"Putin has the function that Trump previously had"

From the Wrauster Bogen in Hamburg's southernmost district of Kirchwerder, it's only a stone's throw to the Elbe. The shore on the other side already belongs to Lower Saxony. It is tranquil here, far away from the pulse of the big city, rural, characterized by orchards. Long, narrow fields run through the landscape.

Marcel J. lived in one of the more modern red brick houses with a view of the Elbe dike. He is said to have recently successfully passed his final exam to become a gardener. Then state security investigators knocked on his door and arrested him.

Since then, the 31-year-old has been waiting in custody for his trial. J. is suspected of violating the War Weapons Control Act and attempting to recruit for foreign military service.

With a view to Marcel J.’s Telegram channel “The other Germany” and his Facebook presence, the allegations are particularly explosive. In the meantime, the Telegram channel has been completely deleted. But until recently there was a lot of agitation there: "Against the state and capital," it said there. "Let's go to the revolution".

Most importantly, J. used social media to defend Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine and to spread the Kremlin propaganda's banned "Z" symbol.

J., who is known on Facebook as Xaver Sch. appears, agitated in the spirit of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his ideological whisperers, such as the ultra-nationalist Alexander Dugin, whose daughter was recently killed in a car bomb attack in Russia that was possibly aimed at himself.

Dugin is best known as an opponent of the liberal Western model of society and for his idea of ​​what is known as Eurasianism.

The basic idea: The traditional civilizations on the Eurasian landmass have a common cultural core, which they should remain true to in order to develop successfully politically and around which they should unite, as the American ethnographer Benjamin R. Teitelbaum explains, who belongs to this ideological flow researches. Russia is the core of Eurasia and should not imitate the West with its liberal way of life.

J. took Dugin's ideas unfiltered. He saw himself as a “national Bolshevik” and he wanted to fight the fight that Russia was fighting against the West domestically and unite those “who not only want to talk about revolution, but are also ready to fight for it”.

J. is said to have already traveled to networking meetings in the Netherlands. In photos he shared online, he posed with a Russian AK-47 assault rifle. Last but not least, he is said to have filled out a visa application for Belarus and uploaded it to the Internet. He wanted to leave the country in August. The police beat him to it. Marcel J. has long been known to the security authorities: Not as an extreme friend of Russia, but as a relevant right-wing extremist with close ties to the right-wing extremist "Merkel has to go" rallies. Together with other right-wing extremists, he is said to have tried to set up a militant movement in recent years.

He repeatedly took part in lateral thinker demos, posed with Holocaust denier Attila Hildmann and is said to have tried to storm the stairs of the Reichstag with other right-wing extremists and conspiracy ideologues at the end of August 2020. He is said to have attacked journalists in Berlin last December. Corresponding criminal proceedings are ongoing.

But what connects German right-wing extremists like Marcel J. with Russian ultra-nationalists? “The worldview that Putin and his ideological milieu hold is similar to what we find on the New Right spectrum: a desire for an authoritarian state that doesn’t allow for liberal ways of life, ranging from gender equality to homosexuality. That's Putin, but it's also repugnant to Alexander Dugin," explains Johannes Kiess from the Else Frenkel Brunswik Institute for Democracy Research at the University of Leipzig.

Both sides pursued a similar goal: to destabilize Western democracy. "The new-right scene in Germany and Dugin can be seen as brothers in spirit," says Kiess.

The connection has been there for a long time, says extremism expert Matthias Quent, who teaches at the Magdeburg-Stendal University of Applied Sciences. With the war she experienced a new impetus.

“There was sympathy before that in Russia for the suppression of civil society organizations, counter-protests like Pussy Riot and queer movements. And there were the discursive networks between the new right in Germany and Dugin's Eurasian ideology," says Quent.

Representatives of the AfD have also traveled to Russia several times. Putin currently has the role that former US President Donald Trump previously held, says Matthias Quent. "As a redeemer from the hated 'globalism'."

The Hamburg Office for the Protection of the Constitution also recognizes “in the spectrum of delegitimizers, Reich citizens and also right-wing extremists in parts a decidedly pro-Russian attitude”. "A striking example is the extremist Hamburg association UMEHR, which has not lost its friendliness to Russia even after the war of aggression, which violated international law, and rather accuses NATO of warmongering," said the head of the state office, Torsten Voß.

One will keep this development in focus, "also from the point of view of alleged disinformation campaigns from Russia and attempts to influence the right-wing and left-wing extremist spectrum."

The investigations against Marcel J. are ongoing. He receives support online: J.'s arrest shows "the nature of this pseudo-sovereign construct called the Federal Republic of Germany," according to an ally. J. is being criminalized because he opposed "the geopolitical course of a world power". This does not mean Russia, however.