C.J. Hopkins's Blog, page 3

The first rule of New Normal Germany is, you do not compare New Normal Germany to Nazi Germany. If you do that, New Normal Germany will punish you. It will sic the Federal Criminal Police on you. It will report you to its domestic Intelligence agency. It will ban your books. It will censor your Tweets. It will prosecute you on fabricated “hate-crime” charges.

I know this, because that’s what happened to me. I broke the first rule of New Normal Germany. I compared New Normal Germany to Nazi Germany. I did it with the cover artwork of my book.

Yes, that’s a swastika on the cover. A swastika covered by a medical mask. I tweeted that artwork in 2022. The German authorities prosecuted me for that, and have convicted me for that. So, now I’m a “hate criminal,” and an “anti-Semite,” and a “trivializer of the Holocaust.”

That’s the second rule of New Normal Germany. You never, ever, display a swastika. Displaying a swastika is not “in Ordnung.” Displaying swastikas is totally “verboten.”

Unless you are the Health Minister of New Normal Germany, and you’re comparing your political opponents to the Nazis. Or unless you are a popular German celebrity, and you’re comparing the Russians and their supporters to the Nazis. Or unless you are a mainstream magazine, and you’re comparing German populists to the Nazis.

In which case, displaying a swastika is fine. And is not “verboten.” And definitely not a “hate crime.”

And that’s the third rule of New Normal Germany. If you agree with the government, obey their orders, and parrot their propaganda, you are not a “hate criminal.” If you are the government, like an actual minister in the government, like the Minister of Health, you’re definitely not a “hate criminal.” And, if you are part of government’s propaganda apparatus, needless to say, you’re also not a “hate criminal.”

However, if you criticize the government, or if you compare the government to Nazi Germany, and if you do that using your book-cover art featuring a swastika behind a Covid mask, then you’re absolutely officially a “hate criminal,” and an “anti-Semite,” and a “trivializer of the Holocaust.”

Here’s how Das Kammergericht, Berlin’s superior or appellate court, explained that in their press release, after they overturned my acquittal in District Court:

“The swastika, one of the main symbols of the banned National Socialist Workers’ Party (NSDAP), is used here exclusively to express criticism of the federal government’s Corona policy; A clear departure from the ideals of National Socialism cannot be seen in the posts in question. The comparison of Corona measures, which are supposed to be embodied by the use of mouth-and-nose coverings, with the Nazi terror regime symbolized by the swastika represents a trivialization of National Socialism and the National Socialist genocide of millions of Jews, but not a criticism of it.”

I remember when the presiding judge read that out in court. I remember it distinctly, because the judge to her right, the bespectacled woman with the short white hair (see the photograph of the courtroom above), was glaring at me with bone-chilling hatred. We got into a staring contest, which she eventually won, because I couldn’t take it for very long. After a minute or so, I started having flashbacks of scenes from The Pianist, Roman Polanski’s film, and of the eyes of medical-mask-wearing Germans when they saw the protest message I wrote on the mask I was forced to wear in grocery stores in order to buy food during the roll-out of the “New Normal” in 2020-2022. That protest message read, “Befehl ist Befehl,” which roughly translates as “orders are orders,” and was the Nazis’ infamous defense at Nuremberg (i.e., “I was just following orders”). If you have never been surrounded by mobs of medical-mask-wearing Germans glaring at you with seething, utterly bone-chilling hatred … well, let me assure you, it is quite an experience. I experienced it, daily, for over two years.

I experienced it again in Das Kammergericht, where my acquittal, back in January, was summarily overturned at the insistence of the Berlin Public Prosecutor. Yes, they can do that in New Normal Germany.

I’m going to spare you the procedural details, and legal arguments, and descriptions of the ham-fisted anti-terror-style security protocols that Das Kammergericht ordered in effect for my trial. If you want to read about that, Aya Velázquez covered it in her recent extensive report, and Dr. Clivia von Dewitz, a German judge and expert on the Nazi-symbol-ban statutes, covered the legal questions in this article before, and this other article after, the trial. I haven’t translated that second article (as I did the first), but here’s an excerpt …

“With this decision, the German judiciary is once again moving away from the principles of a liberal democracy, which thrives on the exchange of conflicting beliefs and opinions as well as criticism of government actions. If Der Spiegel and Stern are permitted to use swastikas on their magazine covers, the same freedom must apply to those who criticize the government. When, as here, the judiciary begins to apply double standards, and condemns obvious criticism of the government via the use Nazi symbols, and conducts a trial under inappropriate ‘anti-terror conditions,’ one has to ask oneself how far the judiciary in Germany has departed from fundamental democratic principles. In response to the court’s ruling that such posts are not covered by freedom of expression or freedom of art, what, if not that, is freedom of expression or freedom of art? An American married to a Jew can hardly be accused of ‘trivializing National Socialism’ or of ‘not expressing an explicit rejection of National Socialism.’”
— Clivia von Dewitz, Berliner Zeitung

Or you can read Eugyppius, another German, writing in English in The Daily Sceptic, or Boris Reitschuster, yet another German, reporting in German, or The Epoch Times, or this excellent piece by Milosz Matuschek, which focuses on the legal arguments.

Or, if you’d prefer to hear from the enormous Goebbelsian keyboard instrument that is the majority of the mainstream German press, and you’re able to read German, you can read all about how seditious and insane I am in Der Tagesspiegel, Die Tageszeitung, and the Legal Tribune Online, a legal journal. For some reason I can’t possibly fathom, Der Spiegel were rather reserved in their coverage. I am sure it had nothing to do with the fact that they had printed that big fat swastika on their cover.

It was rather surprising that the mainstream German press turned up to cover the proceedings, as they had been studiously ignoring the story. Maybe the court’s PR people contacted them, or maybe they just smelled blood in the water.

In any event, the atmosphere in Room 145a of Das Kammergericht was dripping with sanctimonious, fascistic authority. It was clear from the outset that the three-judge panel were there to teach a “Covid denier” a lesson, and remind the German public what happens when you break the rules of New Normal Germany. The judges had clearly already decided to overturn my acquittal, so the rest was just theater, which, apart from my attorney’s lengthy arguments, and my statement to the court, mostly consisted of the judges radiating imperious contempt and seething hostility down at us from the bench like an enormous three-headed Gila monster. The prosecutor had mumbled two or three sentences in a monotone at the outset of the trial. She didn’t bother to attempt to appear to present an actual legal argument, as that would have ruined the fait-accompli mise-en-scène effect they were obviously going for.

I have to give the courtand the prosecution credit for their dramaturgy. The point of staging a public trial like this — which the prosecution demanded, which is unusual at the appellate level — wasn’t to pretend to be carrying out justice. It was a show of force. A demonstration. A public humiliation ritual. And, all things considered, they staged it well.

It’s embarrassing, but, the truth is, they got to me. At some point during the bizarre proceedings, I started experiencing waves of disturbing flashbacks from 2020-2022, when hate-drunk New Normal Germans were chasing down maskless passengers on regional trains like the pod people in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and goon squads (i.e., the German police) were savagely brutalizing anyone who protested against the “Corona measures,” and government leaders, the state and corporate media, and the vast majority of the German masses were fanatically persecuting “the Unvaccinated” with a fervor not seen since the bad old days.

Those flashbacks looked a little something like this …

… so I was a little disoriented as I left the courthouse.

It has taken a few days, but I’ve mostly recovered. After consultations with my fearless attorney, I’ve decided to submit my case to the Bundesverfassungsgericht, i.e., Germany’s supreme court, because … well, at this point, I kind of have to. If I don’t, the precedent the New Normal German authorities are trying to establish will stand, and the right to freedom-of-expression in Germany will have become nothing but a sick fascist joke.

And, yes, that right is guaranteed in the Grundgesetz (i.e., the German constitution). It isn’t quite the 1st Amendment, but it’s good enough for Germany, and I’m not willing to let it be distorted and made a mockery of by a bunch of fascists, not without a fight.

If you want to help me fight that fight, which is going cost about 12,000 Euros in legal fees, plus whatever expenses I incur along the way, you can contribute to my rebooted “legal defense fund.” If you do, please note the disclaimer at the bottom.

My heartfelt gratitude to everyone who has already contributed! Your engagement and generosity has overwhelmed me once again. I did not want this fight, but now it has to

be fought. If it were just about me, it wouldn’t matter that much, but it isn’t just about me, and it matters, greatly. It is a fight that it is being fought throughout the West, not just in Germany and the USA, and the UK, and Ireland, and Australia, but everywhere that people are fighting to defend constitutional rights and democratic principles.

I don’t know whether I will win my fight, but I know we will win the bigger fight. As I said in my statement to the court, totalitarianism, fascism, never wins. Not in the long run. History teaches us that. And it is history that will judge us all in the end.

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CJ Hopkins
October 5, 2024
Photo: Erik Rusch/Epoch Times

DISCLAIMER: The preceding essay is entirely the work of our in-house satirist and self-appointed political pundit, CJ Hopkins, and does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Consent Factory, Inc., or its staff, or any of its agents, subsidiaries, or assigns. If, for whatever inexplicable reason, you appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to support it, please go to his Substack page, or his Patreon page, or send a contribution to his PayPal account, so that maybe he’ll stop coming around our offices trying to hit our employees up for money. Alternatively, you could purchase his satirical dystopian sci-fi novel, Zone 23, or Volumes I, II, and III of his Consent Factory Essays, or any of his subversive stage plays, which won some awards in Great Britain and Australia. If you do not appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to write him an abusive email, feel free to contact him directly.

So, the Berlin Appellate Court overturned my acquittal today. I am now, officially, at least according to the New Normal German authorities, a “hate-speech” criminal. I’m officially a “hate-speech” criminal because I compared New Normal Germany to Nazi Germany, and I challenged the official Covid narrative, and I used the cover art of my book to do it.

The New Normal German authorities didn’t like that, and were determined to punish me for doing that, and to make an example of me, in order to discourage other people from doing that. It took them two tries, but they pulled it off. The judge in my original trial screwed up and acquitted me, but the Berlin Public Prosecutor’s office didn’t give up. They appealed the verdict — yes, they can do that in Germany — and this morning the Appellate Court overturned the verdict and declared me guilty.

I’ll report on all the ugly details of my day in court in a proper column sometime later this week, when I’ve sufficiently recovered from the hangover I am currently about to start working on.

I’ll also be resurrecting my legal defense fund and telling you about that in my next column, because the only recourse my attorney and I have left at this point is to try to get the German Constitutional Court (i.e., Germany’s supreme court) to hear the case.

In the meantime, I wanted to share my Statement to the Appellate Court. Here it is.

Ladies and Gentlemen, my name is CJ Hopkins. I am an award-winning playwright, author, and political satirist. My work is read by hundreds of thousands of people all over the world. For over thirty years, I have written and spoken out against fascism, authoritarianism, totalitarianism, and so on. Anyone can do an Internet search, find my books, reviews of my plays, my essays, and learn who I am and what my political views are in five minutes.

And yet, I am accused by the German authorities of spreading pro-Nazi propaganda. I’m accused of doing this because I posted two Tweets challenging the official Covid narrative and comparing the new, nascent form of totalitarianism it has brought into being — the so-called “New Normal” — to Nazi Germany.

Let me be clear. I did that. In August 2022, as Germany was debating whether to end its Covid mask mandates, I tweeted those two Tweets. I challenged the official Covid narrative. I compared the New Normal to Nazi Germany. I did that with the cover art of one of my books. I did what anyone is allowed to do according to German law. I did what Karl Lauterbach has done. I did what German celebrities like Jessica Berlin have done. I did what major German newspapers and magazines have done.

A few months ago, Stern and Der Spiegel published covers of their magazines featuring swastikas. Der Spiegel’s cover featured exactly the same artistic concept as my book cover and my Tweets. The only difference is, the swastika on Der Spiegel’s cover is behind a German flag, whereas the swastika on my book cover and in my Tweets is behind a medical mask. That’s it. That is the only difference.

Stern and Der Spiegel displayed swastikas on their covers in order to warn the public of the rise of a new form of totalitarianism, and that is precisely what I did. I compared the New Normal — i.e., the new nascent form of totalitarianism that came into being in 2020 — to Nazi Germany. Stern and Der Spiegel compared the AfD to Nazi Germany. That is the only difference.

I’m not a fan of the AfD. I’m not a fan of Stern and Der Spiegel. That doesn’t matter. Stern and Der Spiegel have the right to do what they did, and so do I. That right is guaranteed to us in the German constitution. We all have the right, if we see a new form of totalitarianism taking shape, to oppose it, and to compare it to historical forms of totalitarianism, including Nazi Germany.

I don’t follow German electoral politics very closely, so I don’t know exactly what the AfD has done that prompted Stern and Der Spiegel to compare them to the Nazis. But I know exactly what the German authorities did during 2020 to 2023.

In 2020, the German authorities declared a national state of emergency, for which they provided no concrete evidence, and suspended constitutional rights. Nazi Germany also did that, in March 1933. From 2020 to 2022, the German authorities forced people to wear symbols of their conformity to the official ideology and perform humiliating public-loyalty rituals. The Nazis also did that. The current German authorities banned protests against their arbitrary decrees. With the help of the media, they bombarded the German masses with lies and propaganda designed to terrorize the public into unquestioning obedience. They segregated society according to who was and wasn’t conforming to official ideology. They censored political dissent. They stripped people of their jobs because they refused to conform to official ideology and follow senseless orders. The German authorities fomented mass hatred of a “scapegoat” class of people. They demonized and persecuted critics of the government’s decrees. They dispatched police to beat them and arrest them. They have instrumentalized the law to punish political dissidents. Nazi Germany also did all these things, as have most other totalitarian systems. I documented all this in my book. I spoke out against it. I published essays about it. I tweeted about it.

My punishment for that has been … well, here I am, on trial in criminal court for the second time. The German authorities had my Tweets censored. They reported me to the Federal Criminal Police Office. They reported me to The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the German domestic Intelligence agency. My book is banned in Germany. The German authorities investigated me. They prosecuted me. They put me on trial for tweeting. After I was acquitted, that wasn’t enough, so they have put me on trial again. They defamed me. They have damaged my income and reputation as an author. They have forced me to spend thousands of Euros in legal fees to defend myself against these clearly ridiculous charges. And today, I, and my lawyer, and all the people in the gallery, have been subjected to this official show of force and treated like potential terrorists.

Why, rational people might ask, have I been subjected to this special treatment, while Der Spiegel, Stern, Die Tageszeitung, and many others who have also tweeted swastikas, have not?

This is not a mystery. Everyone knows the answer to this question.

You are not fooling anyone. Everyone understands exactly what this prosecution actually is. Every journalist that has covered my case, everyone in this courtroom, understands what this prosecution actually is. It has nothing to do with punishing people who disseminate pro-Nazi propaganda. It is about punishing political dissent, and intimidating critics into silence. I’m not here because I put a swastika on my book cover. I am here because I put it behind a “Covid” mask. I am here because I dared to criticize the German authorities. I am here because I refused to shut up and follow orders.

At my first trial, I appealed to the judge to stop this game and follow the law. She did that. She needed to publicly insult me, and then put on a “Covid” mask to display her allegiance to the “New Normal,” but she acquitted me. She followed the law. And I thanked her. But I will not appeal to this Court. I’m tired of this game. If this Court wanted to follow the law, I wouldn’t be here today. The Court would have dismissed the Prosecution’s ridiculous arguments in its motion to overturn the verdict. You didn’t do that. So I’m not going to appeal to this Court for justice. Or expect justice.

Go ahead. Do whatever you feel you need to do to me. Fine me. Send me to prison. Bankrupt me. Whatever. I will not pretend that I am guilty of anything to make your punishment stop. I will not lie for you. I will not obey you because you threaten me, because you have the power to hurt me.

You have that power. I get it. Everyone gets it. The German authorities have the power to punish those who criticize them, who expose their hypocrisy, their lies. We all get the message. But that is not how things work in democratic societies. That is how things work in totalitarian systems.

I will not cooperate with that. I refuse to live that way.

As long as the German authorities continue to claim that Germany is a democratic country, which respects the rule of law and democratic principles, I will continue to behave like that is what it is. I will not be bullied. I will insist on my constitutional rights. I will continue to respect democratic principles and fight to preserve them. The German authorities can make a mockery of those rights and the rule of law and democratic principles if they want. I will not. Not for the Berlin Prosecutor. Not for this Court. Not for the German authorities. Not for anyone.

Totalitarianism, authoritarianism, tyranny, never win. Not in the long run. History teaches us that. And it is history that will judge us all in the end.

— CJ Hopkins

So, this came as a pleasant surprise.

A German judge, Dr. Clivia von Dewitz, published an extensive opinion piece about my case, and “political justice,” in the Berliner Zeitung, a mainstream newspaper. I’ve translated it below for any non-German readers who are not sick to death of reading about my case.

And, even if you’re sick of hearing about my case, you should read her piece anyway, because (a) it will clear up any lingering misconceptions you may have about the law regarding the public display of swastikas and other Nazi symbols in Germany — Dr. von Dewitz happens to be an expert on that law, and (b) she references the RKI Files (i.e., the Robert Koch-Institute Files), which are shaking things up here in Germany.

That’s a whole story in and of itself, and I want to stay on track, but here’s an excerpt from a piece by two German lawyers in Cicero magazine about what the RKI Files are exposing [translation mine] …

“To be clear: The first lockdown in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany was apparently based largely on political or ministerial influence on the RKI, which was sold to the public and the courts as an independent scientific risk assessment. … Since the RKI was bound by the instructions of and conformed its statements to the wishes of politicians, the minutes reveal that contradictions, ambiguities and inaccuracies in the official statements were systematically ignored, indeed had to be ignored. The publicly communicated protection of others through vaccination did not exist, nor did the extent of the risk to the general population from corona infections postulated by the RKI. An objective look at the data published by the RKI in Germany in March 2020 showed no national medical threat.” — Corona und Recht: Die Pandemie der Unmenschlichkeit

So, yeah, kind of a big story, which is of course the broader context of my story, which Dr. von Dewitz explains at some length in her piece about my case.

Oh, and, if you’re wondering about the phrase “political justice,” it’s mostly a German concept. I don’t think the term is commonly used in English, or at least I couldn’t find many references to it. It means exactly what it sounds like it means …

“In a political justice system, the independence of the judiciary is overridden by the ruling authorities and thus fundamental democratic rights are violated. This independence [of the judiciary] is part of the separation of powers guaranteed to Germany by Article 20, Paragraph 2, of the Basic Law [i.e., the Grundgesetz, the German constitution]. Political justice is an abuse of executive power. The equality of political groups before the law is not taken into account, but rather, the justice system serves primarily to eliminate political opposition and thus expands the scope of the prevailing political system, rather than holding it in check.” — Otto Kirchheimer: Politische Justiz. Verwendung juristischer Verfahrensmöglichkeiten zu politischen Zwecken. (1961 Political Justice) dt. Luchterhand, Neuwied 1965, S. 606.

Anyway, without further ado, here’s the translation of Dr. Clivia von Dewitz’s piece in the Berliner Zeitung [notes, in brackets, mine].

CJ Hopkins, September 22, 2024

Our author wrote her doctorate on the Nazi-insignia ban and says: Hopkins’ acquittal at his first trial was correct. Why is the Berlin public prosecutor appealing the verdict?

by Clivia von Dewitz
Berliner Zeitung, September 21, 2024

The appeal hearing in the CJ Hopkins case is scheduled to take place before the Berlin Appellate Court on September 30. The American-born man, married to a Jew, and living in Berlin for almost 20 years, is accused by the Berlin public prosecutor’s office of violating the Nazi-symbol ban that has been in effect in Germany since 1968 with two posts on X [formerly Twitter]. The bone of contention is an image showing a white medical mask with a white swastika shining through in the middle of it. He published various accompanying texts, which will be relevant in the course of the trial. But more on that later.

Showing Nazi symbols still causes discomfort among a large portion of the population in Germany. Rightly so — these symbols represent an unjust regime of unimaginable proportions, which is responsible in particular for the Holocaust and the Second World War and thus for millions of deaths.

Immediately after the Second World War, people understandably began to think about how to deal with Nazi symbols. The first criminal regulations that restricted National Socialist ideas and thus also Nazi insignia were the German military government’s occupation laws for the American zone (such as Law No. 154). The law stipulated stiff penalties for the use of Nazi symbols on flags, banners and the like.

After 1949, only the Assembly Act of 1953 contained a ban on the use of National Socialist symbols. It was not until 1960 with the 6th Criminal Law Amendment Act that the ban on displaying the symbols of former National Socialist organizations was introduced into the Criminal Code as Section 96a. In 1968, the insignia ban was introduced as Section 86a StGB as part of the party-ban provisions in the version that essentially still applies today, thus placing the standardization of the Nazi-symbol ban in the more general context of the party-ban law.

According to the ban on [Nazi] insignia (§ 86 Para. 1 No. 4, 86a Para. 1 No. 1 StGB), only those who distribute or publicly display Nazi symbols “which, based on their content, are intended to reflect the efforts of a former National Socialist organization” are liable to prosecution. This means that not every use of a Nazi symbol falls under the ban. On the contrary, the law confirms that only material, the content of which is directed against the free democratic basic order or the concept of understanding among nations, is considered [criminal] propaganda media (Section 86 Para. 3 StGB).

And, according to the criminal statute (Section 86 Para. 4 StGB), criminal liability is also excluded if the material serves the purposes of civic education, defense against unconstitutional efforts, art or science, research or teaching, or reporting on current events or history, or similar purposes (the so-called social adequacy clause).

It was in the 1970s that Nazi symbols were first used in a critical or ironic way. In these cases, jurisprudence failed to establish criminal liability, either at the level of the offense or by virtue of the application of the social adequacy clause. Because a critical and distanced use of Nazi symbols is not punishable, especially in view of Article 5 of the Grundgesetz [i.e., the German constitution, literally “Basic Law”]. The fundamental right of freedom of expression and freedom of art enshrined therein is constitutive of a democracy.

Given the above-described legal background, the Tiergarten District Court quite rightly acquitted CJ Hopkins on January 23, 2024. In its judgment, the court came to the conclusion that the defendant did not commit a criminal offense with his two posts, because, according to the verdict, in both of the posts cited by the Berlin public prosecutor’s office, “when taking into account the text associated with the use of the mask, it can easily be seen that the connection to National Socialism is made in an emphatically negative sense.”

The posts are also unsuitable to promote a revival of National Socialist ideas or even former National Socialist organizations. Because people with neo-Nazi goals would never use the symbols of National Socialist organizations in an artwork that expresses their rejection. Therefore, any effect of the posts in a direction corresponding to the symbolic content of National Socialist insignia is ruled out from the outset. In short: The court found that an American citizen had used Nazi symbols without intending to glorify the Nazi regime in any way.

The question now arises as to how the Berlin public prosecutor’s office is appealing this acquittal and summoning CJ Hopkins to court again on September 30, 2024. According to the wording of the [Nazi] insignia ban, and the special importance, according to the Federal Constitutional Court, of freedom of expression and art for a democracy, there can be no other result than impunity for such posts.

In a ruling on April 11, 2024 in response to a constitutional complaint by Julian Reichelt, the Federal Constitutional Court noted the special importance of freedom of expression and made it clear that the state must also put up with harsh and polemical criticism. This must also apply when Nazi symbols are used to criticize state orders, regardless of whether the criticism is justified or not.

The argument presented by the Berlin public prosecutor’s office in the hearing before the Berlin district court — according to which distance from the Nazi era should not “only” become clear “when reading the text accompanying the image or when reflecting on it” — is not convincing. The criticism of the state expressed in the two posts through the use of the swastika clearly does not glorify the Nazi regime. On the contrary, the defendant is using Nazi symbolism to warn against a totalitarian style of government. This may seem extreme, but if you consider the government’s actions during the Corona period, harsh criticism is at least understandable.

The minutes of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) suggest that the government ordered significant parts of the measures restricting fundamental rights from 2020 to 2022 not on the basis of scientific findings, but out of political calculation, such that a new assessment of the government’s actions from 2020 to 2022 is necessary.

This also and especially applies to the wearing of masks. For example, the RKI minutes of November 4, 2020 state: “FFP2 masks are very unlikely to be a protective measure. In addition, there is no reliable protection for laypeople without accompanying application!” And later, in the minutes of November 16, 2020, it states: “Can we still intervene? It is inconvenient and dangerous for masks to be used by laypeople. The German Society for Microbiology and Hygiene considers FFP2 masks, if they do not fit well, to be a less favorable means than MNS (“mouth and nose protection,” BZ editor’s note), as they provide a false sense of security. (…) Influence is no longer possible, the deliberations are taking place now, RKI was not asked in advance.” And in the very next sentence it states: “If a decision is made like this, the challenges should be pointed out, and disbursement by prescription should be recommended after prior consultation with the family doctor. The family doctor can check whether there is a cardiac or pulmonary risk and can provide instructions on its use.”

Given these statements by scientists in late 2020, how can the ongoing proceedings against doctors who issued mask-exemption certificates be justified? The suspicion of political justice or attitude-based criminal law arises.

The Osnabrück Administrative Court recently initiated a commendable new development in jurisprudence. The court introduced the RKI protocols in a trial regarding an employment ban as a result of the facility-related vaccination requirement. The RKI President was heard as a witness. At the end of the hearing, the court found that there were considerable doubts about the scientific independence of the RKI, as it was operating according to the instructions of the Federal Ministry of Health. Because of massive doubts about the constitutionality of a paragraph in the then applicable Infection Protection Act, it has submitted the case to the Federal Constitutional Court for a decision (a so-called judge’s submission). It remains to be seen whether the Federal Constitutional Court will take advantage of the opportunity and adapt its decisions to the actual state of scientific knowledge in the future.

Finally, it was recently highlighted by retired judge Manfred Kölsch that the damage to taxpayers caused by the ordering of 5.7 billion masks by May 5, 2024 (by the then Health Minister Jens Spahn), as well as by storage costs and by the likely economic consequences of the rulings by the Cologne Higher Regional Court on compensation for mask suppliers, is likely to total around ten billion Euros. The Federal Audit Office speaks of a “massive over-procurement” and further states that the masks were “of no use in combating the pandemic and therefore of no health policy value”. At the same time, the RKI protocol of January 27, 2020 states: “It is not recommended to stockpile masks etc.”

Politicians ordered masks contrary to all economic reason, and mandated the wearing of masks contrary to scientific findings and the professional assessment of the Robert Koch Institute. Regarding children, many experts even considered wearing masks to be harmful to their health right from the start.

In light of all this, the use of a swastika in conjunction with a mask as criticism of government orders may appear in a new light. If it is no longer possible to criticize government actions in an extreme way, what CJ Hopkins was warning against with his posts has come true, namely the rise of new totalitarian government structures and thus the loss of democratic values. If Der Spiegel and Stern, which were not particularly critical of the government during or after the Covid period, and have not made a serious effort to educate, can use swastikas on their covers unchallenged, the same must apply to critics of the government.

Dr. Clivia von Dewitz is a German judge. Her doctorate thesis was on Nazi ideas and criminal law (§§ 86,86a and § 130 StGB).

Photo credit: Christoph Söder/dpa courtesy of Berliner Zeitung.

This article is subject to the Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). It may be freely used by the general public for non-commercial purposes provided the author and the Berliner Zeitung are credited and that it is used unedited.

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 September 30, 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, criticizing 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 New 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 practiced 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 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 day care 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 emphasized 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,’ emphasized 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 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 “delegitimize 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 delegitimizing 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 mold 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 “delegitimizing-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 September 30.

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!

###

CJ Hopkins
September 15, 2024

DISCLAIMER: The preceding essay is entirely the work of our in-house satirist and self-appointed political pundit, CJ Hopkins, and does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Consent Factory, Inc., or its staff, or any of its agents, subsidiaries, or assigns. If, for whatever inexplicable reason, you appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to support it, please go to his Substack page, or his Patreon page, or send a contribution to his PayPal account, so that maybe he’ll stop coming around our offices trying to hit our employees up for money. Alternatively, you could purchase his satirical dystopian sci-fi novel, Zone 23, or Volumes I, II, and III of his Consent Factory Essays, or any of his subversive stage plays, which won some awards in Great Britain and Australia. If you do not appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to write him an abusive email, feel free to contact him directly.

OK, this will be one of my non-satirical essays … or mostly non-satirical essays.

It will serve as a companion piece to The New Normal Left, another non-satirical essay that I published in April 2023, which was basically just a reiteration of a speech I gave at a conference in London. It went over pretty well back then. I republished most of it in my latest column, A Brief History of Global Capitalism. It didn’t go over quite as well this time. Political perspectives appear to have shifted significantly over the course of the last year and a half. Or maybe it was just the word “capitalism” in the title, which, for some reason, annoyed a lot of people.

This essay will also annoy some people. However, that is not my intention, so, if you’re one of those readers who get agitated if you see the word “capitalism” in anything other than an enthusiastically pro-capitalism context, you might want to give this essay a miss.

Also, if you’re one of my regular readers, apologies for the repetition of points that you’ve heard me make many times. Not everyone has read my previous essays, so I need to do that for the sake of clarity, which is what I hope to provide in this essay, rather than, you know, just making people laugh.

Ready? OK, here we go.

The first thing I should probably clarify is what I mean by the term “New Normal.” Naturally, people associate it with Covid. It doesn’t have anything to do with Covid. Yes, the “New Normal” was ushered into being by the “state of emergency” that was imposed on the world from 2020 to 2023, but it didn’t end in 2023, and it never had anything to do with a virus. You do not transform entire societies into pathologized-totalitarian police states and force people to submit to experimental “vaccinations” because of an airborne respiratory virus that poses no threat to the vast majority of humanity.

The “New Normal” was never about a virus. The term — which I did not make up; it was deployed by the authorities and the corporate and state media — means exactly what it sounds like it means. The “New Normal” is our new official “reality,” just as “The War on Terror” was our official “reality” from September 2001 to 2016.

The “New Normal” is actually an evolution of “The War on Populism” that began in 2016, after Brexit and the rise of European populism, and Donald Trump in the USA. I’ve published whole books of essays on this subject, so I’m not going to reiterate all that here. Essentially, what happened in 2016 was, the global-capitalist system that we all live under switched “realities” like The Party switched official enemies in Orwell’s 1984. It happened over the course of a few weeks.

Most people have probably forgotten by now, but, back in August 2016, we were still very much living in “The War on Terror.” By October, “The War on Terror” was over, and “The War on Populism” was on. “The War on Populism” was our official “reality” from then until the Spring of 2020, when it morphed into the “New Normal” with the roll-out of “the pandemic.”

And now … well, here we are.

OK, let me try to clarify another point. When I say the “New Normal” is our official “reality,” I mean “reality,” not ideology. Ideologies are a dime a dozen. They exist in relation to other ideologies. “Reality” doesn’t. There is only one “reality.” If there is more than one “reality,” they’re just ideologies. “Reality” is singular. It is axiomatic. “Reality” isn’t up for debate. If you debate “reality,” you are a “crazy person.” That’s the whole point of having a “reality.”

I realize this is a difficult concept. If you are having trouble with it, perhaps think of official “reality” as a supra-ideological ideology. I’ve often called it a “post-ideology.” It’s what an ideology becomes when there are no longer any other ideologies to put it in context (i.e., as an ideology). So, it disappears as ideology, and becomes “reality,” and becomes unassailable … or, in other words, “just the way it is.”

Which, of course, is the ultimate goal of every totalitarian movement and system, i.e., to overcode every element of society with its official “reality,” eliminating any and all forms of dissent, which, at that point, no longer has to be suppressed, because it has become inconceivable, literally inconceivable, as in the mind can no longer formulate such thoughts (no more than fish could think critically about water, i.e., if fish could think like that).

In any event, the “New Normal” is our new official “reality.” We are only in the early stages of it, but some of its features are unmistakably clear — the criminalization of dissent, corporate and state censorship, the devalorization of democratic rights and principles, the “pathologization” of political opposition, etc.I have described it as a new, nascent form of totalitarianism. A global-capitalist form of totalitarianism. I’m sorry if that agitates my “pro-capitalism” readers — as I mentioned, that is honestly not my intent — but global capitalism is the system that we all live in. We need to be able to call it what it is, and try to understand how it is rapidly evolving.

It is evolving in an increasingly totalitarian fashion, which, given the circumstances, is not at all surprising. As I put it in those earlier essays …

It’s one big global-capitalist world now. It has been since the early 1990s. GloboCap has no external adversaries, so it has nothing to do but ‘clear and hold,’ i.e., wipe out pockets of internal resistance and implement ideological uniformity. Which is what it has been doing for the last 30 years, first, in the former Soviet bloc, then, in ‘The Global War on Terror,’ and finally, in our so-called ‘Western democracies,’ as we have just experienced up close and personal during the shock-and-awe phase of the rollout of the New Normal, and are continuing to experience, albeit less dramatically. In other words, GloboCap is going totalitarian. That is what the ‘New Normal’ is.”

If any of my staunchly “pro-capitalism” readers are still with me at this point, please, try to relax. I don’t want to confiscate your private property, or raise the capital gains tax on billionaires, or any of that other “commie” stuff. I am neither “pro-capitalism” nor “anti-capitalism.” I’m just trying to explain where we are.

Where we are is in the inceptive stages of the evolution of the first globally hegemonic power system in human history. Communism is dead. Nazism is dead. Every would-be ideological opponent to the hegemony of global capitalism is dead. There are only two major forces in play: (1) global capitalism, which is carrying out that above-mentioned global “Clear-and-Hold” op , and; (2) the reactionary resistance to it.

The character of that reactionary resistance is decentralized and heterogeneous, as is the character of the global-capitalist system. Neither force is a monolithic entity. The basic differences are: (1) global capitalism, despite its heterogeneous elements and the perpetual intramural competition among them, comprises a single ideological system, whereas the reactionary resistance to it does not, and; (2) the global-capitalism system is the occupying force, so it controls the territory — i.e., the entire planet — whereas the reactionary resistance is an insurgency, or, rather, a diverse array of insurgencies, many of which do not entirely understand what they are actually “insurging” against.

Which brings us to the New Normal Right.

I have described the resistance to the hegemony of global capitalism as “reactionary,” but I do not mean that in a pejorative sense. Most of this reactionary resistance is an attempt to defend traditional values from the value-decoding machine of capitalism.

If I can quote from The New Normal Left again …

“Capitalism is a values-decoding machine. It decodes society of despotic values (i.e., religious values, racist values, socialist values, traditional values, any and all values that interfere with the unimpeded flows of capital. Capitalism does not distinguish). This is how capitalism (or democracy if you’re squeamish) freed us from a despotic ‘reality’ in which values emanated from the aristocracies, kings, priests, the Church, etc. Basically, it transferred the emanation and enforcement of values from despotic structures to the marketplace, where everything is essentially a commodity.”

As the events of the last eight years have demonstrated, there are still a lot of people who have no interest in living in a global marketplace where there are no values, and anything means anything, and everything and everyone is essentially a commodity.

This is what the “culture war” in the West is all about. People are not quite ready to surrender their religious values, their cultural values, their national sovereignty, and other such concepts, and embrace a borderless, monomulticultural, supranationally- governed post-social society that is basically just an endless combination mega-mall and GloboCap theme park.

The thing is, the majority of the resistance in the West is staunchly “pro-capitalist,” or at least staunchly “anti-communist,” and thus is unable to face the fact that it is global capitalism and its values-decoding machine that they are actually resisting. Hence the desperate coining of alternative names to designate the adversary, “cultural Marxism,” “communism,” “wokeism,” “crony capitalism” … the list goes on and on.

The same goes for the non-Western resistance. Most militant Islamic fundamentalists believe they are waging jihad against “the infidels,” or “the Zionists,” or against “The Great Satan, America.” Populists in Eastern Europe believe they’re resisting the USA, or NATO, which they are, but that’s just intramural competition. What they are really up against is the values-decoding machine of global capitalism, which is desperate to get its hooks back into Russia, de-Putinize and re-privatize the hell out of everything, and get those flows of global capital reflowing.

Anyway, that’s the playing field, currently. You got GloboCap conducting its Clear-and-Hold op, neutralizing internal resistance to its global-capitalist Gleichschaltung campaign and implementing (post)ideological uniformity, and you got the internal, reactionary resistance to GloboCap.

So, that works out pretty well for GloboCap. You can’t carry out a Clear-and-Hold op if there’s no reactionary resistance to “clear.”

The catch is, most of the reactionary resistance is not quite scary and militant enough. I’m going to out on a limb here and state that most conservatives are not longstanding members of democracy-hating neo-Nazi militias. They’re just regular folks who want to be left alone to live their lives as they please, and to raise their families according to their values, just like most liberals — and, yes, even leftists — are not fanatical, mask-wearing, censorship-happy, shrieking, totalitarian freaks, but just regular people, with good intentions.

But that doesn’t work for GloboCap. Garden-variety, non-fanatical folks, regardless of their political persuasions, are as useless to the GloboCap Clear-and-Hold op as a one-legged monkey in an ass-kicking contest.

And so that’s where the New Normal Right comes in.

If the New Normal Right did not already exist, GloboCap would be forced to invent it. It needs a convincing boogeyman — or, actually, a diverse collection of boogeymen — to serve as an excuse for its evolution into a pathologized-totalitarian system.

Fortunately, for GloboCap, the New Normal Right does exist, and is becoming uglier and thus more useful by the day. Just like the New Normal Left are playing their part — i.e., as the New Normal’s brownshirts — the New Normal Right are stepping right into their roles like seasoned Hollywood actors.

Their role in this drama is “the far-right extremists.” The “bigots.” The “anti-Semites.” The “Holocaust deniers.” The “neo-Nazis.” The “neo-nationalist insurrectionists.”

In other words, they are playing the part of “Hitler.”

Naturally, GloboCap is playing “America” (i.e., the “good guys” who defeated Hitler), so it needs a “Hitler” to be at war with. It needs a “Hitler” to justify doing away with what is left of our democratic rights, transferring political power from nation-states to supranational global corporations and non-governmental governing organizations, censoring and visibility-filtering dissent, and otherwise continuing to metamorphose into its new totalitarian form. The terrorists are still playing “Hitler” abroad. It needs the New Normal Right to play “Hitler” at home.

Which the New Normal Right is increasingly doing. Emboldened in large part by Elon Musk and other prominent “influencers,” they’re letting it rip with the blatant bigotry, and anti-Semitism, and neo-nationalism, and strutting around like racist bull roosters. Holocaust denial is trending. Rumors of cat-eating Haitians are circulating. Elon, who has been consecrated “Free Speech Incarnate,” is martyring Himself in Brazil and the UK. His disciples are flying around the planet, preaching The Gospel of Elon in their “Free-speech X” T-shirts, and passing out Bolsonaro stickers.

And the Musk Cult is on its way to Washington to rescue the Republic from tyranny!

Yes, the New Normal Right is salty! They are ready for action! The Rebellion is on! Unfortunately, they have no idea what it is that they are actually rebelling against. Intoxicated by a sense of impending victory over the “libtard commies” and their “woke mind virus,” they are playing right into GloboCap’s hands …

… or being led down to the Weser River, depending on how paranoid you want to get.

If I were the showrunner at GloboCap Pictures, I couldn’t have scripted the set-up any better. All we need now is an inciting incident, you know, like terrorists attacking the World Trade Center, Russia invading Ukraine, Hamas attacking Israel, or neo-Nazis storming the Reichstag, or the Trumpians storming the US Capitol, or British racists running amok, or … well, I think you get the general idea. Something that will enable GlobCap (also known as “The New Normal Reich”) to declare another “global state of emergency,” resuspend constitutional rights, turn loose the goon squads and the New Normal Left again, and maybe even shut down the Internet to protect the public from malinformation, or extremism, or terrorism, or Hitler, or whatever!

Who knows? Maybe they’ll even throw in another apocalyptic virus!

###

CJ Hopkins
September 11, 2024

DISCLAIMER: The preceding essay is entirely the work of our in-house satirist and self-appointed political pundit, CJ Hopkins, and does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Consent Factory, Inc., or its staff, or any of its agents, subsidiaries, or assigns. If, for whatever inexplicable reason, you appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to support it, please go to his Substack page, or his Patreon page, or send a contribution to his PayPal account, so that maybe he’ll stop coming around our offices trying to hit our employees up for money. Alternatively, you could purchase his satirical dystopian sci-fi novel, Zone 23, or Volumes I, II, and III of his Consent Factory Essays, or any of his subversive stage plays, which won some awards in Great Britain and Australia. If you do not appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to write him an abusive email, feel free to contact him directly.

There are a lot of theories going around about the global crackdown on dissent.

Most of these theories are, essentially, bullshit.

Some of them are innocent, well-intentioned bullshit, in that the people putting them forth are honestly trying to explain what is happening, but they have no idea what the hell they’re talking about, or, due to their allegiances, they are only seeing one part of the picture. Others of these theories are not that innocent. Some are clearly designed to deceive, confuse, misdirect, and so on.

In the end, it doesn’t matter. Bullshit is bullshit.

As my regular readers know, for the last two years, I’ve been experiencing the global crackdown on dissent “up close and personal,” and trying to report on it. A lot of my reporting has fallen on deaf ears. Which is understandable, given the nature of what we’re up against, which is (a) formidable, (b) rather challenging to really understand, and (c) virtually unassailable, currently.

People don’t tend to like stories like that. They tend to like stories with “good guys,” and “bad guys,” and identifiable enemies, and simple solutions, even if those stories are, essentially, bullshit.

One of the most prevalent bullshit stories (i.e., theories) about the global crackdown on dissent is the one about how The Big Bad Government Forced the Poor Helpless Global Corporations to Censor Everybody, or at least Conservatives. Americans are particularly fond of this story, especially conservative Americans, as it casts the Big Bad Government as the antagonist, and good, freedom-loving, military-contracting billionaires like Elon Musk as the heroic protagonists.

Variations on this bullshit story include, but are not limited to, the ones about how the Woke cabal, or the Communists, or the Democrats, or the Biden administration, or the Starmer government, or the Satanists, or the Zionists, or some other assembly of perverted evil-doers is responsible for the global crackdown on dissent, and every other bad thing you can think of.

Another bullshit story that is popular with Americans is the one about how the evil EU is the Monster, because there’s no free speech in Europe, not like there is in the USA, where there’s the 1st Amendment, and everyone is free, and extremely armed, and, anyway, Europeans are pussies.

I could go on, but you get the idea … all of these stories, and theories, are bullshit.

The global crackdown on dissent is not a European, or a British, or American, or a Canadian, or Australian, or a Brazilian operation. It is a global, systemic operation. Governments aren’t forcing or extorting global corporations into censoring dissent. Left and right politics has nothing to do with it. It is part and parcel of the ongoing evolution of global capitalism, the globally hegemonic system we all live under. Re-electing Donald Trump will not stop it. Electing Bobby Kennedy, Jr. will not stop it. The Supreme Court will not stop it. Elon Musk won’t stop it.

As I put it in a recent column …

“What is actually happening is, a dominant power — a globally hegemonic dominant power in our case — is eliminating internal resistance throughout the territory it occupies, which in our case happens to be the whole planet. Any and all forms of internal resistance. The character of the resistance makes no difference … Islamic fundamentalism, Christian fundamentalism, neo-nationalism, ‘populism,’ socialism, whatever. Any form of resistance that interferes with the consolidation of its global hegemony and commodification of virtually everything.”

I am well aware of many people’s objections to referring to the system that we all live under as “global capitalism,” but that’s what it is. It may not be the kind of capitalism you want, but it is the kind of capitalism we have.

If we cannot identify it, we cannot understand it. If we cannot understand it, we won’t be able to change it.

I am going to demonstrate how that system works when it comes to cracking down on dissent. I’m going to use the facts of my case to do it. I’ve arranged them into a simple timeline, and editorialized as little as possible.

I would like you to note a few key elements: (1) the sequence of events and their dates; (2) the various entities involved, i.e., the German government, Amazon, Twitter, and X; (3) the “nationalities” of these entities, e.g., Amazon and X are “American” companies, and Amazon operates in markets worldwide, e.g., Amazon.de, -.co.uk., -.nl, -.ca, etc; (4) seeming contradictions, e.g., the fact that Amazon banned my book in three European countries, but continues to offer it other markets all around the world; (5) the fact that “free-speech X” is still censoring my Tweets and stonewalling my attorney; (6) the way the system reacts to press attention that it cannot control, i.e., prior to my original and second trials.

What we are up against is a global system. A system. Not a clutch of conspirators. Not a political party. Not a “cabal.” A system. A decentralized, supra-national, hegemonic, global system. Which is eliminating internal resistance. Like a body’s immune system fighting an infection. Yes, the system is run by people, individual people, but they are all replaceable, interchangeable parts of the system. No one is giving anyone orders to censor anyone or prosecute anyone or telling anyone what to publish or broadcast. No one has to. Anyone in any position of power knows what to do, without being ordered. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be in their positions. They are organs of the body that the system comprises. We are the infection.

Until we understand that, and accept it, and embrace it, we are going to get nowhere.

Anyway, let me not spoil the fun. If you’re not too fed up with reading about my case, go ahead, review the following timeline. Note the six points I outlined above. And, if you subscribe to one of those theories I listed at the top of this piece, and referred to as “bullshit,” try your theory out on these facts. If it works, feel free to let me know.

…

May 4, 2022 — The Rise of The New Normal Reich: Consent Factory Essays, Vol. III (2020-2021) is published. It is an instant Amazon #1 bestseller in Political Science in the USA, Canada, and The Netherlands, and a Barnes & Noble bestseller. The cover art, by Anthony Freda, is an homage to William Shirer’s 1960 classic.

August 24-27, 2022 — Three months later, as the German authorities debate whether to lift the Covid mask mandates, I tweet the following Tweets. (Translation: (1) “The masks are ideological-conformity symbols. That is all they are. That is what they have always been. Stop pretending that they were ever anything else or get used to wearing them.” (2) “The mask always sends a signal.” — Karl Lauterbach, Germany’s Minister of Health, as quoted in Die Welt.)

August 29, 2022 — Amazon/KDP bans The Rise of The New Normal Reich in Germany.

August 30, 2022 — The Hessen CyberCompetenceCenter (“Hessen 3C”) reports the two Tweets to Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office’s Central Reporting Center for Criminal Content on the Internet. (Hessen 3C is “a department within the Cyber and IT Security Administrative Digitalization department in the Hessian Ministry of the Interior,” and an official partner of The National Cyber Response Center (“Cyber-AZ”), “a core element of Germany’s Cyber Security Strategy.”)

August 30, 2022 — Hessen 3C reports the Tweets to Twitter for censoring. Twitter censors the Tweets, claiming they violate German “hate speech” laws.

August 30, 2022 — Amazon bans the book in Austria and The Netherlands, as well as Germany. The book becomes “unavailable to order” in German bookstores. Amazon applies warning notices to the book in markets where it is not banned (e.g., USA, UK, Canada, etc.), advising readers to visit the CDC, the World Health Organization, etc., “for the latest information on COVID-19 and vaccines.”

August 30, 2022 — Hessen 3C reports the Tweets to Germany’s domestic Intelligence agency, The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (Das Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz or “BfV”), one of the “core authorities” of Cyber-AZ. (Together with the Landesämter für Verfassungsschutz (“LfV”) at the state level, the BfV is tasked with “intelligence gathering on efforts against the liberal democratic basic order; counter-intelligence; protective security and counter-sabotage.”)

September 19, 2022 — The Federal Criminal Police Office forwards the case to the Berlin District Prosecutor. An official criminal investigation is launched. (I am not notified of the investigation at this time.)

June 2023 — Nine months later, the Berlin District Prosecutor notifies me that I am under criminal investigation on suspicion of “disseminating propaganda, the contents of which are intended to further the aims of a former National Socialist organization,” a violation of Section 86(a) of the German Criminal Code, punishable by up to three years in prison.

June 2023 — Matt Taibbi reports on the investigation in Racket News.

August 8, 2023 — The Berlin District Prosecutor’s office concludes its 11-month-long criminal investigation of my Tweets.

August 15, 2023 — The District Court of Berlin issues an Order of Punishment. I am sentenced to 60 days in jail or ordered to pay a €3,600 fine.

August 21, 2023 — My attorney appeals the Order of Punishment and requests a trial.

September 2023 — The Berlin District Prosecutor’s office launches a second criminal investigation of me, after I republish the Tweets in a Substack column reviewing the facts of the case. (I am not notified of this second investigation, which is temporarily suspended pending the outcome of the original prosecution. My attorney discovers it in the criminal investigation file after the fact.)

September 2023 — Stefan Millius reports on the prosecution in Weltwoche.

October 2023 — Marc Neumann reports on the prosecution in Neue Zürcher Zeitung.

October 2023 — Matt Taibbi reports on the prosecution in Racket News.

January 2023 — James Kirchick reports on the prosecution in The Atlantic.

January 23, 2024 — I stand trial in The District Court of Berlin. I am acquitted.

January 2024 — Aya Velázquez, other independent German journalists, and Epoch Times report on the trial. It receives zero coverage in the German mainstream press.

February 26, 2024 — The District Court Judge publishes her written acquittal verdict.

March 23, 2024 — The Berlin District Prosecutor files a notice of intent to appeal the acquittal verdict.

March 2023 — Ralf Hutter reports on the prosecution and the banning of the book in Multipolar, a prominent independent magazine in Germany.

March 27, 2024 — My attorney submits disclosure requests to Hessen 3C, Twitter/X, and Amazon, requesting information regarding the censoring of the Tweets and the banning of the book. (Both X and Amazon refuse to comply. X refers us to the X Help Center, noting that, on X, “people are free to be their true selves.” Amazon responds by sending me a zip file of irrelevant “data sets” and advising that they have thereby met their legal obligation to respond.)

May 3, 2024 — The Berlin District Prosecutor appeals to overturn my acquittal and requests a new trial before the Berlin Superior Court (Das Kammergericht Berlin).

May 2024 — Despite repeated reminders, Elon Musk and X continue to ignore my attorney’s disclosure request. Notwithstanding my acquittal, X continues to censor the two Tweets.

May 2024 — Both Der Spiegel and Stern magazine print covers featuring swastikas. Der Spiegel’s cover concept is exactly the same as my book cover concept/Tweets, the only difference being that the Spiegel cover features a swastika covered by the German flag, whereas my book cover and Tweets feature a swastika covered by a medical mask.

June 2024 — In response to my attorney’s disclosure request in March, Hessen 3C denies having instructed Twitter to censor the two Tweets, despite the fact that, on September 1, 2022, in the criminal investigation file, the Federal Criminal Police Office noted, “Hessen 3C has already taken measures to have the Tweets deleted.”

Hessen 3C also denies contacting Amazon regarding the book cover, despite the fact that Amazon banned the book less than 24 hours prior to Hessen 3C’s reporting of the Tweets to the Federal Criminal Police Office and the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution.

July 18, 2024 — The Berlin Superior Court schedules the new trial for August 15, and issues an Order imposing security protocols on the proceedings, i.e., airport-style full-body scanning, no computers, phones, cameras, writing instruments, etc., allowed in the courtroom. Members of the press and the public (and my attorney and I) must surrender all personal items, including jackets, head coverings, etc., and completely their empty pockets before entering the courtroom. Members of the press and public will be limited to 35 and must be seated in the rear six rows of the gallery, so that they can be monitored by security personnel. The Superior Court’s pretext for this Order is that a certain high-security trial sometimes takes place in the same courtroom.

July 22, 2024 — My attorney files a motion objecting to the Court’s Security Order. We are informed that the judge that issued the Security Order has gone on vacation and is unavailable to respond.

July 26, 2024 — The Superior Court denies my attorney’s motion to lift the Security Order, which it explains is required due to the “overall tense security situation” and the need to protect the Court against “recently introduced wiretapping technology.” The trial is set to go ahead on August 15. The Security Order remains in effect.

August 4, 2024 — John Mac Ghlionn reports on the prosecution and the banning of the book in Sky New Australia.

August 9, 2024 — The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (“FIRE”) releases a video feature about the prosecution and the banning of the book.

August 12, 2024 — My attorney files a bias complaint against the judge that issued the Security Order.

August 14, 2024 — Ralf Hutter reports on the prosecution and the banning of the book in Berliner Zeitung, a mainstream German newspaper.

August 14, 2024 — The Superior Court postpones the trial without explanation. A new trial date is set for September 30. The Security Order remains in effect.

…

N.B. The Rise of The New Normal Reich: Consent Factory Essays, Vol. III (2020-2021) continues to sell briskly in countries where it is not banned. It remains banned by Amazon in Germany, Austria, and The Netherlands. Despite also being distributed internationally by Ingram Content Group, the book remains “unavailable to order” from bookstores in Germany.

P.S. And, yes, that’s Mr. Jensen up there again. I’m rather fond of Mr. Jensen. If you haven’t rewatched Network recently, or read his speech, I recommend doing that.

###

CJ Hopkins
August 23, 2024

DISCLAIMER: The preceding essay is entirely the work of our in-house satirist and self-appointed political pundit, CJ Hopkins, and does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Consent Factory, Inc., or its staff, or any of its agents, subsidiaries, or assigns. If, for whatever inexplicable reason, you appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to support it, please go to his Substack page, or his Patreon page, or send a contribution to his PayPal account, so that maybe he’ll stop coming around our offices trying to hit our employees up for money. Alternatively, you could purchase his satirical dystopian sci-fi novel, Zone 23, or Volumes I, II, and III of his Consent Factory Essays, or any of his subversive stage plays, which won some awards in Great Britain and Australia. If you do not appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to write him an abusive email, feel free to contact him directly.

And on and on and on it goes. Today, at the eleventh hour, the Berlin Superior Court postponed my trial, which was scheduled to take place tomorrow, August 15, 2024, for reasons that remain unclear.

It would be wrong, and bad, to speculate about the Superior Court’s reasons for this eleventh-hour postponement. Such unwarranted speculation might even qualify as “misinformation,” and call down the wrath of the German authorities, or the UK authorities, or … God help me, Thierry Breton Himself!

Nevertheless, here’s what happened during the lead-up to my suddenly postponed trial.

On August 12, my attorney filed a motion alleging bias on the part of the Superior Court judge that issued the so-called “Security Order” that I reported on in Part One and Part Two of this series of columns. We filed this motion after our earlier motions to have the Order lifted were summarily denied.

And this morning, a rather extensive article about my prosecution was published in the Berliner Zeitung, a major German newspaper. Despite the fact that this story has received a considerable amount of international press coverage, this is the first piece published by the mainstream German press.

Until today, the mainstream German press had been diligently refusing to report the story, despite the fact that it has been reported in The Atlantic …

And The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (“FIRE”) just released this video feature and published an extensive piece about it …

And Sky News Australia just published this piece …

And Neue Zürcher Zeitung, in Switzerland, also covered it …

And Matt Taibbi in Racket News…

And Aya Velázquez, a German independent journalist who, along with her colleagues Bastian Barucker and Stefan Homburg, has recently rocketed to fame for releasing the “Robert Koch-Institute Leaks,” which are currently shaking things up in Germany …

And too many more independent media sources to mention and post big pictures of here.

But that Berliner Zeitung article (and all that other press) probably didn’t have anything to do with the Court’s decision to postpone the trial. I mean, it’s not like they are ashamed of what they’re doing, i.e., criminally prosecuting an author for two Tweets.

No, the impression I get is that the German authorities are proud of what they are doing, and want everyone to know it. After all, in the space of only a year, with the assistance of Amazon and Twitter/X, they have dragged me into criminal court, reported me to the German FBI and Germany’s domestic Intelligence agency, they have damaged my income and reputation as an author, they forced me to spend over 10,000 Euros to defend myself against their trumped-up charges, they had my book banned in Germany, censored my speech, and just generally made my life extremely stressful.

So, it’s unlikely that this one article, or this recent round of press, has shamed the Court into postponing my trial at the eleventh hour. I’m sure the Court does this all the time, you know, abruptly postpone a trial the day before it’s scheduled for totally unspecified reasons. This is modern Germany, after all! It’s New Normal Germany! Not old, bad Nazi Germany, where the courts were just an arm of the Nazi government! New Normal Germany is absolutely nothing like that! It’s a totally democratic country where everyone is equal in the eyes of the law and “The Land of Poets and Thinkers” and “Unity and Justice and Freedom,” and … whatever.

In any event, don’t show up at the Kammergericht tomorrow … I mean, unless you’re on trial, yourself, for something, or if you just want to get groped by a German court officer. (See Part Two of this series for details on that.)

Seriously, though, all joking aside, I’m very grateful to Ralf Hutter and Berliner Zeitung, and FIRE, and all the other journalists and outlets that have covered this story. Focusing public attention on what the New Normal “authorities” are doing, not just here in Germany, but throughout the West, not just to me, but to many, many others just like me, is one of the only weapons we have to fight back against the criminalization of dissent with. As I have explained in earlier essays, this new, nascent form of totalitarianism — which I think is becoming more and more obvious to people at this point — is not 20th-Century totalitarianism. It can’t go goose-stepping around in jackboots. It has to maintain a “democratic” facade.

Stripping away that facade, calling its bluff, forcing it to show itself as what it actually is, in all its authoritarian ugliness, works. Not always, not perfectly, but it works.

Or at least it works a lot better than frontally attacking it, which is futile, and which is exactly what it wants, so that it can use that as an excuse to further ratchet up the totalitarianism, or, you know, to reduce your entire territory to a pile of rubble.

If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, maybe ask some of those January 6 rioters, or those UK rioters, or Hamas.

###

CJ Hopkins
August 14, 2024

DISCLAIMER: The preceding essay is entirely the work of our in-house satirist and self-appointed political pundit, CJ Hopkins, and does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Consent Factory, Inc., or its staff, or any of its agents, subsidiaries, or assigns. If, for whatever inexplicable reason, you appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to support it, please go to his Substack page, or his Patreon page, or send a contribution to his PayPal account, so that maybe he’ll stop coming around our offices trying to hit our employees up for money. Alternatively, you could purchase his satirical dystopian sci-fi novel, Zone 23, or Volumes I, II, and III of his Consent Factory Essays, or any of his subversive stage plays, which won some awards in Great Britain and Australia. If you do not appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to write him an abusive email, feel free to contact him directly.

So, my second trial for alleged thoughtcrime-tweeting is going ahead as planned on August 15 in Berlin Superior Court (Das Kammergericht). Full-blown anti-terrorism security protocols will be in effect in the courtroom. Yes, that’s right, the Berlin Superior Court denied my attorney’s motion to rescind their special Security Order, so the German authorities will be putting on an elaborate official show of force, which everyone is welcome to attend!

Or, actually, according to the Security Order, only 35 people are welcome to attend. That’s one of the anti-terrorism security protocols. Also, if you do attend, you’ll have to surrender all your personal possessions (i.e., notebooks, phones, wallets, pens, pencils, other writing instruments, wristwatches, hats, and other head coverings, etc.) and any outwear (i.e., jackets, scarves, etc.) and totally empty your pockets of all items, presumably into a plastic bin like the ones they use at airport security, which the Court’s security personnel will carry away and store somewhere while you attend the trial, and which the Superior Court expressly denies any liability for (i.e., for your items). Once you have surrendered all your possessions, and have been body-scanned and metal-detected, and possibly physically patted down, you will be admitted into Room 145a, where you will have to sit in the rear five rows of the gallery, behind a presumably bullet-proof security barrier, so that the security staff can monitor you during the proceedings.

OK, I know what you’re probably thinking, but the Superior Court’s Security Order is not at all intended to prevent members of the press from attending and reporting on the trial. Members of the press are absolutely welcome! It’s just that they will have to surrender their cameras and phones and their pens and other writing instruments to the security staff before they enter the courtroom. But they are welcome to attend and report on the trial! The security personnel will even provide them with pencils — presumably those little child-sized pencils, which are harder to use as Jason-Bourne-style stabbing weapons — and sheets of paper that they can position on their knees and attempt to make notes on during the trial.

Same goes for all you members of the public. This Security Order is not in any way intended to discourage you from attending the trial, or to intimidate or humiliate you by subjecting you to pointless “security protocols” and treating you like suspected terrorists. No, you are absolutely welcome to attend! You just might want to think about what you bring with you. Sharp objects are probably not a good idea. Likewise anything the Court might construe to be a camera or an audio-recording device. The Security Order is clear about that … there is to be no photographic or audio record of the proceedings.

Oh, and, definitely do not bring any state-of-the-art terrorist “wiretapping technology” with you. The Court is particularly worried about that stuff. Hence the need to subject everyone to TSA-style body-scanning, and pat-downs, and to confiscate their personal possessions, i.e., to ensure that no one smuggles in some sort of remotely-activated wiretapping technology that will infect the judges’ smartphones with some kind of untraceable surveillance software that will secretly record everything they say and transmit it to Tehran, or Moscow, or wherever.

You probably think I’m joking. I’m not. Here’s how one of the Superior Court judges justified the Court’s Security Order in his denial of our motion to have the Order rescinded …

“I cannot see the unreasonable restriction of the press and your defense that you are concerned about, nor any violation of the guarantee of a fair trial. I admit that the restrictions imposed by the Security Order are quite significant; however, they are by no means unreasonable. They are objectively required both by the overall tense security situation (e.g. publicly announced threats of attacks against judges of the Superior Court) and the increased special security requirements in at least one criminal trial conducted in the same courtroom. Since only the courtroom in question is assigned to the Criminal Division (and the other divisions) as a permanent courtroom, and a regular search of the courtroom following every session using suitable technology for recently introduced wiretapping technology represents an objectively unjustifiable burden, its introduction must be prevented from the outset if possible.”

Yes, you read the judge’s explanation right. Apparently, the Court is worried that my readers, or maybe members of the German independent press, might be planning to launch an “attack” on the judges, presumably with their phones and writing instruments, and possibly their head coverings and outerwear (for example, their scarves, which I suppose, in the hands of trained terrorist assassins, could be used to strangle them). In any event, they clearly believe that an “overall tense security situation” exists, one which necessitates these anti-terrorism security protocols at the trial of a 62-year-old playwright, author, and political satirist.

OK, I probably should have mentioned that earlier for the benefit of anyone not familiar with my case. I’m not a terrorist, or in any way terrorist adjacent. I’m just an author and a political satirist. The German authorities are prosecuting me because I criticized them and their Covid mask mandates.

As I explained in my most recent column …

“The German authorities have been investigating and prosecuting me since August 2022. My case has been covered in The Atlantic, Racket News, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Multipolar, and many other outlets … Basically, I am being prosecuted for ‘spreading pro-Nazi propaganda’ because I criticized the Covid mask mandates and tweeted the cover artwork of one of my books, The Rise of The New Normal Reich. Here’s the cover artwork of that book. The other two images are recent covers of Der Spiegel and Stern, two well-known mainstream German magazines, which are not being prosecuted for spreading pro-Nazi propaganda.”

My punishment for doing that (i.e., criticizing the Covid mask mandates, not spreading Nazi propaganda) has been … well, here I am, on trial, again, in The People’s Court of New Normal Germany. The German authorities had my Tweets censored by Twitter. They reported me to The Federal Criminal Police Office, which is kind of the German FBI. They reported me to The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany’s domestic Intelligence agency. My book is banned in Germany. They have damaged my income and reputation as an author. They have forced me to spend thousands of Euros in attorney’s fees to defend myself against these blatantly trumped-up charges. And now they are going to subject me, and my attorney, and anyone who attends my trial, to this humiliating, ham-fisted, official show of force.

If you’re an American (or a Brit, or Australian, or whatever), and you’re thinking this is just a story about Germany, or the EU … well, I’m sorry, but it isn’t. My case is just one of countless examples of the criminalization of dissent that is happening all throughout the West. A lot of Americans don’t realize it, but freedom of speech is protected in the German constitution.

My story is not about the differences between the German and American freedom-of-speech protections. It is about the authorities prosecuting government critics like me on fabricated charges, banning our books, and censoring our political speech.

Once a government starts doing that, the protections in its constitution no longer matter. You are no longer dealing with questions of law. You are dealing with the exercise of authoritarian power. That is what my story is about. Any Americans (and any other non-Germans) who have been paying attention to recent events will recognize what I’m talking about.

As I’ve been saying, repeatedly, for the last four years or so, the global-capitalist power system (or the “corporatocracy,” or “The Powers That Be,” or whatever other name you need to call it) is going totalitarian on us. It dominates the entire planet, so it doesn’t have anything else to do. It is conducting a global “Clear and Hold” op. It is neutralizing internal resistance … any and all forms of internal resistance. The criminalization of dissent is an essential part of that. I’ve been documenting this process in my columns and in my books, and specifically in The Rise of the New Normal Reich — which you can read, unless you live in Germany — so forgive me if I don’t rehash it all here.

The point is, we’re not in Kansas anymore. All that democracy and rule of law stuff is over. It is being gradually, and not so gradually, phased out.

I get that most people don’t believe that. Most people won’t, until it’s too late. That’s how these transitions generally work. Most people can’t see what is coming until it gets here. I see it, but not because I’m a prophet. I’m just a loudmouth, and the loudmouths get crushed first.

Anyway, if you are in Berlin on August 15, and would like to observe The People’s Court of New Normal Germany in action, or just get groped by a German law enforcement officer, the trial is scheduled to start at 10:30AM. Seating is on a first-come-first-served basis. So you may want to show up a little early, given all the scanning and screening and groping, and the “overall tense security situation.”

The address is Elßholzstraße 30-33.

###

CJ Hopkins
August 2, 2024

DISCLAIMER: The preceding essay is entirely the work of our in-house satirist and self-appointed political pundit, CJ Hopkins, and does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Consent Factory, Inc., or its staff, or any of its agents, subsidiaries, or assigns. If, for whatever inexplicable reason, you appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to support it, please go to his Substack page, or his Patreon page, or send a contribution to his PayPal account, so that maybe he’ll stop coming around our offices trying to hit our employees up for money. Alternatively, you could purchase his satirical dystopian sci-fi novel, Zone 23, or Volumes I, II, and III of his Consent Factory Essays, or any of his subversive stage plays, which won some awards in Great Britain and Australia. If you do not appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to write him an abusive email, feel free to contact him directly.

Just when I thought things could not possibly get more shockingly totalitarian in New Normal Germany, where I’m being prosecuted in criminal court (for the second time) for tweeting, the German authorities have gone and surprised me again. No, they haven’t established an actual Nazi-style People’s Court (pictured above) yet, and, of course, there is absolutely no similarity between the current German justice system, which is totally fair and democratic and a paragon of impartial justice and the rule of law, and The People’s Court of Berlin during the Nazi era, nor is there any similarity between Nazi Germany and New Normal Germany (i.e., modern-day Germany), and I would never, ever, suggest that there was, as that would be intellectually lazy, and tasteless, and completely inaccurate, and illegal, and … well, let me fill you in on the latest.

The Berlin Superior Court has set a date for my next thoughtcrime trial. As regular readers will probably recall, my first thoughtcrime trial in January ended with my acquittal. So, the German authorities are putting me on trial again. Yes, they can do that in Germany. But, wait, that’s not the best part.

The best part is, at my new thoughtcrime trial — this time in Berlin Superior Court — full-scale Anti-Terrorism Security protocols will be effect in the courtroom. Everyone will be subjected to TSA-style scanning and screening, and will have to surrender all their personal possessions and hats and coats and head coverings to the Security Staff, and completely empty their pockets of all items, before entering the courtroom. No computers, phones, smart-watches, or any other potential recording devices will be allowed in the courtroom. Pencils and sheets of paper will purportedly be provided to members of the press by Security Staff. Members of the press and public will be limited to 35, and, after they have successfully passed their “security screening,” they will be cordoned off in the last five rows of the gallery in the very back of the courtroom, “for security reasons,” and monitored by the armed Security Staff.

For the benefit of any new readers unfamiliar with me and my case, I am not a terrorist. I’m an award-winning American playwright, novelist, and political satirist. I have lived here in Berlin for 20 years. The German authorities have been investigating and prosecuting me since August 2022. My case has been covered in The Atlantic, Racket News, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Multipolar, and many other outlets, so I won’t reiterate every little detail again here. Basically, I am being prosecuted for “spreading pro-Nazi propaganda” because I criticized the Covid mask mandates and tweeted the cover artwork of one of my books, The Rise of The New Normal Reich.

Here’s the cover artwork of that book. The other two images are the recent covers of Der Spiegel and Stern, two well-known mainstream German magazines, which are not being prosecuted for “spreading pro-Nazi propaganda.”

As anyone (even the German authorities) can see, the Spiegel cover artwork uses exactly the same concept as the cover artwork of my book. The only difference is, the Spiegel swastika is covered by the German flag, whereas the swastika on my book is covered by a medical mask.

Both artworks are obviously intended as warnings of the rise of a new form of totalitarianism. Der Spiegel was warning about the Alternativ für Deutschland party (AfD) — as was Stern with its swastika floating in a champagne glass. I was warning about what I dubbed “The New Normal Reich,” the new nascent form of totalitarianism that emerged during 2020-2023, which is still very much on the rise, and which is thoroughly documented and analyzed in my book (which book was banned by Amazon in Germany at the same time the German authorities launched a criminal investigation of me and instructed Twitter to censor my Tweets, which Twitter did).

The pretext the Court is citing for ordering these Anti-Terrorism Security protocols at my trial is ridiculous, and infuriating. The Court claims that the courtroom in which my trial is to take place is occasionally used for a certain “high-security” trial. Therefore, according to the Court, my trial must also be subjected to Anti-Terrorism Security protocols. Seriously, the Court sent my attorney a fax setting forth this “explanation,” which is, of course, a load of horseshit. The Berlin Superior Court is a huge building containing multiple courtrooms, one or two which are probably not subject to such Anti-Terrorism Security protocols when “high-security” trials are not taking place within them.

No, the imposition of these Anti-Terrorism Security protocols is clearly a cynical ploy intended (a) to suppress coverage of the trial, (b) to discourage the press and public from attending, and (c) to intimidate and harass me and my legal counsel, and any members of the press and public who nevertheless attend the trial in spite of the “security procedures” they will be subjected to.

This cynical tactic — which is not an official press blackout, because journalists can still attend and attempt to scribble notes on their knees with the pencils and sheets of paper provided by the Security Staff — comes as no real surprise. As I mentioned above, my case and my first trial got a fair amount of attention from the international press, enough to put the Court on notice that my prosecution was being watched. So, it’s no mystery why the German authorities would want to discourage any reporting on my “do-over” trial in Superior Court.

Also, the gallery was filled to capacity at my original trial in January, where I delivered a rather unusual closing Statement to the Court, which was then published and disseminated widely in Germany. So, again, it is no real mystery why the Superior Court wants to discourage members of the public from attending this new trial by threatening to subject them to these humiliating “security” protocols, and why it has limited the gallery size to only 35 seats.

I assume the German authorities — and by “authorities” I mean the Berlin District Prosecutor’s office, the Berlin Superior Court (Der Kammergericht), and whatever other authorities are intent on punishing me, and making an example of me, for daring to criticize the government’s edicts during 2020-2022, i.e., suspension of the constitutional rights, mask mandates, segregation, the banning of protests, etc. — I assume these authorities are particularly motivated to prevent the press from covering this second trial in Superior Court, because, from what I understand of the German legal system, they are going to “do” me (i.e., convict me) this time.

The way the German legal system works, if they want to do you, is (1) you are acquitted in the lower Criminal Court, (2) the District Prosecutor appeals the verdict to the Superior Court, (3) the Superior Court overturns your acquittal, and (4) the prosecution goes back to the original Criminal Court, which stages a new trial, at which you will be found guilty, because, once the Superior Court has overruled your acquittal, the Criminal Court will convict you based on the Superior Court’s ruling. At which point you will appeal. And on and on and on it will go, until you are broke, or until you give up fighting because you are just so fucking exhausted.

I’m not making this up. This is how The People’s Court of New Normal Germany (i.e., the post-Covid German justice system, which, again, bears no resemblance whatsoever to The People’s Court of Berlin in Nazi Germany, or to the courts in the Soviet Union during the Stalin era, or any other totalitarian “justice” system) … this is how it works in New Normal Germany if you are a critic of the authorities and refuse to meekly accept whatever punishment they want to summarily dish out for whatever they deem to be your thoughtcrimes.

But, hey, at least they’re not going to take me out and put me up against a wall and shoot me, like they did with political criminals in Nazi Germany, and the USSR, so I suppose I should be grateful. I’ll have to work on that.

If you think my case is an aberration, it isn’t. There are many, many other people — critics of the government’s “Covid measures” during 2020-2023 — who are being persecuted and made examples of. Most of these people do not have the financial resources to pay lawyers to fight these prosecutions, so they plead guilty to the charges and pay the fines, which are typically much less than what they would face in attorney’s fees. Being somewhat of a public figure, I thought it was my responsibility not to do that. I’m extremely grateful to everyone who has donated to my legal defense fund, which is how I have been able to cover my legal expenses. There’s enough left in that fund to cover this next trial in Superior Court, so I’m OK for now, financially. I mention that because people are already asking how they can send me money.

What people can do, if they want to do something helpful, is make as much noise as possible about what is happening, not just in Germany, but all throughout the West. Because what is happening is, well, what I tried to capture and analyze in my book. The Powers That Be are going totalitarian on us. They are gradually, and not so gradually, phasing out the so-called “liberal” or “democratic” rights and principles that it was necessary to placate the Western masses with during the Cold War era, which it is no longer necessary to do beyond a certain superficial point.

I have published three books of essays documenting this transition to a new global-capitalist form of totalitarianism, so I’m not going to go on and on about it here. But that’s what all the censorship is about. That’s what all the manufactured hysteria, fomented hatred, fanaticism, the permanent state of “emergency” and “crisis,” the “culture wars,” the cults of personality, the bombardment of our minds with absolutely meaningless nonsense, the naked displays of force, the blatant instrumentalization of the justice system to punish political dissidents, not just here in Germany, but throughout the “democratic” West … that is what all this is about.

I’ll keep my readers posted on the details of my upcoming trial in Berlin Superior Court. My attorney is objecting to these “security protocols,” of course. We’ll see how that goes. In the meantime, instead of sending me money this time, maybe try to step back from all the mass hysteria and hatred that we are being inundated with and see the big picture. It isn’t pretty.

Help spread the word about the new totalitarianism, about the phasing-out of our democratic rights. I don’t care which “side” of whatever you are on — Trump, Biden, Palestine, Israel, the culture wars, the cancel campaigns, Covid, Elon Musk, Russia, whatever — and neither do The Powers That Be. Take a step back and try to see the bigger picture … the forest, instead of just the trees. And then make as much noise about it as you can.

We are heading somewhere very ugly … somewhere most of us can’t imagine. Some of us will get there first, but all of us will be there, together, eventually. My story is just one example of what it will be like there, in that ugly place. It isn’t really a story about Germany. It is a story about the end of the myth of democracy, and the rule of law, and all that good stuff. As Frank Zappa once so eloquently explained …

“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.”

It’s something to behold, that brick wall is, especially up close and personal. You’ll see when you get here. I’ll save you a seat.

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CJ Hopkins
July 21, 2024

DISCLAIMER: The preceding essay is entirely the work of our in-house satirist and self-appointed political pundit, CJ Hopkins, and does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Consent Factory, Inc., or its staff, or any of its agents, subsidiaries, or assigns. If, for whatever inexplicable reason, you appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to support it, please go to his Substack page, or his Patreon page, or send a contribution to his PayPal account, so that maybe he’ll stop coming around our offices trying to hit our employees up for money. Alternatively, you could purchase his satirical dystopian sci-fi novel, Zone 23, or Volumes I, II, and III of his Consent Factory Essays, or any of his subversive stage plays, which won some awards in Great Britain and Australia. If you do not appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to write him an abusive email, feel free to contact him directly.

It has been slouching toward Bethlehem for the last eight years. The gyre has been widening, the falcon turning and turning, the center losing hold, and so on. Its hour has not quite come round yet, but something is definitely rising out of Spiritus Mundi. No, not the beast from The Second Coming, but something perhaps just as rough and pitiless.

I’ve been calling it “The Rise of the New Normal Reich.” Others have been describing it with other names. No one can say exactly what it is, but at this point everyone can feel it coming.

Something resembling a new form of totalitarianism … or something resembling civil war.

One thing often leads to the other.

Every new totalitarian system is preceded by some sort of civil war. You can’t just implement totalitarianism out of nowhere. In order to impose totalitarianism on society, you need to tear society apart, pit the masses against each other, foment fanaticism, mass hysteria, and hatred. Above all you need to foment fear. Once you have torn society apart and whipped the masses into a mindless paroxysm of fear and hate and murderous rage, you can implement your new form of totalitarianism fairly easily, as people will be desperate for the restoration of “order.”

One of the best ways to tear society apart and whip the masses into a mindless frenzy of fear and homicidal rage and hatred until they literally cannot think anymore and are reduced to a robotic state of cognition in which they shut down entirely or are transformed into shrieking fanatical zealots is to (a) terrorize them with fake existential threats, like the return of Hitler, or an apocalyptic virus, or whatever, (b) demonize everyone who refuses to play along with the fake existential threats as yet another existential threat, and then (c) terrorize the masses all over again.

If you do that long enough, what will eventually happen is, the people you demonized as an existential threat because they wouldn’t play along with the fake existential threats you were terrorizing the masses with will rise up against you, and attempt to remove you from power.

At that point, you will be on the brink of civil war, which is exactly what you were trying to achieve. Because, once you’re on the brink of civil war, you can justify the implementation of your new form of totalitarianism without too much trouble.

Basically, what you’re looking to do — assuming you’re the dominant power in this equation — is provoke whatever resistance to your dominance (or your rise to power) exists into forming something resembling a plausible oppositional (i.e., militant) force that you need to suspend constitutional rights and the rule of law in order to contend with.

This civil war that you have instigated, or that you’ve brought a country, or the world, to the brink of, in order to implement your new form of totalitarianism is a simulation, but it is not fake. It is the actual civil war — or the actual imminent civil war — that conceals the fact that there is no civil war, because what is actually occurring is a “clear-and-hold” op.

What is actually happening is, a dominant power — a globally hegemonic dominant power in our case — is eliminating internal resistance throughout the territory it occupies, which in our case happens to be the whole planet. Any and all forms of internal resistance. The character of the resistance makes no difference … Islamic fundamentalism, Christian fundamentalism, neo-nationalism, “populism,” socialism, whatever. Any form of resistance that interferes with the consolidation of its global hegemony and commodification of virtually everything.

In other words, the coming civil war (or the threat of civil war) is absolutely real, and is also a simulation concealing the fact that there is no coming civil war.

Yes, I know this is difficult to grasp. And I realize people are all worked up at the moment, but bear with me if you possibly can. I am going to quote a French philosopher. Please don’t freak out. I’ll explain in a moment.

“The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth — it is the truth which conceals that there is none.” – Jean Baudrillard

Baudrillard is not saying that there is no truth. He is explaining how simulations work, or one way that simulations work. The fake thing (i.e., the simulacrum) exists to make the real thing seem “real.” If you can copy something, then that thing must exist. The copied thing must be real, right?

Wrong. That’s how this magic trick works.

How it works is, it generates a false dichotomy. It conjures an opposition into existence out of the ether. It summons up a simplistic binary equation (i.e., real/fake, true/false, left/right, us/them) and traps our minds within that equation. Either Disneyland is real or Los Angeles is real. Either you support Donald Trump or you support Joe Biden. Either the Palestinians or the State of Israel. MSNBC or X. And so on.

Or … OK, here’s a simple analogy.

Imagine, if the authorities in charge of a prison instigated a war between two prison gangs, who were actually fighting for dominance in the prison. The gangs are real. The war is real. When it is over, one of the gangs will be dominant among the prison population. However, everyone will still be in prison, probably under a state of lockdown, which is what happens after a prison riot.

Does any of that sound familiar? I hope so.

Again, I realize emotions are high, what with the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, and the ongoing liquidation of Gaza, and the ongoing left/right culture wars, and the rise of the Cult of Elon Musk, and the aftermath of the “Apocalyptic Plague of 2020-2022,” and the “January 6th Insurrection,” and so on … but maybe try, just for a few minutes, to step back from all the false dichotomies and all the thought-terminating clichés and the hatred and fear that we are being systematically inundated with, and reflect on where all this excitement is leading us, and how our passions are being instrumentalized … and by whom and for what purpose they are being instrumentalized.

If you think this all ends with America Made Great Again, or Palestine Free, or with Elon Musk marching into the White House with a bathroom sink, or some other “revolutionary” fantasy, well, it doesn’t. It ends up where it ended up in January 2021, with soldiers in the streets of DC. It ends up with Gaza obliterated. It ends up with the prisoners back in their cells. It ends with “the restoration of order.”

I do not know how to stop what is coming … what is “slouching toward us to be born.” I do not believe it can be stopped at this point. I will, however, be observing closely, and trying to make sense of events as they happen. I will probably be paying a fair amount of attention to whoever foments all that fear and hatred and murderous rage I mentioned above, and preys on people’s emotions, and tries to trap people’s minds within those false dichotomies, so that they wind up utterly unable to think, and just shuffle around like robotic zealots logging who is “with them” and “against them.” I hope you won’t find that too “divisive.”

And, if you do, well, I wouldn’t worry too much. My columns are getting less and less traction these days. I alienated the “10/7 Truthers” recently, and I’m severely visibility-filtered on X, which, as you know, is the only real free-speech platform, and “a crucial historical force,” and “the voice of the people,” or “the new generation,” or whatever.

###

CJ Hopkins
July 17, 2024

DISCLAIMER: The preceding essay is entirely the work of our in-house satirist and self-appointed political pundit, CJ Hopkins, and does not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Consent Factory, Inc., or its staff, or any of its agents, subsidiaries, or assigns. If, for whatever inexplicable reason, you appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to support it, please go to his Substack page, or his Patreon page, or send a contribution to his PayPal account, so that maybe he’ll stop coming around our offices trying to hit our employees up for money. Alternatively, you could purchase his satirical dystopian sci-fi novel, Zone 23, or Volumes I, II, and III of his Consent Factory Essays, or any of his subversive stage plays, which won some awards in Great Britain and Australia. If you do not appreciate Mr. Hopkins’ work and would like to write him an abusive email, feel free to contact him directly.