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” i…