What Germany's anti-lockdown protests reveal about the country

In a recent Sunday, anti-lockdown protesters passed under my window, which looks out onto one of the main Berlin thoroughfares. They call themselves Querdenker, “lateral thinkers”. To my untrained eye, not many of the demonstrators resembled fascists, although perhaps at least some of the shaved heads were concealed by beanies. There were teenagers, old women doddering along with walkers, and middle-aged men wearing face coverings declaring “fuck masks,” accompanied by bored riot police. They were met by locals and black-clad anti-fascists banging pans and shouting “Nazis out!”. The weekly protests attract a range of ideological tendencies, from sandal-clad hippies to “Reich citizens,” an eccentric right-wing group which denies the legitimacy of the postwar Federal Republic. Others have no truck with such fringe groups but are worried about whether their livelihoods can survive the economic crisis, even though support for businesses and individuals is by European standards relatively generous in Germany. The peculiarity of the Querdenker – which remains a minority movement, with polls showing up to 85 per cent of Germans opposed – is that they present themselves not as infringers of the liberal constitutional order but as its defenders.