Nile Gardiner, a former aide to Margaret Thatcher, has called for the death penalty for convicted grooming gang members.
Speaking to Bev Turner on GB News’ flagship US programme, The Late Show Live, Mr Gardiner argued that while the state should be “extremely careful about the application” of the death penalty, “it works”.
Mr Gardiner, who serves as director of the US-based Margaret Thatcher Centre for Freedom, told Bev: “It’s effective. Most people support it. It is a big deterrent.
“In the case of the recent grooming gang scandal, for example, there are a number of people who deserve the death penalty for that.
“If they were executed, it would be hugely popular, I think, with the British people.”
However, Bev expressed caution at the idea of capital punishment making a return to Britain.
The Late Show Live host said: “I don’t think any government would ever would ever do that for all sorts of reasons.
“But can you imagine the morning of waking up and knowing that somebody is about to die at the hands of the state?
“You would have children going into school that morning knowing that the Government is killing someone.”
Bev went on to suggest that the British public may not be “ready” for the death penalty to be re-introduced.
However, Mr Gardiner said the case for capital punishment should be put to the people via a referendum – and that he believes “that side would actually win”.
The former Thatcher aide added: “I think it’s such a serious issue that it should be put to the British people.
The debate over capital punishment came after US Attorney General Pam Bondi’s announcement that the Trump administration wants the death penalty to be rolled out nationally.
On Thursday, US President Donald Trump signed a presidential memorandum looking to restore the death penalty in Washington DC.
Mr Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that if “you kill somebody, or if you kill a police officer, law enforcement officer – death penalty”.
However, Ms Bondi told the media that the administration would be seek to reinstate the punishment in the American capital, but “all over the country, again.”
The death penalty was used in Britain between the Anglo-Saxon era up until the middle of the 20th century.
The last executions to take place on British soil came in August 1964, when Peter Allen and Gwynne Evans were hung for murder.
According to recent YouGov polling, 57 per cent of Britons would support the use of the death penalty for terrorist murder, while 54 per cent would back the punishment for child killers.
Capital punishment is still used in 55 countries across the globe, with the top executioners being China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the US.
President Trump is getting nothing but flak for cautioning pregnant women against taking Tylenol, given a string of studies that shows a likely link between a mother taking that common pain killer and autism in their babies. Autism rates, by the way, have skyrocketed in recent decades.
Here’s an overblown lede and criticism of his statement from the Washington Post:
A year ago, the maker of Tylenol lauded a federal judge’s dismissal of hundreds of lawsuits alleging the popular painkiller caused autism in children whose mothers took it during pregnancy. The company, Kenvue Inc., citing “confusion” the litigation caused, said the judge’s ruling affirmed that “science does not support causation.” But now Kenvue and its premier over-the-counter drug have been thrust into a political and medical maelstrom after President Donald Trump — in a White House briefing Monday — amplified the losing side of the court cases with his powerful megaphone. In forcefully warning expectant mothers not to take Tylenol no less than a dozen times, Trump drew on evidence that is unsettled, disputed and that failed to pass legal scrutiny in U.S. District Court in New York.
See, judges, with no medical training, are the final word in what’s science, and there’s no such thing as a bad judicial ruling, despite judicial rulings getting overturned all the time these days in what’s known as bench-slapping.
So many of the media mavens are inserting those words “without evidence” to characterize Trump’s warning, too.
But actually, Trump has a secret weapon they don’t — called ‘science.’
From Harvard, the Israelis, and apparently Tylenol itself:
MAHA: It turns out Harvard sounded the alarm about Tylenol before Secretary RFK Jr. and President Trump. Last month Jay Lau, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health published a systematic review of 46 prior studies using the Navigation Guide methodology, finding that many show… pic.twitter.com/2JlImc5xB3
Tylenol itself sounds confident enough now, but that wasn’t the story a few years ago. Some have speculated that Johnson & Johnson might have spun of its Tylenol line on concerns about potential lawsuits, though that is unknown. What we do know is that they were putting out messaging like this:
Even the makers of Tylenol did not want to take responsibility for pregnant or nursing mothers using their product. It’s right on the package! PS. Acetaminophen is also the number one cause of liver injury in the United States and Canada. Easily verified! pic.twitter.com/7qHGfQj3Jl— 🍁Dr. Tim Goyetche ND🍁 (@WitchDrTim) September 24, 2025
At the time, the press dutifully reported these findings, even as they are singing a different tune now:
Look at how CNN’s reporting changed once the Trump administration warned about the link between Tylenol and risk to neurodevelopment.
I put a blue line to show how CNN ignored their own prior reports in 2021, 2017, and 2016.
I don’t have a dog in this fight — I use Tylenol myself and think it’s a great painkiller. But I’m not a pregnant woman. I think at a minimum, women in that demographic should exert extreme caution, possibly err on the side of caution, and simply not use that product — there are a lot of painkillers out there that might do the job just as well and they can rest easy they have delivered fewer risks to their unborn babies.
But that’s not the attitude of the left, which has sided with Big Pharma, and used their own unborn babies as guinea pigs to prove their political points.
No sane person risks their baby’s health to prove a point. These democrat women chugging Tylenol are ignoring warnings. 🤦♀️
Whether it’s advocating for the “right” to kill their babies via abortion, or risking the health of their babies by taking Tylenol while pregnant just to prove a point, it’s undeniable that the Left does not value Life whatsoever. pic.twitter.com/4tZ8Zc9trE— Kristan Hawkins (@KristanHawkins) September 24, 2025
Why do I feel as if this too is an unconsciously propagated mass sacrifice ritual? https://t.co/D5ybL2tqV2— Dr. Naomi Wolf. 8 NYT Bestsellers. DPhil, Poetry. (@naomirwolf) September 25, 2025
As stunts go, it’s crazy bad — all to Get Trump. Is it because they don’t consider their own kids people? Given their views on abortion, it’s a possibility. Whatever it is, there’s ample reason to doubt the product might be the right product to use in pregnancy. This is just sad. Trump is right and no unborn baby should be put at risk for such a Big Pharma profit concern.
The French-Italian border at Menton has once again become the main entry point for illegal immigration into metropolitan France. Local authorities have recorded around 10,400 interceptions since the beginning of the year, with 200-300 people sent back each week. Although the figures do not reach the crisis levels at the end of 2023, attempted crossings have increased by 30% in recent weeks. The summer season could push interceptions to around 15,000 by the end of the year, a number similar to 2024.
The state’s response includes strengthening the gendarmerie, border police, customs, and soldiers from Operation Sentinelle.
Migrants often use express trains from Ventimiglia or steep routes monitored by drones and police patrols. Among those detained, citizens of Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco stand out, with 10% being unaccompanied minors. Although radicalized profiles are a minority, their presence highlights additional security risks that the authorities cannot ignore.
Since 1968, the immigrant population in France has risen from 6.5% to 10.2% of the national total, now totaling more than 6.7 million people. Territorial concentration has also changed: Île-de-France today hosts 37% of all immigrants compared to 29% in 1968, and departments such as Seine-Saint-Denis reach 31.2% of the immigrant population. The predominant nationalities have also shifted: the number of Southern European immigrants has decreased, while more Moroccan, Algerian Tunisian, and Sub-Saharan migrants have arrived, consolidating a growing ‘diversity’ that poses integration challenges.
This population increase has a direct effect on housing. Nearly one in four immigrants lives in overcrowded conditions, compared with 5.1% of those born in France. Densely populated urban areas such as Paris, Alpes-Maritimes, or Bouches-du-Rhône show rates exceeding 30%. The combination of large households, small dwellings, and urban concentration increases pressure on the housing stock, making access to decent accommodation more difficult and generating tensions with the local population.
The impact is not limited to housing. Essential public services such as education, health care, recreation, and transport are under increasing pressure in municipalities with high immigrant density. Schools with overcrowded classrooms, hospitals with longer waiting lists, and congested public transport are direct consequences of mass immigration, as urban and social planning do not always keep pace with migration flows, leaving local governments with insufficient resources to serve both the newcomers and the native population.
The combination of overcrowding, pressure on public services, and urban concentration highlights that mass immigration, far from being only a demographic phenomenon, has become a structural challenge for coexistence and the management of urban space. Without clear policies guaranteeing integration and access to housing and services, social tensions are set to intensify, generating conflicts that the state must urgently address.
Claire Geronimi is facing down her rapist, African migrant serial offender Jordy Goukara (left), during the first day of court in Paris. He has 12 convictions and 3 deportation orders.
The first day of Jordy Goukara’s trial began yesterday in Paris, with the Central African migrant already confessing to the brutal rape of two women, Mathilde and Claire Geronimi, at knife point. The high-profile case is being widely reported across France and has become a political flashpoint over the issue of mass immigraiton and crime. The two rapes, which happened 45 minutes apart in Nov. 11, 2023, occured right in the middle of the afternoon in an upscale part of Paris.
Geronimi herself has gone public with her horrifying rape, appearing on national news outlets and founding an association for women who have suffered the same experience.
The case is shocking in nearly every day. The African, Goukara, already had 12 criminal convictions, including for sexual assaults, and had three deportation orders, none of which were executed.
The defendant, Goukara, has already confessed to the crime in the first day of court, saying that he has “uncontrollable sexual urges” and could not help himself from raping the women. He also stated that he masturbates 10 times a day.
Both victims stood side by side in the court, touching hands and shoulders at difficult moments.
It was the first time they faced the man since 2023, when they were savagely assaulted in the hallways of their buildings in the upscale neighborhoods of the 17th and 8th arrondissements of Paris.
The 27-year-old African, armed with a knife, forced them to perform fellatio on him and threatened to kill them if they screamed or struggled. He also penetrated his second victim, Geronimi. The two rapes happened right after another, between 3:52 p.m. and 5:05 p.m., with Geronimi raped just a 15-minute walk from the first rape.
“So here are these two women, gathered in the criminal court until Friday. Mathilde (her name has never been revealed), the first victim, was raped for eight minutes. She was 19 at the time. She is a very beautiful, slender young woman with a porcelain complexion. She looks like a little dancer from a music box. To her right stands Claire Geronimi, raped for 20 long minutes. She was 26 years old. Because she denounced the situation of Jordy Goukara, an irregular Central African who was subject to three OQTFs (obligations to leave French territory) in 2020, 2021, and 2023, and his criminal past,” writes legal media outlet Actu Juridique.
Geronimi was ostracized by feminists, according to the victim’s own statements. Worse! By speaking out in so-called “conservative” media and joining Éric Ciotti’s UDR, she alienated a section of public opinion, which led to the left making her “invisible.
As Le Parisien notes in a profile of the young woman, her face was “playing in a loop on television sets, but especially on channels with lines from the most conservative editorial offices, notably from the Bolloré group,” as the debate on an Immigration bill was raging in parliament.
However, she says that the left and right have exploited her story at times.
“The problem is that both the left and the right used my story to hit each other, and I was in between,” she told the media. However, since then, she has teamed up with the right, specifically because she said that was the only political option to fix the issue.
“But very quickly, I understood that social commitment was not enough. There also needed to be political commitment. This is why I joined Éric Ciotti’s UDR. With MP Christelle D’Intorni, we are bringing a bill so that the State can be condemned when a victim is attacked by an individual under OQTF,” she explains. She is currently the vice-president of Éric Ciotti’s UDR movement, which is allied with Marine Le Pen’s right-wing National Rally.
In the two years since the attack, Geronimi has become a prominent voice denouncing the dysfunctions related to deportation orders (OQTFs). Her current speech is extremely critical of the state, referencing not only her own case but also other high-profile incidents. “What I suffered was a double punishment. Attacked the first time by a criminal, and a second time by a State which failed in its duty. This person should not have been in this territory. And I am not an isolated case: The stories of Philippine and Lola showed the same bankruptcy,” she stated in an interview with French news outlet JDD this week.
As the trial begins, her words have become more intimate, as she shared on X: “Two years have passed and I have come a long way — and despite this I can’t help but ask: why me? Why did I survive?”
“Throughout the entire duration of the trial, I will not speak to the media. I appeal to your respect for my loved ones and those of Mathilde: We need this time for rebuilding, so that our story can finally be heard and recognized by the justice system,” she wrote in another post.
Ça y est, le moment est arrivé. Aujourd’hui s’ouvre le procès de mon agresseur. J’y entrerai la tête haute.
Je veux une nouvelle fois exprimer toute ma gratitude envers ceux qui me soutiennent, ainsi que Mathilde. Je suis profondément touchée de voir que tant de personnes seront…
Geronimi has been making the rounds in French media. Speaking to Le Figaro, she addressed what her thoughts had been right before meeting her attacker for the first time during the trial.
“The state of mind, I would say that I am very stressed, very stressed about seeing my attacker again. And at the same time, I actually tell myself that it’s the culmination of something. A victim cannot rebuild their life until there has been justice. Two years is quite fast. On average, it’s between two and five years since the beginning. It’s the fact that there are also other victims who have not been able to be heard.
That’s really what gives me this strength. It was quite an intense moment, but at the same time I was also eager to be able to show him that he had lost and that I was the one who had won the most in this story because he was the one behind bars and that he didn’t destroy me. My attack took place on November 11th, 2023 in the heart of the Eighth Arrondissement in the middle of the afternoon when I had gone shopping and was returning home. I didn’t look when I entered my code for my front door, and a man pushed open this door, which is one of the large Parisian carriage doors, followed me into my entrance hall and tackled me to the ground.
He also threatened to kill me with a weapon. It was a blade. At first, I tried to struggle, but unfortunately, I had the choice between dying or being raped. At first, I thought he was just going to steal my bag and leave. But in the end, I quickly realized that he had told me that he was going to rape me and then kill me.
Matildhe too was threatened with the weapon, this famous knife. And fortunately, some neighbors also arrived and made him flee, except that in fact, the attacker was still “hungry,” as he said himself, and so he attacked another victim. So that was me. There you have it. Investigations have shown that the suspect had a serious criminal record. He is also alleged to have raped and sexually assaulted two young girls during his childhood. What does that make you think? He has already been in prison for theft.”
She continued that just three months before the attack, Goukara was in prison, and then let out to attack again.
The young victim said that there are many concrete examples of other women going through the same thing, with Geronimi directly referencing the case of Philippine Le Noir de Carlan, who was murdered almost exactly a year ago by a Moroccan migrant convicted of sexual offenses.
“I can give you lots of concrete examples of victims that we support with the association that I created, the Éclats de Femme Association. It’s always the same pattern,” said Geronimi. “They are always repeat offenders and at the same time. In fact, it starts all over again. We can also take the example of the Philippines. These are problems from a legal perspective that are unfortunately not insignificant. My attacker is a man who is now 27 years old. He arrived in France when he was 16 and was in a foster family where there had already been complaints of sexual assault on a minor within his foster family. This was not taken into account. Even though the social worker had clearly stated it, they say that there is a real failure on the part of the justice system.”
She also pointed to the man’s many deportation orders, saying, “Beyond that, my attacker, who was subject to three deportation orders, will he be sent back to his country or not after the sentence he served in France? Unfortunately, reoffending is also very likely. I expect the justice system to be exemplary in terms of the sentence my attacker may receive.”
Beyond the actual attack, she also noted how difficult her life has become on a personal and professional level since the attack.
“So of course it takes time. I was working. I was doing financial consulting. I was living in my ideal world, living in a very nice neighborhood. I was graduating from a top business school. You quickly realize that spending all day on Excel spreadsheets is not the same thing at all and is pointless. So that’s why I started this association and I threw myself 100% into the association that I created, the Éclats de Femme association , because I had received many testimonies from other victims, including other victims who had been assaulted in the street, stories that were somewhat similar — similar to mine.
After a victim is attacked, there is both self-loathing and self-hatred. Each victim, let’s say, reacts differently. They may sink into a deep depression or they may not cope with it for 20 years or it may resurface later. So I think I immediately took this personal fight as a more social fight, let’s say. Having testified and so on, and having heard many testimonies from other victims a bit like me. I also stopped working because inevitably, following an assault, there is a potential risk that you could suffer from burnout. There is also a potential risk that you could no longer be with your partner.
Today, it is still very, very complicated to be able to trust someone, a man, simply to have intimacy.”
She says her foundation, which has only been in existence for a year, has already helped 100 women. She laments how little support there is for victims, which she hopes to remedy through her work.
“With the association, we have established the average cost of a victim. It’s more than €35,000 between filing the complaint and the trial. In addition to legal and psychological costs. These are things that, I don’t think, should be paid by a victim.”
A senior German politician has sounded the alarm about what he said would be the catastrophic effects of current climate policy on Germany’s industrial backbone.
Talking to Welt TV from the East German Energy Forum in Leipzig yesterday, Reiner Haseloff, a leading figure in the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) of Chancellor Merz, said Germany’s climate targets were unachievable “unless entire industries are lost”.
Officially, Germany still strives to become “carbon-neutral” by 2045.
That would be five years earlier than deadline for the European Union as a whole, said Haseloff, who is also Prime Minister of the German State of Saxony-Anhalt.
He said the world had changed since the European Green Deal – the EU’s timetable to achieve “climate neutrality” – was launched in 2019, citing the war in Ukraine, US economic policy and Germany’s severe economic crisis as examples.
“We need to modify the EU’s Green Deal and adjust the timetable to the new realities that have emerged globally,” Haseloff said.
He also criticised Germany’s energy transition, the State’s attempt to power the country using renewable energy rather than fossil fuels and nuclear power:
“We need to reflect whether the energy transition can be sustained as planned. The high electricity prices mean that our energy-intensive industries are under pressure. They are losing market share and are not competitive anymore,” Haseloff said.
“This gradually leads to deindustrialisation if we do not act now.”
He demanded a moratorium for the phase-out of Germany’s remaining coal-fired power plants as well as relief measures for the industrial sector.
“We have to liberate energy-intensive industries from restrictions such as emissions certificate trading. Only than can we manage to retain these industries.”
The Conservative politician added that industrial resilience also had implications for national security as Germany was getting ever more dependent on foreign countries with regard to steel, basic chemicals and even automobiles.
“We need to have a fundamental discussion in Brussels and in Berlin,” he concluded.
The 71-year-old Haseloff has been the Prime Minister of Saxony-Anhalt in Eastern Germany since 2011. He is set to retire after the State parliament elections in 2026. According to latest surveys 39 per cent of his constituents are going to vote for the right-wing Alternative for Germany party (AfD), while Haseloff’s CDU is down to 27 per cent.
With his criticism of climate and energy policy, Haseloff joins a growing chorus of voices – which includes the CEOs of several German carmakers – who are demanding a departure from the EU’s zealous plans for climate neutrality.
On Saturday evening, a violent confrontation broke out in Dole, in the Mesnils-Pasteur district on Avenue de Verdun, between a group of motorcyclists from the Gremium MC and several dozen young people who were leaving the mosque. Stones were thrown, insults were hurled and vehicles were damaged, forcing the police and gendarmerie to intervene jointly to restore calm.
According to witness statements, the motorcyclists were quickly surrounded by a hostile crowd. Stones were thrown, damaging vehicles and causing panic. The Dole police, with the support of the gendarmerie’s PSIG, had to intervene urgently to prevent the confrontation from escalating further. However, no arrests were reported.
The incident, which involved several dozen people, has left a climate of fear. Some residents fear that tensions could worsen in the future and are concerned about an escalation. Many say they feel that neighbourhoods such as Les Mesnils-Pasteur are left to their own devices and have to live in an atmosphere of constant confrontation.
A new report sheds light on why complications from dangerous chemical abortion drugs are often left “underreported.”
The report from the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) adds important context to recent studies showing that the complications are often unreported. Abortion drugs can never be considered safe because they kill an innocent preborn baby. But they also can be incredibly damaging for the women who take them as well.
The document details the “deliberate effort by abortion advocates and their media allies to make abortion pills seem safer than they really are.” The issue of abortion drug “safety” has come under further scrutiny since the Biden administration rolled back practically every limit on obtaining the drugs. The Trump administration has meanwhile promised a review of the data, with Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suggesting the Biden administration had “twisted” the numbers.
This new report adds information to why the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC) found a complication rate of 11 percent for using the drugs and suggests the true rate is even much higher.
“10.93 percent of women experience sepsis, infection, hemorrhaging, or another serious adverse event within 45 days following a mifepristone abortion,” the EPPC found in a report. “The real-world rate of serious adverse events following mifepristone abortions is at least 22 times as high as the summary figure of ‘less than 0.5 percent’ in clinical trials reported on the drug label.”
This data alone is concerning, but there are likely even more complications. The NRLC points out that abortion pill pushers specifically tell women to hide their use when they go to the emergency room for complications.
“One reason the ER doctors may not enter any note about the chemical abortion on the chart is that they don’t know patients have taken abortion pills or that patients have been told by those who prescribed their abortion pills not to reveal this to the doctors,” the report notes. It quotes several prominent abortion drug pushers who give women this exact advice.
Aid Access, for example, stated on its website in 2020:
If you think you might have a complication you should go to a doctor immediately. You do not have to tell the medical staff that you tried to induce an abortion; you can tell them that you had a spontaneous miscarriage…. The symptoms of a miscarriage and an abortion with pills are exactly the same and the doctor will not be able to see or test for any evidence of an abortion, as long as the pills have completely dissolved.
The group’s founder, Rebecca Gomperts, said in 2024 that women should just say they had a miscarriage in order to receive treatment after an abortion complication.
Since abortion drugs currently account for about 63 percent of abortions in the United States, it is plausible that thousands, if not tens of thousands of women, are having some sort of complication, but it’s being reported by medical professionals as due to a miscarriage.
Lying to medical professionals, as the abortion advocates say women should do, harms everyone by tainting safety data, the NRLC notes. “Sudden and dramatic increases of complications among mifepristone patients coming in for treatment at the emergency room may be incorrectly attributed to pregnancy in general and may appear to indicate a disturbing and unexplained jump in miscarriage, rather than a direct outcome of growing mifepristone use.”
Abortions often miscoded as miscarriages, study finds
This concern is backed up by evidence in the report. The NRLC cites a Charlotte Lozier Institute study of 29,000 California women who had chemical abortions. The experts concluded “nearly 84% of those visits of chemical abortion patients were miscoded as complications related to ‘miscarriages’ rather than the previous abortion.”
“The complications are there, but they aren’t being reported,” the NRLC says.
There are other ways data is played with to feed into the narrative the abortion drugs are safe for women – a line the media parrots without any skepticism, the national pro-life group says.
For one, complications are considered “minor” even if most people would classify them differently. A 2015 report that purported to find the drugs have few “major complications” illustrates the problem.
Among the “minor complications,” as determined by the authors, are “uterine perforations” and “diagnosis of cervical injury requiring suture repair.”
Infections and hemorrhaging were also labeled as “minor” by this particular study.
Trials of the “safety” of the abortion drugs may also not count those women who had such painful adverse reactions that they drop out of the study in entirety, a problem called “survivorship bias.”
“Clearly a number of women do have problems,” the report concludes. “And it is important that we have accurate information and numbers on the women who do.”
“Assertions of mifepristone safety on the basis of flawed, slanted industry studies are not good enough,” the report concludes.
Jette Nietzard at a panel discussion in Fürth, February 2025 Kasa Fue, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The controversy surrounding Jette Nietzard, federal spokesperson of the German Green Youth, has highlighted a profoundly dangerous trend: the growing acceptance of violence as a political tool in left-wing circles. Nietzard’s repeated suggestions that armed resistance may be justified if Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) were to enter government reflect a rhetoric that risks legitimizing the use of force against democratic outcomes.
During an event in Berlin, Nietzard openly asked: “Will that resistance be intellectual or perhaps armed?” followed by the question: “Would we have to take up arms?” Pressed on whether this would mean resisting “against the will of the voters,” she dismissed the concern: “Against fascism.” She later said in a podcast that civil society is “completely unprepared for what it means to resist rising fascism” and warned: “There’s a point, and I don’t know when that will come, and I’m afraid we’ll miss it when words are no longer enough.”
Her comments have been widely criticized for crossing a line, with observers noting that she appears to justify violence if election results do not align with her ideology. The comparison with Germany’s history of left-wing terrorism, particularly the Red Army Faction, is difficult to ignore. Unlike isolated extremist groups of the past, this rhetoric now comes from within institutions close to mainstream politics.
The broader context makes these remarks even more alarming. A recent INSA survey shows that left-leaning Germans are the most likely to support political violence, ahead of both centrists and right-wingers. According to the poll, 26% of respondents on the left of center see violence as a legitimate means of achieving political goals. Support for violent methods is particularly strong among younger respondents: 34% of those aged 18–29 and 32% of those aged 30–39 said political violence can be legitimate.
Even more troubling is how parts of the Left responded to the murder of U.S. conservative Charlie Kirk by a left-wing extremist. An INSA survey found that a relative majority of Germans who place themselves left of center did not consider Kirk’s death “regrettable.” Only 36% expressed regret, while 27% declined to comment. In stark contrast, clear majorities in the political center and on the right viewed the assassination as regrettable.
Among party supporters, nearly 40% of Die Linke voters expressed no regret for Kirk’s murder, while more than a quarter of Green Party supporters did the same. Prominent politicians echoed this sentiment. Heidi Reichinnek, co-chair of Die Linke’s parliamentary group, said there should be “no sympathy” and “no respect” for the “fascist” Kirk. Former Green Family Minister Lisa Paus shared a post portraying Kirk as a “right-wing disgrace” and mocking those who mourned him. SPD politician and European Parliament Vice President Katarina Barley called Kirk’s death “tragic” but still described him as a “right-wing extremist influencer,” while blocking attempts to hold a minute of silence in his memory.
Taken together, these trends paint a disturbing picture: when over a quarter of the Left embraces political violence; when youth leaders of major parties speculate about taking up arms; and when a relative majority of left-leaning Germans refuse to regret the murder of a political opponent, the risk of legitimizing violence becomes undeniable.
Nietzard insists she does not imagine “everyone will run to the Bundestag with guns.” But as she herself admitted, neither she nor her organization has “thought about it enough.” Against the backdrop of rising public support for violence on the Left—and an erosion of even the basic taboo against political assassination—such ambiguity no longer looks like a mere rhetorical slip. It looks like a symptom of a deeper and more dangerous shift.
