One of the core pillars of a free democratic country is freedom of speech. The level of freedom and democracy of a country can often be at least partially measured by how it deals with free speech of its citizens.
One very particular aspect of this is how such a country deals with criticism against the government itself, against those in power, including the politicians, parliamentary representatives, ministers, law enforcement, and so on. It is a well established principle of democracy that the government, and the people in it, are particularly free to be criticized, even more so than regular citizens who are not in power. In other words, politicians who are in power are in a certain way even less protected against harsh words than regular citizens (in other words, what constitutes illegal defamation has a significantly higher threshold for politicians in the government than it does for regular citizens.)
It is very typical of totalitarian regimes that criticism of the government is forbidden and heavily punished. Two perfect (and rather obvious) examples of this are North Korea and China: In North Korea you will be easily sent to a concentration camp if you show even the tiniest amount of criticism towards Dear Leader or the government. In China you can expect to be arrested by the police and interrogated to completely inhumane extents (and the Chinese government isn't even trying to hide this; in fact, they have propaganda videos showing exactly this.)
In the more free side of the world the amount of freedom-vs-totalitarianism can be, at least partially, measured by how the government and the legal system deals with criticism of the government and its members.
For example the United States ranks extremely high on the list, as there you can say almost anything about a politician and it's protected free speech (about the only thing that may have the FBI knock on your door is if you make a credible threat on the life of a politician.)
I'm happy to say that in my experience Finland also ranks very high in the list: Here, too, criticism of the government and its members is highly protected speech, quite explicitly more so than that directed towards regular citizens. You have to go really, really far in your extreme rhetoric before the police comes to ask you questions.
Germany, on the other hand, does not rank very high in this list.
You see, in that country there are actually laws that criminalize insulting politicians and law enforcement officials. And these laws are not just antiquated, a relic of the past, and never enforced. They are being very much enforced, nowadays more so than in the past. People in Germany are being literally arrested for writing extremely mild insults of politicians in social media, such as calling an obese politician "fat", and other similar examples. Likewise if you insult police officers, you may be arrested and sentenced (something that's not illegal in most other free countries, like the US or Finland.)
It's quite clear that Germany is, even after all these decades, still struggling with the concepts of freedom and democracy. When it comes to criticism of politicians it's much closer to China than eg. Finland.
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