Anyone who calls a German politician a failure is committing a criminal offense – how free speech is coming under pressure

In Germany, anyone who calls a politician a failure risks a fine. The German lawyer Markus Roscher wrote on X that he had been sentenced to a fine of 3,000 euros because he called Robert Habeck, Olaf Scholz and Annalena Baerbock malicious failures, stupid and arrogant because of the heating law. Now the recreational hunter is also to have his gun license revoked - for "unreliability". He could also lose his license to practice law.

As a long-time Twitter user, he actually knows the red lines, Roscher told the "Bild" newspaper. But the boundaries of freedom of expression have "slipped" under the red-green government.

Roscher, who is on the right, made this public last week, encouraged by JD Vance's speech at the Munich Security Conference. The American vice president described censorship of free speech as the greatest threat to Europe.

European governments are silencing their citizens, said Vance. Dissenting opinions are suppressed and declared to be misinformation. But people cannot be forced "to think, feel or believe what they should."

Two days after Vance's appearance, the American television channel CBS broadcast a widely acclaimed documentary showing that freedom of speech laws in Germany are actually interpreted relatively strictly. The report in the popular news magazine "60 Minutes" was titled "Surveillance of the Internet in Germany, where hate speech and insults are a crime."

"It often starts with an early morning visit from the police," says "60 Minutes" presenter Sharyn Alfonsi in her introduction. Then you see officers entering an apartment, which is said to be in northwest Germany. The police come out again with a laptop and cell phone in plastic bags. The devices are confiscated because their owner is said to have posted a racist cartoon.

Their work, three prosecutors confidently say to the camera during the program, helps to preserve democracy. Their job is to prevent harmful rhetoric from spreading unhindered.

One scene in particular caused outrage among many viewers. "How do people react when you take away their cell phones?" asks the presenter. "They are shocked," answers one of the prosecutors. "It's like a punishment to be without a cell phone, worse than the fine itself." All three laugh. They are obviously amused when they think about the effect of their intimidation.

The documentary raises the question of where the line is drawn in Germany between permissible expression of opinion and criminal behavior. The reactions spoke of ideological justice as a result of the pronounced German moralism. In fact, the investigators' behavior once again shows an effort to educate citizens to be better people with a well-intentioned law.

Not surprisingly, according to surveys, almost half of Germans no longer dare to express their opinions publicly.

The murder of CDU politician Walter Lübcke was a turning point in the fight against hate crime in Germany. Lübcke was the target of hostility and death threats on social media for years. In 2019, he was shot dead by a right-wing extremist.

Since then, many new insult laws have been introduced in Germany that make hate speech on the internet a criminal offense. Since 2021, for example, it has been possible to be prosecuted for insulting politicians. Robert Habeck, for example, makes extensive use of this. The Green politician has filed over 700 criminal complaints for hate messages. Last autumn, he reported a man who had called him an "idiot" on X. As a result, his house was searched.

Today, there are no fewer than sixteen units in Germany with investigative teams that investigate hate comments. This is what a prosecutor explains in "60 Minutes" in his office in front of stacks of files. In the Lower Saxony unit, they deal with 3,500 cases a year. It sounds like a bottomless pit.

The CBS presenter speaks ironically of a "touch of German order in the truly disorderly World Wide Web." She asks whether the hate hunters really believe they can make a difference. They say yes. Anything else would call their zeal into question.

Yes - that is how many Americans would answer, and with them all those who understand freedom as the right to cause offense and to say something rude in the heat of the moment. JD Vance, in any case, saw the CBS report as vindication. He commented on it on X with the word "Orwellian". "Insult is not a crime," he wrote. Criminalizing free speech would strain relations between the USA and Europe.

In the USA, the First Amendment protects freedom of expression. This applies even if a statement incites hatred. Freedom of the press is also explicitly mentioned and should be protected from control by the federal government.

However, Donald Trump's questionable treatment of independent media has been noticed several times since his second inauguration. While JD Vance accused the Europeans in Munich of censoring even unwelcome journalists who simply wanted to report, the White House withdrew the Associated Press (AP)'s access to the Oval Office and Air Force One.

AP refuses to adopt the new name for the Gulf of Mexico, which Trump arbitrarily renamed the Gulf of America. AP's decision is divisive and misinformative, the White House said. AP will be kept away from press events until it uses the correct name.

Even the conservative channels Fox News and Newsmax called on the White House to lift the news agency's ban. To no avail. AP is now suing.

Trump's attempts to put pressure on critical media are simultaneously accompanied by a loosening of the boundaries of what can be said. He has signed a decree to "restore free speech and end government censorship." The big tech companies have taken the lead in abolishing fact-checking.

The new government's fight against discrimination rules, against identity politics and wokeness envisages an end to the prescribed "correct speech", for example when it comes to gender. In the USA in recent years, if you addressed someone with the wrong pronoun, you were threatened with denigration and exclusion.

The signals remain contradictory, however. Elon Musk likes to call himself a "champion of free speech," but he also acts just as openly against this proclaimed belief. For example, he called for "a long prison sentence" for journalists from "60 Minutes" because they had portrayed Kamala Harris too favorably in an interview. With the manipulative report, CBS tried to influence the election. Trump has already claimed this and filed a lawsuit over it.

Musk posted his accusation on the same day that "60 Minutes" aired the report on freedom of speech in Germany. Musk also watched it. He shared the program on X and wrote: "Thank God America has freedom of speech!"