Is Germany Previewing America's Speech Future?

Following up on yet another criminal case, and a concerning study by old friends at Liber-Net

“Donkey, dog, cat, shark. - Disinformation changes history!” German “anti-disinformation” message

On November 26th, three armed police officers in Berlin showed up at the door of American playwright and author C.J. Hopkins brandishing a search warrant. Having already charged and issued a “punishment order” to Hopkins two summers ago essentially over the satirical use of a swastika on the cover of his book The Rise of the New Normal Reich — it’s in a white-on-white medical mask, mocking pandemic authorities — officials returned with a new theory. After questioning him and his wife, they searched the place for evidence that Hopkins is indeed the publisher of his book and the operator of his Consent Factory blog, where the book is promoted.

“Basically, distributing and promoting my book is a crime in Germany, at least according to the District Prosecutor,” Hopkins explains.

Left, CJ’s book. Can you see Waldo? Right, the new search warrant

Europe made headlines yesterday by issuing a $140 million fine to Elon Musk’s X platform, but financial and political media for weeks now have been trumpeting a “digital simplification” plan that would ostensibly mean “rethinking its crackdown” on content. To spur investment, supposedly, President Ursula von der Leyen and EU officials are hinting at a less regulated tech future. Things have grown so confused in speechville that some human rights advocates oppose the plan, worried that less oversight would lead to more hate and discriminatory corporate surveillance. If it even happens, will “simplification” impact individuals, or just companies?

As C.J.’s case shows, it’s not clear changes are coming at ground level, at least in terms of policing of speech offenses. “Nothing has changed in Germany or the UK as far as I know,” he said yesterday. “If anything, it’s gotten worse.” He pointed to two other loud cases, a recent raid of Die Welt columnist and media studies professor Norbert Bolz, and the September sentencing of Bremen-based artist Rudolph Bauer to a €12,000 fine for “use of symbols of unconstitutional and terrorist organizations.”

Both cases would strike Americans as absurd parodies of police overreach. The conservative Bolz’s trouble stemmed from a tweet in January 2024, in which he poked fun at the left-leaning newspaper Taz by quoting one of its headlines. “Good translation of ‘woke’: Germany, wake up,” Bolz wrote. Taz had published a piece saluting a ban of the right-wing AfD party that contained the headline, “AfD ban and Höcke petition: Germany is waking up.”

The phrase Deutschland wacht auf recalled a line from the second stanza of the “Sturmlied” anthem, so Bolz essentially was raided for pointing out someone else’s maladroit use of Nazi verbiage. According to Die Welt, police told Bolz to “be more careful in the future” mit der joke-machen. Taz defended Bolz and, humorously, changed its headline.

The case of Bremer, a former Johns Hopkins fellow, was more war on irony. Like Hopkins, Bauer was a critic of pandemic policy, publishing articles with names like “Reason in Quarantine: The Lockdown as a Civilizational Collapse and Political Failure.” He said in a press release that police searched his smartphone and five “art books” plus “all rooms, adjoining rooms, cupboards, and drawers… including those of the artist’s wife,” and “120 linear meters of the scholar’s extensive library.” Ultimately, he was punished for three photomontages, including one that contained images of EU President Ursula Von der Leyen and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky shown with a “black and white imperial eagle with a swastika” in between.

Germany has long been something of an outlier among Western nations when it comes to speech, as its postwar government embraces concepts like overt bans of Holocaust denial and dissemination of Nazi propaganda as essential. However, its more recently development of a system of digital surveillance and policing has created a model for a new brand of neoliberal politics-or-else.

In these procedures the lines between actual neo-Nazism and satire are blurred, and even private criticism of immigration policies or health officials might invite visits from task forces targeting hate speech. New laws continually expand the definitions of prohibited content. For instance, in 2022, Germany added to its incitement laws bans on “discriminatory statements against persons based on gender identity.” Authorities celebrated International Women’s Day in 2024 with raids against 45 people suspected of misogynistic speech.

Similar criminal speech laws have been passed in a number of European countries, and Hopkins believes images of ICE raids and boat bombings in the U.S. are helping set the stage for a clampdown.

“Unfortunately, the populists/neo-nationalists are playing into the neoliberal establishment’s hand, becoming exactly the monster they needed it to become,” he says. “And I’m afraid the inevitable backlash is going to be quite severe.”

Hopkins isn’t alone in not buying the “digital simplification” rhetoric.

“The EU is certainly not backing down,” says Andrew Lowenthal of Liber-Net, a group dedicated to mapping corporate and government censorship. “There are many more innings to go on all this.” Andrew should know, having conducted a long study of the issue: