From: http://www.freespeech.org/sleipnir/

Andreas Röhler is currently being accused by the state attorney of defaming the state and its symbols and must answer in court for the charges the state has levelled against him.

If found "guilty" of this "crime" (which in pseudo-democratic Germany happens to be a crime), he could be punished under the German Federal penal code with a fine or a jail sentence, or both.

In the former Eastern bloc German Democratic Republic, this "crime" was referred to in East Germany's penal code as "agitation against the state." It is the same event as the one West Germany has penalized ever since its inception as "slander against the state and its symbols." No crime of deed is being pursued in both cases, but "crimes" of thought disseminated in public on paper.

At the time when the Communist government of East Germany existed, whenever somebody was accused and eventually punished for agitating against the state, such an event was taken by the West German press and official sources to be a sign that, indeed, East Germany was nothing but a "totalitarian" state, a state where nobody could speak their minds.

Rarely did they assail at that time the encroachment of the state on individual rights, in this case freedom of expression, belief and conscience. The reason for this seems to lie in the fact that West Germany could not offer the individual a better lot than East Germany. Now that the comparison is gone, we are left with a monopolist who deludes himself into believing he is the measure of all standards.

Why is it, then, when the same deed is commited today in unified Germany, this deed is regarded as being worthy of punishable by the state? If it had been commited in the German Democratic Republic, it would have been regarded as an act of courage and even patriotism. How can a citizen's duty in one part of the country be a crime in another?

The commentaries, which in Germany are regarded as reliable sources useful for understanding the law correctly, state that the purpose of the law punishing slander and defamation of the state is designed to protect the state from public mockery, denunciations and disparaging remarks..

If these objectionable remarks were to be randomly disseminated, then a situation would occur in which citizens would be denying the state the loyalty and respect they owe it. This would eventually result in undermining the public order to an extent that the government could no longer govern society.

Examples of such activities undermining the public order are also given in the commentaries as follows:

1) Claiming that there are similarities between the post-war German Republic that was constituted in the year 1949 and the Third Reich of the National Socialists,

2) Claiming that post-war Federal Germany is a state where injustice prevails and justice is an exception,

3) Claiming that Federal Germany is not a democracy, but rather a distorted image or representation of that form of government Germany constitutionally claims to practice,

4) Damaging the reputation of the Federal German state by other means - either domestically or internationale.

Now, the intention of the law as stated by the commentaries attempting to interpret the law contradicts the notion of popular sovereignty that is supposed to be the ruling principle of the post-war state according to the constitution.

The commentaries, moreover, do not state that, if an individual were to substantiate the above objectionable claims punishable by law, he or she would become exempt from any prosecution and/or criminal penalty. Instead, they lead one to believe that, regardless of whether the punishable claims are substantiated or not, their postulation and dissemination are prosecutable and eventually punishable.

In other words, the law forbids even rational discourse on this issue. It regards such claims and their verbalization to be emotional epithets which are, as such, inadmissible in Federal German society.

The government obviously fears that, if this law does not remain in the books, many people will entertain ideologies and world views that are not in allignment with the unofficial state religion of Federal Germany.

If it was right and expedient to agitate against the state under East German Communist rule, then it because the Germans "over there" were not being governed by the proper master. But now they have the right master, hence agitating against the state - no matter in what form - is a crime, because it allegedly foments insubordination against a legitimate master who makes no mistakes.

Democracy in this context seems to be the only government on the face of this earth where the so-called "sovereign" "commands" its state apparatus to perform official acts (e.g., laws, administrative acts and court decisions) that are directed against himself and put himself at a disadvantage. Isn't this a strange sovereign? What monarch would act in this manner?