A journalist in Berlin got a man prosecuted for calling him ‘stupid’ online. The man was hit with a more than $1,000 fine.
Welcome back to Forgotten Fact Checks, a weekly column produced by National Review’s News Desk. This week, we look at Germany’s online censorship and cover more media misses.
The ‘Weaponization’ of Speech
CBS’s Margaret Brennan made a truly mind-boggling claim over the weekend. Free speech, in Brennan’s estimation, was “weaponized to conduct a genocide” in Germany.
It was the first part of CBS’s weekend-long efforts to convince Americans that politically suspect speech is a threat — and something must be done about it.
Brennan’s comments came during a Face the Nation interview with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was defending Vice President JD Vance’s speech at the Munich Security Conference in Germany last week.
Vance criticized European allies for adopting a “Soviet”-style approach to censorship, leaving Brennan to make her absurd claim that the speech climate in 1930s Germany was just too permissive and that, of course, is how we ended up with the Nazis.
Rubio quickly rejected her claims. “Free speech was not used to conduct a genocide. The genocide was conducted by an authoritarian Nazi regime that happened to also be genocidal because they hated Jews and they hated minorities, and they had a list of people they hated, but primarily the Jews.”
He added, “There was no free speech in Nazi Germany. There was none. There was also no opposition in Nazi Germany. They were the sole and only party that governed that country. So that’s not an accurate reflection of history.”
In case CBS viewers were wondering how Germany solved that pesky free speech problem Brennan identified, 60 Minutes was ready Sunday night with a flattering treatment of the country’s downright authoritarian speech codes.
After an excess of free speech led to Nazi tyranny, apparently, the Germans sensibly responded by cracking down, not just on explicit Nazi imagery and speech, but on people being mean.
In fact, the story notes you can be prosecuted just for calling someone a “son of a b****” online.
“As prosecutors explain it, the German constitution protects free speech, but not hate speech. And here’s where it gets tricky: German law prohibits speech that could incite hatred or is deemed insulting,” the report explains.
German law goes so far as to prohibit “the spread of malicious gossip, violent threats and fake quotes.” Even reposting lies online can be considered a crime punishable by a hefty fine, the revocation of the offender’s devices, or even jail time for repeat offenders.
60 Minutes spoke to a unit that successfully prosecuted more than 750 hate speech cases over the last four years.
The most infamous example of an online hate speech case in Germany happened in 2021, when an internet user had their home raided for calling a local politician a “pimmel,” or “penis” online. The incident became known as “Pimmelgate.”
In another case, an offender was fined nearly $4,000 for posting that refugee children should play in electrical wires.
A 2022 New York Times article includes several examples of outrageous censorship under the law.
A 51-year-old man had his home raided after he shared a quote online that was falsely attributed to a German politician. “Just because someone rapes, robs or is a serious criminal is not a reason for deportation,” the fake quote read. The police seized his laptop and tablet as evidence in the case.
Prosecutors said it didn’t matter whether the man knew the quote was fake, he would face a fine of more than $1,400 anyway because “the accused bears the risk of spreading a false quote without checking it.”
Another social media user landed in hot water after comparing Covid restrictions to the Holocaust, though the article doesn’t say whether the person was ultimately convicted.
A journalist in Berlin got a man prosecuted for calling him “stupid” and mentally ill online. The man was hit with a more than $1,000 fine for the remarks.
Another man was ordered to pay a fine of more than $2,500 after he blamed a politician who was murdered in 2019 for the politician’s own death because he had refused a security detail. The 49-year-old man said Walter Lübcke had “himself to blame.” A judge found the man’s statement had effectively condoned the politician’s murder.
Despite all this, CBS seems to celebrate Germany’s censorship and question the merits of free speech that Vance touts, writes NR’s Jeffrey Blehar, who points out that neither Europeans nor CBS seem to get free speech.
Headline Fail of the Week
A Glamour columnist tells readers “Why Taylor Swift Getting Booed at the Super Bowl was Even More Chilling Than You Think.”
“Since Donald Trump took office, there have been several times I felt chilled by the rapid increase in misogyny seeping in our culture,” senior editor Stephanie McNeal wrote. “But watching Taylor Swift at Super Bowl LIX booed by a crowd of thousands on Sunday night was a new low.”
While Swift was met with boos, when Trump was shown on the jumbotron at the game, he was greeted with cheers.
“To me, the disparate reactions felt like a message,” McNeal added. “That the Super Bowl, one of the biggest cultural events in the country, has been reclaimed by Trump and the type of toxic masculinity he appears to be the beacon of. And he and his supporters seem to be living for it.”
Media Misses
-The hits keep on coming for 60 Minutes:
-The Washington Post once again drops the ball in its Israel reporting:
– SNL once again jokes that Trump supporters are generally white and racist — despite the president having made historic inroads with black and Latino voters in November. Actor Tom Hanks portrayed a Trump supporter who competes in a parody game show called Black Jeopardy and who at first refuses to shake the black host’s hand.