No freedom to hate: Germany’s new law against online incitement

 

The violence in August this year in Charlottesville shocked the US public and sparked a debate about the influence of extreme right movements on the internet. The central question was where the limits to freedom of speech lie.

Just a few days after the far-right marches, the major web hosting company GoDaddy cut off The Daily Stormer, probably the largest neo-Nazi website in the US, with over 300,000 registered users. Authors on the site had repeatedly made insulting remarks about Heather Heyer, the 32-year-old killed when a rightwing extremist ploughed a car into a group of counter-protesters. Google then blocked the website editor’s attempt to switch to one of its servers. The site then appeared for a time under a Russian domain name.

The choice of Russia was no coincidence. In their ongoing search for sympathizers online, far-right groups all too gladly use Russian web hosting services and network providers. In Russia, they are subject to comparatively few restrictions on racism, anti-Semitism and other forms of hate speech. Using Russian web hosts also allows them to avoid prosecution by the authorities in their home countries.

However, the virtual emigration of rightwing extremists does not mean that their political influence is restricted to Russia – on the contrary. Because their content is not censored in Russia, they can disseminate their propaganda even more widely than elsewhere.

Western democracies in particular are faced with huge challenges: on the one hand, the internet offers far-right movements a range of exceedingly powerful propaganda instruments. With comparatively little effort, they can use social networks, websites and chats to reach a worldwide public. On the other hand, the global internet hampers nations’ ability to enforce laws against hate speech, whose jurisdiction is inherently national.

ruments. With comparatively little effort, they can use social networks, websites and chats to reach a worldwide public. On the other hand, the global internet hampers nations’ ability to enforce laws against hate speech, whose jurisdiction is inherently national.1

Virtual hate speech in Germany

Prosecutions for incitement to hatred and defamation have increased sharply in Germany in recent years. In 2014, German police recorded 2,670 cases of incitement; two years later, that figure more than doubled to 6,514.2 There are two main reasons for this. On one hand, far-right propaganda is now spread primarily on Facebook, Twitter, etc. Users now report offensive statements to the authorities more frequently. On the other hand, the political tone has lowered dramatically since the beginning of the refugee crisis: ‘Drop dead, you faggot’; ‘Merkel should be stoned’; ‘Gas the lot of them’ – today, this kind of language is all over the social networks.3

Xenophobia, racism and anti-Europeanism rose sharply in Germany at the height of the global refugee crisis in summer 2015. This was also when the rightwing populist party Alternative for Germany (AfD) began to climb the opinion polls – hitting 20 per cent on some occasions. The German government desperately needed a means to stem this racist tide, which to a great extent was expressed via online hate campaigns.

In autumn 2015, the Social Democrat minister of justice, Heiko Maas, set up a task force bringing together representatives of Facebook, Google and Twitter, alongside numerous NGOs. The committee came up with a set of recommendations for dealing with online hatred. However, these remained largely ineffectual: according to one analysis at the beginning of 2017, YouTube deleted around 90 per cent of content reported by users, but Facebook only 39 per cent and Twitter just one per cent.