The fish apparently come to the surface and beach themselves when an earthquake is nearing. Scientific theories support the lore, as bottom-dwelling fish are susceptible to movements in seismic fault lines and act uncharacteristically before an earthquake. At least a dozen oarfish were washed up dead in Japan in 2010, just months before the March 2011 earthquake.

The quake had a magnitude of nine and was one of the biggest recorded in a century. A devastating tsunami followed and 19,000 people were killed after the country was ravaged by the disasters. The fish live at depths of 0.62 miles and come to the surface when an earthquake or tsunami is looming.

Today, though, the Kyffhäuser has quietly become the rallying ground for a modern far-right faction that has come to dominate the Alternative for Germany [AfD] party. Once a year, the AfD’s leaders come to pay their respects at the cauldron of a new and virulent form of German nationalism that dismisses the Holocaust as an irrelevance and Muslims as a cancerous blight on the present.

Known as the Wing, the movement has forged ties with the white supremacist underground and devised an ideology that espouses the genetic and cultural superiority of the German race. Mr Höcke has warned of the imminent destruction of the German race by “foreign peoples” and called for the systematic “de-Islamisation” of his country. “The struggle is for nothing less than everything,” he said.

Last year his close ally Hans-Thomas Tillschneider, a member of the state parliament in neighbouring Saxony-Anhalt, told the Kyffhäuser crowd that Islam was like a “tree fungus” infecting the sickly oak of Germany. “Our Germanness is, I would say, a special light that illuminates our entire German world,” he said.

Past AfD leaders have regarded Mr Höcke and his lieutenants as a scourge of their party. In early 2017 the national executive tried and failed to have him expelled for a speech in which he called for a “180-degree reversal” in Germany’s approach to the Holocaust. In the months before the 2017 general election, however, a seismic shift in the AfD brought Mr Höcke back into favour. Frauke Petry, the party’s relatively cautious leader, was replaced with Alexander Gauland and Jörg Meuthen, two tweedy figures from its right-wing fringe.

Both have since made their pilgrimage to pay homage to Mr Höcke and the Wing at their mountain stronghold. In his 2017 Kyffhäuser speech, Dr Meuthen described Muslim migrants as “illiterates” who would bring down the German welfare system and “import terror”. Not to be outdone, Dr Gauland told last year’s gathering that immigrants from the Arab world were “almost invariably ill-educated, raised in tribal societies, and pious to the point of disability”.

The German authorities must now decide whether the Wing is an embarrassment to the AfD, or whether it is increasingly setting the party’s tone. The domestic spy agency’s report noted that Dr Gauland and Dr Meuthen “have in no way distanced themselves from the aggressive language of the Wing’s protagonists at the Kyffhäuser”.

The report added: “We fear that the Wing has already achieved its first successes in its campaign to influence the whole party.”

The establishment media and parties have reacted to the report with anger and indignation. The Frankfurter Rundschau lamented the “disastrous shortages in the Bundeswehr,” the Süddeutsche Zeitung claimed that soldiers would have to mend their overalls themselves, and finance daily Handelsblatt asked provocatively: “Is our Bundeswehr even operational?” In a commentary on the “embarrassing condition” of the troops, the tabloid Bild newspaper raved and demanded “compulsory military service be restored.”

Terms such as “fully equipped” and “national and alliance defence” are euphemisms for a new German war policy. The “Conception of the Bundeswehr” issued last August by the Minister of Defence leaves no doubt that the German military is preparing for massive operations and a possible Third World War, despite catastrophic outcomes of the previous two world wars.

On January 22, in a foreign policy keynote address titled, “The Future of European Security and Defence,” von der Leyen railed against “the expansive behaviour of Russia” and “an increasingly demanding China.” It was necessary to “strengthen Europe’s military capabilities” in order to be “able to act” and to be able to “act independently.” The implementation of this strategy, which builds on German ambitions in the first half of the 20th century, goes hand in hand with the strengthening of extreme nationalist and right-wing extremist forces.

Von der Leyen delivered her speech as part of the 2019 Security Policy Review in Vienna, organized by Austrian Defence Minister Mario Kunasek. Kusanek is a member of the extreme right-wing Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ,) which currently has five ministers in the Austrian Peoples Party-led (ÖVP) government of Chancellor Sebastian Kurz.

In Germany too, the ruling class is working very closely with the AfD. In the foreword to the Defence Report, Bartels expressly thanks the “Defence Committee and the political leadership of the Ministry of Defence for an open, constructive exchange to the benefit of our soldiers.” In addition to representatives of CDU/CSU (12), SPD (8), FDP (4), Left Party (4) and Greens (3), the Defence Committee also includes five representatives of the neo-fascist AfD.

Nobody better represents the stakes than the person topping our annual list of people who will shape Europe in the year ahead: Matteo Salvini. Having risen to dominance domestically, the Italian far-right leader is taking his brand of fiery populism to the continental battlefield, with every intention of overturning the European order.

Even as polls predict that Europe’s traditional conservative and socialist parties will get the most votes, it’s Salvini and French President Emmanuel Macron who are turning the election into a battle over the survival of the European Union in its current form. With Brussels in his sights, Salvini is seeking to unite the Continent’s nationalists into a Euroskeptic bloc capable of reshaping the Union. “We’ll be one of the strongest groups,” he predicted.

Academics across the European Union have issued a damning review of the state of the project, warning top Eurocrats their pursuit of further integration is fuelling growing dissent among EU voters. With Brexit on the horizon, experts in EU policy have warned the bloc changes will have to be made to the inner structure of the European Union machine to save it from total collapse. 

Craig McKinley MP, a staunch supporter of the Brexit campaign, suggested the "quasi-religious" regard the European Commission and its boss Jean-Claude Juncker have for the European treaties could be a driving force of dissent among EU member states craving more independence.

Speaking to Express.co.uk last year, Mr McKinley said: "The Commission is the guardian of the treaties, it has almost become a quasi-religion for them, ‘how dare any country even want to leave?’ The EU has got some significant problems. You’ve got a parliamentary election next year on the backdrop of an increasing number of the countries that are concerned about the direction of travel."

There’s certainly Italy, one of the big four, that has had a complete change of Government recently. Greece is obviously desperately unhappy with the situation it finds itself in. "If it doesn’t change quickly and reflect what people are saying, I think it’s got real difficulties in the future. The EU you see today is going to be a very different one in 10 years time."

Dr Korteweg warned Brussels a "systemic shock" to the integrated monetary system of the EU – including a potential fallout of the Brexit negotiations or a recession – could threaten the stability of the bloc as a whole. He added: "I think there’s awareness the Eurozone is very much still a work in progress and that means any systemic shock – whether its Brexit or its an EU trade war or whether it's just the systemic vulnerability in some of the Southern European states – can still undermine the project."

“I just think these people, particularly the Junckers and the Barniers, the unelected European Commission, they are bigger, stronger, more powerful than national governments, than electorates. I suspect what you are going to get is the British public becoming even more angry about the way these negotiations are being handled.”

On Wednesday, Mr Farage warned his counterparts in the European Parliament that a no-deal Brexit was now more likely because of “fanatics who are not prepared to be reasonable or make any sense of compromise.” “Unelected bureaucrats in Brussels have been talking down to, and humiliating the prime minister of our nation, and we don’t like it. And even when she comes back, trying to be reasonable, saying let’s renegotiate, you’re not prepared to give an inch.”

The deliberate distortion of “Church and State” by the Democrats who have ordered the removal of the Ten Commandments from courthouse entrances, the public statements by such people as Barack Obama and Ruth Bader Ginsburg stating they have a problem with the US Constitution illustrates an ideology that challenges the norms and decency of an America that once proclaimed itself “One Nation Under God”.

As America is led further into the aegis of globalism, adopting international UN law over our own US Constitution and Bill of Rights, we are witnessing a literal mutiny against human rights, belief in God, and the ethics that are promoted from these concepts. When society legalizes the child being clinically liquidated fresh from the womb there is literally no refuge from the devaluing of human life and the undeniable orientation toward depopulation on a worldwide scale.

In his letter to the Danbury Baptists, Thomas Jefferson’s intent was to keep government out of the church but not to remove the church from government! Our founding fathers wanted the influence of the Christian church involved in lawmaking! Without the influence of morality they reasoned there would never be just and fair legislation. They were right! Today’s government resists the imposition of morality to lawmaking. Vaccinations are made with the body parts of the unborn.

If the unborn have no refuge left, if human body parts can be sold like commodities, if vaccines and prescription drugs can be sold to the public for billions in profits as thousands of people die from side effects and poisonous additives in the drugs themselves, we are entering a progressively depopulation oriented society devoid of true humanitarian directive. Where does the rationale come from that condones this kind of conduct? What influence has made the conscience of a society so removed from compassion for its very own species? What has enabled current social conscience to accept the expendability of human life?

At that point, when you find yourself in the government’s crosshairs, it will not matter whether your skin is black or yellow or brown or white; it will not matter whether you’re an immigrant or a citizen; it will not matter whether you’re rich or poor; it will not matter whether you’re Republican or Democrat; and it certainly won’t matter who you voted for in the last presidential election.

Take Roger Stone, one of President Trump’s longtime supporters, for example. This is a guy accused of witness tampering, obstruction of justice and lying to Congress. As far as we know, this guy is not the kingpin of a violent mob or drug-laundering scheme. He’s been charged with a political crime. So what does the FBI do? They send 29 heavily armed agents in 17 vehicles to carry out a SWAT-style raid on Stone’s Florida home just before dawn on January 25, 2019. As the Boston Herald reports: “After his arraignment on witness tampering, obstruction and lying to Congress, a rattled Stone was quoted as saying 29 agents ‘pounded on the door,’ pointed automatic weapons at him and ‘terrorized’ his wife and dogs.”

“Stone was taken away in handcuffs, the sixth associate of President Trump to be indicted in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. All the charges have been related to either lying or tax evasion, with no evidence of so-called ‘collusion’ with Russia emerging to date.”

Overkill? Sure. Yet another example of government overreach and brutality? Definitely. There are few communities without a SWAT team today. In 1980, there were roughly 3,000 SWAT team-style raids in the US. Incredibly, that number has since grown to more than 80,000 SWAT team raids per year. Where this becomes a problem of life and death for Americans is when these militarized SWAT teams are assigned to carry out routine law enforcement tasks.

Heavily armed police officers, the end product of the government — federal, local and state — and law enforcement agencies having merged, has become a “standing” or permanent army, composed of full-time professional soldiers who do not disband.