The Free Speech Union is launching in Germany to support people threatened with jail for making jokes about politicians online. The Telegraphhas the story:
Lord Young of Acton, the FSU founder, said he was in talks with free speech activists in Germany on opening a branch there in the next year.
The Telegraph has revealed how Germans are being threatened with prison sentences for making fun of elected officials under the country’s “political insult” law.
Thousands of citizens have been subjected to police investigations under the controversial Section 188, which in effect makes it illegal to mock a politician crudely.
German officials say the law was introduced to stem a rising tide of abuse and death threats against politicians, but critics say it is being misused to criminalise those who mock the Government.
Citizens who fall foul of the political insult law face an initial police investigation and can be sentenced to up to three years in prison if convicted.
In one case in 2024, Bavarian police raided the home of a German man because he had called Robert Habeck, the then Vice-Chancellor, a “schwachkopf” [dummy].
The FSU was founded in February 2020 at the peak of “cancel culture”, and supported Allison Pearson, a Telegraph columnist, when she was investigated by police over social media comments that she later deleted. …
Lord Young said he hoped to see a German wing of the FSU up and running by mid-2027.
Yes, it was nauseating to watch that video Rees-Mogg put out, lecturing…
Heretic
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Heretic
2 months ago
It will be very interesting to see whether the downtrodden, forcibly guilt-ridden German People can gather the strength to defy Communist East Germany’s Stealth Coup over West Germany’s democracy. Lord Toby and the Free Speech Union are throwing them a lifeline, but will they grasp it?
Arresting & imprisoning citizens merely for criticizing politicians is CLASSIC COMMUNISM.
I’m old enough to remember the celebrations in the West when the Berlin Wall came down. Little did we know that it was only a Communist trick, to install East German Stasi like Angela Merkel into power, open the floodgates of the West to Invasion by the Third World, and all the other Communist Subversion agendas, as the late great Russian defector Yuri Bezmenov warned:
I feel sorry for all those Eastern Europeans who fled Communism to seek safety and freedom in the West, only to find the Hideous Communist Fungus inserting its slimy hyphae into every corner of the West, while importing Islam as a Proxy Army, willingly supported by the Vatican Jesuits obsessed with exterminating Protestantism from the face of the earth.
Jeff Chambers
2 months ago
All politicians are wonderful. They are so wonderfully wonderful that my heart misses a beat whenever I think of them. Thus it is quite wrong to call such wonderfully wonderful people dummies. They are not dummies at all – no, not at all. Neither are they lying toads. Or ignorant fools. Or contemptible scum. Or the dregs of humanity. Politicians are none of these because they are so wonderfully wonderful. Yes, indeed.
I try very hard to regard politics as an amusing spectator sport. Although sometimes, when sheer disbelief at our rulers’ cultivated stupidity sets in, I have to supplement this with a class or two of my wife’s Grappa.
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It will be very interesting to see whether the downtrodden, forcibly guilt-ridden German People can gather the strength to defy Communist East Germany’s Stealth Coup over West Germany’s democracy. Lord Toby and the Free Speech Union are throwing them a lifeline, but will they grasp it?
Arresting & imprisoning citizens merely for criticizing politicians is CLASSIC COMMUNISM.
I’m old enough to remember the celebrations in the West when the Berlin Wall came down. Little did we know that it was only a Communist trick, to install East German Stasi like Angela Merkel into power, open the floodgates of the West to Invasion by the Third World, and all the other Communist Subversion agendas, as the late great Russian defector Yuri Bezmenov warned:
FULL INTERVIEW with Yuri Bezmenov: The Four Stages of Ideological Subversion (1984) – YouTube
“Demoralization (15–20 years)
Destabilization (2–5 years)
Crisis (2–6 months)
Normalization (“indefinite”) [2]“
That’s the Angela Merkel whose family moved with her from the west to the east while East Germans were being shot trying to escape to the west.
The country seems to be regressing back to the Third Reich. Banning candidates from standing for elections for example.
I wonder what the new German owners of the Telegraph have to say about Matt’s cartoons (the chief reason I still subscribe).
Apart from about three regular columnists, Matt is the only reason to read someone else’s DT. There is no justification for hading over money.
So all German political Satiriker will be seeking alternative employment then. Chilling.
I feel sorry for all those Eastern Europeans who fled Communism to seek safety and freedom in the West, only to find the Hideous Communist Fungus inserting its slimy hyphae into every corner of the West, while importing Islam as a Proxy Army, willingly supported by the Vatican Jesuits obsessed with exterminating Protestantism from the face of the earth.
All politicians are wonderful. They are so wonderfully wonderful that my heart misses a beat whenever I think of them. Thus it is quite wrong to call such wonderfully wonderful people dummies. They are not dummies at all – no, not at all. Neither are they lying toads. Or ignorant fools. Or contemptible scum. Or the dregs of humanity. Politicians are none of these because they are so wonderfully wonderful. Yes, indeed.
Whatever you’re on, Jeff, I want some!
I try very hard to regard politics as an amusing spectator sport. Although sometimes, when sheer disbelief at our rulers’ cultivated stupidity sets in, I have to supplement this with a class or two of my wife’s Grappa.
She makes Grappa?
FSU France on the cards?
Germany hasn’t moved on much since the Nürnberg Rallies.
We can’t be too complacent in the UK
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/07/03/police-threaten-pub-goer-tweet-green-councillor/