Democratic Corrosion at the Heart of Europe

1. Introduction

The Covid-19 pandemic crystalized the myriad challenges facing the modern world like

few crises before it. Its impacts were so far reaching, its insights so diverse, that even the

metaphors created to understand it spun off their own field of study.1 It seems impossible

to conceive of another event that revealed so much about the very nature of our globalized

world, system of international relations, and forms of governance. Throughout history,

“pandemics [have] expose[d] and exacerbate[d] the existing inequalities, divisions, and

other fault lines of our society,” stated Brian Michael Jenkins, author of Plagues and

Their Aftermath: How Societies Recover from Pandemics and a senior advisor to the

RAND Corporation.2 And Covid-19 was no different.



In Germany, Covid-19 and the measures introduced by the government to halt its spread

sparked a nationwide protest movement that revealed a startling level of mistrust

and skepticism towards democratic institutions. The anti-lockdown and subsequently

anti-vaccine protests – elements of which bore the moniker “Querdenker ” (“lateral

thinker”) after their most successful chapter, the Stuttgart-based Querdenken 711 –

waxed and waned between 2020 and 2022, mirroring the changing severity of

government restrictions. While this period witnessed a shift from massive gatherings in

cities like Berlin to spontaneous, localized “walks” taking place throughout Germany ,

protest in some form remained a constant.



As a diverse slice of the German population came together on the streets, the country’s

far right, sensing an opportunity to attract new supporters and keen to exploit the energy

of the protests, sought to coopt them. From 2020 to 2022, elements of the Covid-19

protest scene radicalized sharply. The protests – and the Telegram channels through which

they were organized – served as touchpoints between middle-class Germans and various

anti-democratic actors seeking to spread their worldviews and beliefs. Though the protest

scene may not have given its wholesale support to the radical right-wing Alternative for

Germany (AfD), more Germans have now been exposed to corrosive, antisemitic conspiracy

theories that serve as a pre-political accelerant for hard-right ideologies as a result

of its efforts. Political discourse in Germany has roughened. The country’s citizens have

come to view their society as deeply polarized around Covid-19, and many have lost faith

in their government’s capacity to act. Random acts of violence, purported terrorist plots,

and even a disturbing yet somewhat farcical alleged coup attempt have been connected to

individuals associated with the protests.



The dangers posed by the most radicalized elements of the protest movement and the

sharp polarization that has accompanied it were thrown into sharp relief by the outbreak

of war in Ukraine. Russia’s full-scale invasion, which occurred as the pandemic was

beginning to wind down, re-energized a movement that had started to flag as more and

more Covid-19 restrictions were dropped. Almost immediately after the invasion,

Telegram groups that had spread conspiracy theories about Covid-19 began to

incorporate conspiratorial, Russian-aligned explanations for the outbreak of the war .



That this shift was so seamless appears anything but coincidental. In psychological terms,

those who believe in one conspiracy are more likely to believe in others. For many of the

protestors, opposition to and criticism of the perceived mainstream were seen as fundamental

goods. And politically, Russian state propaganda outlets such as RT (formerly

Russia Today ) played an important role in supporting the protest movement’s worldview,

while anti-Ukrainian conspiracies began to flow into Covid-19 protest channels even

before Russia launched its attempt to decapitate the Ukrainian government in February

2022. Actors who played a prominent role in the Covid-19 protests had also helped stoke

pro-Russian sentiment at Pegida5 protests or during the Monday “vigils for peace” (Montagsmahnwachen für den Frieden ) following the illegal annexation of Crimea by Russia in

2014. It is therefore unsurprising that researchers have identified a strong link between

those who believe conspiracy theories about Covid-19 and those that subscribe to

conspiracy-heavy defenses of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.



In seeking to understand these developments, this paper first takes a closer look at the

2020-2022 Covid-19 protests in Germany and examines their domestic impacts in

the context of a period rife with societal and geopolitical challenges, chief among them

the ongoing war in Ukraine.



The findings are troubling, both for Germany specifically and regarding the national

security risk posed by heightened polarization and anti-democratic radicalization. While

Russian propaganda outlets sought to propagate conspiracies about Covid-19 and Ukraine

in Germany, it was Germans themselves who created the audience for these narratives.

The Covid-19 protest scene has been referred to by experts as a “society of rejection” and

a form of counter-Enlightenment. That this dynamic not only applies to domestic policy

decisions but also permits the justification of a brutal attack on a nearby democracy

should raise concern about the subterranean processes underway in German society.



The German anti-lockdown and anti-vaccine protests marked neither a beginning nor an

end, but rather a waypoint in a continuum of internal and external challenges faced by

German democracy. At the domestic end of the spectrum, they reveal an existing, virulent

anti-democratic sentiment that can be spread through the exploitation of various crises,

to the detriment of German society. And in foreign and security policy terms, the growth

of the protest movement marks the visible expansion of a diverse political scene that

f undamentally rejects the basic tenets of German liberal democracy, thus serving as a

useful tool for foreign adversaries seeking to influence the direction of German

policy. As breaking German solidarity occupies a central place in Vladimir Putin’s

strategy to undermine sanctions and weapons support for Ukraine, this could have

extremely dangerous consequences.