By John ROSENTHAL

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The arbiters of acceptable online speech are not nearly as ‘independent’ as the EU would have people believe.

The role assigned to ‘trusted flaggers’ under the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) has been a target for criticism from Republican lawmakers in Washington, who have argued that the legislation risks making Europeans and, more specifically, European governments the arbiters of what even Americans can and cannot say online. The DSA requires online platforms, like Facebook or X or TikTok, to maintain “notice and action” mechanisms that allow “individuals and entities” in the EU to flag content for suppression, and it empowers EU member state governments to appoint organizations whose notices the platforms are required to give priority treatment. These are the ‘trusted flaggers.’

But in a response to the House Judiciary Committee’s interim report on the “foreign censorship threat” represented by the DSA, Democratic members of the committee have reassuringly cited an expert source who notes that the trusted flaggers “don’t have a magic delete button” and that it is up to the platforms themselves to decide whether to remove the content flagged by them. The Democratic members do not mention that the expert source they cite is in fact herself the managing director of an organization with ‘trusted flagger’ status: namely, Josephine Ballon of the German organization HateAid.

But since they have chosen to cite her, it is perhaps worthwhile for us to have a closer look at HateAid so that Americans and other English speakers can assess whether they would like such an organization to have—if not “a magic delete button”—any special say whatsoever about what they can or cannot say online.

For a more general discussion of whether the DSA’s ‘trusted flaggers’ should be trusted to police American speech, see my recent essay in Law & Liberty here.

So, what is HateAid, and what does it do?

In its interim report, the House Judiciary Committee majority has warned that, although the DSA requires the ‘trusted flaggers’ to be independent of the regulated platforms, they are certainly not independent of EU member state governments, which appoint them, after all, and, in some cases, also fund them. HateAid is a case in point. Indeed, its links to the German government are so extensive that it would be more accurate to treat it not as an NGO but rather as a ‘PGO’—a para-governmental organization.

Last June, HateAid was appointed as a ‘trusted flagger’ by the German telecommunications regulator, the Bundesnetzagentur. The Bundesnetzagentur (Federal Network Agency) serves as Germany’s national DSA implementing authority or Digital Services Coordinator. But, oddly enough, even before being named as ‘trusted flagger,’ HateAid, in the person of none other than Josephine Ballon, was already serving on the German regulator’s advisory board on DSA implementation. Ballon is even the deputy chair of the board.

Not only was it appointed by the German government, and not only does it serve the German government in an advisory capacity, HateAid is also indeed funded by it. Citing the government’s answer to a parliamentary question, the alternative German news media Nius reports that HateAid has received €4.7 million in public support since its founding in 2018. Data from the German Bundestag’s Lobby Registry show that it received nearly €1.3 million in support from two different government ministries—Justice and Family Affairs—in just 2024 and has received over €1 million in support every year since 2022.

And what exactly does HateAid do? Well, as its name suggests, HateAid specializes in providing assistance to victims of ‘hate.’ But this does not mean ‘hate crime,’ as understood in American law. It means rather ‘hate speech’—i.e., ‘speech crimes’—which, needless to say, is not even a category in American law.

The German Criminal Code does not only prohibit ostensible expressions of “hate” against religious, racial, and ethnic groups (§130), but even mere “insults” (§185) and “malicious gossip” (üble Nachrede—§186) directed against individuals! In the latter context, moreover, public officials even enjoy heightened protection against allegedly injurious speech under what is commonly referred to in Germany as the lèse-majesté law (§188).

Thus, for example, in a case that gained wide notoriety, the retiree Stefan Niehoff had his home raided by German police last year merely for having reposted a meme on X that used a pun to jokingly refer to Germany’s then Economics Minister Robert Habeck as a “professional moron.” During his time in public office, Habeck reportedly filed over 800 criminal complaints against fellow citizens for “insult” and other speech offenses. Fellow Green Party politician and then Minister of Foreign Affairs Annalena Baerbock—now president of the UN General Assembly!—filed over 500 such complaints.

HateAid seems to have made assisting public officials in such cases into a specialty. Indeed, its client list reads like a veritable who’s-who of the German Green Party leadership in particular. Thus, in a legal spat with Nius about which the outlet has itself reported, HateAid admitted to having assisted Habeck—even if it denied doing so in all 800 complaints and the Niehoff case specifically. Habeck is the former co-chair of the Green Party with Annalena Baerbock, whom HateAid has also acknowledged aiding with complaints under Germany’s lèse-majesté law.

But the HateAid client list also includes two other former co-chairs of the party, Claudia Roth and Cem Özdemir, as well as the former chair of the party’s parliamentary group, Renate Künast. Both Roth and Özdemir also held positions in the same government with Habeck and Baerbock that provided HateAid millions of euros in funding.

HateAid assisted Künast in what the organization itself describes as a “landmark” lawsuit against Facebook. The suit revolved around a meme of Künast including the quote “Integration starts with you as a German learning Turkish!” As documented here (in German), the ‘quote’ was an obviously satirical variation on remarks that Künast made on a German television talk show when criticizing another guest for being unable to correctly pronounce a Turkish name. Künast argued, and the German court accepted, that viewers might think that she really said it! (For an English summary of the judgment, see here.)

HateAid also claims to combat antisemitism but found itself embroiled in controversy a couple of years ago for assisting Michael Blume, the Antisemitism Commissioner of the German state of Baden-Wurttemberg, in a court case against Twitter. Blume has been involved in a long-running feud with the prominent German-Jewish journalist Henryk Broder, who regards him as unfit for the position he holds. Germany’s antisemitism commissioners are supposed to lead the fight against antisemitism. But despite this official function, several contributors to the Achse des Guten (Axis of Good) website that Broder co-founded have accused Blume himself of antisemitism—which, if nothing else, shows how malleable accusations of ‘hate’ can be. (For a distillation of the controversy in English, see here.)

HateAid too has a long history with Broder and his website—or, more exactly, a pre-history. Broder and his colleagues founded Achse des Guten in the aughts as a decidedly pro-Israeli, pro-American, and anti-Green-ideology alternative to the mainstream German media. Later, during the COVID period, the site would also provide an important outlet for critics of lockdown measures and COVID-19 vaccines.

In late 2016, a German online-advertising specialist named Gerald Hensel launched a campaign to demonetize supposedly ‘far-right’ websites by getting their advertising pulled. Hensel used the Twitter hashtag “no money for the right” (#keinGeldFürRechts), and included Broder’s Achse des Guten on his blacklist. Hensel literally compiled such a list, and he himself called it a “blacklist.”

Even the decidedly mainstream German weekly Der Spiegel found it absurd to treat Broder’s site as ‘far right’—although, n.b., Der Spiegel was perfectly fine with Hensel treating the American conservative website Breitbart as similarly “extremist.” It is important in the present context to realize that figuratively ‘killing’ precisely the American site Breitbart was an avowed aim of Hensel’s boycott campaign. Thus, the blog post in which he first published his blacklist was titled “No Money for the Right: Let’s Cut Off Breitbart & Co from the Media Lifeline”—i.e., their advertising revenue.

Why is this important? Well, because Hensel is one of three founding partners of HateAid. He can be seen on the left in the below portrait from the HateAid website.

In the meanwhile, HateAid appears to be expanding its combat against ‘hate’ to include supposed hatred against ‘trans’ people. Thus, in a November 2024 video spot for HateAid that has been preserved by Nius here, the Berlin-based trans activist and drag queen who goes by the stage name Jurassica Parka makes an emotional appeal for tolerance. “No one chooses to be trans, dammit,” Parka screams, before theatrically pausing to regain composure, “Trans people do not take anything away from anybody. Trans people do not threaten this society. Trans people enrich this society.” The spot finishes with the HateAid logo, as well as that of the German Ministry of Family Affairs.

Jurassica Parka, born Mario Olszinski, is currently under investigation by German police for possession and dissemination of child pornography. German authorities acted on a tip from the U.S.-based National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. As uncovered by the German queer magazine Siegessäule, Olszinski was already convicted of distributing “child-pornographic writings” in 2023.

Original article:  europeanconservative.com