Oliver Janich, the self-proclaimed spearhead of the far-right alternative media scene, can be recognised by his restless and indefatigable use of social media. That, and his messianic, evangelical drive. The prototype for this breed of far-right internet warrior emerged already in 2019 with the “Identarian” boss Martin Sellner, active on all important platforms. Since then, however, he’s been kicked off almost all major networks, including Facebook (2018), Instagram (2019), Twitter (2020) and YouTube (2020), leaving only niche platforms.
Currently, Oliver Janich is the man in the social media spotlight. His most-viewed channels are his YouTube (159,000 followers) and Telegram (140,300 followers), making the description of him as a YouTube conspiracy influencer an apt one (he calls himself a “YouTube columnist”). However, his YouTube has since been deleted in October 2020 by the platform – a severe blow to his online reach.
Telegram continues to be an important medium for Janich, and his Facebook page now has over 37,000 subscribers. On the YouTube alternative Bitchute, which is popular with the far-right, the number is 7,300 – a high figure for this platform. He also posts on VKontakte (VK), a Facebook clone founded in Russia and without moderation, where he still has 3,100 followers, and on Twitter, where he has 1,300 followers. Instagram and Facebook removed Janich during their first deletion of “Identarian” channels in 2018 (although he has rather little to do with the movement, known in the English-speaking world as “Generation Identity”). He subsequently called Facebook “Faschobook”, but secretly returned secretly. Instagram remains Janich-free
But who is Oliver Janich?
If you ask “the internet”, his fans think he’s “our best” and share Janich’s videos, many in which he visits other far-right alternative channels. The magazine Compact, which has been classified by domestic intelligence services potentially far-right and regularly publishes conspiracy myths, calls him the “superstar of the German Truther scene”. His most prominent fan is the singer Xavier Naidoo, a passionate fan of antisemitic conspiracy ideologies, who also likes to promote him on his Telegram channel.
One thing’s for sure: Janich is a PR whiz. The 51-year-old, who was born in Munich and has been living in the Philippines since 2015, likes to work himself up over migration in Germany, allegedly because he’s afraid that the world economy would collapse “and in the Philippines, you don’t need much”. Furthermore, “the Antifa” had published his address. And in Germany, he could no longer do his “journalistic” work at all because there was “no freedom of opinion” anymore. He gave this unbelievable explanation during an interview on YouTube. But how did it come to this?
Oliver Janich was originally a business journalist who wrote for Euro am Sonntag and Focus Money, later writing for media outlets such as the Financial Times Deutschland or the Süddeutsche Zeitung. He had previously completed a bank apprenticeship and studied economics.
Stock market manipulation
During his studies he found friends with criminal tendencies. Together with them, he was part of a network of stock traders and stock market journalists (called the “Bosler clique”) who systematically raised the prices of relatively unknown listed companies whose shares people in their network had previously bought – classic market manipulation, which is said to have brought the clique around 17 million euros until the criminal game was ended (see Spiegel 2010). However, according to the trial against the group, Janich was not one of the ringleaders in the network (see Spiegel 2012). He was neither charged nor sentenced. The main victims were small investors who, in the wild economic years of the 2000s, trusted that everything was going well with the stock market. Absurdly enough, Janich was thus associated with groups charged with criminal economic manipulation of the kind that he, as a conspiracy ideologue, would later accuse other groups of.
Political ambitions
In the meantime, Oliver Janich tried his hand as a party founder and politician. A tendency to overestimate his own abilities shines through in the fact that he founded the “Party der Vernunft” (English: “Party of Reason”) in 2009, because he had received 100 positive letters from readers following a thought experiment in Focus Money about a libertarian party, meaning here one that rejects state action as much possible. The “Party of Reason” rejected the welfare state and called for a decentralised, minimalist state and direct democracy. The protection of societal minorities and human rights were up for negotiation. Janich was party chairman until 2013 and in 2014 tried to gain his party’s nomination as a candidate for the office of Mayor of Munich – but failed to gather the minimum number of supporter signatures. The party continues to exist – without any success.
Down the rabbit hole
During his career as a financial journalist, Janich began to take an interest in conspiracy ideologies. His entry into the world of “Truthers”, i.e. those conspiracy fans who believe they know another hidden truth: articles on conspiracy ideologies focussing on 9/11. Subsequently, the “enlightenment” about a “New World Order” became Janich’s mission – a conspiracy ideology with antisemitic connotations that “elites” and “powers” acting in secret and only for their own benefit stand behind governments or economic powers, “pulling the strings of the world” and having a “worldwide agenda”, a centuries-old antisemitic conspiracy narrative. He “saw” and “sees” signs of this everywhere in business and politics. He reports on Freemason lodges and the alleged “evidence” of how they control politicians.
As serious media were less and less willing to give Janich the time of day and no longer published his inventions, he wrote books like The Capitalism Conspiracy. The Secret Circles of Power and their Methods (2010), The United States of Europe. Secret Documents Reveal: The Dark Plans of the Elite (2013) and New World Order Exposed: Strategy, Tactics and Methods of the Power Elite (2018). He also published in far-right and conspiracy-sympathetic media such as Kopp online and Compact, as well as in far-right, libertarian media such as eigentümlich frei. Conspiracy ideology-based and antisemitic pamphlets, often written in hateful language, were twinned – almost naturally in this journalistic environment – with racism, Islamophobia, antidemocratic attitudes and anti-feminist views.
And then came the internet
The man who has hundreds of thousands of attentive followers on social media listening to his explanations of the world has a biography full of failures and had links to the “Bosler clique” of stock market manipulators, who cheated the very “little people” who are supposedly following him now. His political ambitions led to a right-wing libertarian party that championed an economic and social ruthlessness.
Nevertheless, as the figures clearly show, Oliver Janich has built up a large following, which is likely to contribute significantly to his livelihood by buying his books and subscribing to his “premium” channels.
Based on this, one would assume this YouTube Truther star to be a highly charismatic person or a brilliant writer of sharp-tongued texts. None of this is the case. He talks and writes in an ineloquent way, sometimes agitated with furious, faecal-inspired language, sometimes so monotonous that he seems sedated. His analyses are rather dull and are unable to even feign a sense of wisdom. His conspiracy repertoire is also merely average, but broadly varied: there is an antisemitic tenor of an alleged “New World Order”, which he identifies in politics, the economy and entertainment, as well as racism, Islamophobia, “fake news” and hate against social networks, which seem to be the centre of his life, but which also regulate and block him from time to time. Bilderbergers, freemasons, Rothschilds are everywhere in his rants.
In 2020, he took up the topic of climate denial, though somewhat sporadically. But then, QAnon emerged as the new conspiracy trend. Janich had already starting spreading this trend back when it was only discussed among hardened conspiracy ideologists in Germany.
Janich thus became one of the most enthusiastic advocates of this wild conspiracy ideology in Germany by 2020 (see Belltower.News). Since then, his social media channels have been pushing messages about the “deep state”, alleged paedophile networks, Satanism and Donald Trump worship. He also likes to combine his topics to get more buzzwords in the titles of his videos. To name a few:
- “Lodge Brother and Agent Provocateur”: Attila Hildmann & the Third Temple
- There was never an epidemic! Evidence from the laboratories of the Republic
- “We are already in the Corona-dictatorship” – in conversation with Member of Parliament Hansjörg Müller
- 9/11: Can aircraft made of aluminium penetrate steel beams? A magical mega-ritual
- “The vaccination dictator” – How dangerous is Bill Gates?
- Adrenochrome – the evidence: What CIA files reveal
- Insider: Federal government prepares for uprisings – Bilderberger & the Corona crisis
- Rothschild head-hunter & Bill Gates want world government because of pandemic
- The satanic background of the climate movement
This is all nonsense, but it is always presented with the greeting, “Hello, friends of truth”, and sometimes with nothing but the interjection: “This is fact!” Oliver Janich sells his lies as “investigative journalism” and probably avoids lawsuits because non-fans lose their attention during his monotonous sermons.
The social networker
Oliver Janich’s large popularity seems to stem form his networking abilities. In his conspiracy-laden far-right populism variety store, there is something for everyone – not just for other alt-right content producers, but also for AfD politicians, right-wing extremists or other conspiracy ideologists. As a columnist in the far-right magazine Compact he has become well-known in the scene, a relationship he constantly cultivates. Above all, however, Janich continually interviews people from different parts of the spectrum, and they constantly interview him as well. In this way, he contributes to the connection of different far-right milieus.
Xavier Naidoo is his most prominent fan and was a frequent guest in his videos this year. In his videos, he has also met figures from the “Querdenker” movement, such as Attila Hildmann, Heiko Schrang, Samuel Eckert and ex-national soccer player Thomas Berthold, as well as with formerly semi-famous and now far-right individuals like actor Michael Lesch, ex-CDU Minister Günther Krause, ex-journalist Matthias Mattussek, ex-news anchor and current conspiracy icon Eva Hermann or the ex-policeman, ex-hooligan and PI-News columnist Stefan Schubert.
This clique also includes other alt-right content creators like the “Digital Chronicler”, Naomi Seibt, Oliver Flesch or “Hyperion” (Homid Mebrahtu), as well as right-wing extremists like Hagen Grell, Chris Ares or Martin Sellner. In addition, there are other conspiracy ideology writers such as Gerhard Wischnewski, Tilman Knechtel or Rico Albrecht or esoteric doctors like Dr. Rüdiger Dahlke. The conversations are as uninterestingly arranged as Janich’s scripts, because his conversation partners are usually similarly vain, ideological stubborn and out of touch with reality. The videos are often very long, and that is the only consolation: that Janich’s followers at least lose a lot of time in consuming his verbal discharges.
Translated by W. F. Thomas. Original German text: https://www.belltower.news/social-media-rechtsaussen-oliver-janich-qanon-desinformationen-auf-allen-kanaelen-105577/
