American broadcaster CBS followed German police as they raided homes for speech crimes, such as posting a “racist cartoon” on the internet, which prosecutors in the country defended as a supposedly necessary safeguard to protect democracy.
Just days after U.S. Vice President JD Vance lambasted Germany and other European states for failing to live up to Western ideals of liberty, particularly on the issue of free speech, CBS’s 60 Minutes news magazine broadcast footage of police raids over social media posts and interviews with prosecutors defending the draconian practice.
“It’s 6:01 on a Tuesday morning, and we were with state police as they raided this apartment in Northwest Germany. Inside six armed officers searched a suspect’s home, then seized his laptop and cellphone. Prosecutors say those electronics may have been used to commit a crime, the crime; posting a racist cartoon online,” 60 Minutes anchor Sharyn Alfonsi described.
Unlike the United States, where the First Amendment protects citizens from being arrested over so-called “hate speech”, it is a very different story in Germany.
Local prosecutors told the American broadcaster that there are currently 16 dedicated police task forces monitoring “hate speech” on the German web, with around 3,500 cases per year. Prosecutor Frank-Michael Laue told the news programme that his unit alone has successfully secured 750 speech crime convictions over the past four years.
Fellow prosecutor Dr Matthäus Fink said that many of those arrested for online speech crimes believed that their posts were protected free speech, “And we say, ‘No, you have free speech as well, but it is also has its limits.’”
The prosecutors explained that people in Germany can be jailed for public insults — including against politicians — spreading malicious gossip, making violent threats, inventing fake quotes, or even reposting “lies” online. They claimed that in most instances, offenders are fined and sometimes have their devices seized.
“Comments like ‘You’re son of a b—h,’ excuse me for using, but these words has nothing to do with a political discussions or a contribution to a discussion,” Fink asserted.
They said that their task forces have access to special software to target anonymous users who violate speech laws, while investigators are given access to government data to hunt down thought criminals.
The programme on Germany’s censorious police apparatus came just days after Vice President JD Vance excoriated European states, including Germany, for failing to uphold freedom of speech and comparing the tactics to the Soviet Union.
“The threat that I worry the most about vis-a-vis Europe is not Russia, it’s not China, it’s not any other external actor. What I worry about is the threat from within. The retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values: values shared with the United States of America,” Vance said at the Munich Security Conference last week.
Vance also criticised the political establishment in Berlin for its “firewall” around the anti-mass migration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which currently stands as the second-strongest in the polls ahead of next week’s federal elections. In addition to refusing to work with the party, politicians throughout Germany have also called for the AfD to be banned outright over supposed extremism.
Vance’s speech sparked outrage among German politicians, with leftist Chancellor Olaf Scholz declaring that Berlin “won’t accept outsiders intervening in our democracy.”
Foreign Affairs Minister Annalena Baerbock of the far-left Green party defended what she called “resilient democracy” in which the government confronts external enemies to democracy, such as Russia, but also against the “enemies inside”, such as Islamists and the “radical extreme right”.
Even top CBS anchor Margaret Brennan appeared to side with the current German censorship model, suggesting that Adolph Hitler’s Nazi regime “weaponized” freedom of speech to conduct the Holocaust during the Second World War.
However, Vance’s call to protect civil liberties did have defenders in Germany. In the nation’s paper of record, Die Welt, columnist Andreas Rosenfelder remarked that the warnings of encroaching authoritarianism “encounter so little curiosity and such deaf ears among German opinion leaders is the real scandal.”
“They would do well in their own best interests to recognise [Vance’s] speech as an hour of truth instead of turning it into an enemy attack,” he added.
In response to the 60 Minutes programme, Vice President Vance remarked on Monday: “Insulting someone is not a crime, and criminalizing speech is going to put real strain on European-US relationships. This is Orwellian, and everyone in Europe and the US must reject this lunacy.”
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