How do »lateral thinkers« and »Monday strollers« tick? Bad Nauheimer Fabian Laasch spent ten days in a “lateral thinker” group on Telegram. In the end he was appalled.
Fabian Laasch sees Bad Nauheim as a tranquil town. Until December 2021, he associated “walks” more with the city forest and parks. This is now different because of the “Monday walks”, which Laasch is skeptical about. He was recently attacked for this, among other things, in the local group “Corona Wetterau (FB)”, which uses Telegram, which started an experiment for the IT engineer. Telegram is a »messenger«, i.e. a communication service on the Internet where you can chat and send messages. “In the local group, around 350 ‘walkers’ exchange views on the topic of Corona.” The 40-year-old was not active on Telegram. “Nevertheless, out of the blue, I was called a ‘mole, sleeping sheep and rat’ there.”
As the Kurstadter believes, his comments in Bad Nauheim groups on Facebook were noticed. “Recently, there have been an increasing number of really unbearable posts against the vaccination campaigns and about the ‘walks’ that I didn’t want to leave uncommented,” reports Laasch. Friends informed him that people in the Telegram group were calling him to join to engage in the discussion.
An endless stream an Fake-News
At first he had reservations about it, because the administrators only use nicknames and are therefore anonymous. “I had no sense of who was behind it. An NPD member is active under real names. In addition, two esoteric shamans. I wasn’t in the mood for contact.«
On Telegram there are group chats with hundreds or thousands of members. Laasch finds the messenger good “apart from certain data protection problems”, and there are exciting topics in terms of content. “But the problem is the endless stream of lies and fake news in the Corona groups,” he notes.
After he joined the group, a plan quickly matured: “What if I create my own Telegram channel with facts and expose a lie every day?” For example, the false claim that the World Health Organization (WHO) controls the population with the help of nano-bots would like. Or that every 37th vaccination is fatal. “That’s easy to refute,” says Laasch. He posted his facts on his channel and linked them to the “Corona Wetterau (FB)” group. Reactions to his views were “playing down, ridiculing, ignoring and changing the subject ‘to the next big scandal'”. According to Laasch, the users of the Telegram group “Corona Wetterau (FB)” and other groups for conspiracy theories are moving in “a juggernaut of lies”. They are convinced that they are informed and believe the “fairy tales” that are being spread there.
Not interested in an exchange
“I actually thought that ‘walkers’ and ‘lateral thinkers’ would have a real interest in exchanging ideas,” he says. As he found, that is not the case. Nevertheless, Laasch hopes to have moved something and reached silent readers.
In the “Corona Wetterau (FB)” group, Laasch was finally blocked because he had clearly taken a position on a borderline post. “It was when they compared wearing protective masks to slavery.” He was outraged, whereupon the admins accused him of “agitation and division”.
As Laasch thinks, the conspiracy theorists will not stop acting in this or a similar way. “Driven by lies and the complete conviction that they are right, that they know the ‘truth’, they are preparing for the time after Corona.” The group will talk about it openly – the next big point will probably be the denial of climate change.
Laasch warns against obtaining information from channels for conspiracy theories such as “Corona Wetterau (FB)” – it is dangerous. He does not see blocking Telegram as a solution, as recently considered by Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD). “It’s up to civil society to clearly label lies for what they are: lies.”
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