We here republish CJ Hopkin’s latest blog updating readers on the course of his prosecution by the Berlin state for allegedly “disseminating propaganda, the contents of which are intended to further the aims of a former National Socialist organization.”Details on how you can donate to CJ’s legal costs here.
As a quick introduction, for readers who are not already aware, in June this year CJ Hopkins received a letter informing him the Berlin state prosecutor had launched a criminal investigation of him for tweeting the image of a cover of his book ‘The Rise of the New Normal Reich,’ which featured a swastika. Swastikas are banned in Germany if they are used to promote Nazism, fascism, neo-Nazi organizations, etc. However, they are allowed to be displayed for the purposes of “civic education, countering anti-constitutional activities, art and science, research and education, coverage of historic and current events,” and similar purposes. Obvious to Hopkins (and any objective onlooker) -given that the body of his writings represents a robust critique against repeating the horrors of Nazism- is that these charges are a pretext, in order to make an example of his outspoken dissidence to present day totalitarian trends. The prospect of facing similar state prosecution is likely to chill the speech of other authors, public figures, and members of the German public, who take issue with any aspect of the hyper-authoritarian measures introduced since the media announcement of a global Covid-19 pandemic.
In his latest blog, CJ Hopkins rails against the Kafkaesque nature of the trial he faces, and poses the question of how we should respond to such intimidation and suppression tactics.
So, the Germans are putting me on trial for my thoughtcrimes, and, apparently, I’ve already been found guilty and sentenced. Bear with me and I’ll try to explain.
The Berlin District Court has issued a so-called “penalty order” or “order of punishment,” in which I am advised that I am now officially a criminal in Germany, for tweeting two Tweets. According to my attorney, a trial will now be scheduled, at which my attorney will argue the case before the judge that just issued the “order of punishment.” At this trial, the judge will listen attentively to the arguments my attorney has already made in writing, consider them carefully, and find me guilty, again. Then the judge will reaffirm the “order of punishment.”
Go ahead, read that paragraph again.
After my Kafkaesque trial has concluded, my attorney will file a series of appeals, which will fail, at which point I will have to decide whether to pay a fine of 3,600 Euros or go to German prison for 60 days.
This process will take months, if not years, and will cost me God knows how much money in attorney’s fees, court costs, and then the €3,600 fine. Yes, I’m going to pay the fine. I am not going to German prison for 60 days. Life is too short, and I am getting older, and it wouldn’t really accomplish anything except making a narcissistic spectacle of myself.
However, what will accomplish something (I don’t know how much, but something) is if I see the whole process through to the end, and shine as much light on it as I possibly can, because my case is just one of many such cases, and the real story here is not about me, it is about the crackdown on political dissent that is being carried out, not just here in Germany, but also in other countries all throughout the West.
There are not many outlets reporting this story, not outlets with any significant reach. If you are reading this column, you’re probably aware of various alternative media outlets that are, but most of these outlets are quarantined off where “normal” people never have to see them, and are delegitimized as “unreliable sources” and purveyors of “misinformation,” and so on.
There are a few bigger sources covering the story, which are also increasingly being branded “illegitimate,” Matt Taibbi’s Racket News, Michael Shellenberger’s Public, Glenn Greenwald’s Locals operations, and I’m sure I’m forgetting a few more, forgive me.
The point is, unless you’re a charter member of the “science-denying, conspiracy-theorizing, hate-speech-speaking, anti-vaxxing, misinforming left-or-right extremist” club — i.e., people who read weird “malinformationist” publications like The Grayzone, OffGuardian, ZeroHedge, Dissident Voice, and Unlimited Hangout, and who are planning to vote for Bobby Kennedy, or, God help them, Donald Trump — you probably have no idea what I mean when I refer to “the crackdown on dissent” … or you do, and you think it’s just hunky-dory.
I won’t mince words. The folks who think it’s hunky-dory are totalitarians. They’re fascists. They applaud the crackdown on dissent. They applaud the criminalization of dissent. They applaud the censorship of political speech, of any speech they do not agree with. They want their political opponents in prison. They want everyone who disagrees with them punished. They want people who offend them cancelled. They want anyone who refuses to conform to their official ideology erased.
I have been calling these people “totalitarians” and “fascists” for a number of years now. I do not enjoy doing that. I’m not doing it gratuitously. Some of these people were my friends. I’m doing that, calling these people “fascists,” and comparing the nascent totalitarianism that is erupting all throughout the West to other, earlier totalitarian systems, like Stalinism (sorry, Marxist friends), and, yes, to fucking Nazi Germany, because, despite the fact that there are numerous differences, a lot of it is textbook totalitarianism. Naked textbook totalitarianism. There isn’t another, nicer word for it … or for those who are enthusiastically embracing it.
I’m not going to present the evidence for that assertion again. I have done that ad nauseam, much of it in my latest book, which is banned by Amazon in several countries, and which bears a warning on other Amazon sites to “visit the WHO, the CDC,” or your local national health authority, “for the latest information on Covid-19 and vaccines” before you consider buying it, and the cover art of which is about to make me an official “hate criminal,” with a criminal record.
That’s right, as I explained at greater length in a previous column, the pretext for this so-called “hate crime” prosecution is two Tweets I tweeted almost exactly one year ago of the cover art of that very same book, which just happens to document the rollout of the “New Normal” (i.e., the new totalitarianism) in 2020 and 2021.Here are the two Tweets that constitute my “hate crimes.”
The one on the left reads, “The masks are ideological-conformity symbols. That is all they are. That is all they have ever been. Stop acting like they have ever been anything else, or get used to wearing them.” The one on the right is a quote by Karl Lauterbach, the Minister of Health of Germany. It reads “The masks always send out a signal.” The image is the cover art of my book.
Say what you want about me and my writing. I can be “provocative,” and some of my political satire is bombastically over-the-top, but, as Matt Taibbi put it in a recent Racket News piece …
“No amount of drugs exist that if consumed would allow a rational person to conclude that the writing of C.J. Hopkins furthers ‘the aims of a former National Socialist Organization.’ Agree with him or not, and I increasingly do, he used his imagery to compare the sweeping declarations of emergency power that were common around the world during the pandemic (and were particularly authoritarian in Germany) to Nazi tactics.”
And that is what I am being accused of, and “punished” for doing, by the German authorities, i.e., “furthering the aims of a National Socialist Organization” … basically, promoting Nazism, for tweeting those two Tweets above.
The point of prosecutions like this (and much more serious and significant prosecutions, like that of Julian Assange, for example) is to send a message. The naked disregard for the rule of law, the blatant absurdity of the charges, the open contempt for democratic principles, is all part of the message. It’s not a message about the law. It’s a message about power. Who has it, and who doesn’t. And what happens to those who refuse to bow down to it.
The message is not intended for me, or for more important figures like Julian Assange, or the many other less well-known dissidents that are being made examples of currently. We’re just the medium that conveys the message. We’re the delivery service. The message is for you.
I’m pretty sure you’re getting the message. The question is … how are you going to respond?
I do not mean by “storming” your capitol. Please do not go out and get yourself shot. I mean, are you going to help shine a light on where we are headed? Because it’s pretty fucking dark. Folks are offering to send me money to help with my legal costs, and I’m extremely grateful, because I’m going to need it (and here’s how to do that), but what I think we need to do is a little harder, and costs more, and is much more important.We need to talk to the totalitarians … yes, the ones who wanted to put us in camps. If we can’t get through to them, we’re probably screwed. And there is a window of opportunity to do that now. It’s not 2020 or 2021. The mass hysteria has worn off for a lot of people. I know, not all of them, but for some of them, a lot of them. Some of them are finally reachable.
Take a chance, talk to them, the ones you know, or used to know. Try to get through to them. Not the bug-eyed, fanatical, foaming-at-the-mouth types who can’t wait for the return of the “emergency measures.” The other ones … you know the ones I mean. The ones who want out. You can see it in their eyes. Take a chance. Talk to these people. Totalitarianism, fascism, it is not an identity. It’s a mindset. No one is born a fascist. People can be deprogrammed. Some of them can. And, at this point, we need all the help we can get.
So, if you’re one of the kind and generous folks who have been asking what you can do to help and offering to send me money, sure, go ahead and send me the money — thank you, I’ve been overwhelmed by your messages, and I’m sorry that I can’t personally respond to all of them — but also consider what I’m suggesting, if you can possibly bring yourself to do it. If you can’t, I completely understand. Trust me, I am still just as angry as you are. I am hurt. I feel betrayed and abandoned. I have a feeling that some of you feel that way too. So I know what I’m asking when I ask you to talk to the New Normal totalitarians, the ones who might be reachable.
If you can’t yet, don’t. But if you’re able to, try.
Don’t try to convince them that you were right and they were wrong. Just shine a light on the road we’re on. Try to get them to recognize where we’re headed. Regardless of who was right and who was wrong about whatever, we are all going down this road together.
Personally, I’d rather not ride it all the way to the end and face what is down there this time.
2 thoughts on “Update on CJ Hopkin’s Prosecution by the German State for his Opposition to the New Normal Reich”
I copy and paste this substack article, and also mention the prosecution and aquittal of Sucharit Bhakti, of Doctor4covid ethics which group has just recently published a book.
German Judge Gets Probation Sentence For Allowing Kids to go Maskless
After his house was raided in 2021
NE – NAKEDEMPEROR.SUBSTACK.COM
23 AUG 2023
Christiaan Dettmar, a family judge from the Weimar District Court in Germany recently faced the Erfurt Regional Court for his stance against the unnecessary imposition of mask mandates on children. In April 2021, going against the grain, he ruled that children at two Weimar schools should not be burdened with wearing Covid masks in class, defying the restrictive guidelines set by the Thuringian Ministry of Education.
However, in a move reflective of the bureaucratic stranglehold on such decisions, higher courts dismissed his ruling, claiming it unauthorised. The Thuringian Higher Regional Court stated that the family judge did not possess the jurisdiction on this matter, a viewpoint also echoed by the Federal Court of Justice. They insisted that only administrative courts should handle state orders regarding corona protection measures.
At the time (in April 2021), Dettmar had his office, private residence and car searched after he ruled that children should not be wearing masks. He also had his phone confiscated after his decision which embarrassed the government.
His decision to end mask mandates was made after hearing evidence from Professor Kappstein on the lack of benefit of wearing masks and observing distance rules for the children and third parties. Kappstein said that after evaluating all the international data on the subject of masks, the effectiveness of masks for healthy people in public is not supported by scientific evidence.
Dettmar concluded that not only are masks useless but they are also dangerous.
The compulsion imposed on school children to wear masks and to keep their distance from each other and from third persons harms the children physically, psychologically, educationally and in their psychosocial development, without being counterbalanced by more than at best marginal benefit to the children themselves or to third persons. Schools do not play a significant role in the “pandemic”.
The PCR tests and rapid tests used are in principle not suitable on their own to detect an “infection” with the SARS-CoV-2 virus. This is already clear from the Robert Koch Institute’s own calculations, as explained in the expert reports. According to RKI calculations, as expert Prof. Dr. Kuhbandner explains, the probability of actually being infected when receiving a positive result in mass testing with rapid tests, regardless of symptoms, is only two per cent at an incidence of 50 (test specificity 80%, test sensitivity 98%). This would mean that for every two true-positive rapid test results, there would be 98 false-positive rapid test results, all of which would then have to be retested with a PCR test.
A (regular) compulsion to mass-test asymptomatic people, i.e. healthy people, for which there is no medical indication, cannot be imposed because it is disproportionate to the effect that can be achieved. At the same time, the regular compulsion to take the test puts the children under psychological pressure, because in this way their ability to attend school is constantly put to the test.
In the recent trial against Judge Dettmar, although the prosecution demanded a hefty three-year prison term, the defence, representing the concerns and wishes of countless parents and citizens, argued for acquittal. The presiding judge at the Erfurt Regional Court noted that the Weimar judge’s decision emanated from his personal views.
After originally being sentenced to two years in prison, the court has now suspended the sentence on probation.
However, it is still possible that Dettmar may lose his office and pension as a result of the conviction.
Throughout the proceedings, the courtroom was electric with tension and support. Spectators broke into spontaneous applause in favour of Dettmar. This would have continued except the judge threatened to throw them out. The prosecution’s attempt to paint the judge’s intentions as malicious was met with scepticism. They claimed that he intentionally set up a child protection procedure against the mask mandate, misrepresenting it as a statement against government measures. Their evidence, mainly based on emails and chat messages, was tenuous at best.
The defence, however, passionately highlighted the judge’s genuine concern for the well-being of children. They asserted that the case was merely an attempt to suppress and penalise differing opinions in a society where free thought should be celebrated.
Reiterating his unwavering stand, Dettmar confirmed he would make the same decision again. The subsequent lifting of school mask mandates by German states in April 2022 only reinforces the argument that such restrictions should never have been in force in the first place.
I copy and paste this substack article, and also mention the prosecution and aquittal of Sucharit Bhakti, of Doctor4covid ethics which group has just recently published a book.
German Judge Gets Probation Sentence For Allowing Kids to go Maskless
After his house was raided in 2021
NE – NAKEDEMPEROR.SUBSTACK.COM
23 AUG 2023
Christiaan Dettmar, a family judge from the Weimar District Court in Germany recently faced the Erfurt Regional Court for his stance against the unnecessary imposition of mask mandates on children. In April 2021, going against the grain, he ruled that children at two Weimar schools should not be burdened with wearing Covid masks in class, defying the restrictive guidelines set by the Thuringian Ministry of Education.
However, in a move reflective of the bureaucratic stranglehold on such decisions, higher courts dismissed his ruling, claiming it unauthorised. The Thuringian Higher Regional Court stated that the family judge did not possess the jurisdiction on this matter, a viewpoint also echoed by the Federal Court of Justice. They insisted that only administrative courts should handle state orders regarding corona protection measures.
At the time (in April 2021), Dettmar had his office, private residence and car searched after he ruled that children should not be wearing masks. He also had his phone confiscated after his decision which embarrassed the government.
His decision to end mask mandates was made after hearing evidence from Professor Kappstein on the lack of benefit of wearing masks and observing distance rules for the children and third parties. Kappstein said that after evaluating all the international data on the subject of masks, the effectiveness of masks for healthy people in public is not supported by scientific evidence.
Dettmar concluded that not only are masks useless but they are also dangerous.
The compulsion imposed on school children to wear masks and to keep their distance from each other and from third persons harms the children physically, psychologically, educationally and in their psychosocial development, without being counterbalanced by more than at best marginal benefit to the children themselves or to third persons. Schools do not play a significant role in the “pandemic”.
The PCR tests and rapid tests used are in principle not suitable on their own to detect an “infection” with the SARS-CoV-2 virus. This is already clear from the Robert Koch Institute’s own calculations, as explained in the expert reports. According to RKI calculations, as expert Prof. Dr. Kuhbandner explains, the probability of actually being infected when receiving a positive result in mass testing with rapid tests, regardless of symptoms, is only two per cent at an incidence of 50 (test specificity 80%, test sensitivity 98%). This would mean that for every two true-positive rapid test results, there would be 98 false-positive rapid test results, all of which would then have to be retested with a PCR test.
A (regular) compulsion to mass-test asymptomatic people, i.e. healthy people, for which there is no medical indication, cannot be imposed because it is disproportionate to the effect that can be achieved. At the same time, the regular compulsion to take the test puts the children under psychological pressure, because in this way their ability to attend school is constantly put to the test.
In the recent trial against Judge Dettmar, although the prosecution demanded a hefty three-year prison term, the defence, representing the concerns and wishes of countless parents and citizens, argued for acquittal. The presiding judge at the Erfurt Regional Court noted that the Weimar judge’s decision emanated from his personal views.
After originally being sentenced to two years in prison, the court has now suspended the sentence on probation.
However, it is still possible that Dettmar may lose his office and pension as a result of the conviction.
Throughout the proceedings, the courtroom was electric with tension and support. Spectators broke into spontaneous applause in favour of Dettmar. This would have continued except the judge threatened to throw them out. The prosecution’s attempt to paint the judge’s intentions as malicious was met with scepticism. They claimed that he intentionally set up a child protection procedure against the mask mandate, misrepresenting it as a statement against government measures. Their evidence, mainly based on emails and chat messages, was tenuous at best.
The defence, however, passionately highlighted the judge’s genuine concern for the well-being of children. They asserted that the case was merely an attempt to suppress and penalise differing opinions in a society where free thought should be celebrated.
Reiterating his unwavering stand, Dettmar confirmed he would make the same decision again. The subsequent lifting of school mask mandates by German states in April 2022 only reinforces the argument that such restrictions should never have been in force in the first place.
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