You Have To Break A Few Eggs To Make A Coup D’État
A far-right German coup plot looks a lot like January 6, but with eggs.
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May 9 at noon Eastern, 18:00 Europe, 16:00 UTC
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ALEX’S WEEKLY RANT
Trial started this week for a group of far-right Germans who had plotted to storm Germany’s parliament, the Reichstag, to overthrow the government and install a self-proclaimed prince as leader.
The group’s (alleged) ringleader is Heinrich XIII, Prince Reuss, a descendant of German nobility who never accepted the erasure of noble titles that came with the establishment of the Weimar Republic after World War I. He got together a big group of people who also hated the German government and organized them to overthrow it and make him their monarch. He planned to name his new state “Dukedom Reuss.”
The group is part of the Reichsbürger movement, which looks similar to many of the Patriot movement groups we see in the US. In terms of ideology (if you can call it that), we see similar conspiracy overtones (anti-vax, Deep State cabals working with Jewish globalists) that sound similar to what we hear with QAnon craziness. The group even believes elites are trafficking children and performing experiments on them in subterranean prisons (remember how Hillary Clinton was sacrificing children in the basement of a pizzeria in Washington, DC?).
Only The Best Advisors
Also similar to Patriot movement groups, Prince Reuss surrounded himself with a number of advisors who look like they escaped the Island of Misfit Toys.
Among those (allegedly) helping Prince Reuss was a member of Germany’s Alternative for Germany (AfD) party who is an astrologer and who planned to choose people for the future government on a “spiritual basis,” using their dates of birth. I have written a lot about the AfD, mostly because it is infiltrated with moles. I had no idea they also had spiritual astrologers in their midst.
The group also had enlisted the help of a top chef from Austria, who was to be brought in to prepare healthy food for all involved in the coup plot, because no one should raid a parliament on an empty stomach. Nobody wants to see hangry Germans.
Prince Reuss planned to install as his health minister Melanie Ritter, a doctor who is a vaccine skeptic and who—I’m not making this up—specializes in divining the future using eggs.
Scrambled Logic
Apparently, predicting the future with eggs is a thing and that thing is called oomancy. These fortune tellers crack eggs and interpret the formation of the white and yolk.
Folks, unlike Ritter, I am not a vaccine skeptic, but I am an oomancy skeptic. If she really could predict the future with eggs, why did she not foresee that the coup plot would fail?? What was wrong with her egg-reading skills? Or did no one involved in the coup plot think to ask the one egg-divining doctor in their group what the future held?
There’s Always A Russia Angle
Any movement that aims to overthrow a government and install a new one knows it needs to line up a few allies to recognize that new government. Otherwise, you just look like a bunch of angry, violent, cosplaying protesters running into the parliament. Prince Reuss knew this (he is an aristocrat, after all, and thus well-educated). You’ll never guess who he went to to ask for recognition of his planned Dukedom Reuss.
Try to guess. Go ahead. You’ll never figure it out.
Yep, turns out Heinrich XIII Prince Reuss was getting hot and heavy with a woman named Vitalia B. (German indictments do not include last names) from the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad.
The group planned to sail across the Baltic Sea to Kaliningrad and ask for a meeting with Vladimir Putin himself to ask him to recognize Dukedom Reuss should the storming of Germany’s parliament be a success. Turns out, that was a rather ambitious plan. They settled instead for meeting the Russian Consul General in Leipzig. Prince Reuss reportedly told him, “We’ll show you that the German wolf and the Russian bear are an unbeatable team.”
So far, there is no evidence to suggest Russia was down with the plan and was like, “Yeah, absolutely we’d love to recognize an old guy who thinks he’s a prince and whose advisor keeps buying eggs.”
So far.
Because when I look at who Russia supports in the US, it’s just as looney: an old guy who thinks he’s king and whose national security advisor is a major proponent of QAnon, so who knows. Maybe Russia did like the German eggnosticator and the prince.
Tourists At The Reichstag
It would be funny if it weren’t so scary. The group had amassed an enormous amount of weapons, according to prosecutors, including 380 firearms, 350 cutting and stabbing weapons, almost 500 other weapons, and 148,000 pieces of ammunition. The group also had a list of German politicians they planned to kill. The “Execution List” had been drawn up by a former member of one of Germany’s elite military groups.
Does any of this sound familiar? Far-right extremists with access to lots of weapons who don’t trust the government but put all their faith in one man who acts like a monarch and whose members include former members of elite military units and many with a penchant for Putin.
It’s a recipe for disaster, one a top chef from Austria could easily feed to the hangry masses. This particular group was found out and stopped before they could unleash violence. But I wonder how many other groups like this exist in Europe. We know they exist and are plotting in the US. I fear it’s not going to go well, although admittedly, I haven’t consulted my eggs on that.
THE WEEK’S LINKS
A roundup of stories you should be reading
RUSSIA AND EUROPE
Italy’s far-right leader Matteo Salvini fights for political survival (FT)
German ex-army officer admits spying for Russia, blames fear of nuclear war (Kyiv Independent)
Alex Finley is a former officer of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, where she served in West Africa and Europe. She writes and teaches about terrorism, disinformation / covert influence, and oligarch yachts. Her writing has appeared in Slate, Reductress, Funny or Die, POLITICO, The Center for Public Integrity, and other publications. She has spoken to the BBC, MSNBC, CNN, C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, France24, and numerous other media outlets. She was also invited once to speak at Harvard, which she now tells everyone within the first ten seconds of meeting them. She is the author of the Victor Caro series, satirical novels about the CIA. Before joining the CIA, Alex was a journalist, covering Capitol Hill, the Pentagon, and the Department of Energy. She reported on issues related to national security, intelligence, and homeland security. Did she mention she was invited to speak at Harvard?
