The Berlin Prosecutor’s Office has charged political satirist (and frequent OffG contributor) CJ Hopkins with:
“disseminating propaganda, the contents of which are intended to further the aims of a former National Socialist organization,”
The charge relates to CJ’s promotion of his 2022 book The Rise of the New Normal Reich, which has already been banned by Amazon in several European countries, and the cover art of which features a swastika:
The book is a work of political satire warning against the rise of fascistic government all around the world – and especially in Germany – during the “pandemic”.
According to a post on CJ’s substack, if found guilty he faces “imprisonment for not more than three years or a fine.”
Nobody who knows anything of CJ’s work would ever consider for a second he would promote fascism, and nobody who read so much as the title of his book could possibly mistake its true meaning.
Obviously, simply using the imagery of the swastika is not de facto promoting fascism, just ask literally hundreds of books and films through the decades.
Clearly this is nothing to do with so-called pro-Nazi propaganda, and everything to do with shutting down criticism of Germany’s mask-mandating, vaxx-pushing government.
A government that has resorted to using hypocritical faux-morality to smear its critics. punish dissent and attempt to intimidate other potential critics into keeping their mouths shut.
Ironically enough, this is entirely fascistic.
The prevention of this kind of abuse of power is the EXACT REASON free speech protections were signed into law in the first place.
You can read about the case in more detail on CJ’s substack:
The Berlin State Prosecutor has launched a criminal investigation of me for tweeting the image on the cover of my book, The Rise of the New Normal Reich.
I am charged with “disseminating propaganda, the contents of which are intended to further the aims of a former National Socialist organization,” which is punishable by “imprisonment for not more than three years or a fine.”
The “propaganda” in question is the image on the cover of my book, which image will be familiar to the thousands of readers who have bought and read it. It was a Barnes & Noble and Amazon bestseller upon its release in 2022, and continues to sell quite well internationally.
As you might recall, the book was banned by Amazon in Germany, Austria, and The Netherlands in August 2022 (i.e., the time of my alleged Twitter crimes).
The Prosecutor’s notice orders me to respond to the charge within two weeks, though it’s possible the deadline to respond was today, June 8, 2023 (i.e, the day I received the notice of the investigation, dated May 25, 2023, in the mail).
Along with my response to the charge, I am ordered to provide the Prosecutor with all my personal identification papers and documentation of my net monthly income.
Obviously, the cover of my book is not “propaganda intended to further the aims of a former National Socialist organization.” Anyone vaguely familiar with my work over the last 30 years is aware of my fierce opposition to fascism, totalitarianism, and all other forms of authoritarianism.
The charge is utterly ridiculous. Swastikas are banned in Germany if they are used to promote Nazism, fascism, neo-Nazi organizations, etc. However, they are allowed to be displayed for the purposes of “civic education, countering anti-constitutional activities, art and science, research and education, coverage of historic and current events,” and similar purposes, according to German law.
Given the circumstances, I have to assume the Berlin State Prosecutor has launched this absurd investigation in order to punish me for my aggressive opposition to the roll-out of the New Normal, or intimidate me into silence. There’s quite a lot of that going around these days … just ask Matt Taibbi, Roger Waters, Sucharit Bhakdi, and Kit Klarenberg, among others.
It is possible these trumped-up charges are also a result of my criticism of the official Russia/Ukraine narrative. I’ve been pretty tough on the NATO-backed neo-Nazis and the official propaganda the corporate media has been churning out.
Whatever the actual reason is, I am, needless to say, angry. I will be responding to this baseless and unsupportable charge in a robust fashion. I’ll keep you posted.
In the meantime, I need to go hire a lawyer.