Germany
January 9, 2025 — John Hinderaker
Elon Musk has created a furor in Germany by endorsing the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in that country’s upcoming election. Musk says that AfD is Germany’s last hope; naturally, the other parties are accusing him of “election interference.” Earlier today, Musk interviewed AfD leader Alice Weidel, that party’s candidate for Chancellor, on Twitter: Here's the full conversation from earlier today between Elon Musk and Alice Weidel, co-chairwoman of Germany's
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January 6, 2025 — Steven Hayward
Last week Victor Davis Hanson noted that Germany’s current de-industrialization, born of its fanatical “Net-Zero” climate mania that has resulted in ruinously high energy prices, resembles a self-imposed “Morgenthau Plan” from World War II. For readers not up on their World War II history, the “Morgenthau Plan” was a proposal hatched by the staff of, and endorsed by, Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau and presented to FDR at the Quebec summit
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January 4, 2025 — John Hinderaker
Elon Musk ignited a firestorm of controversy in Germany by penning a column in Die Welt in which he supported the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in the election scheduled for next month. AfD is a “far right” European party, which means that it doubts the wisdom of mass third-world immigration. Given their experience in recent years, most Germans share that skepticism; hence the fear in establishment circles that AfD
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January 2, 2025 — Steven Hayward
Elon Musk has raised eyebrows to DefCon1 with his recent endorsement of the insurgent AfD (“Alternative for Germany”) Party in Germany’s snap election next month, in the pages of DieWelt, one of Germany’s leading newspapers. AfD has a checkered character, to put it mildly, but like Marine le Pen in France, it seems the unified front of the established political parties against considering AfD as part of any governing coalition
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September 5, 2024 — Lloyd Billingsley
In Germany in 2023 there were 13,844, “knife crime” incidents and last month a Syrian “soldier of the Islamic State” stabbed three people to death and wounded eight others at a “Diversity Festival” in Solingen. That got the attention of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who seeks to reduce the length of knives people are allowed to carry from 4.7 inches to 2.4 inches. Chancellor Scholz may be unaware that Theodoric the
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September 2, 2024 — John Hinderaker
In state elections in Saxony and Thuringia, AfD, the Alternative for Germany party, has scored a dramatic success. The Telegraph reports: Exit polls predict the anti-immigration party has gained some 33% of the vote in Thuringia, with the conservative CDU party polling at around 23%. However, in the state of Saxony, the AfD is projected to narrowly lose to the CDU, with about 30 per cent of the vote to
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August 24, 2024 — John Hinderaker
At a festival in Solingen, Germany, a knifeman–an increasingly common term in Western Europe–went on a rampage, stabbing at least 11 people, three fatally. Somehow the knifeman escaped. The man was described by witnesses as “Arab-looking,” and today ISIS claimed credit for the attack: Islamic State claimed responsibility Saturday for a knife attack at a festival in Germany that left three people dead and eight hurt, according to reports. The
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June 21, 2024 — John Hinderaker
The Euro 2024 soccer tournament is under way in Dusseldorf, and in the U.K. there has been less attention to the games than hand-wringing over the likelihood of English fans singing “Ten German Bombers.” Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has denounced the song as “offensive” and urged Brits not to sing it, as has England’s team manager. A German police chief has warned British fans, “Don’t be dicks.” Only a few
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June 9, 2024 — Steven Hayward
The results are coming in for today’s elections for the European Parliament, and so far it appears right-leaning populist parties are routing the establishment centrist and left parties. Green Parties are taking a disproportionate share of the losses. One of Bloomberg’s headlines in their election coverage package is “Macron and Scholz Get Trounced by Far Right in EU Elections.” In France, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally won with 32% of
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January 21, 2024 — Scott Johnson
In the old Wizard of Id cartoon, when the King is advised the peasants are revolting, the King responds, “You can say that again.” This time around they are revolting in Germany. Spiked editor Tom Slater writes in his weekly email: “German farmers have had enough. On Monday, thousands of tractors and tens of thousands of farmers descended on Berlin, capping off a week of nationwide demonstrations. It was a
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December 31, 2023 — John Hinderaker
The Christmas/New Year season is one of heightened terrorism alert in Europe. Today, German authorities announced that they had stopped an intended Islamic attack on Cologne’s (Koln’s) historic cathedral: German police have arrested three people suspected of planning a New Year’s Eve terrorist attack on Cologne Cathedral, which was reportedly to be carried out in a car loaded with explosives. Officers had first been informed of an attack planned for
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November 5, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Yesterday, many thousands of Islamofascists and leftists turned out across the globe for pro-Hamas demonstrations, celebrating the massacre of October 7 and demanding the extermination of Jews. Trafalgar Square was packed to overflowing: Hundreds of thousands turned out in Paris: Some might find the idea of a “kill the Jews” rally in Berlin alarming: And, of course, many thousands rallied to support genocide against the Jews in Washington, D.C. It
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October 22, 2023 — Steven Hayward
I have been speculating for some time, and occasionally hinting here, that if Europe wants to survive, at some point it is going to have to deport large numbers of unassimilable “migrants.” I’ve long thought for a variety reasons that France would be the country most likely do this, though don’t count out Sweden or Denmark, which, unbeknownst to most American media, are starting to reckon with rising crime and
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October 21, 2023 — Steven Hayward
An unusual experience on the train from Salzburg to Munich yesterday. The train stopped at the German border, whereupon eight police officers, well armed and wearing full body armor, boarded the train and asked to see passports. I haven’t had a passport check on a European train in years, and I thought they were obsolete in the era of the Schengen Zone that allows visa-free travel throughout the European Union.
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September 23, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Destroying the German economy isn’t easy, but that country’s government is working hard at it. Since the Industrial Revolution, it has been hard to imagine a de-industrialized Germany. But that is the way things are trending. The London Times reports: Germany is in the teeth of a “severe and sustained downtrend”, experts warned after a closely watched survey showed that a deep contraction in factory output was keeping its economy
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September 19, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Everyone knows that Germany was the “first mover” on the net-zero bandwagon, spending more than a trillion Euros over the last 15 years on its “energiewende” (“energy revolution”) only to see their greenhouse gas emissions begin rising again, and last year reviving coal-power to keep the lights on. One thing they did achieve was causing consumer energy prices to roughly double. I guess that “wind-and-solar-are-cheaper” isn’t working out according to
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August 21, 2023 — John Hinderaker
It is hard to believe, but Germany is on its way to becoming a post-industrial country. What its economy will look like at that point is anyone’s guess, but it won’t be pretty. The Telegraph interviews Monika Schnitzer, who heads Germany’s Council of Economic Experts. She leads off by talking about the need to distance Germany from China: Berlin outlined a plan to “de-risk” the relationship with China last month.
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