The persecution of CJ Hopkins
In Germany, a man is being dragged through the courts for criticising the Covid regime — a terrifying example of the the broader crackdown on dissent in Germany and across Europe
Guest post by Irish journalist Ciarán O’Regan (Substack; Twitter).
It was September 2023 when I first wrote about the dire state of free speech in Germany in general, and the particular persecution of CJ Hopkins, who, almost unbelievably, is being dragged through German courts for publishing the image above.
A lot has happened to Hopkins since then that readers, in light of the totalitarian “hate” laws being foisted upon us in various European countries, might take interest in: such persecution of anti-establishment views could reasonably be expected to play a part in our political future — in my country, Ireland, and elsewhere.
After all, the laws we are facing are ones which Helen Joyce of the Economist has described as “literally Orwellian” — the same kind of strategically ill-defined “hate-speech” law employed by the Soviet Union and its allies to persecute political dissent. The Irish Independent’s Ian O’Doherty seems to agree. O’Doherty straightforwardly described in The Spectator how this “completely bonkers” bill is “bad law with bad intentions” and how it “will have terrible consequences for Irish democracy and freedom”.
In January 2024, Hopkins was acquitted by a Berlin district court. “Technically, it isn’t all over”, wrote Hopkins at the time, “because the prosecutor has a week to appeal the decision, but, given the circumstances, I doubt he will. He made a total fool of himself in front of a large audience yesterday. I can’t imagine that he will want to do that again”.
The prosecutor — unfortunately for Hopkins, but also for the reputation and integrity of the German justice system — had other plans. “Apparently,” wrote Hopkins, “their plan is to keep putting me on trial until they get a judge who is willing to convict me of something, or to bankrupt me with legal costs. Silly me, for a moment there, I was actually starting to believe this was over”.
His absurd political persecution was covered shortly thereafter by FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. And among many other international outlets, across both mainstream and independent media, it was also covered by Irish journalist, John Mac Ghlionn, for both Sky News Australia and Discourse, the journal of George Mason University’s Mercatus Centre.
Though mounting international pressure is important, and should continue, of greatest relevance was the appearance of articles about his case in mainstream German outlets.
In September 2024, a German judge who happens to be an expert in the very law Hopkins is being persecuted for violating, Dr Clivia von Dewitz, published an extensive opinion piece about the case in the Berliner Zeitung. Needless to say, Dr von Dewitz did not agree that Hopkins was guilty of disseminating Nazi propaganda and sided strongly with the initial judge’s decision to acquit.
Despite all this, the appeals court have determined that Hopkins, an award winning playwright, author, political satirist and self-described “old lefty”, is now a “hate speech” criminal. And they did this in a special courtroom, often used for highly sensitive terrorism trials, that it is impossible to believe wasn’t selected in order to intimidate Hopkins and whoever else could fit in the tiny space to witness his show trial. Hopkins issued a rousing statement prior to receiving the expected verdict:
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.
Since then, Germany’s largest weekly newspaper, Die Zeit, has published a solid overview of his case.
The irony of his case should be clear: in persecuting a writer who compared totalitarian aspects of today’s German authorities to totalitarian German authorities of the past, they have clearly proven his point. That massive, mainstream outlets like Der Spiegel and Stern, pictured below, have also used similar cover art to Hopkins’ book, with no persecution or terrorist court for them, only makes the fact that this is a power play to crush dissent all the more obvious. The key difference, of course, is that Der Spiegel and Stern used the swastika symbol to criticise people who are against establishment orthodoxy, whereas Hopkins criticised the establishment itself.
To play on the old quip about the US, when Germany sneezes, the EU catches a cold. And since early 2022, when learning that the German establishment were discussing the imposition of nonsensical, anti-scientific vaccine mandates as well as planning to close functional nuclear power plants despite a serious energy crisis, Germany’s deranged hyper-moralism has been quite an interest of mine.
So much so, in fact, that I took great length to use the country as a (basket?) case study to outline a new totalitarian ideology, which I have termed Compascism, and have described as the “weaponization of compassion related virtue which employs outward concern for victims in order to gain power and justify intolerance for non-conformity”. Hopkins writes about Germany as part of the “New Normal Reich” and, while I have taken a more ideological angle in framing our zeitgeist, he has taken more of a systems based approach and has written about an impersonal, resistance destroying machine he terms “GloboCap” — short for global capitalism. But whatever we choose to call it, and whatever forces are driving it forward, the totalitarianism is real. And CJ is in its teeth.
I needed to meet this man who, at much personal cost, is refusing to take the easy road and submit to becoming a hive mind automaton. Hopkins accepted my offer of an interview over lunch and we met at a favourite seafood spot of his in the Neukölln area of Berlin.
He already knew about Ireland’s incoming “hate” laws and the plans to ram the “hate speech” component through after the November 2024 election. Hopkins sees “the whole concept of ‘hate speech’ and ‘hate crime’ and all of that as bullshit. We [already] have laws on the books for these crimes”. Nodding over toward two women sitting nearby with a black baby, to illustrate the point, Hopkins says that “if some racist comes over to their table and starts shouting racial slurs, that’s harassment. We already have a law against that. We don’t need an extra law to make a special crime that is based on that person’s emotions or bigotry or attitudes”. Hopkins goes on:
The problem that I have with “hate speech” or “hate crime” legislation is that it’s not legislating against acts, it’s legislating against beliefs or emotional states. I don’t like racism; racism is ugly. I try not to be racist. But the fact is that people are racist to one degree or another if you look at the history of humanity and the world. Tribalism is real. I don’t say that lightly. If someone started abusing someone with racial slurs, someone that I thought was weak or vulnerable, I would step up and confront that person. I’m against racism, but we’re not going to cure humanity of racism and we don’t need laws that criminalise bigotry. Bigotry is ugly and it can be dealt with socially as it has always been dealt with.
While waiting over coffee for food to arrive, Hopkins makes the case that criminalising “hate” is no different to criminalising resentment or anger. He is right, of course: why should crimes motivated by “hate” be treated any differently whatsoever to crimes motivated by any other belief or emotional state? He sees such attempts at “mind control” as “essentially totalitarian and fascist”. I’d agree. And Jacob Mchangama, in describing The Sordid Origins of Hate-Speech Laws, lends some historical support to CJ’s argument around the use of “hate” laws by totalitarian regimes of the past. Mchangama describes how the vast majority of Western states were originally against “hate-speech” laws and “shared the view that human rights should protect rather than limit freedom of expression”:
Rather, the introduction of hate-speech prohibitions into international law was championed in its heyday by the Soviet Union and allies. Their motive was readily apparent. The communist countries sought to exploit such laws to limit free speech.
Hopkins described to me how this kind of thing is a hallmark of totalitarian systems. “I have no problem with people advocating their views”, he says, “people confronting other people on their views. I have no problem with any of this. But when you start using the power of the state and the power of the police to try alter peoples beliefs, you’ve entered the realm of totalitarianism. It’s that simple”. As an alternative way of dealing with “hate”, Hopkins goes on to talk about a black musician in the US whom his wife is a big fan of, Daryl Davis, who has convinced hundreds of men to leave the KKK. (In case you haven’t heard of Davis, go watch his remarkable Ted Talk). How? “He talks to Klan guys, starts relationships with them”. According to this “old lefty” sitting in front of me, redemption through human connection is always a possibility. “And that’s how you do it, you don’t do it by locking people up for their beliefs. We don’t need thought crimes”.
So what’s next for Hopkins? He and his lawyer are appealing to Germany’s highest court. However, it isn’t that simple:
One way of another, I’m going back to the district court. There are three scenarios with the Constitutional Court. Scenario number 1, the Constitutional court refuses to hear my appeal. Then I go back to the district court to be sentenced. Scenario number 2, the Constitutional Court hears my appeal, they accept it, they rule against me, I go back to the district court to be sentenced. Scenario number 3, they take my appeal, they rule in my favour, I go back to the district court for a new trial.
More absurdly, if scenario number 3 happens and, after a favourable ruling by Germany’s Constitutional Court he is acquitted again by the district court in a new trial, “the Berlin prosecutor can appeal again, and this can go on, and on, and on. It basically depends on how determined they are to punish me. They can drag this on for quite a while”. Hopkins, like the mythological Sisyphus, may well be facing an unending loop of sadistic punishment.
What hope is there? “What I’m seeing is even some sections of the mainstream who have been absolutely conformist, are starting to have to confront this nascent totalitarianism”, he says. “They’re having to look at how the authorities are behaving and decide is this the kind of society that you want to live in or not. I have to believe that the vast majority of people deep down are not fascists, they’re not totalitarians. I think the majority of German society want to live in something resembling a democratic society with these democratic principles of rights and constitutional protections and what have you”.
In light of the recent “hate” bill passed in Ireland and the stated aims of government ministers like Helen McEntee and Roderic O’Gorman to push through the “hate speech” component after this election, what Hopkins says next should be of particular interest to the Irish reader:
The way this stops, not just my case but the broader crackdown on dissent, is people in the mainstream, people who people can’t ignore, speaking out against what’s happening, and I’m seeing the beginnings of a shift in that direction. But that’s what it’s going to take. It’s not going to be a ruling in one of the courts. The authorities have already proven that they don’t give a fuck about the principles of the law. They’re instrumentalising the law to crack down on dissent.
In Ireland’s recently passed “hate crime” legislation, the definition of “hatred” is literally circular: “‘hatred’ means hatred against a person or a group of persons”. Hatred means hatred. This insidious nonsense is becoming Irish law. One cannot but look back to the totalitarian Soviet use of “hate-speech” laws, and ponder the possibility that such an idiot definition might be, from a purely predatory political standpoint, actually quite ingenious: what if the definition of “hatred” is strategically ambiguous so that the state provides itself a means of applying the law however they’d like to do so, thereby “instrumentalising the law to crack down on dissent”?
To me, Hopkins’ case is extremely important, not just because it is clearly a ludicrous injustice and an assault against freedom of expression in Europe’s most powerful country, but because he is so clearly not a fan of Nazism that his case highlights the blatant totalitarian clampdown on dissent for what it really is. And so, if you’d like to help Hopkins pay his legal bills, he can be supported financially by subscribing to his excellent and continuously thought-provoking Substack. He also has a new book coming out in April which can be pre-ordered here. Other ways of supporting financially can be found on his Consent Factory website.
With regards to Ireland’s creepy future, a few thoughts come to mind. Firstly, let’s not back politicians or political parties who have supported insidiously idiot “hate” laws. If we continue to put into power people and parties with openly declared totalitarian intent, we fully deserve whatever horrors await.
Secondly, through our own actions and attitudes, we need to promote a culture of open discourse and civil dissent against establishment orthodoxy. Note: civil dissent, by definition, involves civility, and does not involve treating badly the people with whom we disagree. Apart from being rude, scenes of upheaval are gifts to an opportunistic regime that longs desperately for the chance to paint all dissenters as malicious and dangerous “far-right” loons. Instead, we might do well to take example from Daryl Davis, the man who treated as fellow travellers those who hated him, thus knowing them capable of redemption. Totalitarianism can be resisted without the poison of hatred. CJ Hopkins proves this.
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Thomas Fazi
Website: thomasfazi.net
Twitter: @battleforeurope
Latest book: The Covid Consensus: The Global Assault on Democracy and the Poor—A Critique from the Left (co-authored with Toby Green)
Many thanks, Thomas and Ciaran!
With all my support to CJ Hopkins...
Also in Germany : any news about Reiner Fuellmich ???