The cases of a former government official and a university professor raise concern over the transformation of Germany into a police state, to repress opposition to war against Russia. Former State Secretary Jürgen Todenhöfer (84) was hit by a search warrant, including his electronic devices and his person, apparently because of a tweet in which he had addressed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with the following words: “Mister Netanjahu, protestiert Ihr Gewissen eigentlich nie, wenn Sie den Palästinensern dasselbe antun, was die verfluchten Nazis den Juden angetan haben?” [Mr. Netanyahu, does your conscience never protest, if you do to the Palestinians the same that the damned Nazis did to the Jews?]” Contrary to initial media reports, however, the warrant has not been executed yet. Todenhöfer stated that it hangs over him like a Damocles’ sword.
In the state of Hessen, a similar warrant was in part executed against Norbert Bolz, a conservative author and former university professor, who avoided a raid by voluntarily producing his electronic devices for the police. Bolz is being investigated because of a tweet in which he wrote that “The right translation of the term Woke is ‘Germany Awake.’” The formal motivation for the investigation is that German law forbids the use of Nazi slogans. This is of course a sophism, as Bolz clearly intended to compare the Woke culture with the Nazi regime.
(To be precise: according to the liberal-conservative online opinion magazine Tichys Einblick of Oct. 24, Bolz quoted the newspaper Tageszeitung (Taz) (Tichy: “left-wing fascist Antifa newspaper") which commented on the demand for a ban on the AfD with the headline: “Germany Wakes Up!” Bolz suggested that this sounds fatally like “Deutschland erwache!” ("Germany awake!"), a Nazi slogan that is a good paraphrase of the often-used term “woke,” which Tichy attributes to the left-wing green bloc.)
