In Germany, politicians across the spectrum—from the far left to the far right—are facing an alarming surge in attacks. While neo-Nazi violence often dominates headlines, it represents just the tip of a much larger problem.

On Dec. 22, 2024, two women and a man of the left party Die Linke were beaten up by as many as eight masked people on the right. The perpetrators threw fireworks and punched and kicked the victims even after they were on the ground. One of the female victims told mdr:

It all happened really fast. I can only remember how we were standing there on the corner, a bottle suddenly flew at us, we ran into the street, and then a friend of mine was already lying on the ground, beaten up by them.

Shortly afterward, she herself was attacked and kicked. “You could tell that there was simply no inhibition at all,” she noted.

One of the perpetrators is from Görlitz, Saxony, and is a leader of the far-right Elblandrevolte, part of the Junge Nationalisten (Young Nationalists), the youth organization of the party The Homeland (previously the National Democratic Party of Germany).

In early 2024, we saw an increase in attacks on politicians in the lead-up to European Parliament elections. In April, Matthias Ecke from the Social Democrats was attacked as he hung campaign posters. Members of the Elblandrevolte were also involved in this attack. Around the same time, Social Democratic Party (spd) politician Franziska Giffey was attacked. Politico noted:

One politician ruthlessly beaten while hanging campaign posters. Another assaulted in a public library. Yet another, pushed and spat on by suspects who were part of a group of people allegedly calling out “Heil Hitler.”

A string of violent attacks on politicians in Germany—including a brutal assault on a member of the European Parliament in Dresden—has shaken many and sparked a national debate over the increasingly raw political climate in the country, with some drawing comparisons to the kind of political violence that accompanied the rise of the Nazis.

Recent attacks on politicians are “reminiscent of the darkest chapter in German history,” said Hendrik Wüst, the conservative premier of North Rhine-Westphalia, in an interview on German public television.

After Greens candidate Yvonne Mosler was spat on and threatened in May, she told Euronews: “It is no longer the case, as it was before, that people simply say, ‘No, I’m not interested.’ Now, there are repeated verbal assaults. There are insults, stupid remarks, and not just disinterest, but also open aggression.”

The far right is not the only one on the attack. In December, a video circulated on X showing an spd council attacking an Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) politician. In fact, AfD politicians are most often the victims of political violence in Germany.

In 2023, 86 violent attacks were committed against AfD party representatives, followed by 62 violent attacks on representatives of the Greens. When nonviolent attacks are included, the Greens suffered 1,219 attacks in 2023 compared to the AfD’s 478.

Politically motivated crimes independent from direct attacks on politicians are also on the rise. Germany registered 60,028 politically motivated crimes in 2023. Of those, 28,945 were right-wing crimes (an increase of 23 percent compared to 2022) and 1,270 were violent. Left-wing crimes contributed 7,777 cases (an 11 percent increase), of which 916 were violent. This marks the highest level since the government started tracking more than 20 years ago.

“Politically motivated criminality has almost doubled within the last 10 years and continues to increase,” said Holger Münch, president of the Federal Criminal Police Office. “Parts of the population are tending towards radicalization. These tendencies include attempts to delegitimize the state and its monopoly on violence.”

While such violence is starting to spread more and more through party lines, far-right violence, especially in Eastern Germany, has been traditionally more common, especially among young people. Focus Online wrote on Aug. 19, 2024:

“Voting right-wing has become part of youth culture for young people, like techno and skateboarding.” The founder of the [German People’s Union] dvu, Gerhard Frey, said this back in 1998, when the Frey party won a whopping 12.9 percent of the vote in Saxony-Anhalt. Frey’s assessment and the remarkable result were preceded by frightening attacks on foreigners and migrants in Eastern Germany.

In 1990, skinheads surrounded an Angolan in Eberswalde and kicked him to death. In 1991, 30 right-wing extremists forced their way into a hostel in Winterberge and pushed two men from Namibia over the balcony on the fifth floor. There were serious racist riots in Hoyerswerda in 1991 and in Rostock-Lichtenhagen in 1992. While the mob raged for days, the people of Rostock stood idly by.

Commenting on the election success of dvu, Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry warned in 1998 in “Pro-Nazi Party’s First Win”:

The Nazis love to hate. Their hatred is what motivates them. That is why they are so terribly dangerous. They spew out their Nazi hatred and do their violent deeds, using foreigners as a scapegoat for any problems they face. Just like [Adolf] Hitler, they hate Jews and almost every other race. This method is used to stir up violence. …

The Nazis are going to force the major political parties to accept much of their message of hate! And that means hatred for America and Britain most of all. These are primarily the nations that beat them in World Wars i and ii. …

Gerhard Frey owns two newspapers. He continually publishes articles glorifying German victories in World War ii. His party won 14 seats in parliament with such slogans as “Foreigner bandits get out.” Thirty percent of the young people under 30 years of age voted for these pro-Nazis. Many young people said they “wanted a new man with new ideas.” Or is it a new man with old ideas that they desire?

Hitler also had an enormous appeal to Germany’s youth. This age group knows less about their own history.

We see a clear continuation from the 1990s to today. No matter how one justifies his hatred, if uncontrolled, it leads to violence (1 John 3:15).

Part of the Problem

The strongest far-right party today is the Alternative für Deutschland, which won the election in Thuringia in September and came in a close second in the neighboring state of Saxony.

Spiegel tv asked some of the members of the Elblandrevolte at a AfD campaign on May 1, 2024, in Dresden if they would vote for the party. To their surprise, one of them stated: “The AfD is too far left for me.”

The AfD is not extreme enough for the extremes! Its targeted audience is common people upset about politics, so it has dropped many overt extremist views. In 1998, Mr. Flurry predicted such a trend:

I believe there is going to be a backlash against the extremist parties in Germany. But that is not going to change the dangerous direction Germany is going. It is only going to make these political parties more subtle and deadly.

The AfD today is indeed much more subtle and thus drawing greater support and forcing other parties to respond to their narrative. But from time to time their extreme views still surface. The speaker at the campaign that Spiegel tv visited was AfD candidate Maximilian Krahn who had defended soldiers who fought in the Waffen-SS in World War ii saying that he would “never say that anyone who wore an SS uniform was automatically a criminal.”

While many AfD politicians are more moderate, there is a general theme of blaming Germany’s problems on migration and the erosion of traditional German culture. Many claim that the underlying problem is Germany’s shame for its past. While we are witnessing a sickening moral and cultural decline, the proposed solutions are equally horrifying.

Though the AfD has branded itself as a common-sense party, its primary purpose is to stir hatred toward those who “oppressed” Germany after the war. While this is not the AfD campaign slogan, it is what many people associated with the party promote, such as the magazine Compact, which laments Germany’s World War ii losses, belittles German crimes, and accuses the Allies of having brutally and unjustly oppressed Germany after the war. Compact’s issue on history, “The Death Camps of the Americans,” accused Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower of “deliberately” murdering Germans in prisoner of war camps. Another issue was titled “Historical Lies Against Germany.”

Though the links to the party are undeniable, the hatred of party representatives has been disguised in such a way that people not in tune to their messaging are oblivious to the danger.

Foreign Policy rightly noted on Jan. 26, 2024, that “Germany’s Far-Right Party Is Worse Than the Rest of Europe’s.” Even more concerning, it is getting notable support from aboard.

Foreign Endorsement

On Dec. 29, 2024, Germany’s Welt published an op-ed by billionaire Elon Musk endorsing the AfD. Knowingly or unknowingly, he thus supports a message of hatred—not just against migrants but also against the United States and Britain.

Musk justified his support for the AfD by writing:

The traditional parties have failed Germany. Their policies have led to economic stagnation, social unrest and a dilution of national identity. The AfD, despite being labeled far right, offers a political realism that resonates with many Germans who feel their concerns are ignored by the establishment. They address the issues at hand without the political correctness that often masks the truth. The description of AfD as far right is made obviously false simply by noting that Alice Weidel, the party leader, has a same-sex partner from Sri Lanka! Does that sound like Hitler to you? Please.

On X, Musk shared a post of a user that cited Alice Weidel’s Ph.D. in economics and her sexual orientation and commented, “Obviously not ‘far right’!”

Musk’s intervention may cause the far right to appear more acceptable nationally and globally. But those who hate the AfD will not be swayed by an American billionaire who collaborates with President-elect Donald Trump. Instead, it has caused more polarization and more hatred toward America, which is already accused of puppeteering Germany.

There is also a crucial lack of understanding about Germany’s Nazi past. Anyone who has read Mein Kampf knows how excellent Hitler was at pinpointing the problems of the establishment, the cultural decline and the economic vows. Being able to “address current problems—without the political correctness” isn’t enough to actually solve those problems without also bringing some terrible evils.

Weidel does come across as more moderate and thus appeals to the general public. However, she does little to distance herself from other extremist party members, such as Björn Höcke who led the party to election victory in Thuringia.

Höcke, who has been called the “secret party leader,” has said German attempts to commemorate and apologize for World War ii are a “stupid coping policy.” And he called Germany’s Holocaust memorial “a monument of shame in the heart of its capital.”

In Thuringia, Weidel and Höcke campaigned side by side.

The fact that the party would allow Weidel to be the outward face of the movement isn’t too surprising. In the early days of the Nazi Party, Hitler surrounded himself with homosexuals—though he later sought to purge the German population from the same. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich notes about the Nazis’ paramilitary organization SA: “Many of its top leaders, beginning with its chief, Ernst Roehm, were notorious homosexual perverts. … Murderers, pimps, homosexuals, perverts, drug addicts or just plain rowdies were all the same to him if they served his purposes.”

The AfD today is an alliance with common goals uniting many radicals with more moderate members. More interesting than Weidel’s sexual orientation, however, is her family history—which Musk didn’t mention. This history shows that people carrying the title “Dr.” are not immune to being swept up in extremist causes.

Weidel’s grandfather Dr. Hans Weidel joined the National Socialist Party at the end of 1932 and the SS in January 1933, before Hitler came to power. Germany’s Welt got access to related documents from the time and revealed:

He was once proud to have declared his support for the nsdap earlier than most. “Even before the September 1930 election and continuously afterwards, I voted National Socialist and always actively campaigned for the movement in election propaganda,” he wrote in a document from that time.

Dr. Weidel went on to become one of 3,000 judges of the Nazi military justice system. In 1944, he was appointed chief staff judge, approved in October at the führer’s headquarters.

After the war, Hans Weidel went through a common rehabilitation process and was left unpunished. His son Gerhard Weidel became an early member of the AfD in February 2014 at the age of 75. Gerhard Weidel and his daughter Alice campaigned together for the AfD. Welt commented:

No, she isn’t responsible for her grandfather. But for her party’s history policy. Alexander Gauland called the Nazi era a mere “bird poo.” In May 2024, the AfD’s lead candidate for Europe, Maximilian Krah, answered the question from the Roman newspaper La Repubblica as to whether his statement that Germans should be proud of their ancestors also included SS officers: He would never say that anyone who had worn an SS uniform had automatically been a criminal. In response, Marine Le Pen’s French far-right party broke with the AfD. It declared that it would not form a joint parliamentary group with her in the Brussels parliament.

But the most dangerous part of this trend is not the AfD at all.

A Prophetic Warning

In 1998, Mr. Flurry warned that “Nazi extremists are impacting the major parties. The politicians are saying whatever things will win them votes. Politics as usual.” He cited the examples of chancellor candidates Helmut Kohl and Gerhard Schröder using stronger and stronger rhetoric against migrants.

After stating that political parties will become more “subtle and deadly,” Mr. Flurry wrote:

The Bible says that it is Israel’s (America’s and Britain’s) “lovers” that conquer them—not their obvious enemies. Our nations are going to be so deceived that we fall victim to the greatest double cross in the history of man! “Wherefore I have delivered her into the hand of her lovers, into the hand of the Assyrians, upon whom she doted” (Ezekiel 23:9). Our Assyrian or German “lovers” are going to destroy us unless we repent. …

Britain and America are deeply deceived and refuse to understand what is really happening inside Germany—until it is too late (Ezekiel 33:3).

That means the decision to destroy us is made by “respectable” politicians who are our close allies.

In “Nazism Rises Again in Germany” in our August 2024 Trumpet, Mr. Flurry gave a more detailed explanation of how this hatred relates to Bible prophecy.

Today, many are not even alarmed by the AfD, much less by “respectable” German politicians. But prophecy reveals that there will arise a strongman in Europe who will channel the hatred currently building in Germany and Europe into another war-making machine.

“And in the latter time of their kingdom, when the transgressors are come to the full, a king of fierce countenance, and understanding dark sentences, shall stand up. And his power shall be mighty, but not by his own power: and he shall destroy wonderfully, and shall prosper, and practise, and shall destroy the mighty and the holy people. And through his policy also he shall cause craft to prosper in his hand; and he shall magnify himself in his heart, and by peace shall destroy many: he shall also stand up against the Prince of princes; but he shall be broken without hand” (Daniel 8:23-24).

Prophecies like this caused Mr. Flurry to conclude his 1998 article with:

There is still great hope in this very bad news. Because it is a sign that Christ is about to return and destroy the Nazi war machine forever!

Still, we must brace ourselves for the worst time of suffering ever—just before Christ returns.

Germany will have an absolutely wonderful future once Nazism is destroyed. Sadly, those days are not here yet.