Police in Baden-Württemburg break up a perfectly legal private political meeting and ban Martin Sellner from an entire town in this, the best and most democratic Germany of all time

Nothing threatens German democracy more than our rights to free expression and assembly. If our constitutional order is to survive, our constitutional freedoms must be abridged.

Riot police in Neulingen demonstrate the present state of democratic freedoms in Germany by breaking up a private and perfectly legal political event.

The past four years have been a very amazing time in Germany – a time in which I’ve learned many new and exciting things about my country.

For example, I’ve learned that the state can use emergency provisions to literally house-arrest its entire population indefinitely.

I’ve learned that our politicians can forbid protests on the slightest pretence, that they can conduct a public hate campaign against millions of their own citizens who refuse to comply with nonsense hygienic measures, and then after the hysteria has passed, use the towering indifference of a complicit media to impose an enduring regime of near-absolute silence upon their misdeeds.

I’ve learned that domestic intelligence agencies can unilaterally repurpose elements of the DDR criminal code to make comparing these authoritarian policies to the tactics of communist regimes a political offence.

I’ve learned that deriding the Greens, calling self-described socialist politicians socialists, opposing mass migration, denouncing trans ideology, and even criticising state media can make you politically suspect and subject you to surveillance from the Federal Protectors of the Constitution.

I’ve learned that the Interior Ministry and its enforcers can pursue those who “mock the state” as they would organised criminal gangs, that they can ban entire newspapers overnight and without a scintilla of due process, and that state politicians can ignore their statutory obligations to neutrality in the exercise of their office and call for nationwide regime-sponsored protests against their political opposition.

Almost every day is a learning experience in this, the best and most democratic Germany of all time. Rarely does a week pass that I don’t learn something entirely new. Today, I learned that the German police in Baden-Württemberg can use an obscure aspect of their statutory authority to ban individuals from entire municipal districts. All they need to do is claim these individuals have the potential to commit a criminal offence. They don’t need to have a good reason; they can just show up at your pub or your apartment and demand that you leave. This is an incredible power, as it would seem to vitiate entirely and at the very least whatever it is that remains of our rights to freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, freedom of association and freedom of movement (Articles 5, 8, 9 and 11 of our Basic Law).

From the deutsche-presse agentur, via Welt:

The police have stopped a reading by the right-wing extremist author Martin Sellner in the municipality of Neulingen in Baden-Württemberg – and prohibited his presence in the town. This was to prevent criminal offences, according to a statement from the Pforzheim police headquarters …

In consultation with the municipality of Neulingen, a temporary ban was issued for the area of the municipality on the legal basis of the Baden-Württemberg Police Act …

The ban was issued in the evening immediately after the private meeting began. Sellner then left the event and complied with the order, it was said. Some of the other participants remained.

According to the police, the law allows the local police authority responsible to issue a temporary ban on a person's presence if there are facts that justify the assumption that this person will commit or contribute to the commission of a criminal offence …

Sellner was the head of the far-right Identitarian movement in Austria. He recently visited German cities to read from his book “Remigration.” When right-wing extremists use the term “remigration,” they usually mean that a large number of people of foreign origin should leave the country – even under duress.

Sellner has been a target of political hysteria in Germany since the false scandal surrounding his talk in Potsdam in January – a scandal that was likely stirred up with the assistance of domestic intelligence, for the purpose of smearing Alternative für Deutschland as dangerous right-wing extremists ahead of the European elections. Authorities in Potsdam previously tried to ban Sellner from entering Germany for a period of three years, but their order was reversed by the Potsdam administrative court, and so now our hysterical schoolmarms are trying out different methods to forbid the speech that so terrifies them.

In this video (source) we see a whole troop of riot police entering the venue where Sellner was speaking yesterday …

… and here (source) we see the police stopping Sellner’s reading and issuing him the ban. Sellner and his audience call their actions a scandal while they march him out:

I reviewed the subject of Sellner’s talk – his book on Remigration – back in March. It contains nothing that is remotely illegal, but because mass migration has become one of the most sacred political doctrines of the Federal Republic, the hall monitors are determined to suppress his critique anyway. Of course, they’re too stupid to see that their tactics will merely drive more attention to Sellner’s political programme, and that at this point they’re basically running a guerilla marketing campaign for his book.

That’s little comfort if you take the longer view. The state are developing legal tactics in the course of this false controversy that I fear they’ll begin to deploy far more widely against their critics.