Germany Increases Speech Policing

Police in Heilbronn, Germany, are investigating a man for calling Chancellor Friedrich Merz “Pinocchio” on Facebook, local newspaper Heilbronner Stimme reported Friday. The police cited a clause added to Germany’s criminal code in 2021 that imposes up to five years in prison for those convicted of “insult, malicious gossip and defamation directed at persons in political life.”

• Last year, a retired man had his house raided by police for essentially calling Germany’s former finance minister a “moron.” Dozens of German citizens had police search their homes in predawn raids last February.

The German government continues to tighten its grip on online speech, with its largest party, the Christian Democratic Union, recently endorsing a ban on social media for children under 14.

• Banning social media for children may sound like a good idea, but critics warn that the much more consequential result will be to force all users to upload their identifications, removing any remaining anonymity that Internet users have.

No more hiding: A removal of anonymity is exactly what cdu leader Friedrich Merz wants. Last week, he stated, “I want real names on the Internet. I want to know who is speaking. Those who hide behind anonymity demand the greatest transparency from others.”

• Removing anonymity will help with some of the many problems that currently exist online, but drastically increasing government control over such a powerful tool will have its own major consequences.

If Germany is already raiding citizens’ homes for making critical statements about government officials, what will it do when it can track everyone and everywhere they go online? The counterbalance of public opinion will be largely removed. (Many Europeans are already fed up with democracy anyway.)

• What would an information-controlling, criticism-immune, unrestrained, 21st-century German government look like? We are about to find out.

Germany is growing more authoritarian. When a regime successfully outlaws, blocks and punishes free speech, it always uses that power to do dangerous things both inside and outside its borders. This has been true on every continent throughout every generation of human history.

And remember, Germany was an advanced, sophisticated, lauded nation the last time it began censoring free speech—in the 1930s.