New NGO | »Free Speech Aid«: Freedom of expression as a battle cry

A new organization dedicated to protecting freedom of speech was founded in Germany this week: "Free Speech Aid." According to the initiators, this fundamental democratic right is increasingly threatened by censorship mechanisms. Western democracies, they argue, are "quietly and efficiently expanding their own surveillance systems to control what can be said," while simultaneously criticizing authoritarian states for their repression.

The quote comes from Jakob Schirrmacher, journalist and son of FAZ co-editor Frank Schirrmacher, who died in 2014. In a guest article for the right-wing nationalist "Preußische Allgemeine Zeitung," he describes Germany as a society that "seeks to stabilize itself by restricting speech." Schirrmacher emphasizes that many supporters of "Free Speech Aid" have experienced this.

Other co-founders include former AfD politician Joana Cotar, Marcus Pretzell (also FDP and AfD), FAZ author Rainer Meyer ("Don Alphonso"), and constitutional lawyer Josef Franz Lindner. What unites them is their regular polemics against a left-wing "cancel culture" – and claim that "wokeness" has replaced democracy in Germany.

The term refers to an awareness of social injustice and discrimination, as well as the desire to actively combat them. The Free Speech Aid bubble, however, understands "wokeness" as left-wing political activism by state-funded non-governmental organizations, which they believe leads to intolerance toward those who think differently.

Even after the federal election, the Greens are considered their main enemy – especially former Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck. The party is being blamed for establishing reporting centers to prosecute non-criminal hate speech online. However, this is not a Green invention, but rather a requirement for implementing the Digital Services Act , an EU directive.

In his recently published book "Disinform Yourself!", Schirrmacher speaks of a so-called "Censorship Industrial Complex," a network of governments, technology companies, NGOs, media outlets, and fact-checkers that claims to defend democratic values but, he argues, undermines the foundations of an open society. It relies on subtle mechanisms such as "algorithmic visibility control," informal sanctions, and political support programs.

"Free Speech Aid" therefore reaffirms its status as an independent NGO without government funding. Its goal is to document cases of censorship. However, the organization's criteria for selecting these cases remain unclear. It is expected that the focus will continue to be on cases that are compatible with the more conservative or even right-wing political orientation of the founding group.

The organization cites examples such as "house searches due to satirical image contributions" and omits the context: for example, the criminal relevance of such contributions in cases of incitement to hatred or threats . Jakob Schirrmacher's reference to well-known dissidents such as "Ai Weiwei, Navalny, Snowden, Assange, Böhme, Biermann" is also unconvincing: These individuals represent resistance against authoritarian systems, which their mention in the context of the prosecution of inflammatory social media content trivializes.

"Free Speech Aid" is therefore likely not concerned with the comprehensive protection of pluralistic debates in general, but rather with the targeted defense of a right-wing spectrum of opinion. The organization thus exemplifies a development in which the concept of freedom is increasingly being politicized by the right.