WarRoom Battleground EP 981: Ex-head Of German Domestic Intelligence Surveilled By Agency He Once Ran For Opposing The INVASION
Stephen K. Bannon and Pastor Joel Webbin analyze Senator Ted Cruz's claims of a Catholic takeover, arguing instead that 85% to 90% of evangelicals embrace dispensationalist Zionism, demanding Israel's hegemony from "river to the sea." The episode then features Dr. Hans Georg Maaßen, former head of German domestic intelligence, who reveals he was surveilled for three years by his own agency after criticizing Chancellor Merkel's illegal mass migration policies. Maaßen warns that uncontrolled immigration since 2015 fueled the AfD and pushed Germany toward a "totalitarian democracy," where only leftist views on gender and Ukraine are permitted, suggesting society remains asleep until electoral momentum forces change. [Automatically generated summary]
Good evening, Hanwell here at the helm on Steve Bannon's war room.
You've got a fascinating, fascinating show for you today, folks.
In the second half, we're going to be interviewing Dr. Hans Georg Marsen, who is the former head of German domestic intelligence, who fell out with Angela Merkel over the issue of admitting one million or so Syrians into Germany.
And he's going to be talking about how the very intelligence agency that he once directed then turned its sight.
Before that, however, I'm delighted that we've got Pastor Joel Webbin on the show, who's the founder of Right Response Ministries.
And the reason we asked Pastor Webbin to come on the show is last week, Senator Cruz shared an article.
Many people will have seen this.
It's basically lit up.
Everyone in the sector, their Twitter algorithms lit up with this.
Senator Crew said, read every word of this.
It's the best and most comprehensive explanation of what we're fighting.
And his tweet had 3 million visualizations.
The article he was pushing out had, I think, 5 million or so visualizations.
And it basically got everyone talking about, for some corners of evangelicalism, the idea that traditional.
Catholics are plotting a takeover of the American state.
But that's not really what I want to discuss in that, because what really interested me is the standing assumption, and I think this came through very clearly, that the author's principal preoccupation was that American evangelicalism might be losing its grip on Zionism, on the pro.
Israel state stance, which has subsumed a huge section of contemporary American evangelicalism.
And I wanted to dig into that because it wasn't always so.
And Pastor Joel Weber has been active on this issue in social media.
I thought he would have interesting things to say, especially to our largely evangelical audience.
Pastor Weber, thank you very much indeed for coming on the show.
Tell me, if you wouldn't mind, in your own words then, About this wider debate, why are some dispensationalist evangelicals concerned that the evangelical institution, if I can use that word, the evangelical churches' grip on the narrative, the pro Zionist narrative, might be slipping?
Zionism is dispensational Zionism, I should say, it's a very modern notion.
It's not just that it's, oh, well, this is what Protestants have always believed.
No.
At this point, most people are probably aware of the Schofield Study Bible and Joseph Darby and these guys that came in the mid 1800s.
Dispensationalism, dispensational Zionism, is about 150 years old at this point.
Point.
And so it's very modern, whereas the Protestant Reformation tracks back for 500 years.
And so when you look at Martin Luther, you look at John Calvin, you look at Zwingli, you look at all these, Jonathan Edwards, you know, any of the Protestant reformers who outlined the Protestant position, none of them were dispensationalists.
And to break those terms down just briefly, dispensational Zionism is the idea that all of these Old Testament promises that we find in the Bible for Israel that are physical promises.
Um, that these promises are meant to be understood, they've either already in a preterist meaning past, the Latin for past, they've been past fulfilled, or if there are any future instances of these promises that are still yet to be fulfilled, they have a spiritual, um, fulfillment, not a physical fulfillment.
So, all of the Catholics and all of the Protestants, until again, very recently, the last hundred.
150 years understood that whether or not Israel was a nation state in the year of our Lord 2026 or not had no bearing on whether or not biblical prophecy will be fulfilled and the return of Christ.
But somewhere along the line, there became this very wooden hermeneutic, this very literal, physical interpretation of Old Testament prophecies that essentially got evangelicals, which is a subset of Protestants, but a large subset, to believe that Christ can't actually.
Come in his final physical return, that that can't take place.
What every Christian desires and wants to see that that won't actually happen until the nation of the state of Israel has been reestablished and Israel widens in its territory, achieves hegemony, and all the boundaries.
Mike Huckabee is saying this, Ted Cruz is saying this.
The old boundaries, all the way from the river to the sea, has to belong to Israel, the Temple Mount, and a new temple actually fashioned, and then.
Will get the return of Christ.
That's not how the Protestants historically saw it.
That's certainly not how Catholics have seen it.
That is a modern innovation, but many evangelicals have fallen for it.
Protestants, evangelicals, Catholics, Orthodox, for the vast historical sweep of history, right up until about 150 years ago, they were all supersessionist, right?
The idea of dispensationalism goes against supersessionism, the idea of covenant, that God has been doing something and he's not doing it ad hoc, right?
It's not on the fly.
But that God, who formed the world before the foundations of the world were laid, he had a plan.
We're not on plan B.
The church is not plan B, whereas Israel, God's chosen people, is plan A, but that didn't work out.
Dispensationalism is the idea that God is doing a different thing in each of these dispensations, each of these eras of time.
Whereas covenant theology or supersessionism is the idea that God has had a plan from the very beginning.
And his plan with Israel under the Old Covenant, Old Testament Israel, Israel according to the flesh, is that through them he would bring about the promised seed.
And the seed is singular.
St. Paul says this in the book of Galatians.
We see this in Ephesians, multiple New Testament passages.
Paul, when he's commenting and exegeting the Abrahamic covenant from the Old Testament, Genesis chapter 12, this promised seed, he even goes out of his way verbatim to say it is not seeds, plural, but rather seeds, singular.
And the seed is Christ.
So, what is the purpose of Old Covenant Israel according to the flesh in the Old Testament?
God was using them to bring about eventually the promised Messiah, to bring about the Christ.
And then, upon the completion, once we have the new covenant, we have the incarnation of Jesus Christ, his life, his death, his resurrection, his ascension, and the inauguration of the new covenant and the church, then Israel, according to the flesh, Old Covenant Israel, they're not just discarded, they're warmly invited in.
But sadly, many of them, not all, but many of them chose to reject that invitation.
The analogy or illustration that I often will use is that Old Covenant Israel, according to the flesh, was like the construction crew with scaffolding that God used for multiple millennia to build a glorious cathedral of true Israel, the church that is rooted ultimately in Christ.
He is the promised seed, He is the root.
The root of Jesse, it's Jesus.
And then this church is to be made up of both Jews and Gentiles.
So it's not that the Jews are sent home, but they're warmly invited in.
But what evangelicals, dispensationalists, have been doing is they've basically said when the scaffolding, when the cathedral was finally completed, they said, no, the scaffolding is actually, that's the cathedral.
Leave the scaffolding up.
The cathedral is a sideshow.
That's just something that God's doing temporarily.
But the real, the real, Show the real exciting thing is look at this beautiful scaffolding.
It's like, no, God was doing something through Israel to bring about the Messiah.
And then out of that, the new covenant is inaugurated, the church is incompleted, and God invites into this church both Jews and Gentiles to have union with Christ, his son, by grace and by the power of the Holy Spirit.
And the sad thing is that, you know, Jews still to this day, religious Jews and many ethnic Jews, Still reject Jesus as the promised Messiah, that's somewhat to be expected.
They need to, ultimately, God would have to change their hearts.
They would have to be born again, like any person.
You must be born again and come to faith in Jesus Christ.
What's shocking is not really the disposition of Jews.
What's shocking is the disposition of Christians, predominantly evangelicals, as you're giving the lay of the land.
Evangelicals, a subset underneath Protestants, you have the mainline Protestants that are all gay affirming, the rainbow flags are outside of their buildings, church buildings.
Then the evangelicals tend to be the more traditionalist, traditional marriage, traditional this, that, and the other, and they vote Republican, GOP.
The problem, though, is they've bought into dispensationalism.
And so they think that whether it's America's success politically or whether it's the success of Christianity and the return of Christ, that the physical expression of Israel.
Taking over the land, holding the land, rebuilding the temple, that all this is integral for those things to take place.
Could you just give me, I'm talking about a lay of the land, could you just give me an indication, if you wouldn't mind guesstimating on this, what proportion of evangelicals are dispensationalist and which proportion would be, as a percent, supersessionist?
Yeah, for evangelicals, I would say that probably 85, 90%, an overwhelming majority.
Because within evangelicalism, again, that being a large subset of Protestantism, Most evangelicals don't really appreciate the original Protestant reformers who tended to be, they were reformed.
They were Calvinist, you know, if I could use such a dirty word on the air, Calvinist, you know.
I'm a Calvinist for better or worse.
There are strengths and there are weaknesses, but Jonathan Edwards and Martin Luther and John Calvin, these were the original reformers.
They were all Calvinist.
Most Protestants today are not.
They're Arminian.
Most evangelicals today are Arminian.
In their view of salvation, their view of God's sovereignty.
And so, most of them, most evangelicals, when they think of the original reformers, they think of Calvinism, like election, God choosing with salvation, those kinds of things.
And they have an aversion to that.
And so, they've kind of turned away.
It's ironic, but Protestants today have turned away from the original protest, the original Protestants, because they've been turned off by the soteriology, which is just doctrine of salvation, the emphasis of God's sovereignty.
They think that there should be more elevation.
Elevating of human free will.
And so they've turned sour on the original Protestant Reformation.
And in doing so, for salvific, soteriological reasons, they detach themselves from the history.
So most evangelicals today, they don't have a clue what Martin Luther or John Calvin or Jonathan Edwards or these guys thought about supersessionism or the future role of Israel in the eschaton.
I'm going to ask you when we come back, by the way, about the practical implications in US politics right now about this difference in interpretation.
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Back now to Pastor Joel Weber.
Pastor Weber then, so here's a question for you looking at the contemporary split, if you will, of US politics.
Because it seems to me that MAGA is split as a movement.
seems to me as an outsider, as a foreigner in a different country, that MAGA as a movement is split down the middle into America first and Israel first.
My question to you then, because there is this new phenomenon that has been bubbling up for the last couple of years called Christian nationalism, my direct question to you is, do you think within this wider then umbrella movement of Christian nationalism, there is an opportunity for supersessionist.
Evangelicals such as yourself to work together with supersessionist Catholics.
Probably that's going to be supersessionist traditional, traditionalist Catholics.
Do you think there's an opportunity for that kind of collaboration?
Certainly, moral virtue is of infinite, eternal value that matters most.
But there are different categories, right?
So there can be someone, there's lots of guys like this.
Timothy Gordon is a great example.
He does a lot of good work.
He's Catholic.
Dr. Taylor Marshall, he's Catholic.
He does a lot of great work.
Calvin Robinson is a friend, and he's actually coming on our network.
And being a contributor and doing a show with us.
That's NXR Studios, New Christian Right Studios.
This kind of been birthed out of Right Response.
Right Response still continues, but having two organizations.
And all these guys are Catholic.
Calvin Robinson is not Roman Catholic, but he's Catholic for all intents and purposes.
And my point is the reason why we're able to unite is because there are different categories.
Calvin is, for instance, a dear friend.
He's not an elder in my church, right?
Evangelicals are still going to have their individual churches, and Catholics, of course, are going to have their individual churches.
But there's church, the ecclesia, right?
But then there's the realm of politics, there's the realm of culture, there are other realms.
And so, politically and culturally, I think that supersessionist Protestants, evangelicals, actually make for a very natural ally to traditional supersessionist Catholics, because what we're both seeing.
Is that yes, our intramural debates about theology, it's not insignificant.
It matters.
We have real disagreement and we know we're not relativists, right?
We can't both be right if we have two contrary opinions.
Somebody's right, somebody's wrong.
All that matters.
But we're realizing there's an existential threat right now, which is foreign influence.
That we need to be able to have a country that is truly America first.
So I am finding myself very comfortable reaching across the aisle.
Politically and culturally, with Catholics, and saying, Look, this is not what the Bible teaches.
There's a lot of Christians who have been manipulated, thinking that they have a divine obligation politically and geopolitically, and with their money and giving and all these kinds of things to support something that the Bible doesn't actually require.
And so I think that, yes, a broad coalition on this issue, it's not only possible, Ben, but it's already well underway, it's happening.
So first concentrate on the existential battles, the existential threats, and then is the opportunity to pat one another in a fraternal way on the back.
Look at our fellow combatants in the eye and say, you're going to hell.
I've always said, by the way, because I spent a lot of time in politics when I worked in the UK Parliament and in the European Parliament working with evangelicals who were very well informed over their elements of their belief.
And I had no better allies working on the pro life front.
And I always said, I work best with evangelicals who will do that, who will look me in the eye and say, you're going to hell.
And the only thing I ask is the opportunity just to push back a little bit on all of my own heresies back, and then we'll have that debate.
What I can't abide is what passes for ecumenism, where you just have the institutional leaders of the respective churches who frankly don't believe a word of their own religion anyway, getting together, having these big confabs, and they put out these ridiculous statements where they say, look how much we hold in common.
Well, of course, you hold a lot in common.
What you hold in common is that you don't believe the elements of your faith.
I think it's far more serious for people who actually do believe the elements of their faith to sit down and talk, to reach out, especially when there are these existential threats right across the West.
I was going to say, I think that was the failure of like a Billy Graham.
So if your listeners are, I still don't understand what's an evangelical, think Billy Graham.
He was the quintessential evangelical Protestant, and he would host these massive crusades, you know, and fill.
Football stadiums.
You know, I mean, he was a phenomenon.
He was, you know, friends with Carter, with all these different presidents, and would frequent the White House.
And I mean, he was a huge, huge figure.
But the problem is that Billy Graham, who I appreciate in some respect, although I would have some disagreements, the problem is that later on, towards the latter end of his ministry, he was no longer just partnering with Catholics for, for instance, the protection of the unborn or on certain, you know, issues politically and culturally.
But he started having in his crusades, he would preach the gospel, he'd have, you know, altar calls to salvation and prayer, and he would have, you know, Catholic priests down there at the stage, you know, praying.
And when he started to partner in terms of the religious aspects, and not just broad, like we, you know, Catholics and Protestants, we believe in the triune God, we believe in the incarnation, we believe in the resurrection, all these different things, but they started to partner on how we're saved and these kinds of things.
That's where I think he lost some credibility and where it began to get off the rails.
And so I actually appreciate what you just said, Ben, because a lot of guys aren't willing to be honest about that.
It sounds like you're devout in your faith and you would have sharp disagreements with me.
I would have sharp disagreements with you, but we could do something like this, this show, and have a reasonable degree of alignment.
And then at the same time, you know, if I was like, hey, I'm going to tomorrow become, you know, the priest of your parish, you would say, we love you, Joel, but.
Heck no.
No, you're not qualified.
You're not, no, you don't get to be.
And I think that it's the conflating of categories where alliances that may have been well meaning initially become compromised.
And so what I'm saying is Catholics and Protestants have real disagreements theologically.
But where we align to save the country politically, I think is not only permissible, but commendable and vital.
In some senses, facing this existential threat now, certainly in America, which I think is at the edge of the spear on this, it's the Christian nationalism, I think, will become what the pro life movement was before the repealing of Roe vs. Wade.
It's absolutely essential, I think, for all of Christians of goodwill to get together in the front line of this.
And then we'll have the theological issues.
I sort of think that these theological issues aren't ever actually going to be resolved here on earth, but I'm okay with that.
What I don't like is the lukewarm, blancmange Christianity, which means nothing, asks for nothing, and ends up delivering nothing as well.
Just give me 30 seconds, if you will, because I know something of the contemporary Protestant landscape.
How does the dispensationalist, supersessionist split work out in things, say, like the assemblies of God or the other sort of well-known, Branches, is there a division within these churches, or is it basically on a church by church basis?
Just give me sort of 20 seconds on that, if you can.
Reaction positive reaction from the interview we did a couple of weeks ago with Arian Agashahi.
If you remember that, we were talking about an interview that he'd had published in the Hungarian Conservative with Dr. Hans Georg Maassen, who was the former head of German domestic intelligence.
This was a guy who worked, led that organization, that agency, and found that he was basically being monitored by the agency he once led, that he once directed, because of.
Of the comments that he had been releasing in interviews about the consequences of the invasion in Germany and the consequent rise of the alternative for Deutschland.
Well, we're very, very honoured indeed that Dr. Hans Georg Marsen himself, on the back of the interview that we did with Erin Agershah, he now joins us live in the war room.
Dr. Marsen, very honoured to have you on the show.
Yes, for my profession, I'm a lawyer and I'm from the intelligence service.
I worked for more than 30 years for the German government and more than six years as a director or president of the German domestic intelligence service, something like MI5 or FBI in the United States.
And I protected Germany against a lot of terrorist attacks from Islamist terrorists.
And I had a lot of problems with Mrs. Merkel.
She was my boss.
She was chancellor during my time as head of the service because she was responsible that millions of people entered Germany illegally as asylum seekers, and a lot of people were Islamists.
So I had a confrontation with Mrs. Merkel, and at the end, she dismissed me.
I had to retire.
I'm a political thinking person.
I was for decades a member of the Christian Democratic Union, the former Conservative Party in Germany.
And I tried to change our politics in Germany as a member of the party, as a political activist.
And at the end, I was, as you said, a subject of my former service.
I'm monitored for more than three years as a subject, as a Political target of my service because I criticize the politics of my government, especially in the field of migration.
I'm strongly against the rogue politics in Germany.
I criticize this politics.
And at the end, as I said, for more than three years, I'm subject to monitoring of my service.
I think you can say, if you are cynical, It's a privilege that I'm, I think, the only Western intelligence director who is monitored by our own people.
Okay, so let's recap this because you started off your political, even though you were a civil servant, you were, as I've understood this, within the political family of the CDU, the Christian Democratic Union.
You've also spoken, we might have time to get onto this a little later in the interview, but you've also spoken against the firewall, against the alternative for Deutschland.
But it strikes me, listening to you describe the interaction that you had with the former, well, the then Chancellor, Angela Merkel.
That if she had followed your advice on the admission of over a million Syrians, unvetted Syrians, into Germany, the whole consequent problem with the AFD would never have arisen.
Because the AFD, in its present form, is largely a response to the consequences of the invasion that Germans are living with on a day to day basis.
And something on this show that we sort of follow every day, basically, of the four hours that we put out every day, is the fact that these populist nationalist political parties, like the AFD in Germany, like, say, Fratelli d'Italia here in Italy, and so on and so forth, right across the European Union,
these are largely a consequence of the uncontrolled immigration that we have seen in continental Europe.
Since 2015 onwards, it hasn't simply changed the political landscape of Germany, it's changed the political landscape of right across the European Union.
Let me ask you this question then before I give a quick shout out to one of our sponsors.
Friedrich Mertz a couple of days ago announced that he was going to send the Syrians back, considering that the Assad regime fell.
And he's projected that 80% are going to return.
Dr. Marsden, do you think that's.
Is this what we call in colloquial English performance politics?
That is, is he simply saying this because he's trying to do something to diminish the AFD's appeal and to show himself as taking this issue seriously because it is taken seriously by German people?
Is it really a realistic expectation that 80 Syrians are going to return to Syria voluntarily?
It would be possible for Germany if it had a government that was politically minded to do it to send a million Syrians back.
But that would require the whole of the political class, or at least the governing political coalition, to be absolutely serious about that.
How serious?
Well, it would require a seriousness much like that shown by President Trump in America.
And you have all the headwinds going against you.
On that.
It seems very unbelievable to me that a CDU chancellor is just going to be able to implement a policy that's going to be as politically difficult to enforce as that, just on a whim.
He'll need an election mandate, he'll need organisation.
He would basically need to be the AFD, and that I think is the point.
You need to be the AFD to try to enforce something like that.
Dr. Marston, please very kindly stay with us.
We'll close out the show with a few more questions with you.
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Back with Hans Georg Marson right now.
Dr. Marson, if I may, in the five or so minutes that we have of this show, You indicated in your interview with Arian Aga Shahi for the Hungarian Conservative that you thought that Germany was sliding towards democratic totalitarianism.
Yes, a free democracy means that everyone is able to speak and to think, even to think what he wants to say and what he wants to think and to discuss.
And everyone has equal rights to express his own political positions.
In a totalitarian society, or philosophical thinkers speak about a totalitarian democracy, you are only allowed.
To speak about these issues, the political establishment wants to speak.
We had in the former GDR, the East German so called democracy, it calls itself the German Democratic Republic, a system which calls itself a democracy, but it means only democracy in socialism.
So you have to accept the socialism, and if you do it, You can decide, you can discuss, you can think freely, but you have to accept all rules of socialism.
And I got the impression that in the Western societies, and especially in Germany, we have the problem that the political leftists, the liberals, they are so strong, they are hegemonials in our media, in our mainstream media, that is only allowed to speak, to think, to discuss about issues.
Which are mainstream issues, which are mainstream positions about climate change, about wokeness, about the question do we have one, two, three, or 76 sexes, genders?
Is it allowed to speak about Ukraine war or not?
And this is, of my position, the way into a totalitarian democracy, because at the end, If you do not accept the rules of the media, if you do not accept to speak only about the positions the mainstream wants to hear, you will see that you were politically persecuted,
that you could lose your job, that you are not longer a member of the society because nobody will invite you to garden parties, to birthday parties, and so on.
And I think we are here on the way to such a democracy, unfortunately.
You're obviously a very consequential figure in Germany, as you say, a lawyer trained in immigration law, as good fortune should have it, as well as being amongst your 30 year career in public service, you've also been.
The head of the German domestic intelligence.
Let me just quickly ask you this question.
How are people in Germany taking this warning that you're giving?
Are they taking it seriously or are they just trying to dismiss you totally and the arguments that you're presenting?
They are sleeping, but I think they're going to be woken up very soon because you have the AFD there.
And that brand Mauer, the firewall, isn't going to last forever.
At some point, the electoral inevitability of German anger and distrust at their political class is going to break through, and I think it is going to make a difference.
But you're somewhat prophetic right now before these events are taking place and giving the warning to the German people if they want to pay attention to it.
Somewhat ironic that they're basically accusing you as being a threat to the German system, to the German constitutional order, when you've devoted your whole life in order to preserve that.
Where do people go on social media, Dr. Marsden, to keep up to date with your analysis and your contributions and warnings to the German people?