World Coronavirus Dispatch: Germans denying Covid put under surveillance

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Germans denying Covid put under surveillance

Germany’s domestic intelligence service is surveiling members of the increasingly aggressive coronavirus denier movement because they posed a risk of undermining the state. The movement — fueled in part by wild conspiracy theories — has grown from criticising coronavirus lockdown measures and hygiene rules to targeting the state itself, its leaders, businesses, the press and globalism, to name a few. The movement, called Querdenken, German for lateral thinking, communicates and recruits over social media and has a large presence on the encrypted chat service Telegram, where its main channel has 65,000 subscribers.