This is probably the dumbest, most monumentally retarded speech crime case we have had here in Germany, which is really saying something.

As Apollo News are reporting, the public prosector’s office in Schweinfurt (Bavaria) have charged a woman for violating Section 86a of the German Criminal Code, which forbids the “use of symbols of unconstitutional and terrorist organisations.” This is the law you break if you display a swastika or throw up a Nazi salute in the Federal Republic. Except, the defendant in this case has not reproduced any Nazi symbols at all. Rather, she has merely published a video grab of the sitting German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach, as he raised his arm during much-lampooned remarks he gave in Magdeburg on 22 June 2022. The district court have already issued summary judgment in the form of a €3,500 fine, but the defendant has refused to accept this absurdity, and so a full trial has been scheduled for 12 May.

That might already sound dumb to you, dear reader, but it gets so much stupider. Our defendant reproduced Lauterbach’s image on this political poster …