Lateral thinker activist
How Thomas Berthold became a right-wing conspiracy theorist
Thomas Berthold at the lateral thinker demo in Berlin at the end of August
© Christoph Hardt / Picture Alliance
Football world champion Thomas Berthold has been a prominent activist of the conspiracy-theoretical “maverick” movement since the outbreak of the corona pandemic. Many are appalled by his career, but he does not come as a complete surprise.
Thomas Berthold has spoken again. The former national soccer player and world champion from 1990 called in a video message to come to Berlin on Wednesday, November 18, to prevent “the Enabling Act”. What is meant is the adoption of the revised Infection Protection Act by the grand coalition in the Bundestag. After all, it’s about the big picture: With the law, we would “say goodbye to basic rights and democracy,” whispers Berthold in the best conspiracy theoretician.
At some point, a golf ball must have blown to him. Fuck me fat, that’s over. #Berthold pic.twitter.com/9fWfYmr7YB
– Frank Lussem (@ frankie1960) November 16, 2020
Berthold, 56 years old, has apparently found a new role, one that brings him attention, but also recognition from a questionable source. Since his appearance at the lateral thinker demonstration in Stuttgart at the beginning of August, he has been one of the most prominent figures in the initiative. However, anyone wondering why the former professional got lost in right-wing esoteric circles should take a look at the biography of the former world-class defender. At least one thing can be said: Berthold has always been headstrong, offensive and a troublemaker. Strongly expressed it could be expressed neutrally.
Conspiracy theories
During his time at Bayern in the early 1990s, he was thrown out of the team because he had messed with coach Erich Ribbeck. Berthold returned from Italy very self-confident and considered Ribbeck’s training methods to be backward (“the worst coach I have ever seen”). For the last six months he sat in the stands and is said to have spent his free time playing golf. This earned him the derision from the Munich people of being “the highest paid golfer since Bernhard Langer”. Finally, at the end of 1994, he even succeeded in being kicked out of the national team, for which he had played 62 times (18 World Cup appearances). He had accused fellow players and national coach Berti Vogts after the weak World Cup in the United States of dilettantism.
That Berthold had a penchant for conspiracy theories first became apparent in 1999. On the website buecher.de he advertised the book “Secret Societies and Their Power in the 20th Century”. The title, a collection of right-wing extremist conspiracy theories, was on the index for sedition.
That was just before the end of his career. Berthold played for VfB Stuttgart for the last seven years. In 2000 he ended his career after a brief stint in Turkey. Since then he’s been doing what many ex-professionals do. He appears from time to time as an expert and columnist for various media. However, the soccer magazine “kicker” recently ended the collaboration because of Berthold’s “Querdenker” appearance in Stuttgart. Previously, an engagement as a manager at the then fourth division Fortuna Düsseldorf was not so successful, last year it failed when the attempt to be elected to the supervisory board of VfB Stuttgart.
The world needs guys like Berthold, says Berthold
In 2007 he said in an interview with the magazine “11 Freunde”: “We have been going in circles here in Germany for years. It’s always the same soup that swims around here.” Back then, Berthold meant the young football professionals whom he accused of being only PR-controlled and adapted. Guys like him were no longer there.
He justifies his current engagement with the lateral thinkers with the fact that we are supposedly living in a “hygiene dictatorship” and are only “informed one-sidedly by the leading media”, as he said in an interview. The “Frankfurter Rundschau” wrote: “Thomas Berthold only knows black or white, gray tones are alien to him, differentiation is not his thing. Thomas Berthold likes things simple – in politics as well as in football.”
He defended himself against sharp criticism of his appearances with the lateral thinkers: “99 percent of this feedback was positive. I believe that many people in our society share my opinion. But they are afraid of what to say.” That is how he sees himself. He sees himself as a fighter for justice in a world that is out of joint. As simple as that.
Sources: “Spiegel online”, “11Freunde”, “Frankfurter Rundschau”, SWR, N-TV
