The Left Berlin News & Comment

This is the archive template

Category: Articles

For an internationalist Left

Statement on Palestine by Die Linke Wedding and Linksjugend Wedding (English version)


02/07/2024

The European elections are over. In Mitte, we look back with some relief at a stable result without significant losses. In Wedding, we even managed to make gains in some polling districts. And yet, we cannot be particularly pleased these days. Fascist forces are on the rise across Europe, and the nationwide result for Die Linke is disastrous despite the few rays of hope.

Given that securing peace was the main issue for voters, we interpret this result, among other things, as a critique from many people regarding our party’s contradictory stance on Israel’s war and occupation policies and other peace policy issues. As party activists on the ground, we too have felt increasing frustration in recent months and especially during the election campaign. We are frustrated, because principles such as the rejection of arms deliveries, opposition to all forms of oppression, and the advocacy for democratic and equal conditions in the context of the war in Gaza have been continuously attacked by members of our party in public. Had these positions been internalized within our party, our stance at the outbreak of the latest escalation would have been unequivocal: ceasefire now, support for a democratic political solution that also takes into account the right to self-determination of the Palestinian people, and a clear rejection of all attacks on civilians by both sides. Instead of adopting such an internationalist stance, immediately after October 7, our deputies in the Bundestag joined all other parties in parliament, including the AfD, to call for arms deliveries abroad and repression at home. Our party therefore has undeniably made itself complicit in the tenfold increase in arms deliveries to Israel since October 2023 and in the massive escalation of state attacks against both the movement in solidarity with Palestine and the Palestinian community.

In view of the threat that this public stance poses to the credibility of Die Linke as an internationalist party, we have, over the past months, raised our voices against war and occupation, alongside many other comrades at protests and events. In addition, we have continually voiced our concerns within the party. For example, we initiated the resolution “Immediate Ceasefire and an End to the Support for the War in Gaza,” passed by the general assembly of Die Linke Mitte on March 23. We ensured that the election material, at least in Berlin-Mitte, was supplemented by posters calling for an end to German support for the war in Gaza. Together with many other comrades in the Left, we called on our group in the Bundestag to submit a motion for the recognition of Palestine.

While we have strived at every step to ensure free exchange of opinions within our Basisorganisation and to participate at all levels in the formulation of party positions, we must make clear that the way internationalist positions have been dealt with by significant parts of the party has taken on worrying features in recent months. In this context, we list the following examples:

  • The participation of two Berlin councillors in the alliance “Against Anti-Semitic Terror” and specifically their signing of a declaration that effectively legitimizes state repression against the Palestine Congress (Palästinakongress), which members of Die Linke were involved in organizing, and calls for counter-protests. Both councillors allied with German right-wingers from the CDU and FDP to accuse the organizers of the congress, many of whom are Jewish leftists, of “spreading anti-Semitic hatred.”
  • The organization of a blockade against a left-wing pro-Palestinian demonstration in Halle by a local councillor.
  • The support of a councillor in Saxony, who is the party’s anti.fascist spokesperson, for a prohibition of Handala Leipzig.

While public agitation and defamation fuel state repression against leftist activists within and outside the party, the necessary debate within the party itself is being restricted. Thus, a narrow majority of delegates at the Berlin state party conference on April 27 voted against even addressing the two Palestine-related motions from Mitte and Neukölln, which had found broad support in their respective districts. Some of those who oppose real debate inside the party are loudly demanding the criminalization of Palestine solidarity and are supporting Israel’s war in public.

The latest election results show that erasing internationalist positions from our public profile and supporting the German Staatsräson only further undermines our party’s credibility. Now more than ever, a strong Left Party is needed to transform the rejection of German support for Israel’s war within the broader population and the growing solidarity movement into a unified political expression; a Left Party that boldly stands against oppression and repression and for an immediate and lasting ceasefire; a Left Party that stands united where it counts, because it can endure a democratic culture of debate. We conclude from the election results that not only are we interested in a Left Party like that, but so are countless comrades outside our party, with whom we have been on the streets for months, as well as large parts of the population seeking an alternative to militarism and arms deliveries.

To reach these people and to win them over to an internationalist Left Party, we, as BO Wedding, want to be clearly visible as members of our party within the solidarity movement from now on. We follow the example of our comrades from Neukölln, who have long participated in weekly peace demonstrations with party flags and banners. With them and all other comrades, we want to say clearly: If Die Linke is to remain a socialist party, the defense and expansion of internationalist positions within Die Linke must become a priority for the entire peace movement.

 

Basisorganisation Wedding

Linksjugend Wedding

You can read the original German version of this text here.

Scarier than Stephen King

The possibility of being born again frightens me even more than the inevitability of death.


01/07/2024

Have you ever drunk wine at 10 in the morning? Before the war, I watched my diet, played sports, and built my career, but now I drink wine as soon as I wake up. Sometimes it is unbearable to contemplate the ruins of my present.

So, I’m drinking. Right now. Dry white wine. I’m sitting in shorts on a sunny balcony and staring out the windows of the building across the street. There, a young family congratulates their child on his birthday. In the window I see a golden inflatable balloon in the shape of the number 9.

Naturally, I didn’t know it was a random child from the building across the street’s birthday. But this day came, and I became its silent witness. However, I decided to drink wine this morning for a completely different reason.

Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night thinking that I need to go to France to ask for political asylum there. In Ukraine they will put me in prison because I say too many unnecessary things. Silence for me means agreeing with what public officials say. So, I have no choice. I have to speak, otherwise my death will be called the death of a volunteer. Nah. Enough!

Sometimes I wake up thinking about buying a ticket to Thailand and getting lost among the scooter vendors. Often, I wake up feeling the acute need to save my own ass, and then I remember that impulsive actions will only make the situation worse. Then I have a glass of wine. Jerk off. Try to fall asleep.

I still dream of war. I dream about how indifferent officials send me to fight against my will. I dream about how parents laugh at me, showing off their children as replacements for me. I dream of indifference, and it scares me much more than the lunatic clown from Stephen King’s It. One of my favorite King novels. 

But this night I dreamed of something scarier than the clown and indifference. I dreamed of my dad, who suddenly called me. Abandoning me with my mom when I was 3 years old left me with deep trauma that I now use as ink for my prose and analysis of modernist works.

The thing is, my dad never called me. He didn’t wish me happy birthday. Never. I didn’t even receive from him a pitiful inflatable balloon with a number representing my age. Nope. My reality is a single-parent family. War. Emigration. Nothing could break me because I’m already broken. I’m peeping on a beautiful family at 10 o’clock in the morning. Damn. What’s up? That clown is supposed to be the creep, not me. 

In this dream, my dad was damn real. I recognized his voice. At a conscious age, I heard his voice only once. As a student, I came to his house to meet him. I arrived in another city. He was not at home. But I met his neighbor, who was surprised at the unprecedented similarity of our appearance. He suggested to call my dad. So, he did. He said that I came to see him. In response, my dad asked to call the police.

And now in a dream he ingratiatingly asks what hobbies I developed abroad? He wonders if I play sports. Am I running on a stadium? Do I smoke? Am I eating right? His caring questions are alarming. For the first time in my life, I feel interest in myself from the one who created me. So, he laughs in my ear and tells me not to lose heart.

At this point you can rightly ask, what was so terrible about this dream? The fact is that then for the first time I saw in my dad not a dad, but an ordinary person. Moreover, not just a neutral person, but a vile one. Suddenly I understand that all these caring questions of his are aimed at making me accidentally tell him a secret – how I managed to leave Ukraine, despite the ban for men from 18 to 60 years old to leave the country. Damn. Da-a-a-amn!

My dad doesn’t want to fight. My dad is scared. He calls his abandoned son and asks to share the secret with him. But this is not a secret. At least not anymore. In my books, I have long described how exactly I managed to cross the border. But he doesn’t want to read my books. Even in my dreams he doesn’t care about me indeed. This indifference is of a different kind. But it wasn’t the thing that scared me, it was the fall of the unknown idol. The dad I never had in reality existed in my imagination and was certainly idealized. And suddenly the idealized version of the BIG DAD collapsed, just as the monument to Lenin, Zhukov, and Pushkin collapsed in Ukraine after the beginning of the full-scaled war. So, should I help someone who once abandoned me?

Frankly speaking, I don’t know what exactly I missed growing up without a dad. I don’t know what children who grow up in a complete family get. For me, a dad is something as necessary as teeth in my ass. I was raised by a real lesbian family – my mom and granny. This is the norm in post-Soviet countries. It is ironic that these countries are usually against same-sex marriage, although at least half of their population consist of them.

Books have become my salvation. I’ve loved reading since childhood. I loved literature lessons. I read my first Stephen King novel, Pet Sematary, when I was about 14. I remember this book with the same fondness with which I remember how my first partner’s homophobic dad caught us having sex.

In truth, Stephen King’s novels arn’t so scary. You could say they’re fascinating. You could call them psychological. But not scary. Here, again, it turns out that it is not words that frighten, but actions. At the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Stephen King banned the publication of his novels in Russian, thus speaking out against Russian aggression. But did politicians and the military suffer from this?

Stephen King may not know, but Russian is also spoken in Belarus. As well as in Ukraine. I’m tired of explaining that Russian is my native language, not Ukrainian. I’m not an exception, it’s just the way it is over there. 

Thanks to the Russian language, I could have fun with a guy from Kazakhstan whom I met in the Czech Republic. Language is not the property of a political regime. Language is a tool that helps people from different countries communicate. 

Hating a language does not overthrow a regime. That’s why it is important to understand exactly what is an enemy and what is not. We are already divided by fear, so why do we allow ourselves to continue to be divided into small groups?

In Russia, quite a few books were already banned, but King became a writer who went ahead – he banned himself. My dad left the family. Stephen King left the Russian-language book market. My dad came to me in a dream to find out how to escape from Ukraine. I’m spying on a beautiful European family and scaring myself more than a goddamn clown.

I’m sitting on the sunny balcony at 10 am and drinking wine. I watch as, in the building across the road, a child receives gifts from his parents. The child’s father then tightens his tie, kisses the child’s forehead, and leaves the apartment. A couple of minutes later I see a man leaving the building via the main entrance.

Looking at how someone else’s father is gradually moving away, I want to get up and shout something to him. Something that would make him return to the child and never even think about leaving the family. I want to scream so badly that it becomes obvious that I’m drunk.

A beautiful family. Sport and a career. This is all too damn far from me. Further than someone else’s dad walking towards the bus stop. Further than virginity. Even after the war this will not end. The internal front grows more impenetrable. After the nightmare-awakening on February 24, 2022, no one will keep healthy. All I can really do is document it. 

 

This piece is a part of  a series, The Mining Boy Notes, published on Mondays and authored by Ilya Kharkow, a writer from Ukraine. For more information about Ilya, see his website. You can support his work by buying him a coffee.

India: Elections 2024 and the Extreme Right

Modi’s right is a paper tiger, yet capable of biting. The latest elections show it can be stopped


The results for the recently concluded parliament elections in India were declared on 4th June, 2024. The election process took place in 7 phases, lasting for 44 days and involved voting by 642 million voters, making it the largest electoral exercise ever. And the results were quite unexpected and surprising for many. The extreme right Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) under the prime ministership of Narendra Modi has been ruling India for the last 10 years. There was a widespread expectation, reinforced by a suppliant national media and overawed international media, that Modi would be winning the elections with an even greater majority, cementing his control over India for the foreseeable future. When the results were declared it was found that although the BJP did win the elections, the number of seats won by them has gone down drastically and it was not able to form a government on its own. Finally, Modi got support from a number of smaller parties, including two regional parties which contributed a total of 28 parliamentary seats to form the government in India for the third time. So it turns out that in India, the extreme right is a “paper tiger”. But it is also a “paper tiger” that bites. 

Like the extreme right everywhere, the policies of the BJP is grounded upon attacking minorities, which in case of India are the Muslims, who at 200 million, constitute one of the largest Muslim populations in the world but are marginalized economically and socially. Marking out of the Muslims as the “other” and targeting them for repression has been the historical policy of the BJP in order to consolidate the support of the majority Hindu population. This, although described as “Hindu nationalism”, is in reality nothing but fascism. The BJP is the political front of an organization called the RSS, which though calling itself a “cultural organization”, is actually an ultranationalist, extreme right organization, run on paramilitary lines. Established in 1925, contemporary to and modeled on the Italian Fascist party, it waited for 90 years till Modi, himself a lifelong RSS member, gained power in India in 2014. Most of the top brass of the BJP belong to the RSS, and in the 10 years that Modi has ruled in India, the RSS has gained control over many aspects of India’s political and social life.

The RSS’s political philosophy is based on defeating who their founders identified as their main “enemies”: Communists, Muslims and Christians, in that order. Modi’s government has just done that in the last 10 years. It has branded its critics and opponents from the Left as “anti-nationals”, and imprisoned many of them under anti-terror laws, including some of the foremost activists, academics, lawyers and journalists of India. Muslims have been targeted by in many legal ways, including citizenship and racial purity laws to push them to the margins of Indian society and numerous physical attacks such as mob lynchings and pogroms in which dozens have been killed. Christians have been targeted by anti-religious conversion laws and their places of worship have been attacked and destroyed. Together with this, India’s most downtrodden communities, the dalits or the lower castes in India’s caste-divided society, and the adivasis, or the indigeneous people who populate many of the forested areas of India, have also been subjected to extreme repression in various ways.

While the demonization of minorities and repression of dissenters have been one aspect of Modi’s rule, the other has been a complete sellout to capitalists. While maintaining a “populist” image in the traditions of the extreme right, in reality his government has sold out India’s valuable economic assets such as mines, ports, airports, airlines and telecom infrastructure to capitalists, especially some crony capitalists who have closely supported and financed Modi’s rise to power. These economic policies have led to the highest unemployment rate in India in the last 40 years and unprecedented economic inequality. The government even passed laws which would have effectively handed over the control of agriculture, which still employs nearly 60% of India’s working population, to the corporations but which were forced to be withdrawn by a year-long resistance movement by the farmers. While people suffered from unemployment, unprecedented price rise and migration from villages to cities in search of jobs, Modi showed the dreams of India becoming a “trillion dollar economy” on the basis of his business-friendly policies.

Although leading a government deeply involved in the violation of human rights and the destruction of democracy, Modi became a darling of the so called Western democracies, the USA, UK, Germany, France, etc. The Western governments feted him, overlooking his dismal record in human rights and overtly opportunist policies such as enhancing trade with Russia during the war in Ukraine. This was because of two reasons: India’s economic position as one of the largest market for products of Western corporations and its geopolitical position as a bulwark against China for the West. Modi has used both of these positions very cleverly to his advantage, on one hand using Indian taxpayers’ money to make huge purchases of things such as warplanes and weapons from ailing Western economies and on the other becoming part of US-initiated anti-China groupings such as the Quad (together with USA, Japan and Australia). Modi has also grown close ties with Israel, with shared ethnonationalist political ideologies, becoming one of the largest buyers of Israeli weapons and also products such as the malware Pegasus, which was used to hack the cellphones of political opponents and critics from civil society.

Modi used the embraces which he received from the Western powers to cement his standing in the eyes of his support base in India. He claimed that he has made India “arrive” in the world stage. His political positioning was greatly enabled by the corporate-owned mainstream media, which has reached unprecedented levels of sycophancy and unquestioning compliance in India today. What has developed as a result is a regular personality cult around Modi, with everything, from COVID vaccines to free rations for the poor, being attributed to him. In January, he also inaugurated a newly built temple for a Hindu mythological figure to great fanfare and celebration all over the country, a temple which had been built on the site of an ancient mosque destroyed by a RSS-led mob in 1992. This had made Modi claim nearly semi-divine status for himself. All the ingredients for a fascist dictatorship was in place in India.

Modi’s power was further reinforced by a parliamentary opposition which was weak, directionless and completely unable to face the challenges put forth by the BJP and its repressive tactics. Many leaders of the opposition parties were harassed by national investigative agencies and many were imprisoned for different lengths of time. Further, the opposition was disunited and many of the opposition parties including the main opposition party, the Indian National Congress, often toed the same line as the BJP in encouraging majoritarian Hindu sentiments, out of fear of losing the votes of Hindus. The many regional parties in India were competing with each other for power and could be used by the BJP against each other whenever necessary. It was thus taken for granted that Modi and the BJP would win the elections by a landslide in and attain unprecedented power, even allowing them to change the democratic constitution of India and convert it into a majoritarian, fascistic state.

The elections in India were held in this background in which the future existence of democracy in India was at stake. Fortunately, the opposition Congress party was able to revive itself, especially due to the two countrywide marches made by the leader of the party Rahul Gandhi. This brought the Congress party in closer contact with the common people and also reinvigorated the organizational structure of the party. The Congress also shifted its political position more to the left, basing its election campaign on promises of social and economic justice. Moreover, the Congress and a number of other parties formed an alliance, called the Indian National Developmental and Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) which agreed to put up joint candidates against the BJP in as many seats as possible. Initiatives by activists and civil society organizations also contributed to the development of the opposition to the BJP. The farmers’ movement, which had been ultimately successful in getting the pro-capitalist farm laws withdrawn because of their ability to stay on the streets and resist state repression, had also shown that it was possible to defeat the extreme right with an organized mass movement. On the other hand, the election campaign by the BJP, especially Modi, was directly and ruthlessly targeted against the Muslims, with the aim of consolidating the votes of the majority Hindus in their support. The BJP publicly declared that they were going to get more than 400 among the 543 seats in the Indian parliament, which would give them an overwhelming majority. In interviews, Modi was even talking of a “1,000 year vision”, eerily reminiscent of an earlier “1000 year Reich”.

The election results appeared to be set in stone, with even exit polls held on the last day of voting predicting an huge win for the BJP. However, in a nail-biting finish to the elections, the BJP only won 240 seats, well short of the 272 to reach a majority of their own, and much less than the 303 seats which they had won in the last election. The opposition INDIA alliance won 234 seats, up 149 seats from last time. The BJP finally cobbled up 293 seats together with its allies in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). This allowed Modi to finally form the government for the third time. This government is expected continue to exert the same authoritarian and repressive rule, and early signs such as the order to initiate prosecution of the famous author and steadfast critic of the government, Arundhati Roy, under an anti-terror law, point in that direction. But the hope is that the resistance to all these will be stronger, as the weakness of the BJP and Modi has become evident. 

There are many reasons why the extreme right did not get the electoral victory in India which most people were expecting. It appears that many of the backward castes had turned against the BJP because of their concern that if the BJP won with a huge majority they would change the provisions of the Constitution which protected their social rights. The unprecedented attack on the lives and livelihoods of the poorest people had finally made them turn against the BJP, regardless of the blatantly xenophobic propaganda they were exposed to. Moreover, very crucially, the RSS itself had felt threatened by the rise of the personality cult of Modi, as he was overshadowing the organization, and the cadres of the RSS on the ground had turned against the BJP. And lastly, the opposition parties had been able to organize to pose a challenge to the BJP on the ground. 

There are multiple lessons to be drawn from the elections in India, especially in the context of the rise of the extreme right in Europe and their electoral successes. It is to be understood that the extreme right has gained strength in India since the last 30 years, and their ideological fountainhead, the RSS, is one of the original fascist organizations of the 20th century.

The strengthening of the extreme right in India mirrors other countries worldwide, because of the economic hardships, cultural dislocation and frustrations of the middle and working classes due to globalization and neo-liberal economic policies. Just as the extreme right everywhere consolidates its support base by pointing at a perceived enemy, such as migrants in the USA and Europe, the RSS-BJP in India has consolidated its support base among the majority Hindus by marking the Muslims as the perceived enemy.

But these elections also show that the extreme right can be challenged and weakened, and the only way to do that is to organize and put up a united fight. Finally, elections are won, or lost, by organization or the lack of it. It is also important for the centre-left to realize that in order to win against the extreme right, it is important to take up the ideologically opposite pole at the left, rather than to mimic their political positions.

It is also evident that civil society and activist organizations play a crucial role in creating the opposition to the extreme right, and the opposition political parties need to recognize and reinforce that.  It is clear that the people will rise up against the extreme right only when they will see with confidence that an organized opposition at the opposite ideological pole is present and ready to fight it.

German arms exports to Israel

Is Germany complicit in Israeli war crimes?


In April 2024 the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) filed a lawsuit against the German government for exporting war weapons to Israel and the consequent threat to civilian life. The lawsuit was made in the name of five Palestinians living in the Gaza strip who had lost family members in the Israeli bombardment. The action was supported by Raji Sourani, Director of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights in Gaza:

“Germany should ultimately urge Israel to stop the aggressions in Gaza. (…) The stop of all weapon deliveries would be an important political signal in that regard. (..) International human rights exist to protect civilians in times of war. Instead we witness dogs eating the corpses of our children in the ruins of Gaza. Germany should not deliver even one of the bullets that kills us in Gaza and demand an immediate ceasefire” 

In early June the Berlin administrative court declined the ECCHRs request. It gave reasons similar to the ICJs denial of Nicaragua’s urgent application to prohibit German arms exports to Israel. Namely – currently the German government is not delivering any weapons of war and has not been since the beginning of 2024. This change is apparently in response to Israeli warfare. The German government has therefore in practice, put a stop to war weapon exports. Even though it will not publicly advertise it as such.

Is Germany therefore not as complicit in Israeli war crimes as Nicaragua has argued? Does this change in practice absolve Germany from claims that it is supporting a genocide? 

A look at the history of German arms trades with Israel proves otherwise. Since the 1950s Germany has supported Israel militarily, establishing itself as its second biggest arms dealer. In the period from 2019 to 2023 Germany’s share of major conventional arms imported by Israel was 30%, second after the US at 69% In 2023 the German exports of military equipment to Israel spiked significantly. Licences worth 326.5 million euros were granted in 2023, a ten-fold increase from the previous year. Most of these licences were granted after October 2023. Some of these licences included:

3,000 portable anti-tank weapons, mainly the “Matador”

Manufactured by the company Dynamit Nobel Defense, the Matador was first used in the 2009 Israeli operation “Cast Lead” (known as the Gaza massacre). Its use in the current massacre of Gaza has been documented repeatedly. For instance in a video clip of IDF soldiers gleefully firing Matador missiles at homes in Khan Younis.

Two Sa’ar 6 Corvette Warships

One third of the construction costs of these warships, manufactured by ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems, was subsidised by the German state. The Sa’ar 6 Corvettes have been documented striking the Gaza strip from the sea as early as October 16th, 2023. 

50 diesel engines for Merkava 4 tanks and Namer APC

Since 2002, Germany has exported around 1060 of diesel engines fitted to the Merkava tanks to Israel. The Merkava 4 tank is considered one of the “main assets” in the Gaza ground invasion. The Israeli use of tanks against Palestinian civilians has repeatedly been criticised. Including when a alleged IDF soldier posted a video from a Merkava 4 tank, claiming he had run over the Palestinian civilian in front of the vehicle shortly after.

Evidence is piling up of German arms being actively used in the killing of Palestinians. Meanwhile the German government claims it does not know if its exports are being used in the Gaza strip as they were theoretically restricted to training purposes. This pretence of ignorance admits a total failure of arms regulations. But it also shows a ‘benign’ neglect of the government in accepting becoming an active and involved party in Israel’s massacres. It is symptomatic of the general mendaciousness of the German rhetoric around arms sales. For example:

The Ministry of Economy and Climate Protection claims that the government has “imposed particularly strict rules on itself in this sensitive area and pursues an extremely restrictive licensing policy. (…) The government pays special attention to the general human rights conditions in the receiving country, as well as that the goods are not misused for human rights violations or the aggravation of crisis.”

However, compared to 4,427 individual arms export licences to Israel approved by the German government since 2003, only 54 were rejected, an approval rate of 99.74%. These rates are standard, and place claims of an “extremely restrictive licensing policy” into serious question. Moreover it is also difficult to fully scrutinise these exports, due to the lack of transparency. Information about licences are only published after they have been decided on. This makes legal procedures against pending licences near impossible. Details about the actual exports are also scarce. The war weapon exports to Israel are redacted after 2018.  

Furthermore, the German legal framework for arms exports distinguishes between “weapons of war” and “military equipment”.  “Military equipment” has a faster approval procedure. However, “military equipment” can also include components of weapon systems creating a false distinction as such components are treated as “armaments lite”. Dismissing Nicaragua’s  and the ECCHR’s legal cases against Germany were on the basis that there are no deliveries of “war weapons” anymore. It is unclear how far the deliveries of “military equipment” continues.

A call for a broader sense of an arms embargo, which includes military equipment, is therefore necessary. Such a resolution was adopted already in April by the Human Rights Council. That backed a call “to cease the sale, transfer and diversion of arms, munitions and other military equipment to Israel, the occupying Power… to prevent further violations of international humanitarian law and violations and abuses of human rights”. 

The German delegation, however, was one of six which voted against the resolution, noting that it “refrains from mentioning Hamas and denies Israel the exercise of its right to self-defence”. This line is by now well-known to those following German political discussion on the war in Gaza.  It is an incessantly repeated mantra which skirts around any actual confrontations with Israeli war crimes. 

Sevim Dagdelen of the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) subsequently introduced their proposal for an arms embargo to Israel with the requested condemnation of the Hamas terror attack on October the 7th in front of the German Bundestag. But Alexander Müller of the FDP was quick to dismiss this proposal, this time for not including a call for the release of hostages as well. Müller did not spend a single word on the atrocities committed by the IDF mentioned by his colleague from the BSW.

This game of moving goal posts again highlights the unwillingness of the German government to actually confront accusations of the brutal killings committed with the weapons they approved a few months earlier. It is symptomatic of the spinelessness of this current government.  That does not dare to advertise their drastic reduction of war weapon deliveries nor enact an official embargo out of fears of criticism.

At the same time the extent of their  “military equipment” exports are opaque to scrutiny. This nauseating charade is played out in front of the horrifying backdrop of Thyssen-Krupp and Dynamite Nobel Defense tools aiding the massacre of currently more than 37,000 Palestinians. 

We need a general shift in German war export policies. That must include transparency, true restriction and placing the axiom of human rights over the economic interest of German arms manufacturers. Moreover it needs an official arms embargo including all tools of war. That would be a clear signal that Germany investigates the deployment of its exported arms and does not condone its exports being used in a genocide. Germany has already made itself complicit in Israel’s war crimes. However the continuation of its involvement lies in the hands of the German government.

Bloque Latinoamericano Manifesto, Part 3

As part of an ongoing transformation, Bloque Latinoamericano are publicising their political manifesto.


29/06/2024

This manifesto is from the Bloque Latinoamericano, which has been translated by The Left Berlin team. We will be publishing it in three parts; this is the last part.

 

Organic/Organizational Questions

In this chapter, we present some methodical and organizational thoughts on how we conduct our daily political work. These stem from the experiences that we have gathered since our organization’s founding.

Grassroots Work

Grassroots work consists of making organizational tools available and addressing those who are not presently organized and do not have the initial impulse to organize politically. 

Using a framework of methods developed in Latin America, we understand grassroots work to be the construction of spaces for specific sectors, as in the development of initiatives that respond to concrete problems and needs arising from structural inequalities, and we offer solutions through self-organization and self-management. Grassroots work is essential to constructing popular power, meaning the gathering of forces for the transformation of society and the prefiguration of alternative forms of social organization.

Our grassroots work is based on a diagnosis of the need of the Latin American diaspora in Berlin. We observe, particularly in migrant communities but also in society at large, considerable deficiencies in access,  especially with regard to adequate housing and working conditions. The needs of the community are not limited to access to material resources, which are guaranteed to a greater extent in Germany than in Latin America, but also include the needs for community belonging, care networks, and emotional support. These needs arise from the deep penetration of neoliberalism throughout the economy and societal fabric. 

In carrying out grassroots work, we cooperate with very different people whose worldviews are not necessarily leftist, even if we are not willing to work alongside right-wing convictions. We believe that the accessibility of grassroots movements is essential in breaking free from a subcultural logic strongly anchored in the left in Germany. This logic tends to be self-isolating and only views those who have already internalized system-critical discourse and ways of living as subjects of social transformation. 

In our work with the migrant community in this area, we have developed methods allowing us to draw upon individual experiences to recognize their collective character and relationship to structural problems. Through discussions and political education, we have managed to understand the causes of shared hardships that have connected us to respective grassroots movements and driven us to organize. A substantial part of grassroots work is practical and concerns collective, if only partial, solutions to unmet needs. Involvement in grassroots movements is attained through the distribution of labor according to the interests and needs of the participants. 

Grassroots work only makes sense to us in conjunction with the building of a political organization. Without the political struggle for an overall restructuring of society, grassroots work can become charity work. The role of political organization is to develop visions for social transformation that go above and beyond meeting concrete needs under the current structure. 

The Relationship Between Political Organization and Grassroots Work

As a political organization, the Bloque Latinoamericano Berlin creates new grassroots movements and promotes existing ones. These spaces are attended by both Bloque members and non-members who share the goals of the grassroots space and who want to organize themselves due to specific hardship or a specific need or demand.

Because these are public spaces, members of other political organizations can also participate without the necessity of an alliance between them and the Bloque.

The role of the Bloque Latinoamericano in grassroots movements is to guarantee their perpetuity and political life. It does so by ensuring that meetings take place and that proposals for defining goals and the execution of political actions take place. Participation in these spaces is a central educational experience for all those active in the Bloque. Even if the Bloque offers support, this does not mean that its members have to take on all tasks. On the contrary, the goal of these spaces is that they are adopted by those who animate them—an important part of which is the assumption of responsibility.

The political line of a grassroots movement is the result of participants’ collective debate. Members of the Bloque Latinoamericano bring suggestions discussed within the Bloque to the table, but decisions within the grassroots movement are made democratically. 

Our Policy on Alliances

We understand ‘alliance’ as cooperative political work with other organizations on the basis of agreements that can be negotiated at varying levels. This means that we do not have to agree with our allies on everything in order to work together.

Our policy on alliances is founded on concrete practice and objectives set in the phase at hand.  Some alliances are long-term and based on deep–rooted political understanding (strategic alliances). Others surround daily and mid-term political work (tactical-political alliances). We also enter into short-term alliances in order to carry out concrete political activities or gain visibility for specific issues.

Tactical flexibility is a central element of our policy on alliances. We see the necessity in staying true to our principles as an organization. That does not, however, hinder our flexibility in our manner of reaching concrete goals for which cooperation with other organizations is of high importance. 

We find that our alliances arise in three main fashions: Firstly, through the struggle to improve living conditions of the migrant community, shared with both other migrant and non-migrant broader movements, for example, the movements for access to housing and better living conditions. Secondly, we work with migrant and international organizations under the shared goal of bringing visibility to and supporting struggles in Latin America and other areas of the Global South. Finally, we form alliances with organizations that share our visions or forms of political engagement beyond concrete struggles, such as anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist stances or the necessity of grassroots work, and developing a practice strengthened by desire and emotion. 

Our Understanding of Militancy

As with any political organization, the backbone of our collective is us as activists, as we uphold its structure and daily work.

Why are we politically active? We self-organize to be free, to have autonomy over our lives and bodies, and we are moved by a great feeling of love, empathy for, and solidarity with all those who suffer the consequences of capitalism, the cis-hetero patriarchy, and racism. We have chosen the path of organizing anger and defending now and build a more just world day by day.

We know that to be politically engaged means to strive for political transformation and that in doing so, we will compulsorily make mistakes. But we know too that without revolutionary practice, there is no future and that we cannot remain idle out of fear of error or stumbling blocks—to the contrary, we strive for a constant, practical implementation of that which we think and believe with the conviction that we will be through criticism and reflection in the position to develop better tools for transformation and new relational frameworks.

Our organization offers multiple levels of participation, from grassroots movements to the structure of the organization itself. We are aware that we each have different capacities to contribute to political work according to our life circumstances, wishes, and motivations. We see this diversity not as a hindrance but as wealth. We expect  the members of our organization to be regularly present and to maintain functional communication with their comrades, to act transparently and responsibly, and to value equally each member’s contribution to the building of our political project. 

The Role of Political Education and Collective Learning

In order to have a realistically transformative practice, we consider it essential to reflect upon our own practice and develop theoretical and conceptual tools that help us to understand the structural problems we are confronted with and outline alternatives. Political education has essential meaning in doing so. It is our pathway to broaching experiences of others’ struggles, their failures and successes, but also to new forms of knowledge and new concepts of reality. 

Political education serves the purpose of democratizing knowledge internal and external to the organization in that it breaks with the private acquisition of knowledge prevalent in formal education and academic institutions. If we truly want to break with the dominant positions of the elite, if this is truly about the construction of worldviews that give meaning to the world, it is crucial that we begin to take charge of the spaces in which this occurs and use all the tools at our disposal. In our political work, we learn together and in connection with practice. We learn what we need for social transformation and we shape learning environments around respect and the value of different forms of knowledge: popular, academic, sensory, historical, bodily, and so on.

We are of the opinion that education takes place in different spaces: in the execution of practical tasks, on the streets, and in political discussions. The Bloque Latinoamericano regularly organizes training opportunities with the goal of broadening our imagination to develop tools to mark out our mutual horizon beginning with questions raised by our political work while going beyond the immediate. In planning and designing these spaces we refer to the perspectives of Educación Popular, inspired by social movements in Latin America from the 1960s to the present. The task of preparing and moderating educational spaces is a rotating responsibility that each member can and should take on for a time.

The Role of Emotion and Desire in Militancy

Not only has the capitalist system taught us a way of reading the world, but has also taught us how to desire and affectively restrict ourselves. We therefore want to question our inherited individualist, cis-heterosexist and consumerist behaviors in our organization. 

The experience of migration is wrought with individual emotions and leaves emotional traces of lived structural violence in our bodies. We know that it is often these feelings that motivate many to align with our organization in search of others with similar experiences and motivate building networks of affection based on a shared understanding and experience.

Within the Bloque Latinoamericano, we try to offer a space where individual emotions, which often motivate a search for belonging and community, are welcome. We know that when emotions become collective emotions they can be a force for political practice. The challenge for us is to find a balance between holding space for emotionality and, at the same time, systematically examining our inherited cis-het and consumerist sensibilities. 

It is our suggestion that we construct a space in which honest dialogue and active listening are facilitated and in which members feel free to express their views and emotions. Nonetheless, we are of the opinion that offering the right to a ‘safe space’ can be a trap in that for the ‘safety’ of some, others must be excluded. 

Informal meetings between Bloque activists, members of grassroots movements, acquaintances, friends and all belonging to our network have just as central importance as political meetings. It is in these spaces that the bonds of affection, trust, and solidarity among comrades are fortified.  

Finally, we emphasize the importance of desire and pleasure in militancy, as they form the structural foundation which guarantees the functionality of the organization. Without desire, there is no movement, and ideas and ideological guidelines cannot translate to tangible action. Not only does political organization not contradict the politics of emotion, we affirm that desire and pleasure must be present for our project to materialize.