Europe Is Silencing Its Citizens—One Jail Sentence at a Time
28th May 2025
On Tuesday, May 27th, a 73-year-old Bavarian pensioner was notified that he was to start his 75-day prison sentence by June 5th. His crime? Two posts on X in which he used the phrase “Alles für Deutschland” (“Everything for Germany”), a slogan often associated with the SA, a paramilitary organisation of the Nazi party some 90 years ago. The elderly man was first sentenced to a fine, which he did not pay, claiming he did not have the financial means to do so.
Germany’s speech police is now cracking down on ordinary citizens, after primarily targeting the politicians of Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), currently the most popular party in the country. One of the most recent cases was that of David Bendels, editor-in-chief for the AfD-affiliated Deutschland Kurier, who received a seven-month suspended sentence for “abuse, slander or defamation against persons in political life.” The offence? Bendels had edited and posted a meme of then interior minister Nancy Faeser, which pictured her holding a sign saying “I hate freedom of opinion.”
As a February report by the MCC Brussels think tank revealed, Germany’s expansive hate speech and defamation laws were being used in particular ahead of the parliamentary elections to target political opponents. Section 188 of the German Criminal Code has led to police searches and criminal penalties for citizens who insult politicians online, including a raid on a retired man’s home for sharing a post critical of a government minister, the fining of a pensioner €800 for a joke referencing a politician’s personal life, and a citizen being sentenced to prison for sending an angry email to a prime minister.
“The dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe.” ?