German Politics and Society

Since early 2020, the covid-19 pandemic has unfolded as a global crisis that poses significant challenges to governments and societies.¹ Governments have reacted quite variably, with policies ranging from strict lockdowns over a longer period of time to flexible approaches with restriction of freedoms at very low thresholds of intrusion into citizens’ rights.² While the pandemic does not affect everyone equally, and some countries are more advanced in containing the virus than others, the sense of vulnerability and insecurity is widespread. In addition to the 6.5 million people who have died from covid-19 as of late August 2022, many more are affected by ongoing symptoms of long covid-19. Increased economic disparities and new forms of inequality only exacerbate the degree of uncertainty and the feeling that life is out of control.³ However, the popular yearning to regain control has not led to an unambiguous “desire for the state.”⁴ Rather, trust in governments has fluctuated in the wake of the pandemic. If there was a “rally around the flag” effect, it was certainly not found in every country.⁵ Even if support for government regulations and restrictions were prevalent within a state, it was not shared equally by different parts of the population. In several countries, the pandemic has also given rise to substantial protests against the restriction of civic, economic, and social liberties, often driven by fears of state surveillance, libertarian rebellion against state paternalism, and conspiratorial beliefs.⁶

This study analyzes the interplay between the public image and the self-image of the German Querdenken movement during the covid-19 pandemic. First, we reconstruct the public image of Querdenken with data from the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung. Our findings reveal a multifaceted network of critical arguments against the government's public health measures during the crisis. Querdenken remained at the periphery of this newspaper discourse because it was mostly perceived as anti-democratic, particularistic, and irrational. Next, we compare this public image with Querdenken's self-image using the movement's press releases. Our analysis shows that Querdenken's supporters responded to public criticism by counter-labeling their critics as untrustworthy, conspiratorial, and corrupt. Our conclusion finds that due to its highly contentious “anti-science” and “anti-elite” approach, Querdenken failed to produce a positive “resonance” within the public sphere and developed only limited civil power.

Performances of closeness—showing one's uncovered face, physically touching others, rhythmic chanting combined with hand gestures, and collective singing and dancing—were central to pandemic-skeptical protests in Germany. This article shows that publicly performing such intercorporeal practices can become a political act when governments and health professionals promote physical distancing and mask mandates. Moreover, it analyzes how pandemic skeptics used both visual and auditive symbols of resistance against past dictatorships that are popular in Germany's dominant national narrative to legitimate their protest and stage “the people.” Protesters’ invocation of a new totalitarianism closely connects to fears revolving around the erosion of representative democracy in neoliberal times and the emergence of a digitalized world ruled by mega-corporations that is seen to be threatened by anonymity and isolation.

After the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic, a heterogeneous protest movement emerged in Austria that managed to mobilize more than 20,000 people to protest against the prevention measures imposed by the government in February 2021. The preliminary results from the survey we conducted in January showed that an unusually large proportion of women participated in these protests. In this article, we aim at exploring the gendered aspects of the protests through the use of a frame analysis. Against the backdrop of an extensive public debate on the gendered ramifications of the pandemic, we also ask whether experiences of double burden were incorporated into the problem definition. We base our analysis on a mixed-methods approach that complements the results of a quantitative protest survey with qualitative interviews, social media analysis, and data from protest observations.

This article shows how antifeminism manifested during the covid-19 pandemic and played an integrative role for pandemic-deniers. It first explains how antifeminism was understood and shows that antifeminist actors often used alleged concerns about child welfare to legitimize and morally enhance their own political views. Subsequently, the results of a systematic study of various antifeminist actors such as Birgit Kelle, Beatrix von Storch, Demo für Alle (Protest for all), and Eltern Stehen Auf (Parents Rise) from the pandemic denial spectrum are presented and compared to each other. Further analyses of the Querdenken protests make it clear that some narratives of antifeminist actors were also taken up by Querdenken members, and that in this way various alliances were able to emerge.

In Germany, tens of thousands of people took to the streets to demonstrate against the government's measures to handle the covid-19 pandemic. These protests started in the spring of 2020. What makes these protests puzzling is their unusual heterogeneous political composition and ambiguous symbolism. This article argues that protesters used the pandemic (and calls for “freedom” from restrictions) to bridge left- and right-wing movement frames. Importantly, though, the amplification of radical right strands of populist discourse played a central role in this frame-bridging. These arguments are supported by a visual discourse analysis using photographs of demonstrators and protest materials (N = 212) taken at the Berlin “Querdenken” demonstration on 29 August 2020. The implications of these findings for the mainstreaming of right-wing politics are then discussed.

To cope with the covid-19 pandemic, people not only relied on state measures and scientific knowledge, but also drew on the resources of religion. They may also have embraced conspiracy theories that sometimes led them to engage in protest behavior. Against this background, we address the following research question: “How are people's religiosity and spirituality related to their belief in covid-19 conspiracy theories in Germany?” We answer this question by conducting a theory-led empirical analysis. We apply quantitative methods based on primary data from a (non-representative) online survey that we carried out with 2,373 respondents in Germany between July 2020 and January 2021. The results show that belief in covid-19 conspiracy theories is positively correlated with the image of a punitive God, with exclusivist beliefs, and with private prayer—and negatively correlated with attendance at religious services. Moreover, Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, and Jews have a lower affinity for conspiracy theories than not religiously affiliated people, while the opposite is true for Evangelicals.