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Lessons from the Kamala Harris campaign for the coming German election

You can’t fight racism by trying to be more racist


01/12/2024

As we pore over the ruins of post-election USA, various commentators have rushed to conclusions. Some say that Kamala Harris lost because voters were too racist, too sexist, or too Transphobic. Others go further and blame Muslims and Palestine activists for being too concerned about genocide to vote in their own interests. The main conclusions of these analyses is that the USA is irredeemably reactionary, and that the next Democrat candidate must tack even further to the right.

What these commentators downplay, or downright ignore, is that Harris ran a terrible campaign. The voting figures show that Harris lost the campaign rather than Trump winning it. Michael Roberts reports that, “contrary to the usual hype of a ‘massive voter turnout,’ fewer Americans eligible to vote bothered to do so compared to 2020. Then over 158m voted, this time the vote was down to 153m. The voter turnout of those eligible fell to 62.2% from the high of 65.9% in 2020.”

One should be careful with such figures, as voting turnout was generally up on previous elections, but with nearly all votes counted, Associated Press reports that 76,851,910 people voted for Trump and 74,348,719 for Harris. This compares to the 2020 figures of 81,283,501 for Biden and 74,223,975 for Trump. This means that although Trump had a slight gain in voters, the real story is of the 7 million voters, who were no longer prepared to vote Democrat.

Despite her massive failure, Harris saw no problems in her campaign as reported by Piotr Smolar in Le Monde: “Despite the scale of her defeat, there was no trace of regret, only gratitude for the unwavering support of her heartbroken campaign volunteers. ‘I’m so proud of the race we ran. And the way we ran it.’” After she announced that she may run again in 2028, US Americans should be very scared.

This does not just affect the USA. With elections due in Germany this February, it is high time to ask why Harris ran such an unsuccessful campaign. I fear that German liberal and Left parties are about to repeat the same mistakes. Is this inevitable? Can the Left succeed if it merely offers a watered down version of old right wing politics? If not, do we have a convincing vision of something else?

Apeing Trump

For all the claims that Harris’s campaign was too left wing, on many issues, she was barely distinguishable from her right wing opponent. When asked what would distinguish her presidency from Biden’s, she initially said: “not a thing comes to mind,” then, “Listen, I plan on having a Republican in my Cabinet. You ask me what’s the difference between Joe Biden and me, well that will be one of the differences.”

As Gabriel Winant remarked: “the only issues on which Harris hinted of a break with Biden concerned more favorable treatment of the billionaires who surrounded her, and her closest advisers included figures like David Plouffe, former senior vice president of Uber, and Harris’s brother-in-law Tony West, formerly the chief legal officer of Uber, who successfully urged her to drop Biden-era populism and cultivate relations with corporate allies.”

On the campaign trail, Harris surrounded herself with right wingers, including Liz Cheney, accurately described by Elaine Godfrey as “the pro-life, ultraconservative daughter of Dick.” This was not a great move in a campaign for which one of the main issues was abortion rights. Godrey talked to “Brittany Prime, a self-identified moderate Republican and a co-founder of the anti-Trump organization Women4US,” who said that, “they assure voters that backing a Democrat ‘doesn’t mean you aren’t a Republican anymore’.” 

Although Naomi Klein supported Harris as a lesser evil to Trump, she commented: “she’s sending a message to that base that, ‘Sorry, you know, I’m more interested in Liz Cheney and Dick Cheney and getting Republicans than I am interested in listening to Palestinians, to Muslims, to Arabs, to the left generally, to the antiwar forces.’ She’s told us we’re irrelevant.”

The consequences of this strategy were largely ignored by commentators. In order to win a popular vote, you need people to drum up support, and to get their friends and neighbours to vote for and campaign for you. Harris’s campaign created a disillusionment in the party base, which could not be compensated by the $5 billion spent by the Democrats on campaign ads (significantly more than that was spent by the Republicans).

Throwing migrants under the bus

Nowhere was Harris’s flirtation with right wing politics more evident than in her statements on migration. Rather than criticizing Trump for his racist pleas to “Build the Wall” between the USA and Mexico, she complained that Trump “has been talking a big game about securing our border, but he does not walk the walk.” At the same time, when asked about Trump’s wall she answered, “I’m not afraid of good ideas where they occur.”

The former cop criticized Trump from the right, saying, “How much of that wall did he build? I think the last number I saw is about 2 percent. And then when it came time for him to do a photo op you know where he did it? In the part of the wall that President Obama built.” Her campaign highlighted the border security bill, which the Democrats cobbled together with the support of the far-right white nationalist National Border Patrol Council.

Adam Johnson summarizes the bill as promising “$8 billion in emergency funding for ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], including $3 billion to increase detentions; a mechanism to ‘shut down’ the border if a certain number of people cross; $7 billion in emergency funding for Customs and Border Protection; and a continuation of Trump’s border wall.” Harris complained that the Republicans scuppered the bill and promised to enforce it if she won the election.

Harris could have argued, as Michael Roberts does, that, “if immigration growth slacks off or if a new administration introduces severe curbs or even bans of immigration, US economic growth and living standards will suffer.” She could have made a positive and inspirational plea for unity and solidarity, or simply taken a principled stand. Instead, she pandered to Trump’s racism 

Johnson concludes, “the decision to wildly contradict the party’s previous position on immigration and take a hard-right turn signals to every constituent member of the tenuous Democratic coalition that they — at any point it is deemed convenient — are entirely expendable. A myopic ethos in a party that’s constantly flabbergasted as to why it has such unenthusiastic support and low voter turnout.”

It’s the economy, stupid

Commentators differ about whether or not the economy improved under Biden. But most agree that public perception was that it had gotten worse. Many articles cite a poll in Fortune magazine, which found that, “some two-thirds (67%) of voters said the condition of the economy was ‘not good/poor,’ and that ‘any macroeconomic gains were entirely overshadowed by voters’ feelings about the dollars and cents in their own personal budgets.”

Another poll, by AP News reported that, “about 9 in 10 voters were very or somewhat concerned about the cost of groceries, and about 8 in 10 were concerned about their health care costs, their housing costs or the cost of gas.” And one from CNN said that, “in 2020, just about one-fifth of voters said they were doing worse than four years before. This year, it’s nearly half of voters who say they are doing worse than four years ago. Trump won them overwhelmingly.”

Such fears are based on real facts. According to Gabriel Winant: “By the middle of his term, Biden had become a de facto austerity president, overseeing the lapse of welfare state expansions, including not just the loss of the child tax credit and temporary cash relief but the retrenchment of SNAP and the booting of millions off Medicaid, all during a period of unified Democratic control.”

A March 2024 poll by KFF found that about half of U.S. adults said it is difficult to afford health care costs. One in four adults said that in the past 12 months they have skipped or postponed getting the healthcare they needed because of the cost. 21% said they had not filled a prescription because of the cost. 41% reported having debt due to medical or dental bills.

Even if the fears were baseless and Biden had presided over a flourishing US economy, the candidates were faced with many voters who felt that things were getting worse. How did they react? Harris arrogantly told voters that they were mistaken, whereas Trump said that he felt their pain and offered solutions. It does not matter that Trump’s “solutions” were racist and impractical. Many voters were desperate for change and saw that Harris was promising more of the same.

Harris patronised voters, confirming their belief that she was an establishment figure, who could not understand their lives. This was deeply reminiscent of Hillary Clinton’s campaign of 2016, which was equally unable to stop Trump. As Naomi Klein said, “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that it’s wealthier, you know, well-educated people who are still resonating with Harris, and it’s people who are closest to the pain going, ‘What are you talking about? You know, this is not a joyful moment. You’ve got to earn our joy.’”

Even if the economy is doing better, this does not mean that the wealth will trickle down to the majority of people. Economist Michael Roberts wrote, “between 2020-2023, real pretax income growth for the bottom 50% of income earners in the US was basically zero. Prices of goods and services are up over 20% since the end of the pandemic and for basic foodstuffs and services it is even higher. Moreover, the huge hike in interest rates by the Federal Reserve to ‘control’ inflation drove up mortgage rates, insurance premiums, car lease payment and credit card bills.”

How important was Palestine?

In an ABC poll after the election, voters were asked which one of five issues most affected their vote. Just 4% said foreign policy, compared to 14% who said abortion, 32% for the economy, 12% immigration and 34% the state of democracy. At first sight, Palestine (which, after all, is only part of US foreign policy) did not significantly affect the election results.

While it might be true that Palestine had little effect on primary voting intentions, it became symbolic of a government which had become arrogant and out of touch. Gallup reported that a clear majority of US Americans opposed Israel’s actions in Gaza, but the Biden government, with Harris as proud Vice President, never wavered from its moral, financial, and military support for Israel.

Mitchell Plitnick argues in Mondoweiss, “Gaza became a symbol for the lack of substance among the Democrats and their manifest policy failures. The Democrats’ response to the horror their own constituents have expressed at what we are doing in Gaza produced a revulsion that alienated many voters.”

People saw the links between huge financial support for Israel and insecurity and repression at home. A Tweet by Nina Turner put it succinctly, “It’s not much deeper than the Democratic Party telling Americans that the economy was booming and calling it ‘Bidenomics’ while people struggled to afford rent and groceries. Then they funded a genocide and came after those who spoke out.”

Early in her campaign, Harris did recognise the need to offer lip service to Palestinian pain, saying, for example, “This year has been difficult, given the scale of death and destruction in Gaza and given the civilian casualties and displacement in Lebanon, it is devastating. And as president, I will do everything in my power to end the war in Gaza, to bring home the hostages, end the suffering in Gaza.” 

Even in this speech, she promised to guarantee the security of Israel and was low on detail on how she would get any of this done. At the Democratic Convention in Chicago, the Democratic establishment denied speaking rights to any Palestinian. Meanwhile pro-Israel hawks like Ritchie Torres were sent to campaign in Michigan.

Gabriel Winant reported on the response of people attending the Democratic National to demonstrators outside who were chanting the names and ages of dead Palestinian children: “The attendees did not simply ignore the demonstration, as one might have expected; rather, they exaggeratedly plugged their ears, made mocking faces, and, in one notable case, sarcastically mimicked the chant: ‘Eighteen years old!’”

There were two key moments in Michigan, home to the largest US-Arab community, where the Harris campaign showed its utter contempt for people campaigning against genocide. The first was Harris’s now infamous speech, where she told protestors to shut up because “I’m speaking.” The second was just 5 days before the election when she sent Bill Clinton to tell a rally that Hamas “forced” Israel to kill Palestinian civilians.

Palestine may not have been the key issue for most voters, but for many, particularly those with murdered relatives in the area, it was very important. Once more, the Democrats’ arrogance and indifference to their audience lost them not just potential voters and campaigners, but also the moral high ground, even though they were campaigning against a racist, sexist convicted felon. 

What does this mean for the upcoming German elections?

On the same day that US-Americans learned that Trump would be president, the German government fell after the governing parties were unable to agree on a budget. There will be new elections in February, and the prospects do not look good for Leftists and liberals of any denomination.

Just as in the USA, many votes will be made in response to Germany’s stumbling economy, which, according to Professor Timo Wollmershäuser, “is stuck and languishing in the doldrums, while other countries are feeling the upswing.” 

Volkswagen recently announced a 60% drop in profits and the closure of 3 factories, with consequent job losses. If Trump imposes tariffs, as he has threatened, the German car industry will be further hit. The US is Volkswagen’s second largest export market after China, with 400,000 cars exported in 2023. 

Volkswagen also announced dividends of 6.5% for their shareholders, which shows just who is benefitting from the crisis. The CDU, likely winners of the next election, are promising an Agenda 2035, a follow-up to Gerhard Schröders Agenda 2020 which was a massive attack on the unemployed. This will result in further attacks on social services, and an even larger gap between rich and poor.

And in the wings, the increasingly fascist AfD is waiting. Having already achieved massive success in local elections in East Germany, the AfD is currently polling as Germany’s second most popular party, and expecting significant gains at the coming snap election.

The response of Germany’s Left-liberal parties 

How have parties like the SPD and the Greens responded to the rising fascist threat? In January this year, it was reported that prominent members of the AfD had attended a meeting with “the head of the right-wing extremist Identitarian Movement and neo-Nazi activists to discuss a masterplan for the mass deportation of migrants and ‘non-assimilated’ German citizens or what both sides call ‘remigration’.” 

It was difficult for left-liberal parties to take the moral high ground. The previous October, SPD Chancellor Olaf Scholz had appeared on the front cover of Spiegel magazine with the headline, “We have to deport people more often and faster.” One month earlier and in the same magazine, Green Foreign Secretary Annalena Baerbock had called for increased deportations. 

The Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW), a supposedly left wing break from Die Linke, has consistently taken a hard line on refugees. After a knife attack in Solingen by a Syrian refugee, Wagenknecht called on Scholz to “send a stop signal to the world. The welcome culture is over.” Wagenknecht called for a “turning point in refugee policies,” and issued a racist 6-point policy plan.

Worried about the threat from the AfD, the mainstream parties seem to think that they can fight racism with more racism. I hate to quote the old fascist Jean-Marie Le Pen, but as he said back in 1991, people prefer the original to the copy. 

When French parties tried a similar strategy in the 1980s, this legitimized the French fascist party the Front National (now Rassemblement National). The whole discussion in French society moved to the right, and FN ideas — which had previously belonged to the racist fringe — became respectable.

Die Linke: the abstention party

On the same day the US election results were announced and the German government fell, that same government passed an antisemitism resolution, which could lead to widescale deportations of Palestinians and their supporters. How did Die Linke, the party of the Left, respond? It abstained. And when the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) brought in an amendment which slightly improved the motion, Die Linke abstained again. Rather than being a leader of social movements, or a consistent fighter against racism, Die Linke has become the abstention party.

It is not just Gaza. On Ukraine, on fighting fascism, on the environment, Die Linke has failed to take a lead. It has abstained — sometimes literally, sometimes metaphorically. Is it any wonder that it is haemorraging voters to the nationalist, racist BSW?

We are facing an election campaign in which migration will play a large role, and most parties are competing with each other for who can attack refugees the most. Even Die Linke abstained on the antisemitism resolution — something that has become increasingly common in a party which is petrified of taking a position that might be controversial.

Die Linke is planning a “Haustürwahlkampf” — a house door election campaign, consisting of knocking on people’s doors and asking them what they think. It sounds great, an exercise in democracy. But what do you say to people who say they’re for genocide, or that they’re a racist? Will the election campaign just be an extension of the current policy of abstaining on anything which might be unpopular?

Conclusion

This is not just about elections, which are only a small part of the political process. Basing your politics on saying what you think people want to hear does not just risk them dismissing you as an insincere opportunist. It also means abdicating any principles, and giving up on trying to change people’s minds. There are some subjects which will lose you votes in an election. This does not mean that we should stop talking about them and fighting for them.

In the USA and in Germany, it is increasingly clear that we cannot rely on parliamentarians to fight our battles for us. We need to build a principled extra-parliamentary opposition based on solidarity, anti-racism and unconditional support for Palestinians.

The best way of getting the politicians we deserve is to build a mass movement that they cannot ignore. If this or that politician takes a principled stance, I welcome them for it. But I will leave the last word to the Clyde Workers Committee of 1915. This statement applies to trade union leaders, but it is just as suitable for any career politician, “We will support the officials just ‘so long as they rightly represent the workers, but we will act independently immediately they misrepresent them.”

 

Irish Election 2024: A Preview

A Left Government may still be too elusive to be the final nail for Civil War politics


29/11/2024

With the 2024 election in the Republic of Ireland taking place this Friday, the insights of someone not living there and unable to vote are actually a testament to one of the prevailing features of Irish life – emigration. Even if the current waves of people leaving take on the distinct characteristics of the past, its causes still highlight some of the main issues at stake in this election. While before, young Irish people were leaving the island in search of work and prosperity, those leaving today are doing so more out of choice than desperation, although a certain amount of desperation still exists.

Irish young people are better educated and earn more than ever before, but their rates of home ownership are lower than any previous generation. With a very low number of apartments, and a high proportion of precarious rental arrangements, home ownership has historically been a goal for many young Irish people, even marking the full transition to adulthood. Many have joked that committing to a mortgage is a bigger decision than the commitment to marriage. This will be the third election in a row where housing is a key factor in voters’ calculations going into the polls. It seems as if land has become the leading social issue in Ireland once again.

With house and rent prices rising and not looking set to slow down any time soon, even the well-educated and those with good jobs find it difficult to pay these prices. Those earning between €50,000 and €100,000 cannot afford to buy a home.  Many who were living in Dublin decided that if they were going to pay London-level rents, they may as well be in London. Many others have moved to Australia or have committed to saving for their own place while still living at home with their parents. Emigration rose to 70,000 in 2024, the highest level since 2015. Almost half of these emigrants were between 25 and 44 years old, the age when people would normally be expected to buy their first home.

Every political party has their own plan for housing, although the reliability of their ambitions is still to be tested. The reliability of Fine Gael, a member of the ruling coalition, has however already been tested, seeing it struggle to provide an answer. A recent statement by leader Simon Harris said his government would commit €40 billion to build 300,000 homes. Some quick division shows that this means about €130,000 per house, at least €200,000 below the current national average house price, not even accounting for the higher prices in the areas where these houses need to be built.

While the previous depressing news that Fine Gael were doing well in the polls has subsided, it is remarkable how resilient the party is after being in power since 2011. This will warrant an in-depth post-election analysis. Their distinction from the other party in the ruling coalition, Fianna Fáil, has become so minor that even establishment politicians are starting to see their collaboration as a clever double act. Just as in 2016, after a term of government working in tandem, the two parties now try to make the election about how completely different they are from each other, while claiming that the main opposition party, Sinn Féin, can’t be trusted. At least one of these two parties has served in every government in Ireland since the founding of the state. But neither of the two “Civil War” parties are able to form a government on their own anymore, fuelling hope for those seeking progressive change, and possibly a left-wing government.

Since 2016, this beacon has been provided by Sinn Féin who, after an extended period in opposition, have increasingly been marketing themselves as a moderate centrist party to court middle-class voters. Far-right protestors are blaming them for a conflicting stance on immigration. This is what many analysts use to explain their poor performance in the last local elections. That said, it is potentially a good thing for the party that this reactionary element of their support base seems to have vacated it.

A common feature of past coalitions in Ireland is that the smallest party in government takes a severe beating in the next election. This was true for the Greens in 2011 and Labour in 2016 (just the most recent example of such a beating for them). This does not seem to be the case this time around, with the Green party still polling around 4% along with the other social democratic parties, Labour and the Social Democrats, whose differences are so small that it has often come up that they should merge.

Due to the quirks of the Irish electoral system, voters often express preferences between individuals. You can even vote for which candidate within a political party you prefer. This has often led to entertaining infighting from party members who share a constituency, but also produces independent candidates and small parties campaigning on local issues. About 20% of the Irish parliament is made up of these “Independents and Others”. While it may seem ridiculous for “parish politics” to have a national audience, given local government’s toothlessness, it does serve at least one purpose. It can lead to genuinely progressive views getting a place in the national legislature, for example in the form of People Before Profit. At the same time, it can also lead to embarrassing displays from millionaires cosplaying as local heroes fighting for the little man up in Dublin (see the Healy-Raes).

Given that most of the far-right tendencies are coming in the form of these independent candidates or small party groupings, there is no immediate cause for concern about a far-right takeover of the parliament. But recent riots and protests in Dublin still loom large, and the threat is not to be taken lightly.

There has been much discussion of a “left government” coalition, led by Sinn Féin and supported by the other left parties and left-leaning independents. Given Sinn Féin’s moves towards the centre, joining them would be a risky move for any leftwing party hoping to maintain its position in the parliament as a defender of radical alternatives. Voicing strong opposition and representing the activist left is a serious position held by parties like People Before Profit and independent candidates like Clare Daly, and should not be traded in lightly for a few junior ministries. A step into government to wage tireless battles with centrist politicians would risk undermining this.

Regardless of who comes out on top in the election, or who forms a coalition, the housing and cost of the living crisis is so dire and plans to solve it so ambitious that they would require a vast amount of external pressure for any government and bureaucracy to act accordingly. After the vote on Friday, those seeking change will need to stay active and demand what they voted for through direct action and public protest. These problems cannot wait another five years for your say. 

Austerity in Berlin: Fighter Jets Instead of Electric Busses

Austerity is going to hit us all like an SUV plowing into a pedestrian. The cuts serve to finance militarism.


27/11/2024

Austerity is going to hit us all like an SUV plowing into a pedestrian. Berlin’s government, the Senat formed by the conservative CDU and the social democratic SPD, has agreed to a budget for 2025 with three billion euros in cuts. As rbb reports, everything in the city is going to get worse:

  • the transportation budget will be cut by 660 million euros. Soon, a monthly train ticket will go from €29 to €71 — an increase of almost 250%. The “social ticket” for unemployed people will more than double in price, from €9 to €19.
  • this also means that big investments in public transport, like new tram lines and electric busses, will be cancelled. 
  • new bike lanes will also be cancelled — even though they barely cost anything.
  • another 350 million euros are being cut from education, youth, and family programs. This means schools will have fewer, and worse paid, teachers, as their facilities continue to crumble. Day care is already in crisis, and will only get worse.
  • some 40 percent will be cut from programs against gender-based violence, including women’s shelters.
  • the biggest protests so far have been in the cultural sector, where 130 million euros — 12 percent of the budget — are disappearing. Theaters and museums will have to reduce their offers. The Free Museum Sundays are over.  
  • and as rents explode, the government is cutting hundreds of millions of euros from affordable housing.

This is just a few highlights of what’s getting worse. Some line items are not getting cut, however:

  • the Polizei budger is set to go up by about 3 percent — all the repression against the Palestine solidarity movement is not cheap!
  • the government wants to keep building the inner-city highway A100 through Friedrichshain — which is projected to cost 1.8 billion euros for a few kilometers, making it the most expensive highway ever built in Germany.
  • there is also no shortage of money for deporting people to Afghanistan, which requires paying indirect bribes to the Taliban.

When politicians say there is no money, it’s fascinating how they completely ignore the 100 billion euro “special fund” for the military (on top of the military budget of over 50 billion each year). 

Another number: Germany’s billionaires pay very little in taxes. If they paid the same rate they owed just a few decades ago, the state could easily get 100 billion euros in extra revenue. When the corporate landlord Vonovia swallowed its competitor Deutsche Wohnen, it used a tax trick to avoid one billion euros in taxes. Generally, realty speculators pay almost no taxes in Berlin. In other words, the cuts to our standard of living will subsidize German oligarchs.

The worst part about austerity is its long-term effects. The ongoing crisis at the BVG is the result of austerity policies from 20 years ago, under the social democratic finance senator Thilo Sarrazin (who has since become Germany’s most shameless racist demagogue). Investments that get cancelled now will be felt for decades to come.

Yet nothing will happen without resistance. Culture workers have already organized demonstrations. The GEW union, which organizes teachers and daycare workers, has called for a one-day strike on December 5 (part of a long series of teachers’ strikes).

With Germany set to go to the polls on February 23, there is a surprising level of consensus among German parties. They want fighter jets instead of electric busses. They want us to be poorer so that a handful of Nazi billionaires can get even bigger yachts. Even the left party Die Linke offers no alternative: they have often been in government in Berlin, and they have carried out the exact same austerity programs as the SPD and the CDU.

When they demand more money from us each month to take the train, they are handing our cash straight to the arms industry. In order to defend our standard of living, and maybe even improve it a bit, we need to say: not one cent for militarism!

A Corrective to Transphobic Pseudoscience

Statement on Dr. Ingeborg Kraus’ public stance against trans healthcare by Dr. Lara Werkstetter


In my clinical work I have gotten to know many transgender people—that is, people who do not identify with their biological sex, but rather with the opposite sex in many cases, and in some other cases, neither sex (non-binary persons).

With great astonishment and a certain disbelief, I read Dr. Ingeborg Kraus’ article and listened to the associated TV interview. In the latter she mentioned having the authority to write corresponding appraisal letters. What she apparently was referring to are psychological letters of indication, a prerequisite for hormone therapy and gender-aligning surgical measures. This authority is one which every psychotherapist is entitled to. Per her own testimony, in her career up until this point she has treated just four transgender clients.

Dr. Kraus describes the Selbsbestimmungsgesetz [self-determination law] as ‘dangerous’. It has supposedly led to ‘misdiagnoses with devastating consequences’. It is important to emphasize here that the self-determination law only allows for a change of name and gender marker at the residency registration office [Einwohnermeldeamt] without a letter of confidence from a mental health professional.

This law does not make access to hormone therapy and surgery possible—these still require a thorough diagnosis, necessarily including a written confirmation from a psychotherapist. 

…she speaks of ‘very many’ patients who regret their decisions. She neglects to mention that she only has personal experience with four clients…Each individual who crosses the threshold of a psychotherapy practice for support in their gender identity has the right that the issue at hand as well as their psychological condition be regarded and understood individually—generalisations have no place in this subject.

As such, ‘devastating consequences’ could not,  from my perspective, be attributed to the new law. If a person realises after some months or years that they are not transgender after all, their first name and gender marker can be changed again. The earlier process which required two expert opinions was often costly and burdensome for those affected. Expert opinions from doctors and therapists involved in the individual’s treatment were generally not accepted, meaning that one had to present intimate information to an additional two strangers. In my opinion, this was not a reasonable approach, and I view its abolition as great relief for those concerned.

‘Schools oversimplify the matter,’ says Ms. Kraus regarding gender transition, supposedly ‘luring [them] toward the path of transexuality’. I consider education in schools (yes, including with regards to sexual orientation and gender identity) as presently of absolute necessity. I do not see how this form of education could be considered ‘luring’. After all, schools offer—rightly so—education on drug use.

‘In my practice, I pretty much only came across transexuals who were not happy with the results of their surgeries,’ claims Dr. Kraus. Regrettably, she speaks of ‘very many’ patients who regret their decisions. She neglects to mention that she only has personal experience with four clients.

That there are ‘very many’ who regret their decisions does not adhere to my experience. Nearly every person who I have accompanied in transition felt a weight had been lifted off them through hormone therapy, top surgery or genital surgery among other measures. Each individual who crosses the threshold of a psychotherapy practice for support in their gender identity has the right that the issue at hand as well as their psychological condition be regarded and understood individually—generalisations have no place in this subject.

Additionally, studies show that the risk of suicide among transgender people is extremely high. This shows the extent to which gender dysphoria (meaning the distress that arises from living with misattributed gender roles and a body incongruent with one’s experienced gender) can present as a massive stressor and and how great the need is to take this distress seriously. 

That is why many transgender people choose to transition, meaning adopting new gender roles (typically in tandem with a new name and the wish to be referred to using the coinciding honorifics and pronouns) and adjusting their outer expression (often, but not always, through hormones and surgery). My clinical practice has repeatedly evidenced how drastically suffering is reduced and quality of life increases through these interventions. Depressive symptoms and social anxiety or discomfort with other people also tend to decrease significantly. Transition regret and detransition—pursuing (limited) efforts to reverse the process—do arise, albeit in very few cases (I have yet to see a single such case in my work). A critical approach to one’s own gender identity and the choice to decision should therefore always first take place as part of a psychotherapeutic treatment, during which other factors that may falsely lead to someone believing they are transgender must be excluded.

According to her, one should not “respect trans activists false jargon”. Does she mean the terms that were adopted to replace earlier transphobic and discriminatory language?

This course of treatment is an essential part of the letter of indication without which there is no access to hormones or surgical measures. ‘The self-determination law’s manner (from a clinical point of view) of never questioning anything again” as Dr. Kraus writes, is non-existent. Critical, clinical examination remains requisite. 

In particular, the surgeries in question here are both highly invasive and complex. Before undergoing them, patients need to thoroughly examine scope and associated risk of these procedures. Patient education should also be provided to support the process. I see room for improvement in this area in some clinics, as the affected have the right to making a well-informed decision. Nothing here is changed by the self-determination law. Name and gender marker changes, however, will be less complicated thanks to this new law.

Furthermore, Dr. Kraus’ performance suggests that trans women and men aren’t ‘real’ women or men. According to her, one should not “respect trans activists false jargon”. Does she mean the terms that were adopted to replace earlier transphobic and discriminatory language?

In summation, I find my colleague’s testimony misleading and prejudicial. I hope that with this statement, I have shed more light on practical experience in treating trans people.’

Dortmund, 08.11.2024

Dr. Lara Werkstetter

Translation: Shav MacKay. Reproduced with permission

“[in Germany] you’re denied as an Afghan to show solidarity with Palestine”

Interview with Zoya from the AFG Activist Collective


26/11/2024

Thanks for talking to us. Could you start just by introducing yourself?

I’m Zoya from the AFG activist collective. We’re a self organized, horizontal collective that is composed of first and second generation diaspora from Afghanistan. We are fighting for the cause of a free Afghanistan, from the neighboring countries to the asylum seekers here in Germany. We also express/foster cross solidarity on an intersectional level with other Global South movements.

Could you say something about the current situation in Afghanistan, particularly for women?

Since August 2021, many people have said that the Taliban régime is different now. It’s not going to be the same black hole of 1996 to 2001. As if it is an upgraded version 2.0, more modernized. This is deceiving though. As the international media have left Afghanistan, and with a general ban on non-government media or any outlet which is not led by the régime, news doesn’t come out to the international community and people as it does to us with links and relations in the community. We still have some awareness of what is really happening through information sharing on social media and our collective tries our best to share this and make it more accessible.

Every week, there are stricter developments towards women, including what they are allowed to wear. Women are not allowed to go to parks, or work in most fields. Students have had to stop going to university, and girls cannot go to school after the sixth grade. One of the latest and frankly, ridiculous, restrictions is that women should not even hear the sound of another woman’s voice. For example, if a woman prays her voice should not be heard. People instrumentalise the Taliban for their Islamophobia, yet this fundamentalism does not represent Islam – it is rather used as a tactic of oppression.  More so, it goes against our cultural habits, the Taliban do not practice or represent the vast and diverse culture of Afghanistan. Women in Afghanistan were allowed to vote before women in the UK, or before the creation of the Taliban. Therefore, the people of Afghanistan see the Taliban as a war on our culture and heritage and so much more.

So a lot has changed. The social fabric is completely dissolving—like the female gender inside of it—which is why we talk about gender apartheid in Afghanistan.

How is the population reacting to this?

In the beginning, there were many protests where women went to the streets. They had to face open fire from the Taliban into the sky, and they were lashed. The lashes were so strong that you could become disabled from them.

There were many campaigns around Afghanistan. Boys started campaigns saying “I’m not going to school without my sister”. Men didn’t go to university or refused to do their medical exams.

All these actions have faced repression. There were a lot of forced disappearances of people that spoke up, especially men like YouTubers and famous educators who publicly advocated for opening schools for girls. These are typical silencing tactics. People with leadership positions were also disappearing or even killed for their advocacy.

People still take it to the streets but after three years without support, it becomes harder and harder.

How much support does the Taliban have? Is it just ruling by repression, or does it have any popular support?

It’s hard to understand how much support the Taliban has because, in the current state, you’re not able to express your opposition. If you were interviewed in Afghanistan and asked if you support the Taliban, most people would probably say yes, just because they fear being exposed.

Now, a lot of female activists have gone inside and are protesting indoors with their faces covered and holding signs, demanding for their rights. This makes it harder to identify who they are, but that is the current state of affairs.

We also have to understand that after 40 years of war, 90% of Afghanistan is uneducated, and people are tired from being caught in the crossfire. Many have lost friends and family members, seen the explosions first hand; or are injured from them. So if you ask a farmer at this moment if they support the Taliban, they will only know the crossfire which prevented them from feeding themselves over the years, so they are probably going to say yes. But is this an informed answer which understands the geopolitical context? The answer is no.

Does the current terrible situation mean that people think that life under US occupation was good?

It’s always nuanced to understand what is good and what is bad. From one side, you have the corruption in the previous government, but to us they’re all the same because they collaborate with each other. We call it a handover. We don’t call it a Taliban takeover because they literally sat down in Doha, Qatar with the US and the international community.

They’re the same people, NATO is made up of the same people who were there for 20 years. One is the main initiator and the others back it up. For them, it didn’t necessarily make sense any more to stay and exploit when they can leave, have fewer expenses, and still gain from exploitation.

Could you say a little more about the Doha agreement? What was involved, and what has changed?

One of the demands from our collective is to have full disclosure of the Doha agreement, which is not public. Qatar played a big role in being a hub for the Taliban headquarters, which opened over 10 years ago. There has been a lot of criticism of the collaboration.

A lot of people say that 15th August came as a surprise, but at that point a large percentage of Afghanistan was already controlled by the Taliban. Even if the Taliban wasn’t officially governing, they had the land under their control.

The Doha agreement involved no Afghan civil society representation. At the end, it was a trade agreement that made them hand over Afghanistan.

At the end, we the people of Afghanistan are wondering: why did you bomb us for 20 years if you would handover the country to the Taliban anyway?

Recently, Germany declared Afghanistan to be a safe country and has started deportations again of Afghan people. How precarious is life for people from Afghanistan who are living in Germany at the moment?

I don’t think Germany declared that Afghanistan is a safe country, but they are definitely going with the propaganda in the mass media. Since an Afghan refugee killed a policeman in the south of Germany, there are stronger calls for criminals from Afghanistan and also from Syria to be deported. We see that the “center left” adopts right wing rhetoric.

They say they’re only deporting criminals, but the label criminal is used for a lot of men, also at the borders. You really see how much this is fuelled not only by what’s happening in Afghanistan, but also in Palestine. You see the dehumanization, or that the words “terrorist” and “criminal” are used for anyone that is especially from the SWANA region who are standing up for their rights and that they can be criminalized.

They’re saying that they’re only going to deport criminals, but if it’s criminal to stand up for justice and speak for people’s freedoms, or to stop an occupation or a genocide, then what is a criminal? It’s very much like the brainwashing that Arab or Afghan men are violent which has been systematically done since before 9/11.

On top of that, it seems that there are only calls for deportations to some countries and not others.

Exactly. We saw that Europe and the West were trying to manipulate the Iranian Revolution some years ago, while keeping quiet on Afghanistan—even on the topic of women. We see how geopolitical interests play a role, as well as the alliances that are formed between countries. This is the reason why some things get funding, and certain other things don’t. You can have a positioning that stands against all oppression- you don’t need to be polarized as they push you to be.

In Germany, or Europe more broadly, you really saw the strategy behind certain decolonial, anti-racist, or anti-deportation topics. “The Left” in Germany wants to express that they have an interest in this but only if they can set the storyline. You’re denied as an Afghan to share solidarity with Palestine, even though you are degraded and dehumanized the same/similar way.

There was a recent ruling by the German government only to deport men to Afghanistan and not women. What’s the implication of this ruling?

Women are now able to not go through all of the asylum processes that they have had to over the last years. In Germany, they pass the interview immediately and get protection. Of course, you are relieved about this- not happy, but you’re glad for the safety of the people who will not have to live in extreme repression.  It’s much harder for women to exist in Afghanistan. They cannot exist at all, as they don’t have any rights or prospects in life.

But at the same time, it’s frightening because it reinforces the narrative that Afghan men are only abusers, and Afghan women should be protected from Afghan men. This narrative implies that they’re safe in the West, but would not be back in Afghanistan. When you understand the implications of such a ruling, the feelings become much more complex.

Can you say something about what your collective is doing in Germany?

Our collective is not registered so that we can freely express ourselves without putting anyone in specific danger. Our slogan at demos is “Ob NATO oder Taliban, raus aus Afghanistan”, which translates to “NATO or Taliban – get out of Afghanistan”.

During the 20 years of NATO’s presence in Afghanistan, the amount of money that was flowing into Afghanistan that ended up in officials’ back pockets is astonishing. It created a lot of infrastructural issues, also through the large NGO presence there. Their food programs, for example, created dependencies for a lot of people who were not previously used to these dependencies. It disrupted the self-sustaining infrastructure, increasing the cost of land and making farming harder. Once the Taliban arrived, all these NGOs left, creating a state of shock for people. Now over 95% of people in Afghanistan are dealing with food insecurity. This is a huge number— of a nation of 40 million people.

There are also huge issues at the border with Pakistan and Iran. There are millions of Afghan refugees in both of those countries that are currently being pushed back in masses in the hundreds of thousands. There are also extremely racist campaigns. People are unable to even buy bread in Iran. Then you try to start a life in Germany, and the bureaucratic process does not give you a break  time to reflect and process all of these things on all of these things.

Additionally, we see how much politics are moving towards the right all over Europe. You also see how the topic of refugees is approached and the laws that are getting passed that ensure that the only thing that they experience is violence.

So Afghan people – whether in Afghanistan or outside – cannot catch a break. We need and want to create the space to speak about conflicts within ethnicities and religions, gaps between gender which, of course, affect the entirety of civil society over the last 40 years. You don’t have space to think about or deconstruct things so easily when you’re thinking about your survival and dealing with ongoing trauma. Our collective  wants to express and reflect on all the complexities, not only around the political arena, but also the dynamics within the Afghan community. Essentially, we want self-determination for Afghanistan and its people.

Are you able to link up with other campaigns fighting for  Syrian refugees?

We have a lot of networks between different activists and activist collectives. As the issues have intensified and we have ongoing genocides, we are well connected between the different social and activist groups, and we support each other’s struggles, even though Afghanistan has been seen as a side topic for a lot of the general masses.

But as activists, we support each other. It’s tough to do so because it’s non-stop – in fact it’s increasing. Syria, Sudan, Congo, Lebanon, Eritrea, Palestine, and countries, all over the Global South, are facing so many conflicts and wars. The only thing that we can do is to inform each other and to give each other the space to collaborate or to share information.

And what about the German Left? The German Left does do some good work on refugees, but as you’ve said, a lot of it does have a Palestine problem, which translates into a general difficulty with the Global South.

For sure. I definitely saw a shift starting last year, whenever certain German leftist organizations or NGOs, or some activists or so-called feminists would support us. This support was not genuine, to be honest. They would take a lot of space in groups about who they would support and silence us. And then when the genocide in Palestine started, we would see how those NGOs were somehow getting funded through public money, and wouldn’t share their solidarity or take a stance. So we took a stance and distanced ourselves from them.

On the social level for me personally, having grown up in Germany when 9/11 happened, I’m having a lot of deja vu. On the social level, there was this extreme taboo in schools to be from Afghanistan. You were seen as a terrorist. You would have kids bully you, or teachers brainwash you in class about being Muslim, or for coming from Afghanistan. All of these things were socially acceptable.

For a while, this was less, or there were some improvements, at least on a social level. These racist notions were not as socially accepted. And now we’re back there again. Actually, we’re not even at that standard, but much worse. The amount of dehumanization is seen through the apathy of the society of war crimes and mass destruction.

Do you think things will continue to get worse?

I don’t know. You wake up every morning and think that things will get worse, and it gets worse.

Most people just want to not have to see people die in either of these ways. But that is the reality for all people in the Global South including Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq and Palestine. Western society at this moment still refuses to understand this.

How can people find out more about your collective and what you’re doing?

We have an Instagram page, AFG activist collective, where we post our protest camps, share news, make demos, create positioning, share speeches and so on. We also organize events, sometimes by ourselves other times other groups organize and invite us. If other people want to create alliances with us that’s also supportive, that’s great. We support underground illegal schools for girls and women in Afghanistan. This is a very small thing that we’d like to continue to support because it’s very necessary.

You can also buy our tote bags at our events, or create items for us that we can sell them in markets. You can create your own actions, where we are able to just come and speak or share information. We’re not that many, and we definitely need support. We’re also not trending, so it also gets hard to get that support from outside of this activist bubble network that we have.

We also have a Telegram support group, which is where we can add you if you contact us. We like it when people come with their ideas.

Is there anything you’d like to say that we haven’t covered so far?

What’s important is being open to listening to different perspectives.Try to formulate a nuanced view. At this point, a lot of people do not have the interest to hear about things that are presented in a different way. I just hope that we will continue to be able to express and digest and deconstruct.

People should really start researching a little bit more about these geopolitical issues, and learn about anti-capitalism. People should think critically and be reflective and conscious about movements that they support. At the end it’s our working hours, our taxes here that support these destructions and exploitations over there and we do have the power to make a change. We believe in the power of the people.