Germany is raiding people’s homes, bringing them in for questioning, and throwing them in jail over things the German government doesn’t want them to say.
What could possibly go wrong?
Adam Satariano and Christopher Schuetze of the New York Times detail Germany’s ongoing crackdown against “online hate speech, insults and misinformation” (emphasis added) that stems back to a “coordinated nationwide crackdown” in March. Hundreds of homes have been raided, electronic devices have been confiscated, and more than 1,000 Germans have been charged since 2018.
One man, for example, faces a fine of around $1,378 for sharing a quote falsely attributed to a German politician. The quote claimed that the politician said, “Just because someone rapes, robs or is a serious criminal is not a reason for deportation.” Even if this random civilian did not know the quote was fake, prosecutors determined that “the accused bears the risk of spreading a false quote without checking it.”
The politician gleefully revels in this result, because you “can’t just accuse and hurt people with impunity.”
So hurting a politician’s feelings by sharing a fake quote gets you raided and fined in Germany. As highlighted earlier, insults are illegal too. One Twitter user had his house raided by police for tweeting at a German politician, “You are such a penis.”
This sounds incredibly authoritarian — because it is incredibly authoritarian. Unleashing the police on random people who post things on the internet that the government decides should be illegal is something that Iran or China or Russia would do, not something we should expect from a Western democracy.
Perhaps most galling, Germany claims that this is done in support of free speech. According to Satariano and Schuetze, “The authorities in Germany argue that they are encouraging and defending free speech by providing a space where people can share opinions without fear of being attacked or abused.”
No, now they need only fear being arrested in the night by the government because a politician didn’t like one of their posts.
Giving the government free rein to censor “hate speech” and insults means giving the government free rein to decide what is “hate speech” or insulting. Censoring hate doesn’t eliminate hate; it drives it further underground and fosters more resentment because it is entirely subjective. And it sets the stage for the very abuses that German officials are scared of. What exactly do they think will happen if their political opponents are handed this kind of power?
Whenever some liberal professor or activist (or journalist) whines about how hate speech or “disinformation” should be illegal, know that the natural result is Germany’s censorship regime, where politicians decide what is legal or illegal, and social media posts are answered by police raids and jail time. Anyone who supports that should never be allowed near government power.
