Author C.J. Hopkins Is Investigated By Germany Over Swastika on Cover of Anti-Authoritarian Book

The significant differences in treating the notion of “hate speech” in the US, and in most of Europe, have been highlighted thanks to a case involving American playwright C.J. Hopkins, who lives in Germany. Hopkins is now under investigation in that country over two tweets, one showing the cover of his new book, “The Rise of the New Normal Reich.” For obvious reasons, Germany has had laws since the end of the Second World War that prohibits displaying Nazi insignia – and, most of the time, they are enforced – a part of the broader criminalization of what the state defines, and then interprets as, hate speech. Journalist Matt Taibbi, who interviewed Hopkins, meanwhile notes that the book offers strong criticism of the way the pandemic was handled globally, while the cover image illustration includes a barely discernible white swastika superimposed onto a white face mask. According to a Berlin prosecutor who is handling the case, the authorities are not going after Hopkins because of the content of the book and his open and vocal criticism of the Covid restrictions – but because it supposedly glorifies Nazism. Never mind, as Taibbi notes, that not unlike the case involving Roger Waters, this type of imagery was not there to, as the accusation claims, “disseminate propaganda” and “further the aims of a former National Socialist organization” – aka, the Nazi party – but for satirical purposes. “Promoting Nazi ideology, of course, is exactly the opposite of what I was doing. But the…Author C.J. Hopkins Is Investigated By Germany Over Swastika on Cover of Anti-Authoritarian Book