[See also the campaign of the Initiative Meinungsfreiheit für den Bürger HERE]

Freedom of Expression Initiative (MfB): Mr von Storch, you are unhappy with the traffic light coalition, you criticise immigration and climate policy very openly and even express this on the internet. How long do you think you can continue to do this in Germany, a constitutional state, without consequences?

Sven von Storch: If you look at the speed at which the Federal Minister of the Interior, Faeser, and the head of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Haldenwang, are proceeding, things will soon look very bleak for freedom of expression. The German Bundestag has just paved the way for a digital police state with the votes of the traffic light party. 

MfB: Can you explain that in more detail?

Sven von Storch: The traffic lights are massively upgrading the Federal Criminal Police Office. Not, however, as you might think, to counter the explosion in crime and combat terrorism, drugs and human trafficking, but to declare one of the most noble constitutional rights, namely freedom of expression, a crime. To this end, the left-green traffic light coalition is building up a huge surveillance and prosecution apparatus.

The number of officers in the office of the Federal Criminal Police Office, where critical expressions of opinion are reported, is to be increased more than tenfold from the current 39 to 450. The number of cases, i.e. expressions of opinion, to be checked by the BKA is to increase a hundredfold from 6000 to over 700,000. 

Sven von Storch: A law behind which the EU is forcing national governments to set up censorship authorities, or rather national truth ministries. Under these authorities, the control and surveillance of citizens is to be systematised and intensified. This is exactly what is hidden behind the word "service" in the Digital Service Act. They also describe the abolition of freedom of expression as a service - an unprecedented mockery of citizens.

MfB: What kind of Ministry of Truth, as you say, is planned for Germany? What should it look like

Sven von Storch: The traffic light coalition has not only failed to stop the Digital Service Act, but is further radicalising the law. It is creating a censorship authority free of any democratic control. In order to disguise this intention, it inconspicuously calls it a "coordination centre". This coordination centre is not assigned to the Ministry of Justice, which deals with legal issues, but to the Federal Network Agency, which is headed by the Green Party's Klaus Müller. This is the same man who thinks that Elon Musk's X is "behaving unlawfully" and otherwise drives around the country calling on local authorities to start dismantling infrastructure worth billions, such as the gas network.

So once again: the Federal Network Agency, which is normally primarily responsible for the electricity supply, is to be responsible for controlling opinions on the internet in future. Not only that, it is to be endowed with the powers of a parallel judiciary. This "coordination centre" is to: Conduct investigations and gather evidence, interrogate witnesses, record witness statements, search business premises without a court order and seize property - for up to three days without judicial confirmation.

This should fill everyone, really every citizen, regardless of their ideology, with concern. A virtual welfare committee is being set up here that wants to enforce the green-woke profession of virtue with intimidation and - now at the beginning - with gentle terror. Much in this state reminds me of the instruments in the GDR, but much also reminds me of the government after the French Revolution. With the difference that our government is erecting digital guillotines for non-compliant citizens like you and me.

Incidentally, the supreme guardian of virtue Robbespierre himself ended up under the guillotine, but the real one, just a few months after he took over the leadership of the French National Convention.

MfB: Mr von Storch, thank you for the interview.