I Was Targeted by Germany’s Speech Police

By Rainer Zitelmann

Saturday, July 25, 2026

 

Is free speech under threat in Germany? Most conservatives, center-right supporters, classical liberals, and libertarians in the country believe that it is. After facing criminal accusations for violating Germany’s laws limiting free speech myself, I can tell you firsthand that Germany’s free-speech problem is real — and it’s a warning to anyone who cares about the right of free expression.

 

For many years, those on the political left vehemently denied that Germany had a free-speech problem. Their standard argument was: “You can say whatever you want — you just have to expect others to disagree with you.” Yet for years, opinion polls have shown that many Germans no longer feel free to express their views on certain issues without fear. According to a 2025 Allensbach survey, only 46 percent of Germans believe they can freely express their political opinions, while 44 percent say it is better to be cautious about speaking openly.

 

The terms “cancel culture” and “political correctness” have become widely used not only in the United States but also in Germany. Over time, however, these concepts have lost much of their impact. When people not on the left are routinely labeled “Nazis” or “fascists,” such accusations eventually lose their effectiveness. And as those terms lose that power, the next stage in spreading fear and intimidating dissenters has been the increasingly open use of police and the justice system. This is a sign of weakness, reflecting an inability to prevail through argument.

 

The growing restrictions on free speech are now acknowledged even by critical left-wing journalists and legal scholars. Ronen Steinke, a senior political editor at the center-left newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, recently authored a book on the subject, in which he writes: “Germany has always been the Western country with the greatest number of speech taboos and the strictest criminal laws governing mere words.”

 

According to Steinke, between 2015 and 2025, Germany took action to crack down on political speech: “Parliament expanded and multiplied criminal provisions. The offense of incitement to hatred has been broadened in several respects, and the offense of publicly approving criminal acts has been extended to such a degree that people can now be punished for endorsing acts that exist only in the imagination.”

 

In addition, Steinke argues, many public prosecutors have made the fight against so-called hate speech a top priority, creating new and powerful investigative units. His conclusion is unequivocal: “Never before have there been so many criminal investigations in Germany over mere words.” For some offenses, according to Steinke, the number of investigations has increased tenfold, and in extreme cases even a hundredfold.

 

In one widely publicized case, police arrived at a retiree’s home at 6 a.m. to carry out a house search after he had shared on X an image referring to the then–federal minister for economic affairs, Robert Habeck, as “Schwachkopf” (idiot).

 

Another retiree came under criminal investigation after calling Chancellor Friedrich Merz “Pinocchio” on Facebook. That case was later dropped.

 

Such investigations are possible in part because of Section 188 of the German Criminal Code, which grants politicians special legal protection. The number of criminal investigations for insulting politicians has doubled every year since 2021, rising from 748 to 4,439 in 2024, Steinke writes.

 

Well-known classical liberal and conservative journalists have also been reported anonymously to the police through so-called reporting centers.

 

Complaints have repeatedly relied on Section 86a of the German Criminal Code, which prohibits the use of symbols of unconstitutional organizations and provides for penalties of up to three years in prison.

 

At the beginning of February 2026, I too received a letter from the police. For the first time in my life, I was accused of committing a criminal offense. Someone had filed a complaint against me through one of these reporting centers simplybecause I had reposted an image on X that showed a historical photograph of Adolf Hitler on the left and a contemporary photograph of Vladimir Putin on the right. A speech bubble attributed the words, “Give me Czechoslovakia and I won’t attack anyone else,” to Hitler, while Putin was shown saying, “Give me Ukraine and I won’t attack anyone else.”

 

I have never been particularly fond of Hitler analogies. Perhaps that is because I spent ten years of my life studying the subject and earned my doctorate with a dissertation on Hitler. From that scholarly perspective, I see how many such comparisons are historically inaccurate. They often serve more to shut down debate than to illuminate it.

 

Yet since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, I have been struck by clear parallels between the arguments advanced by Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Putin, as well as similarities in the West’s responses to both dictators. During the Sudeten Crisis of 1938, Hitler repeatedly claimed that the Sudetenland was his final territorial demand in Europe. Shortly afterward, the Munich Agreement forced Czechoslovakia to cede the Sudetenland. As is well known, Hitler did not stop there. Only a few months later, he occupied the remaining territories of what had been Czechoslovakia.

 

Numerous media outlets in Germany and abroad reported on my case, and I received a great deal of solidarity. As an entrepreneur who has become financially successful, I was also able to afford the approximately $7,000 required to hire an excellent lawyer. Many others cannot. Two months later, my case was dropped.

 

But even though that legal threat is in the past, the erosion of free speech continues to deeply concern me. I have increasingly come to the conclusion that the danger posed by allowing the state to decide what people may or may not say is far greater than any danger that could arise from the dissemination of even the most absurd opinions.