Hessen Interior Minister announces measures to combat "unfiltered opinions" on social media, state media expert calls for the regulation of internet memes, and other insanity from the Federal Republic

German Political Insanity Update I

Roman Poseck, Interior Minister of Hessen (CDU), filterer-in-chief of political opinions.

Look, I know I owe you varied topics, and I promise to deliver on that soon. I’m working on a longer piece about the decay of Green environmentalism, and I also want to write about the strange politics of Germany as an expression of our peculiarly uniform middle-class society. But, for the moment, I just can’t tear my eyes away from the insanity that is attending our elections. The AfD are holding strong above 20% and the CDU are having trouble breaking free of 30%. The writing is on the wall: Whatever government comes out of this is going to be a godforsaken mess. Our rulers knows this too, and they are losing their minds. The collective hysteria and repressive zeal is exceeding last year’s unprecedented panic about ThE RiGHt, which is really saying something.

These stories keep coming so fast and heavy that I can’t keep track of them all, so I am inaugurating a new series with regular updates until everybody calms the fuck down, or (I guess) until they turn off the internet in Germany – which sounds crazy, but every day things get more extreme here. For lack of a better term, I’ll call this series the German Political Insanity Update, and I’ll try to produce an installment at least once a week.

Today we have the Vice President of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution declaring that criticism of public media is a “danger to democracy.” That matters; this man is among the top political enforcers and domestic intelligence chiefs in the country. We also have Nancy Faeser’s Interior Ministry sending a threatening memorandum to all federal police officers, warning them that active membership in “confirmed right-wing extreme” groups – like specific regional chapters of Alternative für Deutschland – could constitute professional misconduct and warrant dismissal. She goes further, declaring that the state will not tolerate its civil servants joining any “extreme right-wing,” “racist” or “anti-human” group, vastly exceeding the bounds of her authority. We have the Green Party Chancellor Candidate Robert Habeck calling Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg “autocrats” and comparing them to the Communist Party of China. These are not idle words from some crazy man; Habeck will very likely have a cabinet position in the next government, and it’s not wholly inconceivable that Germany ends trying to ban Facebook or Twitter at some point. We even have bizarre “experts” on state media calling for the government regulation of internet memes. Internet memes!

And then, finally, we have this story from Hessen, confirming that our constitutional protectors are turning their sights towards the project of repressing internet speech in general. The State Office for the Protection of the Constitution in Hessen – under Interior Minister Roman Poseck (CDU) – has formed “a temporary organisational division” to “analyse information and coordinate measures” regarding the “opinions” that “accumulate on social media platforms.” This new task-force will combine agents from the counter-espionage and political extremism divisions of state domestic intelligence, for the purpose of fortifying the federal elections in Hessen. In his statement, Poseck voiced the particular anxiety that “social media platforms” provide access to “unfiltered” opinions. Apparently his office hopes to filter more of them.

More from Poseck’s statement, issued on Monday:

In the digital world, fake news is spreading faster than ever before – especially on social media. Opinions accumulate on social media platforms, some of them unfiltered, including targeted fake news … Disinformation is a major problem, especially during elections. Foreign actors try to influence elections and democratic processes, thereby undermining trust in institutions and democratic forces. This can poison the political climate and deepen divisions within society. Disinformation can influence voting decisions; the effects of disinformation can therefore be devastating for our democracy

… Russia is deliberately using disinformation … to influence international public opinion and undermine the credibility of the Ukrainian and other governments. Similarly serious was the flood of false claims surrounding the US presidential elections, which caused lasting damage to trust in democratic processes. The current interference in European political debate by Elon Musk, who heads the platform X, is a cause for concern. The announcement by Mark Zuckerberg, the head of Meta, that Facebook and Instagram would no longer fact-check is also a bad sign.

… [F]ake news and manipulation endanger social cohesion. It is clear that the fight against disinformation requires joint efforts by the EU, the federal government, the federal states, social media platform operators and society …

It is the same noxious and deeply dishonest argument we have heard since 2016. The inconvenient political opinions of the rabble are reconstructed as “targeted fake news,” “manipulation” and “disinformation” proceeding from a rotating cast of villains from other countries – presently the ominous Putin-Musk-Zuckerberg triad. In this way, our politicians conflate their own people with foreign enemies and seek to deprive their citizens of the right to free political expression under the cover of maintaining “social cohesion” and defending “our democracy.” These lunatics would like nothing so much as to shut down the entire internet, which is an enormous thorn in their side – not because Musk has occasional conversations with blacklisted German political personalities on Twitter, but because it has given millions of ordinary people a voice. We’re not supposed to have a voice, we’re supposed to shut up.