The Stasi has returned to Germany

Recently in Germany six armed police officers raided in the middle of the night the home of a German citizen, seized all of his electronic devices, forced him to reveal the pin number to his smartphone, dragged him to the police station where they took a boatload of biometric data, including weight, height, multitudes of photos, biometric data from his hands, and a blood sample for DNA.

Was he, perhaps, suspected of murder, assault, rape, robbery, or some kind of other severe crime? Or perhaps the electronics that they seized contained highly illegal material that he not only had downloaded but was also distributing? Or maybe he is a notorious hacker who has broken into computer systems and stolen boatloads of money?

Nope. They did that because of one social media post that he had written.

So surely the post itself was highly illegal to elicit such a reaction? Was it, perhaps, threatening to commit an act of terrorism? Or perhaps he was writing credible threats against someone's life, or something along those lines?

Nope. This is the exact contents of that online media post that elicited that reaction from the police:

"No, every person who is financed by the state pays no net taxes; they live off taxes. Every civil servant, every politician, every employee in a state-owned company, everyone who is subsidized and financed by the state. Not a single parasite pays any net taxes."

In other words, he was criticizing members of the government for living off tax-payer money, without they themselves paying taxes. He called these people "parasites".

That's it. That's literally it. He didn't post any threats, he didn't post anything illegal, he didn't even say anything about a protected minority, as he is completely exclusively talking about members of the government, nobody else.

In other words, he is criticizing the government. And for that, six armed police officers raided his home in the middle of the night, confiscated all of his electronics, dragged him to the police precinct, took all kinds of biometric data from him, and issued threats to him, telling him quite explicitly "you are now under observation."

All that even though he literally did not break any German law. None whatsoever. What he wrote is (even to this day) not illegal in Germany.

But I suppose the German police forces don't care: If you criticize the government, expect a visit from them. And even if the case gets thrown out in court, the cops don't need to care because they will receive no repercussions from this. Nothing.

And it's not like they are somehow excusing or hiding it. Government officials have directly said in TV interviews that doing things like that is an intimidation tactic. They are completely open and brazen about it. They aren't even trying to hide it, but are directly saying it. That's how bold they are. 

The Stasi has returned to Germany in full force. Germany has become, once again, a bona fide police state.

The funny (and scary) thing is that if I was a German living in Germany, they would be kicking down my door next just for writing this blog post. It's just incredible. 

I have a hard time deciding which country has become worse, the United Kingdom or Germany.