When Criticism of Government Turns Into Rejection of the State

A letter sent to our newsroom offers a revealing example of how legitimate political frustration can be converted into sweeping contempt for institutions, conspiracy narratives and misleading claims about German law. Criticism is indispensable to democracy. But dismissing elections, declaring the state itself illegitimate and treating the constitutional right of resistance as a political blank cheque does not defend democracy – it erodes its foundations.

Editorial commentary

Newsrooms receive many kinds of correspondence: useful tips, forceful criticism, accounts of personal experience and, from time to time, political manifestos. A recent message sent to our editorial team, together with a ten-file archive, clearly belongs to the last category. It derides Germany as a land of sleepers, brands politicians collectively as puppets or henchmen, calls for the activation of a supposed “organisation of former non-voters, protest voters and warning-shot voters,” and deliberately gives that organisation the acronym NPD. Its attachments combine anti-American slogans, occupation myths, allusions to the so-called “BRD GmbH,” Reichsbürger-style language and instructions to redistribute the message to nine people in the manner of a chain letter.

We are not reproducing the visual material in full. Doing so would go beyond necessary documentation and would assist the distribution mechanism explicitly requested by its author. The argument itself, however, deserves scrutiny. It illustrates how political frustration can be fashioned into a closed worldview in which every institution is suspect, every objection is treated as proof and every attempt at nuance becomes an act of betrayal.

Discontent is legitimate; total contempt is not analysis

A democracy must withstand severe criticism. Citizens are entitled to consider a government incompetent, unjust or profoundly mistaken. They may protest, petition, establish political parties, challenge official decisions in court, publish arguments and seek a change of power at the ballot box. Those possibilities are precisely what distinguish a democratic constitutional state from an authoritarian system.

The message in question offers few claims that can actually be tested. Instead, it relies on insults, puns and collective denunciations. Society is divided into the “awake” and the “sleeping,” while sceptics are labelled informers or trolls. The reader is therefore not invited to think independently but subjected to a loyalty test: agreement is proof of awakening, while disagreement supposedly confirms submission to the system.

This rhetorical device protects a claim from criticism. Evidence is replaced by moral self-certification, and meaningful dialogue becomes almost impossible. Political language ceases to describe reality and becomes an instrument for excluding those who disagree.

The missing percentages: non-voters do not belong to anyone

At a crucial point, the letter substitutes question marks for evidence. It speaks of “more than ? per cent” non-voters and another unknown percentage of protest voters, then presents these undefined groups as the foundation of a political movement.

Germany’s official figures tell a different story. Final results for the 2025 federal election put turnout at 82.5 per cent, meaning that 17.5 per cent of eligible voters did not participate – a considerably smaller share than in 2021. “Protest voters,” meanwhile, are not a single officially measurable bloc. People vote or abstain for many different and sometimes contradictory reasons. No movement can simply claim their motives without evidence.

Even a very large number of dissatisfied citizens would not make a particular claim factually correct. Democracy counts votes, but propositions must still be tested against facts, law and fundamental rights.

Remonstration is not a call for general disobedience

The letter’s appeal to a supposed duty of “remonstration” is especially misleading. In German civil-service law, Remonstrationspflicht has a precise and limited meaning. Under Section 63 of the Federal Civil Servants Act, federal civil servants who doubt the legality of a specific official instruction must raise their concerns with their immediate superior and, if necessary, with the next level of authority.

This is an internal rule-of-law safeguard. It is not a general duty imposed on all citizens, it does not require recipients to circulate political material and it does not provide a legal basis for rejecting democratic institutions wholesale. Removing a technical legal term from its context merely gives a political appeal a false appearance of legal authority.

Article 20(4): protection of the constitution, not a licence against policy

One attachment invokes Article 20(4) of Germany’s Basic Law. The constitution does indeed recognise a right of resistance. But that right applies against anyone attempting to abolish the constitutional order described in Article 20, and only when no other remedy is available.

It is a safeguard for democracy, the rule of law and the separation of powers in an extreme emergency. It does not legitimise resistance to every disputed tax measure, migration decision, military alliance or parliamentary majority. As long as elections, legislatures, independent courts, free media, peaceful assemblies and legal remedies remain available, the constitutional text’s “other remedies” plainly exist.

Germany is not an occupation construct

Several attachments suggest that Germany remains under foreign control or is merely a “banana republic” and an occupation-era construct. These are familiar motifs in sovereignist and Reichsbürger narratives, but they do not withstand historical or legal examination. The Two Plus Four Treaty ended the post-war order and restored full sovereignty and international legal equality to reunified Germany.

Germany’s domestic intelligence service estimated that roughly 26,000 people belonged to the Reichsbürger and “self-administrator” milieu in 2025. That does not mean that everyone using one of its slogans is automatically an organised member of that scene. The responsible journalistic conclusion is narrower: the submitted package reproduces several of its defining narratives, including denial of state legitimacy, claims of continuing occupation, wholesale disparagement of democratic institutions and distorted readings of constitutional law.

The acronym NPD is not an innocent joke

The author coins a phrase for his proposed organisation that produces the acronym NPD. The message provides no evidence of a formal link to the former National Democratic Party of Germany, and no such link should be alleged. Yet the choice is politically loaded. The party, now called Die Heimat, has been found by Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court to pursue anti-constitutional aims. In 2024, the court excluded it from state party funding and associated tax benefits for six years.

Using that acronym sends a signal even if its author later describes it as wordplay. A democratic public sphere should neither exaggerate that signal nor pretend it is meaningless.

What democratic vigilance actually requires

Germany does need alert citizens. But vigilance does not mean branding every dissenting view as sleep, betrayal or denunciation. It means checking sources, tolerating contradiction, distinguishing opinion from fact and remaining willing to revise one’s own conclusions.

Citizens dissatisfied with politics possess strong, lawful and effective means of action: voting, standing for office, joining a party or civic initiative, filing freedom-of-information requests, demonstrating peacefully, questioning elected representatives, pursuing legal remedies, engaging in local government and conducting serious research. These paths can feel slower than an angry chain letter. But they are how anger becomes responsibility and criticism becomes change.

Our editorial team will continue to take uncomfortable correspondence seriously. Taking it seriously does not mean amplifying it without examination. It means separating evidence from performance and defending a basic democratic principle: power should be questioned, but criticism must also remain truthful, lawful and respectful of human dignity.

Transparency note: This commentary is based on a message sent to the editorial team and ten attached files. Personal contact information has not been published. The positions quoted or described are not those of the editorial team.

Sources: Federal Returning Officer: final result of Germany’s 2025 federal election; Section 63, Federal Civil Servants Act; Article 20, Basic Law; Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution: Reichsbürger and self-administrators; Federal Foreign Office on the Two Plus Four Treaty; Federal Constitutional Court on the exclusion of Die Heimat from state funding.