Swastika mask: Berlin court fines US author Hopkins 4,800 euros
Over two posts from 2022, Berlin-based satirist C.J. Hopkins must pay a fine. He says he meant to warn against authoritarianism.
Photo: A.Savin / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped and resized)
Berlin's Tiergarten district court on Monday fined Berlin-based US author and satirist C.J. Hopkins 4,800 euros (60 daily rates of 80 euros). The case concerned the use of symbols of unconstitutional organizations in two instances: two 2022 posts on Twitter (now X) showed a medical face mask bearing a swastika, an image taken from the cover of one of his books.
Hopkins was initially acquitted in January 2024. The Berlin Court of Appeal overturned that verdict in September 2024 and found him guilty; Monday's hearing dealt only with the sentence. The court weighed in his favor that he has no prior record and that the posts are more than four years old, and against him that the posts were public and aimed at many people, the Berliner Zeitung reported.
Hopkins says he wanted to warn of authoritarian trends during the COVID-19 pandemic: "I am just an author, not a terrorist or criminal." A separate case over the distribution of his book is still pending. The report did not say whether the verdict is final.