The Germans are already going totalitarian. No wonder German corporations are heading for the exits. Keep these precedents in mind when the pendulum keeps swinging and they start crying about free speech and freedom of the press.
A decision by the German government to ban a “right-wing extremist” magazine may be linked to an interview it conducted with Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, she has suggested.
She made the claim on Tuesday, hours after the crackdown on Compact magazine was announced by Berlin. The move also affected associated companies and individuals. The 80-minute interview with Zakharova was published last Saturday.
“Apparently, people in the German Interior Ministry watched the interview on Monday. And on Tuesday the newsroom was raided, and the publication was banned,” the spokeswoman said.
She included a selection of her quotes that she believes Berlin may have found objectionable, including: “Germany does not get Russian natural gas for the sole reason that the US has prohibited that.” Later in the day, she uploaded the full video of the interview on social media, saying this was a precaution in case the original becomes censored.
The German government targeted the monthly magazine with the ban, along with its associated online TV channel, as well as other entities and individuals. Search warrants were executed on Tuesday in Brandenburg, Hesse, Saxony, and Saxony-Anhalt, targeting the properties of leading contributors, managers, and main shareholders, it said in a statement.
It’s certainly going to be amusing to hear the screams when media institutions start being banned and the properties of leading contributors, managers, and main shareholders are targeted by governments around the world because someone interviewed an Israeli government employee or a US corporate executive.
The terms of future engagements are being established. When new rules are introduced, don’t hesitate to play by them. But the collapse of the European Union can’t come soon enough for the good of the European peoples.