Germany and US Are in a Race to the Bottom on Suppressing Pro-Palestine Speech

Last week, 52 Democrats voted to embolden a fascist.

Let’s back up. For the past year, leading members of the Democratic Party have increasingly called attention to Donald Trump’s authoritarian ambitions.

He tried to overturn an election. He’s threatened to prosecute his political rivals. He’s sowed distrust in the democratic process, deemed the press an “enemy of the people” and pledged to use the National Guard to squash protests and conduct mass deportations of millions of people.

“We cannot allow Donald Trump and the rise of fascism and authoritarianism to take root in America,” Rep. Greg Landsman (D-Ohio) said in a July statement. “To allow Trump to become president and control all three branches of government puts our democracy and freedoms at great risk.”

Democrats are right to name the imminent draconian threat of a second Trump presidency. But such rhetoric stands at odds with their business-as-usual approach to transferring power. For a glaringly obvious example of Democratic doublethink, look no further than the 52 votes from party members, including Landsman, on H.R. 9495: the “Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act.”

The fast-tracked House bill died on November 12 after it failed to secure support from the necessary 2/3 majority. Widely condemned by human rights groups, the resolution would allow the Treasury secretary — a presidentially appointed position — to strip any nonprofit organization it deems to be “terrorist supporting” of its tax-exempt status. Free speech and civil rights advocates noted how easily the law could enable an authoritarian ruler to weaponize accusations of “terrorism” to unilaterally silence dissent, particularly against groups that support Palestinian liberation. As of this writing, Israel has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians in Gaza since October 7, 2023, a number the United Nations says is likely an undercount.

H.R. 9495 is just one new development in a transnational string of crackdowns on the activists and groups that dare to speak out against Israel’s genocide in Gaza. And while Democrats quibble over terminology, we don’t need to look to fascist regimes to see how quickly civil rights can be eroded. Even under democratic systems, pro-Palestine activists are suppressed and branded as terrorist-supporters. Germany, in particular, offers a playbook — and a mirror.

Just days before the House voted down H.R. 9495, a parallel legislative measure moved through the German government. On November 7, the parliament overwhelmingly voted to pass a resolution that would ban public funding for any group that “spreads anti-Semitism, calls into question Israel’s right to exist or calls for a boycott of Israel.” The resolution was opposed by more than 103 civil society organizations, including Amnesty International and Oxfam, who wrote in an open letter that “branding legitimate criticism of Israel’s human right record as anti-Semitic also undermines the fight against genuine anti-Semitism.”

H.R. 9495 is just one new development in a transnational string of crackdowns on the activists and groups that dare to speak out against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

While Germany’s resolution is more direct, it shares the same goal as the House Republicans’ bill: shut down organizations that critique Israel. It’s important to note that, while the German constitution includes protections for freedom of expression, it has broad carve-outs for language that is considered a danger to the state, and several laws on the books ban hate speech. This is, of course, understandable given Germany’s abhorrent past. But amid the genocide in Gaza, Germany has thrown about accusations of Nazism and antisemitism to assuage itself of its own national guilt and shield Israel from anything remotely approaching accountability.

Such a practice, Daniel Denvir wrote in Jacobin earlier this year, “involves demonizing and suppressing expressions of Palestinian identity and anti-Zionism in the guise of Holocaust remembrance.” In Berlin, for instance, officials authorized schools to ban Palestinian flags and keffiyehs, and police have responded with repeated brutality towards Palestine solidarity protests, which have been heavily limited by the state. “Meanwhile, far-right politics are ascendant, with the Alternative for Germany party, or AfD, making terrifying gains in the polls fueled by an anti-migrant politics that’s increasingly echoed across the political spectrum,” Denvir continued.

German politicians do not shy away from making explicit that their opposition to antisemitism is often a cover for racist, anti-immigrant policies. “It is very clear to us that Islamist agitators who are mentally living in the Stone Age have no place in our country,” Germany’s Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, a member of the governing center-left Social Democratic Party, told reporters.

In fact, another draft German law would deport anyone promoting “terrorist crimes.” The resolution includes “liking” a single post on social media as an example of something that could constitute support for terrorism.

“Anyone who does not have a German passport and glorifies terrorist acts here must — wherever possible — be expelled,” said Faeser.

Under the draft law, a criminal conviction is not required for deportation. Meanwhile, advocates for Palestine have also faced legal ramifications for benign expressions of solidarity. In August, activist Ava Moayeri was convicted of a crime and ordered to pay €600 for leading a chant at a protest on October 11, 2023. The judge ruled that the phrase, “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” condoned a crime and “could only be understood as a denial of Israel’s right to exist.”

Mirroring the U.S. but taking it one step further, the latest German resolution also calls for the expulsion of students responsible for “antisemitic acts” in schools and universities.

U.S. politicians agree. In December, the House passed a resolution condemning antisemitism, which deemed the slogan “a rallying cry for the eradication of the State of Israel and the Jewish people.” In reality, the phrase emerged in the 1960s as a call for equal rights within a democratic secular state, but that hasn’t stopped the phrase from becoming a lightning rod for accusations of antisemitism, particularly since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7.

Notably, the ahistorical expansion of what constitutes “antisemitism” fails to protect Jewish people from actual harm. In an open letter protesting Germany’s latest antisemitism resolution, roughly 100 Jewish artists and academics noted that, by linking antisemitism to anti-Zionism, the law would “weaken, rather than strengthen, the diversity of Jewish life in Germany by associating all Jews with the actions of the Israeli government.”

In May, the U.S. House passed its own bill directing the Department of Education to investigate allegations of antisemitic discrimination under the Civil Rights Act using a broad and controversial definition of antisemitism that includes speech critical of Israel. Federal law already prohibits antisemitic discrimination by federal institutions; the latest bill is a clear response to the protests that have swept college campuses, aiming to strip funding from universities where students have demanded their leadership divest from companies complicit in Israeli apartheid. Again, mirroring the U.S. but taking it one step further, the latest German resolution also calls for the expulsion of students responsible for “antisemitic acts” in schools and universities.

It’s important to note that, under President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration, university students faced police raids when speaking out in support of Palestinian rights. And, of course, Biden has facilitated and bankrolled the genocide from its inception. Last week, his administration backtracked on its own pledge to limit arms transfers to Israel if the country didn’t increase the flow of humanitarian aid across its borders.

Still, when Trump takes office, he will be greeted by a GOP-controlled House and Senate and a federal judicial system stacked with his picks. Trump already vowed at the Republican National Convention to “deport pro-Hamas radicals and make our college campuses safe and patriotic again”; he privately told donors he would throw “any student that protests … out of the country.” He’s pledged to use the military to attack “the enemy from within” and has indicated he includes so-called “pro-Hamas radicals” and leftists under that definition.

The string of crackdowns in Germany offers a glimpse of ways in which we could see U.S. lawmakers escalate attacks in the coming months. Erosions to free speech are already here, and they have a playbook. H.R. 9495 is a pile of kindling, waiting for the lit match of Trump’s second term.

House Republicans have already revived the bill under regular procedure. While the fast-tracked bill required a two-thirds majority, this process would only need half of the House to be in favor.

If the last roll call is any indication, Democrats are ready to give them enough votes.