(INTELLIHUB) — Germany’s Justice Minister Heiko Maas said in an interview published on Sunday that German judges and state prosecutors need to crack down right away on so-called “fake news” disseminated through social media platforms such as Facebook.
As we should all know by now, Germany is a totalitarian country headed up by the hard-core Socialist Angela Merkel who’s been pushing for a Nazi style police state including surveillance and a blitz on dissenting opinions published online for quite some time.
Maas, a Social Democrat from Merkel’s coalition, has repeatedly warned the U.S. technology corporation to respect laws against defamation in Germany that are more rigid than in the United States and some other parts of the world.
Of course, this whole “fake news” narrative is nothing more than a witch-hunt on alternative, independent news media which more and more people are turning to instead of the dying, lying, whining mainstream media.
Marxist governments around the globe are jumping on the “fake news” narrative that has gone viral since the U.S. election. The narrative was started by the mainstream media in a desperate attempt to reclaim some scrap of lost credibility. And who is more appropriate than Germany to head up this tyrannical charge?
Germany’s Socialist leadership are taking their part in this whole war on “fake news” very seriously — so seriously in fact that they are now lobbying for the courts to prosecute dissenting, “unauthorized” opinions under the guise of “defamation,” “hate speech” and “malicious gossip,” which from their viewpoint is apparently not covered under “freedom of speech.”
Sounds like they’re following in the footsteps of Adolph Hitler doesn’t it? Only, it’s not 1944.
“Defamation and malicious gossip are not covered under freedom of speech,” Maas declared, just days after other top government officials called for legislation to tackle “hate speech” and “fake news” on Facebook and other social media platforms.
“Justice authorities must prosecute that, even on the internet,” he said, noting that offenders could face up to five years in jail.
FIVE years in jail for not holding an opinion approved by the Nazi-wannabe government?
“Anyone who tries to manipulate the political discussion with lies needs to be aware [of the consequences].”
And who exactly gave the government the right to define what “manipulating political discussion” and peddling “lies” found on Facebook is? Answer: nobody, but themselves.
It seems as though Germany is attempting to set an example for foreign governments wishing to copycat their draconian measures on anyone who does not hold the approved, “official”, mainstream narrative.
The whole “issue” of “fake news” has certainly taken on new urgency following warnings by both German and U.S. intelligence agencies that claim Russia sought to influence elections and sway public opinion. This has since been spectacularly debunked as real fake news.
German government officials are worried that populism rising up on social media platforms (which they brand as “fake news” or “Russian propaganda”) could influence the parliamentary election expected in September 2017, in which Merkel will run for a fourth term.
Germany’s strict libel and slander laws are supposedly in place to “protect” citizens by making it a crime to defame others. According to Reuters, more than 218,000 cases involving insults were filed with prosecutors in 2015. But few internet cases were prosecuted.
Maas has a solution for that: “We need to fully utilize all the legal authority at our disposal,” he said.
Fears of fake news ahead of the election have increased after the head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, Hans-Georg Maassen, reported a rise in “Russian propaganda” and “disinformation campaigns” aimed at “destabilizing” German society.
“Facebook is earning an awful lot of money with fake news,” Maas told Bild am Sonntag. “A company that earns billions from the internet also has a social responsibility. Prosecutable defamation must be deleted immediately, once reported. It needs to be made easier for users to report fake news.”
Moreover the parliamentary floor leader for Merkel’s Socialist party, Volker Kauder, announced Friday that the government wanted to introduce a law in early 2017 that would require social media firms to set up local offices to respond to and deal with complaints much faster.
Facebook, the obliging lackeys that they are, have agreed to play their part in preventing “fake news” from spreading — mainly because of legal conflict fears and protecting the company’s reputation.
It’s time for the German people to wake up to the sinister agenda of the German government.
They must realize that these Socialists know precisely what they’re doing by taking their freedoms slowly by slowly, little by little.
As Adolph Hitler said, “The best way to take control over a people and control them utterly is to take a little of their freedom at a time, to erode rights by a thousand tiny and almost imperceptible reductions. In this way, the people will not see those rights and freedoms being removed until past the point at which these changes cannot be reversed.”
And that’s precisely what he did with his Third Reich during the period of 1943-45.
The rest of the West can learn a valuable lesson from the complete and utter folly of Germany’s draconian censorship measures. If we are to keep free speech and expression of opinion intact, we must fight to retain it at all costs.
“Freedom is our most precious commodity and if we are not eternally vigilant, government will take it all away. Individual freedom demands individual responsibility.” — Lyn Nofziger
Caleb Stephen is a freelance journalist, independent commentator, political activist and the founder and Editor-In-Chief of The Caleb Report (Calebreport.com) He is also a contributing writer and editor of WeAreChange.org.
©2016. INTELLIHUB.COM. All Rights Reserved.
Featured Image: SPD Saar/Flickr
Threats of violence, foul language, bullying, etc. will not be tolerated and may be flagged.
Shepard Ambellas
