Generally, selective enforcement is itself a huge problem. That might not actually be an issue in this instance though if the only thing preventing enforcement is the lack of a formal complaint and assuming that the complaint process is easily accessible to everyone (not requiring money to file, and without other barriers that might prevent certain people from filing but not others). It's still a terrible idea to make it illegal to insult others, but "rarely enforced" may not be the red flag it usually is.
On the other side of the pond cases are routinely decided by who can afford the right lawyer or litigation costs.
So yeah, it's very admirable that you want German law to be perfect, but you've gotta admit how it currently ranks up against real-world points of reference other than the ideal.
> But it was a 2021 case involving a local politician named Andy Grote that captured the country's attention. Grote complained about a tweet, that called him a "pimmel," a German word for the male anatomy. That triggered a police raid and accusations of excessive censorship by the government. As prosecutors explained to us, in Germany, it's OK to debate politics online. But it can be a crime to call anyone a "pimmel," even a politician.
Naturally, it's necessary to arrest people for being mean and/or expressing VERBOTEN political beliefs on the Internet so that...uh...everyone will feel free to express their opinions.
> Josephine Ballon: This is not only a fear. It's already taking place, already half of the internet users in Germany are afraid to express their political opinion, and they rarely participate in public debates online anymore. Half of the internet users.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/policing-speech-online-germany-...
I'm not saying this is good, but it's not recent and it does not prevent free communication of ideas.
What a bold lie. There are plenty of opinions that are literally illegal to voice such as Nazism.
That's why freedom of speech must entail the freedom to say things people find offensive, or there's no free communication of ideas at all. The state and ruling elites will determine that there is a set of proscribed ideas and a set of approved ideas and yours fall into the wrong set.
Banning speech and ideas also accelerates extremist - Weimar had very strong hate speech laws and prosecuted and imprisoned Nazis many many times. [1] The Nazis turned around and used the same laws on their enemies. Then the Stasi with similar motives used similar means. Suppressing speech in the name of order seems to be a German cultural value.
[1] https://www.thefire.org/news/blogs/eternally-radical-idea/wo...
Claiming that Germany recently introduced a law prohibiting criticism of politicians is an admission of belief in something demonstrably incompatible with reality.
If you want to keep both narrative and truthfulness, you should ask “doesn’t Germany have laws criminalizing insults, and someone had to pay a fine after insulting a politician”.
Still not very authoritarian on a global scale. We have countries where politicians are exempt from criminal prosecution via presidential pardons and countries that kill dissidents. These countries form alliances and align their foreign policy.
As for whether it's ingrained in German culture, quite possibly! These laws originate from the 1500s.
Already having a legal infrastructure and social expectation that offensive speech is criminal is an enormous help to dictators.