They think that European countries (or commonly just "Europe") are about to arrest all citizens for criticizing politicians. "Europe" must be saved from their leftist fascist regimes. For now using propaganda. Soon militarily.
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.
> 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-...
It's being enforced more these days, perhaps because social media makes it more tempting and easier to insult politicians in a manner where it can be easily detected. In the old days, you'd have to hand out flyers or get your letter to the editor published in a newspaper, in order to insult politicians where they could notice, and even then there was no way to automatically detect it. But when people insult politicians on social media, it's an extremely low bar for the effort required, both to do it, and to detect it.
If someone were to insult me on social media, I'd never know about it, because I'm not constantly monitoring Twitter. But some politicians pay some agency to constantly monitor Twitter etc, and then they file complaints about everyone they catch in the act, and then the jackbooted police kick down the perpetrators' doors and confiscate their phones and computers.
