Since taking power on January 20, the Trump administration has engaged in an all-out assault on First Amendment rights and due process. It is attacking judges in the U.S. that have issued rulings that cite serious constitutional concerns. It has embarked on a sweeping campaign to force colleges and universities to hand over private records of students who have protested the U.S.-facilitated Israeli war against the Palestinians of Gaza. It announced a sweeping program to deport students because of their activism—including those with legal permanent residency, or green cards, as in the case of Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil.
The position of this administration is that the First Amendment does not really apply to criticism of Israel or of Zionism. Trump’s administration is trying to circumvent the Constitution and to criminalize clearly protected speech in the service of a genocidal government whose weapons and political support overwhelmingly come from the U.S.
The tactics employed by the Trump administration are firmly in line with a longstanding German policy of putting support for Israel, no matter how heinous its crimes, above the basic free speech rights of its citizens. In a wide-ranging discussion, Alexander Gorski, a Berlin-based criminal defense and migration lawyer, lays out how Germany has weaponized the concept of anti-semitism to stifle dissent and to suppress speech.
Since October 7 and the launch of the war against Gaza, Germany has targeted residents for deportation and has ignited a campaign of fear among particularly Arab and Muslim residents of Germany. Many German media outlets have joined this frenzy, running tabloid headlines accusing Arab activists of being Hamas propagandists or operatives. More recently Germany has begun trying to deport activists with EU citizenship, people who have a clearly defined right to live in Germany. Among these are citizens of Ireland and Poland. They are also trying to deport a U.S. citizen for participating in protests against Israel’s war. Gorski is one of the lead lawyers representing these activists and many other residents of Germany being targeted for their activism opposing Israel’s war.
German police have issued criminal citations to thousands of people for speech crimes. German cultural institutions have canceled speeches of artists and others who have opposed Israel’s war. Conferences featuring Palestinian speakers have been raided and shut down. Prominent figures have been barred from entering Germany because of their political views. In Berlin alone, there have been nearly 6,000 so-called crimes registered that relate to wars in the Middle East with an estimated 90% of them classified as anti-Israel. More than 1200 of these relate to speech or signs held by demonstrators. The Berlin police say they are investigating more than 3,000 people for pro-Palestine related actions. At times, German authorities have banned chanting in Arabic at protests and have told demonstrators they may only use German or English.
At the heart of Germany’s policies is a doctrine referred to as Staatsräson, or Reason of State. In Germany it is official policy that the defense of the Israeli state is a non-negotiable principle of the nation. In some areas of Germany, the government is asking applicants for citizenship if they support the right of the state of Israel to exist and answering in the negative could be grounds for denial. And Germany has spent the past 17 months shipping arms to Israel for its genocidal war, while offering political and legal defense for Israeli war crimes, including the targeting of hospitals.
While the Trump administration has railed against Europe’s speech laws, it is actually in the process of adopting and implementing aspects of Germany’s extremist stance. The U.S. has long had its own bipartisan policy of unquestioning support for Israel no matter the gravity of the crimes; Democrats, too, have supported and implemented efforts to conflate anti-Israel speech with anti-semitism. But now this White House is putting it all out in the open and is implementing a sweeping regime of assaults on basic American liberties to do so. It is a two-way street—both Germany and the US have fed off each other’s militant dedication to Israel and to portray criticism of its actions as antisemitism. There is no clearer example of this nation-state level obsession with excusing the crimes of a government than the dedication of Germany and the U.S. to Israel.
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