Berlin police conduct anti-racist raids

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“If you want to know about the risks and side effects of Nazi uprisings, read a history book or ask your grandparents.”

A little good news out of Germany this morning:

Berlin state police executed ten judicial search warrants on Thursday morning. The action was particularly directed against right-wing hate propaganda on social networks.

The searches, which involved about 60 police officers, took place in homes and buildings in the Berlin districts of Buch, Niederschöneweide, Bohnsdorf, Marzahn, Hellersdorf, Hohenschönhausen, Kreuzberg, Reinickendof and Friedenau.

During the raids, police confiscated various Internet-capable devices, such as smartphones and computers. The investigation is still ongoing. The devices in question will be investigated thoroughly by the state prosecutor’s office.

According to police, the state authorities are dealing with persons who have made right-wing commentaries in social networks against refugees, asylum seekers or other minorities. Sentences will include fines and imprisonment.

Berlin senator Frank Henkel praised the police: “We won’t look away when there’s hate-mongering or racist propaganda on the Internet. Police and the state prosecutor’s office are dealing consequently against hate messages,” said the senator, according to the Berliner Tagesspiegel. But at the same time, the operators of social networks should act more decisively against anti-human propaganda.

Translation mine.

If you think a 60-officer raid on some mere “free speech” sounds heavy-handed, consider this: Germans know all too well what leaving racist and fascist hate unchecked can do to their country. Nearly 100 years ago, they failed to act on it in a timely manner. “Free speech” became the bellowings of one brain-addled man, thinking he was the entire German state. And once he’d whipped up a frenzy against the leftists, he turned his eye on the “foreigners” — and against any German who dissented. It took nothing less than a global war to stop him. And after the war, all the trappings of Nazism, right down to hateful speech, became illegal. For good reason.

Germany can’t afford to have one more Hitler, never mind bands of wannabes. Better police raids against neo-Nazis today than another Gestapo tomorrow.

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