Showing posts with label CJ Hopkins. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CJ Hopkins. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 3, 2023

"A Perversion of Justice" by CJ Hopkins


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Source: CJ Hopkins


So, I translated this piece about my case (and about another piece about my case) by Boris Reitschuster, a German journalist, one of the few with the guts to cover it. I’m not going to make a habit of doing this, i.e., translating German press about my case, but I found his critique of both the German authorities and the editorial practices of Neue Zürcher Zeitung (which published the other piece about my case) impressive, and deserving of something a little better than a machine translation.

Also, Reitschuster explains how this absurd prosecution started with a report to the Berlin State Prosecutor by something called the “Hesse Cyber Competence Center,” which is connected to the Hessian Ministry of the Interior, so yet another example of the Censorship Industrial Complex at work.

Oh, and he (or his layout people) found a particularly “seething-with-anger”-looking photo of me to use for his piece, which I thought was pretty funny.

My comments are in brackets and italicized.

CJH


The Justice System Instrumentalizes the Fight Against Nazis to Persecute Government Critics
by Boris Reitschuster
October 2, 2023

In my opinion, comparisons with National Socialism are poisonous in our social debate. What is particularly poisonous is that one political camp — Red-Green [i.e., the SPD and the Green Party in Germany] — uses them as a matter of course. Hardly anyone is outraged when Red-Green politicians and journalists defame those who disagree with them as “Nazis”. However, if someone criticizes the Red-Green coalition by even remotely drawing parallels to National Socialism, mass hysteria ensues. And, in the worst case, criminal proceedings.

This is what the author Christopher “CJ” Hopkins is experiencing now. An American in Berlin who has also been published on my site, Hopkins was and is a vocal critic of the Corona policies.

According to the Berlin State Prosecutor's office, he is also a Nazi propagandist.

Because he ironically claimed that there were certain parallels between the Corona policies and the policies of the National Socialists, the Tiergarten District Court has sentenced him to a fine of 3,600 Euros or 60 days in prison.

The 62-year-old does not accept the Penalty Order and intends to challenge it in court with his lawyer. “And if we lose, we will appeal, if necessary to the European Court of Human Rights ... I’m not going to prison, because I haven’t done anything wrong, and I’m too old to be in Moabit [Berlin’s main jail],” the author told the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ). Unfortunately, the article is behind a paywall. And the NZZ manipulatively uses the term "Querdenker" to “classify” Hopkins, and certifies that his thinking is “close” to that of “Querdenkers” and “conspiracy theorists.” Unfortunately, this is typical of the NZZ – it wants to be a bit critical. But not too much.

That is, at least, significantly more than the major German media have dared to do. According to Google News Search, they have been dead silent about the case.

There are probably good reasons for this.

The whole thing feels like real-life satire.

Hopkins' "crime", as summarized by the NZZ, is that "as a satirist and author, he has a penchant for exaggerated Nazi comparisons."

Specifically: “The trigger for the Penalty Order against Hopkins was two Tweets in August 2022. ‘The masks are symbols of conformity to ideology,’ said one; the other quoted a statement by German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach in the Welt: ‘The mask always sends out a signal’. The problem was not the text, but the fact that Hopkins accompanied it with an image of a medical mask with a swastika visible behind it.

You may think this is right or wrong.

To portray this as the deliberate dissemination of “symbols of a banned National Socialist organization” for propaganda purposes, as the Penalty Order does, is in my opinion not just absurd and extremely malicious.

In my opinion (as a non-lawyer) this justifies reasonable suspicion of a perversion of justice.

Because it is more than obvious that Hopkins is not disseminating National Socialist ideas. And you don't have to know that he is married to a Jewish woman to see that.

“When it comes to issues such as mask requirements and Corona, Hopkins speaks of 'authoritarian and totalitarian ideologies' that 'strive for control and suppress, censor and silence dissent and critical voices', writes the NZZ, and then describes this as a "conspiracy theory worldview". But at least the Swiss journalists have to confess: “Ironically, the Berlin State Prosecutor’s office appears to confirm this conspiracy theory world view with its Punishment Order.”

Hopkins himself told the newspaper: “The prosecution is retribution for my dissent and is intended to make an example of me.”

In fact, the dissemination of Nazi symbols is permitted in Germany if it serves “civic education,” “warning about unconstitutional efforts,” or if one of several exceptions in the areas of art, science or “reporting on current events” applies.

The NZZ writes: “It is entirely conceivable that, as he emphasizes, he wanted to warn against unconstitutional efforts.”

It isn't conceivable — it is obvious.

And, to be honest, my Swiss colleagues at NZZ almost seem furious about their own fear of courage (which is probably because, as is the case with Welt, many journalists with basic Red-Green beliefs ended up working at a bourgeois paper by accident).

At least the NZZ dares to quote a comparison from Hopkins: “It doesn't make sense to him that Rammstein's 'Deutschland' video — which shows, among other things, SS uniforms — is legal, while his Tweets are not." The author regards his own Tweets as satirical works of art or as contemporary historical contributions. [The NZZ neglected to mention that Rammstein's 'Deutschland' also features members of the band dressed up as both concentration camp prisoners, wearing yellow stars, and Nazi SS guards.]

The NZZ's conclusion is ludicrous: "In Germany there are different sensibilities [i.e., different to the USA with its 1st Amendment protections], but here too it is questionable whether an author can be condemned as a Nazi propagandist because of two Tweets with images of a swastika."

Questionable?

Dear colleagues, why do you not call things what they are? Why do you not state that this is an instrumentalization of National Socialism, or the fight against it, intended to oppose those who express dissent?

This tactic is unfortunately now part of the standard repertoire of the political-media complex and the judiciary, and is entirely in the tradition of the GDR (the fact that one can still say this is probably only due to the fact that the left-wing extremist German dictatorship is viewed more through rose-tinted glasses in the relevant circles).

What is also explosive about the Hopkins case is how the judiciary became aware of him, i.e., through the denunciation industry created with government money. The files show that the report to the Berlin State Prosecutor's office originated in the Hesse Cyber Competence Center, which is connected to the Hessian Ministry of the Interior. In response to a request from the NZZ, the agency explained that it had taken action following a report from the state contact point, “HessenGegenHetze” ["Hessen Against Hate"], which deals with reports from “victims and witnesses of hate speech”. If such reports are deemed “potentially dangerous, criminally relevant or classified as extremist”, they are forwarded to the authorities, according to the NZZ.

Your tax money is being used against dissidents, and to incite denunciation.

Hopkins has drawn his own conclusions: he now plans to leave Germany. "If I stayed here, I wouldn’t be able to look myself in the mirror anymore,” he says.


Boris Reitschuster is a German journalist, author, Eastern Europe expert, and the former head of the Moscow bureau of the German weekly magazine FOCUS. He writes for various German publications and on his own blog, reitschuster.de.

Tuesday, September 12, 2023

The Criminalization fo Dissent (continued)" by CJ Hopkins

 

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The Criminalization of Dissent (continued)


So, the Berlin State Prosecutor has launched another criminal investigation of me. Apparently, I’m being charged with reporting on the original investigation of me that the Berlin State Prosecutor launched in June.


What happened is, the prosecutor visited my blog and read a column I published in July, The Criminalization of Dissent (Revisited), which included screenshots of the alleged “hate-crime” Tweets that the original criminal investigation is based on, and that resulted in the Order of Punishment that the Berlin District Court handed down two weeks ago. So, the prosecutor opened a new criminal investigation and sent my attorney an official notice explaining the gravity of the additional charges.


The charges are of the utmost gravity. I am officially accused of “relativizing” or “minimizing” the crimes of the Nazis … by republishing the two Tweets that I originally tweeted.

Here, once again, are the Tweets …

Yes, that’s right, I just published them again. I am going to explain why I published them again.

I’m not going to explain the Tweets again. I have explained them in several previous columns. I have explained them to Matt Taibbi of Racket NewsMax Blumenthal of The GrayzoneJames Freeman, Patrick HenningsenElena Louisa LangeDirk Pohlmann, and Christine Black at Brownstone Institute (forgive me if I’m forgetting anyone). I explained them to Stefan Millius of Weltwoche, and to another journalist at a big Swiss newspaper. My attorney has explained them, in German, to the prosecutor, and to German audiences on KontrafunkRT published a piece explaining them. I believe they have been exhaustively explained.


Not that they ever really needed explanation. You would have to be a certified moron to believe they “minimized,” or “relativized,” or in any way made light of the crimes of the Nazis. You and I are not certified morons. Neither is the Berlin State Prosecutor. Neither is the District Court of Berlin. Not to put too fine a point on it, the charges are horseshit, and everyone involved knows it. They are a blatant pretext to crackdown on dissent.


OK, now let me explain why I just published the Tweets again, knowing full well that the Berlin State Prosecutor is probably going to read this column, become extremely agitated, and charge me with additional “hate crimes.”


No, I am not a glutton for punishment. I’m not at all enjoying my introduction to the so-called “German legal system.” It is taking up my time. It is making me angry. It is upsetting my wife, which I do not appreciate. It is costing me a lot of money. It has forced me to ask other people for money, which is something I do not like to do. It’s screwing with my sleep. It is distracting me from my work. And so on. Which is exactly the point.


The goal of horseshit prosecutions like mine (and those of many other dissidents currently) is (a) to punish us for speaking out against “New Normal” totalitarianism by making our lives as miserable as possible, (b) to make examples of us to discourage others from speaking out, and (c) to intimidate us into shutting the fuck up.


Totalitarians, fascists, and other power freaks are essentially just glorified schoolyard bullies. They may cloak themselves in the mantle of the law, but their modus operandi is brute force. Beneath all the bullshit, their message is simple: “either do what we say, or we will hurt you.”


OK, prepare yourself, because I’m going to give you some advice. I do not generally like to do that, but, in this case, I’m going to make an exception.


Never, ever, give in to a bully. The second you do, that bully owns you. What the bully wants, more than whatever he is demanding, more than anything else in the world, is your fear. The bully interprets your fear as respect, because the bully doesn’t understand respect. The bully craves your fear, and your obedience, because they reify the bully’s “authority.” They enable the bully to feel powerful and important. The bully needs to feel “powerful” and “important” because the bully feels weak and unimportant, and afraid. All fascists are essentially cowards. They are cowards, and nihilists, who hate themselves, and fear themselves, and hate and fear life, which is why they are so obsessed with controlling everything.


The point is, never give in to a bully. Never reify a bully’s “authority.” If you do, you will find yourself sucked into the bully’s sadistic, nihilistic “reality.” You will be playing by the bully’s rules. And that is all “reality” actually is, a set of rules we agree to play by, or, in this case, do not agree to play by.


So, getting back to my criminal case, and the Berlin State Prosecutor’s latest attempt to bully me into shutting up and demonstrating my “respect” for the “authority” and “power” of the Berlin State Prosecutor, fuck that. I do not respond well to threats. I do not take orders from totalitarians and fascists, or any other type of authoritarians or bullies. So that is why I have republished those Tweets, and why I will continue to republish those Tweets every time the German authorities threaten me with additional criminal charges for refusing to obey their “authority.”


Again, I am under no illusions. I expect the prosecutor to file new charges and issue further threats, which I will defy, which will lead to additional charges, and so on. I am not looking forward to that, but I don’t have any other choice, not if I want to be able to respect myself.

If you have any doubts about whether that will happen (i.e., an endless cycle of new bullshit criminal charges stemming from my repeated refusal to respond to the German authorities’ bullying), well, let me tell you about another dissident the German authorities are currently persecuting. I’ll do it quickly, and then I’ll let you go.


As many of my readers are aware, I am presently holed up in an undisclosed location in the Italian countryside. Michael Ballweg, the founder and lead organizer of the “Querdenken” movement, was also here for a while. Michael, who is an excellent cook, whipped up some delicious “extremist” dinners, after which we all sat around “denying Covid,” “conspiracy theorizing,” brainwashing each other with “Russian propaganda,” and “delegitimizing the state,” and so on. Late at night, when the other “extremists” were sleeping, Michael and I discussed our criminal cases.


Michael’s case is a bit more serious than mine. Michael just spent nine months in jail. The German authorities have seized his assets, and frozen all his funds, so he is homeless, and bankrupt, and they are prosecuting him for attempted fraud, money laundering, and tax evasion, or, in other words, for launching a protest movement.


If you’re not familiar with Michael and Querdenken, you can read the official propaganda disseminated by the usual “mainstream” media or the Intelligence officers who edit Wikipedia, or … here’s Spiked article to start you off. Then, go ahead, do your own research.


The most absurd aspect of Michael’s case is the German authorities’ “theory of his crimes.” According to this theory, Michael’s devious scheme was to commit serious fraud by … well, basically, launching a nationwide protest movement that was certain to get a ton of media attention and incur the wrath of the German authorities. As any criminal mastermind will confirm, the best way to commit major fraud is to absolutely infuriate the government by organizing a series of massive protests, and generate tons of media attention, because you definitely want as much publicity as possible while you are defrauding your unsuspecting supporters of their voluntary donations to your cause.


Seriously, this is their “theory of the crime,” which would make Michael Ballweg the most idiotic and incompetent fraudster in the history of fraud.


I could go on about his case, and mine, or those of the numerous other dissidents that are currently being made examples of, and about the broader GloboCap crackdown on dissent, which is happening, not just in New Normal Germany, but all throughout the New Normal Reich, but I need to end here and go water some plants. I am serving as “caretaker” of this thoughtcriminal sanctuary, and I take my responsibilities seriously.


I’ll keep you (and the Berlin State Prosecutor) posted on my further “hate crimes.” In the meantime, best wishes from somewhere in Italy!

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