Germany: First nationwide raid against hate posts on the internet

From a German language news site, via the Vlad Tepes Blog:

On Wednesday, in their first nationwide operation to fight against hate crime on the Internet, the police searched the homes of sixty accused in fourteen states, among them eleven suspects from Berlin. 

The goal is to counter rapidly accelerating “verbal radicalism” and related criminal offenses on the net, the BKA explains in Wiesbaden. The supposed anonymity of the Internet lowers inhibitions about writing hate speech. 

25 police precincts worked together at a national level for this raid. Investigations are made based on the suspicion of sedition, related to the use of emblems of organizations that are unconstitutional. 

The offending language is also connected with utterances against refugees, say the Berlin state police. One investigation from the prosecutor’s office in Kempten assumed particular importance, the BKA announced. 

According to the information, it concerned a secret Facebook group in which the users glorify national socialism as well as exchanging xenophobic and anti-Semitic content. 

According to the police, with regard to that group, about forty homes of suspects were searched in thirteen states. 

BKA chief: putting a stop to the coarsening of language 

“The number of cases of politically right motivated hate criminality on the Internet has also risen in the wake of the European refugee situation,” says BKA chief Holger Münch. 

“The hate criminality on the net must not poison the social climate.” Attacks on refugee shelters are often the result of radicalization that begins on the Internet. 

“Therefore we have to put a stop to the coarsening of language, and investigate punishable content on the Internet.” With this operation the citizens also must become more sensitive, the BKA says. Whoever finds hate posts on the Internet should immediately report them.