A legislator with the far-right Alternative for Germany party was arrested on Monday on charges including displaying forbidden totalitarian symbols, with neighbours of his fraternity complaining of often hearing the Nazi "Sieg Heil" victory salute.
Much of this is semantics but if you look at the legal texts Germany doesn’t have free speech (freie Rede) but freedom of opinion (Meinungsfreiheit). There’s a lot of restrictions that don’t exist under usual free speech legislations (insult, incitement, etc), but also protections that don’t exist elsewhere, like true statement of fact being a water-tight defence against accusations of libel.
Much of this is semantics but if you look at the legal texts Germany doesn’t have free speech (freie Rede) but freedom of opinion (Meinungsfreiheit). There’s a lot of restrictions that don’t exist under usual free speech legislations (insult, incitement, etc), but also protections that don’t exist elsewhere, like true statement of fact being a water-tight defence against accusations of libel.