Death threats, free speech, Napoleon

Dear Reader,

I begin this week’s newsletter with the alarming news that a poster has been put up in Berlin calling for the murder of a young British journalist.

Nicholas Potter, 34, writes for the left-wing Tageszeitung (Taz) and has been the subject of death threats for over a year over a book he wrote that examined antisemitism in left-wing subcultures.

However, it is his reporting on Israel that has triggered a new level of violent threats. For several weeks, stickers bearing his photo have been plastered around public spaces in Berlin, labelling him a “son of a bitch” and accusing him of being on the payroll of the Israeli government.

This week, though, his newspaper revealed that a full-size poster has now been printed with the word “WANTED” above a photograph of his face. At the bottom of the poster is a death threat. While the newspaper hasn’t disclosed the precise wording, one assumes it continues the cliché familiar from Western films about being dead or alive.

Potter’s “crimes” include reporting that a media platform called Red—popular among the Palestinian activist community—has links to the Kremlin, and publishing an article this month disputing claims that the war in Gaza constitutes genocide.

The points Potter raises in his article—that the civilian death toll is comparable to those in other urban war zones and is not, in itself, evidence of genocidal intent—are not novel. Journalists at other German outlets have made similar arguments.

What appears to have enraged anti-Israel activists to the extent that they are openly calling for Potter’s murder is that he has voiced these arguments in a newspaper traditionally sympathetic to Palestinian narratives.

He is, however, far from the only journalist facing intimidation from within the anti-Israel movement. A video reporter for the tabloid Bild has spoken of how two activists, one of whom was carrying a knife, accosted him at the door to his apartment. Meanwhile, police have reportedly found a list circulating within the movement that contains the home addresses of journalists with opinions on Gaza that don’t fit their worldview.

Reporters Without Borders recorded a doubling of attacks on journalists in Germany last year. Of the 90 physical assaults on members of the media, close to half took place at anti-Israel protests in Berlin.

The thuggery is clearly having an effect. Potter told the Süddeutsche Zeitung that he no longer reports from the protests in person — unsurprisingly, he doesn’t even feel safe going to cafés these days — and many of his colleagues have similarly ceased covering them out of fear of being assaulted.

This isn’t the first time that someone has been subjected to the threat of extreme violence in Berlin for displaying some sort of sympathy for the Jewish state. In Germany’s capital in 2025 you can walk around wearing a kufiyah and no one will bother you, but, increasingly, it takes an brave or reckless person to openly show support for Israel.

The one silver lining is the unequivocal support that Potter has received from his editors at Taz. The left-wing daily has a history of failing to defend journalists who voice opinions on Israel that go against the grain in their newsroom. That, at least, has changed.

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The editor-in-chief of a hard-right newspaper has received a seven-month suspended sentence for posting a photoshopped image of the interior minister on the social media platform X.

David Bendels, editor of the Deutschland Kurier, was found guilty of defaming Interior Minister Nancy Faeser by sharing a doctored image of her holding a sign that read, “I hate freedom of opinion.”

Faeser is a hate figure on the far right, particularly after ordering police to shut down the conspiracist magazine Compact last August. That raid was later overturned by a court, which ruled that Compact’s tin-hat views on everything from Covid to migration were protected under the constitutional right to freedom of expression.

In its ruling against Bendels, the court stated that he had failed to clearly mark the image as satire, and that some viewers may have genuinely believed Faeser had openly expressed disdain for a constitutionally enshrined freedom.

As a condition of avoiding prison, Bendels must now issue a written apology to Faeser.

German law grants politicians special protection against public insults, with courts empowered to imprison individuals for up to five years for besmirching the good name of elected officials.

Prominent politicians have filed thousands of legal complaints against individuals who insult them online in recent years.

In February, a retired judge was fined for calling Economy Minister Robert Habeck a “complete idiot,” while last autumn a pensioner had his home raided at dawn in connection with a social media post in which he called Habeck an “imbecile.”

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The Germans may now be having the last laugh in a dietary diss dating back to the early 19th century.

Legend has it that the name Pumpernickel—a type of dense German black bread—originated with Napoleon, who, when offered a loaf during his invasion of what is now Germany, dismissed it as pain pour Nickel, implying that it was so unappetising that only his horse Nickel should eat it.

But, now French researchers have concluded that people who eat wholegrain bread for breakfast are more attractive than those who start the day with croissants or other refined wheat products.

In the study, half of the participants were given a baguette for breakfast, and the other half received wholegrain bread. The researchers then photographed them and asked passers-by in Montpellier to rate their attractiveness. Team wholegrain were the clear winners.

Had the famously vain Napoleon appreciated the invigorating effects of Germany’s hearty cuisine at the time, perhaps the course of 19th-century history might have turned out rather differently.