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Welcome To 2026: Europe Laying Groundwork For Climate Science Censorship!

By P Gosselin | No Tricks Zone | December 31, 2025

As EU narratives collapse, desparate leaders are planning more tyrannical measures to keep it all from sinking.

Currently, EU leaders are fuming that US officials would be so audacious as to accuse them of practicing censorship. Yet, when it comes to suppressing open discussions and differing viewpoints on major issues, things are in fact worse than most people think. And, it’s about to get even worse.

A recent (indirectly EU-funded) report released earlier this year shows how the EU is planning to broaden censorship to include the topics of climate and energy science.

In the “Harmful Environmental Agendas and Tactics” (HEAT) report, published by EU DisinfoLab and Logically, its authors investigate how climate-related misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation (MDM) are strategically used to undermine climate policy in Europe, specifically in Germany, France, and the Netherlands.

Climate science skeptics threaten democracy

The report argues that climate disinformation has moved beyond simple science denial and has become a tool for broader political and social polarization.

Outright denial of climate change, the authors claim, is being replaced by narratives focused on “climate delay.” These often acknowledge climate change but attack the feasibility, cost, and fairness of solutions, e.g., they claim green policies will bankrupt households or destroy industries.

The enemies

The report identifies four main pillars driving these agendas:

  1. The Conspiracy Milieu: Distrust of elites and “deep state” narratives (e.g., the “Great Reset”).
  2. Culture War/Partisan Discourse: Framing climate action as an authoritarian or elitist project.
  3. Hostile State Actors (HSAs): Significant involvement of Russian-linked networks (e.g., Portal Kombat) that use localized domains like Pravda DE to amplify divisive climate content.
  4. Big Oil Alignment: Narratives that align with fossil fuel interests, even if direct corporate attribution is often obscured.

In Germany, for example, there are attacks on the Energiewende (energy transition) and the Building Heating Act.

In France, there are links between climate policy and the “Yellow Vest” movement or anti-elitist sentiments.

Meanwhile, the “nitrogen crisis” has been reframed as “government land theft” in the Netherlands. 

European leaders are convinced that their policies have nothing to do with all the failure going on. In their eyes, it’s all the fault of unruly citizens and their disinfoarmtion campaigns.

The report’s key recommendations

The authors call for decisive institutional and platform-level action to treat climate disinformation as a structural threat and a danger to democracy. This all needs to stop!

Platforms must act!

The primary recommendation is for the EU to explicitly recognize climate disinformation as a systemic risk under the Digital Services Act (a.k.a. by critics the Digital Censorship Act). This would force so-called Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs) to take proactive measures and conduct risk assessments.

The authors also call for mandating algorithm audits and public reporting on content moderation, specifically for climate content. It’s time to crack down on skeptics, they say. 

“Independent” auditors

Moreover “independent researchers” are to be provided with access to disaggregated platform data to track how these narratives spread.

Another recommendation is calling for the labelling and limiting the reach of “ideological or sponsored” climate disinformation.

“Trusted flaggers”

The authors also are calling for greater monitoring of Russian-aligned and other hostile state operations that exploit climate debates to weaken EU democratic resilience.

Another step suggested to counter “climate disinformation” is the establishment of reporting channels for civil society organizations (so-called “trusted flaggers”) to flag coordinated inauthentic behavior (CIB) and harmful narratives to regulators.

“Prebunking”

Also “prebunking” campaigns aimed at proactively educating the public on disinformation tactics before they are exposed to them—especially in lower-educated rural and working-class areas that are frequently targeted.

December 31, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

The new German totalitarianism

The German liberal order resorts to totalitarianism to preserve the hegemony of its elites

By Raphael Machado | Strategic Culture Foundation | December 30, 2025

Mentioning “totalitarianism” in Germany quickly forces our minds to associate it with the Nazi period in that country’s history. 12 years during which Germany was under the command of Hitler and his party; a command that culminated in the Second World War and the greatest military hecatomb in human history. Indeed, historically, and thanks to figures like Hannah Arendt, the political category of “totalitarianism” has been restricted to the manifestations of illiberal political theories, such as fascism and communism. Liberalism, on the other hand, could not, it never could, it could never be totalitarian; that would be a “contradiction in terms.”

However, a closer look would quickly point out that many post-war Western philosophers, particularly Jewish ones like Karl Popper and Theodor Adorno, in dealing with attempts to understand Germany’s fascist turn, argued that legalistic concerns would have prevented the state from removing from the political game a political force, like Nazism, which very obviously intended to liquidate democracy and, therefore, put an end to the political game as such. This is the so-called “paradox of tolerance.” Popper, from the right, and Adorno, from the left, both agree in defending that the liberal-democratic state must be intolerant towards the “intolerant”; that is, to pursue, silence, and liquidate, without formalist concerns, any figure or political group that openly opposes the fundamental values of liberal democracy and human rights.

Very obviously, we can see that this is an attempt to philosophically legitimize the establishment of a totalitarian regime under the justification of defending “democracy” against fascists and/or communists. Despite its specific emphasis on rational deliberation, even Jürgen Habermas, the philosophical “pope” of German democratic liberalism, places the enemies of liberal society outside the umbrella of tolerant society, insofar as, if tolerated, they themselves would lead to the end of tolerant society.

The evident risk, nonetheless, lies in the decision that designates a figure, group, or ideology as “contrary to the liberal system.” In the 21st century, neither in Germany nor anywhere else in Europe, is there a serious and grave threat of the rise of openly fascist or communist political groups. Thus, at every moment, it is necessary to make a judgment about the possibility of an analogy between each political challenge to the existing order and the historical anti-liberal ideologies.

Since the definitions of fascism and communism are obviously imprecise (each theorist, each academic, etc., has their own definition of these ideologies), accusing an opponent of being “fascist” or “communist” is easy. And with that, it becomes possible to construct the possibility of silencing and excluding the opponent from the public sphere.

The German state, therefore, has all the necessary theoretical foundation to justify the persecution of citizens who oppose its designs and values.

And now it has the technical and legal means to discover who all the “enemies of tolerant society” are among its citizens.

In December 2025, the Berlin House of Representatives passed an amendment to the General Law on Security and Public Order that significantly expands state surveillance capabilities. The amendment introduces several tools that are, to say the least, controversial, such as authorizing police forces to install spyware on the smartphones and computers of “suspicious” citizens, as well as to intercept encrypted communications. If these actions are not feasible remotely, the new regulations allow police forces to secretly break into citizens’ homes to install the spyware physically.

Another innovation is the possibility for police forces to access traffic data from cell towers for all devices in a specific area and moment, without the need for specific judicial authorization. With this, the police could map the movements of any citizen during protests and public events. Furthermore, the legislation also authorizes the collected data to be used for training artificial intelligence systems.

This is a clear institutional slide toward totalitarianism. It is impossible to twist the narrative to deny, therefore, the possibility of liberalism also degenerating into totalitarianism, just as this possibility is recognized for fascism and communism. However, the regulations in question will only apply to the state of Berlin; it is not a change at the federal level.

But it may only be a matter of time. A similar bill is advancing in the Bundestag that promotes mass monitoring at the federal level, with the possibility of chat controls, weakening encryption, and digital and physical invasions of citizens’ property.

This intensification of state surveillance is no coincidence. It appears at a time when the legitimacy of the German liberal republic is being questioned by its citizens, disheartened by the achievements of recent decades, mass immigration, rising violence, and a clear effort by the government to push its citizens into a conflict with Russia. Questioned and under the threat of the rise of anti-system political forces, the German liberal order resorts to totalitarianism to preserve the hegemony of its elites.

December 31, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Anti-Russia States Cannot Join Ukraine Peacekeeping – German Lawmaker

Sputnik – 28.12.2025

NATO and EU countries using anti-Russian propaganda cannot join any potential peacekeeping mission in Ukraine, while Germany’s direct military involvement risks dragging it into foreign conflict, Steffen Kotre, a Bundestag member of the Alternative for Germany party, told Sputnik.

On Friday, Manfred Weber, the leader of the European Parliament’s largest European People’s Party called for sending troops from EU countries to Ukraine. The politician added that he would like to see soldiers with the European flag on their uniforms in Ukraine.

“Such measures should be seen as part of militarization that contributes to prolonged confrontation with Russia. If we are talking about deploying contingents, they should be provided by neutral countries, not states with anti-Russian propaganda or NATO members,” Kotre said.

In addition, Kotre opposed further supplying Ukraine with weapons, as well as the EU countries’ intention to commit to permanently maintaining the Ukrainian armed forces at a high level of combat readiness.

“I fundamentally oppose sending multinational military forces to Ukraine – even if they are called ‘protection forces’ or ‘multinational forces.’ I consider German direct military involvement a mistake, as it could drag the country into someone else’s war and entail significant risks of escalation,” he said.

Since this spring France, as the co-chair of the so-called Coalition of the Willing, has been trying to broker a deployment of a multinational “deterrent” contingent to Ukraine. In September, French President Emmanuel Macron said that 26 countries committed to joining the deployment after a ceasefire is reached in Ukraine.

On December 15, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that the European Union and the United States had agreed to provide security guarantees to Ukraine, modeled on NATO’s Article 5. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that Moscow and Washington had reached an understanding that Ukraine should return to being a non-aligned, neutral, non-nuclear state.

In 2024, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) said that the West planned to deploy the so-called peacekeeping contingent of about 100,000 in Ukraine to restore its combat capability. The SVR called this scenario a de facto occupation of Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin has stated that there is no point in the presence of foreign military personnel in Ukraine after a possible sustainable peace agreement. The Russian leader also stressed that Russia would consider any troops on the territory of Ukraine to be legitimate targets.

December 28, 2025 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , , , , | Leave a comment

Head of EU Parliament’s biggest faction wants German soldiers in Ukraine

RT | December 27, 2025

Berlin must send troops to Ukraine as part of a potential peace settlement, according to Manfred Weber, the leader of the European People’s Party (EPP) – a political group with the biggest faction in the EU Parliament. Brussels cannot rely on Washington to secure peace between Moscow and Kiev, the politician told Funke Media Group in an interview published this week.

Moscow has repeatedly rejected the idea of any NATO presence in Ukraine. It also named the US-led bloc’s expansion to the East one of the root causes of the conflict.

Kiev’s Western backers, including France and the UK have occasionally raised the issue of NATO troop deployment to Ukraine throughout the conflict. The plan was given another impetus earlier this month at the talks in Berlin, where US officials met with the Ukrainian delegation, the leaders of Germany, France, the UK, and eight other European countries.

”We cannot seriously expect Trump to secure a peace settlement solely with American troops. And when we talk about European troops, Germany cannot be left out,” Weber said. “After a ceasefire or a peace agreement, the European flag must fly along the [contact] line.”

He also claimed he did not “see” the Russian leadership “pursuing the path of peace” and called on Kiev’s European backers to demonstrate strength.

Moscow has repeatedly stated it is ready and willing to resolve the conflict peacefully as long as the other side demonstrates a similar commitment and the root causes of the crisis are addressed. On Friday, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said that the conflict resolution was “really close” but warned that Kiev and its European backers are actively trying to “torpedo” the peace process.

The Trump administration has not confirmed the extent of its support for the European plan. Weber also called on the EU to act independently from the US in security matters, prompting the NATO head, Mark Rutte, to warn that creating alternatives to the bloc would not benefit its European members.

December 27, 2025 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

The vindication (and brutal punishment) of Dr. Reiner Fuellmich

By Stephen Karganovic | Strategic Culture Foundation | December 23, 2025

Alongside the powers that be everywhere, Google’s still anonymous AI is also a pious believer in the virtues of free expression. It proclaims boldly and for all the right reasons that free speech is vital to democracy, in which it also claims to believe. It reminds us also, which is good to know, that freedom of expression promotes an informed citizenry and self-governance and ensures government accountability. Furthermore, that open dialogue and debate facilitate the “marketplace of ideas,” which is a vital condition for social progress and provides society with a much-needed “safety valve.” And finally, that the unhindered right to express one’s thoughts, beliefs, and values without fear is a fundamental aspect of human dignity and self-fulfilment. Amen, amen, amen.

In theory, all would heartily salute those noble sentiments. And that includes even some of their most ruthless violators, such as the German government.

For over a year after kidnapping him abroad, the German government kept prominent German lawyer Dr. Reiner Fuellmich in prison on contrived charges and under extraordinarily harsh and inhuman conditions, which were seemingly designed just to torment him. In Germany, for Dr. Fuellmich at least, the right to express one’s thoughts with dignity (never mind self-fulfilment) in the manner so movingly preached by Google’s AI avatar went out the window many moons ago.

How many are there who still remember who Dr. Fuellmich is and what he stands for, let alone are aware of his current plight?

For those who do not, a brief note is in order. Shortly after the sudden appearance of the Covid affair in 2019, Dr. Fuellmich, a prominent trial attorney from Gottingen, gained public attention by raising sensible questions about the nature and origin of the commotion which was becoming global in scope. Identical questions were on the minds of many, but few were capable of articulating them in legal terms as effectively as he was. Initially, his questions were formulated rather timidly, barely overstepping the unspoken bounds of permissible inquiry. There was nigh a suggestion of any “conspiracy theory” or frontal challenge to the integrity of the system that in a matter of weeks had improvised, for purposes then still unknown, a global health emergency which was the pretext for unprecedentedly comprehensive social disruptions and the imposition of hitherto inconceivable restrictions on elementary human liberties.

As prominent professionals in the medical and other fields began also to sound the alarm and to raise questions from their respective areas of expertise, it became obvious to those who followed Reiner Fuellmich’s public pronouncements that both the direction and tone of the Covid inquiry he and his associates were pursuing were beginning to change. The issues he was now beginning to raise were no longer merely technical. Increasingly, as he dug deeper he was calling into question the bona fides of the political, media, and pharmaceutical intimidation machine that was invoking a supposed pandemic to implement a global lock-down regime, with compulsory mass injection of untested “therapeutic” substances.

Dr. Fuellmich’s basic questions about the “pandemic” are well worth recapitulating:

  • “One: is there a corona pandemic, or is there only a PCR test pandemic, specifically, does a positive PCR test result mean that the person tested is infected with COVID-19, or does it mean absolutely nothing, in connection with the COVID-19 infection;
  • “Two, do the so-called anti-corona measures, such as the lockdowns, facemasks, social distancing, and quarantine regulations serve to protect the world’s population from corona, or do they serve only to make people panic, so they believe, without asking any questions, that their lives are in danger, so that in the end, the pharmaceutical and technology companies can generate huge profits from the sale of PCR tests, antigen and antibody tests and vaccines, as well as the harvesting of our genetic fingerprints; and
  • “Three, is it true that the German government was extensively lobbied, more so than any other government, by the chief protagonists of the so-called corona pandemic? Germany is known as a particularly disciplined country and was therefore to become a role model for the rest of the world, for its strict, and therefore, successful adherence to the corona measures.”

When, compelling as they evidently were, those interrogatories remained ignored in the public arena (whilst Dr. Fuellmich himself was being ridiculed and vilified just for asking) there began a perceptible shift in the scope and focus of his inquiry. His razor sharp legal mind was activated in the highest degree. The Establishment’s stonewalling on mostly softball issues gradually led him to undertake an unsparing in-depth scrutiny of the systemic background of the global Covid affair, fully intending to go to the root of it and leaving no stone unturned. Dr. Fuellmich threw the gauntlet when he announced that he was assembling evidence of crimes against humanity on a massive scale and of sufficient weight to convene a Medical Nuremberg II, with parallel criminal and class action proceedings that he intended to initiate in the judicial system of the United States and also before the European Court of Human Rights.

Dr. Fuellmich had stepped on some very sensitive and hostile toes. Clearly no such lunacy as he was contemplating could possibly be allowed. Plans were laid immediately to derail him by means of one of those shabby, low life operations in which secret services excel. Informants were planted in the target’s immediate circle to snitch on him and under false witness to furnish compromising evidence. A secret indictment (lettre de cachet, as this practice was known under the ancien regime in France and which recently was revived by the Hague Tribunal) for a purported money laundering scheme was duly prepared and German authorities waited for the convenient opportunity to catch their unsuspecting prey. That opportunity presented itself two years ago when Dr. Fuellmich, as a German citizen, appeared on the premises of the German consulate in Mexico (technically German territory, of course) to solicit a routine consular service. There, he was apprehended and promptly packed off to Germany to be disposed of as the German authorities saw fit. The only saving grace is that he was not snuffed and chopped up like the dissident journalist at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

Following an unprecedented, almost two-year, pre-trial incarceration under medieval conditions that was seemingly devised especially for him (the old “flight risk” ruse was cited as the official rationale for this harsh measure) in April 2025 Dr. Fuellmich was finally sentenced to three years and nine months in prison on the bogus charges filed against him. On the surface, everything appears neat and proper. Technically, he was condemned for a crime of moral turpitude. His real “offence” against the vindictive globalist Establishment, the irrefutable public exposure of its totalitarian and population-reduction agenda and its corrupt liaison with the nefarious pharmacological mafia and compulsory promotion of its lethal products, was not even alluded to in the course of those proceedings. Yet, while Dr. Fuellmich is rotting in prison, every one of the principal claims for which he actually was imprisoned is now being scientifically corroborated.

The so-called “covid vaccines” are now known to be associated with heart damage, exactly as Dr. Fuellmich and numerous other researchers insistently warned during the “pandemic” (also here). As predicted by Dr. Fuellmich and his research team, a surge of life threatening blood clots has been correlated with the mass injection of untested “vaccines.” There has also been a marked acceleration of deadly cancer conditions. As further evidence of the fraudulence of the “pandemic emergency,” a peer reviewed study has demonstrated that 86% of allegedly PCR-positive “Covid  cases” were not even real infections. That had originally been stated by Dr. Fuellmich, to widespread derision at the time. It is a fact that dismantles the scientific foundation used to justify lockdowns, social distancing, and vaccine mandates. And perhaps the most damning fact of all, Japanese scientists have demonstrated that contrary to disinformation about infected bats and unsanitary Chinese markets when the pandemic broke out, all known Covid variants are in fact of laboratory origin. That raises obvious and legitimate questions about criminal intent both on the level of the proposed “cures” and of the fabricated health emergency itself that those cures presumably were developed to resolve.

The vicious treatment allotted to the distinguished German lawyer Dr. Reiner Fuellmich is comparable to the persecution of figures like Giordano Bruno. It gives the lie to the collective West’s pharisaical pretence of freedom of expression. The dark stain it leaves will be indelibly recorded as a shameful episode in the history of German jurisprudence.

December 24, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , , | Leave a comment

Failed Diplomacy & Collapse of Ukraine

Glenn Diesen | December 22, 2025

Larry Johnson is a former intelligence analyst at the CIA who also worked at the US State Department’s Office of Counterterrorism. Johnson outlines why the negotiations are failing and what the pending collapse of Ukraine will entail.

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December 23, 2025 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia, Video | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

German politicians and police on lobby trips to Israel

By Leon Wystrychowski | MEMO | December 23, 2025

Several recent investigative reports in Germany’s alternative media have revealed that Israel has been stepping up efforts to invite German decision-makers in order to exert influence and initiate business deals. The focus is primarily on senior politicians and high-ranking officials within Germany’s security apparatus.

Propaganda trips for politicians

Mondoweiss and Declassified UK recently highlighted that trips to Israel are among the “less well-known” yet widely used tools of the Israel lobby to influence senior politicians. The same appears to be true of Germany, as the left-wing daily Neues Deutschland has now exposed. According to the paper, as recently as last November some 160 politicians from across Germany and from a wide range of parties were invited to Israel as part of what was described as an “influence operation”, where they took part in a five-day programme.

The trip was so clearly a propaganda exercise that even hardline Zionists among the hand-picked guests later complained to the Israeli daily Haaretz that it had amounted to a “one-sided PR operation”. The itinerary included sites where fighting with the Palestinian resistance had taken place on 7 October 2023, the Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem, a guided tour of a factory belonging to the Israeli arms manufacturer Rafael, and the Old City of occupied East Jerusalem, under illegal Israeli control since 1967. Representatives of the Israeli government also reportedly made use of the opportunity to rail against the establishment of a Palestinian state and against a “two-state solution”.

As the authors point out, although the November delegation was the largest of its kind to date, it was by no means the first. Since 2014, politicians from all German parties – with the exception of the far-right AfD – have regularly been invited on similar trips. While such visits in the United States are organised by AIPAC and its affiliates, in the UK and Germany they are handled by organisations such as the European Leadership Network (ELNET) or the so-called Nahost Friedensforum (Middle East Peace Forum). In all three countries, these trips and their funding are frequently obscured, using a mix of legal and legally questionable methods. In 2024, for example, a senior Green Party politician in Germany resigned after it emerged that he had failed to declare such a trip as a donation.

German police on a “study visit” to an apartheid state

These trips are by no means limited to politicians. As reported by the German online outlet Itidal, Berlin’s police chief and newly appointed head of the “Association of Police Presidents in Germany”, Barbara Slowik Meisel, recently travelled to Tel Aviv at the invitation of the Israeli police. She was accompanied by senior officials from across Germany and from various police institutions. The Israeli side covered accommodation and meals, while the travel costs themselves were paid by German taxpayers.

The occasion was reportedly a “Multidisciplinary Emergency Management Commissioner’s Conference”. The visit had been preceded by a trip to Berlin in October by Israel’s police chief, Daniel Levi, during which he extended the invitation. According to Itidal, the conference featured extensive propaganda against the Palestine solidarity movement, which was portrayed as an extension of Hamas. There were also calls for increased repression of dissenting views and information online. In addition, no fewer than twelve arms manufacturers presented their products.

In this case too, the trip was not made public. As Itidal explains, this is not illegal, but it is highly unusual. Despite the frequently proclaimed “German Staatsräson” (reason of state), under which Berlin declares its firm and unconditional support for Israel, there appears to be a clear awareness of the moral and legal problems this entails. There is endless rhetoric about “Israel-related antisemitism” and “solidarity with Israel”; weapons are supplied for a genocide; the illegal occupation and apartheid condemned by the International Court of Justice are financially supported; Israeli expertise in surveillance, crowd control and warfare is utilised; and lobby trips are eagerly undertaken. Yet speaking about all this openly and transparently is something Germany’s political and security elites evidently prefer to avoid.

December 23, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Leave a comment

Zelensky Says Some US Security Guarantees to Ukraine Will Not Be Made Public

Sputnik – 23.12.2025

Volodymyr Zelensky has said that the United States will provide security guarantees to Ukraine, although some of them will not be made public.

“There are security guarantees between us, the Europeans, and the US – a framework agreement. There is a separate document between us and the US – bilateral security guarantees. These, as we see it, should be considered by the US Congress, with some classified details and additions,” Zelensky said during a press conference on Monday.

Last week, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that the European Union and the US had agreed to provide security guarantees for Ukraine, similar to NATO’s Article 5. At the same time, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that Moscow and Washington had reached an understanding that Ukraine must return to the non-aligned, neutral, and non-nuclear foundations of its statehood.

Since mid-November, the US has been promoting a new peace plan for Ukraine. On December 2, Russian President Vladimir Putin received US special presidential envoy Steve Witkoff and US president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, at the Kremlin. The US representatives’ visit to Russia was related to the discussion of the US peace plan for Ukraine. The Kremlin stated that Russia remained open to negotiations and committed to the Anchorage discussions.

December 23, 2025 Posted by | Deception, Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

No More Ukraine Proxy War? You’re a Traitor!

Glenn Diesen & Lt Col Daniel Davis
Glenn Diesen | December 16, 2025

I had the pleasure of speaking with Lt. Col. Daniel Davis about how Europe has trapped itself in ideological narratives of good versus evil

December 18, 2025 Posted by | Militarism, Video | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

AfD: “The German government is trying to create the conditions for war without the consent of the people”

AfD Co-chair Tino Chrupalla says the EU’s sanctions, militarism, and support for Israeli crimes are eroding Europe’s democracy and sovereignty.

By Tunc Akkoc | The Cradle | December 16, 2025

With western double standards laid bare by Israel’s war on Gaza, Germany’s political order is facing an unprecedented rupture. The ruling Social Democrats (SPD) and Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU), both staunch backers of Ukraine and Israel, have pushed Berlin into economic turmoil with self-destructive sanctions on Russia and unconditional support for Tel Aviv. Now, with the country in recession and the public burdened by soaring energy costs, Germany’s once-stable centrism is crumbling.

Trends in German politics point to a change unseen since World War II. The INSA poll conducted between 8 and 12 December shows the CDU/CSU has fallen to 24 percent, while the SPD has dropped to 14 percent. The rising force is the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. In the INSA poll, its vote share reaches 26 percent. These figures are consistent with the Ipsos results from 7 to 9 November.

The AfD was founded in 2013, following the 2008 financial crisis. It is now the main opposition party and even a contender for power – that is, if they are allowed to participate in the elections. The party criticizes “mass migration, crime, high taxes, silenced opposition, and poverty.” It is labeled “far-right” by the ‘centrist’ neoliberal bloc. So what views do they defend to be considered “far-right”? What exactly are they saying about current issues in Europe, Germany, and the world?

Tino Chrupalla has co-chaired the AfD party with Alice Weidel since 2019. A Bundestag member since 2017, Chrupalla hails from East Germany and started his political journey in the youth wing of the Christian Democrats. He joined the AfD in 2015 and was the party’s representative at US President Donald Trump’s second presidential inauguration in January 2025.

In this exclusive interview with The Cradle, Chrupalla speaks out on the failures of the Ukraine and Gaza wars, the militarization of Europe, and why he believes Germany must break from Atlanticist subservience to pursue a future of peace, trade, and sovereignty.

(This interview has been edited for length and clarity)

The Cradle : How do you assess the geopolitical and geoeconomic situation in Europe? Is it possible to reverse the effects of the Ukraine crisis?

Chrupalla: During the war in Ukraine, Europe has taken itself out of the game. Those who are strong are those who have multiple options. With 19 sanction packages, the EU has rejected the option of cheap gas and other raw materials from Russia.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent put it aptly: if you have to do something 19 times, you have apparently made a mistake. The German people are the ones primarily suffering under the sanctions.

This policy has failed. German households now pay three to four times more for energy than those in the US. Our energy-intensive industries are relocating. Unemployment is rising. Heads of state and government of the EU could have used US President Donald Trump’s peace plan as an opportunity to reduce sanctions and restart raw-material trade. Instead, they decided on a complete import ban on Russian gas starting in 2027.

These politicians can delay the conclusion of peace. They can let their citizens suffer in order to punish Russia. But they cannot change the geography of the European continent. My goal is peace and free trade across the entire continent.

The Cradle : Germany and the EU are undergoing rapid militarization. Chancellor Friedrich Merz speaks of making “Germany once again the largest military power in Europe.” Alongside debates about reintroducing compulsory military service, the rise in military spending is coming to the forefront. What are the implications?

Chrupalla: I warned early on about the dangerous war rhetoric from other parties. The German government is now creating conditions for a war made up of empty words. Defense budgets have exploded. In 2022, the Bundeswehr received a special fund of €100 billion ($117.5 billion). Now it has ballooned to €1 trillion ($1.175 trillion).

Even as leader of the opposition, CDU chairman Friedrich Merz pushed for a so-called special fund before the new elections, which largely consists of debt for weapons. Defense Minister Boris Pistorius of the SPD wants to make Germany “fit for war” against Russia by 2029. Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt of the CSU wants war instruction in schools. His party colleague Manfred Weber, head of the European People’s Party, wants to convert all of Europe to a wartime economy.

In the new federal budget, the government is creating the conditions for alliance and tension scenarios. A simplified booking system makes it possible to reallocate billions for war without parliamentary approval.

The opposition is sidelined. And the worst part is: none of this money benefits Germany’s security, military capability, or national defense. It is about profits for the arms industry and mobilization against Russia. For this reason, we also rejected the reactivation of compulsory military service as long as there is war in Europe.

The Cradle : The Gaza war has further exposed western double standards. How do you view Germany’s position?

Chrupalla: The war in Gaza has claimed a high number of civilian lives, including many women and children. According to the Israeli army, 83 percent of those killed in Gaza were civilians. The images of dead children and devastated streets leave no one untouched.

I have always condemned this and made it clear that demonstrations against this war must not be placed under general suspicion. Our program is clear: no arms deliveries to war zones. I have repeatedly insisted on this demand.

Chancellor Merz shifted to this position in August. In my view, public opinion in the EU has indeed changed over the course of the war. There is far more nuance on Gaza than there ever was on Ukraine.

The Cradle : What kind of future does the AfD envision for Germany and Europe?

Chrupalla: We want a sovereign Europe in a multipolar world. That starts with strengthening nation-states. Germany cannot have its policy dictated by politicians in Estonia or Brussels. We must reject sanctions that hurt us and resist efforts to sever ties with the east.

We are against economic wars fought for foreign interests. Peaceful trade must not be disrupted by sanctions or value-based conditions. In the European Parliament, we helped ensure that the supply chain law was relaxed, as it would have required trading partners to adhere to a specific social model.

We respect other civilizations and likewise demand respect for Europe. We oppose value-driven foreign policy with a policy of mutual respect. For Germany, we strive for a future of peace and prosperity.

The Nord Stream attack was an act of economic sabotage. It cut off our industrial lifeline and pushed us deeper into recession. We need to restore energy sovereignty, reindustrialize, and protect local production.

Corporate insolvencies are increasing. Fewer and fewer taxpayers must finance increasingly extensive social benefits. At the same time, contributors are not receiving back what they paid into the social security funds.

Federal governments have relied solely on renewable energies. We, however, want a broad energy mix, including fossil energy. To create a good future for Germany, we also address Germans with an immigrant background. Sovereignty and peace, freedom and prosperity are in all our interests.

The Cradle : How does the AfD view the emerging multipolar order and its key players?

Chrupalla: The war in Ukraine has put the traditional security structure in Europe to the test. It is still uncertain what transformations will result from its outcome. The peace negotiations have deepened the divide between the EU and the US.

Washington is at least attempting to reach an understanding. Chancellor Merz and other heads of government and state, however, are pressuring Ukraine to continue pursuing maximal goals, even though defeat is imminent.

In fact, it should be the other way around. Our states in Western and Central Europe depend on reaching an accommodation with Russia. We need raw materials and would be the first to be affected by a major war.

For us, Russia is part of Europe. We seek a peace order and security architecture that includes Russia. The People’s Republic of China is Germany’s top trading partner. Commonalities are more important than differences. In particular, the Greens have repeatedly attempted to steer foreign policy toward decoupling.

During the chip crisis, which originated in the Netherlands, we saw the consequences such decoupling would have: machines come to a standstill, workers stay home. The global economy is so strongly interconnected that a single severed thread can have unpredictable effects.

We want free and peaceful trade with the whole world. The Global South has a legitimate interest in prosperity and autonomy. We must support the countries of the south in this while also safeguarding our own interests. Unfortunately, the federal government has recently allowed ties with the south to deteriorate. Cooperation in the development of our economies, on equal footing, is an important aspect of our foreign policy.

The Cradle : What is your foreign policy approach to the Islamic world?

Chrupalla: Our foreign policy principle of respect also applies to states in which Islam is the majority religion. Islam is not a monolithic bloc. Despite unity in faith, these states pursue different interests. This becomes clear when looking at conditions in West Asia.

Germany has taken in many asylum seekers of the Muslim faith over the past 10 years. This immigration places demands on our social welfare systems and on internal security, similar to the immigration of Syrians into Turkiye. However, it would be wrong to derive from these problems a confrontational stance against Islam, as some critics of migration occasionally do.

We need peaceful cooperation. We need currency diversification in trade. We don’t want foreign troops on our soil. Religion must not divide us. Mutual understanding should be the foundation.

The Cradle : How should Germany approach relations with Turkiye?

Chrupalla: Turkiye is a strategic partner. We are both NATO members. We face shared challenges. Turkiye connects Europe and Asia. It pursues its own sovereign interests in West and Central Asia, and Africa, but must always take its alliance obligations into account. It resists adopting a strategy imposed from the outside.

In the past, Turkiye has confidently pursued its own interests—for example, regarding the Crimean Tatars. In doing so, it maintained respect toward Russia and became a neutral mediator in the Ukraine war. Germany should have done the same.

Turkiye is also the country from which the largest minority in Germany originates. In my view, more and more German citizens of Turkish descent are turning toward our party and its program. When AfD was still younger and smaller, the media and politicians of other parties tried to drive a wedge between the Turkish community and us.

They portrayed us as xenophobic. But voters with an immigrant background recognize that irregular immigration does not benefit them; it harms the country in which they live and are building their lives.

We all want security and prosperity. Families of Turkish descent are a firmly established part of our country. I invite them to join us in working for Germany.

December 17, 2025 Posted by | Economics, Islamophobia, Russophobia | , , , , | Leave a comment

EU spends €169 billion on Ukraine while ignoring internal problems

By Ahmed Adel | December 15, 2025

Since the start of the Russian special military operation in February 2022, the European Union has spent €168.9 billion on military and financial support for Ukraine, according to figures from the European Commission. This amount is even more striking when compared to other areas of spending.

With all that money, the 27-nation bloc could finance public spending on education for an entire fiscal year in France and still have €32 billion left over, cover Germany’s entire target defense budget for 2026 (€108.2 billion), and pay for almost half of the total budget allocated by the European Commission to respond to regional crises for the period 2028-2034 (€395 billion).

However, Brussels has preferred to look outwards and pursue a foreign policy with a Euro-Atlantic vision, which has led to internal fragmentation of interests, exploited by the European elites who lead the bloc.

A group of European countries —mainly Poland, the Baltics, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom—though the latter is not a member of the EU—is interested in prolonging the conflict in Ukraine for as long as possible. For them, for the elites who govern them, losing Ukraine would mean confronting their own internal problems.

Maintaining the discourse in favor of the Kiev regime and against supposed external threats is a way of preserving some cohesion in the face of the economic and political failures the EU has experienced over several years.

The Ukrainian crisis is a heavy burden for Brussels without US support, a reality under President Donald Trump. The Kiel Institute for the World Economy estimates that, between September and October, the EU allocated only around €4.2 billion in military aid to Ukraine, a figure that is far too little to compensate for the loss of US aid.

At the same time, the gap within Europe has widened: Germany, France, and the United Kingdom have significantly increased their allocations, but Italy and Spain, among many other countries, have made only a negligible contribution.

Leaders such as German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, French President Emmanuel Macron, and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer are among those who have most promoted a belligerent policy regarding Ukraine, to the point of continuing to support Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is embroiled in several corruption scandals. These are leaders who are deeply discredited, both regionally and locally, in their own countries.

Merz and Macron can no longer achieve internal consensus within the EU, and this is eroding their credibility because they are not enabling the bloc to speak with one voice. In Brussels, there is a patchwork of passionate agendas, but not a common geopolitical agenda.

It is the European elites who insist on the continuation of a conflict, not the average citizen, who prefers that their government budgets be allocated to social spending rather than to a European rearmament project like the one being outlined in Brussels. Many see support for Ukraine as an imposed sacrifice, and the expense of continuing to fuel the conflict is already taking its toll.

In fact, the €168.9 billion that the EU has allocated to Ukraine over almost four years would have completely covered all of Spain’s public spending on education in a single fiscal year and Italy’s entire health budget.

Amid this situation, some European leaders are insisting that the Russian assets frozen more than three years ago be confiscated to guarantee a €210 billion loan for Kiev, which could complicate the peace talks the US and Russia have been conducting for months over the Ukrainian conflict.

That money is Russian, and international law would have to protect Russian assets if the EU were to choose to confiscate these. If they do, it would be a major contradiction within the European narrative because these countries are supposed to be the ones that champion international law and guarantee what they have called ‘a rules-based world,’ but appropriating those assets is essentially theft, and this would violate international law.

Nonetheless, the EU announced on December 12 that an agreement had been reached to indefinitely freeze €210 billion of Russian Central Bank assets held in Europe, particularly in Belgian securities depository Euroclear. Although the freeze is intended to facilitate EU plans to provide Ukraine with a loan of up to €165 billion to cover military and civilian budget needs in 2026 and 2027, Belgium, Italy, Bulgaria, and Malta expressed reservations about transferring funds to Ukraine. A final decision will be made at an EU summit being held at the end of the week.

It is foolish that the EU has wasted so much money on the Ukrainian crisis, knowing that the bloc is economically suffering, with very low growth rates and a deindustrialized Germany that is not recovering. Yet, despite this, the EU seemingly wants to further tarnish its global reputation by aiming to steal Russia’s wealth.

Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.

December 15, 2025 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Russophobia | , , , , | Leave a comment

The Price of Sanctions: Volkswagen Shuts Down Dresden Plant as German Industry Reels

Sputnik – 14.12.2025

Volkswagen plans to halt production of vehicles at its Dresden plant on Tuesday, marking the first time in the company’s history that a Germany-based factory has been shuttered.

With an installed capacity to build up to 37,500 cars a year, and the flagship of VW’s EV lineup, the Dresden plant’s closure comes against the backdrop of Germany’s broader deindustrialization, which started in 2022 when Berlin rejected the Russian energy supplies propping up its manufacturing base.

FT blames the closure on poor demand in Europe, weak sales in China, and 15% US tariffs on European vehicle imports.

Volkswagen announced plans to “transform” the Dresden factory into an “innovation campus” earlier this month as part of a “Future Volkswagen” program, which includes plans to reduce Germany-wide vehicle output by 730k units by 2028, and slash 35k jobs “in a socially responsible manner.”

German industrial leaders and Russian President Vladimir Putin warned about the consequences of cutting Europe off from Russian gas almost four years ago, with Putin saying the “suicidal” decision would undermine Europe’s global economic competitiveness.

December 14, 2025 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

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