74yo Retiree Who Criticised Robert Habeck Online Sentenced to 8,000 Euros
The best Germany of all times now comes with state-induced criminal (!) persecution of citizens' opinions of discontent: 'our democracy™' hard at work
The failed left/far-left gov’t of Germany has many, well, let’s call them ‘colourful’ characters, including Russophobe pro-NATO troll Marie-Agnes Zimmermann, of course, there’s the least charismatic chancellor of all times, Olaf Scholz, and the whole cast of unsavoury hypocrites masquerading as ‘Green™’ politicos, ranging from foreign minister Annalena Baerbock (no further comment) to her partner-in-lunacy, Economy Minister and Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck.
What unites these clowns is both a stunning disdain for Germany and Germans, as well as their incredibly thin skin. You see, if the hoi polloi expresses their, shall we say, ‘disagreement’ with the gov’t—as happens, I’m reliably told, apparently quite frequently on social media (regular people calling politicos™ names, if you can believe it), these clowns then send lawyer’s notes to Jane or Joe Q. Public demanding money because they feel ‘uncomfortable’ or, what’s way, way, way worse, offended.
If, at this point, I’ve lost most English-language readers—esp. my American ones—fear not, the below translation of just such a case brought forward by the thin-skinned Robert Habeck against a 74 year-old who engaged in ‘criminally’ shit-posting anti-Habeck sentiments on social media must be like the proverbial twilight zone.
Do read the piece twice, if you need to; it’s sadly not a singular occurrence, and the top-listed politicos™ are at the forefront of using high-powered law (sic) firms to extort money from regular citizens for posting memes and angry comments, which is construed as staatszersetzend (deconstructing the state) and demokratiegefährdend (a danger to, of course, ‘our democracy™’) by said lawyers.
Before we dive into these woods, a word about the author:
Clivia von Dewitz is a judge and wrote her doctoral thesis on Nazi ideology and criminal law (Sections 86, 86a and 130 of the German Criminal Code). Her book Gerechtigkeit durch Wiedergutmachung, focussing on the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission and discusses its applicability to the Ukraine-Russia conflict, was published by Westend in February 2024.
Translation, emphases, and [snark] mine. Also: Robert Habeck is an idiot.
Is that Already Incitement of the People [Volksverhetzung]? Anger at Robert Habeck Costs a 74-year-old Woman Dearly
The case of a pensioner raises the suspicion that the state is blindly eager to persecute anyone even when the government is sharply criticised. An analysis.
By Clivia von Dewitz, Berliner Zeitung, 5 Jan. 2025 [source]
The Düsseldorf district court sentenced a pensioner to 150 daily rates [orig. Tagsätze, daily fees, a common way of quantifying a court-ordered fee] of 53 euros each—for a total of 7,950 euros—for incitement of the people [orig. Volksverhetzung] because she had criticised the German government’s migration policy on Facebook with the following statement:
Blablabla. We need skilled workers, not asylum seekers who just want to make a nice life for themselves here without respecting our values and culture. Send those who are here to work. We don’t need idle bums [Faulenzer] and scroungers [Schmarotzer], and we certainly don’t need knife artists [Messerkünstler, a jab at the drastic increase of stabbings in the past decade] and rapists.
This was a reaction to an article published on Facebook on 8 Oct. 2023, in which Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck (Greens) was pictured and quoted as saying ‘Germany is dependent on immigration to meet its labour needs’. The amount of the daily rates can probably be explained by the fact that a penalty order had already been issued against the pensioner in 2022 who was sentenced for defamation against public figures, which has since become legally binding [two things: I’ll address the migration thing below; in the case of the 74 year-old retiree, she has been convicted of libel or the like before, hence the legal system considers her a repeat offender…].
The public prosecutor’s office now considered this [above-cited ‘Blablabla’…] Facebook comment to fulfil the requirements of Section 130 para. 1 of the German Criminal Code (incitement of the people), as it had ‘incited hatred in a way that is likely to disturb public peace’. In its argument, the public prosecutor's office, which had appeared in court with two public prosecutors [quite unusual, esp. as the defendant is a 74 year-old elderly woman who must terrify the prosecution], demanded that the ‘massive political criticism’ be taken into account as an aggravating offence.
Remorse and Insight Mitigate the Sentence
After Doris van Geul, 74, explained that the comment reflected her anger at Habeck’s statements, for whose position she had no sympathy, she was reprimanded by the public prosecutor [I salute you, Ms. van Geul] with the following words:
That just sounded as if you still don’t approve of the policy [as if political opinions needed to be approved by, of all people, judges].
As if consideration under Section 130 StGB [Criminal Code] depended on whether one approved of the current policy or not. At least the public prosecutor’s office took into account in its closing argument that van Geul had expressed remorse and insight, which mitigated the sentence. However, this does not really seem to have been reflected in the level of the daily rates.
Surprisingly, judge Tobias Kampmann found that parts of the population were specifically targeted in this statement in such a way that it could be seen as an incitement to hatred and that the requirements of Section 130 (1) StGB were met. Because if you read it over and over again, you would eventually believe it, he argued. What do we make of this?
The Historical Background
In 1960, Section 130 (incitement of the people) was introduced into the Criminal Code, which replaced the class struggle paragraph from the Bismarck era. In the 1950s, the Federal Republic of Germany found it very difficult to include the offence of incitement of the people in criminal law at all. In the debates in the Bundestag in the 1950s, it was repeatedly pointed out that the ‘internal coming to terms with the unfortunate era of National Socialism’ was taking place elsewhere than in the criminal courts. For example, in the education of teachers and pupils. The reason for the introduction of the incitement to hatred paragraph was, in particular, to protect Jewish people in Germany against the backdrop of the Holocaust.
The title of the new Section 130 of the German Criminal Code, ‘incitement of the people’, is a word monstrosity that is more suited to a totalitarian criminal regime than to a liberal, democratic, and constitutional criminal law. From the outset, objections were raised to the introduction of a special norm in the sense of a ‘Jew-baiting law’. The terms ‘incitement to hatred’ and ‘incitement of the people’ as legal terms could only be ‘inserted into the indeterminate and therefore biased and arbitrary criminal law of a totalitarian power’. Jewish fellow citizens could not be protected from intolerance by criminal law. It was only after a wave of anti-Semitic and neo-Nazi riots, in particular the ‘wave of smears’ [orig. Schmierwelle] around the turn of the year 1959/60, that the amendment to Section 130 StGB was finally passed in 1960.
Covered by Freedom of Opinion
The reason given was the violent crimes of the Nazi era, in particular the murder of six million Jews. After all, ‘what is said with an anti-Semitic edge is set against the background of the murder of six million Jews. That is why we find it intolerable; and that is why it is also the anti-Semitic statements against which the threat of punishment is primarily directed’, explained MP Bockelmann in 1960 [which is yet another reason why ‘the Holocaust’ has risen to de facto cult-like status in Germany since: if there is even the slightest hint of any doubt about the official WW2 narrative whatsoever, the ripple effects likely to tear apart more than the historical record…].
In order to prevent abuse of Section 130 of the Criminal Code (StGB), the legislature introduced the restrictive offence of public peace in 1960. This was intended to prevent Section 130 from being applied to any expression of opinion. Only if the statement incites other people to commit criminal offences, i.e., when it creates a pogrom-like atmosphere in the population, can it be considered applicable at all. Systematically, § 130 StGB shifts criminal liability to the area of expression in order to prevent simple statements from turning into bodily harm or even homicide offences later on. One of the lessons learnt from the Nazi era.
In the present case, an open-ended examination would have been required to determine whether the statements were at all suitable to endanger public peace (i.e., suitable to provoke a pogrom-like atmosphere), as provided for in the offence of Section 130 StGB. Yet, the statements represent the personal opinion of the person making them. They cannot be seen as an appeal to incite criminal offences. Only if the statement fulfils the elements of the offence—which is unlikely to be the case, as it does not call for subsequent criminal offences and is not intended to provoke a pogrom atmosphere [which the prosecution would have to prove beyond reasonable doubt, I’d add, and this was never done]—would further examination be required whether Section 130 StGB could restrict freedom of expression in a permissible manner in a specific case.
In its 2018 decision, the Federal Constitutional Court clarified with regard to Section 130 (3) that the aim of this provision is to protect against statements ‘whose content is recognisably designed to endanger legal interests’ [whose, you might add? Mr. Habeck and the German judiciary are of the opinion: the gov’t’s interests]. A conviction can therefore only be linked to expressions of opinion [the below quotes are from that 2018 Constitutional Court ruling]
if they are indirectly designed to have a real effect beyond the formation of convictions and can directly trigger consequences that endanger legal interests, for example in the form of appeals to break the law, aggressive emotionalisation, or by lowering inhibition thresholds.
At the end, the Court decision holds:
Freedom of expression only finds its limits in criminal law when the statements take on an un-peaceful character.
This must generally remain the limit for assessing the criminal liability of an expression of opinion, otherwise the judiciary will revert to criminal law based on convictions [which is what Mr. Habeck and his ilk are actively doing (in my view, they are committing high treason doing so), and in this nefarious undertaking these politicos™ are aided and abetted by both the public prosecutor’s office and the judiciary: shame on all of them, esp. if one considers the ‘offence™’ of the 74 year-old retiree: a social media posting].
In the present case, the defendant’s statements made are unlikely to fulfil the offence of incitement to hatred. This is because the statements certainly lack an ‘unpeaceful character’. In any case, however, they are covered by freedom of expression.
Federal Constitutional Court Emphasises the Importance of Ereedom of Expression
In its ruling of 11 April 2024, the Federal Constitutional Court has just emphasised the great importance of freedom of expression. It deemed the following comment by journalist Julian Reichelt (former editor-in-chief of the Bild newspaper) to be covered by freedom of expression:
Germany has paid 370 million euros in development aid to the Taliban in the last two years (!!!!!!). We are living in a madhouse, an absolute, complete, total, historically unique madhouse. What kind of government is this?
The court made it clear that the state enjoys no protection of honour and must also withstand harsh and polemical criticism. Public criticism of the state is covered by the fundamental right of freedom of expression. There are narrow limits to any restriction.
Unfortunately, this case [against 74 year-old Ms. van Geul] shows once again that general principles of due restraint on the part of state authority, clean subsumption work, awareness of the means of criminal law as a last resort, and the importance of freedom of opinion quickly give way to a zeal for persecution when the government is criticised—even if only in very general terms. This can only be explained against the backdrop of a politicisation of the judiciary, which poses a threat to democratic principles [I’d add that this threat is existential].
One of the lessons that must be learnt from the Nazi past, especially in Germany, is to stop prosecuting people who criticise the government and to uphold democratic values such as freedom of expression and the control of the executive by the courts and the media—even and especially in times of crisis.
Bottom Lines
Judge von Dewitz is, of course, correct in her assessment.
It’s almost as if the lack of accountability for the shenanigans, abuses, and, yes, wrongful decisions during the WHO-declared, so-called ‘Pandemic™’ is now coming to haunt us.
The gov’t got away with weaponising spine-less ‘experts™’, aided and abetted by equally amoral ‘journos™’ and the judiciary. As a consequence, we’re now harvesting what was sown—no accountability, no justice, and more closing of the ranks among state actors.
The end result is obvious for everyone to see: the increasingly arbitrary application of the law, the punishment of people who voice their discontent (esp. online), and the picking of winners and losers, all of these fly in the face of the principle of equality under the law.
I’m trying to document some of these ‘milestones’, but I suppose the best starting points might be these two pieces:
Another problem is that the quality of people who do the day-to-day work in public (and, arguably, also in part in private) administration is deteriorating quickly:
The end result is obvious: more and more, increasingly absurd things are bound to happen, with less and less accountability—both in terms of honour/shame and from the courts—will further erode the credibility of ‘our democracy™’.
At this point, there’s little that distinguishes the many ailments of Western societies from late-stage Soviet experiences.
In the end, as the saying goes, things will get worse before they may either get even worse (say, nuclear war)—or better.
What the latter will require, though, is accountability, both in terms of anyone’s character (morals) and in terms of societal implications.
Until and unless these fundamentals change, ‘da system™’ will decay further.
To sum up, 'we're f**ked'. See also the UK doing exactly the same thing.
I recall a young Syrian refugee (~2017) trying to explain the difference in political climates between Germany and the Assad regime of his homeland: "...if I criticise the government, or the president, in Syria, they can put me in jail. Here it is better, you are free to say what you think."