As CBS's Sunday anchor Margaret Brennan claims "The Nazis weaponized free speech to do a Holocaust," CBS' transcript-hiding propaganda unit 60 Minutes promotes Germany's plan to ban people from criticizing the government or calling for change.

Mary Katharine Ham
@mkhammer

You should watch all 13 minutes of @60Minutes coverage of German speech policing. Framing is absolutely wild.

Protagonist German "prosecutors argue," the VO intones, "they're protecting democracy & discourse by introducing a *touch of German order* to the unruly World Wide Web."

There is ONE critical question. This is it: "You're doing all this work, you're doing investigations, finding people, sometimes putting them in jail. Does it make a difference if it's a World Wide Web and there's a lot of hate out there?"

In other words, 60 Minutes asks this question, meant to be the single expression of doubt about criminalizing speech: "Sure it's important to stop free speech, but you can only jail so many people for their speech, can you jail enough of them to actually make a difference?"

Mary Katherine is enraged/baffled that this is the only criticism 60 Minutes can muster.

The criticism is CAN YOU EVER REALLY PROSECUTE ENOUGH SPEECH?? From an American press outlet, THAT is the question as they follow a band of German authorities on armed raids on people's houses taking phones and computers for insulting people online.

There are 16 offices of prosecutors working on these important issues, @60Minutes
informs us, handling more than 3000 cases of bad memes or whatever. It's illegal if speech "could incite hatred or is deemed insulting," and reposting is also a crime. Sure, no problems there!

The literal German speech police then laugh it up when the reporter asks them "how do people react when you take their phones?" after levying stiff fines on them for speech? There reporter smiles, too. Because that is very funny??

But surely they had a consistent free-speech advocate from the U.S. like @glukianoff
on to counter this gleeful, or maybe a victim of overzealous speech prosecution to tell their story. NO, READER, THEY DID NOT.

CORRECTION: There is another critical question, which is a classic formulation along these lines: "What do you saaaayyyy to criticism that throwing people in jail for speech might actually be bad for democracy? Some crazy people in the U.S. think that!"

But my absolute favorite part is when a German activist says in her not-at-all-intimidating accent, "Already half of zee Internet users in Chermany are afraid to express zeir political opinion und rarely participate in debates online anymore." Gee, I wonder why, HELGA.

In conclusion, what I'm saying about this @60Minutes
\ report is I'm sure it sounded better in the original German.

Stephen L. Miller
@redsteeze

So on CBS News today, in one single day, their lead Sunday morning show host claimed free speech led to a holocaust in WWII and then their most recognizable news program featured pandering interviews and an endorsement of German criminalization of speech laws.

What are we even doing here?

Stephen L. Miller
@redsteeze

Also, this was all in service against a sitting Vice President, whom the same host, Marg Brennan, during a nationally televised debate, cut the microphone while he was calmly debating an opposition party's border policy.

So I just hope everyone is pretty clear eyed on what is happening and what corporate media conglomerates are screaming at you in the face about what they think, believe, and will act on.

60 Minutes is also promoting, get this, USAID. It's only "less than one percent of government spending," you guys.