Afroman couldn’t have won his case in Europe

There is a war going on, oil prices are rushing up and down, and elections are being held. In all that chaos, it is likely that many Americans – and most Europeans – overlooked the civil suit against the rapper known as Afroman and his victory in said suit. It is possible that most Europeans do not even know who Afroman is, though they may know some of his songs. But they should know about this case, because it underlines a tragic reality: That Afroman could never have won his case in Europe.

In 2022, Afroman’s house was raided by local police on a warrant for narcotics and kidnapping. While the rapper made himself famous with songs about getting high, he was never a drug pusher and had zero involvement with kidnapping. The police, however, ransacked his house, caused tens of thousands of dollars in damages, and seized $5,000; when the money was returned, $400 were missing.

The rapper, though $400 short, did have access to two other things: Video recordings of the raid from his home security system and the power of his pen. He utilized both, writing an album dedicated to making fun of the individual officers who raided his home; music videos for some of the songs, such as “Lemon Pound Cake” – which mocked one officer for seeming interested in eating Afroman’s cake during the raid – used footage of the raid, and received tens of millions of views.

The police, however, were not happy with the attention, and sued him for millions of dollars. Afroman, unbowed, released another song in which he named them all and highlighted their personal foibles, all while marching in American flag suit and glasses. Days later, a jury found him not liable.

The whole saga, while comical, underlines the strength of America’s freedom of speech. In short, Afroman – a rapper who has openly and objectively used illegal drugs in the past – was able to name specific law enforcement officers, blast them in a song involving aspects of their personal lives which were totally unrelated to the case, and win in court.

But it also underlined Europe’s lack of the same rights.

If Afroman had been wearing the suit composed of flag of a European country – say, Germany – he would have likely not only been civilly liable, but criminally as well.

The second Trump administration has sought to raise awareness of Europe’s appalling speech laws for over a year now. Sarah Rogers, the undersecretary of state for Public Diplomacy, critiqued Berlin earlier this year for a police investigation of a man who said Chancellor Friedrich Merz lied like “Pinocchio.” Merz is a particular fan of using the police to attack critics, hand-signing roughly 5,000 criminal complaints against online criticism, ranging from the aforementioned “Pinocchio” crack to another which called him “a little Nazi”. One overweight German politician also had police go after individuals who called her fat.

This is not unique to Germany, of course. Poland, Austria, Italy, and more have lèse-majesté laws on the books which made it illegal to insult elected officials. These laws carry genuinely heavy penalties. Germany, for example, will send you to jail for up to a year if you insult someone – and up to three years if you insult a politician. It must be underscored that these are not penalties for defamation: If the content is entirely true, you can still be jailed if  “the act is likely to significantly impede their public activities”.

These free speech restrictions are so broad that, when writing about them, one could be accused of simply making things up. After a man shouted expletives at a mass shooter in Munich – who had just killed nine people – police investigated him for insults after a woman reported him (no charges were ultimately brought). Even darker, a woman was given more jail time than a gang rapist after she called him a “disgusting rapist pig.” She was not alone in being prosecuted: Police investigated over 140 people for daring to insult the disgusting rapist pigs.

There is no question whatsoever what would have happened if Afroman had been in Germany. He would have almost certainly been arrested and sentenced to jail, and the country’s defamation laws would have likely allowed them to sue him for emotional hardship.

The baffling thing is that the German establishment, and other European establishments, have given themselves these immense powers in the name of keeping fascism at bay. They even expanded these laws in 2021 to further “protect” politicians from online “hate-speech”. Which seems counter-productive. After all, the German government fears the AfD, portraying them as fascists-in-waiting; nationalists around the continent are likewise feared by their establishments. But by expanding the power of the state to restrict speech, they are simply giving the nationalists more tools to use should they gain power. They claim to be afraid of a new Adolf Hitler, yet they give themselves powers which a new Adolf Hitler would love to have, were he to come to power.

To make it harder for a future nationalist government to run wild, as the establishmentarians imagine they will, the actual solution would be severely to limit government control over speech (and, for that matter, the right to bear arms, though that is a somewhat separate discussion). But increased speech restrictions seem to indicate that establishmentarians are not truly afraid of a new fascist takeover – that instead, they are simply stoking the fear of one so that they can further empower themselves.

Europe may crow about how, in the Trump era, it is the last true remnant of the free world. But until a German Afroman can make fun of cops and politicians without risking jail or financial hardship, it is no such thing.