Maybe, just schmaybe, those cod-clasping Vikings in Iceland knew what they were doing on Sunday evening, when, by the hairs on their bearded chinny chinchins, they extricated themselves for the foreseeable future from any discussions about becoming a European Union vassal state.
Oh, excuse me - European Union 'member,' as if that implied some sort of chummy club filled with bonhomie, and all looking out for the other fellows' best interests.
As someone said, it's more the Hotel California. And at the rate the unelected Empress of Europe, current European Commission president, and epic Bond villainess Ursula von der Leyen is going, no one will be left standing to wonder how to check out, even if they could.
The entire union charade is going to collapse in on itself with a great sucking sound, like a black hole, and simply wink out, leaving dazed survivors standing knee-deep in civilizational rubble and blinking in stunned astonishment like Rip Van Winkle waking up from his nap.
WHADDA WE DO NOW, GEORG?
The rumblings of discontent are already so loud, and the currents running beneath the surface so strong that one can tangibly detect them through the purposeful noise screen the Brussels Brahmins and their pliant government minions maintain to distract from it, and in defiance of all the legal obstacles erected in an effort to eradicate it.
In five days, it very much looks as if the status quo seismic meter will suffer its first great shock, should the populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) Party earn its way to single-party dominance in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt.
NAZI! ULTRA RIGHT WING! EXTREMIST!
All the old, tired slurs are falling by the wayside because they've been deployed too often and too cheaply. As retorts rather than the real answers people are seeking for the miserable state of their countries.
Those same everyday people, being slurred and demonized as 'NAZIS!' by the purple, blue, and green-haired freaks routinely assembled for public protests against them, have had quite enough of the double standard accorded to everyone but their hardworking, tax-paying selves.
They are tired of virtue signaling progressive/socialist politicians who rail against the middle class as NAZIS! for wanting an imported-men-of-fighting-age-stabby-types-free homeland once again while being married to actual neo-NAZIS! themselves.
Horrible Green politician who loves calling her political opponents Nazis married to a literal confessed ex-neo-Nazi
She is the lead candidate for the Green Party in Sachsen-Anhalt and she is fighting for her political career and the broader relevance of her party, which may not make it into the state parliament when voters go to the polls this coming Sunday. The AfD, on the other hand, are on the verge of achieving an outright majority and entering government for the first time. Yes, you read that right: the good citizens of Sachsen-Anhalt are on the verge of voting their way back into Evil Fascist Nazi Hitlerism again.
This displeases Sziborra-Seidlitz because she really hates Nazis, or at least she claims to. It’s actually hard to know what she thinks of the undisputed card-carrying Nazis who ceased to exist formally in 1945 and almost all of whom are either dead or among the oldest people presently alive. At least I couldn’t find her saying much of anything about those guys. Sziborra-Seidlitz saves most of her bile for the far more politically useful purported Nazis with whose politics she disagrees. These are the kind of Nazis she really loathes.
...Of course Sziborra-Seidlitz has not waged her witch-hunt against these incredibly nefarious if equally scarce neo-Nazis alone. In these cases she was merely contributing to much bigger and more general discourse. The AfD in general are smeared as Nazis all the time, particularly the AfD in Sachsen-Anhalt, because nothing makes you more Nazi than being likely to win an election while also being in the political opposition. To make the case, journalists have reported unceasingly on a few politicians in the AfD Sachsen-Anhalt chapter who spent a youthful year or two in a since-banned microscopic hard-right group nobody ever heard of before called the Heimattreue Deutsche Jugend (“German Youth Loyal to the Fatherland”). Pleas that these were teenage stupidities irrelevant for these candidates’ present politics have fallen on deaf ears.
I type all of this because it makes this story all the more hilarious:
The husband of Saxony-Anhalt Green Party lead candidate Susan Sziborra-Seidlitz was apparently a leading figure in Quedlinburg’s neo-Nazi scene in the 1990s. In a 1995 Antifa magazine, David Seidlitz was listed as a “well-known neo-Nazi in the town” and associated with a group called the “Deutsche Recken” … Today, Seidlitz serves as the Greens’ regional manager for Central Saxony-Anhalt.
When approached by a journalist from Compact magazine, Sziborra-Seidlitz stated that her husband was “a flawless democrat, unlike the AfD in Saxony-Anhalt.” As early as 2022, she had commented in the state parliament on her husband’s past, saying that Seidlitz had been friends with a well-known neo-Nazi at the time because of a “highly polarised youth culture” in Quedlinburg. Yet she claimed he had never been a leading member or part of a group. Today, she said, Seidlitz is also a staunch “antifascist,” and she continued that his career path shows there has been “potential for democratic maturation” over the past 30 years.
In the best tradition of leftists doing damage control, Sziborra-Seidlitz claimed in a speech that her husband had merely 'hung out with right-wing extremists' as part of a youthful phase in his life.
Despite all newspaper documentation to the contrary.
As eugyppius says, if this happens to a hardcore lefty, it is part of the maturing process. Asking about it is a smear, indicative of the sad current hateful state of politics, and how dare you.
...Who knew that a leading Green Party politician in 2026 would be arguing before a cheering leftist crowd that marrying ex-Nazis is good actually.
This is the most insane timeline.
The heaving, outraged chest of hypocrisy is no longer working its magic on listeners in the audience. No longer do they question why they thought they had a right to ask to begin with, and no longer do they slink away in shame that they somehow found the temerity to do so.
Now they see the arrogant hypocrisy on display, as if a film had been lifted from their eyes, and they are no longer being cowed into believing their honest concerns were wrong from the start. They see the frauds they've allowed to hold emotional sway berating them for who they are, and can begin to hold them accountable for what they've done, both to the nation physically and to the national psyche.
This explains the strength of the AfD's appeal, the surging popularity of Marine Le Pen's National Rally (RN) in France, and the strength of populist movements across Europe. Citizens of countries whose cultural identities and work-ethic traditions have been nearly swallowed by diktats from the EU leviathan are stirring en masse to reject the politicians who have foisted this calamitous artificial construct on them. Farmers on tractors across Europe are blocking highways or spraying manure. Populist victories in elections in nearly every single country, particularly among the major players.
And the EU's response to all of this?
Ever more tone deaf tightening of the control screws, and rejection of the middle-class values that once made Europe 'Europe.'
Ursula von der Leyen gave an astonishing speech to French business leaders five days ago that has just now broken into the news. As you will see in the video, the unelected Empress of Europe was tremendously animated for her normal appearances, but that was, perhaps, due to the subject - money.
She and her appointed satraps have run through all of it. The money sent to Brussels, the money they've extorted from 'member states' for their weapons build-ups and defense spending, all of it.
And what makes her angry enough to smack the podium is the savings of hard-working Europeans, sitting fat and untouched in European banks, out of her control.
She wants to control it. All of it.
Von der Leyen Wants Your Bank Deposits: Here Is How to Keep Control of Them
Brussels wants Europe's 10 trillion euros in deposits funding its companies
The President of the European Commission stood in front of a room full of French business leaders last week and said the quiet part out loud. Europeans have roughly 10 trillion euros parked in bank accounts, that money is "sitting idle", and Europe now needs to put it to work for European companies.
She was not proposing to raid anyone's account. But the language matters, because it tells you exactly how your savings are viewed from Brussels: not as your money, but as a national resource that is currently being wasted. Here is what is actually happening, and what you can do about it that does not involve waiting for a policy to be designed for you.
How is she going to do that?
...The vehicle for fixing this is the Savings and Investments Union, or SIU. The Commission says the package of measures on securitisation, bank and insurance investment rules, market integration and supervision could unlock up to 470 billion euros in additional investment.
...No, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling something. There is no confiscation, no forced conversion, no deposit levy in the SIU.
What the SIU does is change the plumbing. It makes it easier and cheaper for banks, insurers and asset managers to move retail money into capital markets, it pushes simplified investment products and pension wrappers, and it leans hard on financial literacy campaigns to convince you that your deposit account is underperforming.
On the last point, they are not wrong. The Commission's own framing is that bank deposits are safe and easy to access but usually earn less than capital market investments. That is true. The awkward part is the second half of the pitch: the goal is not only better returns for you, it is cheaper capital for European companies. You are being asked to become the funding source for an industrial policy.
There is also a detail that rarely gets mentioned. Your savings were never idle. Banks lend deposits out. They always have. What Brussels means by "idle" is that the money is not flowing into the specific channels the EU wants it to flow into.
EUROPE MUST NOW PUT THESE SAVINGS AT THE SERVICE OF THESE COMPANIES
EU President Ursula von der Leyen believes that Europeans are not saving money correctly.
— Wall Street Mav (@WallStreetMav) August 31, 2026
She wants to control how Europeans are allowed to save their money.
The European Commission head stated that about €10 trillion in household savings are currently sitting in bank… pic.twitter.com/A4q4sBtrtN
...household savings are currently sitting in bank deposits and not working for the European economy. "Europe has savings. Unfortunately, these savings are lazy,"
She wants savings to be withdrawn from other countries and instead directed toward financing the borrowing needs of European entities.
Her message to European citizens, "You will invest where the Fuhrer instructs you to invest."
Ursula von der Leyen was not elected by the citizens of EU countries. She was appointed by other EU bureaucrats.
WHOSE MONEY IS IT?
It is a lot of savings, because 'saving' is baked into the DNA of most Europeans.
Imagine a household that has accumulated €80,000 over twenty years.
...The household has made those choices for its own reasons: security, liquidity, expected returns, diversification and tolerance for risk. From its perspective, nothing is waiting to be “unlocked.”
Yet European policymakers increasingly look at household savings through a different lens.
In March 2025, the European Commission launched its Savings and Investments Union, or SIU. Its stated objective is to give EU citizens better opportunities to build wealth while connecting more savings with productive investment. The Commission also presents the SIU as a means of supporting broader European strategic objectives against investment needs estimated at an additional €750–800 billion annually by 2030, even before accounting fully for increased defense requirements.
The Council of the European Union points to roughly €10 trillion of household savings held in bank deposits and describes the present situation as a mismatch between savings and the investment needs of European businesses and the wider economy.
Christine Lagarde, President of the European Central Bank, has made a similar argument. Europe saves more than the United States, she has observed, but is much less effective at channeling those savings into the expansion of innovative companies. European institutions increasingly see a large pool of household savings alongside a large pool of European investment needs and ask how the two might be connected more effectively.
There is a serious economic argument here. However, there is also a simple question worth keeping in view throughout the discussion:
Whose money is it?
There are myriad reasons why citizens should be wary of having the EU direct where and to whom household savings are going.
First and foremost, the EU should work to make European businesses a worthwhile place to invest in.
...Europe does have a financing problem. It needs large amounts of investment in technology, energy, infrastructure, defense, industrial capacity and growing businesses.
It also has a capital-market problem. Fragmentation, costs and regulatory differences make European markets less efficient than they could be. Addressing those weaknesses could benefit both companies and savers.
But that suggests a more durable answer than thinking primarily about how household savings might be mobilized.
Make Europe more attractive to capital.
Make European businesses more competitive. Reduce unnecessary fragmentation. Lower investment costs. Make it easier to build and scale companies. Create deeper and more liquid capital markets. Give citizens simple ways to invest and enough information to make informed decisions.
Then let them decide.
After all, hard as it might be for von der Leyen and the Brahmins to see that money quietly sitting there, steeping away with whatever saving plan those who earned and stashed it have chosen, it is theirs.
At least, it is so far.
Editor’s Note: Republicans are fighting for election integrity by requiring proper identification to vote. It's common sense, yet Democrats are spreading lies about the impact of such a measure.
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