Scenes of angry protestors attempting to storm the Reichstag this weekend have left Germany in a degree of shock, and raised questions over whether a growing mood of discontent over coronavirus restrictions is being exploited by the far-Right. The protests which brought 38,000 people onto the streets of Berlin at the weekend were billed as a peaceful demonstration against the coronavirus policy of Angela Merkel’s government. But it was the images of a few hundred violent protestors attempting to force their way into the German parliament that came to encapsulate the day. They were carrying the flags of the “Reich Citizens” — a far-Right movement that refuses to accept the fall of the pre-war German Empire — and according to disturbing reports on Monday, at least one was armed with a handgun. It is hard to overstate the symbolism of an attack on the Reichstag — which went up in flames at the start of Nazi rule in 1933, stood abandoned by the Berlin Wall during the Cold War division of Germany, and rose phoenix-like to become the seat of the Bundestag after reunification. “Reich flags and a far-Right rabble in front of the German Bundestag are an unbearable attack on the heart of our democracy. We will never accept that, ” Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the German president, said in the wake of the weekend's events. But that left unanswered questions about how a protest that was supposed to bring together a coalition of anti-vaxxers, coronavirus sceptics and conspiracy theorists ended up culminating in a far-Right attack on the Reichstag.
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