US report on German prosecutors causes a stir - what's behind it

FOCUS online US report on German prosecutors causes a stir - what's behind it Ansgar Graw • 3 hours • 4 minutes reading time Three German prosecutors are interviewed and introduced in the CBS documentary. America is different. This is becoming clear these days, when Vice President J.D. Vance first used the Munich Security Conference to warn Europe about a loss of freedom of expression. And it continues with an edition of the program "60 Minutes" on the US broadcaster CBS, which accompanied and interviewed three prosecutors from Lower Saxony in a completely calm manner. They are pursuing so-called "hate crimes" by social media users who spread insults or worse on the Internet. What is the reaction when a suspect's smartphone is confiscated during raids on private homes at 7 a.m., asks the US journalist? "They are shocked," says one of the prosecutors, and all three laugh happily. "Idiot" post about Habeck leads to house search In America, the television report is causing people to shake their heads in incomprehension. State repression for such crimes would be unthinkable there. Donald Trump's commitment to "free speech", his criticism of woke speech bans and of regulated and monitored networks was one of the most important reasons for his election, surveys have shown - behind the topics of migration and the economy, but still way ahead. The CBS broadcast was about extremely ugly cases of "hate crimes". A meme showed a tangle of high-voltage pylons with the explanation that it was a "climbing park for refugees", and the image of a machine gun was said to be able to reject "up to 1,400 asylum applications per minute". CBS, however, did not show much more recent cases, including that of the Franconian pensioner who reposted a distorted advertisement for the hair care company Schwarzkopf on X. The caption for the Green Party politician Robert Habeck's face was "idiot," and so the police knocked on the man's door early in the morning and searched his house. The case involved the offense of "insulting a person in political life" under §§ 185, 188 of the Criminal Code. "Insulting politicians" is completely normal and not punishable in the USA That happened in mid-November, when Trump had just been elected president for the second time in the USA. The offense of "insulting politicians" does not exist there. At that time, you could order T-shirts from Amazon for $17.99 plus shipping with the slogan "Trump is a moron," which is the closest thing to "idiot." Nobody would think of taking legal action against a buyer or wearer of this shirt. How could they? During the election campaign, Trump was much more rude about his opponents. In March 2024, he called then-President Joe Biden the "stupid son of a fool," and Vice President and later candidate Kamala Harris either a "low-IQ person" or "dumb as a rock." According to Trump, her "running mate" Tim Walz was the "stupidest person who ever ran for office." Harris did not make identical statements, but she called Trump a "fascist" with a "dirty mouth." Biden used similar language. NYT: "America has a problem with free speech" Journalists use a different vocabulary, but many of the so-called "mainstream media" have regularly questioned Trump's mental capacity and moral integrity. Conversely, right-wing media such as Fox News and Breitbart repeatedly attacked the Biden-Harris administration. Despite this tolerance of violent insults, Americans are always concerned about their freedom of speech. As early as March 2022, an editorial in the New York Times warned: "America has a problem with free speech." From the left, it is threatened by cancel culture, from the right by an "even more extreme form of censorship as a bulwark against a rapidly changing society," the editors wrote. According to a survey conducted by the newspaper, only 34 percent of respondents believe that all Americans have unrestricted freedom of speech. 84 percent say it is a "very serious" or "fairly serious" problem that some Americans do not speak freely in everyday situations for fear of retaliation or harsh criticism. In addition, 58 percent of respondents who identify as Republicans said they had "kept their mouths shut at some point in the past year because they feared retaliation or harsh criticism." Among Democrats, the same was true for more than half (52 percent). Debates show escalating culture war Trump supporters celebrated it as a victory for democracy when Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the end of the "fact checkers" on his portal shortly after their hero's re-election.