When the government does not allow its population to freely speak against it, it's just waiting to be abused by one bad leader.
Germany restricts insulting individuals / your neighbour, police officer, a pastor or a minister. There’s no special law for politicians. Political criticism is protected under the Basic Law (constitution). Go ahead and be crucial about a politician’s actions but don’t insult their person’s honour or use a slur. That’s not your freedom of speech, that’s the dignity. In fact, you can even insult the government! You can say German government as the government is not a person.
Anyone can defame anyone else on the US. The only time the libel or slander laws apply is when the defamed person can prove real harm in court. Not harm to dignity, but monetary loss, personal loss, or physical injury. These are very high bars to clear.
If people could sue and win just for proving willful or negligent defamation of character, a lot of extremist influencers would be in the poor house.
You're not allowed to insult anyone, https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/stgb/__185.html , though the term "insult" is not nearly as broadly defined as in everyday speech. The law dates back to the 18th century, and has largely been unchanged for 150 years. I really don't understand the recent outrage over these and other laws. We have been fine.
More background: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beleidigung_(Deutschland)
The last 150 years of Germany have...ahem...not been what I would call "fine."
It would be interesting to have a replay of history without this law and similar ones related to it. Could be nothing different happens.
On the other hand, any law regulating speech is going to have a reverberating effect on the marketplace of ideas with 2nd and 3rd order outcomes that are impossible to disentangle after the fact.
But it's certainly not been because of that law…
At the very least I'm sure you'll agree we've been fine the last 80 or so years. Again, I'm just saying I don't understand the outrage right now.
However, I don't see how this would imply the law that's been in place for 150 years would suddenly be bad. In fact, one might argue that precisely because so much communication is happening in public now, more regulation is needed.
You shouldn't need a "license" to publish a website.
> The January 14, 2016, edition of Weekly Disinformation Review reported the reemergence of several previously debunked Russian propaganda stories, including that Polish President Andrzej Duda was insisting that Ukraine return former Polish territory, that Islamic State fighters were joining pro-Ukrainian forces, and that there was a Western-backed coup in Kiev, Ukraine’s capital.11
> Sometimes, Russian propaganda is picked up and rebroadcast by legitimate news outlets; more frequently, social media repeats the themes, messages, or falsehoods introduced by one of Russia’s many dissemination channels. For example, German news sources rebroadcast Russian disinformation about atrocities in Ukraine in early 2014, and Russian disinformation about EU plans to deny visas to young Ukrainian men was repeated with such frequency in Ukrainian media that the Ukrainian general staff felt compelled to post a rebuttal.12
> Sometimes, however, events reported in Russian propaganda are wholly manufactured, like the 2014 social media campaign to create panic about an explosion and chemical plume in St. Mary's Parish, Louisiana, that never happened.15 Russian propaganda has relied on manufactured evidence—often photographic. Some of these images are easily exposed as fake due to poor photo editing, such as discrepancies of scale, or the availability of the original (pre-altered) image.16 Russian propagandists have been caught hiring actors to portray victims of manufactured atrocities or crimes for news reports (as was the case when Viktoria Schmidt pretended to have been attacked by Syrian refugees in Germany for Russian's Zvezda TV network), or faking on-scene news reporting (as shown in a leaked video in which “reporter” Maria Katasonova is revealed to be in a darkened room with explosion sounds playing in the background rather than on a battlefield in Donetsk when a light is switched on during the recording).17
> RT stated that blogger Brown Moses (a staunch critic of Syria's Assad regime whose real name is Eliot Higgins) had provided analysis of footage suggesting that chemical weapon attacks on August 21, 2013, had been perpetrated by Syrian rebels. In fact, Higgins's analysis concluded that the Syrian government was responsible for the attacks and that the footage had been faked to shift the blame.18 Similarly, several scholars and journalists, including Edward Lucas, Luke Harding, and Don Jensen, have reported that books that they did not write—and containing views clearly contrary to their own—had been published in Russian under their names.
I found that source on the Wikipedia page for RT after a couple of minutes. You can find more pretty easily.
Germany is currently actively campaigning to force everyone to use their real names on all social media and force ID checks to do so, a clear chilling effect for free speech.
Macron has been railing against free speech specifically in recent months, calling it "bullshit".
Europe is against free speech, any argument to the contrary must contend with the above examples of them trampling on rights.
Can you share some concrete examples from reputable sources that show these? Every examples I've seen have been clear-cut calls for violence, or unambiguous harassment.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/02/15/hundreds-charged...
> After the Southport stabbings, several people were questioned by police over false communications for spreading claims the attacker was a Muslim immigrant. In one instance, a man pleaded guilty to the offence for a livestreamed video on TikTok where he falsely claimed he was “running for his life” from rioters in Derby.
That very much seems like an attempt to harass or invite harassment against a group of people...
https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/1qv0vpi/...
The propaganda take I keep seeing is that you can get arrested for misgendering people or something, but these are at least close to incitement to violence. Some clearly cross that line.
To be clear I’m closer to the American view. I think the bar should be very, very high for speech to be criminally actionable. Just pointing out that it doesn’t seem as nuts as some make it sound.
https://freedomhouse.org/country/united-kingdom/freedom-net/...
"Internet freedom declined in the United Kingdom during the coverage period due to a reported increase in criminal charges for online speech"
"A separate report from The Telegraph found that 292 people had been charged for spreading false information and “threatening communications” under the Online Safety Act between when it came into effect in 2023 and February 2025. Some civil liberties groups expressed concern that the laws were being applied broadly and in some cases punished speech protected by international human rights standards (C3)."
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/02/15/hundreds-charged...
"Legal experts have also questioned the new rules. David Hardstaff, a serious crime expert at the law firm BCL Solicitors, said the fake news offence was “problematic both for its potential to stifle free speech if misused, but equally for its lack of clarity and consistency”."
Source? (Other than one derailed politician, which unfortunately we get to call our chancellor, having a moment? He's still not "Germany", though, not even "the German government".)
> Macron has been railing against free speech specifically in recent months, calling it "bullshit".
I think you're misrepresenting what he said:
https://www.politico.eu/article/emmanuelmacron-calls-social-...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-02-18/macron-bl...
Macron was responding to criticism of the Digital Services Act, which contains censorship provisions for 'hate speech', which is repeatedly and routinely used by European nations to crack down on protected political speech. For example, it has been used as an excuse to censor political views leaning anti-immigration.
The UK in particular has used Ofcom as a weapon to target American companies that enable free speech communications, notably 4chan.
[1] https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/germanys-merz-calls-real...
I'm saying, there is a huge difference between a random utterance of the chancellor, which by next week he'll likely already have forgotten about, and "Germany actively campaigning" e.g. at the EU or federal level, both of which would require both ruling parties to get behind the chancellor's demands, which – based on how similar discourses have turned out in the past – is completely unlikely.
I'm not defending Merz's position, not by a long shot. I'm just saying that, based on previous experience, we're still quite far away from the "actively campaigning" stage and very, very, very far away from Merz's ideas being turned into law. I'm concerned about many things but this is not one of them. Civil rights organizations are already rallying and telling him how stupid he is¹ for suggesting that real name enforcement would be a good idea. :-) It's the usual political discourse.
¹) See how I am exercising my right to free speech and am not at all concerned about being charged for "insulting a politician"?
You do realize that the UK is not part of the EU? So I'm not sure how UK's supposed "weaponization" of Ofcom has anything to do with Macron's statement.
> which is repeatedly and routinely used by European nations to crack down on protected political speech.
I'm really looking forward to your sources here. The DSA does not contain any provisions that change anything about the legality of speech. It's mostly meant to harmonize procedural aspects across the member states.
https://www.csis.org/blogs/europe-corner/does-eus-digital-se...
https://bhr.stern.nyu.edu/quick-take/a-clear-eyed-look-at-th...
As for the DSA censorship, I don't think you've read it.
https://judiciary.house.gov/media/press-releases/foreign-cen...
But the Digital Services Act is EU-specific? Macron's statement referenced the DSA specifically, so I don't know what the UK has to do with that.
> As for the DSA censorship, I don't think you've read it.
I have. In fact, it seems you didn't read the links I shared, given that the second reference specifically addresses the – quite frankly – bullshit House Judiciary Comittee Republicans' report you linked to. (Again, to emphasize, this report was authored by the committee's Republican members only. In today's MAGA-controlled congress, I don't think such a report can count as authorative reference any longer.)
Just to be sure, by "it" you're referring to the committee report?
> Your previous claim was that DSA did not have hate speech provisions. Are you claiming DSA Article 22 does not exist, for example?
Please do quote the parts of DSA Article 22 that regulate hate speech or speech in general. It says absolutely nothing of the kind. It concerns itself with "illegal content" and defines procedures to handle it. What content is legal or illegal is defined by the laws already in place in the different member states. Also, procedures to handle illegal content already existed at a national level before DSA was enacted, so the only thing that DSA did was to harmonize them.