By C.J. Hopkins
So, the German authorities have filed an appeal to overturn my acquittal in criminal court last week. Apparently, their plan is to keep putting me on trial until they get a judge who is willing to convict me of something, or to bankrupt me with legal costs. Silly me, for a moment there, I was actually starting to believe this was over.
Let me quickly review how I got here for anyone just tuning in.
I am an author and a political satirist and commentator. In August 2022, I posted two Tweets criticizing mask mandates and making fun of Karl Lauterbach, Germany’s Minister of Health. Both Tweets included an image from the cover artwork of my latest book, The Rise of The New Normal Reich: Consent Factory Essays, Vol. III (2020-2021).
The German authorities did not appreciate those Tweets, so they (1) had them censored by Twitter, (2) had Amazon ban my book in Germany, and (3) dragged me into criminal court and prosecuted me on trumped-up “hate crime” charges.
Last week, a judge acquitted me of those charges, after which she launched into a tirade in which she insulted me at some length, and then strapped on a “Covid mask” and stalked out of the courtroom. During her diatribe, she made a big show of proclaiming that, by acquitting me of the fabricated hate-crime charges, she was proving that “Germany is not a totalitarian state” … you know, the kind of totalitarian state where books are banned, political speech is censored, and dissident authors are harassed by the police and subjected to ridiculous show trials.
The judge didn’t have much choice but to acquit me, because the relevant German law is clear, as my attorney had reminded her in his pretrial pleading, and because my case had received some international press. Also, the public gallery was packed, and there was a fair amount of independent media in the courtroom. Unlike the German mainstream media, which have been churning out government propaganda like the proverbial Goebbelsian keyboard instrument for years, and which were too busy covering the totally-organic government-sponsored mass demonstrations against the government’s only political opposition to devote any attention to my political prosecution, the banning of my book, government censorship, and so on, some of the alternative German media are still interested in actual journalism.
The prosecutor, who appeared to be drunk or on some kind of high-grade sedatives, was very clearly unhappy to be there performing in front of a sold-out house. He spent the proceedings hidden behind one of those Plexiglass “anti-Covid” panels that cashiers still have to sit behind in grocery stores and other retail establishments, so I couldn’t make out every word he slurred. The gist of his argument was, although I didn’t intend to “disseminate pro-Nazi propaganda,” I nonetheless “disseminated pro-Nazi propaganda,” by comparing New Normal Germany to Nazi Germany, and “unnecessarily using a swastika in an artwork.”
Related:
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