Book Fair 2022: Slavoj Žižek received harsh criticism and was even being boo’d on stage by the mayor of Frankfurt for saying exactly that, even after he literally condemed Hamas. An Antisemitism representive then suggested what Žižek did was essentially hate speech.
April 2024: Germany imposed an entry ban on Greek’s former financial minister Varoufakis for criticising Israel, labeling it, you guessed it, antisemitist hate speech.
There is more but those are two at the top of my head which you can google yourself if you can’t read German or don’t want to translate it. It is not an exaggeration to say humanizing the ‘wrong’ humans can get you in trouble in Germany and that’s really depressing.
Belated response – prefacing, I don’t doubt that a bunch of German politicians will end up finding out they were on the wrong side of history here, that’s not my point though.
Zizek incident: He was placed into an uncomfortable and unfair situation. However, afaict, there were no legal troubles, he was only told his speech was not welcome. (Of course, “legal troubles” was my interpretation of your original message only – it’s fair if you don’t agree). Also, as far as I gather, he was not criticized for mentioning humanity of Gazans either, rather for suggesting they should have a say in how their country is divided up. Yes, that’s messed up too.
Varoufakis incident: Varoufakis argues for the one-state solution. Afaict, Germany basically made arguing for that illegal, unless the one state you want is Israel. Again, messed up, but the humanness of Gazans is not concerned here either. (And of course, we somehow can’t prevent a notorious racist who wants to send foreign-looking people into certain death like Martin Sellner from entering Germany; yet the law works against Varoufakis who tries to argue for peace.)
Book Fair 2022: Slavoj Žižek received harsh criticism and was even being boo’d on stage by the mayor of Frankfurt for saying exactly that, even after he literally condemed Hamas. An Antisemitism representive then suggested what Žižek did was essentially hate speech.
April 2024: Germany imposed an entry ban on Greek’s former financial minister Varoufakis for criticising Israel, labeling it, you guessed it, antisemitist hate speech.
There is more but those are two at the top of my head which you can google yourself if you can’t read German or don’t want to translate it. It is not an exaggeration to say humanizing the ‘wrong’ humans can get you in trouble in Germany and that’s really depressing.
Belated response – prefacing, I don’t doubt that a bunch of German politicians will end up finding out they were on the wrong side of history here, that’s not my point though.