Chancellor Friedrich Merz has filed more speech crime charges against detractors than anyone else in the history of the Federal Republic

Last November, a Bavarian pensioner had his house raided by police for the crime of retweeting a meme implying that then-Economics Minister Robert Habeck might be a moron.

The case took the Federal Republic by storm. In its wake, Germans learned that Habeck had personally signed hundreds of similar criminal complaints – at least 805 as of August 2024. This made Habeck by far the thinnest-skinned member of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s cabinet, with the closest runner-up – Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock – having put her name to a mere 513 such actions. Both Greens were however vastly outdone by the terrifying MEP hag Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, who amid her unceasing warmongering and deranged talkshow appearances somehow found time to file 1,900 charges against her many critics.

German courts use cases like these to impose crushing fines on ordinary social media users who can ill afford them, while police and prosecutors exploit these complaints to conduct punitive raids on offenders’ homes and seize their electronic devices. The aim is discourage unauthorised discourse on social media and to criminalise political dissent.

As I will never tire of typing, we know little about the scale and intensity of speech oppression in Germany; only a minority of cases ever make it into the press. Most people just endure the harassment and get on with their lives. Nevertheless, we are always learning a little more, and this weekend saw a great sensation: Frédéric Schwilden, writing for Welt am Sonntag, revealed that even the industriously punitive Strack-Zimmermann is but a bit player in this game. She has nothing on Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who may well have initiated more speech prosecutions than any other person in the entire history of the Federal Republic.

Let us go through the article together. It reads like a long, twisted, dark joke.