J. D. Vance (Photo by Gage Skidmore from Surprise, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0)
The Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Christian Social Union (CSU) and Social Democratic Party (SDP) — three major German political parties — are forming their governing coalition to counter the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD), which achieved its best-ever national results in February’s federal elections. Now, the incoming coalition’s pact is proposing to further restrict free speech in Germany and create a media oversight body to monitor “information manipulation,” according to a translated report by Bild and a Sunday op-ed by Filipp Piatov, the deputy head of Bild’s politics department.
The particular section of the pact that pertains to speech is called “Dealing with Disinformation,” according to Bild. That provision of the plan reportedly states that “the deliberate dissemination of false factual claims is not covered by freedom of expression” and states that the nongovernmental media oversight entity will look to crack down on things like “information manipulation” and “hate” while “preserving freedom of expression.”
The new governing coalition was assembled specifically to box out AfD, which put up its best-ever national performance in the 2025 German federal elections, according to Reuters. AfD is a right-wing populist party that opposes mass immigration to Germany, and the base of its support in the 2025 elections was primarily found in eastern Germany, which languished under Communist rule for decades following World War II.
“Nowhere is it written that one is obliged to disseminate only true facts,” Udo Vetter, a German criminal defense lawyer, told Bild. “In principle, this is the introduction of censorship.”
Moreover, the new coalition is also considering a new law to ban anyone who has been convicted of “incitement to hatred” twice or more from holding public office in Germany, Piatov wrote in a Sunday piece for The Wall Street Journal.
“Some in the political class know these efforts won’t be enough. That’s why the coalition also plans to disqualify competitors via law. A new provision would bar anyone twice convicted of ‘incitement to hatred’ from holding public office. The government calls it a step to ‘strengthen the resilience of our democracy,’” Piatov wrote. “Berlin seems unwilling to recognize a simple political truth: You can’t contain extremist parties by narrowing democratic freedoms. If anything, such measures tend to fuel the populist movements they’re meant to suppress.”
During Vance’s speech to the Munich Security Conference in February, the vice president slammed the governments of Europe and Germany specifically for censoring their constituents.
“I look to Brussels, where EU commissars warn citizens that they intend to shut down social media during times of civil unrest the moment they spot what they’ve judged to be, quote, ‘hateful content,’” Vance said during the speech. “Or to this very country, where police have carried out raids against citizens suspected of posting anti-feminist comments online as part of, quote, ‘combating misogyny on the internet, a day of action.’”
The new coalition’s plans for “dealing with disinformation” already have earned a nickname among the German populace: “the lying ban,” Piatov wrote.
Piatov detailed several instances of government censorship in Germany, such as one in which a German journalist was handed a seven month suspended jail sentence and had to apologize for posting a satirical image of German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser wearing a sign reading, “I hate freedom of speech.”
He further noted that he suspects German establishment authorities are reaching to reign in media that they cannot control as easily as the country’s major public broadcasting entities and other established news organizations.
European officials have stepped up their censorship of disfavored speech under the auspices of democracy promotion and protection for years. Germany is one of the worst offenders, where at least 98% of comments taken down on YouTube and Facebook over a two-week period in 2023 were actually found to be legally permissible, according to a May 2024 report by the Future of Free Speech, a non-partisan think tank located at Vanderbilt University.
“Now, to many of us on the other side of the Atlantic, it looks more and more like old, entrenched interests hiding behind ugly, Soviet-era words like ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation,’ who simply don’t like the idea that somebody with an alternative viewpoint might express a different opinion, or, God forbid, vote a different way, or, even worse, win an election,” Vance said in Munich.
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As I have said so many times over the years, there is only one reason for those with power and/or authority to censor anyone: you are lying and they are telling the truth, and allowing them to speak freely will expose you as the liar you are. If your opponents/enemies are lying, then expose them as liars by countering their lies with the truth. Most people are smart enough to figure it all out in the end. Using censorship, however, is an immediate and obvious admission of who is and isn’t lying.
I would agree with the quote below, our problem might be in a narrow definition of religion. Nazism was a religion just like all Amalek serving institutions. They worship a god of their own creation, whereas we worship the God (YHWH) of creation. “All the worst censorship historically is that of religious vested interests and organisation. Moslem countries intimidate by mob accusations of blasphemy.”
Legally permissable under whose law code/statute book?
Germany’s or California’s?
All the worst censorship historically is that of religious vested interests and organisation. Moslem countries intimidate by mob accusations of blasphemy.
Still: what do we do about the sort of sexualised violence materials that totally misguide youngsters about relationships?
Similarly about the sort of religious bigotry that promotes the roughing up and persecution of minority sects and faiths?
Interesting article. As they say in German, “it won’t be eaten quite as hot as it was cooked.”
While it is true that the coalition would prefer nothing more than to be rid of the AFD, and they have already tried a few times to “solve” the problem by lawfare, the main issue is that about 30% of the population actually voted for the AFD and they cannot be ignored forever.
The coalition should, instead of trying underhand tricks to get rid of the AFD, listen instead to what they are saying and try to improve their own performance by adopting relevant issues, such as dealing with the (legal and illegal) immigrants properly and infrastructure issues like roads and trains, not to speak of correctly assessing the damage done by the Covid measures and the now upcoming patient digital card information trouble that leaves patients transparent to anyone that has a “need” to read in the card data.
There are plenty of other subjects that the new coalition must address, sooner or later, but they will, of course, prefer not to “dirty the nest” as they say in German.
This “Nestbeschmutzung”, or attacking members of their own party, or similar activities is to be avoided at all costs, of course.