One year after the Hamas attack on Israel, I think it is important to take a look at how the Islamist group's escalation of the conflict that has been going on for generations has once again shown how the German left fails to understand international politics. As a result, we see how the left and many anarchists in the country can't find a reasonable approach to the war in Israel/Palestine and now in Lebanon. This text will hardly come as a surprise to activists in Germany. At the same time, I think it's important for anarchists and leftists in other regions to understand the German “Antideutsch” and not just see it as a joke version of some kind of political correctness, but rather as a political movement with its own ideals.
In Berlin on February 24, the Ukrainian diaspora is holding an action on the anniversary of the start of the full-scale invasion. Local groups (mostly made up of immigrants from Belarus/Russia) have called to join this action in the format of an anarchist bloc, in response to the Pramen collective's call for this kind of action across Europe. One of the comrades involved in the preparations for the action today threw me the information that their call was removed from the local indymedia without any comments – the German indymedia is still alive and actively filled with various content, from authoritarian left to anarchist. It's hard for me not to comment on such a situation.
В Берлине 24 февраля украинская диаспора проводит акцию в годовщину начала полномасштабного вторжения. Местные группы (в основном состоящие из иммигрантов из Беларуси/России) призвали присоединиться к этой акции в формате анархического блока в ответ на призыв коллектива Прамень проводить такого рода акции по всей Европе. Один из товарищей, занимающихся подготовкой к акции сегодня скинул мне информацию, что их призыв удалили с местной индимедии без каких-либо комментариев – немецкая индимедия все еще живет и активно наполняется различным контентом, от авторитарно левого до анархического. Мне сложно такую ситуацию не прокомментировать.
For over a week, hundreds of thousands of Germans have been taking to the streets against the far-right AFD, whose plan to deport millions of people has been exposed by journalists. Secret meetings in hotels with various types of fascists – these events happen regularly from time to time. But it is rare for the content of these meetings to be made public. The anger and frustration of certain parts of the liberal and left-liberal political spectrum is very clear – they don't want neo-Nazis or fascists to come to power in the country. And that is a good thing.
The general mood among a lot of people I'm talking to right now is positive. Finally, you have a lot of interest from different parts of society who are starting to pay attention to the rise of the far-right agenda in politics. It gives hope that there are some people who are ready to take action for a more progressive and free society, but I personally – I'm more of a glass-half-empty person in this context...
This July I managed to visit two big anarchist festivals – Balkan Anarchist Bookfair and Anarchy 2023 in St.Imier. The first event attracted hundreds of activists mostly from the Balkans and Western Europe, while the Swiss festival had more people from outside the EU.
As a lot of things happened, I would like to share my personal experience and criticism of these events from the point of view of the participants. During BAB and St.Imier I had a lot of contacts with comrades from Belarus, Russia and Ukraine to gather some extra information and try to understand how things were developing. The whole text will be primarily focused on coverage of the war in Ukraine and situation in Belarus during those events.
When I was just starting to get involved in anarchist organizing in Belarus I downloaded somewhere out there with my 100MB traffic per month 5MB pdf version of Huey P. Newton's “Revolutionary Suicide” about the history of black panthers. It was quite an easy and fast read that touched a lot of different sides of being active under constant oppressions from the state. One of the most quoted stories from the books is about the cop who beats panthers at the police station at some part of the book and tells others that they should be done as soon as possible as he has to go the church next day with his family.
I wanted to write this text for many months. It's been almost a year since Belarusian regime captured and tortured anarchist activists Evgeny Rubashko. We know each other many years, and I feel that it is somehow my responsibility to tell at least some parts of his story, so the world know what an amazing person he is. He is not the only close comrade siting in prison in Belarus right now, and I hope in coming weeks I will find time and energy to write more about the anarchists of Belarus who dared to stand up against the dictatorship despite all the risks.
Today a group of prominent authors and cultural personalities published an open letter to still German chancellor Olaf Scholz, calling him to stop any further delivery of weapons to Ukraine as this can provoke the third world war. This position is not new. In fact, there are a lot of politicians who still believe that their actions can provoke Putin and “force” him into starting the war with NATO countries.
In zwei Jahren einer der größten sozialen Krisen haben Anarchisten und Linke keine Strategie entwickelt, wie sie damit umgehen können. Die wenigen Versuche, solche Strategien zu entwickeln, wurden von den meisten Aktivisten oder Menschen, die den politischen Kreisen nahestehen, oft ignoriert. Viele beklagten sich zwar über die soziale Isolation, genossen aber ihren verlängerten Urlaub vom politischen Aktivismus. In Deutschland wandelte sich der so genannte “Plena”-Aktivismus, bei dem die Menschen den größten Teil ihrer Freizeit in Meetings verbringen, in Online-Meeting-Aktivismus. Die Menschen verbringen täglich viele Stunden damit, darüber zu reden, was getan werden sollte, und scheitern nicht selten daran, etwas zu tun: Wegen der hohen Auslastung der Online-Meetings bleibt keine Zeit, um tatsächlich zu aktiv werden.
In two years of one of the biggest social crisis, anarchists and leftists have failed to have any strategy on how to deal with it. Humble attempts to develop those strategies quite often were ignored by majority of activists or people close to political circles. Many, though complaining about social isolation, enjoyed their prolonged vacation from political activism. In Germany, so-called “plena” activism, where people spend most of their out of work time sitting in meetings, transformed in online meeting activism. People would spend hours and hours per day talking about what should be done and quite frequently fail to act: because of high load of online meetings, there is no time left to actually act.
