Stefan Niehoff was prosecuted for a tweet that compared the policies towards COVID-unvaccinated people to how the Third Reich treated Jews. He also made comparisons to the Nazis with respect to how the German government is treating the AfD. These are both criticisms of government policy with respect to public health and handling of democratic opposition parties. The man was put through a criminal trial and then found guilty, being fined for his tweets.
He is not an exception. Twice in August 2022, the American playwright, satirist and longtime Berlin resident C.J. Hopkins tweeted cover art from his book on The Rise of the New Normal Reich. This art featured an image of a Covid-era medical mask with a barely-visible white swastika superimposed upon it. In his first tweet, Hopkins wrote that “Masks are symbols of ideological conformity. That’s all that they are, and that’s all they ever were. Stop pretending that they were ever anything else or get used to wearing them.” In his second tweet, Hopkins simply quoted Health Minister Karl Lauterbach’s notorious statement that “Masks always send a signal.”
For those tweets, Amazon Germany promptly banned Hopkins’s book, and eight months later the Berlin state prosecutor’s office informed Hopkins that he was under investigation, because they believed his tweets violated German criminal statutes against “the use of symbols of unconstititional and terrorist organisations.” In January of 2024, Hopkins was tried before the Tiergarten Berlin District Court and acquitted. In many countries that would be the end of it, but in Germany double jeopardy is not a thing. The prosecutor appealed, and Hopkins found himself on trial once again, this time before the Berlin Court of Appeals. The appellate court overturned his acquittal and found him guilty.
So these are two men who have been prosecuted for their criticism of policy, without groups being involved. But the more common pattern goes like this:
Activist: We must welcome infinity Muslim migrants.
Person: No we shouldn't. That would be bad.
Activist: Why do you say that?
Person: Because they commit crimes at a higher rate than we do and their culture is incompatible with ours.
Activist: That's hate speech and you are going to be fined/imprisoned for it.
When the left is obsessed with group-based identity politics, there's no difference between banning criticism of groups and banning criticism of left wing politics. Enforcing the former is simply a way to prevent anyone explaining or justifying their position, meaning they can't actually advocate for it. It's no difference to an outright ban on opposition.
I do believe you will say it endlessly, as you're clearly in denial about what's happening (lemme guess, are you German?).
Germany is months away from outright banning the AfD, the primary opposition party that has hundreds of MPs, on the basis that the SED um I mean the SPD hates their policies. That's what punishment of dissent looks like, what a regime looks like: bulk disenfranchising a quarter of the population because they object to left wing policy.
If they get those judges appointed it'll likely be lights out for German democracy. All the AfD MPs will disappear overnight, leaving the left wing parties with a majority. They will then launch a vote of no confidence in Merz and take over the government, at which point the already extremely harsh oppression of the left's enemies will be ramped up much further still. The right will be fully driven underground by many more prosecutions of the form you claim aren't about punishing dissent, and Germany will be fully converted to the DDR model in which there are theoretically competitive elections, but the only parties allowed to exist are all on the left.
I really hope you're not German, that you're just very stubborn instead. Because if Germany does get turned into a left wing dictatorship there's no limit to how crazy and dysfunctional life there will become. The USA will be paradise in comparison.
Am I understanding you correctly here - your idea of free speech is that people should be able to wear/use Nazi symbols proudly? That's what you mean when you say there's no free speech in Europe?
Both of those men used the Nazi symbol as a warning: "this policy seems bad in a totalitarian way, like what those very bad people did in the 1930s, so we shouldn't be doing that". They didn't wear these symbols, nor present them as a representation of their own beliefs, nor glorify them in any way. They used them as a compact representation of where they feared the slippery slope can lead.
Discussing history, learning from it and avoiding a repeat of it is a foundational justification for political speech. If Germans cannot point to their own past to warn about the present - and under the current German government they clearly can't because people who do keep getting prosecuted - then they cannot learn from it and might well repeat it.
All of this is obvious. The last two paragraphs were already very clear in my previous post. There was no way to interpret them the way you did, so I don't believe you are arguing in good faith. At his trial, CJ Hopkins pointed out that mainstream German media routinely printed the swastika on their front page in relation to the AfD, yet they weren't prosecuted under the same legal theory he was being prosecuted under. The symbols aren't really banned. The judgement, when finally read out, didn't make any mention of the defense arguments at all. It was a show trial and everyone knew it, including independent journalists:
They did that knowing that Nazi symbols were banned in Germany. They did it on purpose to get in trouble with the law in order to conflate the two things: 1) using Nazi symbols, 2) criticizing government policy.
it's a classic motte and bailey approach, and I'm sure they're grateful to you for defending their demagoguery.
I already addressed your claim Nazi symbols are forbidden in the post you clearly didn't read (again).
It's darkly amusing that you guys have gone from "source?!" to "it's good that the provocative troublemakers are being punished" in the span of about 5 posts whilst you simultaneously flag kill FirmwareBurner. Nothing screams "we have free speech in Europe" like aggressive censoring of people who point out you don't.
Whatever dude. You can deny what's happening for a while, but one day you'll wake up and realize everyone around the world just sort of ambiently knows that Europe has become a totalitarian dictatorship.
