Germany’s Thought Police Are at It Again

Just before 9 a.m. yesterday, Berlin police raided the home of journalist and pundit Norbert Bolz. Officers searched the 72-year-old’s house and threatened to confiscate his electronic devices on the suspicion that Bolz had violated Article 86a of the German Penal Code—the law that bans the use of symbols of illegal organisations like the Nazi Party. 

So what was Bolz’s crime? Was he involved in some underground cell of far-right extremists? Was he posting threats online? Of course he wasn’t. The Welt journalist was being questioned by police for a post he made on X almost two years ago. This post contained a phrase associated with the Nazis, deployed in what you might think was an obviously ironic jab. Bolz had written in response to a taz article that was celebrating the idea of banning the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party: “A good translation for ‘woke’: Germany, awake!” 

Anyone with a basic level of reading comprehension should be able to figure out the point that Bolz was making. Chiefly, that he was making a comparison between the German Left’s authoritarian impulse to ban a popular political party and Hitler’s totalitarian Nazi regime. He told Die Welt: “The taz newspaper had written something about [Björn] Höcke with the conclusion ‘Germany is awakening.’ I thought: That’s actually a good definition of ‘woke.’ Because ‘woke’ also means ‘awakened.'” He didn’t understand how “anyone could misunderstand” this quite simple idea that “the madness had changed sides.” 

Bolz wrote on X yesterday about the incident: “The friendly police officers gave me the good advice to be more careful in the future. I’ll do that and only talk about trees from now on.” Hopefully he doesn’t get hauled away for that. He also told Nius, an outlet for which he writes: “I can’t say that I’m shocked—that would mean that I didn’t expect it. But the fact that it is exactly as the critical diagnoses describe it is creepy in every respect.” How terrifying that German journalists have come to “expect” a knock at the door for simply commentating on politics. 

Naturally, you have to squint pretty hard to convince yourself that Bolz’s post was in any way supportive of the Nazi regime or ideals. Why, then, is Germany wasting police time on this kind of thing? It’s clear that the law is being applied somewhat lopsidedly here. It’s rare, if not unheard of, for left-wing journalists, pundits, or social-media users to be visited by police over what they say online. Indeed, it seems like the phrase “Germany, awake!” is fine for some to use, while being out of bounds for others. In fact, the German government sponsored a piece of music by that very name in 2023. The work apparently contains “biting parodies of Hitler and Goebbels” and calls for “resistance against fascist aggressors.” Parody and irony, it seems, are state-approved for some and illegal for others.

It’s difficult to overstate how absurd and restrictive public discourse in Germany has become. Not long ago, we saw the conclusion to one of the most infamous social-media hate speech cases, in which a pensioner from Bavaria had his house raided and was later convicted for calling then Economy Minister Robert Habeck a “professional idiot” last year. He was, thankfully, acquitted—only to be fined €825 for sharing satirical memes containing Nazi imagery. As with Bolz’s case, the posts were made with the clear intent to satirise or were simply historical images. But the judge was apparently unable to tell the difference between this and outright support for Nazism—something that should strike us all as deeply concerning. 

In Germany, as of 2021, the law criminalises “insult, defamation and slander directed against persons in political life,” effectively giving politicians special protection against criticism. This is why calling Habeck an idiot landed Stefan Niehoff in hot legal water and could have potentially seen him imprisoned for up to three years. This is also what led to the hounding of Wolfgang Conzelmann, a 76-year-old physician who had spent decades treating drug addicts in Berlin. In 2022, Conzelmann posted critically about the German government’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic on Facebook. He published a Photoshopped image of a Nazi-era propaganda poster, with the swastika replaced by the Green Party logo and a portrait of Habeck. For this, Conzelmann’s home was raided, and he was handed a €3,000 fine, which he refused to pay, choosing to appeal instead. He was acquitted in June this year. Just three days later, he was found murdered in his practice, in what appears to be a wholly unrelated incident. 

These are by no means isolated cases. In August this year, a 72-year-old man faced a police investigation over a satirical letter he wrote complaining about a small fine from the tax office. In another case, a woman was fined €1,800 for posting an image of former Health Minister Karl Lauterbach with his arm raised, in an action that resembled the banned Hitlergrüß. The woman did not perform the gesture herself or endorse it in any way—she simply posted the picture. One right-wing journalist, Daniel Bendels, was even given seven months’ probation for making fun of former Interior Minister Nancy Faeser. 

There are too many examples to possibly list them all here. Last year, there were 10,732 recorded crimes relating to online hate speech, marking an increase of 34% since 2023. Since 2021, those numbers have quadrupled. Worse still, the German state regularly conducts coordinated, nationwide raids on people suspected of posting hate speech or insults on social media. This year, one such operation resulted in around 170 house visits. 

All this brings to mind a meme doing the rounds lately, in which a woman asks, “How’s life in Germany?” “I can’t complain,” says the man. “That’s good, then,” replies his female companion. “No,” the man corrects her, “I mean I can’t complain. I could get arrested for that.” It’s a joke, but only barely. Germans are living under a regime that can ruin their lives or even throw them in jail for daring to criticise their government and politicians. It’s bad enough that they can expect a knock at the door for their social-media posts—they can’t even trust the people judging them to be able to tell the difference between satire and enthusiastic support for fascism. This lethal combination of elite totalitarianism and incompetence is pushing the country into dangerous territory. 

Germany is suffocating under a culture of fear. Democracy will die if the state continues to strangle it.