---

CJ Hopkins takes us through his experience of the “New Normal” Germany’s legal system. His experience involves the alleged “hate crime,” which wasn’t a “hate crime” but perhaps now is a “hate crime” again, which involves two tweets criticising covid mask mandates.

He introduces us to Frau Ines Karl, the Senior Public Prosecutor and Head of the Berlin Central Hate Crime Office, and highlights her prosecutorial background in the former German Democratic Republic, the judiciary of which convicted roughly 200,000 people of political crimes during its existence.

The Hate Crime Commissar of New Normal Berlin

By CJ Hopkins

The column you are about to read is a “hate crime.”

Or, rather, an alleged “hate crime,” as I believe my attorney would like me to put it. We’re still sorting that distinction out in criminal court. Or, rather, we are about to sort it out again, on 30 September, in Berlin Superior Court.

We already sorted it out once, in January, in District Court, where I was summarily acquitted, following which, for a few weeks, it wasn’t a “hate crime.” But the Hate-Crime Commissar of New Normal Berlin wasn’t happy about that verdict, so she appealed to have it overturned, whereupon it became a “hate crime” again, or an alleged “hate crime,” or whatever it is, currently.

OK, I’m going to go ahead and re-perpetrate my “hate crime,” or alleged “hate crime,” or whatever its legal status actually is at the moment. I want to get that out of the way now so I don’t go off on a tangent and forget to do it later. If you don’t want be a party to that, this would be the time to click away.

Still with me? OK, here comes the “hate crime” …

There you go. That’s my “hate crime” … those two Tweets from 2022, criticising the covid mask mandates. I’m not going to bother translating them again and going over all the details of my prosecution. I have done that ad nauseam. There is only so much repetition my regular readers can take. If you’re unfamiliar with the background of my case, you can read about it in The Atlantic, Racket News, Berliner Zeitung, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Multipolar, Weltwoche, Sky News Australia, Epoch Times, Discourse Magazine, and assorted other outlets, or you can watch this video by The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or refer to this chronological fact-sheet I published in a recent column.

Instead (i.e., instead of reciting all the details of my prosecution again, like late Lenny Bruce reading his trial transcripts onstage, which, I promised I was really going to try not to do that), let me introduce you to Frau Ines Karl, the Hate Crime Commissar of New Normal Berlin.

That isn’t her real title, of course. Her official title, in German, is “Oberstaatsanwältin als Hauptabteilungsleiterin der Zentralstelle Hasskriminalität Berlin,” which basically means “Senior Public Prosecutor and Head of the Berlin Central Hate Crime Office.”

Senior Public Hate Crime Prosecutor Ines Karl began her distinguished prosecutorial career back in the GDR, i.e., the German Democratic Republic, the judiciary of which convicted roughly 200,000 people of political crimes during its 40-year existence.

I couldn’t find any details about her distinguished prosecutions during her GDR days, but Der Tagesspiegel, a German newspaper, did a profile of her in 2021 and assured us that Karl had been “lengthily reviewed” before being allowed to prosecute people and run “Hate Crime Offices” in the reunified Germany.

Here’s an excerpt from that piece [translation and emphasis mine] …

“In April, Ines Karl will have been a public prosecutor in Berlin Moabit for 30 years. She knew early on that this was her dream job – it almost came to an abrupt end with reunification. She grew up in Berlin-Mitte and Lichtenberg, studied Law in Jena in the 1980s, and worked as a public prosecutor in Weißensee before the wall came down. Only after a lengthy review process, including by the Judges’ Election Committee and the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, was she allowed to continue the profession she learned and practised in the GDR in the Federal Republic. The experiences of that time are still with her today, with mixed feelings.” — Der Tagesspiegel, 2021

Given that Ines Karl was cleared by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (i.e., Germany’s domestic intelligence agency), there is absolutely no reason to hold her East-German prosecutorial “experiences” against her, or to go fishing around in the GDR archive to determine the exact nature of those prosecutorial “experiences.”

In fact, doing so would probably be a “hate crime.”

So, I definitely won’t be doing that. I’ve got enough “hate crime” troubles as it is.

What I did, though, after I stumbled onto Senior Public Hate Crime Prosecutor Ines Karl’s background, was Google around a bit, you know, just to refresh my memory of other people’s “experiences” in the German Democratic Republic.

One thing I found was this article in Deutsche Welle (East Germany’s Tortured Political Prisoners). Here’s an excerpt [emphasis mine] …

Thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, there remain Germans who tout the legacy of the German Democratic Republic. The oft-heard claim that “not everything was bad about the GDR” and that the Soviet-allied state had great daycare facilities, as some still assert, strikes 68-year-old Manfred Wilhelm as utterly absurd. He was a political prisoner. In 1981, Wilhelm was sentenced to eight and a half years behind bars for the crime of inciting hatred against the state – just for telling a few political jokes to friends and in bars.

So that made me feel a little better about being re-prosecuted by Senior Public Hate Crime Prosecutor Karl, and being defamed, and having my reputation and income as author damaged. At least she’s not looking to lock me up for eight years! Three years is the maximum sentence for my “hate crime.” Or, I don’t know, if she feels she really needs to send a message to other alleged “hate criminals,” I guess she could count up all the times I’ve published the tweets that I just republished again above and charge me with multiple counts of my “hate crime.” In fact, her office has already launched a second criminal investigation of me based on just that!

Another thing I found while just idly Googling around, which didn’t make me feel so much better, but maybe kind of explains a few things, was an article, in two different German outlets, in which Senior Public Hate Crime Prosecutor Ines Karl was quoted referring to one of her colleagues’ participation at a demonstration and his criticism of Germany’s covid measures on social-media networks as “crimes.”

Here’s the quote [translation and emphasis mine] …

“Karl emphasised that the debates about possible right-wing extremist attitudes in the security services were being ‘monitored very closely.’ The case of a Berlin public prosecutor who took part in the corona-denier demonstrations and spread corresponding posts on social networks is being extensively discussed in the public prosecutor’s office, for example ‘whether this should be socially acceptable here. If such crimes are committed, investigations will also be carried out within our own ranks,’ emphasised Karl.” — Evangelisch Magazine, MiGAZIN, 2020

The fact that Senior Public Hate Crime Prosecutor Karl would refer to the expression of political dissent as a “crime,” on the record, without a second thought, may explain why her office is unabashedly prosecuting me on fabricated “hate crime” charges (i.e., using a swastika in my artwork), and not Der Spiegel, Stern, Karl Lauterbach, and many others, for doing exactly the same thing.

I don’t want to impugn her competence as a Senior Public Hate Crime Prosecutor or in any way suggest that the “lengthy review process” of her understanding of the law (including the concept of “the rule of law” in non-totalitarian societies) conducted by the Judges’ Election Committee and the Office for the Protection of the Constitution prior to turning her loose on the public following the collapse of the GDR was … well, anything less than adequate, but, if Germany is going to continue to claim that it has any respect for basic democratic principles – not to mention its own constitution – someone might want to take Ines Karl aside and explain that political dissent is not a crime.

Or, on second thought, maybe it is now. In which case, it would be helpful if the German authorities would drop the “Germany is a democratic state under the rule of law” crap and just go openly totalitarian. It would certainly be less confusing.

After all, in New Normal Germany, it is once again a crime to “delegitimise the state,” as it was in East Germany and Nazi Germany. I reported this in May 2021 in a column called ‘The Criminalization of Dissent’, as did The New York Times.

Here’s an excerpt from my column …

Yes, that’s right, in “New Normal” Germany, if you dissent from the official state ideology, you are now officially a dangerous “extremist.” The German Intelligence agency (the “BfV”) has even invented a new category of “extremists” in order to allow themselves to legally monitor anyone suspected of being “anti-democratic and/or delegitimising the state in a way that endangers security” … I’m not joking. Not even slightly. The Federal Office for Protection of the Constitution (‘Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz’) is actively monitoring anyone questioning or challenging the official “New Normal” ideology … the “Covid Deniers,” the “conspiracy theorists,” the “anti-vaxxers,” the dreaded “Querdenkers,” and anyone else they feel like monitoring who has refused to join the Covidian Cult. We’re now official enemies of the state, no different than any other “terrorists” … or, OK, technically, a little different. As The New York Times reported last week (German Intelligence Puts Coronavirus Deniers Under Surveillance), “the danger from coronavirus deniers and conspiracy theorists does not fit the mould posed by the usual politically driven groups, including those on the far left and right, or by Islamic extremists.” Still, according to the German Interior Ministry, we diabolical “covid deniers,” “conspiracy theorists,” and “anti-vaxxers” have “targeted the state itself, its leaders, businesses, the press, and globalism,” and have “attacked police officers” and “defied civil authorities.”

As I mentioned above, it’s a bit confusing, the “delegitimising-the-state as opposed to political dissent” thing, and the selective-prosecution-of-“hate-crimes” thing, and the German justice system, generally.

I reached out to some of the German state media, and even to Marco Buschmann, the Minister of Justice, and requested more clarity on the German justice system, and the “Is Germany a totalitarian state again?” question. Sadly, I have received no response.

Maybe Senior Public Hate-Crime Prosecutor Ines Karl can help me out with that. In light of her “experiences” as a prosecutor in the GDR, she probably has a pretty good understanding of how things work in totalitarian systems. And, if she needs to brush up on the “democratic rights” thing, she could have a look at Article 5, and Article 2, and Article 3, and Article 8, of the German constitution.

Or, I’d be happy to go over those articles with her, personally. Perhaps she’ll show up in court this time. Last time, she sent one of her junior colleagues who appeared to be a bit … well, under the weather, or on some sort of heavy medication, or maybe he had just emerged from a strenuous “New Normal” struggle session.

In any event, if you’ve never witnessed a “hate-crime” trial in New Normal Germany, and you don’t mind being subjected to the anti-terrorism-style “security protocols” that the Court has ordered in effect in the courtroom – not to discourage the public and the press from attending and reporting on the trial, of course, but on account of what the Superior Court describes as “the overall tense security situation” – you’re welcome to attend on 30 September.

Be advised, though, I might commit a few more alleged “hate crimes,” right there in the courtroom, assuming I’m allowed to speak. I’m not sure what the rules are these days in terms of what we’re allowed to say … which is kind of the point of this entire exercise, in case that wasn’t already clear.

Oh well, I guess I’ll take my chances. I hear the New Normal political prisons aren’t nearly as bad as the old East German ones. Maybe they’ve even added toilet seats!

About the Author

CJ Hopkins is an American award-winning playwright, novelist, and political satirist living in Berlin, Germany.  His political satire and commentary have been published by Consent Factory, Off Guardian, Zero Hedge, Cold Type, Rubikon, RT.com, CounterPunch, Dissident Voice, and many other publications, and have been widely translated.

He regularly publishes articles on his Substack page which you can subscribe to and follow HERE.