People had no problem voting for an extremist party in Saxony-Anhalt on Sunday. The Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) received 43.8 percent of the vote in the state election despite being labeled a “confirmed far-right extremist” group by the domestic intelligence agency.

But the AfD isn’t the only extremist party. In fact, all parties have aspects of deranged extremist ideologies. Some of those views make the AfD look sane.

There is one extremist ideology that is prevalent in the AfD and other parties alike.

Where the AfD Appears Sane

The AfD’s government program in Saxony-Anhalt states regarding the push for abortion and other family-destroying policies:

This perverse leftist, radical feminist and individualistic evil spirit not only erodes traditional family and gender role models but also denies and criminalizes even biological facts.

The AfD is the only major German party that claims to uphold the traditional family based on the existence of only two sexes. For this, they are accused of being extremists. “If we’re not happy with drag queens making gender reassignment surgery seem appealing to our children, they call us ‘homophobic’” (ibid).

But in truth, the other parties that don’t even pretend to advocate for such a standard of sanity and morality are the weird extremists in this regard.

The AfD is also the only party that denies the so-called science behind the climate change agenda. The election program states: “If we refuse to accept the defacement of the landscape and the destruction of the environment caused by wind turbines and solar power plants, and if we don’t want to pay the highest electricity prices in the world, they call us ‘anti-science’ and ‘climate deniers.’”

The AfD is also one of the few to speak out against censorship in Germany. The program states: “If we don’t think it’s right that some immigrants receive lighter sentences for aggravated assault than some Germans do for holding the wrong opinion, then we’re actually ‘far-right extremists.’”

In all these cases, the extremists have become the mainstream, and the sane are called the extremists.

Extremist Views Converge

There are also extremist ideologies that find broad support within the AfD and the established parties.

Jerusalem News Syndicate wrote on September 7:

As anti-Semitism rises on both the right and the left, it risks abandoning the lessons and responsibilities imposed on it by history.

The right-wing party that scored a landslide victory in the recent elections in Saxony seems to have provoked more outrage than reflection across Europe.

Still, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is not some inexplicable creature of history. It has emerged after years of mistakes associated with immigration under former Chancellor Angela Merkel, coupled with political instability, economic anxiety, unemployment and a growing fear of war.

What should really give us pause is Germany itself.

The article recounts that Germany’s efforts to break with its World War ii past are “beginning to fray.” Later on, jns writes: “[W]hen politicians minimize the significance of Germany’s 20th-century history, they know they are touching a nerve that can easily turn into hatred.”

Here, the AfD program provides one of its most alarming statements: The “perpetuation of a guilt complex” resulted in the fact that “national pride is generally considered disreputable, the defense of one’s own interests is perceived as indecent, and politicians avoid any positive references to our rich history prior to 1933.”

The “rich history prior to 1933” includes World War i, the wars of German unification, religious wars, pogroms and massacres against the Jews, the Crusades, the Inquisition with its forced conversions of Jews, and much more. Of course, there are also bright periods in German history, but this dark side is a deeply entrenched part of its historic identity.

The AfD bemoans the loss of German heritage just as Adolf Hitler once did.

Concerning his time in Vienna, Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf: “This was the time in which the greatest change I was ever to experience took place in me. From a feeble cosmopolite I had turned into a fanatical anti-Semite.” He also wrote, “To me the big city appeared as the personification of incest. … The longer I stayed in this city, the more my hatred increased against the mixture of foreign nations that began to eat up this site of old German culture.”

A similar statement could come from the AfD today.

jns continues:

Both the AfD on the right and Green and left-wing parties reject the label “anti-Semitic.” Yet each, in very different ways, is increasingly willing to fish in one of the darkest reservoirs of German history: hostility toward the Jews. …

The left is more explicit. It exploits hostility toward Israel, portraying the Jewish state as colonialist and genocidal, and finding allies among radical Islamist movements. Anti-Zionism provides a convenient vocabulary through which ancient prejudices can be repackaged as progressive politics.

This vile accusation of Israel committing genocide is not only an anti-Semitic conspiracy; it indirectly makes light of Germany’s own history of actually committing genocide.

Germany is “losing its balance when confronted with the political temptation to capture anti-Semitic sentiment as another reservoir of votes,” jns writes.

The article concludes with this shocking warning:

Germany increasingly seems to be shrugging its shoulders and saying: If anti-Semitism is becoming acceptable everywhere else, perhaps we, too, can loosen our grip on the lessons of the past.

Germany cannot afford that luxury.

Its confrontation with the Holocaust was not merely an act of repentance. It became part of the moral architecture of postwar Europe and a warning about what happens when hatred, political expediency and historical amnesia converge.

If Germany forgets that responsibility—if it begins to forget the meaning of World War ii—then that will be a terrible warning sign.

And not only for the Jews.

Hatred, political expediency and historical amnesia are indeed converging again, and jns is right: This isn’t just a warning to the Jews.

Where Extremism Leads

Six million Jews were brutally murdered in the few short years of the Nazis’ reign. But they weren’t the only targets of Hitler’s insanity. Germany at the time sought world dominance—motivated by a feeling of superiority.

The AfD is stirring these feelings of superiority again by appealing to Germany’s “glorious history”—the very history that led to 1933.

And it’s also the continuous defamation of America, the British and Israel from the political left that stirs a moral superiority in the German people. Left-wing extremists see the Jews and the West as the new Nazis, and thus justify violence against them.

While our modern society has been more adept at recognizing the evils of right-wing extremism, they are at large blind to the mixture of hatred rising in Germany today.

No nation has brought more evil militarily than the German people—and the Bible reveals that the worst is yet to come. Referring to a prophecy in Ezekiel 7, our booklet Germany and the Holy Roman Empire states:

This is what God will do: “Wherefore I will bring the worst of the heathen, and they shall possess their houses: I will also make the pomp of the strong to cease; and their holy places shall be defiled” (verse 24). When the “worst of the heathen” attain power, they do what they have always done. Only this time, God says they’re going to wreak worse havoc, death and destruction than has ever occurred in man’s history (Ezekiel 5:9).

The Germans have many wonderful characteristics. But when Satan leads them into war, they become brutal!

We need to be reminded of how horrible man can be toward his fellow man. There is probably no greater example of inhumanity than German atrocities in World War ii. But how much have we forgotten? Have we completely shut it out of our minds? Do we think it won’t happen again? God says it’s going to happen far worse than ever before.

We need to remind ourselves of what happened in the German death camps during those ugly times of modern “civilization.” The phrase “worst of the heathen” applies to Germany today.

We must recognize that the hatred boiling in Germany will lead to a violent nuclear explosion. The worst holocaust imaginable. Some will scoff at these prophecies all the way till they come to pass. But you can be forewarned and turn to God for protection.

Our booklet Germany and the Holy Roman Empire will help you understand Germany’s history and the prophecies of its future.