Police in Berlin on Thursday searched the home of prominent conservative political commentator and former university professor Norbert Bolz over a social media post he wrote in 2024 that contained a Nazi-era slogan. On Thursday morning, officers arrived at Bolz’s home and questioned him about a post on X that featured the Nazi-affiliated expression, “Deutschland erwache!” (“Germany, awake!”). Bolz confirmed his authorship of the post, avoiding the seizure of his laptop, he told POLITICO.  “The friendly police officers gave me the good advice to be more careful in the future. I’ll do that and only talk about trees from now on,” Bolz sarcastically commented in a separate post on X. Bolz is a regular commentator for WELT, a sister publication of POLITICO in the Axel Springer Group. A Berlin public prosecutor confirmed that police carried out a search in connection with an investigation into the “use of symbols of unconstitutional organizations.” Bolz had shared a post from the left-wing newspaper taz that read, “Ban of the AfD and a petition against Höcke: Germany awakens,” and added ironically: “A good translation for “woke”: Germany awake!” The German case comes after U.K. authorities arrested “Father Ted” co-creator Graham Linehan on suspicion of inciting violence with a series of social media posts about transgender people, amid a wider debate over hate speech laws and free expression in the U.K. and other European countries. In February at the Munich Security Conference, U.S. Vice President JD Vance lambasted European leaders, arguing that free speech was increasingly under threat on the continent, though the Trump administration has itself also clamped down on some commentary posted on social media.

The EU should swiftly pull funding from organizations that fail to uphold its values, and do more to tackle hate speech, France, Austria and the Netherlands urged in an informal document seen by POLITICO. Citing a surge in antisemitic and racist incidents following the Hamas attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 and the war in Gaza, the three countries call on Brussels and national capitals to “redouble their efforts to combat racism, antisemitism, xenophobia and anti-Muslim hatred” and ensure that “no support is given to entities hostile to European values, in particular through funding.” The document lays out proposals to tighten financial oversight and expand the EU’s criminal and operational response to hate crimes. It calls on the European Commission to fully apply existing budget rules allowing for the exclusion of entities inciting hatred, and to make beneficiaries of programs such as Erasmus+ and CERV (Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values) sign pledges that they will respect and promote EU rights and values. The document comes just one day before a European Council meeting in Brussels at which EU leaders are expected to discuss support to Ukraine, defense, and also housing, competitiveness, migration, and the green and digital transitions. According to a draft of the Council conclusions obtained by POLITICO, national leaders are expected to stress that EU values apply equally in the digital sphere, with the protection of minors singled out as a key priority. Beyond funding, the document demands tougher measures against online and offline hate speech. It also urges Europol to launch a project looking at hate crimes and calls for education and awareness programs on tolerance and Holocaust remembrance through Erasmus+ and CERV.

PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte plan to provide “scientific” evidence to prove that France’s first lady is not a transgender woman after suing far-right influencer Candace Owens for defamation the United States. Owens has repeatedly put forward transphobic allegations that Brigitte was assigned male at birth and had “groomed” a teenage Emmanuel Macron before transitioning to female. France’s first couple brought legal action against Owens this summer. “We’re prepared to demonstrate fully both generically and specifically that what she’s saying about Brigitte Macron is false,” the Macrons’ American lawyer Tom Clare said on the BBC’s “Fame Under Fire” podcast. Clare said during the trial there would be “expert testimony that will come out that will be scientific in nature.”  POLITICO has reached out to representatives for both Clare and Owens for comment. Owens previously accused the Macrons of using the suit to try to bully a reporter into submission. Brigitte, a mother of three, met Emmanuel — 24 years her junior — while teaching at a high school in Amiens, where the future president was her student. In August, the French president said he and his wife “had to” sue Owens in order to “have the truth respected,” despite the risk of triggering the so-called Streisand effect — drawing more attention to something by trying to suppress it. Clare added that the president and his spouse would also testify and said the process is “incredibly intrusive for this family” but would ultimately demonstrate “how confident they are in their ability to prove it is false in an open forum.”

The assassination of Charlie Kirk sparked a cacophony of condemnations and grief from leaders across the political spectrum. But missing from the din was the voice of a unifying political leader calling for calm. No one appeared well positioned to play the soothing role that has fallen in the past to presidents and the nation’s faith leaders. “I’m looking, but I can’t claim that I can identify that person,” former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels told POLITICO. Daniels, a Republican from a more genteel time in American politics, was not alone in his assessment of the bleak landscape. Bill Daley, former President Barack Obama’s chief of staff, said in an interview that President Donald Trump “is the only one who can do it, because he represents everyone.” Rep. Don Bacon, the iconoclastic Nebraska Republican, told a reporter he hoped the president would step up to the challenge, adding, “But he’s a populist, and populists dwell on anger.” In a video statement recorded from the Oval Office late Wednesday, Trump denounced the violence on a Utah Valley University campus that led to the death of the 31-year-old conservative fixture. The president, who survived two attempts on his own life, spoke of the scourge of “demonizing those with whom you disagree day after day, year after year, in the most hateful and despicable way possible.” But he also laid blame at the feet of the “radical left,” who he said compared Kirk to “Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals.” Trump has either actively refused or begrudginly — and then only briefly — embraced the role of consoler- or uniter-in-chief. He has routinely demonized his opponents on social media and threatened to withhold federal dollars from causes with which he ideologically disagrees. His previous rhetoric has included boasting he could stand “in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody” without losing voters and he recently ordered the National Guard to patrol cities whose Democratic leaders he argues let crime get out of control. For some, Trump himself is part of the problem. As president, he has the power to ease an already tense situation — or inflame it. “There is a violent undertow, and we have to be very careful about unleashing it,” said William Barber, an influential pastor and civil rights activist who co-chairs the Poor People’s Campaign, which advocates for the nation’s lowest-income residents. It was founded by Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968. He suggested perhaps one person alone can’t fill the role of cooling the temperature. “Does the president have a responsibility at this moment? Yes,” Barber added. “But I’m saying that in our history there has never been one person. So it’s the president, pulpits and politicians that hold key leadership positions that must step into this moment.” Asked whether he could be the country’s lead uniter, a White House spokesperson highlighted the following portion of his Wednesday night remarks: “Tonight, I ask all Americans to commit themselves to the American values for which Charlie Kirk lived and died. The values of free speech, citizenship, the rule of law, and the patriotic devotion and love of God. Charlie was the best of America, and the monster who attacked him was attacking our whole country. An assassin tried to silence him with a bullet, but he failed because together we will ensure that his voice, his message and his legacy will live on for countless generations to come.” And asked how he would like his supporters to respond to Kirk’s assassination, Trump told a reporter, “He was an advocate of nonviolence. That’s the way I like to see people.” But to another question he replied, “We have radical left lunatics out there and we just have to beat the hell out of them.” Few know how to sew back together a civic fabric that seems irreparably torn. “There’s no one trusted broadly enough to play that role,” said Mike Ricci, former Speaker Paul Ryan’s communications director. Ricci crafted Ryan’s remarks in the minutes after Rep. Steve Scalise was shot at a congressional baseball game practice in 2017. “And in the absence of that kind of voice, it just leaves people retreating more into their own camps: They’re more likely to share what Megyn Kelly says about it than they are the president.” Trump still has room to seize the mantle, said Ari Fleischer, George W. Bush’s former spokesperson. Back when the former president climbed a pile of rubble in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001, Fleischer said, “We were still a polarized nation where many Democrats thought President George Bush was an illegitimate president because of the Supreme Court ruling in the recount. What changed everything was the fact that America was attacked and our nation rallied.” “I don’t agree that it’s impossible for leaders to bring people together, because I saw it happen,” he added. Indeed, FBI Director Kash Patel, a MAGA faithful, attended the anniversary ceremony Thursday alongside New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, an establishment Democrat, in a sign that a few moments and places remain to bridge the partisan divide. Former presidents looked to offer their own way forward for the nation using the only megaphone they had: social media. “Violence and vitriol must be purged from the public square,” Bush said in a statement through his presidential center, and Obama posted,“This kind of despicable violence has no place in our democracy.” Former President Bill Clinton vowed to “redouble our efforts to engage in debate passionately, yet peacefully.” But no one can quite find the words — or the credibility or moral authority — to quell the molten anger of this American moment, an anger that shows no signs of receding ahead of the pivotal midterm elections next year. Trump is as much an ailment to the body politic as he is a symptom. Declining trust in politicians, a fragmented and siloed media, and decades of waning social and religious institutions are all colliding. There’s no Rev. Billy Graham to speak to broad swaths of the faithful and call us to Americans’ better angels. The Pope — an American — hasn’t yet addressed Kirk’s death, though U.S. bishops did, urging for a national reckoning that rids “us of senseless violence once and for all.” “Billy Graham … spoke as someone who had something to offer to everyone, as opposed to someone who was speaking on behalf of a tribe— and that’s what we’ve lost,” said Michael Wear, Obama’s former faith outreach adviser. At its core, Wear said, the killing of Kirk — and the lack of a unifying leader to emerge in its aftermath — reveals something about American politics in 2025. “Politicians used to be valued by their most strident supporters for their ability to speak and persuade others who were not among their core supporters,” he said. “Now, the common definition of a good politician is someone who excels at channeling and mobilizing anger among their core supporters against an enemy.” Shia Kapos contributed to this report.

French prosecutors said Friday that foreign interference is behind a wave of apparently provocative acts — from stunts targeting Muslims to antisemitic graffiti — that have struck Paris in the last two years. Pig heads were found outside nine mosques on Tuesday, shocking the Paris region. “Several of the pig heads had the inscription ‘MACRON’ written in blue ink,” the prosecutor’s office said earlier this week. Prosecutors have not yet publicly named a state actor as being responsible for the various incidents, but the cases echo tactics previously attributed to Russian networks seeking to exploit social fractures in Europe. Foreign interference is “something we must take into account, and that we do take into account, since in making an assessment of this type of acts that have taken place in the Paris area since October 2023, we have nine cases,” Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau told BFMTV on Friday. “It started with the blue Stars of David,” Beccuau said, referring to an incident that saw the symbols daubed on building walls in the French capitals’s 14th district in October 2023 — and was later linked to pro-Russian interference. “Then came the ‘red hands,’ then splashes of green paint,” she said about attacks that targeted the Paris Holocaust memorial in 2024 and 2025. Earlier this month, pro-Russian posters were discovered on several pillars of the Arc de Triomphe, showing the image of a soldier with the caption, “Say thank you to the victorious Soviet soldier.” Beccuau said investigators have identified similar patterns in the modus operandi of individuals of Eastern European origin arriving for a short period of time in France to carry out these acts. “Sometimes they take photos of what they have done, and send the photos beyond the borders to sponsors,” she said. “Some of the sponsors have been identified … so we are fully able to be convinced that these acts are operations of interference.” Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, French authorities have accused Moscow of spreading disinformation and orchestrating symbolic provocations designed to sow mistrust in institutions and deepen religious or political tensions. Clea Caulcutt contributed to this report.

Former Polish Health Minister Adam Niedzielski was hospitalized on Wednesday after being assaulted in the eastern city of Siedlce, in what authorities say was an attack linked to his role in shaping the country’s pandemic policies. “A few hours ago, I was the victim of a brutal attack,” Niedzielski said after the assault. “I was beaten by two men shouting: ‘Death to traitors to the homeland.’ I got punched in the face and then kicked while lying on the ground. The whole incident lasted several seconds, and then the perpetrators fled,” he added. Police confirmed late Wednesday that two men in their 30s were detained in connection with the incident. The suspects are expected to be questioned on Thursday. Authorities said more details about the suspects and the circumstances of the attack would be released after questioning concludes. The assault took place outside a restaurant in central Siedlce, the police said. Witnesses reported that the attackers loudly criticized the government’s Covid-era decisions before physically confronting the former health minister. Following the assault, Niedzielski was briefly admitted to the Provincial Hospital in Siedlce and discharged the same day with no serious injuries. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk condemned the attack Wednesday evening, vowing that the perpetrators would go to jail. “No mercy,” he said. Niedzielski, who led the health ministry from 2020 to 2023, was a central figure in implementing restrictions and vaccination campaigns that remain divisive among parts of the public. Commenting on the attack on Wednesday, Niedzielski said it was “the result of tolerating hate speech,” but also of the decision of Polish Interior Minister Marcin Kierwiński of depriving him of protection, “despite numerous threats” he had previously received. “I hope that this situation will cause reflections on all sides of the political scene that we are already on a slippery slope. Passivity will only condemn us to further escalation,” Niedzielski said.

Shyam Bhatia is an award-winning author and war reporter based in London. His books include “India’s Nuclear Bomb,” “Brighter than the Baghdad Sun” and Benazir Bhutto’s biography, “Goodbye Shahzadi.” The U.K.’s ability to laugh at itself — and listen to those who disagree — was once a point of national pride. From the satire of television’s “That Was The Week That Was” and “Spitting Image” to Hyde Park hecklers and heated radio call-ins, the country’s democracy was loud, cheeky and gloriously irreverent. That Britain is vanishing. Once admired for its rough-and-tumble pluralism, the U.K. long saw freedom of expression as a badge of honor. It tolerated irreverence — even prized it as proof of liberal strength — and saw dissent as not merely allowed but necessary. Now, that legacy is being quietly dismantled by legislation and fear, replaced by a more brittle state that polices protests and placards, as well as satire, sarcasm and even private WhatsApp messages; a state that, in the name of public order, criminalizes the freedoms once used to mock the powerful. Take the case of Marianne Sorrell: An 80-year-old retired teacher who was arrested in Cardiff for silently holding a placard at a peaceful pro-Palestine rally. She was detained and held in custody for nearly 27 hours. Police searched her home, seizing items such as books, percussion instruments, and a walking stick. Her bail conditions even barred her from returning to Wales. Her crime? Quietly dissenting. Then came Jon Farley: A 67-year-old former teacher in Leeds who, at a Gaza vigil, held up a cartoon from “Private Eye” — Britain’s longest-running satirical magazine, famed for lampooning politicians and exposing hypocrisy. The cartoon in question was mocking the government’s anti-terror rhetoric. And in response, Farley was arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000, handcuffed and interrogated for hours. “I was searched and treated like a criminal — for holding a satirical cartoon,” he said. And when he explained where the cartoon came from, by his account, the officers just looked blank. The magazine’s editor Ian Hislop was alarmed too: “If we’ve reached a point where holding up a ‘Private Eye’ cartoon gets you arrested under the Terrorism Act, then we’ve truly lost the plot.” But the intrusions aren’t limited to public space; they’re inside British homes as well. Earlier this year, Maxie Allen and Rosalind Levine — the parents of a 9-year-old girl in Hertfordshire — were arrested in front of their daughter after exchanging messages critical of her school’s new headteacher in a WhatsApp group. Six officers arrived at their home, seized their devices, and the couple was interrogated for hours over allegations of malicious communications. “We’ve gone from being concerned parents to criminal suspects — over a private conversation,” said Allen. The climate of fear has even extended into Britain’s comedy circuit. A couple of years ago, comedian Joe Lycett revealed he’d been reported to the police by an audience member offended by one of his jokes. Officers launched an investigation and asked Lycett to submit a written explanation of the routine. In the end, no charges were filed, but the case highlights how lighthearted satire can trigger official scrutiny. | Andy Rain/EPA “To be fair to them the fuzz were very nice about it,” he later said. “But felt they had a duty to investigate.” In the end, no charges were filed, but the case highlights how lighthearted satire can trigger official scrutiny — and why many in the profession may choose silence over summons. The reach of censorship now extends to include the murky terrain of “hate” as well. Introduced with the intention of protecting marginalized groups, hate crimes legislation can be applied with disturbing vagueness, with one widely cited example of police in 2020 investigating more than 120,000 so-called “non-crime hate incidents” — remarks that aren’t deemed criminal but are still logged in official records, sometimes affecting future employment checks. There’s other legislation treading similarly hazy ground: In 2022, the government passed the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act, giving law enforcement expanded powers to shut down protests deemed “noisy” or “disruptive.” It was a watershed moment, where volume not violence became grounds for arrest. And the law now acts as a muffler on public expression, particularly for those on the margins. Meanwhile, new legislation like the Online Safety Act empowers regulators to censor digital content deemed “harmful,” which is a dangerously elastic term. The act is meant as a shield for children and vulnerable users but, in practice, it extends state reach into satire, parody and legitimate political critique. And with pressure from the U.S. mounting after last week’s visit from Washington’s Congressional delegation, it’s becoming a transatlantic problem. When speech becomes risk, silence becomes strategy — and democratic discourse collapses inward. This isn’t about law and order. It’s about fear and control. And while the government insists it’s a matter of “balance” and protecting people from harm, especially in a volatile political climate, balance implies proportionality — and there’s nothing proportionate about arresting an elderly woman for a slogan or raiding a family home over a WhatsApp message. These examples aren’t outliers. They’re signals of a state clutching its narrative so tightly, it risks suffocating dissent altogether. None of these people were violent. None incited hatred. None posed any credible threat to public safety. Yet they were all treated as suspects — watched, arrested, interrogated and, in some cases, banned from expressing themselves again. And what of the baton-wielding police arresting elderly citizens as if they were threats to national security? They’re increasingly detached from the cultural heritage they claim to protect. There is, in all this, a sense of something quietly slipping away — not just rights but a deeper understanding of what it meant to be British. The tragedy isn’t just the loss of liberty but the fading memory of having once possessed it. Of course, the injustice is nothing new — what’s new is who it’s reaching. For decades, many people of color in Britain endured surveillance, suspicion and suppression, often without the headlines or outrage. Now, much of the majority-white population is getting its first taste of what others have long known: Free expression in the U.K. has always been conditional — on who you are, what you say and how palatable your truth is. There’s a reason comedians are self-censoring, journalists are consulting lawyers before making jokes, and people are hesitating before forwarding memes — in case it’s misunderstood, flagged as offensive or taken out of context. Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park — the open-air emblem of unfiltered public expression — was a highlight for many. Today, the space stands eerily silent. | CGP Grey via WikiCommons We’re witnessing the quiet dismantling of a democratic norm: The right to be irreverent, critical or even foolish without being criminalized. British icon George Orwell warned us of this: “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” But this isn’t just a domestic crisis. It touches everyone — even those just passing through. The U.K. once drew visitors not only for its cathedrals and castles but for its noisy, opinionated democracy. Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park — the open-air emblem of unfiltered public expression — was a highlight for many. Today, the space stands eerily silent. The crowds are thinner. The speakers fewer. The spirit diminished. And yet, Britain continues to lecture others. London-based human rights organizations are quick to highlight repression abroad, but perhaps the time has come to turn their gaze homeward. The erosion of civil liberties isn’t just something that happens in faraway autocracies. It is happening here — quietly, legally and with increasing speed. So, a word of caution: The Britain many once imagined — witty, tolerant, open — is no longer here. In today’s reality, a careless remark in a pub, an ironic slogan on a shirt or a misheard joke can attract a knock on the door. The spirit that made this island loud, plural and proud is flickering. And while Britain isn’t lost yet, it certainly needs watching.

BERLIN — Extreme-right groups in Germany are increasingly targeting LGBTQ+ people as part of a systematic effort to gain popularity and win new recruits. Right-wing extremists have mobilized against Pride events scheduled for this summer, planning counter demonstrations that purport to celebrate traditional, heterosexual relationships. It’s a message, experts say, that is drawing a growing number of young Germans to the extreme right. In the eastern German town of Bautzen, organizers of a local Pride parade set to take place in August are preparing for a large counter demonstration of right-wing extremists, many of them teenagers. “Man and woman. The true foundation of life,” reads an online post advertising one of the protests. Organizers of the Pride event, which celebrates Christopher Street Day (CSD) — a commemoration of the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York City that became a catalyst for the international gay rights movement — say participants face threats and intimidation.  “The threats are much harsher online because of the supposed anonymity,” said Lea Krause, one of the CSD parade organizers in Bautzen. “But it’s tough on the street too, simply because you’re face to face with people. And they know exactly who you are, and you also know who they are.” German federal police say CSD events — of which there are some 200 scheduled across Germany during the spring and summer — are increasingly targeted by neo-Nazi and other right-wing extremist groups. Since the middle of last year, “new youth groups have emerged in the right-wing scene” that target the CSD events, Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office said in an emailed statement. A CSD parade in the Bavarian city of Regensburg planned for July had to be rescheduled due to threats against its organizers. In the small eastern German city of Wernigerode, a 20-year-old man allegedly threatened to open fire on the local CSD event. Police later found ammunition at the suspect’s house, according to media reports. At a CSD parade in June on the outskirts of Berlin, police said they prevented a violent attack on participants amid a counter-demonstration planned by a right-wing extremist group. During last year’s CSD parade in Bautzen, nearly 700 right-wing extremists gathered to disrupt the celebration, which drew about 1,000 people amid a heavy police presence. Many of the counter-demonstrators were minors, according to a report from regional domestic intelligence authorities. “I’ve had enough, enough of this Pride month, enough of all the rainbow flags hanging everywhere: on schools, town halls, even in the German armed forces,” Dan-Odin Wölfer, a member of the extreme-right group organizing the counter-demonstration in Bautzen this year, said in an online video. The month, he went on, “doesn’t belong to the rainbow. It belongs to us. It belongs to the people who built this country, who stand up, work and fight every day for their families, for their homeland. We are proud of our country.” Krause, the CSD event organizer in Bautzen, said she’s confident the police will be able to protect this year’s march, but feared extreme-right violence on the sidelines. Traveling to and from the event alone or in small groups, she said, “is of course dangerous.” THE EXTREME RIGHT’S ALTERNATIVE PRIDE The targeting of Pride events is part of a larger wave of radicalization within German society that is particularly affecting the country’s youth, authorities say. Extreme-right crimes surged by nearly 50 percent last year, according to police figures. “We have to realize that in society as a whole, and among a share of young people, we see a shift to the right and an increase in the acceptance of violence,” Holger Münch, the head of Germany’s Federal Criminal Police Office, told reporters when presenting the crime statistics in May. At the same time, Germany’s far right is increasingly turning its focus to gay pride, rebranding Pride month as Stolzmonat, with a focus on the traditional family and national pride. “Stolzmonat is an alternative that seeks to consciously counter the forced change … setting an example of traditional values, family ties and stability in uncertain times,” reads a statement on the website of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt. Domestic intelligence authorities there classify the party branch as extremist. The targeting of Pride events is part of a larger wave of radicalization within German society that is particularly affecting the country’s youth, authorities say. | Clemens Bilan/EPA “For a long time, the German far right focused on migration, Islam, EU skepticism and the coronavirus,” said Sabine Volk, a researcher at the Institute for Research on Far-Right Extremism at the University of Tübingen. “But in the aftermath of the pandemic, we have seen an increased focus on queer-phobia, anti-LGBTQ+ discourse and, since last year, protest activities.” Such discourse is particularly effective at radicalizing young men who don’t start out identifying with right-wing extremist ideology, Volk said. Recruiting often happens within seemingly apolitical organizations, including at combat sports and mixed martial arts clubs. “If organizations are not clearly attributable to the far-right spectrum, that seems to make them more attractive to young people who are not necessarily attracted to a party, but to a shared experience,” Volk said. In those settings, extreme-right activists often begin radicalizing young people by promoting what they portray as traditional values. Organizers of the extreme-right counter-demonstration in the eastern German town of Bautzen, for instance, say the event is about upholding “the family as the core of our community” and “respect for the natural order.” Krause, Bautzen’s CSD event organizer, said she expected the counter-demonstration to be bigger this year. At the same time, she believes the CSD parade itself will draw many more participants. “It is very nice to see that some people in Bautzen really want to go through with this,” Krause said. “We are very, very brave and empowered to keep on going.”