David Bendels, the Chief Editor of the AfD-adjacent Deutschland Kurier, has been threatened with prison time and sentenced to seven months of probation for an X meme. It is the harshest sentence ever handed down to a journalist for a speech crime in the Federal Republic of Germany.
This is the illegal tweet, which Bendels posted via the official Deutschland Kurier X account on February 28th 2024:
It shows German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser holding a sign that has been manipulated to read “I hate freedom of speech!” Bendels posted the image to satirise Faeser’s disturbing plans to restrict the speech, travel and economic activity of political dissidents in Germany, which she had announced at a press conference a few weeks earlier.
Faeser personally filed criminal charges against Bendels for defamation after Bamberg police brought the meme to her attention. Last November, the Bamberg District Court summarily ordered Bendels to pay an enormous fine for this speech crime “against a person in political life”. This is yet another prosecution that proceeds from our lèse-majesté statute, or section 188 of the German Criminal Code, which provides stiffened penalties for those who slander or insult politicians, because politicians are special people and more important than the rest of us.
Read More: German Journalist Sentenced to Seven Months
