„(Vereitelte) Taten durch sog. Reichsbürger – Warnsignale anhand der TRAP-18 und Erkenntnisse für die Prävention“

If we look at the warning signs in the run-up to the acts of violence investigated, all showed behavior and communication patterns that indicated that they wanted to solve their grievances with violence. They were always more focused on the behaviour-guiding function of the conspiracy ideology or their own (violent) plans to solve what they saw as a crisis. The aspect of identification was also always evident, through a particular interest in weapons or the adoption of a warrior mentality in their statements. In the thwarted overthrow plans, for example, the individuals saw themselves as representatives of an important mission to forcibly eliminate the German state order, followed by a takeover. In the process, the people studied became increasingly active. For example, they showed increased activity on social media in relation to the crime or crime option.

Even though only a few acts could be analyzed, it is noteworthy that all of the individual perpetrators investigated – in the cases investigated it was exclusively men – committed their acts in the context of state and mostly coercive measures (traffic control, forced eviction, withdrawal of weapons). The traffic control measure in particular shows the danger that a person can act out of a sense of self-defense: One offender had attempted to use the car as a weapon following a traffic stop. The individual offenders investigated all showed warning signals in the sense of a last resort. Most of them had threatened security authorities or potential victims. There were no such warning signals among the group members studied. This seems understandable due to the different dynamics. Individual offenders may still consciously or unconsciously hope that the coercive measure will not be carried out – after all, they see themselves as being in the right based on their ideology. In contrast, groups of people planning an attack against the state could be deterred from carrying out their plan if they threaten their targets, in this case the state and its authorities, in advance and thus warn them against the act.

There were fewer differences between Reich citizens whose acts were thwarted and those whose were not, but considerable overlaps were found in terms of warning behaviours, radicalization factors and protective factors. For more differentiated findings, analyses of the security authorities and their interventions in the future would be necessary in order to learn more about the point at which they appear to be dangerous and when interventions could be undertaken. In particular, it would be possible to look at the development of protective factors in any earlier intervention measures. The establishment of local threat management structures in which the police, health authorities, clinics, therapists, relevant counseling centers and other stakeholders work together and provide a structured flow of information to develop management strategies can be helpful in this regard. Translated with DeepL.com (free version)