In the final stretch of the last federal election campaign, a small right-wing party caused a scandal: “The Third Way” had started an action, “Hang the Greens” was to be read on the new posters. After some legal back and forth, these posters were finally banned because they represented a public incitement to commit crimes. A man from the southern district had received mail from the district court precisely because of this fact. In it a penalty order for 80 daily rates of 15 euros each. The trigger for this was not a post, but a post that the 40-year-old posted on his Facebook page and there was the III poster in question. way to see.
However, the man saw himself wrongly accused of inciting criminal offenses and lodged an appeal against the penalty order. His appearance in court was not entirely uncomplicated. Because the 40-year-old is one of the spokesmen for the movement against the corona measures in the district, and as such he refuses to wear a mask, for example. Which is why he had to wait outside the door until the start of the trial, after which access to the courtroom was cleared until the accused had reached it. In the hall itself there is no obligation to wear a mask.
The accused sees himself being persecuted by the left
The defendant now also suspected his involvement in this matter behind the report that had brought him the penalty order. He is perceived as a “critic of measures”, which is synonymous with right-wing extremists from people from the “left-wing extremist spectrum” – the complaint was made by a person who is involved in the “Buntstatt Braun” alliance. He himself, the defendant continued, condemns every kind of extremism, whether from the right or left. That’s why he posted a poster for the satirical party “Die Party” that read “Kill Nazis.” With the post he only wanted to show “how insane the colorful party landscape is”. In the meantime he has deleted the photos of both posters, also because many of his 23 Facebook friends found the post too misleading.
In any case, according to the defendant, the criminal liability of the poster had long been disputed. It hung all over the country, and the judiciary judged it very differently. What the 40-year-old is not wrong about, in fact, the poster was only banned by the District Court of Munich I by means of an injunction five days after the accused had posted his post. Another two days later, the Higher Administrative Court in Bautzen classified the posters as incitement of the people and the Federal Constitutional Court ruled that the Facebook group had to blame the appearance of the III. path where the slogan was also visible. Only: On the day that the accused put the poster on his Facebook page, there was a different court decision. The administrative court in Chemnitz had allowed the Nazi party to hang up the posters under certain conditions.
The accused is no stranger to provocation
Another court decision from the summer of last year shows that the accused at least likes to provoke. At that time he was sentenced to a total of 8,100 euros for incitement to hatred, but he appealed, so that there is currently no final judgment. At the time, the 40-year-old had hung up facsimiles of signs from the 1930s in several shops in the southern district, with which pro-Nazi shopkeepers at the time refused Jews access to their shops. Exactly the same thing is happening today with people who didn’t want to wear masks – or couldn’t, like himself. He was said to be exempt from it with a certificate. At that time, too, the accused argued that he was against all extremism, whether from the right or left – but was represented by a lawyer who was very active in the right-wing scene.
This time he defended himself – the result was no different than last time: the court sentenced the accused to a fine of 120 daily rates of 15 euros each for publicly inciting criminal offenses. The poster has been such since the decision of the Munich district court at the latest. The court held that the fact that the accused only wanted to critically examine political slogans was not credible. Because he put the poster on his side without comment, so that the impression had to arise that he made the statement his own. The verdict is not yet legally binding.