6 ms·

German Interior Ministry shuts down Linksunten.indymedia.org

59 points by mdekkers 9y ago

mdekkers 9y ago
...authorities were treating linksunten.indymedia.org as an "association" rather than a news outlet, which would help officials get around constitutional protections on freedom of expression. [...] The anonymous threat to police - called "bulls" in Germany - led officials to determine that the site had become a "lawless realm," and, for now at least, the authorities have ended it. Which I find pretty concerning. "Don't say anything nasty about the state or the police, or we will shut you down" Isn't a message I was expecting to hear from a European Government.
- mikejb 9y ago
  There's a difference between saying 'anything nasty' and calling for physical action against individuals. Content on that page called for violence against individuals, including members of the police. I'm not saying I disagree with your argument, but "don't say anything nasty" doesn't represent the facts accurately.
  - DarkKomunalec 9y ago
    > calling for physical action against individuals They weren't raided for making true threats, but for letting the site become a "lawless realm" and/or for "sowing hate against different opinions and representatives of the country", charges so vague they could apply to almost any online forum or uppity news site.
    - sgc 9y ago
      I agree that it is disconcerting that it was easier to make these vague charges effective than to charge them with inciting to violence or something similar. It appears to call for a refinement of legislation and perhaps general sentiment of the courts (which is often an extension of that of current culture).
    - dublinclontarf 9y ago
      Germany does not have the protections of free speech that the US has. "Hate speech" is a real thing there that will land you in jail.
      - dom0 9y ago
        > "Hate speech" is a real thing there that will land you in jail. This is wildly inaccurate. In Germany there are mainly three kinds of speech punishable by law: (1) Defamation (2) Volksverhetzung ("all jews must die") (3) Incitement (there are two different kinds of this, one where a specific person is incited to do something criminal, and the other where you publicly instigate a group to do something criminal) It is quite clear that these don't nearly cover everything that may be commonly considered "hate speech".
- aedron 9y ago
  Apparently the fact that the site had administrators (i.e. more than one) made it an association. By that definition a newspaper, TV network and anything else are associations too I guess?
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    By that definition almost anything is an association.
    - yorwba 9y ago
      According to http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/vereinsg/__2.html http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/vereinsg/__2.html (my translation, emphasis mine, legalese is hard): (1) A Verein is regardless of the legal form any association formed voluntarily by a multitude of natural or legal persons over a longer timespan for a common purpose, subject to organized decision-making. (2) Vereine are not 1. political parties as defined by article 21 of the Grundgesetz [essentially the constitution] 2. parliamentary groups of the Bundestag and and the parliaments of federated states EDIT: banning a Verein is regulated by http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/vereinsg/__3.html http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/vereinsg/__3.html (1) A Verein may only be treated as banned (article 9 par. 2 of the Grundgesetz), if the banning agency determines that its purpose or its actions run counter to the criminal law or that it is directed against the constitutional order or the ideal of peaceful exchange between the peoples [Gedanke der Völkerverständigung; let me know if you have a better translation] ; the declaration is to order the dissolution of the Verein (ban). The ban is usually to involve the seizure of [a bunch of stuff I'm too lazy to translate]
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - wongarsu 9y ago
    The association part is a red herring. Of course a group of administrators is an association, just like CNN also happens to be (part of) a company. The important thing he is saying is that they treat them as if they weren't also a news outlet. I find that decision questionable, and I expect an interesting court case centered around the question which kinds of websites qualify as news outlets and which don't.
- rbehrends 9y ago
  > Which I find pretty concerning. "Don't say anything nasty about the state or the police, or we will shut you down" Isn't a message I was expecting to hear from a European Government. If you look at the legal basis they used, you will find that the organization was actually banned as (inter alia) being a criminal conspiracy with the goal of facilitating the commission of criminal offenses (and in particular, violent crimes). Searches found knives, truncheons, and other weapons [1]. [1] http://www.n-tv.de/politik/De-Maiziere-verbietet-linksunten-indymedia-article20000560.html http://www.n-tv.de/politik/De-Maiziere-verbietet-linksunten-... (in German).
DarkKomunalec 9y ago
The site was closed for "sowing hate against different opinions and representatives of the country," I am shocked - shocked - that anti-hate animus would be used this way!
- mdekkers 9y ago
  The mechanism for closing the site is what interests me. There are certain laws in place to prevent exactly this kind of thing from happening. Authorities worked around this by classifying the site as a "club" instead of a publication platform / news portal. The move is widely seen as a response to violent G20 protests. The way to deal with that should be to find and prosecute the violent offenders, not shutting down lawful websites.
  - DarkKomunalec 9y ago
    Shutting down a club seems just as oppressive. And the definition of 'club' is blurry and stretchy, so it's not unexpected a law against 'clubs' would get abused.
  - yAnonymous 9y ago
    Ironically, broad bans of anything right wing are exactly what the left have been asking for all these years. I told people it's going to be used against them one day. Shortsighted idiots.
    - mercurysmessage 9y ago
      People don't have a problem with 'anything' right wing, people have a problem with far right wing, and the views that come along with it. You know, nationalism, supremacy, xenophobia.
      - yAnonymous 9y ago
        Many leftist people have a problem with anything that is oriented right of their own political views - which is almost everything. I see this on a daily basis. They act like fascists themselves. Would be funny if it wasn't so sad.
jacquesm 9y ago
Particularly worrisome here is the potential for a raid on a pretext, ostensibly the main reason for the raid was the presence of an anonymous threat against the police. The only way to deal with anonymous general threats against authorities is to ignore them. The potential for abuse of such threats as a fabricated pretext is simply too high, as is the number of idiots.
- mikejb 9y ago
  Anonymous threads that have become reality in the past. They're hard to ignore. The page in question also introduced a "Randale Bundesliga", a rioting competition in which they crowned the city with the most riots. Anything from throwing paint at buildings to setting cars on fire to beating up people from the opposite political spectrum counts.
DanielleMolloy 9y ago
linksunten.indymedia is a widely known platform of the German Antifa. During the most recent weeks many texts glorifying or whitewashing the Hamburg G20 riots were published there. Texts can be submitted by any anonymous person, however the website owners decide whether they leave it online or not – so there is reason to see responsibility under law. I wouldn't be surprised either if it becomes accessible again just after the German federal elections in 4 weeks.
- mschuster91 9y ago
  Actually the operators themselves have shut it down - press reports have surfaced that the servers are located in France, and I guess that the ops team which did not get their apartments fleeced is busy moving the servers to somewhere well out of the reach of de Maiziere.
- dtornabene 9y ago
  Yes, what could possibly motivate individuals to join ..... a german antifascist movement. Totally bizarre. So strange. Almost as if there was some kind of historical precedent....
- hedgedoops2 9y ago
  I remember that during G20, some grandstanders set fire to some cables in the Berlin S-Bahn system, disrupting train service for a day. They then claimed responsibility with a letter on linksunten. [1] Thing is, the comments on linksunten were uniformly condemning of the letter and the act. Yet still by sympathizers, not outsiders coming to the site. I'd link to the web archive version but the only thing the crawler was able to retrieve was a 'DDOS protection for civil society' banner [2]. "Antifa" is a bogeyman currently, imo. [1] https://linksunten.indymedia.org/de/node/215853 https://linksunten.indymedia.org/de/node/215853 (offline) [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20170620143720/https://linksunten.indymedia.org/de/node/215853 https://web.archive.org/web/20170620143720/https://linksunte...
yAnonymous 9y ago
What happened on that site was straight down illegal and was tolerated for far too long. They shared instructions for making weapons and explosives, publicly shared personal information and called for attacks against the state and individuals. Right wing organizations have been shut down for far less and extremism on both sides should be treated the same way.
- discordianfish 9y ago
  Care to name a single example where "right wing organizations have been shut down for far less"?
  - yAnonymous 9y ago
    Anonymous Germany Facebook account with millions of followers. Einzelfallmap social media accounts that tracked refugee crimes. Some of their content was debatable, but they were nowhere near the level of indymedia. Then they put the identitarian movement on a watch list, who have done very little so far in terms of actual crime.
    - mschuster91 9y ago
      > Anonymous Germany Facebook account with millions of followers. ... which regularly posted conspiracy theories, fake news and distributed hate speech against migrants. > Einzelfallmap social media accounts that tracked refugee crimes. ...ONLY "refugee" crimes, without a comparison to German crimes this is nothing more than inciting hate. > Some of their content was debatable, but they were nowhere near the level of indymedia. It was Twitter and Facebook that shot them down. Private entities, not the government - that's a difference. > Then they put the identitarian movement on a watch list, who have done very little so far in terms of actual crime. One IB guy in Berlin nearly ran over a cop with a car. The IB tried obstructing of SAR NGOs, and they were filmed while trying to pirate a speedboat of Open Arms NGO boat. IB activists have committed many crimes, ranging from simple vandalism over shooting with (fake) guns (Martin Sellner in Austria) to attempted murder (the guy with the truck and the police officer).
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
eatonphil 9y ago
Could we change the title so it doesn't read like the German Interior Ministry itself was shut down?
- mdekkers 9y ago
  done
  - alnitak 9y ago
    Germain? Also, the wording is still ambiguous. How about this: "German Interior Ministry raids Indymedia and shuts it down"
- wongarsu 9y ago
  The title was a great example of misuse of the oxford comma. I might borrow that. (for reference, original title was "Germain Interior Ministry shuts down, and raids Linksunten.indymedia.org")
  - tallanvor 9y ago
    I wouldn't recommend borrowing this, because there's only two items in the list which would never include a comma before the conjunction. The Oxford comma is used in lists of 3 or more items. Also, it seems the person who posted this modified the title for some reason. The actual article title is "German Interior Ministry shuts down, raids left-wing German Indymedia site". We can probably agree that this title isn't great either, but it's far better than the hatchet job the poster did.
    - wongarsu 9y ago
      That's why I said misuse :) If you extend the list to three items, an oxford comma actually helps with understanding the sentence: "German Interior Ministry shuts down, brings charges against and raids Linksunten.indymedia.org" vs "German Interior Ministry shuts down, brings charges against, and raids Linksunten.indymedia.org". But in general it's just a really bad sentence no matter how many commas there are.
o- 9y ago
Chronology of scoops published on that site at [1]. Some headlines translated: * Leak of AfD (right-wing populist German party) internal chat, which reveals Nazi quotes. * Article showing collaboration between a neonazi and police in Leipzig. * Outing right-wing arsonist who was also a police informant. * Research on the Identitarian Movement, revealing organizational structure. * Leak of customer data of a Nazi online shop outing parliament member as customer. No wonder they made some good enemies. [1] https://twitter.com/Chronik_ge_Re/status/901033270133096452 https://twitter.com/Chronik_ge_Re/status/901033270133096452
- teamhappy 9y ago
  * Leak of NPD (the other right-wing populist party) donors' names and addresses. @raverbashing https://youtu.be/vypByg_H_YY?t=51s https://youtu.be/vypByg_H_YY?t=51s
  - raverbashing 9y ago
    NPD is more extremist than AFD
- mikejb 9y ago
  To provide a more balanced picture, there's a competition held at that site: Riot-Bundesliga [1]. Who fucks up cities the most? Throw paint at buildings! Set cars on fire! Destroy property of political enemies! And banks! And stores! Beat up (probably) right-wing people! And cops! Go win the crown! [1] https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:gVWB7Go5zv8J:https://linksunten.indymedia.org/de/node/160914+&cd=1&hl=de&ct=clnk&gl=de https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:gVWB7G...
- mschuster91 9y ago
  > No wonder they made some good enemies. The problem is that it's the hot phase right before the election, and Interior Minister de Maiziere, who himself comes from a family with close Nazi ties (https://twitter.com/wasloshamburg/status/901010204598222848 https://twitter.com/wasloshamburg/status/901010204598222848) wants to prove, especially after G20, that he is the personification of "law and order". What I am really afraid of is Joachim Herrmann (CSU, Interior Minister of Bavaria) succeeding that moron after the election. Herrmann recently introduced the possibility of "indefinite jailing" ("Endloshaft") for people that the police deems as "dangerous". The German Conservatives always have been rightwing-authoritarian, but the pressure from AfD neonazis has shifted their entire politics even more towards right-authoritarian than I would ever have thought possible. To make matters worse, the SPD has not been able to produce a qualified candidate who actually wants to take back stuff like Hartz IV which the working class really hates, the Green Party got their policies stolen / made irrelevant (environmental protection, exit from nuclear energy), and the Left Party (as well as the non-parliamentary lefties) are rather battling themselves than the Conservatives and the Nazis.
hyperfekt 9y ago
This is probably done just for the election, and it's not clear whether the ban will hold in front of courts. linksunten.indymedia is not actually a club, as which it was forbidden, nor did they publish the contents themselves. As such, they should be subject to the 'Telemediengesetz' just like e.g. Facebook and sued on this basis.
odiroot 9y ago
Good. It's really high time German authorities take care of this situation. This is really scary how laissez faire they were before. Bored bands of anarchists destroying public and private property (e.g. burning down cars) on daily basis accompanied by cheers of "useful idiots". I really hope this is a first step in direction of solving this dangerous precedent.
Grue3 9y ago
>portal popular with leftist readers and activists The world's smallest violin is weeping. I guess "big government" isn't such a good thing now, is it?
- br_smartass 9y ago
  Damn anarchists and their """""""""big governement love""""""""". Damn! (Explaining: Your post only exposes the size of your ignorance)

59 points by mdekkers 9y ago

...authorities were treating linksunten.indymedia.org as an "association" rather than a news outlet, which would help officials get around constitutional protections on freedom of expression. [...] The anonymous threat to police - called "bulls" in Germany - led officials to determine that the site had become a "lawless realm," and, for now at least, the authorities have ended it. Which I find pretty concerning. "Don't say anything nasty about the state or the police, or we will shut you down" Isn't a message I was expecting to hear from a European Government.

mikejb 9y ago
There's a difference between saying 'anything nasty' and calling for physical action against individuals. Content on that page called for violence against individuals, including members of the police. I'm not saying I disagree with your argument, but "don't say anything nasty" doesn't represent the facts accurately.
- DarkKomunalec 9y ago
  > calling for physical action against individuals They weren't raided for making true threats, but for letting the site become a "lawless realm" and/or for "sowing hate against different opinions and representatives of the country", charges so vague they could apply to almost any online forum or uppity news site.
  - sgc 9y ago
    I agree that it is disconcerting that it was easier to make these vague charges effective than to charge them with inciting to violence or something similar. It appears to call for a refinement of legislation and perhaps general sentiment of the courts (which is often an extension of that of current culture).
  - dublinclontarf 9y ago
    Germany does not have the protections of free speech that the US has. "Hate speech" is a real thing there that will land you in jail.
    - dom0 9y ago
      > "Hate speech" is a real thing there that will land you in jail. This is wildly inaccurate. In Germany there are mainly three kinds of speech punishable by law: (1) Defamation (2) Volksverhetzung ("all jews must die") (3) Incitement (there are two different kinds of this, one where a specific person is incited to do something criminal, and the other where you publicly instigate a group to do something criminal) It is quite clear that these don't nearly cover everything that may be commonly considered "hate speech".
aedron 9y ago
Apparently the fact that the site had administrators (i.e. more than one) made it an association. By that definition a newspaper, TV network and anything else are associations too I guess?
- jacquesm 9y ago
  By that definition almost anything is an association.
  - yorwba 9y ago
    According to http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/vereinsg/__2.html http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/vereinsg/__2.html (my translation, emphasis mine, legalese is hard): (1) A Verein is regardless of the legal form any association formed voluntarily by a multitude of natural or legal persons over a longer timespan for a common purpose, subject to organized decision-making. (2) Vereine are not 1. political parties as defined by article 21 of the Grundgesetz [essentially the constitution] 2. parliamentary groups of the Bundestag and and the parliaments of federated states EDIT: banning a Verein is regulated by http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/vereinsg/__3.html http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/vereinsg/__3.html (1) A Verein may only be treated as banned (article 9 par. 2 of the Grundgesetz), if the banning agency determines that its purpose or its actions run counter to the criminal law or that it is directed against the constitutional order or the ideal of peaceful exchange between the peoples [Gedanke der Völkerverständigung; let me know if you have a better translation] ; the declaration is to order the dissolution of the Verein (ban). The ban is usually to involve the seizure of [a bunch of stuff I'm too lazy to translate]
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- wongarsu 9y ago
  The association part is a red herring. Of course a group of administrators is an association, just like CNN also happens to be (part of) a company. The important thing he is saying is that they treat them as if they weren't also a news outlet. I find that decision questionable, and I expect an interesting court case centered around the question which kinds of websites qualify as news outlets and which don't.
rbehrends 9y ago
> Which I find pretty concerning. "Don't say anything nasty about the state or the police, or we will shut you down" Isn't a message I was expecting to hear from a European Government. If you look at the legal basis they used, you will find that the organization was actually banned as (inter alia) being a criminal conspiracy with the goal of facilitating the commission of criminal offenses (and in particular, violent crimes). Searches found knives, truncheons, and other weapons [1]. [1] http://www.n-tv.de/politik/De-Maiziere-verbietet-linksunten-indymedia-article20000560.html http://www.n-tv.de/politik/De-Maiziere-verbietet-linksunten-... (in German).

DarkKomunalec 9y ago

The site was closed for "sowing hate against different opinions and representatives of the country," I am shocked - shocked - that anti-hate animus would be used this way!

mdekkers 9y ago
The mechanism for closing the site is what interests me. There are certain laws in place to prevent exactly this kind of thing from happening. Authorities worked around this by classifying the site as a "club" instead of a publication platform / news portal. The move is widely seen as a response to violent G20 protests. The way to deal with that should be to find and prosecute the violent offenders, not shutting down lawful websites.
- DarkKomunalec 9y ago
  Shutting down a club seems just as oppressive. And the definition of 'club' is blurry and stretchy, so it's not unexpected a law against 'clubs' would get abused.
- yAnonymous 9y ago
  Ironically, broad bans of anything right wing are exactly what the left have been asking for all these years. I told people it's going to be used against them one day. Shortsighted idiots.
  - mercurysmessage 9y ago
    People don't have a problem with 'anything' right wing, people have a problem with far right wing, and the views that come along with it. You know, nationalism, supremacy, xenophobia.
    - yAnonymous 9y ago
      Many leftist people have a problem with anything that is oriented right of their own political views - which is almost everything. I see this on a daily basis. They act like fascists themselves. Would be funny if it wasn't so sad.

jacquesm 9y ago

Particularly worrisome here is the potential for a raid on a pretext, ostensibly the main reason for the raid was the presence of an anonymous threat against the police. The only way to deal with anonymous general threats against authorities is to ignore them. The potential for abuse of such threats as a fabricated pretext is simply too high, as is the number of idiots.

mikejb 9y ago
Anonymous threads that have become reality in the past. They're hard to ignore. The page in question also introduced a "Randale Bundesliga", a rioting competition in which they crowned the city with the most riots. Anything from throwing paint at buildings to setting cars on fire to beating up people from the opposite political spectrum counts.

DanielleMolloy 9y ago

linksunten.indymedia is a widely known platform of the German Antifa. During the most recent weeks many texts glorifying or whitewashing the Hamburg G20 riots were published there. Texts can be submitted by any anonymous person, however the website owners decide whether they leave it online or not – so there is reason to see responsibility under law. I wouldn't be surprised either if it becomes accessible again just after the German federal elections in 4 weeks.

mschuster91 9y ago
Actually the operators themselves have shut it down - press reports have surfaced that the servers are located in France, and I guess that the ops team which did not get their apartments fleeced is busy moving the servers to somewhere well out of the reach of de Maiziere.
dtornabene 9y ago
Yes, what could possibly motivate individuals to join ..... a german antifascist movement. Totally bizarre. So strange. Almost as if there was some kind of historical precedent....
hedgedoops2 9y ago
I remember that during G20, some grandstanders set fire to some cables in the Berlin S-Bahn system, disrupting train service for a day. They then claimed responsibility with a letter on linksunten. [1] Thing is, the comments on linksunten were uniformly condemning of the letter and the act. Yet still by sympathizers, not outsiders coming to the site. I'd link to the web archive version but the only thing the crawler was able to retrieve was a 'DDOS protection for civil society' banner [2]. "Antifa" is a bogeyman currently, imo. [1] https://linksunten.indymedia.org/de/node/215853 https://linksunten.indymedia.org/de/node/215853 (offline) [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20170620143720/https://linksunten.indymedia.org/de/node/215853 https://web.archive.org/web/20170620143720/https://linksunte...

yAnonymous 9y ago

What happened on that site was straight down illegal and was tolerated for far too long. They shared instructions for making weapons and explosives, publicly shared personal information and called for attacks against the state and individuals. Right wing organizations have been shut down for far less and extremism on both sides should be treated the same way.

discordianfish 9y ago
Care to name a single example where "right wing organizations have been shut down for far less"?
- yAnonymous 9y ago
  Anonymous Germany Facebook account with millions of followers. Einzelfallmap social media accounts that tracked refugee crimes. Some of their content was debatable, but they were nowhere near the level of indymedia. Then they put the identitarian movement on a watch list, who have done very little so far in terms of actual crime.
  - mschuster91 9y ago
    > Anonymous Germany Facebook account with millions of followers. ... which regularly posted conspiracy theories, fake news and distributed hate speech against migrants. > Einzelfallmap social media accounts that tracked refugee crimes. ...ONLY "refugee" crimes, without a comparison to German crimes this is nothing more than inciting hate. > Some of their content was debatable, but they were nowhere near the level of indymedia. It was Twitter and Facebook that shot them down. Private entities, not the government - that's a difference. > Then they put the identitarian movement on a watch list, who have done very little so far in terms of actual crime. One IB guy in Berlin nearly ran over a cop with a car. The IB tried obstructing of SAR NGOs, and they were filmed while trying to pirate a speedboat of Open Arms NGO boat. IB activists have committed many crimes, ranging from simple vandalism over shooting with (fake) guns (Martin Sellner in Austria) to attempted murder (the guy with the truck and the police officer).

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

eatonphil 9y ago

Could we change the title so it doesn't read like the German Interior Ministry itself was shut down?

mdekkers 9y ago
done
- alnitak 9y ago
  Germain? Also, the wording is still ambiguous. How about this: "German Interior Ministry raids Indymedia and shuts it down"
wongarsu 9y ago
The title was a great example of misuse of the oxford comma. I might borrow that. (for reference, original title was "Germain Interior Ministry shuts down, and raids Linksunten.indymedia.org")
- tallanvor 9y ago
  I wouldn't recommend borrowing this, because there's only two items in the list which would never include a comma before the conjunction. The Oxford comma is used in lists of 3 or more items. Also, it seems the person who posted this modified the title for some reason. The actual article title is "German Interior Ministry shuts down, raids left-wing German Indymedia site". We can probably agree that this title isn't great either, but it's far better than the hatchet job the poster did.
  - wongarsu 9y ago
    That's why I said misuse :) If you extend the list to three items, an oxford comma actually helps with understanding the sentence: "German Interior Ministry shuts down, brings charges against and raids Linksunten.indymedia.org" vs "German Interior Ministry shuts down, brings charges against, and raids Linksunten.indymedia.org". But in general it's just a really bad sentence no matter how many commas there are.

o- 9y ago

Chronology of scoops published on that site at [1]. Some headlines translated: * Leak of AfD (right-wing populist German party) internal chat, which reveals Nazi quotes. * Article showing collaboration between a neonazi and police in Leipzig. * Outing right-wing arsonist who was also a police informant. * Research on the Identitarian Movement, revealing organizational structure. * Leak of customer data of a Nazi online shop outing parliament member as customer. No wonder they made some good enemies. [1] https://twitter.com/Chronik_ge_Re/status/901033270133096452 https://twitter.com/Chronik_ge_Re/status/901033270133096452

teamhappy 9y ago
* Leak of NPD (the other right-wing populist party) donors' names and addresses. @raverbashing https://youtu.be/vypByg_H_YY?t=51s https://youtu.be/vypByg_H_YY?t=51s
- raverbashing 9y ago
  NPD is more extremist than AFD
mikejb 9y ago
To provide a more balanced picture, there's a competition held at that site: Riot-Bundesliga [1]. Who fucks up cities the most? Throw paint at buildings! Set cars on fire! Destroy property of political enemies! And banks! And stores! Beat up (probably) right-wing people! And cops! Go win the crown! [1] https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:gVWB7Go5zv8J:https://linksunten.indymedia.org/de/node/160914+&cd=1&hl=de&ct=clnk&gl=de https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:gVWB7G...
mschuster91 9y ago
> No wonder they made some good enemies. The problem is that it's the hot phase right before the election, and Interior Minister de Maiziere, who himself comes from a family with close Nazi ties (https://twitter.com/wasloshamburg/status/901010204598222848 https://twitter.com/wasloshamburg/status/901010204598222848) wants to prove, especially after G20, that he is the personification of "law and order". What I am really afraid of is Joachim Herrmann (CSU, Interior Minister of Bavaria) succeeding that moron after the election. Herrmann recently introduced the possibility of "indefinite jailing" ("Endloshaft") for people that the police deems as "dangerous". The German Conservatives always have been rightwing-authoritarian, but the pressure from AfD neonazis has shifted their entire politics even more towards right-authoritarian than I would ever have thought possible. To make matters worse, the SPD has not been able to produce a qualified candidate who actually wants to take back stuff like Hartz IV which the working class really hates, the Green Party got their policies stolen / made irrelevant (environmental protection, exit from nuclear energy), and the Left Party (as well as the non-parliamentary lefties) are rather battling themselves than the Conservatives and the Nazis.

hyperfekt 9y ago

This is probably done just for the election, and it's not clear whether the ban will hold in front of courts. linksunten.indymedia is not actually a club, as which it was forbidden, nor did they publish the contents themselves. As such, they should be subject to the 'Telemediengesetz' just like e.g. Facebook and sued on this basis.

odiroot 9y ago

Good. It's really high time German authorities take care of this situation. This is really scary how laissez faire they were before. Bored bands of anarchists destroying public and private property (e.g. burning down cars) on daily basis accompanied by cheers of "useful idiots". I really hope this is a first step in direction of solving this dangerous precedent.

Grue3 9y ago

>portal popular with leftist readers and activists The world's smallest violin is weeping. I guess "big government" isn't such a good thing now, is it?

br_smartass 9y ago
Damn anarchists and their """""""""big governement love""""""""". Damn! (Explaining: Your post only exposes the size of your ignorance)