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As Die Linke Slowly Collapses, What Is to Be Done?

More than 15 years after its founding, Germany’s Left Party has split and is staring into the abyss. Many socialists supported the party — but Nathaniel Flakin from Klasse Gegen Klasse argues a new course is needed


07/06/2024

European elections are less than a week away — the first vote in Germany since the split in Die Linke. In October of last year, Sahra Wagenknecht and nine other MPs resigned from the Party and launched a competing formation: the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW). At the moment, polls vary wildly, making it impossible to say whether Die Linke or the BSW have more support. Since Germany has a 5% threshold to enter the national parliament, but no such threshold for EU elections, it is conceivable that both Die Linke and BSW could get a couple of seats in Brussels, while both failing to win seats in the Bundestag next year.

It has been more than 15 years since Die Linke was founded. The fusion of the PDS (the former ruling party of East Germany) and the WASG (low-level bureaucrats who left the SPD) won the support of numerous revolutionary socialist groups, who saw the new party as a path to reach wider influence. (It’s worth remembering that Wagenknecht once considered herself as a Marxist on the far left wing of the party, even though she was always inspired by Stalinism.)

Die Linke is now in the throes of a likely terminal crisis, and it’s time to draw a balance sheet. A number of articles have been published in English, including from Christine Buchholz in ISJ, Phil Butland in The Left Berlin, and Loren Balhorn in Jacobin.

Which Is Worse?

Sahra Wagenknecht was recently able to present her project to an international audience with an interview in New Left Review. Since 2017, she has been raising the flag of social chauvinism: social justice, but only for people already living Germany. Wagenknecht describes her politics as “left conservatism” — in the English-speaking world, she might be part of the so-called “anti-woke Left.” She not only opposes immigration, which she blames for deteriorating public services, but also defends right-wing positions on a wide range of culture war issues, including even vaccine skepticism.

Her party, the BSW, voted alongside the right-wing CDU and the far-right AfD to limit state support for refugees by forcing them to use debit cards. They again formed a bloc with CDU and AfD to vote against the Self-Determination Act granting basic rights to trans people. Wagenknecht has said that BSW is open to forming governing coalitions with the CDU in East German states. While international audiences might have trouble believing how far she’s moved to the right, it has been more than a decade since Wagenknecht has made any reference to socialism, anticapitalism, or Marxism. Her goal is to strengthen Germany’s medium-sized companies, by opposing “greed” and encouraging “competition.” The candidates and leaders of the BSW include millionaire capitalists and neoliberal SPD politicians.

This might sound like a clear right-left split, with Wagenknecht breaking from Die Linke’s fundamental principles. Yet Wagenknecht’s main selling point in the current election campaign is Frieden, or peace. She presents herself as an opponent of the German government’s relentless drive for war against Russia. A BSW MP, Sevim Dağdelen, was the only German politician to support Nicaragua’s case against Germany in The Hague for complicity in genocide. Yet Wagenknecht is no anti-militarist: she is essentially a German patriot who wants a somewhat independent foreign policy, breaking from the German bourgeoisie’s slavish submission to Washington.

Die Linke, in contrast, has aligned itself with German Staatsräson of unconditional support for Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza. At the press conference announcing her departure, Wagenknecht made a brief reference to the fact that Gaza is an “open-air prison.” Dietmar Bartsch, Die Linke’s main leader, “distanced [himself] in the sharpest possible terms” from that phrase — the only criticism he made of Wagenknecht. In Berlin, Die Linke’s main leaders Klaus Lederer and Elke Breitenbach called for the ban of the Palestine Congress in April — and their wish was fulfilled by the governing parties CDU and SPD. Last year, the party voted, along with all the other parties in the Bundestag, to ban the left-wing Palestinian organization Samidoun.

So which side of the split is worse? As Lenin liked to say, “in our opinion, they are both worse.” We have two parties whose goal is to make the German imperialist state a bit more humane — and only end up administering this inhumane system. 

Integration Into the State

The different balance sheets of Die Linke tend to agree that the party was born out of social movements and subsequently degenerated. Christine Buchholz, for example, says:

The party was founded on the back of a wave of struggles and social movements: ­workers’ struggles, the movement against neoliberal globalisation, the ­anti-war movement and so on. When these struggles declined, the orientation on ­parliamentarism got stronger and stronger, and Die Linke accommodated to the political system.

This is true — but it ignores how thoroughly Die Linke has always been integrated into the capitalist state. In the Federal Republic of Germany, parties form coalitions not only at the national level, but in the states, the cities, and small towns, meaning that in practice everyone governs with everyone (with the partial exception of the AfD, so far). Die Linke has never been — not for a single day — totally outside of government. The PDS was part of multiple state governments before 2007. So even before it was founded, the new party was led by government ministers carrying out neoliberal policies. In Berlin, for example, die Linke has been in government for most of the last 20 years, and its members were directly responsible for privatizing hundreds of thousands of public apartments and introducing precarious, non-union jobs in state-owned companies — more or less the exact opposite of the party’s stated program.

Phil Butland points out that Bodo Ramelow of Die Linke, who for years has been prime minister of Thuringia, deported more than 300 people last year. This is true — but we would need to add that every major politician in Die Linke has similarly been responsible for deportations. This makes the party’s “position on open borders and an anti-racist policy,” which Buchholz counts as a positive element, ring hollow. What use is a “socialist” minister who defends “open borders” on paper while deporting people every day?

Die Linke attracted many activists from social movements — but it also directed thousands of them into cushy jobs in the state apparatus and the countless para-state bureaucracies that make up the enormous superstructure of German capitalism (NGOs, foundations, union apparatuses, etc.). The party never had more than 70,000 members, with over two thirds of them past retirement age. It’s fair to say that at any given time, no more than a few thousand members were active in any meaningful sense — and several thousand had full-time jobs for reformist bureaucracies.

As Lenin and Zinoviev explained during the First World War, these bureaucracies of the workers’ movement formed the social roots of opportunism.

Thus, Die Linke was never a party of socialist opposition. Its stated goal was to administer the German imperialist state in a more social way.

Of course there were always genuine anticapitalists in Die Linke — sometimes they were even able to take over a neighborhood branch, such as in Berlin’s Neukölln or Wedding districts. But anticapitalist forces always had extremely little structural influence. There were never more than a couple of anticapitalists in the Bundestag group or in the party leadership.

In 1940, Trotsky wrote that the labor bureaucracy “is independent of the workers, but in return, completely dependent on the bourgeois state.” In the epoch of imperialist decay, revolutionaries need to fight for the independence of the workers movement from the state — instead of leading activists into these state-financed bureaucracies.

Revolutionary Left

When Die Linke was founded in 2007, numerous revolutionary socialist groups joined the new party. This included the German affiliates of international tendencies like the CWI, the ISA, the IMT, the IST, and the USec. Their strategic hypothesis was that a new “broad left” formation would help them reach a mass audience. The irony was that while these “entryists” sought to take advantage of the larger organisation and played a huge role in the party’s election campaigns, they had little influence on policy — they were usually campaigning for policies they disagreed with. 

The most enthusiastic builders of the new party were the German supporters of the International Socialist Tendency (IST), who founded the network Marx21, as described by Buchholz in the interview mentioned above. The members of Marx21 were rapidly drawn into the party apparatus and other bureaucracies, leading to a rapid process of corruption, political degeneration, and more recently, a three-way split.

As I’ve written previously alongside my comrade Lennart Schlüter, the right wing of this split, which kept the name Marx21, is continuing their careers in the different bureaucracies. The left wing, Revolutionary Left (RL), has called for a break from Die Linke. And the center, Socialism from Below (SvU), which is closest to the IST leadership in London, has one foot inside the party and one foot outside.

Reading the articles by Buchholz, Butland, and Joseph Choonara of the IST, many readers feel like the entire project of building Die Linke was a mistake and a failure. That is certainly what the numbers would indicate: without exception, all the revolutionary groups that joined Die Linke are weaker than they were 15 years ago, with fewer members and less influence.

Yet SvU remains part of Die Linke, with no perspective for a clear break. This is a shame, because SvU comrades are doing excellent work in the Palestine solidarity movement, defying state repression. Yet they continue to encourage people to vote for a party committed to German Staatsräson. To give a concrete example: at the trade union demonstration on May 1 in Berlin, a Class Struggle Bloc with hundreds of workers and leftists expressed solidarity with Palestine. This bloc was attacked by union bureaucrats and police, yet managed to defend its place at the demonstration. SvU was unfortunately marching with Die Linke alongside pro-Zionist bureaucrats like Lederer. I mention this not to cast shade on the comrades — quite the opposite! We think they are holding themselves back with an orientation to a moribund, structurally reformist party. We would like to stand more closely with them in a front independent of and in opposition to Die Linke.

Early last year, a big chunk of Die Linke’s youth organization in Berlin carried out a Revolutionary Break from Die Linke, which we supported wholeheartedly. We think this is the way forward for everyone.

An Alternative

Germany’s revolutionary Left has been weak since 1933. We were crushed by fascism, and further repressed by both capitalist “democracy” and Stalinist “really existing socialism.” This weakness has often led leftists to seek shortcuts, trying to ride on the coattails of reformist parties. I’ve written how in 1968, West Germany’s Trotskyists largely missed the boat of the youth radicalization because they had been hiding inside the SPD.

At the moment, revolutionaries have nothing at all to gain by supporting Die Linke — or equally bad, the BSW. The strategic hypothesis that many defended in 2007 was wrong — 15 years of work in Die Linke has done nothing to strengthen socialist ideas in Germany. With national elections set to take place in a bit more than a year, it is time for a revolutionary break. We think that socialists can join together in an anticapitalist front, presenting ourselves in elections as an alternative to reformism, and not just as a more “left-wing” version of the same.

We do not, in the current situation, expect an enormous electoral breakthrough for the radical Left. Yet there are enormous contradictions in Germany’s political regime: surveys show that 61% of people do not support Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza, even though 99-100 percent of MPs reject any criticism of Israel. That represents a huge space for bold anti-imperialist policies — but these can only be seriously defended outside Die Linke.

We think it is our duty to present an independent banner and try to gather support for a socialist alternative based on class independence. Socialists need to do this together, without hiding our disagreements. Klasse Gegen Klasse, of which I am a member, is currently discussing with different left groups to take such a step. Right now, Trotskyists in Spain are running for the EU elections with an independent revolutionary slate.

It is a disgrace that a chauvinist like Wagenknecht can present herself as an alternative to Die Linke for people who are worried about war. It is also a disgrace that Die Linke can present itself as an alternative to Wagenknecht’s anti-immigrant policies — while the party deports people every single day.

Local branches of Die Linke, such as in Berlin’s Neukölln and Wedding districts, or the Internationals Working Group, have many good policies. But every time elections come around, they campaign for right-wing government politicians. We think it’s time to set a new course

Artists withdraw from Major Group Exhibition of Contemporary Photography from Ireland in Berlin

Withdrawal is a response to the call from STRIKE GERMANY


04/06/2024

The artists Kate Nolan, Mark Curran, Clare Gallagher, Ruby Wallis, Sara McCarroll, Caleb Daly & Luke Ryan, Dragana Jurišić, Miriam O’Connor, Mandy O’Neill, Emer Gillespie and others have formally announced their withdrawal from a major group exhibition featuring contemporary photography from Ireland to open in June at Haus am Kleistpark in Berlin. The exhibition titled, ‘Changing States: Ireland in the 21st Century’, is organised by Photo Museum Ireland, IKS Düsseldorf and Haus am Kleistpark. The exhibition is part of the Government of Ireland’s year long programme of cultural events in Germany – ‘Zeitgeist24’.

This comes following months of exchange with Photo Museum Ireland, regarding the ongoing repression and violence in Berlin and Germany and cancellations of voices stating opposition to the ongoing horror in Gaza and the violence in the Occupied West Bank. The group of artists then recently wrote directly to the three institutions involved with a formal statement and request and received no response.

All the artists wish to state that the reason for their non-participation is in response to the call by STRIKE GERMANY (see below) for international cultural workers to withdraw from participating in any cultural institutions in Germany due to the ongoing violent repression, intimidation and cancellation of individuals who express any support for the calling to an end of the ongoing “plausible genocide” (International Court of Justice) in Gaza and brutal violence in the Occupied West Bank. Many of these incidents are documented by the project, Archive of Silence (see below).

Berlin is home to the largest Palestinian community in Europe while Germany is the second largest supplier of weapons to Israel after the United States, accounting for 47% in 2023 (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)). The weekly reports of violence and brutality at demonstrations in Berlin in support of Palestine extending to the arrest of activists, raiding of homes and media profiling including members of the Palestinian and Jewish communities for no apparent reason other than their support for justice.

In such a context and with little possibility of a ceasefire in sight, the artists as activists state clearly that they can no longer participate and their withdrawal is an act of full solidarity with all those experiencing this violent and brutal repression within Germany and centrally, those suffering the continuing horrific attacks in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank.

The artists had requested that Photo Museum Ireland, IKS Düsseldorf and Haus am Kleistpark:

  • formally acknowledge the absence of their work, including the names of all artists, including those who withdrew prior to May 20th, 2024, to be physically and publicly displayed in the physical exhibition space and in all online and published media in relation to the exhibition.

  • publicly display in the physical exhibition space and in all online and published media in relation to the exhibition these three paragraphs which outline the reasons for their withdrawal:

‘All the artists wish to state the reason for their non-participation is in response to the call by STRIKE GERMANY for international cultural workers to withdraw from participating in any cultural institutions in Germany due to the ongoing violent repression, intimidation and cancellation of individuals who express any support for the calling to an end of the ongoing ‘plausible genocide’ (ICJ) in Gaza and brutal violence in the Occupied West Bank. Many of these incidents are documented by the project, Archive of Silence.

Berlin is home to the largest Palestinian community in Europe while Germany is the second largest supplier of weapons to Israel after the United States, accounting for 43% in 2023. The weekly reports of violence and brutality at demonstrations in Berlin in support of Palestine extending to the arrest of activists, raiding of homes and media profiling including members of the Palestinian and Jewish communities for no apparent reason other than their support for justice.

In such a context and with little possibility of a ceasefire in sight, the artists as activists state clearly that they can no longer participate and their withdrawal is an act of full solidarity with all those experiencing this violent and brutal repression within Germany and centrally, those suffering the continuing horrific attacks in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank.’

  • That the three institutions acknowledge the ongoing repression in Berlin and Germany and Germany’s substantial involvement in the ongoing ‘plausible genocide’ (ICJ), by publicly displaying in the physical exhibition space and in all online and published media in relation to the exhibition, the text below from STRIKE GERMANY and ‘Archive of Silence’.

All the requests are in the context of the exhibition titled, ‘Changing States’, that seeks to be ‘politically engaged’, and as artists from Ireland, knowing how the island suffered the direct experience and devastating impact of settler-colonialism.

One hundred years ago, the British Government stated that their goal was for ‘Palestine to become a ‘Second Ireland’.

STRIKE GERMANY

‘STRIKE GERMANY is a call for international cultural workers to strike from German cultural institutions. It is a call to refuse German cultural institutions’ use of McCarthyist policies that suppress freedom of expression, specifically expressions of solidarity with Palestine.

STRIKE GERMANY withholds labour and presence from German cultural institutions. Until the demands below are met, participation will be withdrawn from festivals, panels, and exhibitions.

STRIKE GERMANY upholds a commitment to liberationist struggle and against Germany’s embargo on internationalist solidarity.

Archive of Silence

Archive of Silence is a crowdsourced archive documenting silenced voices. Their mission is to chronicle the alarming waves of erasure and violence directed at Palestinian advocacy in Germany. There has been an uprise of bans, cancellations and censorship. Many, including Jewish people, have lost their jobs. Events have been canceled and people have been defamed. Archive of Silence refuses to accept this condition.

Mark Curran – ‘Untitled, Gowning Room, Building 7, 11.02 a.m., Monday, November 11th 2003 (Leixlip, Ireland) from The Breathing Factory (2003-2006).

Freedom Walks Through the Cemetery

Text written for the Anti-War Congress in Prague, Czech Republic, May 2024


03/06/2024

I’m on a tram. I see a guy buying a ticket, but suddenly a ticket inspector grabs him. The inspector asks the guy to show his ticket, but it’s still in the machine. Then the inspector hits the guy in the face and demands a fine. At the next stop, he drags the guy out of the tram and 4 ticket inspectors start beating him up. Would you react?

Most people would only step in if it’s really serious. But when is something serious enough to make the average person react? It’s when someone is punished unfairly and way too harshly for what they’ve done. Here on the tram that is the case; the punishment is unfair and too harsh. When we talk about forced mobilization and prison for refusing to join army, we should see it as the nasty beating of a whole nation, but we don’t.

Most people don’t see forced mobilization as a crime because the government shifts how it presents its values to the people. When the military beats up some guy who doesn’t want to join the army, the government tells people through official media that the soldiers are just following orders, and that guy is to blame for not fulfilling his duty to defend his country. The government tells us things aren’t so simple, and therefore good citizens watch a fight between 4 soldiers and a civilian, and see it as law enforcement instead of a crime. That’s why people just keep going their own ways.

During wartime, the government won’t tell you that it’s wrong to force someone to risk their life against their will.

The government won’t tell you that being a soldier is a profession, not a punishment. Yes, in Ukraine today, getting a draft notice is a punishment.

The government won’t tell you about the unexpected power that the military and those who are not subjected to mobilization gain over those who are vulnerable to it. This creates room for manipulation. This is where businesses are built.

Of course, the government won’t tell you that mobilization should only be voluntary, and the army should only be under contract.

The government won’t tell you this because they need you, cheaply and in large numbers.

One British politician once said that war is not killing, but suicide. I would add that it’s forced suicide. A French politician said that war is too important to be left to the military. Was he joking? I don’t think so.

But they are politicians, and I’m just a regular guy. Speaking as a regular guy, I want to say: State, I’m tired of being flexible. Your desire to see flexibility in me is breaking me, instead of benefiting both of us. Yesterday you wanted me to be a businessman, a factory worker, or an office clerk, bringing you taxes, and now you want to turn me into a shooter and a guardian of your territories. Who will you want me to be tomorrow? I’m tired, State. Your persistence makes me not only forget your protection but also start protecting myself from you.

State, why do you think I only have two purposes: to kill and to work? And why are you so confident that I can easily switch between them?

Society, if you know that men can be taken out of Ukraine for money, despite the border crossing ban, then why do you donate money for weapons that bring death, but not on saving us?

Doesn’t the very existence of war indicate that a large number of people among us don’t love life but suffer from it, and that’s where they gather the energy needed to sustain the fire of war?

So maybe war doesn’t end with peaceful negotiations? Maybe war continues as long as there is one  person dissatisfied with life left? How many more will emerge later when they stop shooting?

I love walking in cemeteries. Most people enjoy reading the news and don’t understand my love for cemeteries. Interestingly, what scares most people in a cemetery scares me in the news. Essentially, we’re both repulsed by the same phenomenon, just find it in different places.

My love for cemeteries has given me the desire to control my own death. My sadness outweighs the will of the state. Ukrainian officials may think differently, but fortunately, the sky is higher than state borders.

Recently in Ukraine, plans to mobilize 500 thousand more men were released. If the war continues at the same pace, soon there will be no one left to come to the cemetery for them. Perhaps we should remember our dead to appreciate our lives more? With this in mind, I went to the cemetery by tram today and witnessed a horrific beating.

When I was beaten by a soldier in a Ukrainian army uniform in front of a passive crowd for refusing to take the draft notice, the Ukrainian army made it clear to me that it not only wouldn’t protect me but also posed an immediate danger to me.

It’s a suspicious thing that while you can volunteer to go to war, you cannot voluntarily leave it. Attempting to do so results in imprisonment. This alone makes me think that the state and the individual do not make an equal contribution to the fight. Therefore, today it’s important not only to speak out against forced mobilization but also to help demobilize those who want it.

The way I was beaten by the military in the early days of the war in Ukraine, I describe in my novel THE MINING BOYS. It amuses me when people are outraged by my book because it simply depicts my ordinary life, meaning they are outraged by my life itself. It amuses me when people say I’m wrong to fight against forced mobilization because they are essentially saying I would be better off dead.

I’ve seen many guys in Ukraine forcibly taken to the military enlistment office. I was one of them. Women and the elderly can intervene with little consequence but usually choose not to. The story of a guy being beaten for a tram ticket somehow outrages many more people than the lawlessness of military enlistment office staff. In both situations, people suffer for no reason, with the only difference being that in one case, this guy was beaten, and in the other, thousands of moreu lose their lives. So why are you so outraged by the damn ticket?

When the ticket inspectors were beating up the guy at the bus stop, a huge raven flew past the bus with a 20-Hryvnia note in its beak. Nobody paid any attention to it. I’m writing this with one goal in mind: to make you pay attention to what’s happening.

 

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.

 

Germany’s repression of the Palestine solidarity movement increases even further

As racism grows in Germany, politicians and the police are more interested in attacking anyone protesting against genocide in Gaza


02/06/2024

For almost 8 months now, repression has increased in the pressure cooker that is Germany. The extreme right grows unabashed, and on the eve of the European elections, different positions are taken. Politicians, the media, the police and a large part of German society are more offended by people shouting ‘Free Palestine’ in a televised genocide – than by people partying on a high-class tourist island chanting ‘Foreigners out, Germany for Germans’.  These latter were making the Nazi salute with one hand and wearing Hitler’s ridiculous little moustache with the other. The incident was uploaded to social media by the participants themselves. Although it has created controversy around it, more old videos and imitators chanting the same thing have emerged all over the country. Clearly racist slogans are safely spoken and uploaded to their networks.

The strategy of the government and the media, both public and private, is twofold. To misinform, underreport or not to report at all. Furthermore to increasingly target activists, linking the pro-Palestinian movement to violent antisemitism and jihadist terrorism. An increasing number of stories in the press and on television single out activists  by name, and if possible by their social media accounts and places of work.

In fact, it is not only known activists who are targeted, but anyone who shows solidarity with Palestine solidarity.

A few weeks ago the students of the misnamed Free University of Berlin camped there. This followed students around the world, and the camp-out, in which many of them had participated in front of the German parliament. The university presidency immediately sent in the police. Riot police trucks closed off access to that part of the campus, separating the camped students off from the people who came to support them. That included the many students and professors coming out of the first hour of classes. They closed the cafeteria, from which the police action could be seen, and sent the teachers either home or to their offices. The police then evicted and detained the students with extreme violence and without prior provocation. The presidency wants to open a file on them and follow with ex-matriculation. This is at the same university, which now honours Rudi Dutschke, having demonised him in his life. Using the same arguments now to attack its students, shows that history is repeating itself.

The night of the eviction of the camp, horrified by the attack on the students, hundreds of professors from various universities signed a letter of support for the students. Not for their cause per se, which is to stop the genocide and all economic and academic links of the university with Israel, as well as to acknowledge the colonialist past of this country. More out of concern that it is within their job to protect their students. The signatories were publicly condemned by Federal Minister of Education and Research Bettina Stark-Watzinger of the Free Democratic Party (FDP). The Minister called the statement ‘shocking’ and accused them of ‘trivialising violence’.  Later Bild, Germany’s best-selling newspaper, a racist, right-wing tabloid, published the names and places of work of all the teachers and the picture of some of them on its front page. It include a Palestinian teacher who has lost family members in Gaza.

In the face of this police brutality the student union took a stand in favour of police action, calling for some ‘restrictions’. Der Spiegel reports: “‘The pro-Palestinian demands are again and again supplemented by propagandistic disinformation. An actively anti-Israeli attitude prevails, characterised by widespread antisemitic rhetoric,’ says Debora Eller, fzs expert on anti-fascism, anti-racism and emancipation. For example, the suffering of the people of the Gaza Strip is also being instrumentalised for ‘antisemitic incitement’ during university protests.’ This shows that even the young people of this country are not immune to the one-size-fits-all thinking imposed by the government.

Society was again divided, the political class in general wants to continue the politically motivated ex-matriculations, which endangers the residence permit of thousands of students in this country. Since then, however, encampments rose on dozens of German campuses, including universities of Frankfurt, Cologne, Bonn, Munich and others. some of which were evicted, but others remain. None have managed to stop their university from collaborating with Israel.

At a press conference called by the government on Tuesday 21 May, Michael Wildt, a renowned Holocaust scholar who was a signator of the open letter in ‘Bild’, calls for debate not policing: “Anyone who now demands mainly repressive measures is paving the way for an authoritarian conception of the state”. Clemens Arzt, a professor at the Berlin School of Economics and Law, warned against restricting the right to freedom of assembly, and saw no legal justification for the eviction of the Free University camp.

Berlin students, without missing a beat, last week occupied a building of the Humbold University, and renamed it the Jabalia Institute. The administration negotiated. After 30 hours of occupation, the administration promised the people in the building that there would be no repercussions if they left. Calling this a lack of ‘forcefulness’ on the part of university president Julia von Blumenthal, Berlin’s SPD senator for science, health and care, Ina Czyborra, and CDU`s mayor Kai Wegner demanded that the police clear the building. ‘Our universities are places of knowledge and critical discourse, not lawless spaces for antisemites and terror sympathisers,’ Wegner tweeted. With riot police sent in from other federal states, the police presence for the 150  people inside the building, and 200 outside, was comically excessive. Blocks of central Berlin were cut off by rows of police trucks. Warned that there was at least one accredited journalist, a lawyer and medical personnel inside the building to treat the wounded, videos show that, in true Israeli style, the police went after the press, the medical and legal personnel. These people were among the first to be arrested.

There was bloodshed that day, including that of the journalist Ignacio Rosaslanda of the Berliner Zeitung. In a video recorded by himself, he can be seen being attacked by the police. Rosaslanda claims that the police denied him medical attention for hours. It has to be said, that we have only the testimonies of the arrested students, as the police conveniently turned off their cameras during the eviction.

The Berlin authorities have also closed down day centres Alia and Phantalisa. They were especially important for migrant and lgtbia+ teenage girls. All the workers on the street were left on the street, because some showed solidarity with Palestinians in demonstrations and on the networks. The dismissal letters mention giving likes to posts in solidarity with Palestine and sharing posts on Instagram stories with the phrase ‘From the river to the sea’. It now looks like the authorities are keeping an eye on more centres and their staff.

The demonisation of students, social workers, teachers and anyone who steps out of line with the established Israel is Germany´s raison d’état is constant and increasingly violent. The police rarely let a demonstration reach the end of its route without arrests and lately even bloodshed. This feeds back into the press which classifies the demonstrators as violent antisemitic nutcases. Articles are then used to try to ban events and demonstrations and close social centres, due to the participation of workers in these demonstrations. Letters announcing the bans on demonstrations and the closure of the centres quote these articles, sometimes literally. The state, its bureaucratic institutions, the armed forces and its press function like a machine in perfect continuous feedback motion. The sole function is to crush all criticism.

This is creating a two-headed monster: One the release of guilt for the holocaust from the German people, because now the new Nazi genocidal people are the Palestinians, and the problem of anti-Semitism is imported, something extremely dangerous in a country where an Alternative for Germany politician, Maximilian Krah, recently claimed that not everyone in the SS was guilty. And xenophobia in general, Islamophobia in particular, and especially against Palestinians is being not only tolerated by the state, but encouraged, with a majority of Germans now finding Islam one of the main threats in this country. This is why violence on the streets against Jews and Arabs is on a dangerous rise, but contrary to what the media whips up, the perpetrators are mostly white Germans, both civilians and police, and not foreigners.

“Representation is Key” : An Interview with Dr. Fazila Bhimji

Interview with Fazila Bhimji about Art and Colonialism and her coming workshop “Namibia in Films”


01/06/2024

The Left Berlin sat down with Dr. Fazila Bhimji to discuss her upcoming workshop on Namibia in film. Below is the transcript of our conversation.

Hi Fazila. Thanks for talking to us. Could you first start by introducing yourself?

Thanks for being here. My name is Fazila Bhimji. I do some teaching at Evangelische Hochschule Berlin (Protestant University of Applied Sciences, Berlin). I lived in England for a long time, and I taught film and media studies at a university in England. And then two years ago, I moved to Berlin.

Today we’re talking about a workshop you’re going to be giving soon on Namibia in Film. Why Namibia?

The Museum Neukölln currently has an exhibition depicting the genocide that Germany was engaged in in Western South Africa – at that time, there was no Namibia – against the Ovaherero and Nama. It was about land and colonial rule, and they decided to resist. And Germany, of course, didn’t like that, and between 24,000 and 100,000 Hereros and 10,000 Nama were killed in the genocide by Germans. There was also widespread famine.

This is very nicely explained in the museum. There are a lot of texts in German, but if you don’t speak German, you can hold your phone against the text and use Google Translate. It is a very, very well detailed exhibition.

The museum has a series of collaborations with the Volkshochschule. Different people from the community are doing different things. One person is giving a tour of the colonial history of Neukölln, and there are several other projects that are ongoing in collaboration with this exhibition.

How long is the exhibition going on?

It’s been going on since last year and will carry on until 21st July.

German memory culture talks a lot about the Holocaust, but there is very little talk about Namibia and the genocides in Africa. Why do you think this is?

I think there must be an agenda. If you make visible a European Holocaust, and not something that was done to Africans, perhaps there’s an element of racialization here. And then there’s a broader agenda about sustaining Israel. I don’t want to go into the reasons for this here, but it’s fairly obvious.

This has been obscured, and unfortunately even the exhibition has been obscured. There hasn’t been much publicity on the U-Bahn platforms. Usually when there’s an interesting exhibition there’s always some advertising in the U-Bahns in Rathaus Neukölln and Hermannstraße. But there’s nothing about this exhibition other than the website of the museum itself.

So it’s a wonderful exhibition with different collaborations including with the Volkshochschule Neukölln. I would encourage everyone to go because this genocide is considered the first genocide of the 20th century. It was very brutal, but for various political reasons and agendas, it’s been obscured.

You’re going to be talking about Namibia and film. What films are you going to be using? Are they films that people will know?

Yes, people will probably know some of them, like The Gods Must Be Crazy. This is a film which became popular, not only in the US and Europe, but also in the Global South. I remember at that time, I was a teenager in Pakistan. And that film just ran and ran and ran in the theatre for maybe a year or so. Everybody found the film funny, although it’s full of abstractions and stereotypes. I begin with this very popular film because I’m most familiar with it.

After that, I move on to some German soap operas, which also depict Namibia, and doctors and nurses as saviours in the region. Then I talk about independent films produced by Namibians themselves.

In one of the films I talk about, Horse Without a Name, which is set in Namibia, a monument comes to life. It is a hilarious take on former German colonisers who are worthless. He’s just walking around and looks really out of sync in present day Namibia. These Namibian films are very different to the stereotypes depicted in European and US films.

In the last few years, there have been a couple of German films about colonialism in Africa, to which I’ve had simultaneous and contradictory responses. On the one hand, there is finally an acknowledgement that there was such a thing as German colonialism. On the other, the films still have a paternalistic attitude.

I agree. There was Measures of Men, which was produced in Germany in 2023. It had this paternalistic representation, and didn’t really unpack anything in a serious way. It just glossed over the history. In a way, it was problematic. It wasn’t considered a very good or powerful film.

I think the most interesting film I saw recently was Dahomey. It is more related to France, and was about the return of a few museum pieces to Benin. This film was produced by the Senegalese-French director Mati Diop, who has also produced some other very good films. Dahomey was more complex and showed the transnational aspect and the current situation more.

The recent German films feel like for primary school children. They don’t go beyond some of the basic atrocities that Namibia experienced, and they don’t question imperialism in a serious manner.

But the films made in Namibia confront imperialism?

Some of them do. Horse Without a Name does it in an ironic way. A monument of this German person comes to life and his position is reversed. Namibia is now independent, and this guy is walking around. In one clip he’s told: “Get off the road, white guy, you don’t belong here”.

It also shows all the complexities of Namibia and doesn’t essentialise all Namibians. It shows the poor; it shows sex workers; it shows the middle class. Even in this very short film, it shows that Namibia is not a monolithic state. Even if it doesn’t contest imperialism, it shows present day Namibia in a more complex way.

I guess that unlike most Western films, it is more about people who have been colonized than the colonisers?

Exactly.

Is your workshop just going to be about German colonialism, or will it go wider?

We have just an hour and a half for this workshop, so I can only limit my part to German colonialism, but in the discussion section, the audience is totally free to talk about wider issues and link this first genocide of the 20th century with the current present day genocide happening in the Middle East.

Have you observed any changes over the years in the way that film has dealt either with Namibia specifically or with colonialism in general?

Mainstream films are still lagging behind on the question of imperialism. You now see some films in the Berlinale, but they have yet to reach mainstream theatres. But we have certainly seen a change in independent films. Technology has become much more accessible. So there are many more independent films.

Second-generation children of people who experienced colonialism have grown up in the Global North and now have some resources to make films which are ready to confront some of these difficult questions.

Mati Diop, who I mentioned before, made a beautiful film which dealt with the disappearance of men in the Mediterranean. I regard this as a form of ongoing decolonialism. Many African countries are still controlled by France, and there’s a lot of resistance. If you think about mobility as resistance and about people disappearing and dying in the Mediterranean, this is a form of colonial oppression. The film used metaphors and a little bit of surrealism to bring up these complex issues.

There was also an Indian film made two decades ago, called Lagaan, which means tax in English. It was a bit of a Bollywood film, but it did touch on this idea of how the imperial powers in India would unfairly collect taxes. They had a game of cricket, and obviously, being a Bollywood film, the Indian team won. But it touched on these issues very nicely and made them accessible to the general public.

So in the diaspora, they’re making films about these issues, and then outside the diaspora within the Global South, people are making films about their colonial experience now and historically. Film is a very important medium which can reach a lot of people. Also, the visual experience is different than reading a text. So it’s great that there are more films about these issues.

I have noticed that, particularly in France, a number of second-generation directors are emerging who are making very interesting films about their experience of being a minority within France. Many of these are women like Alice Diop [no relation to Mati]. We are also seeing film’s like Dev Patel’s Monkey Man, which I didn’t think was a great film, but was at least an attempt to talk about India’s colonial history within a mainstream Hollywood action film. Is this something to be welcomed?

Well it is a start, and it’s better than nothing or completely erasing colonialism. Complexities can come later as the film industry develops around this topic. So it should be welcomed, even if it’s at a very basic level. Because people start talking about it. It starts a conversation.

And although there is still way too little diversity in film directions, particularly concerning who wins awards, we’re starting to see more women and minority filmmakers.

Definitely. Because technology is so accessible now, you don’t need as many resources. It’s less expensive to make a film these days. So in Berlin, every second person is a film maker.

In France, Algerians who are second generation are making films about their colonial past and their history. They are so racialized in France that I can imagine a lot of topics which would be of interest to second and even first generation people – and even to the French themselves.

Let’s go back to your workshop. Why should people come, and what will they learn?

I think representation is key, because it has to do with ideology. Film makers represent certain parts of the world, and there’s all these complexities involved. When you see something over and over again, things get normalized. And that is very dangerous.

So it’s important to see films – especially mainstream films – and deconstruct them, so that the idea of how people are doesn’t get normalised, and people begin to see complexities and think about these films in a more critical way. For me, it’s very important that people deconstruct mainstream films, It’s nice to show some Namibian films, just to compare how things should be versus how things are in the mainstream.

The film I mentioned at the beginning, The Gods Must Be Crazy, was so popular. And by virtue of it being so popular, ideas about how certain people live, or about colonialism and imperialism, get normalized. It’s very important to break down and deconstruct these notions.

So your workshop is not just for filmmakers or critics. It’s for anyone who goes to the cinema?

Yeah. I just break the films down and ask people why they found this clip funny, and to reflect on if it’s really funny. What kinds of stereotypes are involved? This film is from the 1970s, and we’re now in 2024. What has changed?

I think people have come a long way and they will immediately pick up on the stereotypes of the time. It’s important to look at another period in another context and see what was popular.

If someone wants to know more about your workshop or wants to know more about the other work you’ve been doing, where can they find out more?

They can e-mail me at bhimjifazila@gmail.com. I’m looking forward to hearing from them.

 

Workshop: Namibia in Films with Dr. Fazila Bhimji: Tuesday, 18th June. Museum Neukölln.