Bulwark Takes - Germany Speech Laws Are A Gift To MAGA

Episode Date: February 17, 2025

Tim Miller and Andrew Egger discuss the insane police raids happening in Germany over hate speech online, and how they are a gift to the rising far right.

America's energy future begins now. More American oil and natural gas means more jobs, more security, and more innovation. America's moment is now. Learn more at LightsOnEnergy.org. Paid for by the American Petroleum Institute. Hey everybody, it's Tim Miller from The Bulwark. I am back with my buddy Andrew Egger off of paternity leave. He has 19 children now and, you know, that's a burden, but it's also a blessing. How are you doing? I'm pretty good. I got about four hours of sleep last night back in the office first day, ready to rock. Let's do it.

All right, let's do it. We've got a couple of things I want to talk to you about. First up is the Germans versus J.D. Vance, kind of. J.D. Vance at the Munich Security Conference, where he was talking about how our allies in Europe are now the ones that are going against the side of freedom. That, you know, that our European allies are now feeling Soviet. He compared them to the Soviets. Now, to many of us on the other side of the Atlantic, it looks more and more like old entrenched interests hiding behind ugly Soviet era words like misinformation and disinformation. We've had some other videos. You can go watch Bill talk about this with Sarah Longman and Eric Edelman. And there was a lot shameful about the J.D. Vance speech. I will start there. And the fact that it seems like this administration is aligned with Russia and not Ukraine in Europe is a big problem. He might have one little point. Do I have to hand it to JD on one thing? So I guess before we get to the one thing we might have to hand it to him on, Andrew, did you concur with the broad assessment there of JD's appearance in Munich? Yeah, no, I mean, of course, like it's I think it's the latest and kind of a long

string of sort of suggestions in this in this direction. And, you know, the question was always like, is this just sort of like, you know, red meat for the increasingly anti-Ukraine base? What will they do once they get in here? Maybe Marco Rubio, his secretary of state, is helpful. Hey, you never know. But no, I mean, it really just kind of seems like they're going to act the way that we always expected them to act and kind of, for the most part, take Putin's side on this much more than much more than certainly we would have hoped. Yeah, and it's going to create huge tensions with Europe. And me and Bill talked about this on the pod today. And I think there are a lot of alarming potential consequences. Here's the thing that here's my message to our

European pals is you don't we don't have to make it as easy on the Magos as possible to attack you. And I am a little bit concerned as a content creator who does his best to get it right. Andrew, we do our best to get it right here, to be truthful. I feel like when I smear people, it's because they deserve it. And it's a fact-based smear. That said, it alarms me a little bit when I see some of the crackdown on information and crackdown on speech that we see in Europe and Canada too. You can't even watch Bulwark content on Instagram in Canada because of some of their laws. So I worry a little bit about some of this crackdown. And there was a 60 Minutes piece that has everybody on the MAGA right really riled up right now. And I got to tell you, I watched some

of this video and I'm, well, let's just watch some of it together and we'll get on the other side. Is it a crime to insult somebody in public? Yes. Yes, it is. And it's a crime to insult them online as well? Yes. Yes, it is. And it's a crime to insult them online as well? Yes. The fine could be even higher in the internet if I insult you or a politician. That sticks around forever. Yeah.

If somebody posts something that's not true and then somebody else reposts it or likes it, are they committing a crime? In the case of reposting, it is a crime as well because the reader can't distinguish whether you just invented this or just reposted it. That's the same for us. Inside, six armed officers searched a suspect's home, then seized his laptop and cell phone. Prosecutors say those electronics may have been used to commit a crime. The crime? Posting a racist cartoon online. At the exact same time across Germany, more than 50 similar raids played out. Like this whole scene to me, like almost

felt like it was like not real. Like the 60 Minutes interviewer is like, so if people lie, then you can take their phones away. And she's like kind of titillated, excited by this. And the whole thing to me, I'm just like, who's watching the watchers? I just I don't. And then and then they're going to raid the house. They go and raid somebody's house for posting a racist meme. There are six armed police raiding the house.

I don't. This to me feels like a bad slippery slope andrew where are you yeah so i think there's like basically two different conversations happening here right and the one it was kind of like the domestic conversation which is like a lot of the mega people are mad at at uh cbs news in particular and kind of like the interviewer and all this margaret brennan had a weird like monologue yesterday about how free speech might be bad. And, you know, that kind of that's one conversation. Right. But I think like the more maybe interesting and fruitful conversation is not like the the MAGAs like, do you have a constitution that actually makes free speech happen? Or don't you? Because if you don't, then, well, it always kind of seems like to one ruling group or another that there might be this or that good reason, fruitful reason, like a reasonable reason to crack down on this kind of free speech or that kind of free speech

or say, well, sure, we have free speech. You just can't, that just doesn't cover this, these sorts of things or whatever. It doesn't cover insults online. It certainly doesn't cover, you know, misinformation online. And, and you end up in a situation where, you know, like what we see in, in Germany or what we see in Great Britain, where it's, where you have these kind of like, really sort of smug, like bureaucratic officersratic, uh, uh, officers of the law, uh, uh, you know, going door to door with no, no knock raids or not. I guess they knocked, there's not a no knock raid, but a raid, you know, armed people in your home saying, I heard that you called a politician, a penis online, you know, like, I mean, it's just,

it, it, it leads very quickly to like this, this, um, this situation that I think that you say you're a little bit concerned about it. I think you're kind of like letting our people down easy a little bit. I find that stuff very repulsive, personally. Oh, yeah. I think I was just being a smart ass. I know. I'm not trying to let it down easy. I was appalled. I was watching this video and I'm like, what is happening? So we're messaging about this offline. I'll give you a little behind the curtain. We're messaging about this in our Slack. And Bill sent this note from some international law expert.

He said that the 60 Minutes excerpt is a little misleading. German law doesn't criminalize insults in general, but only incitement to hatred, which is a form of insult designed to target someone with a campaign of harassment. It's like, okay. But the interview was pretty clear. form of insult designed to target someone with a campaign of harassment it's like okay but but like the interview was pretty clear i mean like they the people the bureaucrats there were not didn't hedge when they're like it is illegal to insult and then they even expanded on that and they're like it's illegal to retweet an insult or to share someone else's insults which to me is crazy

and then you're sort of twirling about it and yeah and then it's like okay well incitement to hatred like that's like not as clear of a line as it like seems right like okay like you could maybe sell me on this if it's like a direct incitement to hatred right or a direct incitement to violence maybe not hatred like you know where it's like it's not it is not legal to be like go to andrew's house and kill him all right like okay like maybe there should be some rules or some platform rules about how people can do all that but like it's you know the eye is in the beholder a lot of times unlike what is an incitement to hatred and this is where like free speech matters free speech is important And where I think it's just like legitimately radicalizing. Like if I was a German, I could see how somebody would be radicalized enough to be like, man, maybe I should give AFD a listen. Like I'm not going to be for AFD, but like I can understand why somebody would look at this and be like, these people are storming my house and taking my phone. I just there has to be a different way to do this.

And I think that there are I have some other ideas about more productive things to do. But I don't know if you have anything else to add on that. I really like the American system where the government is is forcibly restrained by a gigantic body. But first of all, our Constitution and then a giant body of judicial precedent, you know, reaffirming all that stuff. They're just not allowed to do that. You're not allowed to end up in a situation where the guy who gets to decide whether what you're saying is, is hate speech or whatever is like your local cop in your home with a gun, you know, like, and maybe, maybe like, I don't know. It's just like, like, like as an American, it is nice to have like like to to have inherited sort of like the the cultural gag reflex of like absolutely not you fucking sickos like what's going on over

there and i will also say one other thing which is that like it it becomes and and very well may become in germany it becomes kind of like this self-fulfilling prophecy of destruction where you're right. I think it does cause more and more people to give a far right party like AFD a look or a listen. And then say we end up in a situation where they take power. Now you're in a place where basically you have Elon Musk running the country with all those same systems, with all those same rules, with none of the guarantees for speech. I mean, and, you know, that's a problem, right? Yeah, you want AFD and Elon Musk enforcing these laws? Like, imagine if you are a viewer that is sympathetic to that 60 Minutes video, imagine instead of those three people, you have three doge bros sitting there you

know i mean like elon musk has already said he thinks that people should be arrested who speak out against them i don't like again incitement to hatred i just i'm just saying i i think that if the if this was the law here in america and there were maga people enforcing it i'm sure you could find something in my social media history that they could define as an incitement to hatred towards MAGA Americans. Like I just- Yeah, and that's what's so frustrating.

That is the one thing that's so frustrating about like the kind of credulous US media response to this sort of thing. Or like, I mean, just like the whole disinformation thing over the last couple of years and everything. We're like, oh yeah, like, you know, maybe it would be good if like we had more kind of like sane, reasonable people deciding what you can

can't say online or in real life. And meanwhile, like all of the levers of government have been seized by like the biggest cranks in the universe. And that's happening right now. Right. I mean, like like we we're all seeing it happen. And yet we still have, you know, CBS going out and being like, well, you know, isn't it interesting? Isn't this kind of like an interesting, like, like a curious, different way to run our country that we maybe should be taking a little bit of a look at? I don't know. They weren't, they weren't quite that bad about it, but it was, yeah. Yeah. I'm open to different models, by the way. I don't know, you might have a disagreement on this. But like, I, I think algorithm rules are something I'm open to. I don't, I mean, I wish it was the companies doing it themselves. I don't think that we can trust the companies to regulate themselves. I think that like, there is potentially something

to be said, I think probably doesn't pass muster in the US. But if this was a Europe, you know, kind of EU thing, and they're like, okay, we're gonna let everybody post whatever they want. And if you follow people, you're gonna be able to see whatever you want. But we're gonna have certain limits on what can be boosted by the algorithm. I don't think that would pass muster here. But there was a video about that in Europe, I would at least be like, okay, I'm open to listening to that. There are different mores in different countries and different commitments. But like going after individual people for their comments, like feels like a really bad place to be.

So I don't know if you have any algorithm thoughts. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I haven't thought very deeply about the cure for what ails us. If anything, I maybe have just even a more cynical view, which is that there is no fixing the kind of internet that we've created ourselves without humongously dramatic change that basically would involve firing the entire social media ecosystem into the sun, which, I mean, I don't know, that's how we make our money is, is, you know, sharing our content on the same thing. So it's like, uh, you know, that wouldn't be very good for the bulwark necessarily to have no more internet, but like, I'd sacrifice. Exactly. That's one of them that you'd take. Let me give you, let me give you like

a real quick illustration, which is like, this is a very big swerve, but hopefully you'll bear with me. Like I was in the Capitol on January 6th, right? I was outside the Capitol on January 6th. And you had this big mob, this big mob and the mob meant ill. And the, and like at the very beginning of kind of like the actual bad stuff going on, the cops were sort of like ineffectually like deploying little bits of like pepper spray here and there. And that just riled everybody up, you know, like that did not help. They did not actually control the energy of the crowd at all. And that's, I feel that's sort of a similar way about these sort of like attempts to

corral the sort of like destabilizing and reactionary and iconoclastic nature of the internet in particular. And just like human speech in particular, where like, even if you, even if it weren't stupid on its face and like kind of evil on its face why do you think it will work? Why do you think that you actually have the capacity to kind of like go around smacking down

individual people and you think that way you're going to curate like a nicer kinder internet for everybody else? No, it just fans the flames of all of this stuff to where like these guys who have truly awful and vile and evil political views then get to basically just sort of hide under the guise of like well no we're just free speech people uh and and make themselves much more palatable to to a much

broader audience because of this ineffectual and stupid and and ridiculous kind of speech policing that you see in places like so that's how i see it see it. That's how I feel about it. You don't, we can't fight the bad autocrats with good autocrats, I guess would be the way that I would, I would, I would sum it up. So that's my thoughts on that video. I'm just going to tell you when,

you know, my natural instinct when I see in my feed, like performative anger from mega influencers who I follow is to be like well these guys this is going to be bullshit and then i like i watched the video and i was like it was kind of actually worse how some of them were describing it so anyway bad bad job germans in 60 minutes i disagree let let freedom bloom uh cheers for the u.s first amendment you know three cheers for the first amendment our constitution for as long as we're allowed to have it. Everybody, we're going to be exercising our First Amendment, right,

to say whatever the fuck we want and to maybe even say something that might be construed as anti-mega-American. That might even happen on this feed. And luckily, we're still free to do it for now. We'll see how that goes. Subscribe to the feed. We'll be seeing you guys soon peace