They end when they fail to burn the politically inopportune people. Right people, wrong people, it’s the growing size of the blaze that urges them on.

Bob

But the NetzDG enactment, as it is known, has quickly had a number of less expected applications, including the blockage of a satirical publication that had mimicked the tone of an AfD leader, and even the deletion of a years-earlier tweet by Justice Minister Heiko Maas, a champion of the law, in which he had called an author an “idiot.”

So, the night of the short deletion orders has begun early in the movement, even before the Facebook putsch.

When will we see the newsreels of thousands upon thousands goose-typing in unison on their iPhones?