Oh, how wonderful it is to live in an extremely democratic state like Germany, where the police will never harass you or fine you or raid your house for criticising the government

It is just great to live in the Federal Republic of Germany, which is an extremely liberal Western democracy. Here, everybody can express himself freely, because we have a great Constitution which totally protects our rights. Article 5 of our basic law, for example, declares to all and sundry that “Everyone has the right to freely express and disseminate his or her opinion in speech, writing and pictures.” What a wonderful freedom that is. Every night when I go to sleep, I feel a great happiness about this freedom, and I remember how bad things were in the DDR, when saying the wrong thing could land you in the sights of the Stasi.

We enjoy so much freedom in Germany, that it is totally fine for farmers to hang up protest signs attacking the Green Party. Our police and our politicians know that the freedom to criticise the government is central to the healthy, functioning democratic order all Germans enjoy:

A poster with the slogan “Greens and Green voters will no longer be served by us – German farmers!” attracted the attention of police, who say the poster incites hatred. The Neuruppin public prosecutor’s office has now launched an investigation. Chief prosecutor Cyrill Klement confirmed this … The public prosecutor’s office has "affirmed" the initial suspicion of incitement to hatred and “started investigations.” Around a two weeks ago, police officers and a person in plain clothes confiscated the sign from a farmer’s private property.

Our police and politicians are so enlightened that they have no problem at all with multiple signs expressing refusal to do business with the Greens. That’s what a great democracy we have:

A fruit seller at the weekly market in Wittenberge … put up a poster on his van with the words “Greens & Green voters will no longer served by us.” He is now facing criminal charges for this offence. The police confiscated the poster on Friday morning. According to the police, he is under suspicion of inciting hatred. The state security department responsible for political and crimes against the state has taken over the investigation.

The merchant who displayed the poster on his vehicle comes from the district of Stendal in Saxony-Anhalt. The police accuse him of not showing any insight when the officers took the poster down and filed a complaint. Initially, employees of the Wittenberg public order office had informed the police.

In an authoritarian state you might see videos of police removing political posters like this, but not in democratic Germany.

Even though the Greens are in government, you can say what you want about individual Green politicians. That’s what living in a liberal democracy is all about. When a local entrepreneur hung up mock campaign posters last fall, like this one showing Cem Özdemir with a carrot through his empty head, Ricarda Lang on a steamroller, Robert Habeck with empty pockets and Annalena Baerbock as a child …

… or this one suggesting that Habeck cannot even count to three …

…everyone marvelled at our unbounded freedom of expression. In the DDR, the Stasi might have searched this man’s house, but not in today’s Germany, the best Germany of all time:

Michael Much is an entrepreneur and lives in Gmund am Tegernsee in Bavaria. There … he put up posters criticising the policies of four Green politicians in September 2023.

Among other things, Much’s mocking posters quoted the statement by Federal Economics Minister Robert Habeck that “companies don’t go bankrupt, they just [stop] producing.” Underneath it was written: “Can [Habeck] even count to three?”

Shortly afterwards, on 25 October, the police came to Much’s house and searched it for evidence. As Much quickly admitted that he had put up the posters himself, the Munich II public prosecutor's office fined him 6,000 Euros for insulting political figures.

The case will be heard at the district court in Miesbach on 21 March.

We are so free here in Germany that you can even call Habeck a “dumbass” and you won’t be so much as fined. Our politicians are not sacred figures whom you cannot speak ill of; it’s not like in the Middle Ages, when you had to worry about lèse-majesté:

Federal Economics Minister Robert has filed a criminal complaint because a man from Bavaria called him a “dumbass.” The Bavarian now has to pay a fine of 2100 Euro.

On X, a man from the Bavarian town of Wunsiedel posted a …. photo of the Federal Minister for Economic Affairs Robert Habeck with the word “dumbass.” Shortly afterwards, Habeck reported the man to the police…

The man had “disparaged Habeck’s honour” with his action, the public prosecutor's office in Wunsiedel stated …

Of course, there are limits on freedom of speech in Germany, but they are very sensible. You cannot approvingly reproduce National Socialist symbols, for example, but these laws are enforced very narrowly, only against neo-Nazis and other open enemies of our wonderful democracy. As friend-of-the-blog C.J. Hopkins can attest, authorities would never pursue the use of such symbols in satirical contexts:

According to Apollo News, a search warrant was issued in Münster due to a pro-Israeli post. The trigger was simply that the user shared a post from another account that documented anti-Semitic [messaging] at a Palestinian demonstration.

At around 6.30 a.m. on Wednesday morning last week, the doorbell of the Twitter user, who lives in Münster, rang several times. Initially, he expected it was aprank, but after the ringing continued, he gave in and opened the door. Three officers stood in front of him with a search warrant. The warrant had been issued on suspicion of “using symbols of anti-constitutional organisations.”

Apollo News was able to view the search warrant. The picture shared by the person concerned on 12 October showed a young woman displaying a mobile phone picture of a swastika at a demonstration in New York. Another Twitter user shared this image in a meme.

On the basis of this picture, the Münster police came to the young man’s home – with the accusation that he had not distanced himself from the symbols shown on it. On the spot, the police offered him an interview in place of searching house [and] confiscati[ng] … his mobile devices. The young man accepted the … offer and explained the obvious … that he had shared the picture to satirically criticise the anti-Semitism of the pro-Palestine faction.

We have such an open democratic discourse here in the Federal Republic, that I feel the need to introduce a special term for it. Germany is not merely democratic, it is hyperdemocratic. That is why our police feel no need at all to patrol the internet for politically inconvenient content. There are no plans, for example, to fund an entire office to combat “hate” on the internet:

450 civil servants will … examine around 720,000 reported cases per year. In future, platform operators will be obliged to inform the relevant authorities if they “become aware of information that gives rise to the suspicion that a criminal offence that poses a threat to the life or safety of a person ... has been committed,” as stated in the Digital Services Act (DSA).

The Federal Police will then carry out an initial criminal assessment and forward the relevant incidents to the responsible public prosecutor’s office. As mentioned, this procedure is already in practice today. It is however highly controversial and likely to be used on a much more massive scale … The judiciary will be empowered to target citizens in the absence of a criminal complaint or any action initiated by the public prosecutor’s office.

And one thing our rulers would certainly never under any circumstances so much as contemplate, would be outsourcing speech enforcement to NGOs, thereby escaping many legal constraints on the state itself:

The German government is increasingly outsourcing the fight against “hate” and the “right” to non-governmental organisations.

The “REspect!” reporting office receives generous state funding via the “Demokratie Leben” programme. At the same time, its sole purpose is to file criminal charges for allegedly criminal “online hate online.” The organisation boasts on its website that it has already filed more than 8,000 complaints with the Federal Police. The “REspect!” reporting centre is just one example of many. The method used here is more than questionable: The federal government supports organisations that perform de facto state functions. These organisations, however, operate entirely under private law; principles of equal treatment and the like do not apply to their activities. They can operate with opaque methods and are anything but politically neutral…

Unfortunately, all is not honey and daffodils here in the Federal Republic. The democratic parties, like the Greens and the SPD, are stalwart defenders of democracy. That is why we call them democratic. Somehow, though, there are also antidemocratic parties, like Alternative für Deutschland, whose members plot every day to deprive us of our freedoms. If the AfD were in power, we can only imagine what they would do. As we’ve seen, it’s totally fine right now to say you won’t serve the Greens, but in an AfD dictatorship, Evonik CEO Christian Kullmann would certainly face sanctions for saying he doesn’t want any AfD supporters in his company, as would those pub owners in Baden-Württemberg who said last week that AfD “sympathisers” were no longer welcome in their establishment. And our internet freedoms would be a thing of the past under an AfD in government. I could easily imagine them publishing lengthy, overproduced 84-page reports on the problem of political dissent on the internet, for example. That is something our eminently democratic Family Minister Lisa Paus from the exceptionally democratic Green Party would never do. To protect our freedoms and democracy itself, it is crucial to keep the antidemocratic AfD out of government. This is why the democratic parties refuse to form coalitions with the AfD and why some are even considering whether they should be banned. Imagine living in a world where the police raid your house just because you said the Finance Minister can’t count. It seems almost unimaginable, but that’s what’s at stake here.