The Politico article highlights how extreme right-wing and left-wing forces unite to abolish Section 188 but frames the debate as a domestic tension between freedom of expression and state power. This bypasses the constitutional history and the external narratives that actively seek to shift what democracy's protective mechanisms are allowed to mean.
But just as in the case of the Swedish debate on migration and national sovereignty, there is a dimension that receives too little attention: how external powers actively seek to shape the German conversation.
Two sources — one Russian and one American — illustrate how foreign initiatives infiltrate the same fissures in society and shift what is considered reasonable to say about democracy's own protective mechanisms.
When the 1949 Basic Law (Grundgesetz) was drafted, its authors carried the experience of a republic that had fallen from within. The Weimar Republic's Article 118 guaranteed broad freedom of expression without effective protection against that freedom being used to undermine democracy itself. Hitler and the NSDAP exploited exactly that freedom — holding speeches, publishing newspapers, organizing demonstrations — while building a movement that would abolish democracy.
Historian Ernst Fraenkel described this as the "dual state": a democratic system that enabled the work of its own executioners. When the NSDAP came to power in 1933, they did not destroy democracy's structures through military coup. They used them.
The framers of the 1949 Basic Law learned this lesson. Article 5 of the Grundgesetz guarantees freedom of expression — but with a crucial difference compared to Weimar: freedom is not absolute when it threatens democracy itself.
Article 5, first paragraph, guarantees the freedom to express and disseminate one's opinion. But the third paragraph clarifies: this freedom may be restricted by general laws, youth protection, and the protection of personal honor. This formulation was no afterthought. It was a conscious construction to create what was called streitbare Demokratie — a militant democracy that defends itself.
Section 188 of the Criminal Code is a direct manifestation of this principle. It differs from ordinary insult (Section 185) by recognizing that politicians' public role makes them vulnerable in ways that private citizens are not. Systematically attacking a politician's ability to perform their work can in itself constitute an attack on the functioning of democracy.
The first external influence comes from the east. Evgeny Kozhokin, a professor at MGIMO and former officer in Russia's foreign intelligence service SVR, authored a confidential report in December 2025 that OC-Media gained access to. The report, produced for the Presidential Administration's Directorate for Strategic Partnership, categorizes the Russian diaspora into three segments — the loyal, the pragmatists, and the oppositional — and describes how Moscow actively works to influence the political discourse in Europe through the diaspora and other channels.
Kozhokin's document describes the mechanism with precision: pragmatists in the diaspora seek "reliable consular assistance and clear information" but simultaneously, without themselves being politically engaged, carry forward a rhetoric that ultimately serves Moscow's purposes. Arguments echo from various directions, are amplified by social media algorithms, and finally emerge as domestic positions. When German politicians repeat talking points that happen to coincide with Russian interests — about EU bureaucracy, about migration, about the limits of freedom of expression — they need not be consciously taking orders from the Kremlin. The narrative has already infiltrated the debate.
In the context of Section 188, this means that Russia's interest in sowing doubt about democracy's protective mechanisms is strategic, not ideological. A Germany where trust in constitutional institutions is eroded is easier to influence from the outside. Campaigns to abolish Section 188, regardless of whether they are driven by sincere motives or not, fit into a pattern where external actors exploit existing fissures.
The second external influence comes from the west. The U.S. State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor has launched the program "Developing Civilizational Bonds, Democratic Resilience, and Rule of Law in Europe" (DFOP0019307). The program offers between 1 and 3 million dollars per project to organizations working on issues of national sovereignty, migration, and Western identity — the same issues that dominate European debate today.
The NOFO program is less subtle but follows the same logic. By offering significant sums to civil society organizations within an ideological framework formulated by the U.S. State Department, an infrastructure is created where specific interpretations of freedom of expression and democracy receive financial backing and visibility. As the analysis of the program states: DRL will "co-develop workshops and events, select participants, determine training topics and locations." This is not passive support — it is active engagement in shaping the content of the European debate.
When this program targets organizations working on precisely the limits of the constitutional order in Europe, Section 188 finds itself at the intersection. An externally funded narrative that European laws "punish citizens for insulting politicians" — formulated within an American ideological framework of unlimited freedom of expression — risks shifting the German debate away from its constitutional foundations.
What these two initiatives — the Russian and the American — have in common is that they both target the same fissures in society. They focus on freedom of expression, national sovereignty, and the institutional limits of democracy. Both campaigns share an ideological position that runs counter to the German tradition of streitbare Demokratie — the idea that democracy must actively defend itself against those who would exploit freedom to destroy it.
The indirect influence then occurs when ordinary citizens, journalists, and politicians step into an already existing narrative without reflecting on where it comes from. They adopt arguments that seem reasonable in the moment — about EU bureaucracy, about mass migration, about the limits of freedom of expression — without recognizing that the arguments have been formulated within an ideological framework designed to serve other countries' interests.
Adapting the law to modern conditions is reasonable. The requirement for "substantial impediment" of political work needs to be clarified. The distinction between satire and coordinated campaigns needs to be defined. But abolishing Section 188 under the influence of external narratives would mean ignoring 75 years of constitutional experience — and repeating the mistake of Weimar.
The lesson of Weimar is simple: Freedom without mechanisms for its own defense does not endure. Article 5 and Section 188 are not hostile to freedom of expression. They are its guarantees — built on a history that Germany has a duty to remember.
Politico — Germany rethinks law protecting politicians from insults: https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-politician-insult-law-friedrich-merz-section-188/
Kozhokin's SVR Report — OC-Media: https://oc-media.org
U.S. NOFO — Developing Civilizational Bonds, Democratic Resilience, and Rule of Law in Europe (DFOP0019307), Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, U.S. Department of State: https://www.grants.gov