Fighting Hate with Speech Law: Media and German Visions of Democracy

ABSTRACT

In Germany, far-right groups have revived Nazi terminology like Lügenpresse (lying press) or Systempresse (system press) to decry the media today. German politicians, journalists, and the public have turned to numerous methods to try to combat the reinsertion of Nazi language into everyday German life. One key method is the law. Prior to the 2017 German election, the German parliament swiftly passed the Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz (Network Enforcement Law, NetzDG for short). While English-language press has often called this act a hate speech law, it actually enforces 22 statutes of extant German speech law online. Spearheaded by the SPD-led Justice Ministry, NetzDG represented the most public effort by the German government to push back against the AfD, the far right, and the rise of hate speech in Germany. NetzDG attracted huge global attention as the first major law to fine American-based social media companies for not adhering to national statutes. This article examines why German politicians turned to law as a way to combat the rise of the far right. I explore how NetzDG represented German political understandings of the relationship between freedom of expression and democracy and argue that NetzDG followed a longer historical pattern of German attempts to use media law to raise Germany's profile on the international stage. The article examines the irony that NetzDG was meant to defend democracy in Germany, but may have unintentionally undermined it elsewhere, as authoritarian regimes like Russia seized upon the law to justify their own curtailments of free expression. Finally, I explain the difficulties of measuring whether NetzDG has achieved its goals and showcase a few other approaches to the problems of information in democracies.

KEYWORDS:

• Hate speech
• Germany
• NetzDG
• platform governance
• democracy
• alt-right

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 On the resurgence of the term, see Volker Lilienthal and Irene Neverla, (eds.), Lügenpresse. Anatomie eines politischen Kampfbegriffs (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2017).

2 Britta Schellenberg, “‘Lügenpresse’?,” in W. Frindte, D. Geschke, N. Haußecker, and N. Schmidtke, (eds.), Rechtsextremismus und “Nationalsozialistischer Untergrund” (Wiesbaden: Springer VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2016), p. 309.

3 On the AfD and media, see Bernd Gäbler, AfD und Medien. Analyse und Handreichungen. Ein Diskussionsbeitrag der Otto Brenner Stiftung (Frankfurt am Main: Otto Brenner Stiftung, 2017). On the AfD in parliaments up to the federal election of 2017, see Benno Hafeneger, Hannah Jestädt, Lisa-Marie Klose, and Philine Lewek, AfD in Parlamenten. Themen, Strategien, Akteure (Frankfurt am Main: Wochenshau Verlag, 2018).

4 See, for example, Article 19, “Germany: The Act to Improve Enforcement of the Law in Social Networks,” August 2017, accessed 21 May 2020, https://www.article19.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/170901-Legal-Analysis-German-NetzDG-Act.pdf. For an overview of think tank reports, see Heidi Tworek and Paddy Leerssen, “An Analysis of Germany’s NetzDG Law,” 15 April 2019, accessed 21 May 2020, https://www.ivir.nl/publicaties/download/NetzDG_Tworek_Leerssen_April_2019.pdf, pp. 2–4.

5 The working group included politicians, senior company officials, leaders from NGOs, and academics from both sides of the Atlantic. For the working group’s members, see https://www.ivir.nl/twg/leadership_and_members/; for the group’s working papers, see https://www.ivir.nl/twg/publications-transatlantic-working-group/.

6 William Erickson and Olivia Knodt, “Germany’s NetzDG: A Key Test for Combatting Online Hate,” CEPS Policy Insight (November 2018), accessed 21 May 2020, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3300636.

7 Amélie Heidt, “Reading between the Lines and the Numbers: An Analysis of the First NetzDG Reports,” Internet Policy Review, vol. 8, no. 2 (2019), https://policyreview.info/articles/analysis/reading-between-lines-and-numbers-analysis-first-netzdg-reports; Wolfgang Schulz, “Regulating Intermediaries to Protect Privacy Online – The Case of the German NetzDG,” in Marion Albers and Ingo Sarlet, (eds.), Personality and Data Protection Rights on the Internet (forthcoming), preprint available: https://www.hiig.de/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/SSRN-id3216572.pdf; R. Zipursky, “Nuts about Netz: The Network Enforcement Act and Freedom of Expression,” Fordham International Law Journal, vol. 42, no. 4 (2019): pp. 1352–1374. For a short scholarly review, see Danya He, “Governing Hate Content Online: How the Rechtsstaat Shaped the Policy Discourse on the NetzDG in Germany,” International Journal of Communication, vol. 14 (2020): pp. 3746–3747.

8 Thomas Wischmeyer, “‘What is Illegal Offline is Also Illegal Online’ – The German Network Enforcement Act 2017,” in Bilyana Petkova and Tuomas Ojanen, (eds.), Fundamental Rights Protection Online: The Future Regulation of Intermediaries (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2020), pp. 28–56.

9 Stefanie Ullmann and Marcus Tomalin, “Quarantining Online Hate Speech: Technical and Ethical Perspectives,” Ethics and Information Technology, 14 October 2019, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-019-09516-z.

10 “Bundeskriminalamt: Anschläge auf Asylunterkünfte haben sich 2015 vervierfacht,” Der Spiegel, 9 December 2015, https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/bundeskriminalamt-anschlaege-auf-asylunterkuenfte-haben-sich-2015-vervierfacht-a-1066932.html.

11 Daniel Leisegang, “No Freedom to Hate: Germany’s New Law against Online Incitement,” Eurozine, 29 September 2017, accessed 21 May 2020, https://www.eurozine.com/no-freedom-to-hate-germanys-new-law-on-online-incitement/.

12 “Abschlussbericht Bundesprogramm Demokratie leben! Erste Förderperiode (2015 bis 2019),” Bundesministerium für Familie, Senioren, Frauen und Jugend, 19, 5 January 2021, https://www.demokratie-leben.de/fileadmin/Demokratie-Leben/Downloads_Dokumente/Abschlussbericht_Erste_Foerderperiode_2015_-_2019/Abschlussbericht_Demokratie_leben_2015_-_2019.pdf. On the far longer history of the NSU, see Daniel Koehler, Right-Wing Terrorism in the 21st Century: The National Socialist Underground and the History of Terror from the Far Right in Germany (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017).

13 “Über ‘Demokratie leben!’,” accessed 5 January 2021, https://www.demokratie-leben.de/das-programm/ueber-demokratie-leben.

14 “Abschlussbericht Bundesprogramm Demokratie leben! Erste Förderperiode (2015 bis 2019),” p. 2.

15 Bundesministerium der Justiz und für Verbraucherschutz, “Gesetzentwurf der Bundesregierung. Entwurf eines Gesetzes zur Verbesserung der Rechtsdurchsetzung in sozialen Netzwerken (Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz - NetzDG)” (2017), 1, accessed 21 May 2020, https://www.bmjv.de/SharedDocs/Gesetzgebungsverfahren/Dokumente/RegE_NetzDG.pdf;jsessionid=68356F339C331BFF360D5638AF5D4A6F.1_cid297?__blob=publicationFile&v=2.

16 “Stellungnahme von Rechtsanwalt Chan-jo Jun zur Einstellung des Verfahrens gegen Facebook durch die Staatsanwaltschaft Hamburg,” 8 April 2016, accessed 27 May 2020, https://www.junit.de/images/Presse/Stellungnahme_Jun_zur_Einstellung_gegen_Facebook_durch_StA_Hamburg.pdf.

17 Kristen Chick and Sara Miller Llana, “Is Germany’s Bold New Law a Way to Clean up the Internet or is it Stifling Free Expression?,” Christian Science Monitor, 8 April 2018, accessed 27 May 2020, https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2018/0408/Is-Germany-s-bold-new-law-a-way-to-clean-up-the-internet-or-is-it-stifling-free-expression.

18 “Themenpapier: Löschung rechtswidriger Hassbeiträge bei Facebook, YouTube und Twitter,” Jugendschutz.net, 2017, accessed 21 May 2020, http://www.jugendschutz.net/fileadmin/download/pdf/17-06_Ergebnisse_Monitoring_Beschwerdemechanismen_Hassbeitraege_jugendschutz.net.pdf.

19 Jeff Kosseff, The Twenty-Six Words That Created the Internet (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2019).

20 For a comparison of European and American intermediary liability regimes, see Joris van Hoboken and Daphne Keller, “Design Principles for Intermediary Liability Law,” 8 October 2019, accessed 27 May 2020, https://www.ivir.nl/publicaties/download/Intermediary_liability_Oct_2019.pdf.

21 For the full law as well as regulatory fining guidelines, see https://www.bmjv.de/DE/Themen/FokusThemen/NetzDG/NetzDG_node.html. As foreseen in the original law, NetzDG was reviewed after two years and updates were tabled in April 2020. The discussion has stalled given the COVID-19 pandemic. For a summary of the suggested changes, see “Gesetzentwurf zur Änderung des Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetzes,” April 2020, accessed 28 May 2020, https://www.bmjv.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/DE/News/PM/040120_Zusammenfassung_NetzDG.pdf?__blob=publicationFile&v=5.

22 For news reporting calling NetzDG a “hate speech law,” see, for example, “Germany Starts Enforcing Hate Speech Law,” BBC News, 1 January 2018, accessed 20 May 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-42510868.

23 Athena Lam, “87% of Germans Approve of Social Media Regulation Law,” Dalia Research, 17 April 2018, accessed 27 May 2020, https://daliaresearch.com/blog/blog-germans-approve-of-social-media-regulation-law/.

24 “Declaration on Freedom of Expression in Response to the Adoption of the Network Enforcement Law (Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz) by the Federal Cabinet on 5 April 2017,” accessed 21 May 2020, http://deklaration-fuer-meinungsfreiheit.de/en/. A wide range of groups have published papers or critiqued NetzDG within Germany, such as Netzpolitik and Digitale Gesellschaft, as well as internationally such as the Center for Democracy and Technology, Access Now, Article 19, and European Digital Rights (EDRi), Reporters Without Borders, and Human Rights Watch.

25 Letter from David Kaye, Reference OL DEU 1/2017, June 2017, accessed 21 May 2020, https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Opinion/Legislation/OL-DEU-1-2017.pdf.

26 Tworek and Leerssen, “NetzDG.”

27 Article 19, “Germany: The Act to Improve Enforcement of the Law in Social Networks,” August 2017, accessed 27 May 2020, https://www.article19.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/170901-Legal-Analysis-German-NetzDG-Act.pdf, p. 2.

28 Joelle Fiss and Jacob Mchangama, “Germany’s Online Crackdowns Inspire the World’s Dictators,” Foreign Policy, 6 November 2019, https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/11/06/germany-online-crackdowns-inspired-the-worlds-dictators-russia-venezuela-india/.

29 Götz Hamann, “Der Storch-Effekt,” ZEIT Online, 9 January 2018, accessed 27 May 2020, https://www.zeit.de/digital/2018-01/netzdg-meinungsfreiheit-internet-soziale-medien-debatte.

30 “Bundesamt für Justiz erlässt Bußgeldbescheid gegen Facebook,” 3 July 2019, accessed 27 May 2020, https://www.bundesjustizamt.de/DE/Presse/Archiv/2019/20190702.html.

31 For the draft law, see “Entwurf eines Gesetzes zur Bekämpfung des Rechtsextremismus und der Hasskriminalität,” 10 March 2020, accessed 7 July 2020, https://dip21.bundestag.de/dip21/btd/19/177/1917741.pdf.

32 Erickson and Knodt, “Germany’s NetzDG: A Key Test for Combatting Online Hate.”

33 “Maas verteidigt Gesetz gegen Hass im Internet,” Der Spiegel, 4 January 2018, accessed 27 May 2020, https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/netzdg-heiko-maas-verteidigt-netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz-gegen-kritik-a-1186118.html.

34 Ann Goldberg, “Hate Speech and Identity Politics in Germany, 1848–1914,” Central European History, vol. 48, no. 4 (2015): pp. 480–497.

35 Kara Ritzheimer, “Trash,” Censorship and National Identity in Early Twentieth-Century Germany (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016); Gary Stark, Banned in Berlin: Literary Censorship in Imperial Germany, 1871–1918 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2009).

36 Gideon Reuveni, Reading Germany: Literature and Consumer Culture in Germany Before 1933 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2006).

37 Laurie Marhoefer, “‘The Book Was a Revelation, I Recognized Myself in It’: Lesbian Sexuality, Censorship, and the Queer Press in Weimar-Era Germany,” Journal of Women’s History, vol. 27, no. 2 (2015): pp. 62–86.

38 Christopher Hilliard, “‘Is It a Book That You Would Even Wish Your Wife or Servants to Read?’ Obscenity Law and the Politics of Reading in Modern England,” American Historical Review, vol. 118, no. 3 (2013): pp. 653–678.

39 Udi Greenberg, The Weimar Century: German Émigrés and the Ideological Foundations of the Cold War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), p. 204.

40 For a historiography on far-right extremism in West Germany, see Clemens Gussone, Reden über Rechtsradikalismus. Nicht-staatliche Perspektiven zwischen Sicherheit und Freiheit (1951–1989) (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2019), pp. 10–11.

41 Josef Foschepoth, Überwachtes Deutschland: Post- und Telefonüberwachung in der alten Bundesrepublik (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Rupecht, 2012).

42 “Die Meinungsfreiheit hat auch Grenzen,” Medienpolitik.net, 9 January 2017, accessed 27 May 2020, https://www.medienpolitik.net/2017/01/medienpolitik-die-meinungsfreiheit-hat-auch-grenzen/.

43 He, “Governing Hate Content Online.”

44 Hoi-eun Kim, Doctors of Empire; Medical and Cultural Encounters between Imperial Germany and Meiji Japan (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014). On how German colonial knowledge circulated globally, see Sebastian Conrad, “Rethinking German Colonialism in a Global Age,” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, vol. 41, no. 4 (2013): pp. 543–566.

45 Paul-Christian Schenck, Der deutsche Anteil an der Gestaltung des modernen japanischen Rechts- und Verfassungswesens: deutsche Rechtsberater im Japan der Meiji-Zeit (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1997), p. 15. On Karl Rathgen, see Erik Grimmer-Solem, Learning Empire: Globalization and the German Quest for World Status, 1875–1919 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019), ch. 2.

46 Ando Junko, Die Entstehung der Meiji-Verfassung: Zur Rolle des deutschen Konstitutionalismus im modernen japanischen Staatswesen (Munich: IUDICIUM Verlag, 2000).

47 Heidi J. S. Tworek, “Journalistic Statesmanship: Protecting the Press in Weimar Germany and Abroad,” German History, vol. 32, no. 4 (2014): pp. 559–578.

48 Heidi J. S. Tworek and Christopher Buschow, “Changing the Rules of the Game: Strategic Institutionalization and Legacy Companies’ Resistance to New Media,” International Journal of Communication, vol. 10 (2016): pp. 2129–2139, http://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/5179.

49 Heidi J. S. Tworek, “The European Union Clashes with Google over Copyright,” German Marshall Fund Transatlantic Take, 11 October 2016, accessed 27 May 2020, https://www.gmfus.org/blog/2016/10/11/european-union-clashes-google-over-copyright.

50 John Follain and Helene Fouquet, “France’s Macron Says He’ll Stop Fake News Hurting His Campaign,” Bloomberg, 4 May 2017, accessed 27 May 2020, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-05-04/france-s-macron-says-he-ll-stop-fake-news-hurting-his-campaign.

51 The initiative was known as “Das NETTZ – Vernetzungsstelle gegen Hate Speech” and will be supported until 2023. “Abschlussbericht Bundesprogramm Demokratie leben! Erste Förderperiode (2015 bis 2019),” pp. 72–73.

52 Human Rights Watch, “Germany: Flawed Social Media Law,” 14 February 2018, accessed 20 May 2020, https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/02/14/germany-flawed-social-media-law.

53 Jacob Mchangama and Joelle Fiss, “Analysis: The Digital Berlin Wall: How Germany (Accidentally) Created a Prototype for Global Online Censorship,” Justitia - Danmarks Første Uafhængige Juridiske Tænketank, 5 November 2019, accessed 22 May 2020, http://justitia-int.org/en/the-digital-berlin-wall-how-germany-created-a-prototype-for-global-online-censorship/.

54 Ibid., p. 8.

55 Human Rights Watch, “Germany: Flawed Social Media Law.”

56 Maria Vasilyeva and Tom Balmforth, “Russia’s Parliament Backs New Fines for Insulting the State Online,” Reuters, 13 March 2019, accessed 22 May 2020, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-politics-fakenews/russias-parliament-backs-new-fines-for-insulting-the-state-online-idUSKBN1QU1UN.

57 Fiss and Mchangama, “Germany’s Online Crackdowns Inspire the World’s Dictators.”

58 Ibid.

59 Discussions at Santa Monica meeting of Transatlantic High-Level Working Group on Content Moderation Online and Freedom of Expression (May 2019). The discussions occurred under Chatham House rules.

60 Simon Chandler, “French Social Media Law is Another Coronavirus Blow to Freedom of Speech,” Forbes, 14 May 2020, accessed 25 May 2020, https://www.forbes.com/sites/simonchandler/2020/05/14/french-social-media-law-is-another-coronavirus-blow-to-freedom-of-speech/#19efbd29703c.

61 Anne Quito, “Taiwan is Using Humor as a Tool against Coronavirus Hoaxes,” Quartz, 5 June 2020, accessed 16 January 2021, https://qz.com/1863931/?utm_term=mucp.

62 “Public Statement from the Co-Chairs and European Advisory Committee of Social Science One,” 11 December 2019, accessed 16 January 2021, https://socialscience.one/blog/public-statement-european-advisory-committee-social-science-one

63 Irene V. Pasquetto et al., “Tackling Misinformation: What Researchers Could Do with Social Media Data,” Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review (2020), https://doi.org/10.37016/mr-2020-49.

64 Nicholas A. John, “Social Media Bullshit: What We Don’t Know about facebook.com/peace and Why We Should Care,” Social Media + Society (2019), doi/10.1177/2056305119829863.

65 For a literature review reaching that conclusion, see Özen Odag, Anne Leiser, and Klaus Boehnke, “Reviewing the Role of the Internet in Radicalization Processes,” Journal for Deradicalization, vol. 21 (2019): pp. 261–300.

66 See, for example, Britta Schellenberg, Die Rechtsextremismus-Debatte: Charakteristika, Konflikte und ihre Folgen, 2nd ed. (Wiesbaden: VS Springer für Sozialwissenschaften, 2014).

67 Anna Clauß, Birger Menke, Conny Neumann, and Jean-Pierre Ziegler, „Staatsleugner als Staatsdiener,“ Spiegel.de, 21 October 2016, accessed 25 May 2020, https://www.spiegel.de/panorama/justiz/reichsbuerger-wo-staatsleugner-als-polizisten-arbeiten-a-1117747.html.

68 Michael Pal, “Evaluating Bill C-76: The Elections Modernization Act,” Journal of Parliamentary and Political Law (2019), https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3572737.

69 On the possibilities of campaign finance reform for democracy, such as limiting private donations to political campaigns, see Julia Cagé, The Price of Democracy: How Money Shapes Politics and What to Do about It, trans. Patrick Camiller (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2020).

70 Michael Lausberg, Die extreme Rechte in Ostdeutschland, 1990–1998 (Magdeburg: Tectum Verlag, 2012).

71 Britta Schellenberg, Mügeln. Die Entwicklung rassistischer Hegemonien und die Ausbreitung der Neonazis (Dresden: Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung Sachsen, 2014), https://www.boell.de/sites/default/files/muegeln_download.pdf.

72 “Appendix C: Regulatory Impact Assessment – Countering Violent Extremism Online – Changes to Censorship Legislation to Better Protect New Zealanders from Online Harm,” 2020, accessed 28 May 2020, https://www.dia.govt.nz/diawebsite.nsf/Files/Proactive-releases/$file/regulatory-impact-assessment-countering-violent-extremism-online.pdf, p. 12.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Heidi J. S. Tworek

Dr. Heidi Tworek is Associate Professor of History and Public Policy at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. Her book, News from Germany: The Competition to Control World Communications, 1900–1945 (Harvard University Press, 2019), has received the Wiener Holocaust Library Fraenkel Prize and the Ralph Gomory Prize from the Business History Conference and Alfred P. Sloan Foundation as well as an honorable mention from the Council for European Studies book award. She has co-edited two volumes: Exorbitant Expectations: International Organizations and the Media in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Routledge, 2018) and The Routledge Companion to the Makers of Global Business (Routledge, 2019). Tworek has published, or has forthcoming, over 30 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters on the history of communications, international history, and media policy in journals such as American Historical Review, Journal of Policy History, Central European History, and Journalism: Theory, Criticism, Practice. Alongside her academic work, Tworek has written multiple policy reports on European and North American media and communications. She is a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation as well as a non-resident fellow of the German Marshall Fund of the United States and the Canadian Global Affairs Institute.