Banning Books and Combatting 'Hate', New Public Management Shows its True Colours in Germany

Combatting 'Hate' in Germany is 'Outsourced' to the Amadeu Antonio Stiftung Whose Leader once Spied on Fellow GDR Citizens and Ratted Out Jews to the Communists

Mark Crispin Miller brought attention to the appalling case of C.J. Hopkins’ persecution by German authorities.

His crime? Hopkins, an American playwright living in Berlin, is currently under investigation by German public prosecutors for—writing a book. Sure, as a satirist and critic, you could probably imagine his stance would have something to do with this ‘investigation’.

But, no, Hopkins quite consistently criticised Germany’s Covid régime almost right from the get-go. Hence, when his book came out with the title The Rise of the New Normal Reich, it was soon banned. Hi ‘crime’? Writing and tweeting about the absurdities of our time.

How to Weed Out ‘Hate’ and ‘Fake’, German-Style

Speaking of these absurdities, I recalled a quite dated piece that appeared some two years ago that might illuminate these shenanigans.

You see, back in late 2020, alternative outlet Die Achse des Guten (‘Axis of the Good’) ran a piece by Chaim Noll about the person in charge of Germany’s (un)official internet watchdog guarding, as it were, against ‘hate speech’ and ‘hateful content’ online. This piece was subsequently picked up by, among others, the Jüdische Rundschau, one of Germany’s ‘independent Jewish monthly’ magazine.

The content, of course, is what matters here: back during the Cold War, Ms. Kahane was an East German citizen (sic) whose internal security forces (Staatssicherheit, or Stasi) depended on massive numbers of informants ratting out their relatives, neighbours, and friends. Some estimates of the share of informants among the general population suggest that up to third of the GDR’s citizens were, effectively, block wardens (snoops).

Of Foxes and Hen-Houses

Over in Germany, the emergence of social media has resulted in the blossoming of calls to reign in ‘hate’ and to take action against ‘hate-speech’, which is supremely ironic as the former is already covered by the Criminal Code and the latter, originating in the context of Anglo- and esp. American legal culture, has no equivalent, let alone parallel, in ‘continental European’ law.

In Germany, de facto authority to police the internet—that is, to check on people’s online behaviour and, if (of course un-specified) thresholds of ‘hatefulness’ of content are reached, engage with law enforcement and state attorneys to initiate legal (sic) proceedings—rests, among others, with the Amadeu Antonio Stiftung.

The Amadeu Antonio Stiftung is, of course, a ‘charity’ (for this is the legal form of ‘incorporation’ to avoid paying their fair share of taxes. And, of course, to engage in spying on fellow citizens and bringing them to the attention of authorities.

As I wrote elsewhere,

the ‘NGO’ Amadeu Antonio Stiftung (foundation), an institution funded by both donations and the German government, according to independent journalist Thomas Röper:

‘More than half of this [Amadeu Antonio] foundation is financed by the [German] Federal Government, the rest are donations. It became known [in 2018] mainly for its important role in the implementation of the controversial Network Enforcement Act [legislation here, Wikipedia guidance here]. This act is ostensibly about combatting “hate-speech” online and in particular in social media. And the [Amadeu Antonio] foundation is more or less the referee here, because there is no court of law that decides what constitutes “hate-speech”, but this is de facto what the foundation is there for.’

So, to recapitulate, the German gov’t (co)finances a notionally NGO (sic) to ‘combat “hate-speech” online and in particular in social media’, thus, in effect, outsourcing snooping, institutionalising, via legislation, ratting-out people’s activities online, and, ultimately, investing a civilian body with the authority to bring charges.

What could go wrong?

At this point, though, we may finally return to Ms. Kahane, the dubious role of a comparable ‘NGO’, the Bundespressekonferenz (the Federal Press Association)—another one of a seemingly state institution that is a non-governmental collaboration of legacy media outlets (the closes US equivalent is the Associated Press).

Without much further ado, in my translation, and with emphases added. As usual, the bottom lines are also mine. (Note that the reprint in the Jüdische Rundschau of the same piece carried the header ‘How Anetta Kahane Ratted Out Jews in the GDR’).

---

Is Anetta Kahane Spreading Conspiracy Theories?

By Chaim Noll, Die Achse des Guten, 28 Nov. 2020

Someone sent me a video via Facebook showing Anetta Kahane in the hall of the Federal Press Association on 24 November [2020]. She appeared together with Felix Klein, the Federal Government’s Commissioner for Anti-Semitism, and Kevin Kühnert, the Deputy Party Chair of the SPD. The topic, as Anetta put it: ‘Anti-Semitism in Corona times.’ Note the plural, Corona times: Here, certain circles are apparently setting themselves up for a perpetual state of emergency. The temptation is great: never before have governments in democratic states succeeded in restricting the rights of their citizens so massively, in scaring society from toddlers to the elderly with panic propaganda, and in banning everything that they always wanted to ban anyway. And they did so for the sake of more convenient rule.

Brief notes on Anetta Kahane, who is listed in the Merkel empire’s inventory of figures as an expert on Anti-Semitism. Which, in a way, she is, but in a different way than one might think: from the experience of a perpetrator because spying on Jews in a dictatorship is unquestionably a case of active Anti-Semitism. Reporting them to a deadly persecuting authority as opponents and enemies of the state is even more: active participation in the persecution of Jews. This is exactly what Anetta Kahane did (for example, when she denounced the Jewish Brasch brothers to the GDR State Security [the above-mentioned Stasi] as ‘enemies of the GDR’ in 1976; Klaus Brasch took his own life in 1980).

It is one of the stains on the otherwise blessed history of the Jews in Germany that there were Jewish denunciators, such as the Gestapo informers Stella Goldschlag and Rolf Isaaksohn, who tracked down hidden Jews in Berlin. Or, later in the GDR, where denunciation was done for political [sic] reasons, such as that by Anetta Kahane, as an ‘enemy of the state’. Ms. Kahane, of all people, was the expert chosen by the Merkel government to lecture Germans about Anti-Semitism. One of the many grotesque personalities in the Chancellor’s weird empire.

So what was the ‘Federal Press Association’ meeting, attended by about a dozen journalists, about? First, the small audience was lectured that the ‘Federal Press Association’ was a ‘non-governmental organisation’, i.e., one of the many mysteriously financed foundations, corporations, institutes, etc. that are conjured out of nothing to cover up the manipulation and infiltration by the federal government. Like the Amadeu Antonio Foundation to combat ‘racism’ and ‘right-wing extremism’, which is headed by the expert Anetta. The federal government wants to invest one billion of taxpayer money in the ‘fight against the right’ in the next few years—hence, there is a need for ‘non-governmental organisations’ to perform the manipulative fine-tuning, with reliable forces to whom one can transfer all that money.

Suppression of Oppositional Movements among the People

The narrative presented by the trio Kahane-Kühnert-Klein was as simple as it was fabulous: ‘Corona deniers’ are known to be prone to ‘conspiracy theories’, and at the same time conspiracy theories are part of the arsenal of Anti-Semitism - consequently, hence all opponents of the state’s Corona policies are potential Anti-Semites. And therefore, in Germany, where Anti-Semitism must be fought particularly vigorously after the Holocaust, all opponents are thus fair game. Anti-Semitism as a go-to bogeyman to suppress oppositional movements among the people. Around the same time, Angela Merkel, dressed in yellow, the colour of plague and envy, has decreed new [Covid] rules to hamstring her fellow citizens.

I hereby declare myself to be an opponent of these measures, which I consider to be overly excessive, destructive, hostile to the future and children, and in part openly inhumane—and now I await the due accusation of being an Anti-Semite. Perhaps by the ‘non-governmental organisation’ headed by Anetta, who could then finally make up for what she failed to do during our youth in the GDR: denounce me as an enemy of the state.

The two male special forces for the ‘Anti-Semitism in Corona Times’, Kevin Kühnert and Felix Klein, were left with only supporting roles next to the eloquent Anetta. Even so, Kühnert had the audacity to claim that the presumption of Anti-Semitism among the ‘Corona deniers’ was reminiscent of the bloody persecution of Jews during the Black Death. This comparison testifies to embarrassing historical ignorance: neither is the Corona virus about to depopulate Europe as the Black Death once did, nor have there been pogroms by indigenous populations against Jews anywhere in this part of the world in the last seventy-five years.

‘Conspiracy Theory’ As Missing Link

Nevertheless, a new theory is being cobbled together that portrays popular discontent as essentially Anti-Semitic. Pro-government papers, such as Jüdische Allgemeine, taz, or Neues Deutschland, dutifully reported on the otherwise little-noticed event apparently instigated by the German government. As explained by Ms. Kahane and related by the Jüdische Allgemeine, she emphasised that,

‘I want to point out that Germany is the front-runner in the Corona protests.’ The German population seems to be dealing with the pandemic in a strange way, she said, adding that in other countries such sentiments do not exist in this form. Kahane called for more programmes specifically targeting conspiracy ideologies, for the police to be trained accordingly, and for the protection of Jewish citizens and Jewish institutions to be improved.’

The conflation of ‘Corona protests’ and Anti-Semitism is done by claiming they are linked via ‘conspiracy theory’. It looks as if a new conspiracy theory is being constructed here, one that concerns the conspiracy of participants in Corona protests with those who threaten ‘Jewish citizens and Jewish institutions’. Is Anetta, for her part, spreading a conspiracy theory? In order to combat this—clearly, anti-state—conspiracy, all means would then be permitted. In this sense, as the taz reports, Bavaria's Prime Minister Söder is demanding

‘that the Office for the Protection of the Constitution [Germany’s FBI] takes a closer look at the protests’. The head of the Thuringian secret service, Stephan Kramer, concurred. It would be conceivable that the Office for the Protection of the Constitution would not put individual groups under observation, but the spectrum as such…’

---

Bottom Lines

I hope C.J. Hopkins will be o.k.

If not, this has all the markings of a possible continuation of truly Kafkaesque proportions. It’s grotesque, but in this day and age, I wouldn’t stop worrying.

If anything, the ‘pandemic’ has shown, decidedly, that the rule of law is, well, dying if not putrefying these days; what remains is the carcass of once-o.k.-ish societies.

We do live in interesting times, though.

And if you’d excuse me, I’ll go and puke now.