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“Fence up, floodlights on, gates locked – problem solved!”

That’s how Berlin’s Mayor Kai Wegner responded to an alleged gang rape in Kreuzberg’s Görlitzer Park, the strip of land that stretches from Skalitzer Straße to the Landwehr Canal between Wienerstraße and Görlitzerstraße

Nancy duPlessis
29/09/2024

Berliners who lack intimate knowledge of what locals call “Görli,” along with far-off Germans who for decades have been spoon-fed lurid accounts of the “notorious” place (in 2015, the S tuttgarter Nachrichten called it the “drug park of the nation”), favor Wegner’s approach.

Think again! OUR GÖRLI STAYS OPEN!

I have previously written about initiatives for affordable rents and on gentrification projects in Berlin and especially Kreuzberg, where I’ve lived for more than 20 years. Now I’m writing about the fight over my park. Although usually presented differently, this, too, has to do with replacing parts of the population with people who have money.

“Görli” is a people’s park. Berliners – and visitors – go to Görli to pet donkeys and fondle each other, play football and “black light” minigolf, grill with the whole big family, chill watching the sun set, ride bikes, jog, pick berries, study birds, gather for a film or a beer, innumerable children’s festivals, May Day parties, la Fête de la Musique, a free Peter Fox concert for 12,000… Görli is a destination in guidebooks and on walking tours.

Görli is the trampled green lung of “SO36,” that eastern part of the district of Kreuzberg whose pre-reunification “ex-centricity” drew Germans avoiding the (West German) draft to experiment with alternative lifestyles, and “guest workers” in need of affordable housing – which was mostly in very bad shape.

SO36 spawned numerous intercultural and art projects as well as the movement to squat run-down buildings and collectively refurbish them. SO36 residents also successfully resisted plans to construct a highway that would have ripped out its heart.

It all began with Görlitzer Bahnhof…

where trains departed for the eastern towns of Cottbus and Görlitz and delivered cloth, bricks, glass, and coal to the capital. The station built in 1866 spurred the development of new urban neighborhoods whose streets were named after cities along the railroad: Liegnitz, Ohlauer, Oppelner, Sorauer (now Polish Legnica, Olawa, Opole, and Żary), Reichenberg (Czech Liberec), and others; the station square was named after the Berliners’ favorite getaway, the Spreewald.

The elegant station building was heavily damaged in World War II; passenger train service was ended in 1951. Train tracks were removed and coal and gravel heaped on the wasteland. Old cars piled up and leakage from a scrap-metal press contaminated the soil. Repair shops, a hairdresser, a newspaper kiosk, a mosque, an arts center, and even some people moved into the station.

Then, in 1975, according to Werner von Westhafen in the Kreuzberger Chronik, “public authorities feared that the ensemble might provide a haven for anti-social elements”* and demolished most of what remained. However, the area sorely lacked public parks, and the open space was used for recreation. A children’s “traffic school” was built along the perimeter in 1976, a petting zoo in 1981. Freight service between East and West Berlin (the Wall ran along Görli’s southern flank), continued till the mid-1980s. In 1989, the international performance group Mutoid Waste Company pushed their towering scrap-metal “Käfer [Beetle] Man” and Bird of Peace over the canal bridge onto DDR territory – forcing East German soldiers to open the wall.

From 1978, residents fought to have the 14-hectare site turned into a public park, which was key to raising the standard of living in Berlin’s smallest, most densely populated district. Numerous neighborhood groups took part in its development and in the 1984 design competition. The park had to offer a variety of activities and spaces for playing and relaxing. It was also supposed to make the history of the site visible. In 1986, construction began.

Residents wanted their park to reflect the neighborhood’s character, and in 1998, acknowledging its many residents from Turkey, a fountain inspired by the Pamukkale limestone formations was added. Unfortunately, the designer chose a stone incompatible with Berlin winters: the artwork quickly crumbled, unleashing a long legal battle. The area is now used as an informal amphitheater.

According to a brochure published by the district in 2013, “The history of Görlitzer Park is […] one of overload and negotiated compromises. For too long, the area […] was where all the wishes that could not be fulfilled in the densely built-up residential areas were focused: sports areas, mosque, allotments [….] The park has always been too small for all this and only functions by everyone working together.”

For a very long time, they have. Görli has a special, very relaxed, atmosphere that attracts a huge number of different individuals and groups throughout the day and night.

But Berlin’s mayor and the new better-off neighbors seem to not know or want to understand that local residents have been closely involved with Görli for decades. More recent initiatives range from making the park clean and “drug-free” in 2008 to creating a place for nature and environmental education and planting fruit trees in 2010, and special child/parent groups to develop more activities and redesign the “pirate ship” playground in 2011. There is even a park council. Some 30,000 Kreuzbergers can reach the park in 10 minutes. We identify with Görli. Görli is ours.

First came the drugs….

Over the years, Görli has attracted not only neighbors but also other Berliners and tourists, too, including drug dealers, whose business has flourished as other Berlin areas have been “cleaned up.” Numerous countermeasures, including cutting back undergrowth, sending in more police, and a short-lived “zero tolerance” policy of prosecuting even small amounts of drugs that were legal elsewhere, proved futile.

And then…

in June 2023, reports of an alleged gang rape and robbery set off Berlin’s new conservative government’s law-and-order response. Two homeless, unsuccessful asylum seekers from Africa were arrested, along with a third African man with a temporary residence permit who was living with his pregnant partner. But first the presumed victims left for Georgia without notifying the authorities. Then a short video surfaced of a white woman having consensual sex with a black man and a light-skinned man who appears to be her husband. One of the accused testified that he’d been offered money to have sex with the victim, whose account conflicted with the medical report. She was never questioned conclusively, and it is not sure that her husband was in fact robbed. Because Germany has no mutual legal assistance agreement with Georgia, in February 2024, pending the victim’s testimony, the three accused men were released from custody and the trial suspended.

What’s this about?

According to statistics, in the first six months of 2023 there were six rapes in Görlitzer Park and Wrangelkiez to the east. Five were committed in hostels, apartment buildings, and a shop, one in the park. And some of the rape cases involved people who knew each other. So much for the threatening (Black African) drug dealers in public spaces. Rape figures have remained stable in recent years and three times as many crimes occur outside the park as in it.

But facts don’t stop certain parties from warning that Görli is a security risk. For decades, Görlitzer Park and Wrangelkiez have been described as a “crime-ridden area” – one of six such areas in Berlin – where the police can control a person’s identity, search their possessions, and even do a body search without having any specific grounds for suspicion. Park patrons happen upon such “racial profiling” in and around Görli every day.

Rapes also occur in other parks in Berlin. But inconclusive charges sufficed for the mayor to schedule a “security summit” to discuss Görli and Leopoldplatz (in Wedding). Following that, Berlin’s official website announced new activities involving “city government and the districts, the interior and justice departments, prevention and policing […] to combat crime and increase security.” There would be more accommodation and drug-consumption facilities, better maintenance of green areas, increased police presence, up to five days of preventive detention, and video surveillance. Berlin would expand its definition of organized crime to include money laundering, narcotics and arms trafficking, and henceforth investigate crime structures, cryptocurrencies, and new business models. The city would emphasize prevention and programs to help people stay out of organized crime and those in it to get out.

Parts of that plan may not sound so bad…

But it included one dreadful idea: fencing off Görlitzer Park. Erecting lockable doors at all entrances and two huge steel gates at the canal. Replacing some existing wall (much of the original brick wall nearly encircles the park) and building new fences. Installing floodlights to illuminate the park all night. Clear-cutting bushes and underbrush. Closing the park from sundown to sunrise and “if need be,” during the day as well. At the cost of more than €2 million and another €1 million per year to guard the locked park. At a time of constricted budgets, these funds are most likely to be diverted from sorely needed social projects, including those related to drugs.

People who live near Görli and often use the park are horrified. They want it 24/7. They demand social programs and housing for needy park users. Once again, Kreuzbergers have organized in a large number of initiatives, including Wrangelkiez United (with a 13-minute film with those affected by racial profiling),** Görli 24/7: Unser Görli bleibt offen (“Our resistance is motley, creative, diverse, and defiant!”), Görli Zaunfrei; Bündnis für Soziale Sicherheit (“Solidarity instead of law and order!”), and many more.

These groups say the park is for everyone who uses it – not just local residents. They condemn racial profiling and see the issue as the fruit of decades of stigmatizing Kreuzberg SO36 – and the district’s galloping gentrification. In Reichenbergerkiez to the west, luxury condos are being built inside the large courtyards [see my article]. Potential buyers are offered a “pulsating” trendy neighborhood and pricey retreats behind locked gates. Then the new deep-pocketed residents discover drugs, poverty, and unhealthy people in the neighborhood.

But not only do long-time residents often personally know the drug users, and the poor and ailing people in their streets, they also know that locking Görli will push all the dealers into the surrounding streets. They understand that many drug dealers and consumers are homeless and that allowing them to work legally would cause many to leave the trade. Opponents of the fence also place the problem in the context of walls throughout and around the European Union. A mobilization video proclaims: “Berlin doesn’t need more limits and exclusion. Where they build walls, we build a staircase!”

Neighborhood associations and ad-hoc groups have hosted discussions, run guided tours, organized demonstrations, and mounted poster campaigns (“Our Görli Remains Open!”) attacking the mayor’s short-sighted plan to fight crime that will principally deprive them of their park. The district went to court to insist on its legal authority over Görlitzer Park, lost at one level, then had to wait for the Higher Administrative Court of Berlin-Brandenburg to rule on its appeal. Despite announcements that fence construction would begin in June, the Berlin Senat also waited.

Meanwhile…

To prepare for the eventuality that the fence would be authorized, in early September, an “action week” kicked off with an evening of local TV reports on the 2009 action to prevent former Tempelhof Airport from being developed: “Have you ever squatted an airport?” Throughout that day, some 6,000 people approached different sections of the airfield’s fence with humor and determination, repeatedly forcing the police to regroup. Only two managed to get in – but the initiative took off. In the “100% Tempelhofer Feld” referendum of 2014, 64.3% of Berliners voted to ensure that the entire – immense – area will remain accessible for all. With humor and perseverance, Berliners won a major battle against “development” and created a fantastic new public space.

Mayor Wegner is also challenging that success… but that’s another story. For now, the history of Tempelhofer Feld inspires Görli’s defenders.

In a “social summit” held Tuesday, 3 September, local activists and experts addressed some of the major problems that cannot be solved by building a fence with the money needed for social services. That will merely exacerbate them.

Astrid Leicht of Fixpunkt e.V., whose social workers and medical support staff work “to reduce harm and prevent infectious diseases,” explained that the drug scene in Görlitzer Park had grown as a result of increased policing on Leopoldplatz and along the U8 subway line: dealers simply shifted there from Kottbusser Tor after its new €3.24-million police substation opened.

Moro Yapha, “an advocate for migration and human rights,” described the overwhelmingly young African men in Görli, many of whom had had fairly settled lives before losing their apartments or being denied asylum. They didn’t come to Germany to deal drugs, and do whatever they can to financially support their families in Berlin and Africa. Moro wants the positive stories of the dealers’ different cultures and languages to be heard – in a new meeting space. But he also explained that many dealers have become users and urgently need therapy and other social interventions. “A fence and police and security are not the solution. We have social problems and we need a social solution.”

Dirk Schäffer, a consultant on drugs and the criminal system, pointed out that the situation in Görlitzer Park is not unique! Parks are some of the few places where drug addicts can meet. However, these days a lot of cocaine is being smoked in Görli. It’s also used to prepare “crack” and “freebase,” which give faster and more intense highs that are quickly followed by terrible lows. Crack is very addictive, putting users at risk of lung infections, depression, aggressive behavior, paranoia, and schizophrenia. Besides that, the Görli crack users are homeless: they need places to sleep during the day and supervised sites for regulated consumption 24/7. “An illegal environment makes you sick.”

Feminist urban researcher Stephanie Bock addressed “security” and “fear” and the focus on spaces perceived as places to be feared because they lack security infrastructure. She attacked the supposedly feminist analysis: “Women are afraid of violence and violence is a problem: not just for women but also for People of Color and people with disabilities, in Kreuzberg and Tiergarten, too. We have to identify the real problem.” Failed social, immigration, and drug policies compounded by cuts to social facilities and services.

Bock described Görli as a public green space, an “expanded living room” that visitors use for a variety of reasons, including as a safe haven. “A park connects.” Parks can be organized to accommodate different wishes and needs and ideas: “It’s not about closing the park, but rather opening it.”

Criminologist Tobias Singelnschein from Frankfurt wondered out loud why Görli is a “dangerous place.” Over the last 20 years, middle class security has become a bigger and bigger issue, with politicians and the police attempting to objectively solve what are actually subjective concerns about security. “The discussion about Görli and crime has taken on a life of its own. However, when many police are present, there are also many offenses.” In fact, most of the violent offenses occur outside the park. So much for Wegner’s purported “drug and crime problem” in Görli. Most of the offenses there involve drug dealing, immigration law violations, and theft. “Crime” covers many phenomena with many different causes, says Singelnschein. “We have to put aside the misplaced assumptions regarding Görlitzer Park and recognize that there is no quick fix: a fence will only lead to displacement. Instead, we need to discuss both the sense and purpose of police activities within the district and throughout Berlin. Thinking that crime can ever be eradicated is a fallacy.”

Katrin Schiffer from the Correlation Network that studies “drug use, harm reduction and social inclusion” in Amsterdam sent comments about the danger of instrumentalizing groups like drug users and homeless people who, instead of being marginalized and stigmatized, need to be protected. “That takes real, not symbolic, civic participation.”

We know what’s needed. We “get” the problem. It’s structural: unequal opportunity, the prohibition of migrants working legally, neighborhood gentrification, and the cuts to social services that are impoverishing parts of the population.

The 200,000-member German National Cyclists’ Association (ADFC) also weighed in on the subject, criticizing any nighttime closure of the well-used route that cuts through the park for forcing pedestrians and cyclists to take a 700-meter detour – which is definitely not safer.

Beyond these critical social and security issues, thinning or removing existing vegetation “including the roots” (!) to improve visibility for the police would entail massive ecological damage. BUND, the grassroots nature conservation and environmental protection NGO, issued a position paper that describes Görlitzer Park shrubs and undergrowth as breeding habitats for a variety of birds, refuges for fauna, and food sources for birds, insects, and small mammals. They’re also hunting grounds for seven species of bats.

The BUND further notes that floodlights damage trees, and that police and park patrollers have not prevented drugs being dealt in plain sight. Different lighting and extreme pruning “would just harm conservation efforts and reduce visitors’ pleasure in the park instead of minimizing crime.” It adds that ugly clear-cutting and reduced biodiversity would create a less pleasurable park experience and make it less attractive for other social groups. Instead of making Görlitzer Park safe, Wegner’s measures would increase the proportion of drug dealers and users to other visitors. The NGO demands detailed explanations of the plan, a “comprehensive species conservation report and a sustainable lighting concept that protects species.[…] The urban nature in Görlitzer Park must be resolutely protected and maintained.” It notes in passing that targeted maintenance could eliminate the need for radical interventions.

As Görli’s neighbor, I’m also bothered by the thought of the light pollution that all-night illumination would cause. In my backyard that’s just a hop, skip, and a jump from Görli, I love to gaze at the star-studded night sky. In many cities, that’s not possible. Wegner’s plan will dim Berlin’s stars. How dare he? (And by the way, the current lighting along Görli’s footpaths is very attractive.)

Let us not forget that Berlin has become the hottest state in Germany. More environmentalists should get involved in fighting this untenable, unnecessary, and unaffordable project.

All these issues came up on the walking tour of the park on Friday, 6 September. The action week also included one evening of historic videos and reminiscences about the park’s history, another of films about racial profiling and how different cities ensure affordable housing (Berlin looks very bad in comparison), a picnic, a demo, and many opportunities to discuss the way forward. The week’s high point may well have been on Sunday when a few hundred people playfully rehearsed future protests: throwing biodegradable paintballs, writing poems, breaking through a fence and canoeing across the canal to find a bolt cutter.

Not even three weeks later, on 24 September, the state’s Higher Administrative Court ruled that Kreuzberg lacks the authority to use an urgent procedure to fight the fence. It did not rule whether or not the district has a legal right to take action against the Senate. That requires more litigation.

This is not the end of the fight for Görli. Join us.

© Nancy du Plessis 2024

*All quotes are my translations.

** Ignore the terrible automatic translations!

First as a tragedy, then as a farce

Fear and loathing in Austria: Will the FPÖ capitalise to produce the first far-right chancellor in the German speaking world?

Ali Khan
28/09/2024

2024 is the year of the dragon. It is also the long year of elections, with elections being held in 72 countries and 3.7 billion people eligible to participate in them. That makes it the most electorally significant year in human history. The dragon of democracy is raining its cleansing fires on us all; people and planet are melting in the crucible. What pours out remains to be seen.

The grand prix of elections will be held in the United States in November, but this Sunday we will have to sustain our thirst for democracy with the dour drops of bile pouring out of the Danubian republic of Austria.

The old joke is that Austria’s greatest achievement was to convince the world that Hitler was German and that Beethoven was Austrian. Today, walking in a gift shop in Austria, you can find souvenirs saying “No kangaroos in Austria”. Clearly, they have taken the loss of empire better than their perpetually sore neighbours in Hungary. But this election cycle has seen Austria indulge in paranoid fears about decline, the need for restoration. In so doing it revived its longstanding flirtations with Nazism.

The country is prosperous; GDP per capita is higher than Sweden, the median salary for full time work is close to 48,000 euros per year (5% greater than 2021), the unemployment rate is just over 5%. However, inflation has been sharp, with the consumer price index rising by 20% between 2020 and 2023. By contrast, between 2015 and 2020 the consumer price index rose by 8.2%. Net migration had two sharp peaks in 2015 and 2022. That crossed the 100,000 mark in both years, yet overall net migration has been on a downward trend. One could be forgiven for thinking otherwise – based on the xenophobic tenor of every debate. Things can always be better, but these are by no means the conditions that foment a revival of fascism.

So why a mere 5 years after a damaging scandal is the Freedom Party (FPÖ) – a child born of rehabilitated Nazis – in a position to lead the next coalition to govern Austria? Why is a satirical party – die BIER Partei – led by physician-cum-musician-cum-kabarett artist-cum-politician Marco Pogo (real name Dominik Wlazny) – polling close to 4% only 9 years after its founding? Why is it that the communist party of Austria (KPÖ) is vying to scrape into parliament, despite winning just over half a percent in the previous election? We can posit theories. It is tempting to say that Austria simply enjoys being led by the currents it finds itself surrounded by. The idiosyncrasies of its politics are like hors d’oeuvres sampled from the political buffet of the continent.

Unlike its neighbour Germany, Austria is relatively unburdened by the need to feign repentance for its past, nor does it have to play the statesman on the international stage. The FPÖ is no stranger to government, having participated in a coalition as early as 1983, albeit as a much more conventional centrist party. It took a turn to the right in the 90’s under Jörg Haider, pipped the centre-right Austrian Peoples Party (ÖVP) by a mere hundreds of votes in 1999. It re-entered government, splintered and then revived itself under Heinz-Christian Strache to rejoin government in 2017 with Sebastian Kurz.

The Ibiza scandal saw the FPÖ unceremoniously dumped from government. Fresh elections led to the return of the ÖVP in a coalition with the Greens. The former Wunderkind of Austrian politics, was Sebastian Kurz. He weathered the storm of leading the ÖVP-FPÖ coalition as the youngest head of government in the world. But he was ousted because of a corruption scandal of his own a mere two years later.

In normal circumstances, this would pave the way for a third party to fill the void, either an upstart or a traditional mainstay of politics. Enter stage centre-left Andreas (Andi) Babler of the Austrian Social Democrats (SPÖ). Compared to Jeremy Corbyn, Babler is from the left of the party. He defeated the more conservative, anti-immigration Hans Peter Doskozil, only after a clerical error revealed that Babler, and not Doskozil, had won the party’s leadership. This was days after the contest. From relative obscurity as the mayor of Traiskirchen (population circa 21,000), he was raised in comical circumstances to the leader of a national institution. Babler struggled to grip the reigns of a party that was prone to infighting. The SPÖ have neither collapsed in popularity nor soared in the chaos of Austria. Like much of European social democracy, the SPÖ are seen but not heard, and barring deus ex machina will finish third.

It remains possible that the SPÖ might step in eventually to restore a sense of normalcy, but whether that will be with Babler at helm only time will tell. Doskozil remains a national figure, as governor of the Eastern state of Burgenland and a former defence minister. He successfully defenestrated Pamela Rendi-Wagner as leader of the SPÖ, the first woman to lead the party and also the first to be challenged mid-tenure. But he lost out to Babler in a shock upset. The strengthening of the far-right in Austria is likely to embolden Doskozil against Babler, but he will likely bide his time until the distaste left by his failed putsch against Rendi-Wagner fades into memory.

It is the self-styled Volkskanzler Herbert Kickl who has frothed to the top of the Austrian political imaginary. Kickl is best described as a sidekick whose time has come (in German). A party loyalist, he was a speechwriter for Jörg Haider before he split off from the FPÖ to found the Alliance for the Future of Austria (BZÖ). Kickl held fast and became one of his mentor’s harshest critics. Later he served as interior minister in the Strache leadership as well as his lieutenant. Now he leads the party he served his whole political life under a set of ideas that can crudely be tagged as Orbanism with Austrian characteristics. By repute a master of media management, he has a history of pulling the national narrative to himself by pushing the threshold of acceptable language. Referring to himself as a Volkskanzler as opposed to a Systemkanzler in Karl Nehammer, he cleverly draws attention to himself. He used the allusions to Hitlerian propaganda as a cudgel to wield against censorious elites.

It is a well-worn garment and we need not dissect it too much. Two points are worth making however. First, the FPÖ has never come first in an election nor has it ever produced a chancellor in Austria. Should polls bear out, the FPÖ will likely form a coalition with the ÖVP as a senior partner and refuse to compromise on its hardline program. Secondly, the FPÖ is unlikely to breach 30% of the national vote, which the ÖVP and SPÖ did regularly achieve until the mid 2000’s. If the FPÖ produces a far-right chancellor, it will do so enabled thoroughly by parties of the centre, with a plurality of support but by no means a popular mandate, much like the previous Volkskanzler. The depressing reality of Austrian politics is that it is so derivative, and avoidably so.

Decades of grand coalitions between the SPÖ and ÖVP; xenophobic rhetoric preached from the bully pulpits of TV talk shows and national newspapers disguised as mature debates on immigration, weaponized Islamophobia and philosemitism; and an obtuse devotion to forgetting Austria’s sordid role in the Nazi period have – displaced the anger of voters away from neoliberal economic dogma. Austria was, is, and will remain a wealthy country. Yet listening to vox pops on the national broadcaster, a feverish terror of the foreigner prevails. People talk of invasions, Muslim criminals, the ruination of their country as they knew it. Kickl’s promises of restoration are all too predictable and he may as well ask for five years to make Austria unrecognizable. Austria’s diminished position in world affairs afford it the luxury to indulge in this pantomime revival of an episode borne out of the despair of defeat in the First World War.

If there is hope, it lies in obstructing the formation of an extremist coalition. Two glimmers are offered. First, the historic floods in central Europe two weeks before elections might bring climate change back on the agenda, mobilize or persuade voters against the prospect of an obstinately climate denialist government. Second, the parliamentary arithmetic might lock out the potential coalition if both the KPÖ and the BIER party cross the 4% threshold to enter parliament. This has become a focus of campaign messaging by the KPÖ in the final stretch.

That progressive voters in Austria are being urged to vote tactically in a proportional system to clog up the gears of extremism is a nadir by itself. If wishes were horses, beggars would ride – so for now these humble ambitions will have to do. History, however, waits patiently behind the curtain to repeat itself.

Germany’s migration politics and the abuses of solidarity

The new border checks further cement Germany’s and the EU’s move to the right. It is people on the move who suffer the most

Andrei Belibou
27/09/2024

Do the SPD want to be part of the same club as Viktor Orbán? If you asked them, they’d probably say they don’t. But actions speak louder than words, and Orbán himself knows that: on September 10th, he welcomed Chancellor Olaf Scholz “to the club.” Which club? #StopMigration. Scholz was admitted to this less and less exclusive club because of Germany’s decision to reinstate controls on all its land borders starting September 16th.

In the European Parliament, the SPD and Orban’s Fidesz are part of political groups that claim to have little, if anything to do with one another. But Orbán is right to recognize what so many critical commentators have been saying for years, European migration policies and discourses are moving dramatically to his side of the political spectrum, regardless of who is implementing them. German border controls are only the most recent example.

Permanent crisis

When the SPD Federal Minister for the Interior, Nancy Faeser, announced that Germany will impose border control in the heart of the Schengen free-movement area, this came as a shock, but not a surprise. The move might be unprecedented in terms of scale, but it follows measures and declarations that have become increasingly strict and violent. Germany’s parties have been trying to manage the rise of the AfD by imitating its anti-migration stance. Although this strategy has been failing miserably, some still hold on to very dangerously misplaced hopes.

The SPD continue their attempt to lure the AfD’s voter base by promising that they, too, can be hard on immigration. Scholz’s promise to “deport on a massive scale,” made in October 2023, has not been empty. In the first half of 2024, Germany deported 30% more people than in the same period of 2023. The new “Repatriation Improvement Act” made proceedings harsher and faster, leading to the first deportations to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

All of these measures are legitimated by the invocation of security. Germany’s Islamophobic response to the genocide in Gaza made the Schengen border an important tool for policing and oppressing pro-Palestine activists. The knife attack that happened in Solingen on August 23rd, claimed by the Islamic State, brought a new wave of racist moral panic about the dangers of immigration in Germany. Although the number of people seeking asylum in the country has been decreasing, Germany’s borders are supposed to be in a state of emergency, and the situation calls for emergency measures.

According to its various governments, however, Germany has been in a continuous migration crisis for the last 50 years. Measures to combat this crisis are also nothing new. The border controls announced by Faeser are exceptional in name only; controls have been put in place at Germany’s border’s 44 times since 2015. In 2023 alone, those entering Germany from Austria, Poland, Czechia or Switzerland had to go through border checks for a total of 43 weeks.

Not that border controls affect all equally. Faced with criticisms that the new measures will unacceptably slow down traffic and trade, the German government already announced that its border checks are mobile and flexible. They do not target all commuters and travelers, according to a spokesperson from the Ministry of Interior, but only cars where officers notice “hints of people smugglers and cross-border crime.” This is being presented as Germany minimizing the effect that its new measures will have on freedom of movement, but critics have already noted what such “smart controls” will most likely mean: racial profiling and increased abuse against people of color entering Germany.

The fact that the SPD is borrowing from the right’s playbook while claiming to fight it is not the only apparent contradiction in Germany’s migration policy. The newest crackdowns come at a time when migrants are more important to the country’s economic development than ever. Just two days after Faeser’s announcement, the Federal Statistical Office released a report that showed a 25% increase in the recognition of foreign professional qualifications in 2023. It is not only skilled immigration that keeps the German economy running, poor Eastern Europeans are still overworked and underpaid on German farms. Another recent report showed that the second quarter in 2024 saw a record of worked hours in Germany, due in no small part to migrant labor.

As many Germans age out of employment, more and more foreign workers are needed to keep the country afloat and to ensure their retirement. The SPD is, of course, aware of this. Olaf Scholz did not stay at home to see the border controls come into force but was hard at work in Central Asia to solve Germany’s labor and migration problems. On September 15, he signed a bilateral migration deal with Uzbekistan, just one of a recent series of such agreements with Colombia, India, Georgia, Kenya, and Morocco. Besides making the immigration of skilled labor easier, all these agreements also include provisions for facilitating deportation procedures.

Attracting non-European labor force is not a move to increase the freedom of movement, but to make borders stronger as useful tools for racial capitalism. Fortress Europe, of which Germany is a core part, does not only keep people out, but enforces selective admission and control. The border is an instrument of differentiation between good and bad migrants. Good migrants need to be afraid of becoming bad migrants, and stay in their lane as productive, obedient capitalist subjects. There is no contradiction between sharpened border controls and increased reliance on migrant labor. Rather, the former makes the latter possible.

The perversion of solidarity

That is why, although the German border controls have caused a heated debate in European politics, both sides of these discussions are equally hostile to migrants and refugees. The other members of the #StopMigration club are all taking similar, or more drastic measures. Gerd Wilders’s reaction to the news was “If Germany can do it, why can’t we?” and the Netherlands’ government already claimed its own migration emergency and requested to opt out of EU asylum rules. Hungary followed suit while pointing out the hypocrisy of EU attempts to punish its own enforcement of border security while “no one says a word about” Germany’s border checks.

Most importantly, Scholz has the support of the European trendsetter in migration politics. Giorgia Meloni’s government expressed glee at the sight of (allegedly) left-wing parties becoming more aligned with Italy’s own approach to immigration. The appreciation is mutual. Italy’s crackdown on immigration and its project of processing asylum requests in Albania attracted praise from politicians throughout Europe, including Scholz himself, and ensured Meloni’s influence on EU migration policy.

While the Albanian project has not yet been put in practice, the EU has been externalizing its borders to Africa for years. European technology and funds are used by border guards and police forces in places such as Senegal to stop migrants’ journey to Europe, leading to the militarization of African borders and human rights abuses. Italy has been at the forefront of outsourcing European border security to Tunisia, where sub-Saharan migrants trying to reach the Mediterranean are now subject to horrible violence.

So, is the criciticism from other politicians towards Germany’s latest border measures driven by an outrage at the inhumanity of European border politics? Sadly not. Scholz’s detractors have no problem hardening their own borders. Prime minister Donald Tusk called the controls at Poland’s Western border “unacceptable.” On the other side of the country, Polish border guards are now allowed to use live ammunition in their violent response to Belarus’s weaponization of Middle Eastern refugees.

Gerhard Karner, the Austrian interior minister, resolutely stated that his country would not receive any of the migrants that Germany refuses. But Karner ignores Austria’s usage of the same EU mechanism as Germany to impose controls on Schengen borders with Slovakia and the Czech Republic, as well as his own sustained opposition to Romania and Bulgaria’s entry into Schengen due to their insecure borders. Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis also accused Germany of attracting too many migrants because of its welfare policies and declared that the new measures “damage the fundamental achievements of the EU.” The Greek coastguard killing dozens of migrants, however, does not seem to damage any EU achievements.

This is not, to be clear, a matter of hypocrisy or dissonance. Germany’s border controls are indeed widening the cracks within the European project. But they are, at the same time, showing that this project is fundamentally constructed on the instrumentalization, exploitation, and death of migrants. Debates about EU migration policy abound in mentions of “solidarity,” a solidarity that Germany is supposedly betraying. But who is the subject of this solidarity? It is not the migrants who spend years in camps, who are deported to countries where their lives are in danger, who drown in the Mediterranean. It is European nation states.

After all, no EU external borders are controlled by Germany. The new checks on Schengen borders have triggered a new round of discussions about non-European immigration because they affect, as the Austrian response shows, the distribution of refugees and asylum seekers within the EU. In European debates and policies, the matter of who takes in refugees, how many, who pays and who can refuse, are framed as debates about the peaceful and fair cooperation of member states. They are debates about the solidarity that EU government have the duty to show to other members by ensuring that all of them equitably share the burden of welcoming and integrating migrants.

Many, of course, (attempt to) exclude themselves from such mechanisms – and the new EU regulations approved earlier this year will impose a system of “mandatory solidarity.” Germany’s imposing of border controls have been seen as one of the EU’s richest, most powerful countries attempting to shirk its own responsibility for taking in migrants. By seeking to reject asylum seekers at the border and refusing to process them, Germany’s government washes its hands of the people whom, according to critics from the AfD to Mitsotakis, it has been attracting through its lax and generous policies.

Even for some supposedly left commentators, this is a lack of solidarity not towards migrants, but towards other EU member states. Germany refuses to fairly coordinate its policies with other member states and sets a precedent that could lead to a domino effect of closed borders and to the unravelling of EU migration policies. This scenario would obviously hurt people on the move. But calling on Germany to play nice at European politics and lean into the new migration regulations is not a solution. The new CEAS pact’s major shortcomings have been widely criticized, and they will cause only more deaths and detentions.

Within these debates, whose terms are set by murderous EU regulation, solidarity is oriented towards other member states and towards EU citizens. Asylum seekers and refugees appear only as objects, as numbers and bodies, as tools for power plays and political games. Criticism of Germany’s new measures is necessary, but as long as the critique remains within this framework, it is fundamentally limited. It continues presenting migrants as a burden, as an amorphous threat and competitor to Europeans citizens, whose damaging effects need to be minimized through the right combination of policies and politicking.

A radical reorientation of solidarity is needed, one that is based on a very basic concept: migrants, regardless of legal status, of citizenship, or of the reason why they are on the move, are people, and the discourse about migration should be about their needs and wellbeing. True solidarity is not the one that Scholz shows, or refuses to show, to Greece or Poland. True solidarity is practiced by movements and groups who protect and welcome refugees, and who have to fight against EU laws and institutions to ensure a minimal degree of justice.

Spain prepares for the first general strike in solidarity with Palestine

Day of action taking place today

Roser Gari Perez

On 27 September, workers in Spain are called to a general strike and day of action in solidarity with Palestine. The anarcho-syndicalist trade unions Confederación General del Trabajo (CGT) and the Confederación Sindical Solidaridad Obrera (Confederación Sindical Solidaridad Obrera) are calling for the strike. Some 200 associations and groups, including political, feminist, student, environmental and Palestine solidarity associations such as Samidoun and Alkarama, Anticapitalistas, BDS Madrid and Ecologistas en Acción are participating either in the strike or in the day of actions. On Friday, rallies, actions, demonstrations and events have been called in 58 cities throughout Spain.

Solidarity with Palestine and Lebanon is the main focus of the day. An international solidarity of the working class that uses its best weapons, the strike and mobilisation in the streets to demand the Spanish government to cut all relations with the Zionist state.

In a video presented at the press conference sent from Gaza, Fayez, head of the Union of Independent Women Workers’ Committees, thanked the trade unions, social movements and all those who are fighting for the Palestinian people. In the video, he explains the terrible situation in Gaza and the right of the Palestinians to resistance, independence and self-determination.

He also points out the culprits and the shameful response of the international community and demands that international agreements be implemented and the culprits brought to justice.

Fayez asks not to remain quiet and act now, to do everything to stop the indiscriminate killing in Gaza.

Following his plea, a few days before the first anniversary of Israel’s accelerated genocide of the Palestinian people and after 76 years of occupation, ethnic cleansing and apartheid, participants of the strike and day of action will demand of the Spanish government to move from words to deeds.

The Spanish government’s recognition of the state of Palestine has had great repercussions internationally and has largely succeeded in concealing the fact that Spain ranks 5th among EU countries that have exported the most arms and ammunition to Israel since October. Despite Pedro Sánchez’s statements in Congress in April that ‘since 7 October, Spain has not been carrying out any arms sales operations with Israel, none’, Spain has not only continued to buy arms from Israel and award contracts to companies, but has also continued to send arms.

The government claims that the contracts and licences for the arms exported to Israel date from before 7 October 2023, but according to a study by the Delàs Centre for Peace Studies, to which Olga Rodríguez had access for eldiario.es, the purchase/sale of arms with Israel in the last year has not changed much compared to previous years.

In the months following October, for example, Spain sent ammunition worth almost 1 million euros. Moreover, it has not stopped importing arms from the Zionist state, transactions whose value and quantity are unknown thanks to national and international business networks and the Official Secrets Act. The government has also awarded public contracts to Israeli companies worth 1027 million euros. Among these companies are the military companies Elbit Systems and Rafael. This has led the Delàs centre’s researchers to state that ‘despite the extreme seriousness of Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip, Spain’s military relations with Israel have not changed substantially since 7 October’.

The number of arms ships that have docked in Spanish ports is also unknown. The Borkum scandal and the weeks that followed highlighted the complex international network employed by arms dealers that complicates scrutiny, as well as the lack of transparency of the Spanish government.

The opacity of arms trade with Israel is not new, as according to information published by Público, in 2014 the Spanish government signed a confidentiality agreement in perpetuity with the Israeli Ministry of Defence covering the arms trade between the two countries.

It is therefore hardly surprising the attitude of the current government that, although there are more than enough reasons and evidence for it to assume the obligations it has as a signatory to the Convention for the Prevention of Genocide, it does not establish a total arms embargo on Israel as requested by Spanish civil society and the United Nations rapporteur for the Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese.

That is why people in Spain are going on strike and why they will take the streets in the hundreds of planned actions and demos. To demand an end to complicity with the genocide and for Spain to cut all relations with the genocidal state of Israel.

With a free Palestine already on the horizon, it is time for all of us to redouble our efforts and show the mercenaries of war that the people united will never be defeated.

“If they touch one of us, they touch us all”

An interview with Charly Fernandez by Cherry Adam and Ksenia Krauer-Pacheco discussing the role of Argentinian social movements acting as a force for social cohesion.

The Left Berlin
25/09/2024

Charly Fernandez is an Argentinian activist and a member of FOL (Frente de Organizaciones en Lucha), a social organization dedicated to empowering the most marginalized families within the Argentine working class. FOL strives to self-organize and advocate for the rights of these families, aiming to improve their material, social, and cultural conditions of life.

Since the election of Javier Milei, who is known for his feverish anarcho-capitalist fantasies, there has been a widespread media and discursive campaign against social organizations. The attack has been centred on the belief that individuals receiving social aid do not work, painting them as barriers to Argentina’s efforts to overcome its socio-economic challenges.

Nevertheless, FOL remains steadfast in its goals, which include advocating for fair employment with decent wages and working conditions, promoting gender equality, the emancipation of women and dissidents, and fighting for improved access to healthcare, education, housing and suitable living conditions. Additionally, FOL is committed to defending the rights of indigenous peoples, children, and youth, as well as advocating for human rights, access to culture, and recreation.

Tell us more about you and when you started organizing and advocating for the rights of the marginalised.

I have been an activist since I was quite young. I started during the process that began in Argentina with the 2001 assemblies. This was during the closing of the convertibility cycle, the first wave of strong neoliberal measures, and globalization.

Argentina’s exit was an exit from a lot of social conflict – very different from what is happening now. At that time, there was a tendency towards the left, where people began to register in popular assemblies, factories were taken over, and soup kitchens and work co-operatives were organized.

It was a time of great political participation, and I was one of those young people who began joining resistance assemblies. We started organizing ourselves in a situation where our neighbors and families suffered the consequences of years of neoliberal policies and unemployment.

How was the political movement at that time? How did it evolve?

These assemblies rotated from more central locations to neighborhoods and the countryside, especially the city’s shantytowns. However, my activism was in Buenos Aires. The process in other provinces and even in the Buenos Aires metropolitan area was different, so we began to form a link with comrades who came from movements of unemployed workers who had started to organize long before.

From that experience, I became involved with a group of comrades until we formed FOL, Frente de Organizaciones en Lucha. This front is a mix of movements: the MTD (Movimiento de Trabajadores Desocupados), the MTR (Movimiento Teresa Rodríguez – also an MTD), and others. We are talking about the year 2000, 2001.

Today, we continue to build our organizations, but now we are in almost all the country’s provinces. We have developed work co-operatives where many comrades work, from services to productive units to housing. We also have comrades who live in rural environments, and in these cases, there are also food production co-operatives and other types of things that do not exist in the cities.

How is it today?

Today, social movements, and we, in particular, do complex territorial work. It is not that we only attend a soup kitchen or a popular dining room. We have a framework of different spaces of intervention and spaces of health, gender, and environment that promote rights and articulate struggles.

For more than twenty years, we have been winning partial victories, and from those partial victories, we have been winning rights that have often been transformed into devices or public policies.

Are these organizations an alternative to what the State should do and provide for the people?

The lack of fundamental rights for colleagues to join the formal labor market and access to housing or health means that social organizations begin to take over this role. Many times, we’ve been accused of being a “para-state” or an outsourcing of the state. But what happens is that if we are not there? There is nothing. In reality, the alternative is narco-criminal gangs, as has happened in other places in Latin America.

One of the things that we are discussing today with all politicians is: look, the pandemic showed it. If social movements are not building territory, building community, and being part of the social network, there will be narco-criminal gangs. We, the social organizations, have limited and have acted as a barrier against the development of these gangs. The most robust movements are rural rather than urban.

Do you see parallels between Argentina’s form of social organization and other social movements in Latin America?

I have had the opportunity to travel to other countries in Latin America and talk to comrades about this. The role that we play is not against the government apparatus. The problem is that there is a territorialized, armed, millionaire force (narco-criminal gangs), and the state is impotent. So, what we tell them is: do you think that the drug traffickers are going to intervene, and then they won’t try to play in politics and to try to lead the country or lead states?

That is what happens in many places in Latin America. We see that there is a minimum democratic consensus, the understanding that organizations are not part of the problem but rather part of the solution.

What is the situation of the social movements in Argentina and Milei?

We have achieved family allowances, access to resources on gender violence in companies, education, and financing for building popular neighborhoods. All these were achieved not because of the goodwill of the government in power but because there were comrades who died fighting in the streets for this.

They call us the “CEOs of Poverty.” We are “poverty managers.” That is the problem, isn’t it? But, if one looks at how the picket movement began, how the social movements began, and all the rights that have been achieved in the neighborhoods over the years, of course, they want to destroy us.

There was a minimum wage, and the only thing we did was raise the salary ceiling during all these years. We have achieved family allowances, access to resources on gender violence in companies, education, and financing for building popular neighborhoods. All these were achieved not because of the goodwill of the government in power but because there were comrades who died fighting in the streets for this.

And, well, this is what the political class, the establishment, and the capital seem willing to do: destroy and eliminate these rights. Milei has been sent to execute this plan. But if we ask other sectors of politics, they will say exactly the same.

Is there a possibility of co-operation between these movements from below? Does it make sense to co-operate, even with these structural differences?

It is necessary. There is a clear coordination of the global far-right. It’s not a coincidence that Milei comes to Spain to meet with Vox (the ultra-right party in Spain), goes to meetings in the United States, or is invited to Austria to receive an honorary title.

All these societies and think-tanks are part of the apparatus of these digital militias — devices and networks created to fight a cultural battle of aggression and social control.

There is co-ordination, a kind of global far-right international acting, financing itself, and taking over states where they can. And they are saying it everywhere. Milei said it in Davos: we must break with everything progressive, gender culture, ‘woke’ or whatever you call it.

What is your wish or hope for the international left movements and the ones in Germany? How can they show solidarity with the popular movements in Argentina?

We see that there are no such networks of articulation on the side of left-wing progressivism. If there are, they have become old, bureaucratized, and institutionalized, as we see in the social movements in our region, Latin America, and here in Germany. We need to strengthen those ties. The advances we achieve in Argentina, or those achieved here in Berlin or Brazil, will depend on the levels of resistance we can build.

We must build on the idea that ”if they touch one of us, they touch us all,” an old slogan of the international left, emancipatory movements, and national liberation. All movements try to survive, resist, and face daily state repression battles. But we must undertake this task because this is on a global scale.

The mission now is to talk with other comrades and ask ourselves: How do we build a roadmap, understanding our origins and the different ideological perspectives in the international movement? This is a central task.

We are strengthening ties with the comrades of El Bloque Latinoamericano in Berlin, obviously because we are close. Many of us have been activists, and we have known each other and our comrades in their countries of origin. Our actions range from concrete aid to raising awareness about what is happening in Latin America.