Guilty!
CJ Hopkins
So, the Berlin Appellate Court overturned my acquittal today. I am now, officially, at least according to the New Normal German authorities, a “hate-speech” criminal.
I’m officially a “hate-speech” criminal because I compared New Normal Germany to Nazi Germany, and I challenged the official Covid narrative, and I used the cover art of my book to do it.
The New Normal German authorities didn’t like that, and were determined to punish me for doing that, and to make an example of me, in order to discourage other people from doing that. It took them two tries, but they pulled it off.
The judge in my original trial screwed up and acquitted me, but the Berlin Public Prosecutor’s office didn’t give up. They appealed the verdict — yes, they can do that in Germany — and this morning the Appellate Court overturned the verdict and declared me guilty.
I’ll report on all the ugly details of my day in court in a proper column sometime later this week, when I’ve sufficiently recovered from the hangover I am currently about to start working on.
I’ll also be resurrecting my legal defense fund and telling you about that in my next column, because the only recourse my attorney and I have left at this point is to try to get the German Constitutional Court (i.e., Germany’s supreme court) to hear the case.
In the meantime, I wanted to share my Statement to the Appellate Court. Here it is.
* * *
Statement to the Berlin Appellate Court, September 30, 2024
Ladies and Gentlemen, my name is CJ Hopkins. I am an award-winning playwright, author, and political satirist. My work is read by hundreds of thousands of people all over the world. For over thirty years, I have written and spoken out against fascism, authoritarianism, totalitarianism, and so on. Anyone can do an Internet search, find my books, reviews of my plays, my essays, and learn who I am and what my political views are in five minutes.
And yet, I am accused by the German authorities of spreading pro-Nazi propaganda. I’m accused of doing this because I posted two Tweets challenging the official Covid narrative and comparing the new, nascent form of totalitarianism it has brought into being — the so-called “New Normal” — to Nazi Germany.
Let me be clear. I did that. In August 2022, as Germany was debating whether to end its Covid mask mandates, I tweeted those two Tweets. I challenged the official Covid narrative. I compared the New Normal to Nazi Germany. I did that with the cover art of one of my books. I did what anyone is allowed to do according to German law. I did what Karl Lauterbach has done. I did what German celebrities like Jessica Berlin have done. I did what major German newspapers and magazines have done.
A few months ago, Stern and Der Spiegel published covers of their magazines featuring swastikas. Der Spiegel’s cover featured exactly the same artistic concept as my book cover and my Tweets. The only difference is, the swastika on Der Spiegel’s cover is behind a German flag, whereas the swastika on my book cover and in my Tweets is behind a medical mask. That’s it. That is the only difference.
Stern and Der Spiegel displayed swastikas on their covers in order to warn the public of the rise of a new form of totalitarianism, and that is precisely what I did. I compared the New Normal — i.e., the new nascent form of totalitarianism that came into being in 2020 — to Nazi Germany. Stern and Der Spiegel compared the AfD to Nazi Germany. That is the only difference.
I’m not a fan of the AfD. I’m not a fan of Stern and Der Spiegel. That doesn’t matter. Stern and Der Spiegel have the right to do what they did, and so do I. That right is guaranteed to us in the German constitution. We all have the right, if we see a new form of totalitarianism taking shape, to oppose it, and to compare it to historical forms of totalitarianism, including Nazi Germany.
I don’t follow German electoral politics very closely, so I don’t know exactly what the AfD has done that prompted Stern and Der Spiegel to compare them to the Nazis. But I know exactly what the German authorities did during 2020 to 2023.
In 2020, the German authorities declared a national state of emergency, for which they provided no concrete evidence, and suspended constitutional rights. Nazi Germany also did that, in March 1933.
From 2020 to 2022, the German authorities forced people to wear symbols of their conformity to the official ideology and perform humiliating public-loyalty rituals. The Nazis also did that.
The current German authorities banned protests against their arbitrary decrees. With the help of the media, they bombarded the German masses with lies and propaganda designed to terrorize the public into unquestioning obedience.
They segregated society according to who was and wasn’t conforming to official ideology. They censored political dissent. They stripped people of their jobs because they refused to conform to official ideology and follow senseless orders.
The German authorities fomented mass hatred of a “scapegoat” class of people. They demonized and persecuted critics of the government’s decrees. They dispatched police to beat them and arrest them. They have instrumentalized the law to punish political dissidents.
Nazi Germany also did all these things, as have most other totalitarian systems.
I documented all this in my book. I spoke out against it. I published essays about it. I tweeted about it.
My punishment for that has been … well, here I am, on trial in criminal court for the second time. The German authorities had my Tweets censored. They reported me to the Federal Criminal Police Office. They reported me to The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, the German domestic Intelligence agency. My book is banned in Germany.
The German authorities investigated me. They prosecuted me. They put me on trial for tweeting. After I was acquitted, that wasn’t enough, so they have put me on trial again. They defamed me. They have damaged my income and reputation as an author. They have forced me to spend thousands of Euros in legal fees to defend myself against these clearly ridiculous charges. And today, I, and my lawyer, and all the people in the gallery, have been subjected to this official show of force and treated like potential terrorists.
Why, rational people might ask, have I been subjected to this special treatment, while Der Spiegel, Stern, Die Tageszeitung, and many others who have also tweeted swastikas, have not?
This is not a mystery. Everyone knows the answer to this question.
You are not fooling anyone. Everyone understands exactly what this prosecution actually is. Every journalist that has covered my case, everyone in this courtroom, understands what this prosecution actually is. It has nothing to do with punishing people who disseminate pro-Nazi propaganda. It is about punishing political dissent, and intimidating critics into silence. I’m not here because I put a swastika on my book cover. I am here because I put it behind a “Covid” mask. I am here because I dared to criticize the German authorities. I am here because I refused to shut up and follow orders.
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.
As long as the German authorities continue to claim that Germany is a democratic country, which respects the rule of law and democratic principles, I will continue to behave like that is what it is. I will not be bullied. I will insist on my constitutional rights. I will continue to respect democratic principles and fight to preserve them. The German authorities can make a mockery of those rights and the rule of law and democratic principles if they want. I will not. Not for the Berlin Prosecutor. Not for this Court. Not for the German authorities. Not for anyone.
Totalitarianism, authoritarianism, tyranny, never win. Not in the long run. History teaches us that. And it is history that will judge us all in the end.
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German prisons are surely inclusive and community-orientated, or at least more tolerable than, say, Egyptian prisons!
Good job, Herr Hopkins. A little heavy-handed and unsubtle for an artist but the crime itself leaves no place for subtlety.
Comparing current things to the Nazis is otherwise bad form, as it leads to unintelligent, ignorant and tediously clichéd discussions in which the Nazis are the quintessential, ultimate evil in the entire history of humanity and nothing less. Invoking the Nazis out of context is a crime because it offends the surely confirmed 5 million (or was it 6 million) surely verifiably dead chosen ones killed just in those camps, and offends and frightens the heck out the other millions of holoc. reparations recipient holoc. survivors (there must have been a hell of a lot of chosen ones in those days in Europe!)
Casual comparisons to centuries of slavery, kidnapping, mass torture and genocide on the, for example, black folks, plus maybe 10 million or so snuffed out in Congo by the Christian army of ol’ King Leopold of Belgium, all those are fine and just slip under the carpet because Shitler, Zion’s real benefactor was on a different order of magnitude of evil, because of who he included in his targets, you see…so evil , that his crimes are sanctified, only to be referred to in reverential hushed tones by kosher commenters and never to be compared to the de facto lesser crimes of any other war criminals and state/imperial mass murderers of lesser folks..
Plus, the countless million dead black folks or their surviving descendants have much tougher skin and are not so easily offended, I guess. So you could have compared the covid coup to the genocides in Africa and you would have been just fine, if not exactly celebrated by the mainstream.
Now that our divine right to free speech has become “hate speech” we no longer have to wonder about the intention of the corporate technocracy presently ruling over us.
The inversion is complete.
What comes next will be our end and only if we let them.
Our power lies in civil disobedience and non-compliance.
Use cash and boycott those who will not except it.
RESIST NOW!!!
If Nazi Germany was financed by Hitler he must have had very deep pockets.
Not invested.
What are the names of the judge(s) in the Berlin Appellate Court and the prosecutor?
I can’t help wondering if Mr. Hopkins’ real “crime” had nothing to do with Nazi symbols but everything to do with The Science. How dare a non-scientist – a mere artist to boot! – criticize “settled Science?” So maybe it wasn’t so much the German authorities as the Pharmaceutical conglomerates that went after him. And maybe, also, the authorities would have fixed on something other than the Nazi symbol had he not used it. After all, governments exist to uphold Corporate dictates – not Constitutional Law.
Whatever the details or stated reasons, I would think he was mainly singled out for his high-profile, non-conforming critical thought and intelligent analysis of the c19 spectacle, in general. To make an example of someone like him, and dissuade others that might want to publicly do likewise.
Imagine a human population with a majority of people behaving and thinking like him. My guess is it would much less governable, and thus much less acceptable to the ownership class and its interests.
‘Less governable’ to those who seek to impose a gag order (in violation of the German constitution), in an authoritarian power grab. The devil is in the justification for the new, unconstitutional law.
The real devil is the reality that violations of constitutions by states have no real remedy. They are noted and discussed at length in certain places, perpetually so, but never remedied.
That’s the devil.
Science is what academia and its sponsors say is science. E.g., economics, anthropology, psychology and all the other “social” sciences.
I think it likely that this is exactly what Hopkins believes it to be, a public power play, to intimidate everybody who openly exercises their imaginary right to ‘free speech’ when that ‘right’ conflicts with any government narrative which is important to some people in power. Maybe those people are overpaid bureaucrats (like Fauci is), or Moderna executives, with government connections. Doesn’t matter because the German citizens’ right to exercise political speech is actively being infringed by the government which SHOULD be protecting that right, in the name of …..what exactly? I mean what was the stated purpose of the law Hopkins has been prosecuted with when it was presumably put to the German legislature prior to passage/adoption?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13915957/seattle-elementary-school-principal-suspended-swastika-graffiti.html.
She was told that the Swastika has been a religious symbol for the Hindus etc. So her repulsion of the symbol showing up in her school, was immediately met with her suspension. THEY JUST CAN’T GET IT RIGHT!
We’re many long miles in western countries from having ‘the consent of the governed’, arrived now fully at the point that Solzhenitsyn describes early in The Gulag Archipelago about initially getting arrested, and seeing others be, what that’s like and the mindset, the terrible predicament that line in the sand presents.
The U.S. doesn’t have double jeopardy in court, so Germany is worse in that regard, but every parliamentary country in the world from New Zealand to Canada to France is now openly displaying hyper-corruption and totalitarian policies since 2020, and that’s speeding up now, and the U.S. is the mighty siege engine of all of it.
As much as most thought it could or would never really happen, we all know this to be the case. Tracking the tsunami of evidence is long a redundancy now, and is dispiriting.
This site and its commenters have always been about the most civil and enlightened that I’ve come across since c19 brought me here, and I wonder now if the discussion might not now turn to what people think ought be done by we who have seen what it all is, can see it and are willing to?
Thank you. Post the easiest why I can donate.
Has there been any similar cases of this happening in that part of the world or they targeting just CJ.?
Yes, to at least one other; Reiner Fuellmich: https://celiafarber.substack.com/p/tragedy-reiner-fuellmichs-mother
Speaking of masks:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1526054224000745
I dont get the sentence….
It means ‘they’ screwed up their attempt to punish CJ.
It’s heavy irony. The judge screwed up in the eyes of the “authorities”.
We live in “Opposite World”, where (in the eyes of The Powers That Be) doing what is right and Constitutional is seen as BAD, and double jeopardy and spitting on basic rights is GOOD. We’ve been living in “Opposite World” A LOT LONGER THAN MOST OF US HAD MUCH OF A CLUE.
— You can’t hide in the shadows, when you glow in the dark.
Why do you use the word Nazi? Hitler never ever used it to describe his movement. The word Nazi was coined by Jewish (fake Jew) journalist Konrad Heiden to denigrate Hitler and his movement. Until people wake up to the fact that Hitler was the good guy who was fighting the evil Zionist regime which we are all fighting , then we are all done for.
Yes, it wasn’t long before the “Hitler-was-a-good-guy” cultists were bound to appear.
Meanwhile a man guilty of real hate speech and real genocide, Israel’s Nutty Yahoo, is an ally of NATZO Germany.
My sincerest sympathy, Mr Hopkins. And thank you for fighting the good fight on behalf of all human beings everywhere. There is nothing I could add to your own words.
I am here because I refused to shut up and follow orders
That whole speech was superb it’s what millions couldn’t say from behind a mask, beaten,and intimidated, but nonetheless felt and know to be the truth.
I know it reads a nothing but thank you.
Now it has become DEUTSCHLAND ….UNTER….ALLES…
Wait, there is still the Ukraizi regime, also propped up by the CIA.
Race to the bottom for $$$$$$$.
It is all part of Operation Paperclip.
A little study will show that there never was democracy and no free press in Germany and most of Europe and yes the USA. If it helps to fight the system of very sick people in this way is a very personal matter and sure an act of courage. Moving country and keep on producing your views would be more beneficial for all parties. Those sick idiots all took the vaccines and will by that secure an easy transition for something new to happen. You can’t take that court decision as valid as they have no legal status. The justice system is illegal. Guess you could have made that clear as well. A little study in sovereignty makes this very clear. All in all it got clear how the nazi’s still rule and the children of the agents of Operation Paperclip are following order. It is a very predictable show and very boring. Viruses do not exist. Nazi’s do and they rule Germany and the court. Please keep writing on truth. …
You left where you were born, taken by, why ?
Live where you are born, maybe.
Dunno. I was born in London. So what?
Take holidays, extended stays, live a year, don’t fucking stay.
Scotland full (of nimbe english racist bolt-hole).
Too late.
america’s yard, sorry, nimby
The odd good song. Like “Since I” and the odd flat earth entertaining theory (though implausible). Other than that not much imho .Maybe try a little harder?
He married a German.
And what difference what patch of the planet you decide to inhabit?
They all strut in their suits.
Their uniforms of deformity.
They are deformed by authority and greed.
They cannot be questioned, doubted or mocked.
They ARE the law.
We are the Useless Eaters.
The Untermensch.
Great speech CJ.
Perhaps. Except that ‘they’ only exist in the imagination
But then who’s to spoil things,,,
OT but WW3 may have begun
https://files.catbox.moe/asdnp1.mp4
https://files.catbox.moe/5vhw5w.webm
Imran Ahmed of the Center for Countering Digital Hate will be enjoying this and doubling down on any more perfectly free online speech that his twisted little mind can grab hold of and misconstrue as ‘hate’.
The fact that he furiously accuses his own readers of antisemitism has drained me of personal sympathy for him. Maybe they will deport him to Beirut or Tehran.
really this case I guess you could say at root is about Trademark Infringement
the German state still owns the rights to all those Nazi symbols that cost so much propaganda effort to turn into a potent brand recognizable around the world!
who do you think you are, puny blogger, to appropriate that patrimony of mighty memes for your own irksome projects?
the legitimate successors of the Third Reich in their reconstituted Berlin ministries are the only ones who get to deploy swastikas, brownshirt references and the like in the media to tarnish the image of those who THEY deem undesirable neo-fascists, directly through government-controlled TV, radio and websites, or via tacit licensing agreements with trusted mainstream publications à la Spiegel or Stern
I’d leave the country as soon as I could.
OT
“I guess you guys aren’t ready for that yet, but your kids are going to love it”
My Marty Mc Fly moment.
We went to a dinner party with a couple we recently met.
admittedly a little refreshed, I launched into the whole thing.
JFK, Moon landing,, 9/11, Covid, WEF, BIS; NATO, UN. THE LOT !!
The reaction ? 5.30 on the YT vid.
Very eloquent, very disturbing situation in most countries, worse when you are in the sights of the autocrats. What might I do in this situation? Probably try to get out of there by any means. Maybe to a Slavic country. I might feel like I’ve done my duty and not much else to do. Not likely to find a lot of friends in a place like that.
Slightly OT:
The cedars of Lebanon supplied suitable timber for the previous Temple of Jerusalem (courtesy of Solomon, with suitable trade deals, I believe).
The modern Israeli conquests (and proposed conquests of Lebanon) may be to provide for a final Temple construction. Iran being a distraction from the ultimate goal?
Who needs Iran anyway??!
not sure why you got the down votes. It seems apparent the rebuilding of the Temple plays a significant part in things playing out right now
Vagabard got the downvotes for Hate Speech:
“Who needs Iran anyway??!“
80 Million Iranians need Iran but Israel would like to give Iran the Gaza treatment and the Lebanon treatment: genocide of innocent women and children by means of U$ planes dropping U$ bombs.
ps According to Robert Graves (“The White Goddess”) Hiram of Tyre (who supplied the cedars of Lebanon) was King Solomon’s Son-in-Law. How relations have deteriorated since those good old days.
And the dates are better than the Pakistani.
We’re all guilty. Pay the fine, do the time. Pour the burning coals of righteousness upon the accusers (as a wise Man once said).
But by no means fight it; that’s a fool’s game (consuming time and resources). Turn the other cheek to the morally inferior. Let them do their worst.
And then live on to fight a more worthy battle another day…
No worries. Positive responses are clearly limited to that is deemed profitable…
The German judiciary is just doing what they are told. Like all countries swimming in unpayable debt and surviving employing bankruptcy law which allows these governments to continue in business as long as everyone obeys the bankers’ rule that is: We are all slaves with no rights or freedoms. Everything we own is illusionary as all money is debt and therefore owed to these criminal money creators from fresh air arseholes.
Hitler was shoehorned into his position by the same crooks that promised Starmer, Boris, Clinton, Bush, and every leader everywhere the golden mantle. Every leader everywhere is pro-Zion. You get nowhere unless that’s your mantra. Labour and Conservative friends of Israel? How many are friends of Zimbabwe? none because Zimbabwe doesn’t control the purse strings.
How many, for that matter, are even friends of Britain? 😢
If the head of government could go along with the blowing up of Nord Stream pipeline, anything else is not too far-fetched.
I always used to wonder why virtually all countries have a mortgage restricting the choices they were able to make.
Then I realised it is to restrict the choices they were able to make.
As a German, your comparison is exactly what immediately came to my mind. In my diary, I wrote after the first weeks of ‚Covid‘: „Deutschland unter‘m Coronakreuz“… alluding to „… unter‘m Hakenkreuz“.
This decision doesn‘t go unchallenged. For your convenience, here are excerpts from a statement made by a German judge. She considers the war on dissent precisely a totalitarian move, what, if not that (JCH‘s post) must be protected by freedom of opinion and art?
“Auszüge: „Mit dieser Entscheidung entfernt sich die deutsche Justiz einmal mehr von den Grundsätzen einer freiheitlichen Demokratie, die von dem Austausch widerstreitender Überzeugungen und Meinungen sowie der Kritik an Regierungshandeln lebt.“
„Auf die Urteilsbegründung des Gerichts, derartige Posts seien weder von der Meinungsfreiheit noch von der Kunstfreiheit gedeckt, ist zu erwidern, was, wenn nicht das, ist dann noch Meinungs- bzw. Kunstfreiheit?“
„In Urteilen wie diesen zeigt sich eine sehr bedenkliche Tendenz deutscher Gerichte, Menschen, die autoritäres Regierungshandeln kritisieren und vor einem Aufleben faschistischer Strukturen warnen, wie CJ Hopkins, Professor Rudolph Bauer u.a. eine „Verharmlosung des Nationalsozialismus“ zu unterstellen, um an ihnen ein Exempel zu statuieren und Kritiker mundtot zu machen.“
an off-the-top-of-my-head translation:
Excerpts: This decision moves the German justice system ever farther away from the principles of a free democracy, which thrives on the exchange of contrasting opinions and convictions and on criticism of the actions of the government.
The justification for the decision, based on the assertion that the posts come neither under the scope of freedom of speech, nor freedom of artistic expression, begs the question: what meaning then do these freedoms still have?
In verdicts like this, one sees a very questionable tendency of German courts, namely, their tendency to ascribe to critics of authoritarian government policies, like C J Hopkins or Professor Rudolph Bauer, the intention of “downplaying the evils of National Socialism”, to make an example of them and thereby intimidate and silence other critics
Es geht in die hose vollige unter !
Do you still have your passport ?
Therein lies the solution.
Correct, if you don’t like a place why insist on staying there ? There is nothing to demonstrate, maybe you are right or maybe the German law is difficult to grasp. If it’s only to have something to write about then it is not worth.
The problem is political relocation used to be fairly clear cut.
How do you flee from globalism ?
Can you fight it ?
Yes. But not on your own.
Bit of a fix.
But there are still places where life is less under total surveillance and where people are laissez faire, where one could just live and let live.
If you have a family, you will understand the problem.
Exactly. Back during the Cold War, you could flee to the West — assuming you were able to escape the Soviet Union. But now where do you go? We live under a globalist Supreme Soviet anymore. 😰
People from the West, especially religiously conservative ones, are fleeing to Russia.
His Zionist wife has a business in Berlin. He can’t leave.
Great solution.
He could use his jewish status and head back home to that part of the world
and he is very lucky to get the media coverage he has got as many people during covid fined or whatever did not get the media coverage or financial support to help with legal fees.
They will small fine him.
Germany’s in a bit of a weird state these days., It says its democratic, promotes free speech and so on but its actions seem to contradict this. Two recent incidents highlight this. One is the arrest and prosecution of a couple of people for rebroadcasting Russian TV channels via an IPTV service in violation of a blanket ban on any and all Russian media. (What are they so afraid of?) The other is that everyone’s getting the vapors over AfD’s showing in recent elections. We’re not getting any information about what their platform is or why people are supporting them (my guess is a protest vote), just the absolute need to deny them any participation in government regardless of how strong their showing.
Each incident — prosecuting someone over a book cover, prosecuting someone for sending out information to willing subscribers that is officially verboten, denying people a voice even if their politics is not something that’s liked — is like a pebble on a beach. Individually, they’re of small significance. Taken together they make a noticeable, and rather ominous, pile.
Germany was destroyed in ’45, just a vassal remains. The same forces are causing the Fall of England.
Only England or the UK? England is only a part of the whole.
Other than a few “pockets of resistance” (aka, “The Axis of Evil”), there IS ONLY ONE GOVERNMENT: the owners of the central banks (you know, the ones whose names may not be spoken).
I can’t recall the event(s) or article that prompted this 2017 comment, but this news induced a feeling of déjà vu that reminded me of it. The original read “a US judge”, but it’s manifestly applicable to all Western nations that have enthusiastically adopted the “rule of lawfare”:
_________________________________
Occasionally a judge will courageously do the right thing, and issue a ruling that defies some unduly oppressive or manifestly corrupt law imposed by the colluding Executive and Legislative branches of government.
Appeals courts exist, in part, to rectify any such inappropriate and unseemly outbreaks of justice in the lower authority.
_________________________________
Sometimes being validated is no fun at all. 😡 ⚖️
It hardly matters. If you have the contacts, the prosecution does not take off, or ends in its tracks. Otherwise, wealth will get through all the hoops and loopholes.