Germany: First nationwide raid against hate posts on the internet

An original translation by Nash Montana 

From this German language website

Because hate on the Internet is rising, the BKA (Bundeskriminalamt, Federal Criminal Police Office) wants to set an example: this morning sixty apartments were searched nationwide. One emphasis is on Bavaria — that’s where the accusations weigh especially heavily.

 

On Wednesday, in their first nationwide operation to fight against hate crime on the Internet, the police searched the homes of sixty accused in fourteen states, among them eleven suspects from Berlin. The goal is to counter rapidly accelerating “verbal radicalism” and related criminal offenses on the net, the BKA explains in Wiesbaden. The supposed anonymity of the Internet lowers inhibitions about writing hate speech.

25 police precincts worked together at a national level for this raid. Investigations are made based on the suspicion of sedition, related to the use of emblems of organizations that are unconstitutional. The offending language is also connected with utterances against refugees, say the Berlin state police. One investigation from the prosecutor’s office in Kempten assumed particular importance, the BKA announced. According to the information, it concerned a secret Facebook group in which the users glorify national socialism as well as exchanging xenophobic and anti-Semitic content. According to the police, with regard to that group, about forty homes of suspects were searched in thirteen states.

BKA chief: putting a stop to the coarsening of language

“The number of cases of politically right motivated hate criminality on the Internet has also risen in the wake of the European refugee situation,” says BKA chief Holger Münch. “The hate criminality on the net must not poison the social climate.” Attacks on refugee shelters are often the result of radicalization that begins on the Internet. “Therefore we have to put a stop to the coarsening of language, and investigate punishable content on the Internet.” With this operation the citizens also must become more sensitive, the BKA says. Whoever finds hate posts on the Internet should immediately report them.

Federal minister of justice Heiko Maas (SPD, Socialists) welcomed the operation. “The determined action of the administration should make everyone think before they pound on the keys to post on Facebook,” the minister says. “The creators of punishable hate posts are looking at punishments that will hurt. The Internet is not a lawless room. There is no tolerance for punishable offenses on the net.” Maas also warned that the citizens and society as well carry responsibility to counter radical incitement. “Analog as well as digital, it stands: We cannot leave the field to radical haters. The silent majority can no longer be silent.” Minister of the Interior Thomas de Maizière (CDU, Christian Democrats) said: “We have moral principles, online as well as offline.” Verbal violence is not acceptable and it lays the ground for real violence. “Our law also works on the Internet,” says de Maizière.

Just how much this topic has gained focus in political debates is revealed also through earlier remarks made by the Minister of Justice. The trolls have in the meantime become monsters, Maas wrote last November 2015 in the Tagesspiegel. Next to Islamic hate preachers who move about on the net, it is mostly German ‘anger citizens’ who spread hate. And with the rising number of refugees in Germany, the persecution of that group of people has risen. But the persecution of refugees is hard to counter with just Facebook regulations: subsequent to those, posts are only deleted that disparage ethnic groups, sexual orientation or gender. Refugees are not acknowledged as a group.

Stress with the employer

Hate comments on the Internet are punished with relatively high monetary penalties. “Merkel has to be stoned more often,” one user wrote, and had to pay €2000. Someone who posted in a group that was collecting donations for asylum seekers wrote that he would donate a hand grenade and a gas cylinder; he had to pay €7500 as the penalty for sedition. Many states have in the meantime installed so-called “Internet watches”, where hate comments can be reported online.

A person who posts hate speech under his real name should in the meantime fully expect that other users will tell that person’s employer. This is what happened to an employee of Condor Security, who wrote on Facebook that he wanted to plow down refugees with a snow plow. A short while later the company announced that they had let the man go. Another example: A Hermes [similar to FedEx] delivery man commented on the picture of the dead three-year-old Aydan Kurdi at the beach in Lesbos “We are not grieving; we are celebrating it.” He also lost his job. The man was also charged with “denigration of the memory of the deceased”.

About Eeyore

Canadian artist and counter-jihad and freedom of speech activist as well as devout Schrödinger's catholic

20 Replies to “Germany: First nationwide raid against hate posts on the internet”

  1. It certainly appears that in retrospect, the destruction of the Berlin Wall resulted in East Germany absorbing West Germany, rather than the other way around, as we all thought.

    Everything the German government is doing to suppress political opposition is something I thought we opposed the entire Warsaw Pact for two generations. The German government is going to fail at this, and I think the populace and government are headed toward an explosion. Thought control via an armed constabulary vs. an awakening body politic empowered by an American invention, the Internet.

    Something has to give.

      • After WWII the allies started the de-nazification program, they hunted down all Nazi’s and ensured the criminals were sent to prison or executed. After the Cold War the left in the west campaigned hard to prevent a de-communization program. Probably because having the west go through the communist records would show that most of the leftist leaders in the west had committed treason.

        What ever the reason the public never learned about the massive crimes of the communists which lets them quietly enter into politics and become major leaders in the west.

    • That is why they want to disarm us, they want to be able to prosecute anyone that disagrees with the left.

  2. The left, since they run the show, should ban literacy. No more Internet right wing radicalization. I find it quite incredible that a person was charged for saying Merkel should get stoned more often. If this is not an example of budding tyranny, and a tyrannical frame of mind, I don’t know what is. (For those of you who doubt yourselves or those of us who see the tyrannical monster rising.)

    But banning literacy is preposterous you say? They already have. Any cognizant person with kids in the public school system laments the demise of teaching. They may be taught to read but everything else lacks literacy in terms of a classical education. The system is dumbing down into a sheep factory.

  3. I wonder how long it will be before posting “I don’t believe in islam” will be sedition.

    • That’s where they’re headed. And can’t you just hear some “Loretta Lynch” talking in Democrat newspeak and explaining how it all makes perfect sense, and how it’s “who we are”? Curse the schemer who first figured out that the average person had almost non-existent listening skills and could be fooled all day long by nice sounding nonsense words spoken in an intelligent-sounding voice. The greatest example of this is, of course, Barack Obama himself…

  4. Can we have a world wide day of posting “punishable content” to German Commissars?

  5. By fighting against those who wish to fight against the Islamification of the West, the German government is in fact fighting for the Salafist Muslims. Imagine if, during WWII, the police in the Allied countries went around arresting anybody who said anything unkind about the Germans or the Japanese? Well that’s exactly what these leftist appeasers are trying to do today. The Muslims walk into a nightclub with an AK-47 and the next day the police arrest anybody who says anything unkind about the bastards? Well, excuuuuuse me…

    I hate to say it, but I don’t think this is going to straighten itself out until people start taking the law into their own hands. The German People apparently don’t like having their country overrun by rapists and suicide bombers, and now the government wants to arrest them for even complaining about it. There’s a war coming. There has to be.

    Do left wing Germans really sit around together talking about how great it would be if the majority of the population were Muslim and the sight of a pretty girl walking by on a summer’s day was a thing of the past? Do German left wingers relish the thought of getting 140 lashes for picking up a stein of beer? Do German left wingers look forward to the day when all speech was subject to the approval of a board of Imams? Do German left wingers look forward to the day that women become second class citizens and the idea of minority rights vanishes entirely? I guess the answer is “yes”, but for the love of God, I cannot figure out why…

    Perhaps the leftists are playing out some kind of tantrum against their fathers for being “emotionally distant” or not saying, “I love you” often enough? Who knows, but they sure seem intent on burning the whole thing down, don’t they…

    Just you watch. One of these days the cool young leftists are going to start converting to Islam en masse. It’ll be like becoming a Vegan, only waaaaaaaaaaaay more annoying (or controlling). “Please don’t touch me Mother. I’m just going to the Mosque and if I touch you I’ll have to go and take another shower because you’re unclean.” And by the way. All my food has to be Halal or I’ll make a big show about how I “can’t” eat it.

  6. The Internet is an American intervention?

    I was under the impression that the two key elements for the internet, packet switching and HTML, are British inventions.

    • The internet was around a long time before Berners Lee created HTML and the Worldwide Web was born. I think it is fair to say that the internet as we know it is from the US. I believe the military industrial academic government complex put the backbone together. It sure as hell wasn’t Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, though…

      But, of course, you’re right. I think the idea of awarding “credit” for technology is misleading. The amazing technology we use today comes from a long list of uncelebrated geniuses from lots of countries. And besides, do you think we’d still be without telephones if Bell hadn’t invented them? Would our food rot in three days because the guy who invented the fridge died at birth? I don’t think so…

      Actually, didn’t the French have a government-run thing called “Tel-net” or something, back in the 70s?

    • Well, I was thinking in terms of ARPANET, certainly a US invention. The French online thing was a videotext service called Minitel, but was a technological dead end. It was shut down in 2012.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET

      “In 1975, the ARPANET was declared “operational”. The Defense Communications Agency took control since ARPA was intended to fund advanced research.[31]

      “In 1983, TCP/IP protocols replaced NCP as the ARPANET’s principal protocol, and the ARPANET then became one subnet of the early Internet.[40][41]

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML

      “In 1980, physicist Tim Berners-Lee, then a contractor at CERN, proposed and prototyped ENQUIRE, a system for CERN researchers to use and share documents. In 1989, Berners-Lee wrote a memo proposing an Internet-based hypertext system.[3] Berners-Lee specified HTML and wrote the browser and server software in late 1990.

  7. We have to learn to express ourselves in a way that makes us out as the victim when writing about Islam, refugees… while praising outspoken Muslims of the Tarek Fatah type.

    Also, people have to learn about their ideal guy, Mohamed (PBUH)’s atrocities and whatever. We can write about that since it is factual. Muslims don’t want to publicize dear PBUH, so we’re safe to talk about it and express our concern about this new culture living among us that venerate such a guy.

    We also have to learn to talk about Islam through critical thinking. They can’t do anything about that either. I’ve been doing this for quite a while. It shuts down a discussion very fast.

    RE the said refugees – express worry and sadness about the loss of our values, their unwillingness to assimilate (they live in their own Islamic community)… our plummeting economy and loss of jobs…

    One example I often state is the hijab: is it not cruel to brainwash young girls into believing they are impure if they don’t wrap up their cranium, neck, shoulders and torso for the rest of their lives? If I did that to my daughter, Youth Protection would be at my door and remove my child…

    RE hijab: I also write that I find its message very offensive towards me and I am not the most vile of creatures and they are not the best of humanity.

    All that said, I want to move to USA and I love Donald Trump.