Tiny plastic particles may boost risk from major diseases – study

UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM

 

IMAGE: 

HUMAN EXPOSURE RATES ARE DETERMINED BY THE ENVIRONMENTAL FATE AND TRANSPORT OF MNPS THAT CONTROL THE CONNECTIVITY BETWEEN SPATIALLY AND TEMPORALLY DYNAMIC ENVIRONMENTAL POLLUTION SOURCES AND HUMAN EXPOSURES (BOTTOM). TOGETHER, THESE DYNAMIC EXPOSURE CONTROLS DETERMINE THE COMBINED UPTAKE OF MNPS AND THEIR ADDITIVES THAT MAY INFLUENCE THE RISK AND/OR SEVERITY OF NCDS. THE TEXT BOXES PROVIDE SOME EXAMPLE EXPOSURE RANGES ASSOCIATED WITH DIFFERENT MNP SOURCES.

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CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM

People may be at increased risk from cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and chronic lung disease – as rising global levels of micro- and nanoplastics (MnPs) are absorbed into the human body, a new study reveals.

Non-communicable diseases (NCD) such as these are linked to inflammatory conditions in the body’s organs, with the tiny particles increasing the uptake of MnPs and their leachates within digestive and respiratory systems – potentially boosting the risk and severity of NCDs in the future.

And MnP concentrations in infant faecal matter are significantly higher than in adults – possibly because plastic is commonly used in infant food preparation, presentation, and storage. Young children’s behaviour such as putting objects in their mouth may also account for this.

Publishing their findings in Cell Reports Medicine, an international group of researchers is now calling for a global integrated One Health approach to human health and environmental research that will reveal the environmental mechanisms that lie behind the rise in human MnP exposure and the particles links with NCDs.

Lead author Professor Stefan Krause, from the University of Birmingham, commented: “Plastic pollution has increased globally – making it critical that we understand the overall health risks associated with MnP exposure.

“We must tackle this pollution at its source to reduce further emissions, as the global dispersal of MnPs that has already happened will remain a cause of concern for centuries to come. For this, we need a systematic investigation into the environmental drivers of human MnP exposure and their impacts on the prevalence and severity of the main NCD groups of cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and chronic lung disease.”

The researchers highlight that the relationship between MnPs and NCDs resembles those of other particles, including natural sources such as pollen or human-made pollutants like diesel exhaust, and MnPs, and engineered nanomaterials, all acting in a similar biological manner. The body treats these as foreign entities triggering the same protective mechanisms – presenting a risk of bodily defences becoming overwhelmed and boosting the frequency and severity of NCDs.

The incidence of NCDs is increasing across the world with the four main types collectively responsible for 71% of all global deaths annually and creating a predicted economic impact of more than $30 trillion over the next two decades.

Co-author Semira Manaseki-Holland, from the University of Birmingham, commented: “We must better understand how MnPs and NCDs interact, if we are to progress global prevention and treatment efforts toward the UN Sustainable Development Goal on reducing premature mortality from NCDs and other conditions where inflammation are concerned through by 2030.

“This need is critical in low- and low-middle-income countries (LMICs) where NCD prevalence is rising, and plastic pollution levels and exposures are high. Whether we encounter them indoors or outdoors, MnPs are likely adding to global health risks.”

Global pollution trends show that micro- (smaller than 5 mm) and nanoplastic (smaller than 1 µm) particles are now found everywhere. MnPs have been detected in lungs, blood, breast milk, placenta, and stool samples confirming that the particles enter the human body from the environment.

Humans are exposed to MnPs in outdoor and indoor environments through food stuffs, drinks consumption, air and many other sources including cosmetics and human care products.

MnPs have been found in fish, salt, beer, and plastic bottled drinks or air, where they are released from synthetic clothing materials, plastic fabric bedding during sleep, plastic carpet or furniture. Other sources can include fertiliser, soil, irrigation, and uptake into food crops or produce.

Human exposure to MnPs varies significantly depending on location and exposure mechanism, with evidence of MnP pollution hotspots in indoor air containing up to 50 times the number of particles encountered outdoors.

Co-author Professor Iseult Lynch, from the University of Birmingham, commented: “We must understand the human health risks associated with MnPs and to do this, we will need to understand the environmental controls of individual exposures. This will require environmental and medical scientists to work very closely together.”

ENDS

Hypothesized uptake mechanisms of MnPs through human body 

(A) Hypothesized uptake mechanisms of MnPs through human biological barriers, including via (B) the olfactory bulb, (C) the lung-air barrier, and (D) the gastrointestinal tract, indicating also the systems and organs directly affected by MnPs and the associated MnP impacts and suspected adverse health out comes including NCDs. The suspected particle-size fractionation caused by differences in the uptake mechanisms (A–D) is highlighted in (E), with larger particles being ingested (up to 130 mm) rather than inhaled (less than 2.5 mm) and only the smallest (nanoscale) particles being able to penetrate the blood-brain barrier. MnP internalized by routes (C) and (D) reach the wider circulatory system and from there can reach all organs.

CREDIT

University of Birmingham

Infographic details

• Figure 1. Environmental exposure routes, transport, and sources of MnPs Environmental exposure routes and sources of MnPs in indoor (top) and outdoor environments (middle). Human exposure rates are determined by the environmental fate and transport of MnPs that control the connectivity between spatially and temporally dynamic environmental pollution sources and human exposures (bottom). Together, these dynamic exposure controls determine the combined uptake of MnPs and their additives that may influence the risk and/or severity of NCDs. The text boxes provide some example exposure ranges associated with different MnP sources.
• Figure 2. Hypothesized uptake mechanisms of MnPs through human body (A–D) (A) Hypothesized uptake mechanisms of MnPs through human biological barriers, including via (B) the olfactory bulb, (C) the lung-air barrier, and (D) the gastrointestinal tract, indicating also the systems and organs directly affected by MnPs and the associated MnP impacts and suspected adverse health out comes including NCDs. The suspected particle-size fractionation caused by differences in the uptake mechanisms (A–D) is highlighted in (E), with larger particles being ingested (up to 130 mm) rather than inhaled (less than 2.5 mm) and only the smallest (nanoscale) particles being able to penetrate the blood-brain barrier. MnP internalized by routes (C) and (D) reach the wider circulatory system and from there can reach all organs.

Notes to Editors

• The University of Birmingham is ranked amongst the world’s top 100 institutions, its work brings people from across the world to Birmingham, including researchers and teachers and more than 8,000 international students from over 150 countries. Discover Birmingham.
• ‘The potential of micro- and nanoplastics to exacerbate the health impacts and global burden of non-communicable diseases’ - Stefan Krause, Valerie Ouellet, Deonie Allen, Steven Allen, Kerry Moss, Holly A. Nel, Semira Manaseki-Holland, and Iseult Lynch is published by Cell Reports Medicine.
• Participating institutions:

• University of Birmingham, UK
• Universite´ Claude Bernard, Lyon, France
• University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK
• Northeast Fisheries Science Center, Orono, USA
• Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada
• Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, London, UK
• Center for Environment, Fisheries & Agriculture Science, Lowestoft, UK

 

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JOURNAL

Cell Reports Medicine

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

The potential of micro- and nanoplastics to exacerbate the health impacts and global burden of non-communicable diseases

 

Previously uncharacterized parasite uncovered in fish worldwide

Using genome reconstruction, scientists unveiled a once “invisible” fish parasite  present in many marine fish world-wide that belongs to the apicomplexans, one of the most important groups of parasites at a clinical level

UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI ROSENSTIEL SCHOOL OF MARINE, ATMOSPHERIC, AND EARTH SCIENCE

 

IMAGE: 

RED LIPPED BLENNY, A TROPICAL MARINE SPECIES IN WHICH THE RESEARCHERS DISCOVERED THE ICHTHYOCOLIDS.

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CREDIT: PHILIPPE GUILLAUME.

Using genome reconstruction, scientists unveiled a once “invisible” fish parasite  present in many marine fish world-wide that belongs to the apicomplexans, one of the most important groups of parasites at a clinical level. However, it had gone unnoticed in previous studies. The parasite is geographically and taxonomically widespread in fish species around the planet, with implications for commercial fishing and oceanic food webs.

 An international research study led by scientists at the Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science of the University of Miami, the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (IBE), a joint centre of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and the Pompeu Fabra University (UPF) has characterized a new parasite in the red-lipped blenny, a fish that lives in tropical reefs. The international team has also revealed its presence in fish around the world.

Published by Current Biology, the research used an innovative method to reconstruct part of the parasite's genome from sequencing data obtained from its host, and be able to detect its presence in other fish using genetic “barcodes” (DNA barcoding).

An "invisible" parasite has been unveiled

Despite its presence in fish worldwide, the parasite had not been properly characterized until now. The genomic data of the study reveals that this parasite belongs to a group of organisms previously uncharacterized and have been named ichthyocolids, from the Latin “fish dweller.”

“Although it had been previously identified by microscopy, we had not been able to separate the genomic signal from the host fish and the parasite until now. For the first time, we have been able to identify them through their DNA, and place them within the well-known group of apicomplexan parasites,” said Javier del Campo, lead of the study and principal investigator at IBE in the Microbial Ecology and Evolution group and at the Rosenstiel School in Miami.

The parasite is present in fish around the world

Beyond allowing the description of an entirely new group of apicomplexans, the genome reconstruction has allowed researchers to identify a series of genes that can be used to detect the presence of this organism in other genomic or microbiome samples as if it was a “barcode.”

“Once we found ichthyocolids in the red-lipped blenny, a tropical fish, we wondered if it would also be part of the microbiota of other fish,” says Anthony Bonacolta, a PhD candidate in marine biology and ecology at the Rosenstiel School and first author of the study. 

The team compared the DNA of these apicomplexans with public databases of the microbiomes of hundreds of species of freshwater and marine fish. The results showed that these parasites appear associated with the majority of marine fish species analyzed and are present in all oceans. It would therefore be one of the most widespread parasites among marine fish, with potential implications for commercial fishing and oceanic food webs.

“Future studies could help us better understand the impact of parasites as prevalent as ichthyocolids in marine ecosystems,” del Campo says.

A new member of apicomplexan parasites

The Ichthyocolids belong to Apicomplexa, a large group of parasites including the ones that causes malaria and toxoplasmosis. However, these parasites do not pose direct risk to human health, but are important to study for the health of the oceanic ecosystems and for more context on the evolution of those human parasites.

The discovery of the ichthyocolids adds more context to this evolution. For the first time, they are placed as a sister group to well-known coral inhabitants, the corallicolids, also recently described as apicomplexans.

“Studying ichthyocollids not only reveals more about the evolution of major parasites, but also the other basic traits of apicomplexans which may be important in a clinical sense. They may use similar infection mechanisms (as they are also a blood parasite) or have other similar biology which can enlighten our understanding of other apicomplexans.” said Bonacolta.

Reference article:

Anthony M. Bonacolta, Joana Krause-Massaguer, Nico J. Smit, Paul C. Sikkel, & Javier del Campo (2024). A new and widespread group of fish apicomplexan parasites. Current Biology. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2024.04.084

About the University of Miami and Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric and Earth Science

The University of Miami is a private research university and academic health system with a distinct geographic capacity to connect institutions, individuals, and ideas across the hemisphere and around the world. The University’s vibrant and diverse academic community comprises 12 schools and colleges serving more than 19,000 undergraduate and graduate students in more than 180 majors and programs. Located within one of the most dynamic and multicultural cities in the world, the University is building new bridges across geographic, cultural, and intellectual borders, bringing a passion for scholarly excellence, a spirit of innovation, a respect for including and elevating diverse voices, and a commitment to tackling the challenges facing our world. With more than $413 million in research and sponsored program expenditures annually, the University of Miami is a member of the prestigious Association of American Universities (AAU).

 Founded in 1943, the Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science is one of the world’s premier research institutions in the continental United States. The School’s basic and applied research programs seek to improve understanding and prediction of Earth’s geological, oceanic, and atmospheric systems by focusing on four key pillars:

*Saving lives through better forecasting of extreme weather and seismic events.

*Feeding the world by developing sustainable wild fisheries and aquaculture programs.

*Unlocking ocean secrets through research on climate, weather, energy and medicine.

*Preserving marine species, including endangered sharks and other fish, as well as protecting and restoring threatened coral reefs.

www.earth.miami.edu.

 

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JOURNAL

Current Biology

DOI

10.1016/j.cub.2024.04.084 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

A new and widespread group of fish apicomplexan parasites

 Who were the victims of Maya sacrifice? Ancient DNA reveals an unexpected finding

Katie Hunt

CNN
Wed, June 12, 2024 

The ancient Maya city of Chichén Itzá in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula has long been associated with human sacrifice, with hundreds of bones unearthed from temples, a sacred sinkhole and other underground caverns.

A long-held misconception is that the victims were often young and female — an impression that has stuck in the contemporary imagination and become hard to dislodge even as more recent research has suggested that both men and women were among those sacrificed as well as children. A study published Wednesday in the journal Nature adds unexpected detail to that more complex picture.

The new analysis, based on ancient DNA from the remains of 64 people who archaeologists believe had been ritually sacrificed and then deposited in an underground chamber, found the victims were all young boys, many of whom were closely related.

“There were two big moments of surprise here,” said lead study author Rodrigo Barquera, a researcher in the department of archaeogenetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.

“We were thinking, influenced by traditional archaeology that we would find, a non-sex-biased burial or mostly girls,” he said.

“And the second one (was) when we found out that some of them were related and there were two sets of twins.”

The El Castillo pyramid towers over the ruins at Chichén Itzá in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. Chichén Itzá was one of the largest Maya cities. - Donald Miralle/Getty Images
Analysis of skeletons can only reveal so much

The lurid notion that the Maya only sacrificed young women or girls is largely a myth that originated from early and romantic accounts of Chichén Itzá’s sacred sinkhole, or cenote, said Rubén Mendoza, an archaeologist and professor in the department of social sciences and global studies at California State University, Monterey Bay. He wasn’t involved in the study but is an editor of a new book on ritual sacrifice in Mesoamerica.

“This characterization of Maya sacrifice was catapulted to the forefront through media depictions of young maidens (aka virgins) being hurled to their deaths at the Sacred Well,” he said via email.

However, the mystery of exactly whom the Maya sacrificed has been hard to untangle because it’s impossible to identify the sex of a child’s skeleton by analyzing bones alone.

While the pelvis and a few other bones can reveal whether the skeleton was an adult male or female, the telltale differences only emerge during puberty and, even among adults, natural variation can make accurate identification difficult.

This difficulty makes genetic analysis particularly valuable, said study coauthor Christina Warinner, John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Social Sciences and Anthropology at Harvard University and a group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. But the impact of ancient DNA, which has revolutionized archaeology in Europe and higher latitudes, has been more limited in tropical areas because DNA degrades more easily in warm conditions. However, recent advances in ancient DNA technology are expanding its reach, she said.

“We’re getting better and better at retrieving even very small amounts of DNA. And suddenly, we now have the ability to do these large-scale genomic studies and apply ancient DNA as a tool to help us understand the past in Mesoamerica,” Warinner said. “I am so excited about that because this is an area of the world which has this incredibly rich history.”

The sacred cenote, or sinkhole, in Chichén Itzá was found to contain human remains and offerings of valuable goods. - Geography Photos/Universal Images Group Editorial/Getty Images
Boys were younger than 6 when they were sacrificed

The team behind the new study was able to extract and sequence ancient DNA from 64 out of around 100 individuals, whose remains were found scattered in a water chultún — an underground storage chamber discovered in 1967 about 400 meters (437 yards) from the sacred sinkhole in Chichén Itzá.

With radiocarbon dating, the team found that the underground cavern was used for 500 years, although most of the children whose remains the team studied were interred there between AD 800 and 1,000 — during the height of Chichén Itzá’s political power in the region.

All the children were boys, who had been drawn from the local Maya population at that time, according to the DNA analysis, and at least a quarter of them were closely related to at least one other child in the chultún. The group also included two pairs of twins as well as siblings and cousins. Most of the boys were between 3 and 6 years old when they died.

Analysis of variants or isotopes of carbon and nitrogen in the bones also suggested that the related children had similar diets. Together, according to the authors, these findings suggested that related male children were likely selected in pairs for ritual sacrifices linked to the chultún.

“It is surprising to me to see family members, given the enormous time breadth of the deposit, which by radiocarbon dates is now confirmed to have been used over a time span of 500 years, during which these bodies slowly accumulated,” said Vera Tiesler, a bioarchaeologist and professor at the Autonomous University of Yucatán, in an email. She wasn’t involved in the research.

While the study authors believe this finding reveals the only known burial of sacrificed male children, Tiesler said that the ancient Maya ritual calendar was complex, likely with different “victim profiles” for different religious occasions throughout the year and time cycles.

Skull racks, like the reconstructed one here at Chichén Itzá, were used to display skulls publicly. - Johannes Krause
How twins were identified

To avoid sampling the same child twice, the team used the same bone from each child — the petrous bone in the base of the skull.

“Since each child only has one of those, you can be sure that we didn’t double sample any individuals,” Warinner said. “And that’s actually what allowed us to identify identical twins.”

Twins hold a special place in the origin stories and spiritual life of the ancient Maya, Warinner added, particularly a story called the “Hero Twins” in which two brothers descend into the underworld to avenge their father’s death.

It’s not clear how or exactly why the children were sacrificed, but sacrificial methods in use at the time included decapitation and removal of the heart.

“I think we have to remember that death, and everything that these rituals imply, were completely different to us, because we have a very different view of the world than the one that they had,” Barquera said. “For them, it was not losing a child, not losing one of their kids, but an opportunity given by whatever forces to be part of this special burial.”
Connections to present-day community

Warinner said the study was the first time that genetic material recovered from ancient Maya remains was detailed enough to be sequenced, providing a richer picture of who the victims were and to whom they were — and are — related.

The team compared the ancient DNA with that of 68 residents of the present-day Maya community of Tixcacaltuyub. The researchers found the two shared a close genetic signature.

“They were super happy to learn that they were related to the people that once inhabited Chichén Itzá,” Barquera said.

The team also showed how the residents’ immune systems had been shaped by the biological consequences of diseases that European colonizers brought. The researchers found the local Indigenous population today has genetic variants that may have protected them against salmonella infection, thought to be the pathogen behind the devastating 1545 cocoliztli epidemic.

María Ermila Moo-Mezeta, a Mayan coauthor of the study and research professor at the Autonomous University of Yucatán, said the new analysis was significant for her, as a professor of Indigenous origin, to preserve the “historical memory of the Mayan people.”

It was fascinating to learn how past suffering had left a stamp on the immune system of present-day Maya communities, Tiesler added.

“This study is decisively new; a starting point for further, more specific inquiries about the convoluted trajectory of the Maya,” she said.

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Protestant churches in Turkey highlight rising rights violations

ByTurkish Minute
June 7, 2024

The Association of Protestant Churches in Turkey has released its “2023 Rights Violations Monitoring Report,” highlighting increasing challenges and rights violations faced by the Protestant community throughout the past year, the Stockholm Center for Freedom reported.

The report identifies a worrying rise in hate speech directed at Protestants, documenting an increase in hate speech against Protestants on social media platforms, with local media often contributing to the negative rhetoric.

Protestants continue to face significant obstacles in establishing and maintaining places of worship. The report emphasizes that these barriers severely restrict their ability to practice their faith freely, highlighting the ongoing issue as a critical concern for the community.

The report also reveals an alarming trend in the treatment of foreign Protestant clergy. In 2023, 33 foreign religious leaders were assigned restrictive immigration codes such as N82 (requiring prior permission to enter) and G87 (considered a general security threat), a sharp increase from just two cases in previous years. Including their families, this affected a total of 63 individuals.

“Many of these individuals have lived in Turkey with their families for years, contributing positively to their communities without any criminal records or investigations,” the report states. “Their sudden deportation or entry ban has disrupted family unity and caused considerable distress.”

The US Department of State said in a report released in May 2021 that Ankara continued to limit the rights of non-Muslim religious minorities, especially those not recognized under the government’s interpretation of the 1923 Lausanne Treaty, which includes only Armenian Apostolic Orthodox Christians, Jews and Greek Orthodox Christians.

Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) was criticized in the report for many rights violations, including restricting efforts of minority religious groups to train their clergy and making it difficult for them to open or operate houses of worship and obtain exemptions from mandatory religion classes in schools.

Top court finds no rights violation in deportation of Protestant clergy from Turkey

ByTurkish Minute
June 7, 2024


The Constitutional Court has concluded that Turkey has not committed any rights violations in deportations or entry bans imposed on grounds of a risk to national security that have been experienced by members of the country’s tiny Protestant community.

Dozens of Protestant pastors and their families have been effectively banned from entering Turkey or deported over the past several years based on reports from the country’s National Intelligence Organization (MİT) claiming that they pose a threat to national security.

Some of the pastors were deported or refused entry despite living legally in Turkey for years for simply engaging in missionary activities, attending a Christian conference or a meeting, which are cited as examples of actions threatening the security of Turkey.

Turkish authorities are assigning Christians “N-82 (requiring prior permission to enter)” or G-87 “considered a general security threat” security codes, which are used to label a person as a “threat to public order and security” and effectively function as entry bans to the country.

Some of these Protestants — Australian citizens Benjamin Charles McLure and Nathan James Bradtke; German citizens Helmut Frank and Michael Robert; and US citizen Amanda Jolyn Krause and seven other US citizens — took their cases to the Constitutional Court, filing individual applications claiming that they have been subjected to a violation of their rights in their expulsion from Turkey by cancellation of their residence permits or the imposition of an entry ban.

The applicants claimed that their right to freedom of religion and right to effective remedy were violated.

The applications at the top court were filed after the applicants failed to obtain a decision from local and regional appeals courts in their favor.

The applications, which were filed between 2019 and 2022, were merged by the court under the case name “Amanda Jolyn Krause and others.”

However, the Constitutional Court found no violation of the applicants’ rights, ruling by a majority of votes in February. The decision has just been made public.

According to the court, the applicants did not voice any complaints about the obstacles or discriminatory practices they faced while observing their faith during the time they lived in Turkey, hence their claim about a rights violation was baseless.

The court’s former president, Zühtü Arslan, who retired in April, was among the court members with a dissenting opinion.

The Association of Protestant Churches in Turkey in its “2023 Rights Violations Monitoring Report,” revealed increasing challenges and rights violations faced by the Protestant community throughout the past year.

According to the report, 33 foreign religious leaders were assigned restrictive immigration codes such as N82 and G87 in 2023. Including their families, this affected a total of 63 individuals.

“Many of these individuals have lived in Turkey with their families for years, contributing positively to their communities without any criminal records or investigations,” the report states. “Their sudden deportation or entry ban has disrupted family unity and caused considerable distress.”

It is estimated that there are more than 8,000 Protestants in Turkey, a majority of whom are ethnic Turks who operate some 170 churches or communities, for the most part located in İstanbul, Ankara and İzmir.

Applications filed by members of the Protestant community are also pending at the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR).

In Germany, Liberals Lead the Authoritarian Turn

The rise of the anti-immigrant Alternative für Deutschland has prompted a wave of troubled reactions in Germany. But authoritarianism isn’t just a far-right creation, and today, liberals are leading the charge against basic democratic freedoms.

By Ingar Solty

May 27, 2024

Source: Jacobin

For German weekly Der Spiegel, there’s no doubt about the real meaning of the Alternative for Germany (AfD): this far-right party is, in fact, an “Alternative against Germany.” This headline referred to alleged wrongdoing by the AfD’s lead candidate for June’s elections to the European Parliament, TikTok star Maximilian Krah, who is said to have received payments from China. One of Krah’s employees was arrested on suspicion of spying for the People’s Republic; Der Spiegel raised the accusation of “treason.”

It might be observed that Germany, just like any other major power, itself extensively finances actors abroad and influences foreign countries’ internal affairs via its numerous party-affiliated foundations and NGOs. Obviously, Germany’s own secret services are also spying. But beyond that, we may well question those liberal anti-fascists who think that it is really so clever to use the term “treason” against a right-wing authoritarian party that claims to be doing “everything for Germany“ — an SA slogan used by Thuringia AfD leader Björn Höcke. One day they will wake up surprised that they themselves reestablished this illiberal and nationalist rhetoric in the Federal Republic’s political culture.

Obviously, left-wingers can already set the clock for when criminal prosecution with accusations of treason will once again be turned against them. They could, in coming years, be leveled against anyone who raises the slightest doubts and even calls for an open discussion about some of the important questions facing us. Such as whether massively expanded military spending is really such a good idea. Whether Germany’s nuclear armament — once demanded solely by hard-right warhorses such as Franz Josef Strauss, but today with a fresh, pious, cheerful, open “yes to the nuclear bomb“ from Green and liberal icons like former secretary of state Joschka Fischer — is really a good idea. Whether a new bloc confrontation against China and the deployment of the frigates Bayern and Württemberg to the South China Sea to “fly the flag“ for “our values and interests“ — as the cruiser division once did off the Kiautschou Bay Leased Territory — will really help to secure peace and tackle global problems such as social inequality and the climate catastrophe.
Turning Point

The “Zeitenwende” (turning point) was announced by Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz (of the Social Democratic Party, SPD) on February 27, 2022, without prior parliamentary discussion, let alone broad social debate — a democratic scandal in form alone. This is indeed a turning point also in content. It turns the clock not toward a golden future, but toward a dark German past.

The internal “Zeitenwende” is a return to a time of soldiers’ memorials, so that a “society addicted to happiness“ (as former Federal President Joachim Gauck once put it) can once again learn to honor as heroes those who died “defending Germany in the Hindu Kush.” It goes back to the time of the national service called “Pflichtjahr,” with which the same people who once put a bomb under social cohesion through the welfare-slashing “Agenda 2010” and the Hartz laws now want to “strengthen public spiritedness.” Perhaps they forgot that the “Pflichtjahr” already existed once in German history, or what its purpose was and remains. It was the Nazis who introduced it back in 1938 to ideologically repair what was broken in terms of material economic and social policy.

The internal “Zeitenwende” is also about the reintroduction of the military into public schools. According to Federal Education Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger (of the Free Democrats, FDP), children should practice warfare together with soldiers in the interests of a “relaxed relationship with the Bundeswehr” and for “our resilience.” Youth officers from the Bundeswehr would be let loose on pupils as “career advisors“ in order to solve the troops’ general recruitment problems with the current record numbers of teenagers in military service. But clearly, in times of tight labor markets, relying solely on the “economic draft” is no longer enough. This approach once replaced “citizens in uniform” with “precariat in uniform,” creating an “underclass army,” as Michael Wolffsohn described it. In this system, the former East Germany contributed no generals to the German army but almost two-thirds of the soldiers to the war in Afghanistan, following the motto “unemployed or Afghanistan.”

This strategy is, however, no longer adequate to reach the declared goal of a 203,000-strong army by 2031. Foreign recruits from within the European Union (EU) have also failed to materialize so far because youth unemployment in Southern Europe is no longer 50 percent or more, as it was during the euro crisis. Added to this is the drop-out rate during basic military training, which is sky-high because the reality of joining the army has little to do with the image promised by the €35 million a year Bundeswehr advertising plastered across trams, bus stops, and YouTube: camaraderie, wrenching around on cool, horsepower-packed vehicles, war as gaming (only without a reset button), globetrotting, saving the world, finding meaning in life.

And by all means, Germany needs new soldiers in view of the record numbers of reservists who subsequently refused to enlist once the Ukraine War began and whose desire to be shot up for their fatherland is obviously low. Their caution on this front is only surpassed, at least in one sense, by Green voters. In survey after survey — unlike the supporters of any other party — they call for weapons and military service for Ukrainians and other people; but only 9 percent of these Greens, according to a Forsa poll, would be willing to take up arms to defend Germany personally.

Meanwhile, the internal “Zeitenwende” is not only bringing the military back into schools, but also to universities. Here, the government and the conservative opposition, cheered on by the left-liberal media, want to violate the mandatory peace requirement in the German constitution and override the civilian clauses that, as a lesson from World War II, have so far prohibited research and science from being put at the service of private and for-profit arms manufacturers. In North Rhine–Westphalia, easily the country’s largest state, this has long since happened with the votes of the Christian Democrats and Free Democrats.

The internal “Zeitenwende” also means the return of the distinction between “good” (us, of course!) and “evil” (the others, who else?), between (Western) “civilization” and (Eastern) “barbarism.” What has changed is that the frontier of the “Eastern Problem” has been shifted further east and the barbarism no longer begins at the Polish border. We see the return of “hereditary enemies“ (once France, now Russia and China) and the “white man’s burden“ to civilize the barbarians, who are once again supposed to “heal from the German soul.” As former Maoist Reinhard Bütikofer, the Greens’ foreign policy spokesman in the European Parliament, recently put it, the Chinese must “simply let us transform them“ in such a way “that in the end something comes out that simply corresponds to the ideas we had about the country and about how the world as a whole should be organized.”
Enemies Within

The internal “Zeitenwende” is also the return of an ostentatious unwillingness to think about historical context or to take the “enemy” perspective (if not to promote international understanding, then at least to prevent the escalation of war). A knock-on-effect media ostracism punishes the mere attempt to think in such terms. Leftists are again called a “fifth column“ and prevented from exercising their freedom of assembly by illiberal justice and police violence — as recently happened during the suppressed Palestine Conference in Berlin. Alleged enemies from outside are banned by authoritarian means from entering Germany or speaking, as recently happened to the renowned American philosopher Nancy Fraser and the former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis.

It is a symptom of the internal “Zeitenwende” when a federal minister of science and higher education justifies massive police violence against peacefully protesting students by referring to a muck-spreading article in the tabloid Bild. This authoritarian liberalism places its critics and those who merely exercise their civil rights under blanket suspicion of being enemies of the constitution. We see the internal “Zeitenwende” when the Bundestag passes laws overnight that chill scholarly debate and produce conformity of opinion, using penal measures where historians once debated openly. This was what happened two years ago with the tightening of the German Criminal Code and the German Bundestag’s “Holodomor resolution.”

Blacklists have long been back in force for “internal enemies” kept out of public service through tests of political conviction, as with the “extremism check“ in the state of Brandenburg. This is the newest incarnation of the old “Radikalenerlass“ that sought to keep leftists and other radicals from finding public employment. The Bundestag decided this January — with the votes of Social Democrats, Greens, and supposed Free Democrats — that migrants should only be granted citizenship if they are committed to the “liberal-democratic basic order” and the raison d’état of unconditional support for the Israeli state, regardless of which far-right extremist forces are currently governing it and which AI-controlled war crimes it is currently committing. But more than that, migrants are even to be deprived of their citizenship retroactively, for up to ten years, for failing to obey this standard. Federal Justice Minister Marco Buschmann (Free Democrats) and the Social Democrats, among others, demanded this for dual citizens.

It was quite preposterous for these same people to solemnly warn against the far right’s plans for mass deportations — after the AfD’s so-called “Wannsee Conference 2.0“ with the far-right Identitarian Movement leader Martin Sellner became known — and raise scandal over the fact that AfD MP Gerrit Huy advocated dual citizenship at this meeting, in order to make it easier to remove German passports from people with a migration background. In any case, problems of credibility surely arise when the same people who call these plans a red line, because the withdrawal of citizenship was ultimately the Nazis’ means of driving out their opponents, now flirt with it themselves. The same could be said about the outrage over the AfD’s “remigration” dreams, which were already — without question — “an unvarnished plan of state terror” when AfD leader laid them out in his 2018 book. Such outrage looked rather implausible just a few weeks after the current government had itself torn up European asylum law and Scholz had called for “deportations on a grand scale” as part of the “new toughness in refugee policy“ welcomed by Der Spiegel.
Manufacturing Consent

The internal “Zeitenwende” also includes the return of agitation and propaganda in state and private media, which has little to do with the fourth estate and much to do with “manufacturing consent” — spreading images of the enemy, certainty of victory, and slogans of perseverance. This is partly an effect of the fact that for long stretches of postwar history the population was not prepared to follow its elites into rearmament and war operations.

The new propaganda includes the creation of a “Schicksalsgemeinschaft” (community of fate) with an external enemy, national myths, and a “dominant culture“ meant to hold together a country torn apart by social inequality and neoliberal politics, a general renationalization and militarization of language, and the promotion of emotional coldness. We see this internal “Zeitenwende,” for example, when the single highest-circulation newspaper has the largest German arms manufacturer Rheinmetall — share price since the Ukraine war: up 523 percent — call for a return to compulsory military service because “the Zeitenwende . . . is a task for society as a whole“ and “liberal societies . . . must be able to stand up for their values.”

If things continue at this pace, initiatives such as the “Federal Program for Patriotism“ called for by the Christian Democrats will inevitably lead to the celebration of a reincarnated “Sedan Day,” used in the German Empire to celebrate the victory over the hereditary enemy of the time, France. Some planners are surely already considering how a military victory over Russia — which was never likely and is now increasingly unlikely — could be appropriately anchored in the collective memory of the masses.

The many articles from bourgeois-liberal media that warn against the AfD in the spirit of an “impotent“ anti-fascism or accuse the right-wing authoritarian nationalists of “treason” apparently do not notice that every text they write with a morally upraised index finger is driving at least a few hundred new supporters to the right-wing extremists. Their voters are led to believe that by voting for the AfD they are sticking it to the man. Surely these AfD voting masses fail to recognize that — to paraphrase Bertolt Brecht — they are actually just like the calves that trot behind the drum for which they themselves provide the drumhead. But the liberals fail to recognize one thing above all: it doesn’t take the far right itself to bring back the ghosts of the dark past. It is they themselves, the liberals, who conjure them up.
Heroic Thinking?

The “internal Zeitenwende” promoted by left liberals is already rehabilitating the concepts, language, political styles, and means of the German nationalist and authoritarian right of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. “National security” is back, in the name of which the otherwise sometimes-invoked international law can be trampled upon. Also back are “raison d’état,” “autarchy,” which is now called “derisking,” massive military spending, and the call to be “ready for war“ — because otherwise, of course, “in five to eight years“ the Russians will be knocking on your front door. Once again, there are warnings of “war fatigue“ among the people, public pledges and military parades in front of state parliaments, and the “new desire for heroes“ that marks a return of “heroic thinking,” which tells us that in the bloody “unwinnable war“ of position and attrition in Ukraine — reminiscent of Verdun and World War I — “the slaughter is necessary.”

Moreover, a new cult of violence has emerged. The same politicians who bewail the “violence” supposedly committed by youths who set off fireworks on New Year’s Eve have established a political culture whose slogan is “weapons, weapons, and more weapons.” Liberal journalists and a federal Green Economics minister rave about the technical data of the latest weapons systems from the military-industrial complex like the pimps from the German Jungvolk of old, only to then act like first-person shooters in front of the screen celebrating kill counts against enemy soldiers dehumanized as “orcs“ and gloating over the killing of Russians from “world-record distances.” In short: all of this is returning in the words and deeds of the “liberal” middle classes, for which no Nazis are needed.

Fascists are not needed in order to introduce “Veterans’ Day“ and memorials to fallen soldiers or to demand “military education in schools.” They are not needed in order to declare Holocaust enablers like Stepan Bandera as freedom fighters. And they are not needed for there to arise an unprecedented historical revisionism — and the monstrous Holocaust relativization that equates Vladimir Putin with Adolf Hitler and Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine with Nazi Germany’s war of extermination in the East. Did these people perhaps forget that the aim of that war was the enslavement of the Eastern peoples and the liquidation of their entire social elite — at least 30 million people — through systematic massacres of the unarmed (“Kommissarbefehl“) and systematic starvation (as during the siege of Leningrad, with more than one million civilian deaths)? That this was all part of the “General Plan East,” from which the “Final Solution” plan for the systematic murder of the European Jewry also emerged?

While liberals love to talk about the “Putler” on X (formerly Twitter), it was an influential editor at the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Berthold Kohler, who even before the Russian war crime in Bucha became known, used the term “war of extermination” for the Ukraine invasion. He was, of course, fully aware that he was equating Russia’s war against Ukraine, which according to United Nations figures has claimed at least 10,810 civilian lives in more than two years, with the “Russian campaign” of the Nazis, who killed 27 million Soviet citizens from Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia in this “crusade against communism” in less than four years, about half of them civilians.

It was not Nazis but the European Parliament that four years ago, with the votes of the liberals and in the spirit of the historical revisionism of Ernst Nolte, blamed the Soviet Union for World War II. The liberal-left newspaper taz and the Green Youth already on their own initiative performed AfD’s fascist Björn Höcke’s hoped-for “180-degree turnaround in remembrance politics.” Hence the Berlin daily, under the title “Putin is the new Stalin,” explained to its green-alternative readership that “the real history of World War II” was “that Stalin had planned this war . . . long before Hitler came to power.” The Green Youth declared Operation Barbarossa the climax of a war of “settlement-conquest“ by a Russian “colonial state” which today needs decolonizing — thus giving retroactive legitimacy to the Nazis and their claimed “European mission“ to liberate the “Eastern peoples” from the Russian Hun.

Incidentally, an anti-feminist rollback does not require an extreme right-wing incel and “men’s rights movement,” either. Seven years ago, when AfD man Höcke called for an unwavering “masculinity” as a prerequisite for military prowess at the rally for anti-immigration movement Pegida in Dresden, he was scolded for being old fashioned. In the course of the internal Zeitenwende, the same demands are now coming from the so-called bourgeois center, for example when the award-winning literary scholar Tobias Haberl explained in Der Spiegel that the “German city-dwelling man” with his “polka-dot socks” who “is capable of cooking” is “too soft for the new reality,” which is why we need a return to the “necessary toughness” and the “conflict orientation of his fathers,” who — but only for our own good! — regularly beat us with their belts because they still knew that “not every problem can be discussed away.”
Hurtling Toward the Past

For liberals, it is part of the new normal to label their opponents and critics of (one-sided) arms deliveries as “lumpen pacifists,” “Putin’s willing executioners,” and “second-hand war criminals.” It is liberals who are already preparing for the time after the war in Ukraine and demanding that “pacifism must not be allowed to rise again.” It was the liberal newspaper ZEIT that, on the exact day of the eightieth anniversary of Joseph Goebbels’s “Do you want total war?“ speech, entitled the interview with a left-wing liberal, Eva Illouz, “I wish for total victory,” explaining that she wished for this “total and annihilating victory” because “the Russians are committing crimes against humanity every day that must not go unpunished” and because “Putin is threatening the ideal values of Europe.” (Illouz later had the audacity to publicly excommunicate her academic colleague Judith Butler from the Left, because, even though they are Jewish, they do not follow Illouz’s pro–Gaza War position.)

In short, none of all this requires the far right. The same people who today warn conservatives not to tear down the “fire wall” to the AfD, as a lesson from the history of 1933 — while they, like former health minister Jens Spahn declare that fire wall to, run to the right of Giorgia Meloni in Europe, and while they, like multiple corruption scandal suspect European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, kiss the “post-fascist” Italian leader wherever they meet her — do not even notice the flamethrower in their own hands, with which they have long since set the country on fire.

It should be noted that it is not only the die-hard conservatives of the “Stahlhelm faction” but also the “left” wing of the bourgeois class who are particularly committed to the internal Zeitenwende. Sure, it was the Christian Democratic foreign minister in waiting, Roderich Kiesewetter, who demanded a few weeks ago that the “war must be taken to Russia” and that “everything should be done” to “destroy” not only “Russian military facilities and headquarters” or “oil refineries,” but also central government offices like “ministries.” It was Kiesewetter who recently suggested that Ukrainian refugees in Germany should be stripped of their income as an incentive for them to let themselves be shipped off to war.

Liberal extremism, however, does not need die-hard conservatives. This approach — typified by the fact that it takes no account of the true circumstances, risks, and realistic goals, that crusades against “totalitarianism” with a somehow totalitarian fanaticism of its own, with a self-righteous moralism that is to be sated by all available means — has its ultimate origins elsewhere. We see this in the former Maoists in the German Green Party, for whom the “West” and NATO replaced Maoist sects and China as the vanguard of history. Then again, it was a Social Democratic defense minister who called for German “war capability.” And when the Christian Democrat Kiesewetter demanded a further 100, 200, 300 billion euros for the German armed forces — even as austerity measures are imposed on the working class — his demands were, of course, merely an echo of the SPD politicians Scholz, Eva Högl, parliamentary commissioner for the armed forces, and Defense Minister Boris Pistorius.

The warning of “war fatigue” came from a Green foreign minister, who would have liked to dress up as a Leopard tank for carnival and who, as a result of a profound Freudian slip, has long seen herself as “at war with Russia.” It was the Green economic minister who went into raptures about the Panzerhaubitze 2000 armored howitzer on a TV talk show: “It can really do something!” It was Free Democrat Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, chairwoman of the defense committee, who answered a talk show question as to whether she had served by saying that she was “good for the Volkssturm.” And the call for “weapons, weapons, and more weapons” also came from a Green federal politician, in this case Anton Hofreiter, who also wants to make systematic starvation a principle of German power politics again, just like in the good old days of the siege of Leningrad. As an example of the foreign policy he called for, which would finally return to “negotiating with the colt on the table,” he suggested in an interview with the Berliner Zeitung in December 2022 that, with the European breadbasket of Ukraine on the leash, 1.4 billion Chinese should — because one of them might once again “dare” to “look cross-eyed at a German“! — be openly threatened with death by starvation: “If a country were to withhold rare earths from us, we could reply, ‘What do you actually want to eat?’”

It should thus come as no surprise that it is the left-liberal bourgeois class who are now publicly correcting their attitudes and proving their loyalty to the fatherland through symbolic vows, as if it were August 1914 all over again. A long list of figures have felt it necessary to symbolically withdraw their objection to military service and swear an oath of allegiance to the nation in arms. It ranges from Scholz and the “green-alternative” economics minister Habeck to aged intellectuals, journalists, and writers such as Ralf Bönt, Stern editor Thomas Krause, and taz editor Tobias Rapp to other public figures such as the Protestant bishop Ernst-Wilhelm Gohl, the comedian Wigald Boning, and the “eternal court jester“ Campino from “punk” band Die Toten Hosen. It was then only logical that Rapp — coeditor of the war-loving “radical left” organ Jungle World — recently welcomed Veterans’ Day in Der Spiegel as a “big step away from old lies”: “A society” can now “say: we can’t take the burden off your shoulders of having fought and possibly killed. But we can give you a stage once a year and remind you of this burden. It was not pointless.”

Theodor W. Adorno repeatedly expressed the feeling that even more dangerous than the traditional far right was the right-wing radicalization of the “center” — of the return of nationalism, authoritarianism, and fascism in the language of democracy. Those who believe they can best beat the AfD by taking their own migration policy, culture war, and political tools from the “age of catastrophes” are doing the far right’s business for them. In the short term, the AfD’s poll ratings may fall as a result of the scandal raising over its lead candidate for the European elections. In a recent interview for Italy’s La Repubblica he announced that “he would never say that anyone who wore a SS uniform was automatically a criminal” — prompting even French far-right leader Marine Le Pen to break off collaboration with the party. In the long term, however, the AfD may lean back and take a rest, for they know that their politics are winning. Germany is hurtling toward a right-wing past at breathtaking speed; however, it is not the AfD in the driver’s seat, but the liberals themselves.