A court in Bamberg, Bavaria has sentenced David Bendels, editor of Deutschland-Kurier newspaper, close to the AfD, to a suspended jail term for producing a meme about Interior Minister Nancy Faeser. The meme showed Faeser with a poster saying “I hate free speech,” which was an evident satiric manipulation. The court demanded that Bendels write an apology to Faeser.
According to government sources, the police in Bamberg found that the meme violated the recent hate speech and EU digital services rules, and asked Faeser if she wanted to proceed legally, which she did.
There has been a pattern of sentences against “hate speech” in Bamberg, ruled by an SPD mayor, in the last months.
The sentence drew criticism from Sahra Wagenknecht and Free Democratic Party historic figure Wolfgang Kubicki, as well as from several legal experts. For instance, Constitutionalist Josef Lindker from the University of Augsburg spoke of Germany drifting towards “a totalitarian state.” Prof. Volker Boehme-Neßler from Oldenburg University remarked that the meme is protected by the freedom of artists.
