[thunfischbrot]

You argue that the Germans have let the lawmakers erode the law of free speech over time. This does not make sense, since the laws and the system allowing for the abuse of power by this minister are very old. The fact that this could have been abused for the last 50 years and happened only now seems to strongly suggest that your argument does not hold true.

[AmericanChopper]

Whether this particular case would have been enforceable 50 years ago or not doesn’t undermine my point at all. Germany (like almost every other western democracy) has been slowly eroding freedom of expression liberties. However restrictive the country was 50 years ago, it’s more restrictive now, both as existing laws as applied to novel new speech suppression scenarios, and as new laws are created. As recently as 2017 (as far as I’m aware) Germany has been legislating new speech criminalizations (with the Network Enforcement Act), which was rather widely criticized for suppressing freedom of expression and the press.