German police conduct coordinated nationwide raids for the pseudo-crime of "hate posting" in their ongoing battle against freedom of expression

Bavarian police conducting an apartment raid for internet “hate speech.”

Apollo News reports on the newest, most irregular German holiday, which consists of the police conducting coordinated raids on and interrogations of ordinary people who are alleged to have said rude things on the internet:

On Tuesday morning police across Germany conducted raids targeting “hate speech and incitement” on the internet. According to the news agency dpa, there are currently 170 operations underway, including house searches and other measures. Those accused are charged with insulting politicians and inciting hatred …

The Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) is in charge of the operation … In North Rhine-Westphalia, several police authorities struck simultaneously at 6 a.m. Police from Düsseldorf, Dortmund, Gelsenkirchen, Cologne, Bielefeld, Münster, Hagen, and Bonn are among those involved. Fourteen suspects are to be questioned and two search warrants executed.¹ The individuals in question frequently express themselves on social media, such as on X.

… The Action Day against alleged hate posts has been taking place regularly for years. On June 18, the BKA joined forces with the reporting center “REspect!” to participate in the “International Day Against Hate and Incitement.” People were called upon to report posts that allegedly spread hate.

Today was the twelfth such “Action Day against Hate and Incitement on the Internet.” That is only an approximate title; it varies slightly across press sources. This dubious ritual began in 2016, after Merkel opened the German borders to the entirety of the developing world and our politicians grew tired of people calling them imbeciles online. Police are very open that the goal of these coordinated Action Days is intimidation – or, as they put it, “deterrence.”

Our federal police love this holiday so much they often celebrate it twice a year, which is why are already on the twelfth such day, even though we have only had nine years since the establishment of this custom. Sometimes our betters even throw in bonus action days that for some reason don’t count, as during Covid when they conducted a special “Action Day against Political Hate Postings” after the seventh “Nationwide Action Day against Hate Postings” but before the eighth “Nationwide Action Day against Hate Postings.” Who knows how many such action days we have really had, especially considering that since 2020 the broader EU has adopted this sporadic holiday and occasionally coordinates its own Continent-wide “Action Day against Hatred and Incitement on the Internet.”

As always, “the focus is on online right-wing extremist statements” – especially those statements made by “digital arsonists” (lmao) who are exploiting the internet to do and say things they would never dream of doing or saying in real life:

“Digital arsonists must not be able to hide behind their cell phones or computers,” North Rhine-Westphalia’s Interior Minister Herbert Reul (CDU) said … Many people have forgotten the difference between hate and opinion, according to … Reul. “It’s so simple: What you don’t do in the real world, you don’t do online either. It’s time for more integrity, offline and online.”

Herbert Reul, integrity advocate.

The BKA … announced in May that 10,732 crimes related to so-called “hate posts” were recorded last year – an increase of about 34 percent compared to 2023. Compared to 2021, the numbers have quadrupled.

Obviously, internet “hate” has not quadrupled since 2021. The only thing that has increased is the quantity of resources being used to hunt down and punish social media users.

Federal Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt (CSU), apparently unaware that the victims of the present enforcement holiday are disproportionately likely to be his own constituents, made an ass of himself earlier today by saying how “important” it is to “conduct these action days against hate posts,” because “this is part of our policy against radicalisation and polarisation.” Dead-eyed, he continued to muse formulaically that “radicalisation also takes place online,” where it “forms the basis for further radical thinking and possibly even violent acts.”

Note how nonspecific and fuzzy all of this is. What is “hate” actually, what is “radicalisation,” and why is all of this some particular malady of the online world? Obviously we are dealing here with an insecure political elite terrified of losing their hold on power, but that’s only half the problem. The other half of it is the fact that these guys know nothing about the internet and find it just outrageous that nobody likes them there. The dynamics are vastly similar to the hysteria clueless olds kicked up about violent music and violent video games in decades past.

By calling these Action Days idiotic, I don’t mean to minimise them. They are borderline illegal, for they exploit what should be purely investigative tactics (interrogations, house searches) to scare and punish people in advance of any criminal conviction. The emphasis is not only on right-leaning posters, but invariably and most disgracefully on ordinary people with relatively little social media reach, whose posts in many cases have been seen a mere handful of times. The message is clear: They can get you, whoever you are; they can get anybody. Living in a country whose authorities amuse themselves by periodically harassing their own citizens in this way is disturbing. It’s an absolute scandal that all the major political parties support this, save for Alternative für Deutschland. It’s a reason to vote AfD all by itself.

1. To be clear, these figures only apply to the German state of NRW. Nationwide the action consisted of 65 house searches and well over 100 interrogations.