The boycott against Berghain was organized due to its silence about the escalating genocide in Palestine that now extends to Lebanon. Aligning with the German government’s repression, the club is also actively silencing artists’ expressions of solidarity with Palestine, some of whom have shared their experiences publicly, like Arabian Panther and WTCHCRFT. We want to draw attention, as well, to Berghain’s hypocrisy in speaking out against the war on Ukraine but staying quiet on Palestine, as we’ve reported previously in the Left Berlin.
We will go over the history of the Berghain boycott and its reasoning and list some of the collectives and festivals that are disregarding the boycott. Then we will highlight some artists observing the boycott in solidarity with Palestinian liberation. And finally, we will have two short interviews, with DJ Josey Rebelle and with Ravers for Palestine.
Ravers for Palestine calls for boycott
Ravers for Palestine launched in late October 2023 with an open letter calling for musicians and collectives to, “urgently speak out against Israel’s brutal and ongoing attack on Gaza.” In November 2023, Ravers for Palestine posted a message to clubs: “A Message to Clubs: Silence = Complicity. Show up for Palestine or be consigned to irrelevance.” Later, in March 2024, Ravers for Palestine and DJs Against Apartheid called for a boycott of Berghain.
One of the parties that continues to host events at Berghain, despite the boycott, is REEF. Ravers for Palestine reached out to REEF organizers privately on October 11, 2024, asking them to withdraw. After private outreach was not successful, Ravers for Palestine made their appeal public on October 18, 2024, asking REEF to stand with their community and boycott Berghain. REEF had their party most recently on November 15, 2024. As the Antifascist Music Alliance we also reached out to artists who were on the lineup (pictured below), asking them to respect the boycott. We did not receive a response.
Ravers for Palestine has successfully engaged with other collectives and labels that were still hosting events at Berghain. An example of a positive outcome was label party PAN, which canceled their August 2nd, 2024 party at Berghain thanks to Ravers for Palestine and outcry from the dance music community.
We’ve also reported on CTM’s lack of courage and solidarity with the boycott in the Left Berlin previously. CTM festival continues to host parties at Berghain. Their most recent party was on October 30, 2024 and Berghain is still listed as the main venue for their 2025 festival. CTM and REEF are only two examples of parties/festivals claiming progressiveness while holding their events at Berghain. Some other examples that we noticed include Your Love, Love on the Rocks, and queer party weeeirdos. There is no queer liberation without Palestinian liberation.
These parties and collectives refuse to stand with those in the nightlife community who are courageously and unapologetically protesting against over a year of escalating genocide in Palestine and Lebanon and repression in Germany.
Artists speaking out and refusing to play at Berghain
We know of a few DJs who shared publicly their readiness to turn down gigs or their experiences with being cancelled from scheduled lineups (such as WTCHCRFT or Arabian Panther). As Ravers for Palestine mentions in the following interview, a lot of the DJs refusing to play at Berghain are BIPOC, queer, and trans. The artists we’ve been in touch with that have shared their refusal to play at Berghain publicly are Cáit, Beatrice M./Bait, and Josey Rebelle. Beatrice M./Bait said to us by email that, “being a musical artist also means sacrificing opportunities to stand in solidarity with causes that matter more than one’s career.”
Josey Rebelle withdrew from playing at Berghain already at the start of 2024. Josey Rebelle is not on social media, so she chose to make her voice heard through her website, writing:
“at the start of the year i withdrew from all my 2024 bookings at berghain in protest against the club’s deplatforming of a pro-palestinian dj and subsequent refusal to make any apology or gesture to clarify its position on palestine as it had previously done with ukraine. for further info on the reasons some artists have chosen to boycott berghain (among other clubs), visit the djs against apartheid site.”
Even if you are not on social media, there is still a way to communicate! We interviewed Josey Rebelle about her withdrawal, which you can read below. We urge other artists and DJs to respect the boycott and to share their actions, especially those with bigger platforms, so that the brave ones who are doing this publicly are not left to stand alone. As Beatrice M. pointed out, “I think it’s important to share, that’s a point of a boycott, to give others the strength to do the same because it can be a tough decision!”
Interview with Josey Rebelle
When did you make the decision? Was that before or after the March call for boycott from DJs Against Apartheid and Ravers for Palestine?
I was upset to hear about Berghain’s cancellation of Arabian Panther’s event and the way the club had chosen to handle the situation. When this story broke in January I had just agreed to play six dates at Berghain across 2024 and so I knew I needed to have an urgent discussion with the club.
I sent the club an email to express my thoughts, indicating that I was considering leaving, and we agreed to have a phone call. In the initial email I said that my main worry was that, “the absence of any public clarification, statement or gesture from Berghain in the fallout of this situation makes it appear to the world that the club is not opposed to the genocide in Gaza, and that it is actively engaged in suppressing expressions of solidarity with Palestine, perhaps due to pressure from the state or other parties.”
I added, “In the absence of any such gesture, I feel that the onus has been unfairly placed on individual artists and their teams to reach out to Berghain and get clarification or reassurance on this matter, while the club appears to continue with business as usual.”
I asked whether Berghain intended to make any public statement or gesture to call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, to signal any support for Gaza as it did with Ukraine, or to align itself with the demands of the Strike Germany movement. If the answer to these questions was no, I asked if Berghain intended to take any steps at all.
While the tone of the subsequent phone call was respectful, it was clear to me that there was no remorse over the way this situation had been handled, and there was to be neither an apology nor any clarification on the club’s stance on Gaza. I was told that Berghain did not get involved in political matters. Again I pointed out that the club had been very vocal in its support of Ukraine, including setting up a dedicated page on its website, which proved that the club was absolutely able to speak up on these matters and was consciously choosing not to do the same for Gaza.
I officially withdrew from all my bookings at the club a few days later, on 31 January 2024. I allowed myself time to consider the matter thoroughly and had conversations with people I trusted to get alternative viewpoints. I knew I would be losing money and gigs from a club that had booked me frequently but I had to put all that aside and make a decision based on my own values which in this case seemed incompatible with those of Berghain. So in the end it was a straightforward decision for me to leave, and I have no regrets.
In terms of the timing of my decision, I do not think the official call for the boycott had been made, but a number of artists and promoters had already withdrawn from Germany as a whole in solidarity with the Strike Germany movement, including some artists who were due to perform at Berghain for CTM and Dweller.
We were wondering if you’d be willing to share how Berghain and other DJs reacted to the fact that you decided to cancel your gigs there and shared it publicly.
I am not on social media and so I did not announce this news publicly, I simply added a short note to the events section of my website to let people know that I would no longer be playing at Berghain. But I did have lots of conversations with other DJs who had bookings at the club, many of whom felt upset and unsure of what they should do. A lot of pro-Palestinian artists pushed for direct conversations with the club to speak up about this situation, and I think these difficult conversations could be seen as a form of pressure because they placed the club in the uncomfortable position of having to explain itself. However the question for me was: if Berghain is not going to apologise for its actions or change or speak up about the genocide of the Palestinian people after all this, then why should I stay?
Are you boycotting the others on the boycott list (E1 in London, HÖR and://about blank in Berlin, Sweat Festival)?
Yes.
Interview with Ravers for Palestine
You announced in March a call for a boycott of Berghain, together with DJs Against Apartheid. What can you tell us about the djs heeding this call?
A broad and diverse range of DJs is now boycotting Berghain, ranging from experimental up-and-coming artists to former regulars at the club. One clear throughline is the collective withdrawal of international artists. Very few DJs from the UK and US are still playing there, for example. This is a tectonic shift. Even Berghain’s Reddit community has registered this: anxious threads with titles like ‘Why are so many well-known DJs no longer regularly being booked?’ are increasingly common.
Many of the DJs that are withdrawing are BIPOC, queer, trans. As we’ve seen in other solidarity efforts, it’s those with the least wealth, structural privilege and access that are standing with Palestine. It’s not a coincidence that these are generally also the artists that are pushing techno and other forms into the future.
How has it been so far with support for the boycott? What have you seen? What would you like to say?
Early on in the genocide, we weren’t sure if we had the numbers within rave culture to challenge the normalization of ‘Israel’, and the West’s wider attempts to co-opt us into their imperial status quo.
A year on, it’s clear these doubts were unwarranted. While nightlife institutions have largely remained silent, and, in some cases, have even repressed pro-Palestinian voices, the community itself has risen to this anticolonial moment. From boycotts of entities complicit in the genocide, to autonomous actions, the surge in PACBI nightlife endorsements, and the militancy and sacrifice of so many individual artists and ravers, we’ve shown that our culture has deep and powerful reservoirs of resistance at its grassroots. This has important continuities with how other countercultural groups are reconnecting with their roots in this moment: see, for example, Queers for Palestine and Bands Boycott Barclays.
Today, no-one can truly say how these efforts will reverberate, and what impact they will have on the trajectory of Palestinian liberation. But we draw strength and inspiration from the musicians’ boycott of South Africa, which played an important role in dismantling the cultural legitimacy of the apartheid regime.
What can you tell us about the Strike Fund?
So far, the Strike Fund has supported over 25 artists who have boycotted venues in solidarity with Palestine with over 11,000EUR. We’re privileged to have been able to facilitate this crowdfunded venture. In many cases, this resource has helped people pay urgent medical bills or cover rent. Beyond immediate material relief, it’s also modelling an alternative future for the electronic music scene: based on solidarity and a plural, horizontal ethic, as opposed to the competitive monoculture which oppresses us all today.
Mutual aid is a critical aspect of resistance. It’s powerful and moving to see how music venues in Lebanon—like Tunefork Studios and Skybar—have stepped up to support their communities. And we’re excited to see new initiatives, like Forward/Scratch, centering mutual aid in their model.
