Latest news with #counter-state
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Germany Arrests King Peter I, the Son of Man, the Messiah
Last week, Germany arrested Peter Fitzek, 59, an anti-government figure also known as King Peter I, the Son of Man, the Messiah. Historically, attempts to arrest messiahs have met with mixed results, so to stay on the safe side, the Interior Ministry not only rolled up Fitzek and three conspirators but also shut down his whole operation, known as the Kingdom of Germany. Subjects of King Peter deny the legitimacy of the Federal Republic of Germany and, over the past 13 years, have built up a counter-state with its own institutions. 'In Germany, just like in the rest of the world, we have a lot of problems,' Peter told me in 2023. 'These problems could not be solved in the old system, so we needed a completely new one.' A healer, a martial artist, and practitioner of dark arts, Peter has no royal lineage and instead takes his authority from the spiritual plane. The German government alleges that he ran unregulated financial systems, and they banned his group outright. Peter was born in East Germany in 1965. East Germany was poorer than the West then and remains so decades after unification, in 1989. Its failure to catch up economically has led to resentment by many easterners, who consider themselves neglected and forgotten. The far-right Alternative for Germany party, which now controls a quarter of the seats in the German Parliament, campaigned in the East on promises to increase the region's political power. The AfD lost and was officially accused of extremism. The center-left coalition that won is now cracking down on the broader movement of eccentric political discontents. Peter, it seems, was a familiar type of East German from that generation—too old to learn the ways of the new Germany, and too ambitious to be satisfied watching others succeed where he failed. According to a profile in Bloomberg Businessweek, Peter spent his early adulthood getting outwitted in business by West Germans, originally as the bilked investor in a slot-machine racket. [Read: Is the AfD too extreme for democracy?] When I met Peter two years ago, he had recently acquired a castle and invited me to join him there, in an annoyingly remote Saxon village called Eibenstock, near the Czech border. The journey took four hours from Berlin, and upon leaving the Autobahn and skidding around mountain roads, I began to appreciate the significance of the remoteness. Eibenstock is far from Germany's equivalent of coastal elites. It is like Montana or Idaho: You can do what you please, safe in the knowledge that few witnesses will see you doing it. It was quiet and empty with many private areas secluded by spruce and firs. I noticed a few tourists on a winter hike, and at the foot of the castle I had coffee at a tiny restaurant with the unimprovable name Goulash Cannon. Peter came into his castle's echoing, wood-paneled entryway, sporting a ponytail, pulled back tight and short, and wearing a monogrammed shirt with the words Kingdom of Germany in gold cursive on the breast. In this respect and others, he resembled Steven Seagal, another aging martial artist with delusions of divinity and grandeur. Peter then guided me to a sparsely furnished sitting room for my royal audience. He began, unbidden, by laying out proof that his kingship had been recognized internationally. This proof took the form of boarding passes that various airlines had honored, listing his name as 'Peter of Germany.' He had a 'Kingdom of Germany' passport that looked official enough, and had passed inspection, he said, at various borders. All of the airline documents I saw were from within the Schengen area, which means he could travel freely anyway. An airline agent had probably rolled his eyes and let him board his flight to Majorca. When I think of entities capable of conferring royal status, I do not think of Ryanair. His education, he said, began under the tutelage of a contract killer he met in 1989. The man understood spirituality, Peter said, and knew how to hypnotize people and take their money. Peter read up on magic, philosophy, religion, history, and finally law, before he concluded that there was an 'order to creation,' something beautiful and true, an existence freed of the corruption and disappointment of the Federal Republic of Germany. 'I slowly became aware that there is a Creator,' he told me, and that this Creator had endowed him with spiritual powers that proved his divine right to rule. 'I have sat as near to God as you sit to me right now,' he said. He determined that 'true Christianity has never existed,' and that he had been sent to establish it. He fell in love with a woman who could move objects with her mind and set them on fire; he spent time with holy men in India; he discovered cold fusion; Satanists detected his growing powers and sent assassins after him. 'I am lord of the spirits. I have an invisible army. I cannot be harmed.' At first, he said, he tried to improve German democracy by working within the system. 'Before I founded the Kingdom of Germany, I ran as a candidate for the Bundestag. I had previously talked to a lot of members of the Bundestag as well as members of the state parliament for many, many hours,' Peter told me. He said he saw how decisions were made—and how fruitless was any hope of changing a system that had grown beyond the ability of even the most patient citizen to affect. 'The system interlocks in others,' he said. 'It is a nested system, where you can't change individual segments because then they don't fit with the rest.' Foremost among his frustrations were the modern bureaucracies that seemed designed not to serve citizens and help them prosper but to frustrate and enslave them. 'The health system, the pension system, the monetary system, and the banks all have problems,' he told me. 'They cannot be solved in the system. So a new one has to be started.' He said he examined the law and found that the position of Kaiser, supposedly abolished, remained vacant. All it needed was a suitable claimant—and having been anointed by the Creator, he claimed legal succession in 2009. 'We had to claim this legal succession if we wanted to establish a new system throughout Germany and not do what the Allies, the Americans, imposed on us,' Peter said. Photos of his official coronation in 2012 show him in faux-ermine robes. 'We in the Kingdom of Germany take the view that there is a divine order of creation,' Peter said. 'The state should be a reflection of this order of creation, and should be a completely just society or community, like nothing hitherto seen on this planet.' He conducted seminars for his followers, to show off his and his fire-starter girlfriend's ability to leave their bodies, perform feats of physiological impossibility like slowing their heartbeats, and commune with the archangels Uriel and Metatron. To see this is to believe, he said. 'The Creator sent me here to be able to establish the Kingdom, and people can choose freely whether to join.' In 2016, the state imprisoned him for taking supporters' money in what appeared to be a totally unregulated banking scheme. An appeals court freed him after two years, and he insisted to me that his willingness to go to prison proved his divinity. 'Only someone who has been called by God does that.' Under Peter's watch, the Kingdom practiced a kind of primitive democracy, with—crucially—a banking and insurance system totally disconnected from that of the rest of the world. But the details of how Peter ran his kingdom are irrelevant, if colorful. He said the Kingdom will choose his successor by election. 'My son, for example, will not succeed me,' he told me, unless the young man exhibits supernatural powers like his father's and convinces other citizens of his eligibility. Peter had identified sources of frustration and indignity that might bother virtually any German: how one navigates banking, taxation, health care, law. People of much greater education and sophistication than Peter have found themselves at the mercy of these systems, and treated most heartlessly by them. Germans have a slang term, Überzwerg, which means 'head dwarf,' and refers to the petty tyrants in modern bureaucracies who ruin your day by demanding forms in triplicate and inflict other minor hassles that keep you from getting something as simple as a credit card issued or a cavity filled. Navigating modern, complex bureaucratic states is difficult but comes easier if you had an elite education in a big city—the Überzwergs' natural environment. To people without this background, and who fail in business or politics in consequence, others' success may look like the result of magic, fraud, or conspiracy. Peter resorted to at least the first of these and probably all three. In his castle, he described spiritual warfare with ghosts and devils. Who is an Überzwerg but a devil sent to torment you—and in the cruelest way, by taking human form and swearing up and down that he is no devil at all, only the most mundane creature, with a nameplate on his desk and a time clock on his wall? And if you discover that you are living in a premodern, enchanted world, why not go all the way and declare yourself king by divine right? The direction our conversation took next was as predictable as it was repulsive. Peter's ultimate prescription to treat the diseased system of money and power was to get rid of the cabal of Satanic Jews that has taken over the world outside his Kingdom. He said he did not mind Jews per se but objected to the usurers and tricksters who start and encourage all the world's great wars, including Russia's invasion of Ukraine; who deny his status as their redeemer; and who are conspiring to steer us all to the apocalypse. Peter had my attention when he talked about pyrokinesis, and he had my sympathies when grousing about bureaucracy. But Jews run the world through a network of banks and Chabad houses is the most tired claim an extremist (especially a German one) can make. It was then that I lost interest and started thinking about whether the Goulash Cannon would still be loaded and ready to fire a late lunch into my face. On the way out the door, Peter stamped my passport with a Kingdom of Germany royal seal and signed it with a scribble: Peter I, Son of Man, Imperator. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Russia Today
14-05-2025
- Politics
- Russia Today
Germany arrests ‘King Peter'
German authorities have banned an extremist group known as the 'Kingdom of Germany' and arrested four of its top members, including the group's self-declared 'king,' Peter Fitzek. The secessionist group had declared itself a 'counter-state' governed by an absolute monarch. The Kingdom of Germany is affiliated with the Reichsburger (Reich Citizens) movement – a far-right conspiracy-driven network that denies the legitimacy of the modern German state. According to Germany's domestic intelligence agency, around 25,000 individuals are actively involved in Reichsburger groups across the country. Adherents claim that the historical German Reich continues to exist and refuse to recognize Germany's government, including its parliament, laws, and judicial system. Members of the group also reject state obligations such as paying taxes or fines. Around 800 police officers carried out raids on Tuesday, targeting properties linked to the group and the residences of its key members across Germany. 'These extremists created a counter-state in Germany and ran criminal financial operations,' Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt stated when announcing the ban. 'They reinforce their bogus claim to power with anti-Semitic conspiracy theories,' he added. The minister told reporters that the Kingdom of Germany's activities were far from 'harmless nostalgia,' despite what its name might imply. He explained that the ban was imposed because authorities were dealing with 'criminal structures' and 'criminal networks.' Founded in 2012 in the eastern German city of Wittenberg, the Kingdom of Germany gained notoriety for operating unlicensed banking services and promoting its own parallel legal system. Fitzek, the group's leader, who once ran unsuccessfully to enter parliament, styled himself as 'King Peter I' and appointed two deputies along with a finance minister to support his self-declared rule. The Federal Prosecutor's Office in Karlsruhe said Fitzek, as the 'so-called supreme sovereign,' had 'control and decision-making power in all key areas.' The authorities added that the Kingdom of Germany regards itself as a sovereign state under international law and aims to expand its so-called national territory to match the borders of the German Empire as they stood in 1871. In 2022, German authorities arrested members of a group linked to Reich Citizens that included a former MP and ex-military personnel for allegedly plotting to storm the parliament, overthrow the government, and install aristocrat and businessman Prince Heinrich XIII Reuss as the new head of state.
The Guardian
13-05-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Germany bans major part of far-right movement seeking to undermine state
The German government has outlawed a major part of an extremist movement seeking to undermine the state, in a move the new administration said signalled tough action against a subversive far-right scene. Hundreds of security forces across seven states staged early morning raids on Tuesday against the cult-like group calling itself 'Kingdom of Germany' (KRD), a large group within the Reichsbürger (Citizens of the Reich) movement. Four suspects were arrested including alleged ringleader Peter Fitzek, the self-proclaimed Peter I. 'This is illegal and unlawful,' Fitzek told Spiegel TV as he was led away in handcuffs. The interior minister, Alexander Dobrindt, said the KRD, which estimates it has 6,000 members, had created a 'counter-state' in Germany and established 'criminal economic structures' that challenged the rule of law and the justice system. 'They underpin their supposed claim to power with antisemitic conspiracy narratives,' Dobrindt, who took office last week as part of a new coalition government, said in a statement. 'We will take decisive action against those who attack our free democratic basic order.' 'We are stepping up security in our country,' chancellor Friedrich Merz posted on X. 'That includes taking action against those who try to fight internally against our constitution.' The order to ban the group was made just before the raids, the ministry said, calling the KRD 'the biggest association in the growing scene' of radicals rejecting the federal republic. The state ban means its online presence will be blocked and its assets confiscated. The Reichsbürger believe the German state is an illegitimate construct and seek to re-establish a monarchy they say endured despite its formal abolition after the first world war. The group, which bears significant similarities to the US-based QAnon conspiracy movement, does not recognise institutions including parliament or the courts and its followers refuse to pay taxes, social welfare contributions or fines. Fitzek founded the KRD in the eastern town of Wittenberg in 2012 and proclaimed himself the 'highest sovereign' of the new 'kingdom', the ministry said. Beyond Fitzek, a high-profile figure who has given media interviews, federal prosecutors named those arrested on Tuesday only as Mathias B, Benjamin M and Martin S, in line with privacy rules. The four suspects are alleged by prosecutors to have over the last decade set up a bank, a health insurance and pension scheme, identity papers and a separate currency. Germany's domestic intelligence service, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), put the Reichsbürger under observation in 2016, after one of its members shot dead a police officer during a raid at his home. The movement spectacularly came to light for most Germans in December 2022 when authorities swooped on several of its leaders who they said were in the advanced stages of planning an armed coup. The eclectic movement was led by a minor aristocrat and businessman, Heinrich XIII Prince Reuss. In March this year, a German court jailed five members of an extremist group linked to the Reichsbürger for plotting a coup and planning to kidnap the then health minister, Karl Lauterbach, who drew the ire of many opponents of Covid-era restrictions. It was one of several trials targeting the wider movement. German authorities have recently stepped up action against groups seen as a threat to the democratic order. The BfV earlier this month declared the Alternative für Deutschland, the country's biggest opposition party, to be a 'confirmed rightwing extremist' force. Pending a court challenge, the designation would allow stepped-up surveillance of AfD officials, while the announcement has lent momentum to calls for an outright ban of the party.
BreakingNews.ie
13-05-2025
- Politics
- BreakingNews.ie
Germany bans the largest ‘Reich citizen' group and arrests four leaders
The German government has banned the largest 'Reich citizen' group, an extremist far-right organisation that calls itself the 'Kingdom of Germany' and seeks to undermine the country's democratic order, and arrested four of its leaders. Since early Tuesday morning, 800 police officers in several states have been searching the association's properties and the homes of leading members. Advertisement Interior minister Alexander Dobrindt said: 'The members of this association have created a 'counter-state' in our country and built up economic criminal structures.' He added that the members of the group underpinned their supposed claim to power with antisemitic conspiracy narratives — a behaviour that the country cannot tolerate. 'We will take decisive action against those who attack our free democratic basic order,' Mr Dobrindt said. The so-called 'Reich citizen', or Reichsburger' movement, does not recognise Germany as a state. Advertisement Many of them claim that the historical German Reich still exists and ignore the country's democratic and constitutional structures such as parliament, laws or courts. They also refuse to pay taxes, social security contributions or fines. The so-called 'Kingdom of Germany' was proclaimed by its leader Peter Fitzek in the eastern town of Wittenberg in 2012 and says it has around 6,000 followers, the interior ministry said in a statement. It claims to be a 'counter-state' that seceded from the German federal government. Advertisement 'This is not about harmless nostalgics, as the title of the association might suggest, but about criminal structures, criminal networks,' the minister told reporters later in Berlin. 'That's why it's being banned today.' The group's online platforms will be blocked and its assets will be confiscated to ensure that no further financial resources can be used for extremist purposes. It is not the first time that Germany has acted against the 'Reichsburger' movement. In 2023, German police officers searched the homes of about 20 people in connection with investigations into the far-right Reich Citizens scene, whose adherents had similarities to followers of the QAnon movement in the United States. Advertisement Last year, the alleged leaders of a suspected far-right plot to topple Germany's government went on trial on Tuesday, opening proceedings in a case that shocked the country in late 2022.
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Germany bans the largest 'Reich citizen' group and arrests 4 leaders
BERLIN (AP) — The German government has banned the largest 'Reich citizen' group, an extremist far-right organization that calls itself the 'Kingdom of Germany' and seeks to undermine the country's democratic order, and arrested four of its leaders. Since early Tuesday, 800 police officers in several states have been searching the association's properties and the homes of leading members. 'The members of this association have created a 'counter-state' in our country and built up economic criminal structures,' Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said, adding that the members of the group underpinned their supposed claim to power with antisemitic conspiracy narratives — a behavior that the country can't tolerate. 'We will take decisive action against those who attack our free democratic basic order,' Dobrindt added. The so-called Reich citizen, or Reichsbürger, movement doesn't recognize Germany as a state. Many of them claim that the historical German Reich still exists and ignore the country's democratic and constitutional structures such as parliament, laws or courts. They also refuse to pay taxes, social security contributions or fines. The 'Kingdom of Germany' was proclaimed by its leader Peter Fitzek — who was among those arrested on Tuesday — in the eastern town of Wittenberg in 2012 and says it has around 6,000 followers, though the interior ministry said that the group has about 1,000 members. It claims to be a 'counter-state' that seceded from the German federal government. 'This is not about harmless nostalgics, as the title of the association might suggest, but about criminal structures, criminal networks," the minister told reporters later in Berlin. "That's why it's being banned today.' The group's online platforms will be blocked and its assets will be confiscated to ensure that no further financial resources can be used for extremist purposes. It's not the first time that Germany has acted against the 'Reichsbürger' movement. In 2023, German police officers searched the homes of about 20 people in connection with investigations into the far-right Reich Citizens scene, whose adherents had similarities to followers of the QAnon movement in the United States. Last year, the alleged leaders of a suspected far-right plot to topple Germany's government went on trial on Tuesday, opening proceedings in a case that shocked the country in late 2022. Kirsten Grieshaber, The Associated Press
