They shout “wallah,” set schools on fire, douse teachers in gasoline, burn the faces of unsuspecting citizens, chase and beat police officers, and wreck the streets.
In 2005 it was the French banlieues, the working class suburbs, that went up in flames. Twenty years later, the flames are crossing the gates of the high schools. Two eras, and one generation that has been taught to hate not algorithms, but the West. The egalitarian school is a factory that manufactures nihilist wreckers.
The Dutch sociologist and demographer Jan Latten has just said: “We are at the beginning of major social unrest.”
Europe wanted a society without violence. What it got is a society without defense.
From France comes a sequence of unprecedented violence that is not taken from Fauda: it shows a teenager dressed in black attacking a woman with flammable spray full in the face, under the eyes of other high-school students in Marseille’s 7th arrondissement.
A police “sting-ball” grenade meanwhile exploded in a student’s hand; a woman lost an eye to a stone thrown by a student; a high-school student was seriously injured while handling an explosive device; an undercover police commissioner was chased and beaten unconscious in front of a high school; and in Marseille a principal and staff were attacked and doused in gasoline.
What is happening before our eyes has nothing of the usual banal student agitation. It is a dress rehearsal ahead of the election that matters most for Europe’s fate: May 2027.
What is happening in France concerns the entire West. These are extremely serious social-racial uprisings aimed at the destruction of our countries and our culture.
The wreckers want neither better schools nor more social benefits. They want to attack the countries that took in their parents and grandparents.
You do not negotiate with barbarians who aim at civil war. The attempt at integration and assimilation has failed.
They want a European intifada. Block the high schools today in order to block the country tomorrow. They are testing logistics, slogans, the ability to paralyze, and the reaction – or rather the absence of reaction – of the state.
On May 2, 2027, if Marine Le Pen wins, they will be back in the streets.
What is being prepared is not a social movement. It is a strategy of chaos.
When a state reaches the point of asking its population to barricade itself at home to avoid violence, that is a major alarm signal.
A French chief of the defense staff, Pierre de Villiers, who served under Macron, said: “We are in a strange period, and my fear is civil war.”
The question is no longer whether the situation is serious. Only the corrupt, the accomplices and the blind do not know it.
The truth, as usual, was spoken by Michel Houellebecq to the Financial Times: “We are witnessing a disintegration. It is a catastrophe.”
The question is: how far will the loss of control go?
Faced with these images, how many suburbs are ready to give battle? There, weapons circulate freely. Kalashnikovs, Magnums, grenades, hunting rifles. They are there, hidden in cellars the police cannot reach.
The times ahead are heavy with bloody possibilities.
Europe now has only two possibilities: either the states restore order or it will keep sliding toward South Africa’s story.
Every man for himself, the Third World for everyone.
Ignazio Silone, an Italian politician and writer. He became famous during World War II for his anti-fascist novels. Silone was a fierce opponent of British agent Benito Mussolini and frequently warned that democratic and leftist movements could adopt authoritarian methods while claiming to fight tyranny. From 1946 to the 1970s, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature at least 13 times. Photo credit: Wikipedia, Unknown author,PD-1996
The Italian socialist writer Ignazio Silone, a former communist who broke with Stalinism, is credited with the observation—relayed by the Swiss journalist François Bondy after a 1944–45 conversation in Geneva—“If fascism returns, it will not say: ‘I am fascism.’ No, it will say: ‘I am anti-fascism.’”
Large sections of the political and mass-media class in Germany appear determined to fulfill this prediction in the wake of the election of a state parliament president from the ranks of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in Magdeburg.
On 6 September 2026, the AfD won the Saxony-Anhalt Landtag election with 43.8 percent of the vote and 39 of 83 seats—the first time the party has finished first in a German state contest—while the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) collapsed to 17.2 percent. Turnout reached 77.8 percent. In the constitutive session on 6 October, the AfD’s Tobias Rausch was elected Landtagspräsident by secret ballot with 48 of 82 votes cast. The AfD and the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), which had pledged support, together held 44 seats; the surplus indicated votes from other parties. Hans-Thomas Tillschneider was likewise elected a vice-president.
Under long-standing parliamentary custom in the Federal Republic since 1949, the strongest parliamentary group nominates the president. When that custom produces an office-holder from an established party, it is treated as the fulfillment of the voters’ mandate. When the office-holder belongs to the AfD—classified by the Saxony-Anhalt Secret Service as confirmed right-wing extremist—the same procedure is denounced as a unique breach of taboo.
At the Bebelplatz in the heart of Berlin, the precise site where National Socialists burned books on 10 May 1933, Defense Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD) declared: “What we have experienced today is a unique breach of taboo in parliamentary democracy, one we have not seen in this form for more than 90 years. Namely, that democrats have served as enablers for right-wing extremists and fascists.”
He and members of the SPD Bundestag group had marched from the Bundestag through the Brandenburg Gate to the square, several carrying copies of the Basic Law; Pistorius then led the singing of the national anthem which, to no one’s surprise, few knew.
The choice of location and the invocation of 1933 constitute a classic anti-fascist trope: the equation of any electoral advance by a party outside the post-war consensus with the seizure of power by the NSDAP. The trope collapses distinctions between a secret-ballot parliamentary vote conducted under the Basic Law and the street violence and Enabling Act of 1933.
Such statements amount to a declaration of war on the ordinary functioning of parliamentary democracy. They rest on the premise that the AfD’s program and personnel place it outside the constitutional order, so that any cooperation, even the routine election of a presiding officer, constitutes “enabling” fascism. The same logic has long underpinned the “Brandmauer” (firewall) policy and the intermittent campaign, recently amplified by Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD), to explore a ban of the AfD.
In addresses marking 9 November—commemorating both the 1938 Kristallnacht pogroms and the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall—Steinmeier warned that attempts to tame anti-democrats by granting them power failed in Weimar, insisted that democratic parties must not cooperate with extremists in parliament or government, and stated that a party embarking on “aggressive hostility toward the constitution” must reckon with the possibility of prohibition. Although he has not always named the AfD, the referent has been unambiguous.
Public broadcasting and large segments of the press have amplified the same framing, treating the Magdeburg outcome less as an electoral result than as a moral emergency requiring extra-parliamentary protest and historical analogy.
These are recognizable anti-fascist tropes. Historically, the Communist International and the German Communist Party (KPD) deployed “anti-fascism” against social democrats as much as against Nazis; in August 1931 the KPD joined the NSDAP in supporting a referendum aimed at bringing down the Social Democratic government of Prussia. After the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, anti-fascism was temporarily subordinated to the strategic needs of the Soviet Union. Silone’s warning reflected precisely this instrumentalization: a rhetoric that claims exclusive ownership of democratic virtue while expanding the category of “fascist” to include any rival who accepts electoral competition.
Contemporary variants include the routine application of the label to parties advocating stricter immigration controls or national sovereignty, the elevation of Antifa-linked violence—monitored by the Secret Service as a core field of left-extremist agitation involving assaults, arson, and intimidation directed at AfD members and others deemed “fascist”—to the status of legitimate resistance, and the demand that constitutional organs (courts, intelligence services, public media) act as permanent guardians against the largest opposition party.
The Magdeburg election and the Berlin protest illustrate the pattern. An office filled by secret ballot under established rules is redescribed as a 1933-style taboo breach because the winner’s party is politically unacceptable. Every state office and the apparatus of public broadcasting is mobilized in unison under the banner “I am antifascism.” The effect is to delegitimize not merely the AfD but the parliamentary mechanism that produced the result.
It will do them no good. In December, Saxony-Anhalt’s Landtag is scheduled to elect a new Minister-President. AfD lead candidate Ulrich Siegmund has indicated he will stand; an absolute majority requires 42 votes. Escalation of the anti-fascist rhetoric now narrows the room for any subsequent compromise or further escalation.
German voters are facing a conundrum in which the ordinary translation of electoral strength into parliamentary office is treated as an existential threat, while the language of anti-fascism supplies the justification for treating that translation as illegitimate. Silone’s pessimistic prediction is being tested in real time.
War is ugly and awful. People who experience it generally detest it. In movies, soaring soundtracks make falling buildings and gunfights seem exciting. In real life, people feel excruciating physical and emotional pains that never really fade. It’s Hell on Earth.
After WWI, nations around the world celebrated Armistice Day on November 11, which later became known as Remembrance Day in many countries. Remembering the dead was only half of the holiday’s purpose; it was equally important for the survivors of the Great War to remember the costs of total war, so that mankind would never unleash such cataclysm again.
We did not sufficiently remember the costs of global war, and twenty years later, humanity endured a Second World War far more deadly than the First. After WWII, there was a movement in the United States to honor all veterans — both living and dead — on Armistice Day. President Eisenhower signed into law a bill renaming Armistice Day as Veterans Day, and we Americans have observed the holiday ever since.
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We should honor our military veterans every day. By forgetting about Armistice Day, though, we stopped remembering the horrors of war. November 11 was once a day for survivors to say, “Never again.” It transformed into a holiday that celebrates heroes and sacrifice, while often burying the most important warning from past generations to the present: Do not repeat our folly.
War is tragedy, not entertainment. Although I wish that we humans had longer memories when it comes to the psychological toll of mass killing, we barely know peace for half-a-generation before descending into Hell once again.
Wars between belligerents who see no alternative to either victory or death are cruel, bloody affairs.
Despite historical revisionism that often casts the use of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki as indefensible, the enormous loss of American marines, sailors, and soldiers on scattered Pacific islands proved that the Japanese would continue fighting to the last man before entertaining any notion of surrender. Both the Balkan Wars before WWI and the Yugoslav Wars following the Cold War were marked by ethnic cleansing, rape, and mass murder. Every Islamic war against Israel seeks the Jewish state’s eradication; therefore, every war Israel fights is life or death for the nation.
The war in Ukraine has taken on a similar zero-sum seriousness. Ukraine’s wartime president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has repeatedly insisted that there can be no peace until all formerly Ukrainian territory now claimed by the Russian Federation — including Crimea, which Russia has controlled since 2014 — is returned to Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said this demand is an impossibility.
Ukraine desires membership in the European Union and the U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization; Russia went to war in Ukraine, in part, to keep NATO’s thirty-year encroachment from reaching the entirety of its western borders.
Ukraine and European members of NATO have described the war as an existential threat to all of Europe. Russian politicians, academics, and pundits similarly describe the war as an existential threat to Russia’s future survival.
Both sides seek what the other refuses to give. A dangerous stalemate now exists.
Although accurate numbers are difficult to obtain, both Russia and Ukraine claim to have inflicted hundreds of thousands of casualties upon the other. Millions of Ukrainians have been displaced, and Russia’s border regions have endured sustained attacks.
Ukrainian authorities continue to press-gang young men into military service. European Union countries that welcomed hundreds of thousands of fleeing Ukrainians back in 2022 are beginning to insist that young Ukrainian men be sent back home to fight. European and American politicians have suggested that Ukraine’s legal age for conscription should be lowered and that Ukrainian women should be forced into combat, too. Martial-law-President Zelenskyy has admitted that his country is struggling to replenish lost troops.
In Russia, there is less concern about fielding troops for what the government calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine. There is widespread concern, however, that the military will have considerable difficulty defending the country effectively should E.U.-NATO expand the conflict beyond Ukraine — especially if Russia is forced to defend its Kaliningrad exclave situated between Lithuania and Poland.
European politicians and military personnel have argued that taking Kaliningrad would effectively cut Russia off from the Baltic Sea and tighten the noose of a cordon sanitaire formed around Russia’s European flank. Although the largest country in the world by territory, Russia’s moderate population of one-hundred-fifty-million puts it at a disadvantage against a European population three times its size.
With real troop losses and the threat of future troop losses weighing heavily on the minds of decision-makers in Europe and Russia, what once was unthinkable has become more openly discussed: the use of nuclear weapons on the continent. For eighty years, the taboo against atomic warfare has been so great that the United States and the Soviet Union fought a half-century Cold War in the shadows in an effort to avoid direct confrontation. However, as Russia, Ukraine, and E.U.-NATO struggle for leverage and deterrence, the likelihood of nuclear conflict is growing.
Despite the fact that Ukraine is not a part of NATO, military representatives from all of NATO’s thirty-two members gathered in Kyiv this week. Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, the chair of the NATO Military Committee, announced, “We are here in full strength with a clear message: The bond between NATO and Ukraine is stronger and stronger.”
On Tuesday, the French military test-fired a submarine-launched ballistic missile over the Atlantic. President Emmanuel Macron was present for the test and described it as “a new demonstration of the credibility of our deterrence” and “a clear message … for wherever it must be received.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov agreed that France’s missile launch was a “loud and clear message.” Peskov then warned: “Against the backdrop of such aggressive actions and such plans, Russia is on alert. We are taking all necessary measures to ensure our national security at the strategic level.”
At the end of September, Russia sent official notices to NATO and Brussels warning that it would use nuclear weapons in defense of its territory, including Kaliningrad. In blunt language that unnerved European leaders, Russia’s diplomatic message promised “Russian strikes against decision-making centers in the alliance’s member states right from the outset.”
Russian Professor Sergey Karaganov — a highly influential foreign policy figure with close ties to both President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Affairs Minister Sergey Lavrov — argues that “Russia must be prepared to use nuclear weapons.” Because E.U.-NATO countries have population and economic advantages over Russia, Russia must use its “competitive advantage” in nuclear weapons to deter European military actions. Karaganov insists, “Nuclear weapons are necessary to prevent major wars, but this only works if the threat is taken seriously.”
The head of Russia’s Council on Foreign and Defense Policy then takes direct aim at Europe: “Western European elites must be punished for their aggressive policies … and an EU that has lost its mind must begin to truly fear.” Furthermore, “Seeking peace through non-nuclear means alone could prove far too costly for Russia.”
Karaganov concludes, “If the current Ukrainian or German regime … were to acquire nuclear weapons, we would be obliged to launch a preemptive strike because we’d have to stop them. It would be a short war, as a result of which these countries would cease to exist.”
There are those in the U.K., Europe, Canada, and America who believe war with Russia is inevitable. Before we reach the point of no return, I humbly ask that people take a moment to remember why we all once feared WWIII. Remember why mutually assured destruction was madness. There is no shame in armistice when the alternative is Armageddon.
Ali F. from North Rhine-Westphalia is not just another teacher: not only was he regarded as a supporter of the Mullah regime, he was also active as a speaker at the Blue Mosque in Hamburg, which has since been closed down after being classified as anti-constitutional. Ali F. from Wuppertal was suspended for a time, but is now permitted to remain in post as a teacher. For years, children and young people were left defenceless against this radical Islamist; now he is simply carrying on in adult education. He previously worked at a vocational college. If someone from the AfD were to teach at a school, concerned parents would launch petition campaigns and demonstrate outside the school building, whilst the right-wing teacher would be mercilessly bullied out by the left-wing teaching staff.
Once again, however, the ‘Islamist bonus’ comes into play, meaning that Ali F. is allowed to carry on unhindered. The reasoning is that some of the allegations cannot be conclusively proven. Ali F. has already been given a warning for taking part in a demonstration and expressing his views. The 44-year-old had originally arrived in Germany as a young Lebanese refugee, later going on to work as a teacher of economics and the Islamic faith. Ali F. was even followed for four years as part of a documentation by Germany’s WDR broadcaster. However, contact with the broadcaster was severed in 2024 because he was linked to the Blue Mosque in Hamburg. He even appeared there as a speaker and described the mosque as his ‘favourite place’.
But when even someone like Nancy Faeser has the Blue Mosque closed down, that really signals something. Meanwhile, Ali F. was under investigation for incitement to hatred, with such remarks also being seen and heard in the WDR footage. Among other things, statements were made regarding the Hamas massacre in Israel. He was opposed to ‘sexual diversity’ in Germany, whilst expressing enthusiasm for the teachings of Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei.
On Tuesday evening, a service in progress at a parish church in the west of Vienna was disrupted. Several teenagers, estimated to be aged between 14 and 15, stood in the doorway of the church, laughing loudly and shouting “Allahu Akbar” repeatedly.
The parish priest, who has served the parish for two decades, expressed surprise at the incident and told the newspaper Die Presse that he had never experienced anything like it before. For security reasons, the priest did not disclose the exact location of the parish.
Despite the disruption, the vicar emphasised that there had been no specific danger. He attributed the incident to youthful exuberance and had therefore decided against reporting it to the police. However, the vicar expressed his irritation, as his parish has been actively supporting refugees since 2015, offering German language courses and assistance with dealing with the authorities. In conversation with a colleague, he learnt that similar incidents are now occurring more frequently in other districts of Vienna.
In the light of such incidents, both conservative politicians and secular initiatives are calling for more decisive action by the state governed by the rule of law. Rather than dismissing such incidents as mere ‘excesses’, there needs to be a clear zero-tolerance policy towards actions that endanger Christian life or the right to practise one’s faith without interference. Calls are being made for a stronger emphasis on teaching values in educational institutions, stricter monitoring of Islamist influences, and an unequivocal clarification that adapting to the rules of a free, democratic society is not a matter of discretion, but a prerequisite for living together in harmony.
Women in Piddington have been left fuming after GB News revealed the Home Office had refused to share information about its taxpayer-funded guidance given to asylum seekers.
The nine-page pamphlet, which was released on August 19, sparked fury after it included guidance on consent, rape and violence against women.
The pamphlet told asylum seekers that both people must agree to have sex and consent cannot be given if someone is asleep, drunk, or unable to respond.
GB News sent the Home Office a Freedom of Information request to find out how much the pamphlet cost, the languages it was printed in and the number of copies distributed across the country.
The Home Office, which had initially promised a reply by September 17, had still not responded to GB News by October 9.
GB News received an automated response when it chased an update on September 30.
After the Home Office was approached for comment, its Freedom of Information team sent a word-for-word copy of the same email.
Piddington, a small Oxfordshire village home to just 350 people, has been fighting back against attempts to house 1,250 male asylum seekers at MoD Bicester.
Residents voted decisively to leave the UK in a symbolic vote to express their dismay at Labour’s plan.
However, allegations of the Home Office “covering up” the release of information on its consent guidance have fuelled further fears in Piddington.
Local resident Samantha Phillips told GB News: “If the migrants do not pose a threat, why was this leaflet produced?
“There are 133 women and 46 children in our village and we are terrified.”
The Home Office has published a guide for illegal migrants on how ‘not to rape women’ in Britain | HOME OFFICE
Louise Brooker added: “The refusal to provide that information does not inspire confidence and, in my view, transparency is vital and would do far more to reassure communities than withholding answers.”
Deborah Walton also said: “Now the Home Office won’t even discuss the cost of its pamphlet or how many languages it was printed in.
“A Government is accountable to the public, this secrecy is very worrying.”
Tracy Clark also told GB News: “It’s just another example of the Government giving unsubstantial platitudes versus providing hard evidence that the women of Piddington shouldn’t feel concerned about their safety during their normal daily lives.”
Meanwhile, Piddington resident Sandra Innes voiced scepticism about Labour’s strategy to tackle violence against women and girls.
“The pamphlet produced is just a tick-box exercise to say that they are educating these men as part of their VAWG strategy,” she said.
Paula Senior added: “As the Home Office refuses to disclose FOI regarding its own pamphlet, I can only conclude that they definitely have something very bad to hide.”
Deborah Swift said: “A seeming block on FOI information regarding sex and other crimes committed by immigrants just reinforces the veil of secrecy from the Government.”
Another page on domestic abuse warns that you could be arrested or go to prison if you carry out physical or emotional attacks on your partner | HOME OFFICE
The plight of the women of Piddington is now set to be debated in Parliament, GB News has also been told.
Shadow Women & Equalities Minister Joy Morrissey claimed her Labour counterpart Bridget Phillipson had refused to meet concerned women from Piddington.
She said: “Labour claim they want to protect women and girls but they’re doing nothing about all of these male migrants coming en masse.”
However, a source close to Ms Phillipson said no decision had been taken on use of the military base and engagement with local communities would be part of reaching that decision.
The People’s Channel is also aware that residents in Piddington have had their Freedom of Information requests rejected.
In one rejected request, which was shared with GB News, the Ministry of Justice told a Piddington resident that “complying with this request would impose a disproportionate and unjustified burden on departmental resources”.
GB News understands it will receive a response to its request at some point.
However, the response will arrive well after the September 17 deadline set when the request was made on August 20.
A Home Office spokesman said: “We expect everyone who comes to the UK to abide by our laws.
“If they do not, they will face consequences, including the refusal of their asylum claim and removal from the UK.”
The Belgian city of Liège has banned unauthorized public gatherings of more than three people following a week of violent ‘student’ protests that have mirrored the riots sweeping neighbouring France. The emergency order, imposed by Socialist mayor Willy Demeyer, took effect on Thursday, 8 October, and will remain in force until 16 October, as authorities struggle to contain arson, vandalism and attacks on police.
By Thursday morning, Liège police had recorded 194 arrests, including 114 minors, and 43 injured officers since the unrest began on 1 October. Of those detained, 158 were administrative arrests and 36 were criminal arrests.
The protests have followed a remarkably similar trajectory to those garnering significant international attention in France. Initially organized around secondary schools, demonstrations against education reforms quickly escalated into street violence as masked groups moved into commercial districts, set fire to blockades and attacked police. In Liège, the first protests began on 1–2 October before intensifying dramatically earlier this week.
On Wednesday, 7 October, rioters torched rubbish bins and electric scooters, smashed shop windows and targeted businesses around Place Saint-Lambert and Place de la République française, two prominent commercial districts in the city. Authorities temporarily closed Liège-Guillemins railway station and warned businesses to shut their doors. Thursday was comparatively calmer under heavy police deployment, although another 76 arrests were reported.
The initial grievances concern education reforms introduced by the centre-right MR–Les Engagés government of Belgium’s French-speaking Community, including changes to teachers’ workloads, education funding and higher university fees. But as in France, the movement has expanded beyond its original educational demands, attracting far-left organizations and groups whom authorities say have little connection to the schools involved.
‘Belgian Interior Minister Bernard Quintin went further on Thursday, declaring that Antifa had infiltrated the demonstrations’
The involvement of the communist Workers’ Party of Belgium (PTB), for example, has sparked controversy similar to that surrounding the role of Jean-Luc Mélenchon and the far-left France Unbowed (LFI) in the French riots. RTL footage showed demonstrators carrying campaign material from RedFox, the party’s secondary-school youth organization. MR chairman Georges-Louis Bouchez accused the PTB of manipulating students and suggested sending the bill for the destruction to party leader Raoul Hedebouw. The PTB rejects accusations of responsibility for the violence.
Belgian Interior Minister Bernard Quintin went further on Thursday, declaring that Antifa had infiltrated the demonstrations. ‘Adults are manipulating children to convey violent political messages,’ he said.
The crisis has also produced a remarkable contradiction within Belgium’s left: Socialist mayor Demeyer has imposed emergency restrictions on a movement openly supported by politicians from his own party at the national level. On Wednesday, Socialist parliamentarian Christie Morreale accused the government of introducing measures that students perceived as ‘unjust and violent’, while PTB deputy Amandine Pavet attacked military expenditure at the expense of education.
Meanwhile, far-left collective Bruxelles Dévie condemned Demeyer’s restrictions as authoritarian, accusing the Socialist mayor of suppressing student mobilization. Its statement argued that a government choosing to restrict young protesters rather than listen to them was becoming ‘increasingly fascistic’.
The demographic composition of the riots is also very similar to that of the French unrest. Liège is located in Wallonia, where approximately 37 per cent of residents are foreign nationals or Belgian citizens of foreign origin. In Liège municipality itself, the proportion reached 57.7 per cent in 2025, comprising 36.9 per cent Belgian citizens of foreign origin and 20.8 per cent foreign nationals.
‘The riots in France have already inspired similar actions elsewhere in Europe, particularly in Italy and Greece’
The riots in France have already inspired similar actions elsewhere in Europe, particularly in Italy and Greece. In Turin and Rome, radical-left student collectives have occupied schools under the slogan ‘Let’s do as in France’, while other groups organized demonstrations in Bologna. One of the stated reasons behind the mobilization is opposition to the Meloni government’s new school rules, which prohibit burkas and other face coverings and limit the number of foreign-background students in individual classes. These protests, however, have not escalated into the same level of violence seen in France or Belgium.
Similarly, in Greece, the Communist Youth of Greece (KNE) openly endorsed the French protests and called for nationwide student mobilization on 8 October, with school walkouts, occupations and demonstrations reported in Athens, Patras and other cities.
More than 148,000 people remain subject to outstanding arrest warrants in Germany, and only 11.2 percent of them hold exclusively German citizenship, and overall, 87 percent of arrest warrant suspects are foreigners, according to figures the Federal Ministry of the Interior provided in response to a parliamentary inquiry.
Welt newspaper obtained the ministry’s reply to a question from Alternative for Germany (AfD) lawmaker Sebastian Münzenmaier.
Münzenmaier told Welt am Sonntag: “The figures speak for themselves: The overwhelming majority of criminals wanted on arrest warrants do not have a German passport.” He called for a “rigorous change of course” that would include permanent and complete border controls, the immediate termination of the stay of foreign criminals, and the enforcement of prison sentences in the country of origin.
While German citizens form the single largest group, at 16,671, Germany also features a population where 81 percent of people hold exclusively German citizenship. Romanian nationals follow closely with 16,123, then Polish nationals with 12,721, Georgian nationals with 6,869 and Turkish nationals with 6,696.
Alexander Throm, the domestic-policy spokesman for the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) parliamentary group, said: “Every open arrest warrant poses a security risk.”
He added that “the high proportion of foreign offenders, including many from other EU countries, shows that action must be taken.”
Throm also noted that border controls introduced in September 2024 have done more than limit illegal migration: “They have not only curbed illegal migration. Since their start in September 2024, over 17,500 people have also been apprehended at our borders with outstanding arrest warrants.”
Heiko Teggatz, chairman of the German Police Union, called the total worrying and said it “of course, represents a security policy problem.” State police forces, he told the paper, rarely have the staffing to mount dedicated searches; most arrests occur as a “chance hit or bycatch.” The union has long cited personnel shortages as a central obstacle to improved public safety.
Marcel Emmerich, the Greens’ domestic-policy spokesman, agreed that the volume of open warrants constitutes a serious problem, “especially when it comes to dangerous persons, extremists, violent or sex offenders.”
However, Emmerich rejected broader border checks, noting: “Instead of hoping for random hits at border controls, targeted searches are needed, especially for dangerous perpetrators of violence, threats and people from the field of politically motivated crime.”
Sebastian Fiedler, the Social Democratic Party’s domestic-policy spokesman in the Bundestag, cautioned against reading the aggregate figure as evidence of 148,000 undetected dangerous offenders still inside the country. “A significant portion of this is due to substitute prison sentences for unpaid fines. In North Rhine-Westphalia, more than half of all outstanding arrest warrants in total were such cases, he said. Warrants can also remain active against people who have already left Germany or been deported, so that any remaining sentence can be enforced if they return.
“For example, they will continue to be put out to tender for a search so that if they re-enter the country, a remaining prison sentence can be enforced,” Fiedler said.
While the crimes may include many petty offenses, the totals are stark. German nationals represent a minuscule share of the open arrest warrants in a country where 81 percent of the country is made up of German nationals.
Former chancellor Gerhard Schröder with his wife So-Yeon Schröder-Kim keep good relations with Vladimir Putin. Wikimedia Commons, Bernd Schwabe in Hannover, CC-BY-SA-3.0
Former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder has come under sharp criticism in Berlin, including from Chancellor Friedrich Merz, after he spent Vladimir Putin’s 74th birthday at the Russian leader’s home in Moscow on October 7, the Kremlin said.
Schröder, 82, was already in the Russian capital on business when Putin learned of his presence from media reports on the morning of October 7, the presidential press service said. Putin then invited his “old friend” to his residence.
Photographs released by the Kremlin on October 8 showed the two men smiling and shaking hands in front of a traditional Russian stove, with a samovar used for boiling tea water visible in the background.
The official reason for the trip was commercial. Schröder was admitted on September 30 to the supervisory board of Hyperglobus, the Russian retailer that operates Globus-branded hypermarkets and became independent of Germany’s Globus Holding in January 2025.
On October 7 he visited a store in western Moscow, where employees greeted him with applause. He delivered a short welcome speech and met staff behind closed doors, Russian business media reported.
The chain runs 20 hypermarkets in Russia.
Putin met with ex-German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder on Russian leader's BIRTHDAY
The visit revived long-running controversy over Schröder’s ties to Moscow.
He was chancellor from 1998 to 2005 and later held senior roles linked to Russian energy interests, including Nord Stream and Rosneft. He chaired the Nord Stream 2 AG supervisory board and left the board of oil group Rosneft in May 2022.
Those contacts continued after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
On May 9, speaking after the Victory Day parade in Moscow, Putin named Schröder his preferred interlocutor among European politicians for mediation in the war. Berlin said it had noted the remarks but treated them as part of a series of sham offers.
On October 9 a deputy government spokesman, Steffen Meyer, said Merz was “deeply outraged” that the former chancellor had gone to Putin’s home for the birthday. He called the visit “downright immoral”.
Criticism also came from inside Schröder’s own Social Democratic Party (SPD), though there was also support, as some SPD members argue someone needs to talk to Russia. Party leader and Vice-Chancellor Lars Klingbeil told the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung the trip was “completely unacceptable”, while SPD member of parliament Ralf Stegner said Schröder had gone as a private citizen and was one of the few Germans who still had access to Putin.
Green politician Katrin Göring-Eckardt and Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, chair of the European Parliament’s security and defence subcommittee, called the visit a disgrace. Göring-Eckardt wrote on X that it was a disgrace for Germany, a betrayal of Europe and a disservice to peace. Strack-Zimmermann, of the Free Democrats, set the trip against Schröder’s refusal on health grounds to testify before a Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania inquiry into Nord Stream 2.
Schröder and his wife, So-Yeon Schröder-Kim, had not immediately responded to requests for comment, Reuters reported.
The celebrations came a day before a particularly deadly Russian attack on Ukraine: on October 8 a glide bomb hit two buses in Kramatorsk, eastern Ukraine, killing at least 33 people and wounding 18, regional authorities said.
Vlaams Belang politician Filip Dewinter (L) is being assaulted by members of a Moroccan wedding party in Antwerpen, Belgium. X
Belgian right-wing politician Filip Dewinter was left bleeding after being violently assaulted during a confrontation with members of a Moroccan wedding party at Antwerp City Hall on Friday, 9 October. The Vlaams Belang politician was grabbed by the throat, shoved against a wall and repeatedly struck in an attack that forced police to intervene.
The incident unfolded shortly before noon outside City Hall, where a large Belgian-Moroccan wedding party had gathered. Dewinter, who was arriving for official municipal business, said members of the crowd recognized him and began shouting insults, including ‘racist’, before the confrontation turned violent.
Zoals zo dikwijls verdraait de mainstreammedia-media de feiten… Ik ben niet opgepakt (zoals @HLN_BE beweerde…) maar legde klacht neer wegens slagen en verwondingen (mijn belager werd ondertussen geïdentificeerd en verhoord); ik ging niet ‘in de clinch’ met ‘een’ familie (@GVA)… pic.twitter.com/eSLcMrxVK7
According to Dewinter, one of the Moroccans chased him towards the entrance, seized him by the throat and forced him inside the building, where he was punched and kicked. Videos circulating on social media show a man physically restraining Dewinter and pushing him against a wall. The politician suffered a bleeding wound above his eye.
Antwerp police confirmed the attack and Dewinter’s head injury. Several Rapid Response Team units were dispatched to restore order, while two members of the wedding party were stopped by officers. Dewinter subsequently filed a complaint alleging assault and injuries.
The veteran politician condemned the attack as another manifestation of growing intimidation against those challenging mass immigration. He accused Antwerp’s Moroccan community of behaving as though it were ‘all-powerful’ and described his hometown as an ‘occupied and Islamized city’.
