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A Twitter user insulted a German politician, then police raided his house

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Re: A Twitter user insulted a German politician, then police raided his house

#161

Post by disgu »

thunfischbrot wrote: post #132
kybernetyk wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a German I have to say: this happens all the time. By this I mean police raids for minuscule infractions.

While it does happen, "all the time" seems to suggest it happens every week. I believe instead police raids on private homes for e.g. smaller drug related charges happen occasionally. This is the first case I hear of which is such an abuse of power about an insult online.

A spokesperson for the Hamburg Police said that they've carried out a ~50 raids of homes of people for insults/hate speech. And that's just one city. So more than once a week in a single city.

Source: https://www.heise.de/news/Du-bist-so-1-Pimmel-Hamburgs-Innen...

Re: A Twitter user insulted a German politician, then police raided his house

#162

Post by disgu »

gewa wrote: post #117
AmericanChopper wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm sure there will be formal investigations how this happened It happened because you allowed your politicians to pass laws that regulate allowable speech, as many other countries have done. I’m sure it was controversial, but most likely also had a considerable amount of support from people who didn’t like the kinds of speech they thought this would criminalize. A distinctive feature of this case is that it has cr…

It doesn't seem like you are very familiar with German politics or culture, but this is definitely an outlier. Freedom of speech is a central part of our constitution. Defamation is one of the very few ways and enforcement and interpretation is mostly restricted to defamation of policemen. This is the reason why this has resulted in an outcry as the proportionality does not respond to the interpretation how defamatio…

> restricted to defamation of policemen

This is 100% completely wrong. There's §185 and that applies to all citizens. That's the law, there's no such thing as Beamtenbeleidigung or other stuff that gets quotes often. We have to work on educating people that insulting the police is no different than insulting your neighbor. Such a law just doesn't exist and it never did.

Re: A Twitter user insulted a German politician, then police raided his house

#163

Post by disgu »

rPlayer6554 wrote: post #151
disgu wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People get sentenced for insulting police all the time. What are you talking about?

Source please?

Official German 'Polizeiliche Krimnalstatistik'. Go here, download the Excel file and look for 'Beleidigung'. It then shows the exact numbers. https://www.bka.de/DE/AktuelleInformationen/StatistikenLageb...

Re: A Twitter user insulted a German politician, then police raided his house

#164

Post by disgu »

jcrites wrote: post #152
disgu wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People get sentenced for insulting police all the time. What are you talking about?

Can you give an example? I’ve never heard of such a case. You might be thinking of scenarios where people are arrested and prosecuted for resisting arrest, making threats against police officer, or crimes of that nature. There will be limits of what you can say to police before you also run afoul of laws against public nuisance. Just as you would not want a random person to shout epithets and slurs at you and follow…

https://www.bka.de/DE/AktuelleInformationen/StatistikenLageb...

Key word to look for is 'Beleidigung'.

The bigger cases are usually to be found here: https://www.rechtsindex.de/urteile/beleidigung

Keep in mind that the list above is not 100% relevant for these examples. You can also just find articles if you google 'beleidigung' and 'verurteilt'.

Ask any Strafrechtsanwalt in your area and they'll confirm this. This is not even a controversial thing at all.

Re: A Twitter user insulted a German politician, then police raided his house

#165

Post by majewsky »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #127
barbazoo wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's still a fact that in Germany you have to be careful how you express yourself. Is that a fact? That's news to me. You might not hear as much "unloading" in Germany simply because it's not yet as polarized as it is in the US but certainly there wouldn't be any repercussions as far as I'm aware. What exactly are you talking about?

Until recently you couldn't insult any head of state in Germany and still can't insult the German leader.

Until someone did and everyone immediately realized how stupid this law is, and then the law was repealed.

Re: A Twitter user insulted a German politician, then police raided his house

#166

Post by HotHotLava »

esyir wrote: post #67
throwdecro wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As another commenter pointed out, it looks like it's against German law to insult anyone, not just politicians. If only politicians were protected from insult, I don't think that would be compatible with democracy at all.

I'm wondering if enforcement of this law is consistent. Somehow, I'm pretty doubtful, but I'd like some confirmation of how it works over there.

It is never proactively enforced, it always requires a "Strafantrag" of the insulted party.

Re: A Twitter user insulted a German politician, then police raided his house

#168

Post by MagnumOpus »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #127
barbazoo wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's still a fact that in Germany you have to be careful how you express yourself. Is that a fact? That's news to me. You might not hear as much "unloading" in Germany simply because it's not yet as polarized as it is in the US but certainly there wouldn't be any repercussions as far as I'm aware. What exactly are you talking about?

Until recently you couldn't insult any head of state in Germany and still can't insult the German leader.

You still are not allowed to insult not just the German Leader (which Germany hasn't had in 84 years), but anyone at all.

Insults are a misdemeanor crime and you can and will be fined several thousand dollars for calling your local cop an asshole or whoreson, for instance. (Which is better than the US where you will likely get molested, possibly arrested, and might get shot for the unwritten crime of 'contempt of cop'.)

Re: A Twitter user insulted a German politician, then police raided his house

#169

Post by sofixa »

rob74 wrote: post #46
cheesetable wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that different people have different criteria for a coup. For example, in the US in Jan 2021, there was a riot that some call a coup, and some do not. Brazil might also count. I am not aware of the details.

It can only be called a coup if it's successful in actually changing the government. If it's not, you can argue endlessly (as in the Jan. 6 case) if it qualifies as an "attempted coup" (which implies that it had a remote chance of succeeding).

> if it qualifies as an "attempted coup" (which implies that it had a remote chance of succeeding

No, an "attempted coup" means an attempt at a coup d'état. Probability of success doesn't matter for an attempt to be classified as an attempt, only intentions.

Re: A Twitter user insulted a German politician, then police raided his house

#170

Post by tpush »

disgu wrote: post #164
jcrites wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give an example? I’ve never heard of such a case. You might be thinking of scenarios where people are arrested and prosecuted for resisting arrest, making threats against police officer, or crimes of that nature. There will be limits of what you can say to police before you also run afoul of laws against public nuisance. Just as you would not want a random person to shout epithets and slurs at you and follow…

https://www.bka.de/DE/AktuelleInformationen/StatistikenLageb... Key word to look for is 'Beleidigung'. The bigger cases are usually to be found here: https://www.rechtsindex.de/urteile/beleidigung Keep in mind that the list above is not 100% relevant for these examples. You can also just find articles if you google 'beleidigung' and 'verurteilt'. Ask any Strafrechtsanwalt in your area and they'll confirm this. This i…

'jcrites' is talking about the US, not Germany.
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