The frontman of British punk rap band Bob Vylan was denied entry to Germany, detained at the Berlin airport, and ultimately deported to the United Kingdom last month due to his pro-Palestine statements.
German federal police justified deporting the band’s vocalist on June 15, referencing a performance at the Glastonbury Festival in England in 2025 where Bob Vylan led a chant of “Death, death to the IDF,” or the Israel Defense Forces.
A police file on Robinson-Foster obtained by The Intercept alleges that he disseminated antisemitic narratives and Hamas propaganda that could “radicalise certain segments of the [German] population” and serve as “ideological justification” for terrorist groups or individuals. It also says that Robinson-Foster poses a threat to Germany’s public security and public order. Allowing him into the country would cause “considerable reputational damage” by creating the impression that Germany was making “no effort to prevent the spread of the propagated antisemitism and the associated calls to violence.”
Petition to rename germany to “the cursed land”
Germany doesn’t allow you to criticise Israel, Britain won’t let you criticise Israel and if you support trans rights, JK Rowling will sue you into silence, and if you are critical of ICE the Americans will at best, arrest you and at worst shoot you.
Freedom of speech for people with decency is dead.
Determined to win Century’s Worst Country wice in a row.
I think they’re jealous of israel
Allowing him into the country would cause “considerable reputational damage”
For fuck’s sake!
These corrupt bureaucrats are so far in the pocket of the fascist apartheid regime that they think that NOT ostracizing artists for speaking out against a terroristic organization committing countless atrocities would make them look bad!
Nazi country deports POC for opposing Nazism.
Germany is still nazi
Punk AF, honestly
German here: Due to our own history, for specific cases, speech is much more restricted here compared to the UK (or the US until recently). These are things like inciting violence or “gruppenbezogene Menschenfeindlichkeit” (hostility towards / discrimination of a group of people).
So if someone chants “Death, death to the IDF” they could be charged. It will not necessarily end in a conviction if it is considered an acceptable protest.
So if you are expected to do something that might be a crime in Germany, it does not seem unreasonable to deny entry. However, the decision should be transparent to the impacted people and they should have the option to fight against that decision. This is the actual infuriating part of this story.
But framing this as a “Free Speech Crackdown” is a very British/US take on our laws.
If you want something to really complain about: The German government still considers Israel an ally and still supports them. We learnt a lot from our own history but somehow “Genocide is bad regardless of who is doing it” did not make the list.
The Israeli army is not a group that can be discriminated upon. It is an army engaged in occupation and therefore subject to legitimate armed violence by the occupied parties per the UN Charter.
Germany do not force yoy to defend isrsel though yet the fediverse is full of geman defending zionism
Yep. Being Zionist is a choice. Germans choose to be Zionist. They choose to support Germany’s policies and choose to praise it online. Zionism causes harm, which is why we ban it no matter what excuses people have for it.
the issue is that by framing calling the end of the apartheid enforcement mechanism of an ethnostate as discrimination, Germany has normalized and sanewashed a genocidal ethnostate. further, the tying of Jewish identity in Germany to the modern settler colonial project of Israel is harmful to the Jewish diaspora: it does the opposite of Germany’s stated aims. there are many kinds of Jew in the world, but by deferring all discussion of Jewish identity to an Ashkenazi supremacist entity, Germany has committed themselves to a political position of only recognizing those Jews who are themselves the most like Germans from the ~1600 years of central European contact.
the only part of your comment i really accept as a useful reframe is that it sounds like you’re right. this isn’t a free speech crackdown. you haven’t had the freedom to hear about the true meaning of Jewish identity in at least 90 years, and so you switched, as a society, from the militaristic anti-semitic position that Jews have no place in your modern society to the militaristic zionist position that Jews have no place in your modern society.
While I agree that the current official stance on Israel is insane, it is not the majority opinion in Germany.
Do we still have a problem with Antisemitism? Sadly yes, especially now since some people project the behaviour of Israel on German Jews which is absolutely crazy. But I would argue that the overwhelming majority has a positive or neutral view on Judaism.
You sound like you have met too many crazy people from my country. But the loudest people are often not the majority. There are regular surveys on issues like these and I would classify your interpretation of German society as a fringe theory.
While I agree that the current official stance on Israel is insane, it is not the majority opinion in Germany.
They would likely make themselves more known if they weren’t
A. Afraid to speak up due to Germany’s fascist speech laws, and B. Weren’t brainwashed into thinking their country is right to beat and arrest people for saying things the country considers offensive.
Sadly people like you who defend Germany’s speech control laws are ultimately in the same league as the Zionists apologizing for Israel.
my issue is the context under which you and i are having in the first place. Bobby Vylan has been labeled as making calls for violence for calling for the dissolution of the enforcement arm of a genocidal occupying force. while there may be elements that do not find this tolerable, overall the people are either complicit through their inaction or are glad for this to be what their government is doing, just as the issue in the united states, russia, or israel as global fascism is on the rise is a mixture of enthusiastic participation or apathetic inaction. we’re much deeper into Martin Niemöller’s poem than people seem to be realizing…
So would you say feddit.org is full of extremist Germans?
But framing this as a “Free Speech Crackdown” is a very British/US take on our laws.
Well yeah. When you outlaw dissent within a country and train people to never go against the government. Naturally the ones who stand up against it are going to be people from outside that country. In other words, people who are brainwashed to accept their country don’t see the bad things their country does, as bad. That’s why freedom of speech and freedom of opinion is important, and why people fight for it. When the government steps in to control speech and control narratives about themselves, they can weaponize that to force narratives about themselves and make people accept it or else. Germany already does this shit.
I have a lot of problems with our current government but you make it sound as if our current government was working towards a dictatorship. That would be a wild take…
Dissent is not outlawed, as long as you voice your opinion in a sane manner, e.g. don’t chant for the death of other people.
you make it sound as if our current government was working towards a dictatorship.
A lot of people would agree that it kind of is, or has maybe even gotten there. Just because patriotism blinds you to what’s in front of you doesn’t mean it isn’t true. People are right to criticize this aspect of Germany’s government. It’s Orwellian as fuck!
Dissent is not outlawed, as long as you voice your opinion in a sane manner
Which is up to the discretion of the government who enforces it… You can’t challenge the enforcement of the government, it’s called resisting arrest. If you don’t see how them deciding what can and can’t be said is a problem it just shows what a brainwashed sheep you are.
Hey @Flatworm7591@lemmy.dbzer0.com found a vote manipulation account here. Probably an alt of someone banned recently @TipsyDragon@lemmy.world no post history at all and very suspicious favoritism towards @valgarf@discuss.tchncs.de.
I think you make a very good point that Germany has always been anti free-speech thus this is not a “crackdown”.
Also the really funny business in there is how the IDF is somehow a protected group but not, for example, the Russian Army (when was the last time that an Ukranian was denied entry in Germany for voicing a desire for the death of the Russian Army?!).
Of course, if we dig down further, we end with IDF being representative of Israel, a nation which according to the German Authorities represents the Jewish People. This last bit is what’s really interesting: you see, plenty of Jews have very explicitly said that “Israel does not represent me”, so here we are with Germany, once again, telling Jews what Jews are supposed to be like, not to mention the small detail that believing that a nation represents an entire ethnicity (especially when most of them don’t even live there) requires one to believe that “they’re all the same” about that etnicity (otherwise it would represent “some” but not “all”, hence being against Israel would not be the same as being against the Jewish People), in other words, the good old traditional German “Jews are all the same” trope used to justify exterminating an entire people.
No matter which way you follow the logical chain you end up with Germany still being more Authoritarian than most of Europe and still being very big on treating people differently depending on their ethnicity, i.e. Racial Discrimination.
That Germany still operates on the same foundations as in the “good old days” - “the use of force to silence dissent is right” and “race dictates how people should be treated” - explains how easy it was for AfD to rise and is seriously worrisome for the rest of Europe.
The people posting here that Germany is still Nazi, are at least partially correct: Germany still operates based on the exact same principles on how it’s acceptable to use the force of the state to silence people, that race is what defines how people should be treated and that certain races are “good” and others are “bad”, all at a level so extreme that even Genocidal mass murdering of children is acceptable when done by those of a “good” race.
Your first sentence is my whole problem with that framing: Germany is not anti free-speech. It just does not subscribe to the US/UK view that you are allowed to say anything. Maybe voice your opinion without threatening or inciting violence? Maybe the US would be better off if some prosecutor could actually charge Musk after showing the Nazi salute?
I disagree with most of your remaining text but this is too far away from the original topic, I will not comment on that.
Germany is not anti free-speech. It just does not subscribe to the US/UK view that you are allowed to say anything
That’s what being anti free-speech means. It means controlling speech at the nation level and beating and arresting people for saying things that are offensive but ultimately not physical threats. I.e. “I hate X minority” versus “I’m going to blow up X space of minority” That second one is illegal in the UK and US, the first one is not.
Arresting people for opinions or ideas is literally, and definitionally Orwellian. It’s the principle of what George Orwell’s 1984 is about. I know the right weaponize this to compare being banned on Reddit with that, that is a disingenuous use. States controlling the narrative is a problem because you cannot hold them accountable. Germany absolutely takes advantage of its position in being able to control and suppress speech at the state level with police, by adopting the IHRA definition of antisemitism, and using it to silence criticism of Israel
People apologizing for it in this community will be treated as Zionist apologia in and of itself, no matter if it is because of being brainwashed or pushing an agenda. If you choose to start listening to some of these “UK/US positions” and stop apologizing for Germany’s laws, you will be welcome back here. Otherwise you aren’t welcome here, and will be banned again if you come back.
@Flatworm7591@lemmy.dbzer0.com @db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com I hope that I’m being clear. I am not promoting a free speech community, nor do I accept what right-wing shitheads. People who engage in bigotry and harmful rhetoric (including Zionism) here will be banned from the space. I simply think they shouldn’t be arrested for it. Cops have zero accountability, you can’t correct them, you can’t legally fight against them. People already weaponize the law against protestors in places where speech is a protected right.
Speech itself being policed is beyond dangerous, and unneeded since we as a society have systems to control hateful speech through ostracization and social stigma. Using force and law only when safety or physical boundaries are transgressed (i.e. forcing their way into a store after being asked by the owner to leave).
Armed resistsnce is a right so fuck off wirh your bullshit. Death to the occupation force comitting genocide
Well, this specific action of the German authorities is a wonderful example of how a bit of creative interpretation can be used to apply legislation which is supposedly anti-hate to actually support extreme racist violence.
It’s not the anti hate-speech legislation (which, by the way, the UK also has) that makes Germany against free speech, it’s claiming IN CONTRADICTION TO MANY JEWISH PEOPLE than the nation station of Israel represents the Jewish People and hence that voicing a want for the army of the nation state of Israel to be stopped WHEN THEY ARE COMMITTING A GENOCIDE, INCLUDING TARGETING CHILDREN is hate speech.
It takes a disturbing amount of very intense, very purposeful twisting, distortion, selective interpretation and even denialism of the agency of the very people one claims to be protecting, to shove the square peg of the wanting the destruction of a military actively mass murdering hundreds of thousands of civilians into the round hole of hate-speech.
It’s the actual actions of the authorities of Germany which show their opposition to speech which does not align with their political interests.
