A German right-wing journalist has been sentenced to six months in prison for posting a historically accurate photo that Germans have deemed criminally anti-Islam.
Unlike the U.S., Germany has no First Amendment, and anything that promotes the Nazis, Hitler or the National Socialist Party is strictly banned. They also have laws against denigrating Islam. Apparently, this includes posting actual news photos of Palestinians shaking hands with Nazis.
Posted by Michael Stürzenberger, the photo in question shows an unnamed member of the Nazi party shaking hands with Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem from 1922 to 1937.
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Along with the posted photo, Stürzenberger wrote a review of an article about the Nazis’ admiration for Islam and their policy of trying to develop friendly relationships with the Muslim world. This is well-documented and part of the historical record.
Apparently, this was too much for the German government and they found Stürzenberger guilty of “disseminating the propaganda of anti-constitutional organizations,” and sentenced him to prison
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He was accused of “inciting hatred towards Islam” and “denigrating Islam” by publishing the photo. A superficial onlooker, the prosecution argued, could not know that this black and white photo in Stürzenberger’s timeline was a historical document.
But it is.
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Here’s Stürzenberger’s post, translated:
The realization that Islam is a fascist ideology was made presentable two years ago by the Egyptian political scientist Hamed Abdel-Samad with his book Islamic Fascism. Even though this was already clear to former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (“The Koran is the Mein Kampf of the Prophet Mohammed”), but political correctness has long prevented this fact from being openly stated. The Bavarian interior minister Joachim Herrmann has now also jumped on that train and compares Mein Kampf with the warlike announcements of the Islamic state that can be read on the Internet. From there to the Koran is only a small step, which he doesn’t dare yet take. The Süddeutsche Zeitung, in an article on Friday, describes the Nazi pact with Islam and also quotes important statements by Himmler and Hitler. More information at Politically Incorrect.’
For that, he got six months in prison.
The quickest slide into fascism is to criminalize the past. Ignore and ban any representation of our history and we are doomed to repeat it.
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H/T: GatesOfVienna.net