Germany Convicts CJ Hopkins for Satire

Reposting my interview with the American playwright

The American playwright CJ Hopkins “could face years in jail after being found guilty of disseminating propaganda for his satirical use of the Nazi swastika,” reports FIRE.

Mein Gott, Germany, talk about leaning into the punch.

When I interviewed Hopkins in September, I found him witty and insightful. I also find these efforts to silence him, particularly in Germany, disturbingly familiar.

The free speech limits found in Article 5 of Germany’s Basic Law were put there specifically to prevent the return of fascism. But we must never forget one of Hitler’s first steps was to eliminate free speech in 1933 with the Reichstag Fire Decree.

That’s how fascism always starts.

Germany has become the national embodiment of overcorrection. All the great German minds, from Kant and Goethe to Marx and Heine, understood the importance of free speech and openly advocated for it.

Even Konrad Adenauer, the legal scholar and chairman of the Parliamentary Council that drafted the Basic Law itself, believed strongly in this fundamental right.

Yet here we are.

In May, a German appeals court upheld the conviction of an Alternative for Germany (AfD) member over racist posts she made on social media in 2021. AfD politician Björn Höcke now faces trial for using Nazi slogans in his speeches. And in June, police forcibly cleared a pro-Palestinian protest camp from the Free University of Berlin. This is ironic given that the school was founded with American support during the Cold War as a free-thinking continuation of the University of Berlin. The word free was added to its name to contrast with the original University of Berlin, now Humboldt University, which was in East Berlin and therefore under communist rule.

Whatever you may think of these individual viewpoints, silencing people because of the content of their speech renders freedom of speech meaningless.

More than this, it’s a dangerous thing indeed to have a nation of people who think themselves free without that freedom being supported by the law. Or as Goethe put it, “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”

Here is Hopkins writing about the latest court decision in a recent post:

So, the Berlin Appellate Court overturned my acquittal today. I am now, officially, at least according to the New Normal German authorities, a “hate-speech” criminal. I’m officially a “hate-speech” criminal because I compared New Normal Germany to Nazi Germany, and I challenged the official Covid narrative, and I used the cover art of my book to do it.

…

As long as the German authorities continue to claim that Germany is a democratic country, which respects the rule of law and democratic principles, I will continue to behave like that is what it is. I will not be bullied. I will insist on my constitutional rights. I will continue to respect democratic principles and fight to preserve them. The German authorities can make a mockery of those rights and the rule of law and democratic principles if they want. I will not. Not for the Berlin Prosecutor. Not for this Court. Not for the German authorities. Not for anyone.

Totalitarianism, authoritarianism, tyranny, never win. Not in the long run. History teaches us that. And it is history that will judge us all in the end.

If you’d like to help, you can contribute to his legal defense fund. For my conversation last year with Hopkins, see below.