this post was submitted on 13 May 2025

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221

Germany bans far-right 'Kingdom of Germany' group (www.dw.com)

submitted 18 hours ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/world@lemmy.world

28 comments fedilink hide all child comments

German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt has banned a major faction of the far-right "Reichsbürger" movement. Some leaders of the group, the "Kingdom of Germany," have been arrested, including its self-declared king.

German Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt has banned the far-right group "Königreich Deutschland" ("Kingdom of Germany"), a faction within the so-called "Reichsbürger" (Reich Citizens) movement, accusing it of trying to establish a "counter-state" within Germany.

The ban came as police on Tuesday conducted raids on the properties of key members of the group in seven German states, making four arrests, including that of Peter Fitzek, the self-declared monarch of the "Kingdom."

Security authorities believe Fitzek to have founded the group in 2012.

all 29 comments

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[–] UnculturedSwine@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Glad to see germany setting an example by having some actual fkn balls

[–] wieson@feddit.org 8 points 12 hours ago

I feel like this is Dobrindt doing a "see! I'm doing something. Don't talk about the afd, I've already done enough. Don't you see my hard work?"

Meanwhile the Kingdom group is insignificant and the afd is a real fucking threat to democracy and the lives of many.

[–] unpossum@sh.itjust.works 82 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Now do AfD

[–] neukenindekeuken@sh.itjust.works 11 points 11 hours ago

They're working on it right this very minute, as we speak.

[–] Photuris@lemmy.ml 30 points 18 hours ago (4 children)

It blows my mind that there’s anybody out there who would want a king.

[–] Humanius@lemmy.world 25 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (1 children)

This group calls themselves Reichsbürger, and from my understanding it's essentially equivalent to Sovereign Citizens in the US.

Installing a monarchy may be the stated goal, but it is not in itself the reason why people join this group. Rather it is about illegitimizing the current government so that they (supposedly) do not hold power over you.

There are various reasons why people would join a group like that, but a common one seems to be that they are running away from the consequences of their actions in one form or another. If the government is illegitimate, then the pain their society imposes (e.g. unpaid fines, mounting debt, etc) is also illegitimate.

The reason for the government's illegitimacy is irrelevant. All that matters is that the state should be illegitimized in some way.

[–] rottingleaf@lemmy.world 3 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Sovereign citizens are supposedly individualistic and about freedom, "citizens of USSR" and Reichsbürger are a bit different.

Rather it is about illegitimizing the current government so that they (supposedly) do not hold power over you.

Would be a noble goal to bring obligations closer to something voluntarily taken and not just obedience.

There are various reasons why people would join a group like that, but a common one seems to be that they are running away from the consequences of their actions in one form or another. If the government is illegitimate, then the pain their society imposes (e.g. unpaid fines, mounting debt, etc) is also illegitimate.

Call a strong bad man (a politician in his own opinion) a bitch in presence of someone of his relatives, and the ensuing events will make you sympathize with them.

[–] Humanius@lemmy.world 5 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) (1 children)

Would be a noble goal to bring obligations closer to something voluntarily taken and not just obedience.

It may be noble, but it is also a bit out of touch with reality.

When you participate in society (even if it is something as simple as buying from groceries at the supermarket) then you have to follow the rules of that society that you participate in. We have decided together as a society, democratically, what those rules are.

You can't then say "I'm not playing by the rules" and expect people to just accept that.

[–] rottingleaf@lemmy.world -3 points 14 hours ago

We have decided together as a society, democratically, what those rules are.

No we haven't. If you opt out of a vote, you are still treated as if you have an obligation to obey its result. That's not how "deciding together" works. When you put magical words where something well-proven should be, you get Putin.

You can’t then say “I’m not playing by the rules of society” and expect people to just accept that.

Some existing mechanism spitting out rules is not "the society".

There's such a thing as mandate, and there is such a thing as a source of a right, and so on.

None of the laws you can find are well-founded in these. Official mechanisms make laws outside of their mandate all the time, and nobody cares about sources of right, replacing that logic with a stick.

Which means that a legally literate person understands everything can be contested. Calling that "not playing by the rules" is an attack at the dignity of your equal, you peer, who is trying to dispute philosophy and law with you. They may be clumsy, but their right to contest statements in those is never in question.

I mean, the USA has that 9th amendment, all it says is that rights are transcendent and the constitution can only confirm them, it's not a source of rights and rights are not limited by what's said in the constitution.

This is just amazing. Because without accepting that rights are transcendent you encounter contradictions only resolvable by violence everywhere.

And this "rules of the society" thing you've said means just that somebody is more potent at violence than me. It's a return to barbarism.

[–] Karyoplasma@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 17 hours ago

It's not about the form of government, they mainly want to live out their hatred without feeling the reproach of the community.

[–] blaue_Fledermaus@mstdn.io 0 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

In Brazil the monarchists get some sympathy because emperor Pedro II was the only competent and halfway decent leader the country ever had.

[–] demonsword@lemmy.world 7 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

The bumbling idiot that managed to be the last leader to abolish slavery on the whole continent is now "a halfway decent leader". Give me a break.

[–] blaue_Fledermaus@mstdn.io -1 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (1 children)

I don't disagree, but still better than all the other leaders the country had.

The following dictatorship put up a lot of antimonarchist propaganda, but still today abolishing slavery is celebrated by all as an achievement of his government.

(Note: I'm not a monarchist)

[–] demonsword@lemmy.world 2 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

I don’t disagree, but still better than all the other leaders the country had.

This is blatantly false, but you're entitled to have your (wrong) opinion.

[–] blaue_Fledermaus@mstdn.io -1 points 13 hours ago

Not false, I also don't like it, but I'm not wrong.

Pedro II put Brazil well on it's way to become a global superpower.

The only one that came somewhat close was later Getúlio Vargas, but he was an asshole cruel dictator.

Maybe Lula in his first and second terms might deserve a distant third place.

[+] Plebcouncilman@sh.itjust.works -18 points 17 hours ago (3 children)

Well historically it is not a terrible system, it is very stable and tends to not self implode regularly like democracy does. You could argue that it leads to abuse of power but that happens equally under any system; if you look at monarchies historically they tried very very hard to avoid having rebellions in their hands and usually worked in the interest of the nation, as the interest of the nation was the interest of the monarch.

I don’t think monarchy is better than democracy or even desirable all the time, but democracy imo hinges on an educated population and when that fails democracy immediately starts to collapse into fascism which is not monarchic unlike what the popular idea of a king might suggest. So if a democratic nation seems headed towards anti democratic rule, it would seem to me that a better goal would be to install a monarchy instead of a fascist.

[–] Lupus@feddit.org 15 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

TLDR: Hard disagree on almost anything you just said

Well historically it is not a terrible system, it is very stable and tends to not self implode regularly like democracy does.

Yeah if you ignore for example wars of succession, because of incestuous family ties, arbitrary rule, repression and exploitation of its citizens, one could call it stable... Although the escalation and tyranny unfortunately are baked into the system.

if you look at monarchies historically they tried very very hard to avoid having rebellions in their hands and usually worked in the interest of the nation, as the interest of the nation was the interest of the monarch.

Have you ever read history books? Sure some rulers may have had that kind of view but theres also plenty of megalomaniacal, terribly violent and unjust rulers in those big ol books of history. And since it is an imposed rule of tyranny there's really only violence to get rid of an unjust ruler, you know a neat thing about democracy? Violence is the last resort to getting rid of rulers because we can vote! Crazy right?

So if a democratic nation seems headed towards anti democratic rule, it would seem to me that a better goal would be to install a monarchy instead of a fascist.

In that case- what's the fucking difference? Oh, to avoid an autocracy let's install an autocracy with cherry flavor... Great?

[–] driving_crooner@lemmy.eco.br 2 points 12 hours ago

I blame fucking fantasy where the monarchy is noble and just want the best for the kingdom.

[–] Plebcouncilman@sh.itjust.works 1 points 15 hours ago

All of those happen in modern nations, doesn’t say much about the nature of monarchic rule rather more about the nature of power itself. Again I never said monarchic rule was preferable to democracy, I just said it is not as terrible as we like to paint it through our modern lens. Monarchy has a coherent political and ideological system, unlike fascism or other forms of totalitarian governments. There are very few, if any, examples of totalitarian monarchs. They had to balance their decisions between the interests of all groups in society.
There’s plenty of democratically elected leaders that fill that same description. But yes your argument for violence is a good one, that is indeed how democracy solves the problem of violence when a ruler goes rouge. But once more, I never said monarchy is preferable to democracy, it’s just not inherently bad like most people think.
The difference is that monarchs are hardly ever totalitarian rulers because the structure and source of royal power is different from dictators. Look, find one dictator/totalitarian ruler that doesn’t pretend that they run a democracy. Find one. Their entire basis for power is the creation and perpetuation of crises driven by propaganda and misinformation. A monarch doesn’t need that shit to justify their rule, and their job and lives are much much better if they simply let the people be and step in when shit gets out of hand. Otherwise their lives tend to be very short and violent.

The thing people like the least about monarchies other than the violence that you rightly mentioned is how hierarchy is baked into the system and social mobility is almost inexistent. But increasingly that’s becoming the case under democratic liberal rule, so it’s no wonder that people would start looking towards monarchies again since that at least has the benefit of the ruling class being able to implement long term plans that benefit the nation instead of the shit that happens in polarized democracies where there is no long term vision for the nation, and no plan to reach any goals except to keep things humming along by patching crisis after crisis with duct tape.

I think democracy is the best system in practice, but I don’t think monarchies are the worst form of government either. And a disfunctional democracy is worst than a monarchy imo.

[–] Skua@kbin.earth 9 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

I don't think that the stability argument really holds. The surviving European constitutional monarchies today are stable, but there's a pretty huge survivorship bias there — the French monarchy famously collapsed in the French revolution and the resulting wars took several others down, the German, Russian, and Austrian ones went down in WW1, the Italian one failed to prevent the rise of Mussolini, the Spanish one got ousted by the Franco regime. It seems to me like it's more of a case of the places that have been stable have not kicked their monarchies out rather than them being stable because they are monarchies. And of course, all of the monarchies fought each other constantly in the times before

[–] Plebcouncilman@sh.itjust.works 1 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

You’re honing in on the very point in time in which monarchy collapsed entirely, disregarding that many of these governments existed continuously for centuries in one form or another. There is no democracy that has lasted 1,000 years, but there’s a few examples of monarchies that did last that long.

[–] Skua@kbin.earth 6 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Here's a list of civil wars just in England and the post-union UK since it's one of the best-known and longest-standing monarchies. Are we counting a monarchy that was overthrown multiple times as "lasting 1,000 years" (which it would now be close to if you count it from 1066 to the modern day)?

It also seems a bit silly to expect democracies to have lasted a thousand years immediately after making a point about the timeframe of social movements. The tradition of European democracies and the related ones that were spread around the world during the colonial era and the aftermath of it are too recent a movement to have lasted a thousand years. If we want to see if a democracy can last that long, we've got about 800-900 years to wait

[–] Plebcouncilman@sh.itjust.works 2 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

I think you are focusing too much on the modern world. You’re ignoring the Middle Ages and before, and also eastern monarchies as well. Many of them existed for centuries with petty succession squabbles but in general being the same government, in the sense that they were ruled by the same royal family or one with close ties and maintained over that time similar aims. Every 4 or 8 years our governments have to change aims in response to crises that were caused because our government can only implement projects on a 4 to 8 year basis which is often not enough to fix problems. Something akin to technical debt in software, but societal.

Also I think you forget that Democracies existed in the ancient world and they didn’t last long either. They weren’t modern democracies but democracies nonetheless. And they were famous already for being short lived back then.

I’m not saying that we might not see a long lasting democracy, just that the evidence seems to point that democratic states have by their very nature an expiration date in which they enter a stage of some form of dictatorship until a total collapse happens, which is then followed by a renewal of democratic institutions under a new constitution. Maybe this may be construed as the same that happened with civil wars during monarchies but I think the key difference is that the government changes drastically between stages, even the national identity itself may change in these shake ups.

Just look at the US. One of the longest living democracies in the world right now, founded by some of the smartest men of their time who designed a system that could withstand the inherent weaknesses of democracy and yet it is on shaky ground only 250 years in.

[–] Skua@kbin.earth 3 points 12 hours ago

I think you are focusing too much on the modern world. You’re ignoring the Middle Ages and before

Also I think you forget that Democracies existed in the ancient world and they didn’t last long either

And they were famous already for being short lived back then.

I just gave you a list of civil wars in England dating back to the 11th century? But with regards to earlier democracies, I didn't forget, I just don't think they're especially relevant since they were not all that similar to a modern democracy like Germany. Even Athens barred most of its population from voting. I think if you want to include them, you need to explain why they are a relevant comparison to a modern democracy. If you're operating solely on whether or not they allow some people to vote, then constitutional monarchies count as democracies for this purpose and the short-lived fascist dictatorships of the 20th century count as monarchies.

also eastern monarchies as well

I'm focussing on Europe because the article is about Germany, which shares much of its monarchic and democratic heritage with its European neighbours. If you want to bring up other examples, go ahead.

petty succession squabbles

Open civil warfare is not what I'd count as a "petty squabble". If there's a years-long war to overthrow a king, that is not stability.

our government can only implement projects on a 4 to 8 year basis which is often not enough to fix problems

While modern democracies haven't been around that long in the scale of human history, they have been around long enough to demonstrate that they don't appear to be falling behind their monarchic peers. Take Finland and Sweden as an example; in the past ~100 years for which Finland has been an independent republic, would you argue it has performed worse than its constitutional monarchy neighbour Sweden? I wouldn't, despite the fact that Finland started in a far worse position and also fought the Winter War and the Continuation War. And similarly, if we look at the the rest of the world, it doesn't seem to me like republics are doing worse than monarchies that have had otherwise comparable histories.

But I'm not even arguing that democracies are especially stable. I'm arguing that monarchies aren't particularly more stable.

the evidence seems to point that democratic states have by their very nature an expiration date

What evidence? Again, we have not seen more than a couple of centuries of the modern form of democracy.

it is on shaky ground only 250 years in.

If you're going to exclude actual civil warfare and overthrow of the government from counting as instability for monarchies, you really can't count a constitutional crisis as the end of a democracy. Maybe this is the end of the USA, but it's hardly the first time a country has seen a constitutional crisis. It's not even the first time the USA has seen one. If the USA does fall completely... alright? Even limiting it to large modern era countries, I can just as easily point towards the Qing dynasty that fell after roughly that amount of time, or the Brazilian monarchy which didn't even make 100, or the Bourbon restoration in France that was even shorter. Pointing to an individual example that hasn't even actually happened isn't evidence of a broader rule.

[–] Buelldozer@lemmy.today 5 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (1 children)

Well historically it is not a terrible system

Well historically primary education is pretty shit and we, the readers, thank you for proving that to us today.

[–] Plebcouncilman@sh.itjust.works -2 points 15 hours ago

You got me pal, excellent argument.

[–] rottingleaf@lemmy.world 2 points 15 hours ago

I thought Austria was the closest to any kingdom of Germany, except not for the last 100 years.