How the World Conspiracy theory spread in the main country of the European Union

The Qanon movement, based on the theory of the conspiracy of the world elite, originated in the United States and until recently remained the lot of a small group of fanatics. And then the pandemic began, and all the fears and conspiracy the versions around the virus - about its artificial origin, the horrors of compulsory vaccination, quarantine as a way to enslave people - fell on the gracious soil of an existing crazy theory. Qanon went beyond the states and found his associates everywhere, especially in Germany.

Anonymous telegram channels with several thousand subscribers grew to hundreds of thousands. New opinion leaders have appeared, who daily feed their subscribers with tons of fakes, in which myths about the virus, nationalism, anti -Semitism, the intention to make Germany again great, distrust of official government were mixed up.

“All the comments that I see are from people in the abyss of despair. You think about what you know, and those who do not know anything, you hear about the mandatory wearing of masks, forced vaccination, censorship. <...> People must realize the true meaning of freedom. Our founding fathers had to wage war with the most powerful power in the world, most people thought that it was over before it began, but the war turned into favor of the patriots, ”-this is a passage from one post, published on January 20 at the Qlobal-Malace Telegram channel. The post is long, it has a lot of words about true freedom and patriotism, as well as references to certain mysterious messages of Trump. Above the same day - photos from the oath of Joe Bayden and Kamaly Harris, accompanied by signatures: “Kamala is lying on”, “And now Biden is lying”. Numerous articles with dubious sites with headlines like "55 people died after receiving a vaccine." The reposts of other channels and their own reports with an appeal to fight against restrictive measures: “When the Western elite realized that subjects willingly take dragon measures to combat coronavirus, she called them to a lifestyle in increased readiness, in which“ a return to normal life ”would not be in the foreseeable future, and possibly never.” Criticism of large corporations, Trump retweets, caricatures on Biden.

This is the largest Telegram channel in German, dedicated to Qanon, created in 2018. By March last year - at the beginning of the pandemic - he read a little more than 20 thousand subscribers. Now their number exceeded 165 thousand.

Where the conspiracyologists gather

How exactly does Qanon spread in Germany? The Berlin Foundation Amadeu Antonio (named after the worker from Angola, who was killed during the ultra-right pogroms in 1990), who studies nationalism, racism and anti-Semitism, in December devoted an almost 50-page report to this phenomena.

As in the United States, movement activists use imagds-sites structured on the principle of ads on the basis of ads where you can leave such ads anonymously, and publish there the so-called Q-Drops-a kind of message with a “special meaning” that supporters should decipher. Supporters - and there are many of them - spread these messages further, through other sites and social networks. “The space growing from this for the interpretations of such messages leads to the fact that they are very difficult to refute,” the authors of the study say.

The main distribution channel is social networks that are not particularly regulated.

Facebook and YouTube often marks videos with the ideas of Qanon as false information, so the followers of the movement most often use Telegram or Discord - another social network,

In which you can create thematic groups and channels.

In addition to anonymous channels, the “ambassadors” of Qanon ideas play an important role. One of them is Oliver Yanich, a journalist, the founder of the “Party of Reason”, whose supporters promote the free market, the fight against migration, deny climate change. In addition, they are supported by the nationalist alternative for Germany. He worked in the journal Focus Money, from where he was fired in 2010 for advertising in his materials of his own party. Two years later, he was conditionally convicted of manipulating the stock market along with several traders.

Yanich is a popular blogger. Being an active supporter of the theories of the conspiracy, he distributed them through his YouTube channel, collecting more than 160 thousand subscribers there. Yanich intensified long before the pandemic - so, one of his favorite topics of his broadcasts was the theory of preparing the 9/11 attack by American special services, as well as the fight against migrants. In October, YouTube deleted the channel of Yanich, before that his accounts also deleted Instagtam and Twitter. Counting the main blogger platform - Telegram. There, he actively commented on the domestic policy of Germany - for example, the proposal of the ruling coalition to expand part of the Constitution about the rights of children with the phrase that "the constitutional rights of children, their right to develop into an independent person must be respected and protected." Yanich writes that this is a “pedanist agenda, as soon as it is in the main law, they will say that the child has the right to make a decision on his gender or what sexual partner he wants.” The next post is a photograph of a child with a swollen face, accompanied by an article from a blog about serious side effects of a vaccine. Further - the repost of the article that by scanning car license plates the government collects personal data of citizens, then articles that patients with coronavirus are actually dying of sepsis, then about Bayden's friendship with Bill Gates.

In general, Telegram of Oliver Yanich is an ideal example of a landfill of all possible conspiracy theories, but more than 170 thousand people are signed for it, each post collects 30-40 thousand views.

Trump-liberator

Yanich’s nationalist views and his love of “alternative to Germany” is not an accident. The noticeable part of the Qanon movement is the so -called flightsburgers (Reichsbürger, literally - “Resident of the Reich”). Reichsburgers recognize not modern Germany, but the German Reich within 1937. The participants in the movement have special certificates of the personality of the Reichsburger.

On August 29, the most massive action of opponents of restrictive measures was held in Berlin - according to the estimates of the authorities, about 40 thousand people participated in street protests. The protesters broke through the cordon in front of the Reichstag, but they could not enter the building itself, as a result, about three thousand people were detained that day. Along with posters against masks and social distances, some protesters carried in their hands the black-and-red flag of the German Empire-a symbol of the Reichsburgers.

“At first glance, it is difficult to understand how these people can be connected with faith in Donald Trump as a liberator,” say the authors of the study of the Foundation Amadeus Antonio. - But since the spring of 2020, it became noticeable that the Reichsburgers and other supporters of the sovereign state have a positive attitude towards Qanon. The reason was the teachings of NATO “Defender of Europe-2020”.

Proponents of Qanon then began to disseminate messages that said that the exercises were only cover, but in fact, Donald Trump was going to free Germany from the government of Angel Merkel.

Conspiracies and healthy lifestyle

Another trend noted by researchers:

The ideas of Qanon, a little transforming, skillfully penetrate the seemingly alien to them in nature, an instagram type - a social network for beautiful photos

And discussions of travel, a healthy lifestyle or children. Here, Qanon’s ideas are the “Instagram-influuansers” ideas with a large number of subscribers, more often women: large mothers, advocates of a healthy lifestyle and vegetarianism. Words about the danger of vaccination from coronavirus and its harmlessness compared to ordinary flu are organically woven into the anti -precipitory agenda, into the ideas of alternative medicine and the need to strengthen the body with natural remedies, and posts are often accompanied by hashtags like #qamom or #savethechildren. Subscribers who are used to trusting their bloggers in matters of health, beauty or raising children quickly turn to a new faith - Qanon.

Thus, the conspiracy movement of Germany in the summer was replenished with another name-Attila Hildman, the cook, the author of the book Vegan for Fun, Vegan and Food blogger. For several years now he has been conducting YouTube channel, where 73 thousand subscribers are now. Previously, Attila published there the video recipients of Thai vegan curry, told how to make a protein cocktail correctly, and placed motivational videos with a call to take care of nature and his body.

Now the cook moved to Telegram, its channel has more than 114 thousand subscribers. There he calls on everyone to come to the rally on January 23, in order to "put an end to the attempt on freedom and self-determination, a crown-dictatorship and the destruction of life." Hildman is actively fighting an angel Merkel - in one of the posts he calls her enemy number one of the German state, and her friends - Rothschild, Rockefeller and Gates. In another post, calls to purchase gasoline and food, because "a great war is coming." In an epidemic of coronavirus, he takes turns blaming Masons, Jews, NASA and America in principle.

In his conspiracyology, Hildman went even further than others - at the beginning of the epidemic, he became an active supporter of Qanon, but then he was disappointed in motion and warns the rest that Qanon actually use for their own purposes the CIA, Mossad and British intelligence.

Researchers of conspiracy theories are not surprised that right now the time of heyday of Qanon has come. “Many are hungry for stories that can give their lives a meaning that they do not find in everyday,” says the analyst of the Amadeus Foundation Antonio Miro Ditrich. “They feel lost in the world.” Sometimes it happens that they turn to the right extremism, to his narrative of the struggle - against Islam, against migration or Jews. And here we see a turn to the theories of a conspiracy: a person suddenly becomes a great warrior in the struggle against the Satanists or against mockery of children - and in the end again against the Jews, because a lot is associated with anti -Semitic prejudices. Qanon works as an online game, where you all the time have new puzzles, tasks and characters. And the acquired "knowledge" is imprinted very deeply. "