Comment by kubb

Stefan Niehoff was prosecuted for a tweet that compared the policies towards COVID-unvaccinated people to how the Third Reich treated Jews. He also made comparisons to the Nazis with respect to how the German government is treating the AfD. These are both criticisms of government policy with respect to public health and handling of democratic opposition parties. The man was put through a criminal trial and then found guilty, being fined for his tweets.

He is not an exception. Twice in August 2022, the American playwright, satirist and longtime Berlin resident C.J. Hopkins tweeted cover art from his book on The Rise of the New Normal Reich. This art featured an image of a Covid-era medical mask with a barely-visible white swastika superimposed upon it. In his first tweet, Hopkins wrote that “Masks are symbols of ideological conformity. That’s all that they are, and that’s all they ever were. Stop pretending that they were ever anything else or get used to wearing them.” In his second tweet, Hopkins simply quoted Health Minister Karl Lauterbach’s notorious statement that “Masks always send a signal.”

For those tweets, Amazon Germany promptly banned Hopkins’s book, and eight months later the Berlin state prosecutor’s office informed Hopkins that he was under investigation, because they believed his tweets violated German criminal statutes against “the use of symbols of unconstititional and terrorist organisations.” In January of 2024, Hopkins was tried before the Tiergarten Berlin District Court and acquitted. In many countries that would be the end of it, but in Germany double jeopardy is not a thing. The prosecutor appealed, and Hopkins found himself on trial once again, this time before the Berlin Court of Appeals. The appellate court overturned his acquittal and found him guilty.

So these are two men who have been prosecuted for their criticism of policy, without groups being involved. But the more common pattern goes like this:

Activist: We must welcome infinity Muslim migrants.

Person: No we shouldn't. That would be bad.

Activist: Why do you say that?

Person: Because they commit crimes at a higher rate than we do and their culture is incompatible with ours.

Activist: That's hate speech and you are going to be fined/imprisoned for it.

When the left is obsessed with group-based identity politics, there's no difference between banning criticism of groups and banning criticism of left wing politics. Enforcing the former is simply a way to prevent anyone explaining or justifying their position, meaning they can't actually advocate for it. It's no difference to an outright ban on opposition.

> I simply asked you for one, one single case of someone going to jail for criticizing policies and you just can’t provide it.

Stop being a troll. I never said people went to jail for that. Read my comments again. I said people in Germany got in trouble with the law for that, which they did, and I posted proof.

Now you're unhappy you've been disproven so you're being a disingenuous bad faith commenter and moving the goalpost from getting in trouble with the law to going to jail, as if that makes Germany's censorship less worse ("Oh, I only got dragged through court by a politicians for calling him a dick on Facebook and only ended up with a 7k fine, at least I didn't got o jail for that, thank god, such a free country I live in").

>Btw the anti hate speech laws are there to prevent disasters like those from the Nazi time, and for a good reason. Speech has consequences.

Congrats, Germany today is doing exactly what the Nazis and the Stasi did: banning free speech to "prevent the evil guys from getting power". Do you see the irony in what you're advocating?

And FYI since you keep bringing back the Nazi argument for speech censorship, Hitler didn't get to power because Germany back then didn't have enough speech censorship, because it did and that's why people voted for Hitler since he capitalized on the citizens' frustration with the Weimar Republic's policies and they way they didn't listen to the peoples' grievances and instead responded with speech censorship to crush them .... just like Germany (and UK) are doing ...today.

Speech censorship doesn't make people's grievances and hate for the establishment politic parties go away, it only radicalizes them further guaranteeing the rise of political extremism. AFD already got nearly a third of the votes. In the future when they become a majority, how are you gonna speech censor over half the country? The only guarantee is when they get majority votes they will use all the "guns" against you, that the establishment used against them. History proves this.

So how many times do you have to repeat the same mistakes to re-learn the same lessons?