The place to talk/ask about stuff in Germany in English.
Wiki: https://lemmygermany.github.io/wiki/
Many thanks to @Vittelius@feddit.de for creating this!
Fun fact, posting a link to this article got me banned from the Germany subreddit:
Damn, really? Where's the post?
Abnormal human being's comment gives you a good idea why this is ban worthy. Pandering to conspiracy/extremist even if unintentional must be avoided to preserve the community.
So just to make something clear here, because this has been hotly debated in Germany, and people have been doing a disservice to both sides, IMO:
Reports from last year suggest that one of the actions they were alleged to have been involved in included breaking into a university building and threatening people with objects that could have been used as potential weapons.
But the deportation orders go further. They cite a broader list of alleged behaviours: chanting slogans such as “Free Gaza” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, joining road blockades (a tactic frequently used by climate activists), and calling a police officer a “fascist”. Read closely, the real charge appears to be something more basic: protest itself.
So, the former is usually brought up by people, when arguing this is not a case of just protest, numbers I've seen were something like 100k in damages and threatening people with axes used in the break-in. This is usually used to elicit a response of "Oh, okay, they deserve it then."
Thing is: No matter what they did, they deserve proper legal procedure happening, put in front of a court, and to be considered innocent until proven guilty. The whole deportation rhetoric is being used to create a precedent to suspend the rule of law. It's also clearly used in bad faith, also targeting people that haven't had a home outside of Germany in many years, up to decades.
The whole issue of Palestine is very contentious in Germany, as the article points out, and a tool used to create division, not just in society as a whole, but also specifically to create division within the left. My point being: No matter, if you personally think that these people deserve some big punishment, and that the things done were not okay - if you end up supporting this specific way to get there, you are supporting suspension of law, encroaching a new standard of punishment without trial, and the growth of fascism. It really is a "first they came for" situation, don't ever think that this is implemented by people that won't ultimately also use it against you and your own interests down the line.
Note that they're accused of attending a protest where these things (the property damage stuff) happened, not actually doing these things. None of the four protesters face any criminal accusations.
C'mon Germany do better