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February 21, 2025
Recently, 60 Minutes aired a program on German speech regulations. In Germany, though many regulators might insist free speech exists, much narrower limits than in the United States are imposed. The segment includes German law enforcement raiding homes and apartments as a part of an effort to seize computers and phones used in what regulators feel constitute online speech violations. Now, an American viewer might first assume all the citizens subject to these raids and ensuing punishments incited violence with their words.
In Germany, the bar for a speech violation is nowhere near that high. A later CBS 60 Minutes Overtime article conveyed, “It can be a crime to publicly insult someone in Germany, and the punishment can be even worse if the insult is shared online because that content sticks around forever, [state prosecutor Dr. Matthäus] Fink said.” To an American audience, especially with the rise of recent sentiment that too much has been done to police speech online, this is an extreme, fear-inducing view, and it should be.
Certainly, few individuals imagine the model citizen as one who spends their free time engaging in unrelenting insults online and in person with everyone they encounter. However, the way to build a model society is not to box conduct into such a narrow box of permissibility that unpleasant ideas and behavior are prohibited. The natural right of man to liberty must include the right to share an unpopular, even potentially insulting, perspective. What about speech that insults a terrorist or war criminal? Where is the line drawn?
Policing speech, once it becomes an active behavior from the government, becomes incredibly challenging. Unless the standard is clear, like a prohibition on speech that incites violence, determine what meets it, hard enough for the legal community, will become a daily fear of the average everyday citizen. No model society includes fear in the minds of every citizen as they contemplate whether or not to share their viewpoint. Further, if the government has this control, it could easily be abused if one wing of political thought uses excessive speech regulatory power to silence and punish the other.
Of course, German speech laws are well-intentioned, but they are nevertheless misguided. It is not the right of the government to tell its citizens what to believe or say, governments only exist to serve their citizens; thus, any other arrangement is no model government or model society at all.
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