online. Though the threats and evacuations have directly affected only a relative few of the chain’s 2,600 locations in the United States, the attacks have caused fear and anxiety among LGBTQ+ people across the country, some of whom said they are now too anxious to use their local Planet Fitness or set foot in the locker room.” [The Washington Post]
Hunter Walker writes that “Ivan Raiklin, a former Green Beret and associate of retired Gen. Michael Flynn, is currently fixated on a new scheme: to have Musk use his position as CEO of the social media company X, formerly known as Twitter, to publish private messages from the ‘Deep State.’ In various appearances on right-wing broadcasts and events, Raiklin has suggested this would expose a plot against former President Trump and others. Raiklin has described his vision as a natural extension of the ‘Twitter Files’ project Musk launched in late 2022 when, shortly after taking over the social media company, the mogul released some of its internal documents to a group of media figures including Bari Weiss, Michael Shellenberger, and Matt Taibbi. The underwhelming exposé merely highlighted conversations among Twitter’s former members of management as they made admittedly fraught decisions about how to handle a New York Post story on Hunter Biden’s hacked laptop. Experts largely dismissed the project as highlighting routine content moderation.” [Talking Points Memo]
What to expect from Radical Reports: Morning Briefing provides a daily round-up of reporting on the Radical Right; Extremist Links offers a weekly round-up of extremists activities including the white supremacist and militia movements; Narratives of the Right delivers weekly analysis of the current narratives in far right online spaces and promoted by right-wing media; and Research Desk provides monthly highlights research and analysis from academia on the Radical Right.
