What I wouldn't get is arrested. If I got in trouble with the police, it would be for disturbing the peace, not for the content of my speech.
Reagan was talking to Gorbachev, and told him "in the US, anyone can march into my office and yell 'I don't like the way you're running your country!'"
Gorbachev replied, "Same for us! In the Soviet Union, anyone can march into my office and yell 'I don't like the way Reagan is running his country!'"
Not trying to convince you or anything, but I think you'd have a different opinion on the subject if you were as exposed as the politician mentioned in the article and regularly received death threats and harassment.
Consider also that a raid in Germany is not like a raid in the US.
The US doesn't have this problem with wide legal protections for free speech online or off. Europeans are not so lucky.
This is not reflected in the World Press Freedom Index, maybe because there are non-hateful ways to express most thoughts: https://rsf.org/en/ranking
I...also don't know how to respond to your point about the Press Freedom Index other than to say, most European countries have blasphemy or heresy laws, and those apply to the press as well. So I don't know what this index is scoring based off of, but American journalists just don't go to jail for what they write. As opposed to David Irving[1], who did just that.
Pitiful really and the brutality of the raid isn't the issue here.
It is not even a question if the German state will use this to suppress "unfortunate" opinions and they would not deny it if you asked.
"police searched 83 apartments and other buildings to seize evidence like smart phones and laptops. Prosecutors said 96 suspects are being questioned about hateful posts they made online."
"One of the suspects is accused of making anti-Semitic comments while another insulted a female politician online"
Anyone who is interested in free speech issues and civil rights should be very uneasy by the idea that the police can raid your house and interrogate you over online comments that are deemed by the politics de jour to be "hate speech", which, as we all know, is a slippery and ever-expanding category.
The US doesn't have this problem with wide legal protections for free speech online or off. Europeans are not so lucky.