Poll: Only 18 Percent of Germans Feel Free to Voice Views in Public

Poll: Only 18 Percent of Germans Feel Free to Voice Views in Public

For years, we have discussed the unrelenting attacks on free speech in Europe with the expansion of hate speech laws and the general criminalization of speech, including international speech crimes.

(Johnathan Turley)

Some in the United States would like to follow down that dangerous path (and universities are reinforcing the view of the need to regulate speech). The implications of such anti-speech policies are evident in Germany where a survey, conducted by the Institut für Demoskopie Allensbach(and published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) found that only 18 percent of Germans feel free to express their views in public. It is the most vivid example of how Europeans are learning to live without free speech. Undeterred, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the successor to Angela Merkel, is now calling on greater limits on free speech during election periods — a concept that would normally be viewed as counterintuitive outside of the new European model.

Notably, over 31 percent of Germans did not even feel free expressing themselves in private among friends. Just 17 percent felt free to express themselves on the Internet and 35 percent said that freedom to speech is confined to the smallest of private circles.

Even at the height of the Stasi, citizens were not nearly as controlled in East Germany. It is the irony of our times. It has been otherwise liberal governments that have succeeded with authoritarian regimes failed in getting people to give up their free speech rights. All in the name of fighting intolerance . . . by codifying intolerance to an ever-expanding range of speech.

Over the course of the last 50 years, the French, English and Germans have waged an open war on free speech by criminalizing speech deemed insulting, harassing or intimidating. We have previously discussed the alarming rollback on free speech rights in the West, (here and here and here and here and here and here and here) and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here). There are encroachments appearing in the United States, particularly on college campuses. Notably, the media celebrated the speech of French President Emmanuel Macron before Congress where he called on the United States to follow the model of Europe on hate speech

‘GLARING HYPOCRISY” Update on Police Raid on German Dissident Alfred Schaefer

INTERVIEW: Police Seize Holocaust & 9/11 Truther Alfred Schaefer’s Computers, Papers, etc.

‘GLARING HYPOCRISY” Update on Police Raid on German Dissident Alfred Schaefer

(GLARING Hypocrisy) The above video is a 29-minute interview, recorded Friday, August 19, 2016, with Alfred Schaefer, a German-Canadian Holocaust and 9/11 truther and video producer. Early Thursday morning, Alfred and his wife Elfriede’s house was visited by two German criminal police officers who, after providing a search warrant, took possession of Alfred’s computer equipment (e.g., Mac, drives, iPad), various papers and even his iPod.

Alfred is the brother of Monika Schaefer, the German-Canadian woman who, alongside Alfred, produced the Sorry Mom, I was wrong about the Holocaust video that has garnered much media attention around the world. GLARING Hypocrisy interviews with Monika are available here andhere, with additional GH coverage here.

As part of the above interview with Alfred, he discusses the video entitled, A Dissident Speaking Out – Gerhard Ittner, which he posted to his YouTube channel on August 14.

We suggest you watch this brief but potent discussion between Alfred and Gerhard Ittner, who was unlawfully abducted from Portugal and imprisoned for five years for denouncing the lies of the Jewish Holocaust. But — as we like to see here at GLARING Hypocrisy — the import of their discussion reaches far beyond the Holohoax into the present-day Jew World Order tyranny that has all of humanity in its crosshairs. Notably, Ittner had already sent Alfred’s video to all of the judges in Germany before the Schaefers received their home visit from the Kriminalpolizei.

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