Germany has decided international law doesn't apply to it anymore.

Chancellor Merz has seen the façade falling and dutifully taken a wrecking ball to finish the job.

Mar 05, 2026

Good day, spectators,

And there was a time decades ago when I was younger, in a world that no longer exists, when Germany positioned itself as the ‘conscience’ of Europe. The post-war project was built on a questionable foundation of atonement, of ‘never again’, of exporting ‘democracy’ and human rights in an effort to right its historical sins.

It was always a convenient fiction, but it was a fiction with some utility. It gave the European Union a kind of moral compass, however crooked and prone to failure it was.

But that fiction is now dead. And funnily enough, it has been killed by Germany’s own willing hand.

In the past week alone, the scale of the hypocrisy has become so grotesque that it demands my documentation even though I don’t have many words left. Whilst Chancellor Friedrich Merz flies to Washington to meet Donald Trump today, the German government is actively, enthusiastically, and repeatedly violating every principle it claims to uphold.

the war criminal they’ll never arrest.

Last weekend, the most bizarre thing happened when Iran began its retaliatory strikes. Israel’s government plane, Wing of Zion made an unscheduled landing at Berlin’s Brandenburg Airport. Online, millions watched the flight tracker and asked the obvious question: is Benjamin Netanyahu on board? And would Germany arrest him?

The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Palestine. Germany is a signatory to the Rome Statute so the obligation is clear: if a wanted war criminal sets foot on German soil, he must be detained.

The plane landed. The German government confirmed the Israeli government had asked to ‘park the plane’ there. A spokesperson said only the flight crew was on board which is just extremely bizarre. Why move a plane to another continent? Netanyahu’s office released ‘photos of him in Israel’ the following day but unfortunately for them, I don’t think we trust a word they say.

The thing is, this whole occurrence got me thinking…it doesn’t matter if he wasn’t on this particular flight because the question is not about one plane. It is about what Germany does on a daily basis and what it would do if he did arrive.

And the answer, based on every signal, is: nothing.

This is the same government that has repeatedly refused to condemn US actions that clearly violate international law. When the United States kidnapped Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro in January, an act experts called a ‘clear violation of international law’, the German government declined to share that view.

the people of Venezuela rise up in unity to demand the return of Maduro.

Deaglan O'Mulrooney

Jan 5

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When asked to assess the legality of US-Israeli strikes on Iran, Merz said bluntly:

‘This is not the moment to lecture our partners and allies.’

Then most recently came the most revealing statement of all. Merz declared that Iran ‘should not be protected under international law’.

**even the Torygraph can’t hide the truth.**

Read that again.

A German chancellor, representing a country that claims to champion the rules-based order, openly stating that international law should not apply to a sovereign nation because he doesn’t like its government.

The pattern is now explicit: international law applies only to enemies and never to allies.

the double standard.

So Germany likes to position itself as the de facto leader of the European Union. And what does that leadership look like? A study in irreconcilable standards, hypocrisy and lies.

Consider Iran. The EU has imposed repeated rounds of sanctions on Tehran targeting individuals and entities over human rights abuses and support for Russia’s war effort. Kaja Kallas, the EU’s chief diplomat, declared: ‘Repression cannot go unanswered. Any regime that kills its own people is working toward its own demise.’

Now let’s consider the United States and Israel. Together, they have killed likely 100,000 or more people in Gaza, using German-exported weapons and German-supplied components. It has bombed Iran, killing thousands in an unprovoked attack that multiple nations have condemned. It has kidnapped foreign heads of state. It has enforced a brutal blockade against Cuba for six decades.

And Germany’s response? Once again, ‘let’s not lecture our partners’.

Compare this to the treatment of Russia. When Moscow acts, the entire EU apparatus mobilises. Sanctions are rolled out within hours. Assets are frozen. Energy contracts are cancelled. Diplomatic relations are severed. Journalists shut down. Sports people snubbed and excluded.

Yet when the United States bombs a country in the middle of negotiations, when Israel conducts what the International Court of Justice is investigating as genocide, when American commandos kidnap a democratically elected president, Germany is nowhere to be seen.

When Israel and the US bombed Iran the other day, the leaders of France, Germany, and the UK issued a joint statement and it was not to condemn the strikes. They did not call them illegal. They simply urged Iran to seek a ‘negotiated solution’ and made clear they ‘did not participate’.

Think about that framing for a sec. The aggressors are not condemned and the victim is told to negotiate. And the European powers, rather than upholding the international law they claim to cherish, simply step aside and let the bombing continue.

Chancellor Merz, in his statement, said: ‘The mullah regime is a terror regime, responsible for decades of oppression.’ But since when does the nature of a regime justify unprovoked military attack by foreign powers? Since when does ‘they are bad’ become a legal basis for bombing?

Hello! You are friends with Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

The German Greens’ Katharina Dröge was a bit more honest: ‘There is no international legal mandate for these actions. A justification under the right of self-defence is subject to strict conditions. One must assume those conditions are not met.’

So they do know. They know it’s illegal. They simply choose not to act. And this is the behaviour of a client state, not a decent sovereign nation.

the Nord stream farce and the catastrophe of their own making.

And then there is the matter of the pipelines. The Nord Stream sabotage in September 2022 was one of the largest acts of energy terrorism in European history. For years, Germany dutifully pointed fingers at Russia, despite the glaring absurdity of Russia destroying its own infrastructure that generated billions in revenue.

Now the truth has finally emerged. On 26th February, Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski stood in parliament and, when asked about the pipelines, stated plainly: ‘It was Ukrainians who dismantled these pipelines.’ This confirms what independent investigators have long suspected: that a sabotage team used Poland as an operating base, that the yacht Andromeda was involved, and that Germany has been actively protecting the real perpetrators.

Poland arrested a Ukrainian suspect and then refused to extradite him to Germany because it’s ‘not in their best interests’.

The investigation has quietly died. The media has moved on. And Germany, the victim of this attack, has also simply brushed the entire affair under the carpet because confronting the truth would mean confronting Ukraine, and confronting Ukraine would mean confronting the US-led narrative.

It’s pure servility dressed up as diplomacy.

But now, the chickens have come home to roost and with the US-Israeli war on Iran fully underway, oil and gas prices are spiking across Europe. The same Germany that spent years virtue-signalling about Russian energy, that turned a blind eye to the destruction of its own pipelines, that joined every round of sanctions against Moscow, is now quietly begging for Russian gas.

The irony is almost too perfect to satirise. Germany voluntarily severed its most reliable energy relationship to prove its moral superiority. It allowed its critical infrastructure to be sabotaged without demanding accountability. It supported a US-led escalation that has now driven energy prices through the roof. And now, behind closed doors, it is making overtures to Russia to save its economy from collapse.

The German working class are paying the price in the most literal sense. Energy costs are soaring, industry is struggling, and the much-vaunted energy transition will not happen overnight. The government that lectured the world about principle is now scrambling for pragmatic solutions, having painted itself into a corner of its own making.

Germany’s post-war façade has crumbled. What remains is a medium-sized power, economically shaky and strategically servile, that has abandoned any pretence of principle in exchange for continued membership in the American club.

It funds genocides and defends the perpetrators. It applies international law selectively, sanctioning its enemies whilst shielding its allies. It ignored the sabotage of its own critical infrastructure to avoid diplomatic inconvenience. And now it faces the consequences of its own cowardice: an energy crisis, a regional war, and a complete loss of moral authority.

The European Union, with countries like Germany as its de facto leaders, is not a force for peace or justice and never will be. It is an administrative apparatus for managing the Empire’s interests whilst maintaining the fiction of independence. When Russia acts, it sanctions. When the US bombs, it looks away.

And on that note, I’ll let you go for today. But before I do, remember I have a subscription offer going on right now. Anyone who creates a yearly subscription to the magazine before the end of March will be upgraded to a lifetime subscription for free. Pay once, get access to everything the spectacle has to offer forever. It also really helps me in tough economic times.