Just when you may have thought things couldn’t get any crazier: American playwright and humorist C.J. Hopkins, profiled in this space on numerous occasions, has been sent a “punishment order” by a German judge, offering him a Sophie’s Choice of 60 days in jail or 3,600 euros.

His crime? Essentially, insulting the German health minister in a tweet, and using a scarcely-visible image of a Swastika on a mask in a book critical of the global pandemic response, The Rise of the New Normal Reich. He was first accused of this “crime” in June, shortly after Roger Waters was placed under investigation for wearing his clearly satirical “Pink” costume in a stage performance in Berlin. As I wrote when C.J. was charged weeks later, authorities claim that through the use of the mask image, C.J. was “disseminating propaganda, the contents of which are intended to further the aims of a former National Socialist organization.” …

No amount of drugs exist that if consumed would allow a rational person to conclude that the writing of C.J. Hopkins furthers “the aims of a former National Socialist Organization.”

[This is the kind of absurd outcomes one gets with speech codes and censorship regimes — arbitrary, capricious, and usually self-defeating. The point of Hopkins’ cover art was that the pandemic regimes were precisely the kind of fascism that Germany wants to defeat through speech codes. This is ridiculously ironic, as well as a warning about what will come if we demolish speech protections in the US. — Ed]