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Germany's Censorship Frontier And The Rise Of Digital Control Submitted by Thomas Kolbe Schleswig‑Holstein’s Minister‑President Daniel Günther has, in what felt like a genteel salon, pulled back the curtain on the true censorship ambitions of politics. In the safe biotope of public broadcasting, he simply babbled and hit the spotlight on the repressive tendencies within the party system. We now find ourselves in a critical defensive struggle against the enemies of liberty. Some achieve notoriety and fame by chance. Fortune may fall into one person’s lap, another may experience his ten minutes of public shine through a fluke rhetorical spark. In the case of the Minister‑President of Schleswig‑Holstein in Germany, however, this is a dubious honor. In his appearance on Markus Lanz’s show on Germany’s state TV "ZDF", CDU politician Daniel Günther slid into that revealing tone of small talk to which people are prone precisely when they believe themselves in a supposedly safe social environment – a place where no criticism is expected, no matter what leaves their lips. What emerged during his guest spot on Lanz was a condemnable attitude toward the principle of free speech and toward critical media: the threat of censorship up to and including the blocking of individual platforms, including the portal Nius, reveals a profound ethical collapse. A growing, subtly operating apparatus of repression is now reaching us – a warning we should take seriously. It was almost comical how Lanz, styled by public‑broadcasting elites as a star moderator, in tandem with the state‑aligned media sector repeatedly sought in the aftermath to rhetorically downplay Günther’s clearly articulated desire for censorship. Decontextualize, diffuse, and smother the real scandal with new waves of outrage like the Greenland debate – that’s how the media repair operation works. Imposing Order in the Digital Sphere What is forming before our eyes is unmistakable. A surveillance apparatus coordinated by the EU Commission in Brussels is emerging, built on the Digital Services Act and extending like a kraken over national intelligence agencies such as the Federal Intelligence Service (BND). In an echo chamber, Daniel Günther now operates in the mode of a censor‑in‑waiting, confident that he is secured by the party apparatus. As early as June of last year, the CDU of Schleswig‑Holstein unveiled a policy paper titled “Protecting Democracy – Effectively Combating Disinformation as Well as Hate and Incitement Online.” In fifteen pages, its authors sketched a concrete strategy to regulate content on platforms such as Telegram, Meta, and X. Totalitarian thinking and the prospect of fulfilling a secretly cherished control fetish seem to exert a peculiar fascination even on the second tier of party functionaries. Followed over the past months — culminating in a real dispute with the U.S. government — one thing becomes clear: Europe’s political leadership seems to fear nothing more than losing its dominance over the public discourse. Yet that is the very nature of social media: it allows individual opinions to float freely, to form clusters and to be cast loudly into the public sphere. That is their explosive power — and apparently the genuine problem from the perspective of those who would rather order, canalize, and control discourse. Günther is not alone in his crusade against a defiant opposition that raises its voice now against COVID lockdowns, now against overheated climate apocalypticism, and otherwise positions itself as broadly skeptical of the state. German Roots Strategically, the politics of initially gentle censorship followed a seemingly intelligent, media‑political path. Two strands define the rhetorical front: On the one hand, so‑called youth protection is invoked whenever politicians attempt to justify instruments of surveillance into private communication. On the other, the fuzzy concept of combating “hate and incitement” online is used as a vector against…

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