European Elections Rock Berlin
The European Parliament elections saw two related trends. One was the rise of populist fringe parties, often on the fringe right. In France, far-right National Rally leader Marine Le Pen just managed to beat the party of French President Emanuel Macron. In Italy, Matteo Salvini’s fringe right-wing party Lega won.
The other trend is the rise of the so-called green wave, sweeping environmentalist parties to highs they’ve never seen before.
The common factor here is that people across Europe are fed up with mainstream parties and mainstream politics. The main left-wing and right-wing party groupings in Parliament have always controlled a majority of the seats and dominated the Parliament. Until now.
The same trend hit Germany, and it has plunged the ruling coalition into chaos.
The far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) received only 11 percent of the vote nationwide. But it had massive success in the East. In the German states of Saxony and Brandenburg, it was the most popular party.
Meanwhile, on the much further left, the Greens also did well, with over 20 percent of the vote across the country.
All this means that the mainstream parties, the Christian Democratic Union and the Social Democratic Party, which rule together in coalition, had their worst results ever for a European election.
Both parties are looking for new leaders.
Bloomberg reported this week that Chancellor Angela Merkel is no longer satisfied with the woman she chose to succeed her, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer. The coalition could fall apart at any time. It’s no longer clear who will end up leading Germany if that happened.
Ms. Merkel is also revealing an increasingly bleak view of Germany. She told cnn that Germany needs to be “vigilant” regarding the rise of dark forces. This week Der Speigel also published a lengthy piece saying that Ms. Merkel “sees the pillars of the world order collapsing.”
Is Chancellor Merkel right to be worried about the future of the world and of Germany?
The election results in Germany show that she is. This abandonment of mainstream parties and turn to fringe or extreme groups is dangerous. People are looking for someone very different from the current politicians, as well as a way of doing things that is very different from the current democracy.
A revolution in European politics is one of the key trends the Trumpet has been watching. Daniel 11:21 describes how it will happen. It tells us to watch for the arrival of “a vile person, to whom they shall not give the honour of the kingdom: but he shall come in peaceably, and obtain the kingdom by flatteries.”
The Jamieson, Fausset and Brown Commentary says that “the nation shall not, by a public act, confer the kingdom on him, but he shall obtain it by artifice, ‘flattering.’”
In our January Trumpet issue, editor in chief Gerald Flurry wrote, “Current conditions in Europe, including the refugee crisis and the turmoil in German politics, provide probably one of the greatest opportunities ever for a new leader to come into power ‘by flatteries.’”
The European elections show that these conditions remain, and perhaps have even intensified. Watch for that strong leader. For more information, read our free booklet A Strong German Leader Is Imminent, by Gerald Flurry.
