The Left Berlin News & Comment

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Month: February 2025

Falastin Cinema Week

A week of film screenings, talks, art and more.


12/02/2025

Running parallel to the Berlinale this February, Refuge Worldwide will host Falastin Cinema Week: five days of film screenings, talks, and art exploring Palestinian histories and decolonial narratives. The events will take place at Refuge’s Niemetzstraße community space in Berlin and at Spore Initiative.

Together with AL.Berlin, Jewish Bund, Diaspora Rising, Spore Initiative, Jüdische Stimme, Irish Bloc Berlin, Rawy Films, SPACE OF URGENCY, Palinale, Amal Abu Hanna, House Of Base, and more, Falastin Cinema Week is scheduled to run daily from Monday 17th February to Friday 21st February.

Although a tentative ceasefire is in place, February 2025 will mark the 77th year of the occupation. We call for an end to the apartheid regime, the right to return, sovereignty, and self-determination for all Indigenous Palestinian and Levantine people. We stand in solidarity with the Palestinian liberation movement and with all interconnected decolonial struggles.

The full programme and tickets are available on the Refuge Worldwide website.

The artwork visual is a film still from O, Persecuted, courtesy of Basma al-Sharif. Commissioned by the Palestine Film Foundation to make a film in response to Kassem Hawal’s 1974 Our Small Houses, O, Persecuted uses the act of restoration to force the burden of history onto an unforeseen future. Graphics are by Bianca Mocan.

Access Info

Refuge Worldwide’s community space is located at Niemetzstraße 1, 12055 Berlin. All the rooms used for the event are step-free and located on the ground floor. There is a gender-neutral step-free toilet that’s accessible for wheelchair users.

There will be a variety of seating options: chairs and beanbags.

We encourage guests to do COVID-19 tests before coming and will also have some tests available at the door.

No one will be turned away due to lack of funds.

If you have any access requests, please email nicky@refugeworldwide.com

Let Francesca Albanese Speak at LMU!

Open letter from students and staff at Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich


11/02/2025

We, students and staff of Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich, strongly oppose LMU’s decision to cancel Francesca Albanese’s lecture on international law which was scheduled to take place on February 16th at the LMU’s main building. 

As the UN Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian Territories, Ms. Albanese’s work extends far beyond the current crisis in Gaza—it began long before the October 7th attacks and has consistently focused on upholding international law and humanitarian principles. Her efforts are critical in ensuring accountability and justice, particularly through the ICC and ICJ.

The cancellation sets a dangerous precedent for universities- one in which shunning international human rights lawyers and UN representatives becomes a reality and can be repeated. Article 5 of germanys constitution protects the freedom of “the arts and sciences, research and teaching”, and as a publicly funded university, the LMU, like all other German universities, must uphold the principle of academic freedom. Universities must remain bastions of free speech, and academic exchange cannot be subject to the whims of one administration or another. The academic integrity of the LMU is in jeopardy. 

We ask you to sign this petition, demanding that the LMU allows Francesca Albanese to hold her talk at the main building, in accordance with article 5 of the German constitution, and in accordance with the university’s own commitment to academic freedom and academic integrity. 

You can sign the petition and see a list of existing signatories here.

***This petition is managed by LMU staff and students. We will handle your data responsibly.**

Wir, Studierende Mitarbeiter:innen der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, wenden uns entschieden gegen die Entscheidung der LMU, die Vorlesung von Francesca Albanese zum Völkerrecht abzusagen, die für den 16. Februar im Hauptgebäude der LMU geplant war.

 Als UN-Sonderberichterstatterin für die palästinensischen Gebiete geht die Arbeit von Frau Albanese weit über die aktuelle Krise in Gaza hinaus – sie begann lange vor den Anschlägen vom 7. Oktober und konzentrierte sich stets auf die Einhaltung des Völkerrechts und humanitärer Grundsätze. Ihre Bemühungen sind von entscheidender Bedeutung für die Gewährleistung von Rechenschaftspflicht und Gerechtigkeit, insbesondere durch den Internationalen Strafgerichtshof und den IGH.

Die Absage stellt einen gefährlichen Präzedenzfall für Universitäten dar – einen, bei dem die Ablehnung von internationalen Menschenrechtsanwält:innen und UN-Vertreter:innen zur Realität wird und sich wiederholen kann. Artikel 5 des deutschen Grundgesetzes besagt dass „Kunst und Wissenschaft, Forschung und Lehre sind frei“, und als öffentlich finanzierte Universität muss die LMU, wie alle anderen deutschen Universitäten, das Prinzip der akademischen Freiheit aufrechterhalten. Universitäten müssen Bastionen der freien Meinungsäußerung bleiben, und der akademische Austausch darf nicht von den Launen der einen oder anderen Verwaltung abhängig gemacht werden. Die akademische Integrität der LMU ist in Gefahr. 

Wir bitten Sie, diese Petition zu unterzeichnen, in der wir fordern, dass die LMU Francesca Albanese erlaubt, ihren Vortrag im Hauptgebäude zu halten, in Übereinstimmung mit Artikel 5 des deutschen Grundgesetzes und in Übereinstimmung mit der Verpflichtung der Universität selbst zur akademischen Freiheit und akademischen Integrität. 

Diese Petition wird von Mitarbeiter:innen und Studierenden der LMU verwaltet. Wir gehen verantwortungsvoll mit Ihren Daten um.

French Fascism and Marine Le Pen

Marij from Sozialismus von Unten interviews John Mullen on France’s fascist movement


John Mullen has been engaged in political activism in Paris since the 1980s. Here’s what he has to say about the current political state of France.

Marij: In June last year, French Prime Minister Emmanuel Macron dissolved parliament prematurely and called new elections for the end of June. What was the reason?

John Mullen: He called elections at the shortest notice possible, because he was convinced that the Left would not unite, and that, because of the two-round election system, he would be able to present his own party as the only alternative to Marine Le Pen’s, and regain a solid parliamentary majority. His plan failed.

M: Why was the RN able to gain so many votes so quickly?

JM: The fascists got nearly nine million votes in the legislative elections of June this year. This is fewer than the 13 million they got in the second round of the presidential election of 2022, but far more than the four million they got in the legislative elections that year. They also got fifty more members of Parliament than they had previously. The main reason is the collapse in support of the traditional right wing and left-wing parties of government. However, the lack of a permanent, national mass movement against fascism has certainly helped the far right tremendously.

M: How did the other parties react?

JM: The terrifying results of the fascists in the first round of the elections led to a historic anti fascist mobilization between the two rounds. This was the most dynamic left election campaign for fifty years. The result was that, whereas everybody expected the fascists to have more Members of Parliament than any other group, they actually came third. First place, and therefore the largest group of members of parliament, went to the left electoral alliance, which took the name “New Popular Front”.

M: The RN had been “restructured” in a process that took several years. What were the main steps?

JM: The name of the party was changed from “National Front” to “National Rally”. A series of members were expelled for expressing too openly antisemitism or fascist sympathies. These included the founder of the party, Marine Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who could not refrain from making “jokes” about the extermination of Jews by the Nazis. The organization also stopped calling for street demonstrations, because they were moments when open Nazi supporters might show themselves.

M: Did this change the character of the party?

JM: No. The core of the RN leadership is fascist. They still use the flame logo taken from Mussolini.They still aim at banning Muslim headscarves in all public places, banning immigrants from social housing, allowing impunity for racist police murderers. They try to hide their links with open fascists. However, recently it has been shown that they have close links with the women’s group “Nemesis” who specialize in turning up to feminist demonstrations with placards claiming that all rapists are immigrants. A study this year shows that at least 80 of the RN candidates for the June elections had been involved in openly racist or antisemitic activity. One of them wrote, “distinguishing between races is common sense and is useful in a certain number of debates”.

When openly antisemitic Jean Marie Le Pen died recently, Marine Le Pen declared she would never forgive herself for having expelled him from the party. Other RN leaders explained that she had been obliged to do so because of the damage he was doing to their image. None of them claimed he had been expelled because the party’s ideology had fundamentally changed.

Since the RN is very much an unprincipled and opportunistic party, they frequently change their discourse. Right now, they are confident they have a solid voter base among the poorer parts of society, so they are concentrating on slogans like “avoiding chaos” (by refusing to oppose the right-wing government’s austerity budget), while insisting that Macron’s racist measures do not go far enough.

M: Are there any hopeful signs of activity against the RN?

JM: The historic mobilization last year, when hundreds of thousands of people moved into action in order to stop the fascists becoming the government, in a situation where opinion polls said this was the most likely outcome, was obviously extremely encouraging. Tens of thousands of people joined radical Left groups for the first time, in particular the France Insoumise (France in Revolt). Since the National Rally has put elections at the center of its strategy, persuading voters that these people are fascists and have nothing to offer working people is extremely important.

Nevertheless, there are considerable limitations on antifascism in France. It is extremely common on the Left either to believe that Macron is a fascist anyway, and therefore specific campaigning against the National Rally is not necessary, or to very much underestimate the importance of stopping the National Rally from building their party structures. In many hundreds of towns, the National Rally has almost no local structure. Building this is their priority, and stopping them building it should be ours. However, most left organizations consider that proposing an alternative left program will be sufficient to marginalize the fascists. This is a mistake, and vigorous debate is necessary. There are regularly local initiatives against fascist meetings or activity, but a national campaign is needed.

M: We are on the brink of new elections in Germany—the bourgeois parties are acting as stooges for the AfD in the election campaign. What can we learn from the French experience? 

JM: [That] established right wing parties will always prefer the fascists over the radical left. Macron argued for years he was the only alternative to the far right, before changing his discourse to proclaim that he was the only alternative to “the two extremes”. Then he refused to allow the Left to form a government although they had the biggest parliamentary group, and he strengthened the fascists immeasurably by appointing hard racist ministers, and treating the far right National Rally as a  respectable mainstream party.

This article first appeared in German on the Sozialismus von Unten website.

Are There Any Leftist Candidates in Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg?

The once rebellious district was long represented by the legendary Hans-Christian Ströbele. He died in 2022, and his replacement is retiring. Who can lefty Kreuzbergers and Friedrichshainers vote for?


07/02/2025

Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain don’t fit together at all, but each neighborhood has a long history of rebelliousness. In Kreuzberg, people started squatting buildings in the late 1970s. Friedrichshain, in turn, became the center of Berlin’s counterculture in the 1990s, with numerous squats of its own. The two districts on opposite sides of the Spree were put into an uneasy marriage in 2001. For 15 years, from 2002 to 2017, Fhain-Xberg was represented in the Bundestag by the silver-haired, soft-spoken rebel Christian Ströbele.

Ströbele won his legendary status back in 1969 when he founded the Socialist Lawyers Collective to defend left-wing activists, including members of the Red Army Fraction (RAF). In the late 1970s, he helped found the alternative daily paper taz and West Berlin’s Alternative List, which eventually folded into Die Grüne. Until just a few years ago, Ströbele could be seen at just about every demonstration on his signature red bicycle. 

Over the decades, Die Grüne got closer to power and abandoned every single one of their principles. Within one generation, they went from protesting against NATO missiles to being the most pro-NATO party in Germany today. In the late 1990s, die Grüne launched Germany’s first war of aggression since 1945, and carried out the biggest social cuts program in the history of the Federal Republic.

Thousands of old-school greens turned their backs on the party. Ströbele stuck around, though he consistently voted against his party. He retired in 2017, and died in 2022. His replacement, Canan Bayram, was Kreuzberg’s Die Grüne representative for two terms. Last year, however, Bayram declared that she “didn’t want to be a fig leaf” for such a right-wing party — she’s not even campaigning for Die Grüne this time around.

So who can leftists in Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain vote for?

Katrin Schmidberger (Die Grüne)

The person the Die Grüne picked to replace Ströbele and Bayram is not really known for anything. According to Wikipedia, Katrin Schmidberger was once a parliamentary assistant to Ströbele, and has been a member of the Berlin parliament since 2011. Personally, I have yet to meet anyone who knows her name or what she stands for. Does she go to demonstrations? Hard to say. Her main topic — really her only topic — appears to be housing policy. 

To be fair, she doesn’t seem terrible on housing policy. In contrast to her party, which gets donations from realty speculators, Schmidberger supported the referendum to expropriate Berlin’s big corporate landlords, which 59% of voters approved back in 2021. At the same time, though, she was part of Franziska Giffey’s government coalition that actively sabotaged this democratic decision. 

Looking through parliamentary records and social media posts, Schmidberger has impressive message discipline: she talks about housing policy and nothing else. She wants more public housing, and any leftist would agree. But how does she feel about her party spending 100 billion extra on the military instead? What does she think about Annalena Baerbock’s support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza? What does she think about Robert Habeck’s plan to radically increase deportations?

In contrast to the antimilitarist Ströbele, it’s almost as if Schmidberger has never heard of the multiple wars getting active support from German imperialism and its Grüne administrators. But Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg have changed due to gentrification, maybe this is just the kind of Grüne that new residents wants.

Pascal Meiser (Die Linke)

For people who miss Kreuzberg’s old school Grünen, Pascal Meiser of Die Linke is presenting himself as an alternative. He is also particularly focussed on housing policy, but can be seen outside of parliamentary committees — you run into him at demonstrations fairly often, in fact. Meiser is doing a cool campaign where he puts posters on buildings: “Why are there empty apartments here?” In the middle of a housing crisis, speculators are keeping an estimated 40,000 apartments empty. You also see him when workers at publicly owned companies like Vivantes and BVG go on strike for better wages.

But there’s a big contradiction here. Berlin’s housing crisis was caused by the privatization of several hundreds of thousands of housing units in the early 2000s — a policy carried out by Meiser’s party, Die Linke. The same party was responsible for drastic cuts in wages for public-sector employees. So while it’s nice for a “left” party to show support at a strike, workers can’t forget that they are on strike against the very same party. As far as I’m aware, Meiser has never once protested against his comrade ministers carrying out neoliberal policies. Die Linke has also deported thousands of people from Berlin — without any objections from Meiser.

Meiser has the same discipline as Schmidberger when it comes to avoiding questions of imperialism. Over 15 months of genocide, the only reference I could find was a link to an Israeli propaganda page. By the standards of Die Linke, this is relatively good — at least Meiser is not aggressively supporting genocide, like Dietmar Bartsch, Petra Pau, Gesine Lötzsch, and numerous other “left” politicians. Yet this is an awfully low bar. Imagine a “left-wing” politician anywhere else who carefully refuses to say a word about their own government supplying weapons to be used in a genocide.

I asked his office if he voted for the resolution in Solidarity with Israel from October 12, 2023, but got no response. He was no longer in parliament for subsequent resolutions in support of genocide, but Die Linke abstained both times, and Meiser hasn’t said anything at all.

Inés Heider

Statistically, it is quite likely the Die Grüne will get the seat. They won 38% four years ago (compared to 18% for Die Linke). Eight years ago, though, they won by less than two points. With Bayram’s retirement, Meiser might have a chance. 

This time, there is a new candidate: the social worker Inés Heider is running on an anticapitalist program. She is also in favor of expropriating corporate landlords, like Schmidberger and Meiser say they are. Crucially, though, Heider is in favor of mobilization and self-organization. She doesn’t think progressive change can come around by getting elected to parliament and forming a government together with the SPD — as a communist, she calls for a workers’ government.

Heider is the only candidate to oppose all deportations — she openly calls for open borders, while Die Grüne want more deportations, and Die Linke are happy to keep deportations at their current rate. As an internationalist and anti-imperialist, Heider calls for blocking all weapons shipments to Israel, and for kicking both Putin and NATO out of Ukraine.

Generations of workers and leftists in Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain, even 150 years ago, voted for radical change instead of choosing the “lesser evil.” They were told they were “wasting their vote” — in reality, though, their support for independent, working-class candidates was preparing the future. This time, Friedrichshainers and Kreuzbergers can register their fundamental opposition to a rotten system.

German Anti-Palestinian Racism Besmirched The Commemoration of the Liberation of Auschwitz

A litany of abuses by the German state and its enablers in civil society lays bare their disrespect for the memory of the Shoah


05/02/2025

In Germany, politicians, public figures and ordinary citizens have been insisting for years that the Palestinians don’t fight Israel because of the occupation and apartheid, but rather because they are rabid antisemites. They are labelled as the new Nazis, and it is claimed that antisemitism has been imported into this country by the migrants who have arrived in recent decades. On Holocaust Memorial Day, they made this clear in the worst possible way on social media, in the courts, and on the streets.

On 27 January 2025, coinciding with the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet troops, once again a Jewish person sat before a Berlin court accused of inciting hatred for opposing genocide in Palestine.

The Israeli-Jewish filmmaker Dror Dayan sat on the bench accused of using symbols of unconstitutional and terrorist organisations (Section 86a of the German Criminal Code), for denouncing on his social networks the state’s intention to criminalise the use of the slogan “From the River to the Sea” and its attempt to link it to the prosecution of the use of Nazi symbols. In Dror’s own words:

“In 2023 I read a newspaper article stating that the slogan “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” will be treated in Germany in the same way as swastikas and SS-Slogans. I saw this as a further, dangerous step not only in the criminalisation of the Palestinian struggle and solidarity with it but, more hypocritically, as a clear attempt at equating the legitimate Palestinian resistance with the genocidal Nazi past of today’s German Federal Republic. Since October 2023 we have seen many voices in German media and politics not only equating Palestinian organisations with the Nazis but at times even claiming that they are worse. This serves a double purpose – it allows to further dehumanize Palestinians and present any support of them as criminal, but also to minimize and relativize the German Nazi crimes. If SS-Slogans are the same as Palestinian slogans for liberation from occupation and genocide, the logical conclusion is that the Nazis were only fighting for their freedom and equality. This is sickening but in the current climate in Germany in no way surprising. For this reason I published a post using the slogan and explaining that Palestine solidarity cannot be the sacrificial lamb on the altar of German historical revisionism and that the German crimes will always remain German and cannot be pushed unto the backs of Palestinians and their supporters.”

 “Several months later I’ve received a letter telling me I’m charged with usage of propaganda of terrorist and anti-constitutional organisations. This is due to the fact that in the wording of its ban of Hamas, Germany has included the words “from the river to the sea” as a Hamas slogan, without any evidence. This was clearly done in order to ban as large parts as possible of the solidarity movement together with the organisation, even if they are not related. My hearing was scheduled for January 27th, the holocaust remembrance day. This date is very fitting, as it marks one German genocide and today we are dealing with active German support for another genocide. This is another German attempt at rewriting history and changing the meaning of the term antisemitism from hatred of Jews – which would make many current German politicians antisemitic – to opposition to Zionism and Israel’s crimes, which would clear those same public figures from antisemitism, as they might hate Jews, but love Zionism.”

“This is all part and parcel not only of Germany’s active role in the genocide in Gaza – through arms deals, support in the ICC, and repression at home – but also the ongoing attempt to mililtarize Germany and re-invent its past. While Germany has never broken away from its Nazi past, it is now equating all its enemies – be it Palestinian freedom fighters or Russia – with its own Nazis. While Germany is propping up its own neo-Nazis in the AfD and CDU, it attempts to sell the world an image of itself as fighting Nazis. It simply lies about who those Nazis are.”

The trial, which was due to start at 11am, was finally delayed for several months because an expert who was to give a statement on the history and use of the slogan failed to attend the trial due to illness. The judge had had this information for a few days and decided to disclose it minutes before the trial. However, the expert’s testimony had already been submitted to the court in writing and could have been read out, as is customary in the instance of an expert’s non-appearance, so it seems that the judge’s decision was based on other factors.

It is possible that the judge has decided to postpone the trial and await the decision of other judges in one of the many cases pending in this city over this slogan. Including one of the two cases that have already been lost in Berlin, which is now in the second instance.This will set a bad precedent, because in this case the person used the controversial slogan together with pictures of the Qassam Brigades. This puts on a golden platter for the prosecution the argument that it is a slogan used by an organisation that is considered a terrorist organisation in this country. Undoubtedly, the judicial establishment has an interest in this trial, which is clearly in its favour, to set precedent.

But this decision must also have been influenced by the demonstration outside the court, which clearly denounced that the German Staatsräson, i.e. its unconditional support for Israel, takes precedence over the lives of the anti-Zionist Jewish people in this country. And which highlighted the lack of historical memory by holding this trial on the very day when the victims of the Holocaust are commemorated. At a subsequent rally called in the same place for another anti-genocide comarade, the police seemed to be trying to make up for this little antisemitic slip-up on Holocaust Day. They arrested half of the people present on various pretexts, including the new ban on slogans such as “Zionists are fascists” or “Israel is killing children“.

The day before, on Sunday 26 January 2025, the left-wing anti-Zionist organisation Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East called for a rally to commemorate all the victims of the Holocaust, explicitly calling for all the victims, including those of the current genocides, to be mentioned.

The place chosen for the tribute was highly symbolic, as it was the square where the Nazis famously burned books on 10 May 1933, now known as Bebelplatz.

This moving tribute, at which relatives of Holocaust survivors, Jews, Roma and Sinti, as well as communists, anarchists and socialists spoke, was hyper-policed by officers in riot gear.

In response to this national Zionist, German, white and non-Jewish groups, including groups that consider themselves to be anti-fascist, counter-mobilised. In what appears to be a deliberate move, these groups, who had applied for permits after seeing the call by Jewish Voice for Peace, were given the first line of the square facing the main avenue. Meanwhile, the groups of Jews, Roma and Sinti, migrants, anti-fascists, communists, anarchists and other allies were relegated and fenced in at the back of the square, as far as possible out of sight of potential tourists and passers-by. The police force surrounding them did not lift a finger when some of these Zionist “anti-fascists” broke into the event to break it up, shouting “Free Gaza from Hamas” in the middle of a speech, after having interrupted the minute of silence for the victims of past and present genocides with loud music. Paradoxically, with the song “The Sound of Silence”.

These unpleasant incidents and details show the institutionalised and widespread historical blindness of a segment of the German population which, in its flight from its genocidal Nazi past, is beginning to want to move on and make others pay the price: Palestinians, anti-Zionist Jews or any migrant who does not fit the twisted narrative of its neo-historical remembrance.

The far-right has latched on to this trick, fed up with this phoney sense of guilt, which wants not only to turn the page on this chapter but to reawaken the worst of its patriotic pride. The day before these incidents, the AfD party held a campaign rally with Elon Musk, who declared that Germany had had enough of historical guilt and claimed that Germany should be great again. The question is: which great Germany do they want to return to? Their rhetoric and iconography suggest the 1930s.

Anyone who has read anything about the Holocaust knows that it began decades, if not centuries, before the so-called Final Solution was implemented. It began on the streets with the harassment of Jews. It moved into the courts and institutions with trumped-up charges, preventing Jews from practising their professions, gradually stripping them of all their possessions and citizenship before finally taking their lives. Many of those who managed to escape saved their lives by arriving in Palestine, as has been shown, despite the opinion of some in German society, even the Stolpersteine.

And anyone who has read history knows that the other victims of the Nazis and their allies were also those groups that the German government today criminally ignores or blames: minorities such as the Sinti and Roma, those who are still considered foreigners no matter how many generations they have been here, anti-fascists, communists, anarchists and, in general, anyone who does not put Israel and its right to commit genocide above all else.

The author was approached after the article was published by the organisers of the Jewish Voice for Peace rally and informed that they in fact chose the location in the square and was not a decision of the authorities as the article suggests.