German 4 Dummies: Volksverhetzung

Our plan to bring you the long word Volksverhetzung has been made easier by a new development in the German Pegida debate. A German prosecutor is investigating allegations of Volksverhetzung against one of the Pegida organizers .

Pegida, the "anti-Islamization movement", has been garnering international media attention for a few months, with the latest twist having been the cancellation of last Monday's march (or "stroll", as the marchers call it) because of possible attack plans by radical muslims out of the Middle East.

A mere day after this, the news of the investigation into one of the leaders made the rounds. At issue: screenshots from an alleged social media account of the man where he calls refugees and asylum seekers things like "cattle", "dirty rabble", or "garbage".

Hurtful, hateful, xenophobic, are all terms you can use to label such utterances, but we are looking at the legal term Volksverhetzung. It is composed of Volk (people, masses) and a noun derived from Hetze (incitement, hunt, bait, hustle).

The current legal definition (§ 130 StGB) comprises hate speech, incitement to violence directed against groups or individuals as infringing on the human rights of others through slander, defamation, or insulting activity. Wikipedia says "For any hate speech to be punishable as Volksverhetzung, the law requires that said speech be "qualified for disturbing public peace" either by inciting "hatred against parts of the populace" or calling for "acts of violence or despotism against them", or by attacking "the human dignity of others by reviling, maliciously making contemptible or slandering parts of the populace".

In German law, Volksverhetzung has a storied, at times creepy, history. Staring in its early days in the early 1800s,  the law was used to prosecute people who advocated democratic reform. The Nazis used it widely to suppress opponents. The law was extended to include denial of genocide. The law is used mostly in cases that go beyond "simple" contempt or slander.
  
A virtually unknown fact about this law is that its application is not geographically limited to Germany.

On top of this, a person who violates this law from inside a foreign country, for example, by vociferously denying the Holocaust, can be prosecuted in Germany under § 130 StGB even if he or she is not a German citizen.