Europe

Idk, some people portray Germany as being properly fascist and having protest censored effectively... It's not exactly like that. All I can say I live there and it's not uncommon to walk into a pro-Palestine protest by accident. Or see people make some political statement. "They" were certainly not able to silence the people and protests are still going strong. Maybe not as strong as ever but I guess both the weather here in autumn isn't exactly fun for outside protests and then the situation in Palestine has changed a bit as well, and generally, it's been going on for quite a while... But with that said, we definitely had some police brutality this year. As far as I know there are some court cases from earlier this year where people caught the officers lying and there's video evidence on how police misbehaved and hit people. And we all hope they loose their jobs and face consequences. And chances are this is going to happen.

Article beyond the paywall:

Two politicians from the Left Party were beaten by police at separate pro-Palestine protests in Berlin this month while acting as parliamentary observers. Shocking footage shows a police officer punching one female MP in the face, completely unprovoked. Another MP was beaten at another protest and arrested – despite parliamentarians having immunity in Germany. The police said, without presenting evidence, that the second MP had attacked them, which the lawmaker forcefully denies. This claim has been repeated in much of the media, despite the Berlin police being caught previously lying by an independent forensic investigation.

But even the self-censorship of the German media, which an analysis found used Israeli sources nine times more than Palestinian, isn’t enough for the country’s bloated antisemitism bureaucracy.

The federal commissioner for antisemitism, Felix Klein, who was silent when leftist Jewish activists had their bank accounts illegally frozen by the state, has now called for media organizations to have specific antisemitism officers whose role would be to point out that any atrocities that taken place in Gaza are the result of an “unprecedented” terror attack, ignoring that Israel has targeted civilians, journalists, hospitals, schools, soccer fields, entire families. The Far-Right Sets the Agenda

Much is made of the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), who now sit comfortably at the top of the polls and is set to sweep to majorities in state elections next year. And, once again, the German conservatives look on helplessly.

Though Chancellor Merz promised to halve the support of the AfD when he took over the conservative Christian Democrat party, their support has since more than doubled.

One recent study says that the approach of mainstream parties has been to let the far-right set the agenda by constantly talking about their favorite political battlegrounds of Islam and immigration.

In one particularly egregious example, Merz recently complained about the “city image” problem caused by migration, which caused outrage among liberal Germans. Some have even pointed out similarities between that and a statement by Nazi propaganda minister Goebbels, who said Jews ruined the “street image” of German cities. But Merz doubled down on the statement, saying “ask your daughters,” and a third of Germans afterwards told pollsters “people with non-white skin color or non-Christian religious clothing ‘disturb’ the city’s image in Germany. Given Germany’s history, that should disturb us all. Mounting International Criticism

The good news is that after two years, international institutions are finally beginning to watch and comment on police violence and repression in Germany.

UN experts forcefully called on Germany to stop repressing the Palestinian solidarity movement in a fresh statement. “We are alarmed by the persistent pattern of police violence and apparent suppression of Palestine solidarity activism by Germany,” the experts said. “Germany must support, not suppress, actions aiming to stop atrocity crimes and genocide,” the experts said. “No circumstances can justify unnecessary and excessive police violence or unjust criminalisation for exercising fundamental freedoms.”

And the European Commissioner for Human Rights visited Germany this month, also raising concerns about freedom of peaceful assembly and expression in the context of Gaza protests. He noted that “the distinction between what constitutes legitimate criticism of Israel and what constitutes antisemitic hate speech has become increasingly blurred,” leading to “undue restrictions of the right to freedom of expression.”

Palestine solidarity activists are frequently treated and portrayed as something closer to a marauding mob of violent Jew-haters than activists trying to stop atrocities. Their marches were frequently described as “Jew-hate marches” in newspapers owned by the Axel Springer media group, whose CEO was just given the Israeli Presidential medal of honor.

But a study showed researchers that participants at the largest ever German demonstration for Palestine in late September were “predominantly young, highly educated, and politically left-leaning.”

“While there was clear support for the recognition of a Palestinian state,” the study noted, “they simultaneously advocated for special protection of Jewish life in Germany.”

As a reporter, I frequently go to these demonstrations, and I’ve noticed that you are far more likely to meet Jews demonstrating for Palestine in Berlin than you are at the small pro-Israel counter demonstrations.

Will this mounting international criticism that they have gone too far in repressing democratic voices, along with the growing consensus that Israel committed genocide in Gaza, lead to a shift in the German elite? I won’t hold my breath.

“Facts are acknowledged partially, forgotten deliberately, or swallowed by collective silence. And so we repeat catastrophe – again and again, in cycles,” Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei recently wrote when he was commissioned by Germany’s Zeit Magazin to write about “what I wished I had known about Germany before.” After excoriating German self-censorship and conformism, he was, in fact, censored, with the newspaper spiking the commission.

As an activist from a group called Germans against Genocide told me, four consecutive German generations have been involved in genocide: supporting the Armenian genocide, against the Herero and Nama, the multiple Nazi genocides, and now supplying arms and diplomatic cover to Israel against the Palestinians. So what is German history, other than catastrophe, again and again?

James Jackson is a Berlin-based independent journalist and host of the Mad in Germany YouTube podcast.