Worried by the threat posed by hate speech and lose gun laws, the German government on Wednesday, 30th October 2019 approved a draft law to crack down on hate speech and gun laws.
It was established that Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cabinet signed off on a raft of measures that in particular target weapons sales and hate speech online.
“The threat from far-right extremism and far-right terrorism, and with them anti-Semitism, is high in Germany and we can’t stress it often enough,” Interior Minister Horst Seehofer told a news conference.
It would be recalled that in 2017 Germany passed one of the most restrictive laws in the world to combat racist and incendiary speech online, requiring social media giants to remove illegal content or risk fines of up to 50 million Euros ($56 million).
It came after the arrival of more than one million asylum-seekers since 2015 fuelled far-right propaganda, and gives companies such as Twitter and Face book 24 hours to remove posts that openly violate German law after they are flagged by users.
Although detractors have continued to criticize the law as curbing free speech and putting internet companies in the role of censors.
The new legislation goes further, compelling internet companies to flag problematic content including death threats and incitement of racial hatred to police.
Law enforcement authorities will have the power to order online platforms to provide them with user data in these cases for possible criminal prosecution.
The measures will also make it more difficult for firearms to land in the hands of criminals.
It was further gathered that domestic intelligence watchdog will review arms purchases to make sure the buyer is not a known sympathizer with radical movements.
The measures come three weeks after a right-wing extremist who had posted a racist, misogynistic and anti-Semitic manifesto online tried and failed to storm a synagogue in the eastern city of Halle on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar.
