Coup Attempt in Germany?

 This story has broken into the news today, at least a little, as reported at Daily Kos:


"German authorities have arrested right wing and ex-military plotters who were planning a violent attempt to overthrow the German government...The group of far-right and ex-military figures are said to have prepared for a "Day X" to storm the Reichstag parliament building and seize power."


Here are some details about this group, as detailed in a BBC report linked to in the Daily Kos story:


"The plotters are said to include members of the extremist Reichsbürger [Citizens of the Reich] movement...(which) plotted to overthrow the republic and replace it with a new state modelled on the Germany of 1871 - an empire called the Second Reich.  The Reichsbürger were, for years, a source of national derision, dismissed as crackpots.
Members don't recognise the post-war German state and reject the authority of its government. Despite the name, this is no organised national movement - rather a disparate set of small groups and individuals scattered across the country who are united in that shared belief.


Some print their own currency and identity cards and dream of creating their own autonomous state.  Others refuse to pay tax or intentionally clog up the administration of local authorities by sending large volumes of, often abusive, letters.  And many have guns - legally or otherwise."


Daily Kos very correctly observes that:


"Change the names and the locations, this is a story that could easily have been written about some people in America."


No mention is made, however, about which "people in America" this could have been written about, which I will do here:  These are German equivalents of the Sovereign Citizen movement, the most violent terrorist group in the United States in recent decades. Even their name, which translates as "Citizens of the Reich," is an analog to the Sovereign citizens. I am positive that Dave Niewert, the expert on this subject, will point this out in an article in the near future, as I am sure that this group is in someway connected to American Sovereign citizens- the similarities are too great for this to be an accident- but so far, I've seen nobody making the obvious point that everything about this group, including its name, is a direct parallel to the Sovereign Citizen movement in the United States.


Well, the truth is that this is a particularly pathetic coup attempt, so there is no need for us to get too excited about it, but still, it is worth noting that despite decades of nothing but ludicrous failure and meaningless violence, the right still persists in its malicious attempts to take over, not just here but in other countries too.

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