>Calling it "German authoritarianism" risks thinking it's a localized phenomenon or special case.

It very much is though. Plenty of other countries in EU like France or Romania for example but probably many more, don't have even remotely as many authoritarian and invasive BS laws as Germany does.

But the worst part is that Germans have gaslit themselves to think that their authoritarian laws are there "for their own protection". They don't even realize they have a problem, until they move and live abroad and learn you can run a country without your government have so many surveillance and speech control powers over what you can do or say in public about their leaders.