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.
A couple of days ago, former antifascist prisoner from Belarus Dmitriy Zvanko with a mob attacked anarchist squat Sirena in the center of Warsaw. The gang used bottles, peper spray, bricks and other things to throw out residents of the occupied building.
Bei den letzten Wahlen zur Duma (russisches Parlament) hat die kommunistische Partei (KPRF) 5% gewonnen und liegt nun bei 18,93%. Sie ist zwar noch weit von Putins “Einiges Russland” entfernt, aber für viele Enthusiasten kann dies eine gute Nachricht sein. Manch einer mag denken, dass die Ideen des Kommunismus wieder auf dem Vormarsch sind und Russland früher oder später vom Kapitalismus befreit werden wird. Die Geschichte ist aber viel komplizierter. Und kurz gesagt: Nein, Russland wird nicht dadurch kommunistischer, dass es Mitglieder der Kommunistischen Partei wählt.
In recent elections to Duma (Russian parliament) communist party (CPRF) gained 5% and is resting now at 18.93%. It is still far away from Putin’s United Russia, but for a lot of enthusiasts, this can sound like good news. Some might think that ideas of communism are gaining once again and sooner or later Russia will be liberated from capitalism. The story is way more complicated. And shortly – no, Russia is not becoming more communist from electing members of the Communist Party.
Although for most of the German anarchists the anti-germans are not something to talk about, the agenda that was presented by the pro-Israelian movement took roots in anarchist and leftist circles deep. It goes as far as attempts to pass agreements within the anarchist syndicate FAU to put an equal sign between antizionism and antisemitism. And although the push within FAU so far has failed, the anarchist movement is still getting more and more pressure from the pro-Israelian and clearly statist left to distance itself from work with the Palestinian Diaspora. With that happening inside the country, the complicated issue with the topic of Israel is also pouring outside of it. There were troubles within the international syndicalist groups because of member's support of the BDS movement which is seen by many german leftists as antisemitic.
