Billionaire Elon Musk has spoken out in the case of 16-year-old schoolgirl Loretta B., who was pulled out of her classroom by police last week because of a TikTok post in support of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
At the end of February, the girl was taken out of class in front of her fellow students and questioned by police, as first reported by German newspaper Junge Freiheit.
In her TikTok post, she asked “What do Germany and the Smurfs have in common: They are both blue.” The post was in reference to the AfD, which has blue party colors.
She had also shared a post that stated that Germany was not just a place on the map, but also home for her.
In response to the story, Elon Musk asked in disbelief, “Really, that’s all?”
In an interview with Junge Freiheit, Loretta B. told the paper that when she was pulled out of class by the police, “I felt everyone’s piercing stares on me.”
The Brandenburg police then spread disinformation following the event, claiming the mother and daughter understood the police actions, with their statement reading: “The student showed understanding of the police measures and the preventive approach behind them, as that was what was important to her to protect against possible hostilities that could arise from their activities on social networks.”
The mother said this was a lie, and that “I was totally horrified. There is nothing criminal about the video and yet my daughter is treated like a criminal.”
The principal of the Richard-Wossidlo-Gymnasium in Ribnitz-Damgarten initially called the police over the girl’s TikTok posts. The police told Junge Freiheit that they had conducted “a kind of endangerment talk” with the student. The mother, Annett B. said her daughter was targeted due to political motives, saying, “My daughter was to be made an example of!”
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The Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania “Security and Public Order Act” does not include the provisions that exclude speech based on public disorder risk. However, in Baden-Württemberg’s law, for example, it is applied on the assumption that “a person will disrupt public safety within a foreseeable period of time.”
The police operation caused outrage across Germany. Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania’s minister of the interior had recently defended his officers. “If someone then says: ‘I know the limits’, then it’s all the better,” the politician emphasized on Thursday in the Schwerin state parliament with regard to 16-year-old Loretta.
