Barack Obama on his way to Ireland in May

One typically rambunctious UK tabloid labelled the current German administration as “The Fourth Reich” last week – and a German state is playing its part by banning the Facebook “Like” button from all websites in its jurisdiction.

The Eurozone financial crisis has produced far-reaching recommendations from the Germans and France which will impact upon the entire EU, prompting the always over-the-top Daily Mail to carry a headline hailing the arrival of the Fourth Reich.

One of the characteristics of Hitler’s regime – apart from the millions of executions, of course – was the arbitrary outlawing of run-of-the-mill activities such as reading certain books or listening to a particular type of music.

And while the latest thing to be banned in one part of Germany may not exactly be a 21^st century echo of that time, it does appear to be an arbitrary decision to clamp down on something people all across the world might look upon as one small definition of freedom – the ability to “Like” something on Facebook.

As well as encouraging the public at large to avoid Facebook, the state of Schleswig-Holstein has ordered all government offices to remove the Like button from their websites and take down any Facebook fan pages.

Why? Because the overlords there see Facebook’s data-gathering technique as a violation of German and European data privacy laws.

Anyone who doesn’t comply is liable to face a €50,000 fine.

Still, it beats a one-way ticket to hell, eh?

[Main picture via owenwbrown/Flickr Creative Commons]