It may have been former German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cabinet that came up with a law allowing politicians to sue for alleged defamation but members of the current authorities are the ones reaching for it with alarming frequency.
Over the last three years, there have been over 1,300 such cases, with journalists among those named as defendants, while the ruling coalition, and Green Party politicians in particular, often see “defamation” even in social media posts and memes. Those found guilty are punished by hefty fines, but can also be sent to prison.
And while critics of this surge of using the legal system to protect politicians – sometimes from no more than what amounts to “hurt feelings” – point out that the practice could see Germany spiral into free speech repression, those defending the state of affairs want the rules regulating what can and can’t be posted online to be even stricter.
Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck’s comments to this effect came across as sheer defiance since he made them after a major controversy that saw the police raid the home of a Bavarian pensioner, Stefan Niehoff because he had posted a meme that referred to this politician as an “idiot.”
Habeck’s idea now is to combine “decency and democracy” into more stringent rules that would prevent what he considers unacceptable criticism. However, opponents think that what is in fact unacceptable in a democracy is the stifling of various forms of dissent, including satirical memes.
Not all politicians believe getting in a tizzy over being called names and then criminally prosecuting citizens is the way to go. Armin Laschet, the former head of the North Rhine-Westphalia state government, argues that people should be able to refer to members of the ruling class as “morons,” “idiots” and the like – that is, in a democracy.
Otherwise, Laschet told the German press, that a country is a dictatorship. And while this politician says he drew the line at death threats and filed complaints only when receiving those, the number of legal cases launched over what can be seen as trivial insults is only rising, particularly after the Social Democrats-Greens-Free Democrats coalition came to power.
