The Left Berlin News & Comment

This is the archive template

Film Review – Time of Pandemics

A new South African film shows how millions died from AIDS because of the priorities of Big Pharma and how we are repeating the experience under Covid

Phil Butland
26/01/2022

Time of Pandemics is the new film by Rehad Desai, South African director of award-winning films about the Marikana massacre (Miners Shot Down) and the Rhodes Must Fall campaign. This film looks at two pandemics which have ravaged sub-Saharan Africa in recent decades – HIV/AIDS and Covid.

AIDS and HIV in South Africa

When the AIDS epidemic emerged in the 1980s, Western media coverage initially concentrated on the USA and Western Europe, but it was Africans who suffered the most. 35 Million have died worldwide from AIDS-related illnesses. Most infections have been in sub-Saharan Africa. At present, 9 million South Africans are HIV positive.

The high incidence of HIV in South Africa was largely down to two factors. Firstly, leading politicians denied that the disease could be fought. In parliament, president Thabo Mbeki rejected the possibility of effective treatment, saying: “when you ask the question, does HIV cause AIDS, the question is, does a virus cause a syndrome? How does a virus cause a syndrome? It can’t”.

South African AIDS victims had much more to deal with than obstinate politicians. Even without the obstruction of people like Mbeki, there was simply a lack of available antiretroviral drugs, which allow you to live with HIV and reduce the risk of transmission. Western pharmaceutical companies refused to allow these drugs to be used in the Global South if they could not bring a profit. South Africans had to wait 18 years for life saving medicine, resulting in 10 million deaths.

This combination of blaming the people who were suffering from AIDS and a lack of sufficient drugs led to health workers having to make impossible decisions. Human Rights lawyer Fatima Hassan explains how doctors were asked to decide who was “innocent” enough to be saved. This meant that infected nurses and rape victims were given medicine, but men who had sex with other men were not. As a result, infections increased.

Epidemiologist Rob Wallace explains how the development of HIV/AIDS and many other pandemics is linked to colonialism and capitalism. The original SIV virus (the precursor to HIV) was transmitted from chimpanzees to workers who had been sent to the rain forests to gain more profit for capital, then transmitted through trade routes to Kinshasha. It is not a coincidence that the main hotspots for disease and epidemics are now global trade centres like London and Hong Kong.

Wherever HIV became endemic in Africa, there was a rise in tuberculosis (TB). The two diseases both affected each other and also strained the health service. People with HIV are ten times more likely to develop active TB, and TB is the leading cause of death of people with HIV worldwide. The increase in HIV led to an increase in TB, and hospital infrastructure was not able to handle this. This also led to the development of drug resistant mutations in both HIV and TB. What this means is that every new epidemic does not just endanger the local population, it also brings the danger of a pandemic that can potentially spread globally.

Local activists formed the Treatment Action Campaign, which won the active support of former president Nelson Mandela. They put AIDS in South Africa on the international agenda. But the old power disparities remained. One pharma company felt compelled to voluntarily drop its patents, leading to much lower priced antiretroviral drugs – but these were only made available at the cheaper price in the developed world.

In 1986/1987, South African doctors joined their Western counterparts to work on an HIV vaccine. We are only now approaching the possibility of an effective vaccine against HIV and AIDS. Doctor Anthony Fauci, Chief Medical Advisor to the US president, calls this “definitely worth the investment, particularly among women in South Africa, who were at enormous risk.”

AIDS and Covid in the USA

South Africa was not the only country which had to deal with reactionary politicians. In a parliamentary debate, US Senator Jesse Helms claimed that “the subject matter is so obscene, so revolting that until we are ready to eliminate the types of activities which have caused the spread of the AIDS epidemic, I don’t think we’re ever going to stop it.”

President Ronald Reagan denied migrants with AIDS entry into the US. Reagan was not alone. In the mid-1980s, 81 countries passed legislation restricting the movement of HIV positive people. Migrants, gay men and Black people were all scapegoated for the failure of governments to adequately deal with a problem which could not be solved by a system based on profit.

Many of us remember how the AIDS epidemic was used to stigmatise gay men. But Black people were also demonised. Fauci explains how in the USA, African Americans, Latinx and Asian Americans have been disproportionately hit by Covid – largely because these are the groups most likely to be affected by poverty. As Fauci says: “ if you don’t understand that, you’re not going to get your arms around the disease.”

Despite not having HIV himself, Justin Lofton joined trials trying to find a cure, because as a black, gay man, he knows that he has a 50% chance of contracting HIV in his lifetime. In the film he explains that being black and gay in the Southern States is a double whammy which makes him a particular target for prejudice, facing discrimination in the housing market and even eviction.

With the emergence of Covid, we have experienced some familiar patterns. As with AIDS; this is partly to do with victim blaming from above. We are shown footage of then-president Trump railing against the so-called “China virus”. Trump also claimed that Covid will “just go away”. This helps explains why the greatest number of Covid deaths have been registered in the USA.

But Covid has also brought some new problems. Firstly, as AIDS was primarily transmitted by sexual contact, it could be severely reduced by safer sex (although is easier said than done and many women are faced with belligerent husbands who refuse to wear a condom). It is much easier to transmit Covid through everyday contact, making it even more dangerous.

But the problem is more systemic and international than just Trump’s racism. There has been a systematic disinvestment from public health spending. 28 million US Americans still have no health insurance, and 24 million are under-insured – despite the alleged benefits brought by Obamacare. New Public Private Partnership means that although Fauci says that “we were considered the best prepared country for the epidemic”, politics was allowed to intervene.

There is also the problem of lockdown. Towards the beginning of the pandemic South Africa implemented one of the most severe lockdowns that was seen worldwide. The main victims were the poor, who just could not afford to stockpile food. One of the side-effects of Covid in South Africa is that malnourishment has now reached epidemic proportions. This is not just a problem of the Global South.

How the WTO causes millions of deaths

And yet the problem is not simply caused by the US or South African governments, it is systemic. Chief Offender is the World Trade Organisation (WTO) which in the mid-1990s was able to implement Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property, better known as TRIPS. Simply put, TRIPS made unpatented generic drugs illegal. Big Pharma was able to set the prices for the drugs that were literally a matter of life and death for millions of people.

When the ANC government took over in South Africa in the early 1990s, the first question that the WTO put to them was whether they would respect patent rights (ie whether they would allow pharmaceutical companies set the price for anti-HIV – and later anti-Covid – drugs at a price that most people could not afford). Until the early 2000s, antiretroviral drugs in South Africa cost $15 thousand per year, even though much cheaper generic drugs from India were available.

As a response to TRIPS, countries in the Global South had some hope in COVAX, which was set up by the World Health Organisatoin to ensure that all countries get equal access to Covid vaccines. Yet, as medical journal The Lancet reported: “COVAX was a beautiful idea, born out of solidarity. Unfortunately it didn’t work … Rich countries behaved worse than anyone’s worst nightmares.” When the Delta version of Covid hit South Africa, only 2% of the population had been vaccinated.

Poor countries requested a TRIPS waiver during the Covid pandemic, which would allow them to use generic drugs. World leaders like Emmanuel Macron and Joe Biden made self-important speeches supporting this demand. And yet, the 2021 G7 summit in Cornwall – attended by Macron and Biden – rejected it. Many people in poor countries died as a result.

There was resistance to the WTO and to TRIPS, most notably at the WTO Conference in Seattle in 1999. Massive protests outside shut down the conference, giving countries that didn’t want TRIPS the confidence to make a stand. Protests shut down the WTO. Over the following years, lower and middle income countries won concessions to produce generic drugs. Fifteen years later, a WTO amendment on Intellectual Property Rights was a great gain for the poor countries.

These have been minor victories, but the war continues. In 2020, the US-American Federal Drugs Agency allowed emergency use of the Covid vaccine from BioNTech. In principle, this would mean free drugs for the Global South. And yet Vaccine Nationalism means that the rich countries who account for 13% of the world’s population have already bought up over half of the available vaccines.

What is the problem? And how can we solve it?

Director Rehad Desai describes the problem as “Zombie capitalism, marching us towards our mutual destruction.” Dr Aslam Dasoo, from the South African Public Health Forum explains: “Big Pharma is not owned by pharmacists. It’s owned by the hedge funds which require a return on investment. To make huge profits you need to be sole supplier.” Whether people live or die is simply not relevant unless it can be represented by an entry on the balance sheet.

The film ends with Desai accurately summarizing where we are:

“So, what has society learned from this Time of Pandemics? That we have encroached upon nature to the extent that it’s now only a matter of time before we face another threat? That seems clear enough. But what about the more difficult issue of how prepared we are for what’s to come?

Covid has revealed that our current approach to public health is simply not working. Maybe this is our last chance to go back to an older path we once travelled – health as a basic right, not letting the market determine who gets access to innovation. Not treating the Global South as a charity case and turning us into a petri dish of variants. Not letting the quest for profit lead us all further into catastrophe.

Is it really such a radical idea to put people first?

This is an angry film, which has a very real reason for its anger. And yet it is not without hope. The focus on our victories – on Seattle, on the brave doctors and patients who might make HIV/AIDS a disease of the past – means that it does not fall into mawkish cynicism. At the same time, it issues a clarion call: if we want to save lives, we need fundamental changes, and we need them now.

Times of Pandemics now has a German distributor and will hopefully be released later this year in Germany. When it does, you should go and see it, take your friends and colleagues, and discuss its serious implications. Many lives were lost to AIDS due to the policies of international governments and Big Business. We must not allow history to repeat itself.

For more information about Time of Pandemics, see its website. You can view the trailer here.

Greece seven years after the left’s electoral challenge

7 years ago today, SYRIZA won a historic election in Greece. What has happened since?

Dimitra Kyrillou
25/01/2022

This week in Greece marks a bitter anniversary. Parliamentary elections held on 25 January 2015 ended a series of right-wing governments and opened up the chance for a coalition headed by a broad left party, SYRIZA, standing on a clear mandate to “tear up” all memoranda and austerity measures imposed by the so called stabilization programs, defend the working-class and the poor and deliver democracy. That SYRIZA failed to deliver as well as spread disillusionment is beyond doubt and has been analyzed elsewhere – on this webpage as well. So where do the people of Greece stand now?

Seven years later the official picture at first glance looks rather dim. Right wing New Democracy is in office since 2019, implementing a full pro-capitalist program: Hard neoliberal measures (more austerity, job “flexibility”, confinement of trade union activity, further privatization of key sectors (ports, electricity, water-supply), and privatizing public space. It is combined with attacks on democratic rights (more police forces, “normalizing” the eternally insurgent university campuses), more institutional racism (patrol police leaving refugees to drown in the Aegean Sea), nationalism and huge arms spending. And this goes hand in hand with ideological attacks, as well as smearing the Left and any idea of socialism and solidarity as utterly bankrupt. Greek capitalists expect that their party in office can make the Greek state work for their interests. The right wing’s absolute control of mainstream media facilitates the control of public opinion so the failures of the government will never be revealed, and polls describe prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis as more and more popular. However this is only the surface.

Has New Democracy succeeded in its goals?

Far from the success story headlines, the Greek economy remains one of the weakest links in the EU chain, and this practically means that Mitsotakis’s government is not getting close to the end of the tunnel. On the contrary, all relieving measures taken during the pandemic by the EU institutions are coming to an end and Greece has to pay its debt, which has gone out of control.

According to the experts of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), Greek public debt must be steadily reduced from the heights it was allowed to reach during the pandemic and this demands drastic primary surpluses for at least the next twenty years. A primary surplus isthe difference between incoming minus outcoming (expenses), without borrowing from outer sources

In 2020 Greece had the highest debt in the Eurozone as it stood at 205.65% of GDP, (followed by Italy with 155.81% of GDP). The plan foresees that in order for the Greek debt be reduced to 100% of GDP, primary surpluses of 4.5% are required for the next 20 years, while reducing it to the current threshold (60% of GDP) will require primary surpluses of 6.5% of GDP per year for 20 years! To have a sense of the scale, the previous memorandum had a surplus target of 3.5%. It is easy to see how ferocious the cuts should be in public spending in order to reach these targets! Obviously the cuts will not be implemented on arms spending, police and the notorious coastguards, but will butcher public sector wages and pensions, public health, education and social services.

Last week Athens welcomed six more Rafale combat aircrafts purchased from France, with the support of the government of Emmanuel Macron. While the airplanes were flying over Acropolis to cheering from mainstream media, everyone could make the comparisons for the cost of these political decisions to the expense of Special Care Units, hospitals and schools, not to mention inflation and soaring prices in basic goods, which are consuming wages and the living standard of the vast majority.

Additionally, one shouldn’t discount the debacle of the government’s strategy with Covid. New Democracy’s catastrophic management of the pandemic crises, in correlation with the abandoning of public health has brought Greece to the top in mortality figures within the E.U.

These are only a few aspects of the right wing attacks and failures. Corruption, scandals and institutional sexism is everyday practice of New Democracy. So there is a legitimate question: Are these policies tolerated by the Greek people? The answer is that there has been resistance from the first day of Mitsotaki’s government.

Who’s afraid of the working class?

“Dear Rider, in the context of increasing fleet productivity and according to the company’s broader strategy, we would like to propose you to join the freelancing partnership scheme… We would like to continue our cooperation, but based on the above and on your batch (resulting from various factors), we consider that it would be better for you to continue working as a freelancer… In other case, we would like to inform you that there is no possibility of renewing the existing contract…”

This message was sent via sms to 115 delivery workers of efood , the country’s biggest online delivery company (subsidiary of German “Delivery Hero”), on 15 September 2021. Until then, efood employees had enjoyed full insurance, paid holidays, allowances, night shift and public holiday bonuses, as well as 15% of their basic salary for the operation and maintenance of their self-owned two-wheeled vehicles. This was stipulated by Law 4611/2019, which was won through the motorcycle riders union’s struggles and the support of thousands of workers, culminating to a magnificent strike in April 2019. But the newly voted “Chatzidaki’s law” on labor affairs, named after the notorious right-wing minister who compiled it, opened all possible ways for scraping such achievements.

What was amazing was not the attack but the response from the workers of efood and the Greek society. Right after receiving the message, there were strike announcements from both trade unions in charge (Tourism, Catering and Motorcycle delivery riders – ΣΒΕΟΔ), despite their political differences. Within hours from the news hitting social media, a number of efood clients estimated between 100,000 and half million cancelled their subscriptions and uninstalled the app, while social media was flooded with denouncements of efood and with solidarity to the workers. Two days later the management of the company made a public statement, apologizing for a “misunderstood statement” and clarifying that nothing will be changed in the contracts and conditions of work. It was a humiliating defeat with strong conclusions: It showed that the bosses are not all-powerful, that reactionary laws may be voted on in parliament but can be cancelled in the streets. In addition, it refuted popular theories (even within the Left) about the weakness of the new “precarious” workers to organize and resist, about “great walls” dividing the working class. Not only did efood workers win, but their victory put pressure on the rest of delivery companies to offer full contracts and benefits to their crew. And the thousands of people who suspended their accounts did so as co-workers and fellows and not as consumers, their power lay in solidarity and that was a message of hope for everyone.

Efood is not a unique story. One month later it was the turn of the workers of COSCO, the Chinese giant which has purchased the port of Piraeus after its privatization. In the afternoon of Monday, 25 October 2021, Dimitris Danglis, a 45-year-old worker of subcontractor company DPort encountered a horrible death on his counter shift – a shift following a 12-hour shift with an 8-hour break. He got trapped on the rails of a travelling crane, which evidently ran over him. The response from the trade union ENEDEP was immediate, calling a general 24-hour strike from midnight that Monday and a rally the next morning at the gate of the Container Terminal. Following a powerful strike that shut down the port for seven consecutive days against intensified work and inadequate safety measures, COSCO was forced to sit at the table to negotiate. They committed themselves in writing to the abolishment of inhumane “counter shifts”, as well as to the formation of a Health and Safety Committee with the participation of members of the union. They also recognized the union officially.

During those days, in addition to the daily assemblies, large mobilizations and marches took place with the participation of unions all over the country: at the Port, at COSCO headquarters, at the Ministry of Maritime affairs and at the Courts. The Piraeus Port Workers’ Union held a support strike, the Piraeus Labour Centre organized a solidarity event and a mobilization at the Ministry of Labour, while the Tourism and Catering Trade Union cooked in solidarity with the strikers at the port.

Resistance is here

What happened with efood and COSCO is only a sample of resistance from below, from the almost forgotten sections of the working class, and is only a part of the picture. The overall sheet of balance has been shaped by strikes and working class militancy which, despite bureaucratic maneuvers from the trade union leadership has never ceased to resist measures of the government. The workers in public health have been on the front lines since the outburst of the pandemic to defend health care for all, challenge the cuts and demand new jobs instead of redundancies. Art workers, despite being scattered across numerous workplaces came to protests and succeeded in obtaining compensations for all during the lockdowns.

This is where inspiration for younger sections of the working class to come out and fight originates, as well as from a long record of political struggles against racism and fascism, and from protests for democratic rights.

Opposition?

Under such circumstances of discontent and polarization it was expected that the opposition would grasp the chances to challenge the hegemony of New Democracy and propose an alternative. Unfortunately, the parties in the parliamentary opposition have so far failed to do so. The main reason is that no party wants to stand for an angry working class and take the risk to commit to a break with the bosses. This includes SYRIZA, which is the main opposition party, and also PASOK, the socialist party that governed Greece for almost two decades in the 1980s and 1990s.

For Alexis Tsipras, the main concern is to appear as a “responsible” political force, one that will not challenge the interests of Greek capitalism. The “lesson” from last time in office is that despite SYRIZA’s U-turn and compromises, its government still never had the support of the Greek ruling class and media moguls. Although the establishment was relieved at Tsipras’ capitulation to memoranda and the exhaustion of people’s anger, they slaughtered SYRIZA as incompetent and unstable and clung to their traditionally favorite party, New Democracy. So the reformist strategy now is not a militant opposition, but instead to let the government rot and disintegrate by itself, leaving a gap for SYRIZA to come back and fill.

The effects are disappointing: SYRIZA has fully conceded to the “national” strategy of pursuing Greece’s geopolitical interests against Turkey, including arms spending and dangerous war rehearsals. Under the same “responsible” pretext they tolerated New Democracy’s failure with the pandemic. Tsipras recently expelled an MP from the party, for calling the government “killers”, on the ground that this is not the time for populism! This policy only legitimizes New Democracy and blurs the lines that separates it from SYRIZA.

Consequently, the party’s orientation has been set towards the centre left, targeting cadres who had left social democratic PASOK after the latter’s electoral collapse. Even the party’s name has been updated to “SYRIZA – Progressive alliance” to suit the new priorities. Inside this peculiar constellation, the left fraction, namely “Umbrella” is a confused versatile minority. But it seems that SYRIZA’s further approach to social democracy benefits its official political expression, PASOK, and introduces another vicious circle of right-wing shift.

In the last weeks a lot has been written about PASOK’s comeback following the election of a new leader, N.Androulakis, after the sudden death of center-left president F.Gennimata. Asked about participation in a future coalition government, the new leadership would not put its cards on the table, obviously waiting for the winner between New Democracy and SYRIZA! Needless to say that PASOK’s new face, despite efforts to appeal to the followers of “old good social democracy”, lacks serious bonds with the working class and its organizations. Oscillating between left and right will not do any good to rebuild them. However, in the context of New Democracy’s failure and SYRIZA’s pale opposition, there is some space for PASOK, who would like to follow the SPD’s example without having their roots as deep in society.

What now?

While this article was being written a snow storm hit Greece, resulting in horrible chaos in transport electric supply, and public safety. Cars were trapped on motorways and people were freezing out there, while it took half a day for the government to …call for the army to help remove the snow. This once more exposed the incapacity of New Democracy. The dominant slogan in the streets is “Mitsotaki fuck off!”, and this is a sign that the people are angrier and more radicalized than the parties that represent them, at least inside the parliament. It is also a call for the political organizations to the left of SYRIZA, including the anticapitalist left, to support and give expression to this potential, and not just wait for the “correct vote” in the next elections, because it might be too late. The time for getting rid of the government and halting its catastrophic plans is now, and this could be the real vindication for our struggles.

Don’t Blame Each Other. Build Solidarity

Germany is obsessed with the wrongdoings of individuals. Would the pandemic be over if more people took individual responsibility?

Jacinta Nandi
24/01/2022

So a mum from Leo’s Kita recently told me a story about her sister who works in a test centre. One day, after a hard day at work, she went into Edeka on her way home. She saw someone there who had tested positive that very same day – and should have been in quarantine! She went to the branch manager and told him about it. The manager promptly made an announcement over the tannoy: “Can anyone who tested positive today please leave the store”. And five people left the building.

I don’t really believe this story, by the way. I’ve heard it often – sometimes it was in Lidl, sometimes in Aldi, one time it was even in Rewe. Each time exactly five people leave the supermarket after the manager’s announcement. I just don’t believe it. If I had broken quarantine because I needed to buy food, I wouldn’t go home without what I’d just bought. I’d have stood firm.

And me, personally, I would have been more worried about my leaving the store announcing my guilt to the whole neighbourhood, than just staying put and – should anyone ask me about it – claim that I must have a Doppelgänger who tested positive.

But I’m like that, you know, lots of things are more embarrassing to me than they would be to Germans. Every time when I mistakenly press the button in the Straßenbahn, I leave the tram and walk. And walk. And secretly think: no-one in the Straßenbahn knows that I made a mistake. That’s just what I’m like.

But you know what I do believe? I fully believe that there are people who are in quarantine, or even in isolation who break the rules, break the law, even. Because they need to get something to eat, man.

I still haven’t really understood what people in Germany are meant to do when they’re in quarantine but they need to eat? After all, the only thing seen as worse than popping to the shops in quarantine is the dreadful “hamstering”. People who hamster have no solidarity but breaking quarantine is illegal.

I keep on hearing German fantasies about friendly, helpful neighbours who bring grocery shopping round to grannies and single mums. Well, I don’t know about you guys, but this famous neighbour-quarantine-voluntary-delivery service agency hasn’t contacted me yet. (Bit of a shame really!) I live outside the city centre – there’s no Gorillas or Flink here. What should you do? What should I do? What are people meant to do, exactly?

I now know single mothers who may not have broken isolation, but have broken quarantine rules out of mix of necessity and desperation. And there are some people who have done even worse things than that: I, for example, have drunk tea with coconut milk. And yep, it tastes as bad as it sounds. I drank it all up and I hated myself.

Germany is obsessed with the idea that individual people fuck up a lot. The breathlessly disapproving anecdote about Edeka is about five individuals who have sinned, they have fucked up, they have failed, they are total losers. They should have gone shopping BEFORE they got tested (which, by the way, wouldn’t have actually put less people at risk of infection) or maybe they should have signed up for Gorillas. Or they should have stocked up on enough food for exactly ten days (and not a day longer, or else they’d be hamstering!). Or maybe they should have just spent their entire quarantine ordering food on Lieferando. Or I dunno: maybe they should have used the quarantine as an excuse to lose weight.

In Germany, individual people are always failing. They travel too much, their kids have too many parties, they get vaccinated too soon like a selfish, vaccine-hungry helicopter mamas – or else not soon enough like the uneducated people from “certain” communities. “Do you know…”, people ask, “…what the problem is in this country? No sense of responsibility! This pandemic would have been over long ago if there had been a greater sense of responsibility!”

But those five people in that Edeka are like cigarette butts in an Agatha Christie novel – they’re just red herrings. Disapproving of them comforts us. The truth is, staying alive during a deadly pandemic is fucking hard. It’s difficult enough for people who have money, a steady partner, good mental health. And for those people who were struggling already, it’s almost impossible.

I’m writing this text standing up by the way –just like Goethe. My back hurts, yesterday I had to carry my youngest child through Aldi. He refused to move, so I carried him on my hip with one arm, and pushed the pushchair with the other, and he’s just too heavy for that kind of shit. After shopping, I sat with him on the floor and hugged him. He slowly calmed down, his breathing slowing down, his body getting heavier.

I gave him some chocolate and watched his cheeks get redder. An old lady, a granny, who’d already had a go at us in the supermarket bawled me out. She spat out: “A great way to reward him for bad behaviour!”

“I’m not rewarding him, actually” I answered. “I’m distracting him.”

We’re obsessed by the failures of individual people: holidaymakers, Party-People, quarantine breakers, and the greatest public enemies – Anti-Vaxxers. Look, I’m not saying that these people aren’t selfish. What I’m saying is that precisely because these people are selfish, because people ARE selfish, and because life in a pandemic is pretty fucking difficult, we need to build a system that allows us to behave with solidarity.

To be honest, I don’t believe that individual people in Germany should be shopping more for the grannies and grandpas and single mothers who live in their apartment buildings. If you do feel that you need to do this, then yeah, go ahead, be my guest, just do it. Von mir aus, as we say in German. But I personally feel everyone in Germany is pretty fucking exhausted.

I don’t feel that German people, that individuals living in Germany, the individuals who make up the German nation, are particularly irresponsible or lacking in solidarity. I believe that people in Germany find it hard to admit that life is difficult – and that some people’s lives are much harder than others. To be honest, I think Germans are in total denial about this.

The health insurance – or, as far as I’m concerned the social services – should send food to people in quarantine – above all, to old people and single parents, people like that, but really, let’s be honest, to everyone. More child benefit should be made available to people who voluntarily want their kids to leave the Kita until the pandemic is over. We should abolish the punitive compulsory school attendance laws. And there should be more (and not less!) free PCR tests.

The plural of individual responsibility is not individual responsibilities but shared responsibility. We should try to forget the five people in Edeka. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they shouldn’t have been there. But maybe they were just hungry.

This article first appeared in German in analyse & kritik nr. 678. Translation: Phil Butland. Reproduced with permission.

US fascism – the view from Europe

Fascism is a real threat in the USA. But we still have time to organise the mass resistance needed to stop it

Mike Hembury
23/01/2022

Almost a year to the day after the assault on the US Capitol Building by an insurgent right-wing Trump-supporting mob, prospects for the continuation of US democracy – such as it is – after the Biden administration are looking bleak in the extreme.

Not only have the main instigators of the attempted coup not been punished (in spite of overwhelming evidence pointing towards the deliberate nature of the act) but a majority of the Republican party remain convinced that the 2021 election was stolen and that the current government is illegitimate.

The Republican response to the lost election was to double down on the myth of the Big Steal, and to repudiate the validity of the electoral process. Dissenters within the ranks have been purged and electoral officials who carried out their duty in the last elections (to the displeasure of the Trump faction) have been replaced across the country by Trump loyalists. This sets the scene for a very different outcome in the next election.

In its purging of moderate elements the Trump Republicans fully embraced an anti-democratic, insurgent agenda. This sees violent resistance against any other outcome than a Trump win as being fully acceptable. The result is a dangerous alliance between ultra-conservative, Christian fundamentalist and openly fascist elements . It represents a grave and growing danger to women, people of colour, the immigrant and LGBTQI communities and the working class in general.

The Trump agenda is openly billed as the “revenge tour”. From a European perspective at least – the historical parallels to periods preceding the fascist coups in 20th-century Germany and Spain are too stark to ignore.

How should the Left respond to the Trump agenda?

So what should the response of progressive and democratic forces be in the face of a gerrymandered Trump win in 2025? Or the renewed threat of a coup in the event that the electoral process holds up and the Republicans lose once again? To put it another way: with the Republicans now so openly manipulating the democratic process, how can a Republican win be taken at face value?

By way of historical analogy, it is worth comparing the responses of the Spanish and German labour movements in the face of a fascist takeover. The leaders of German Social Democracy acquiesced in the electoral victory of the Nazis in 1932, only to find themselves banned, arrested and sent to concentration camps in the weeks and months that followed. That fact surely counts as one of history’s greatest failures of judgement.

By contrast, in 1936 Spanish workers poured onto the streets on hearing the news of Franco’s putsch, confronting insurgent troops and fascist militia. They went on to implement bold social reforms in the areas under democratic control in the civil war that followed.

And although there’s a lot of talk right now in the US media about the threat of civil war, perhaps it’s the prospect of a peaceful handover of power to a nakedly anti-democratic Republican party that is more worrying.

It was certainly a peaceful transition to a fascist government that spelt the end of the German Weimar Republic, and led to the smashing of the labour movement, persecution of minorities, war, genocide, Holocaust and the deaths of up to 75 million people in World War II.

The gravity of the situation in the USA is beyond doubt. President Biden has described it as “a dagger at the throat of democracy”. Former US Secretary of Labor Robert Reich recently called for a “war to save American democracy”. The Democrats are making efforts to counter Republican gerrymandering by enacting voting reform at federal level. However it would be a mistake to count on mere parliamentary manoevers as an effective strategy against a nascent, broad-based and militant fascist movement.

The role of the Democrats

In the fight against fascism, illusions in the class interests of the Democratic Party are no substitute for the self-activity – including self-defence – of the working class and the oppressed. As Democratic senator Bernie Sanders put it recently: “It is no great secret that the Republican party is winning more and more support from working people… It’s not because the Republican party has anything to say to them. It’s because in too many ways the Democratic party has turned its back on the working class.”

In this respect, Sanders is right. The response of the working class and allied progressive forces cannot be subordinated to the inherently conservative agenda of the Democratic Party nor to the supine position of the trade union leadership. In contrast it must be an independent response, based in workplace, union and community organizing. It must be committed to mutual self-defence in the face of any form of fascist aggression, whether at neighbourhood, city, state or national level.

The coming mid-term elections in 2022 and the presidential election 2024 mark key threats to existing democratic and civil rights gains in the United States. Progressive forces and democracy defenders should use the current breathing space to mobilise, make their presence felt and create a genuine united front against the fascist threat. In spite of all the bluster and the current hype around the Trumpist insurgency, in overall terms the extreme white-power right are still a minority.

Progressive change is possible

Rebecca Solnit argued in the Guardian

“While the right has become far more extreme and has its tens of millions of true believers, it is morphing into a minority sect. This has prompted their desperate scramble to overturn free and fair elections and other democratic processes. White Christians, who were 80% of the population in 1976, are now 44%. Mixed-race and non-white people are rapidly becoming the majority. On issues such as climate, people of colour are far more progressive; if we can make it through the huge backlash of the present moment, the possibilities are dazzling.”

The United States has a rich heritage of militancy for progressive causes and movements. Its mass struggles for justice have been inspirational to peoples around the world. America is not just the country of slavery, Jim Crow and the KKK. It is the country of rebellion and resistance both militant and peaceful, of MLK and BLM, the Women’s March on Washington and Christopher Street, of Blair Mountain and the West Coast Waterfront Strike.

If white-power Trumpist Republicans return to power unopposed in 2024, it will surely mean the end of the universal franchise in the USA, the end of American democracy for at least a generation. It will mean incarceration and terror for thousands, if not millions.

Fascism is not something that can be solved by appeasement. It can only be opposed by mass mobilisation and mass resistance.

So at this historical juncture, what’s it to be, America? What path will you take: Germany ‘32, or Spain ‘36?

How did Berlin Museums get the Benin Bronzes? Part Two

Anti-colonial activists have succeeded in having some plunder returned to its original country, but the struggle goes on

Hari Kumar
22/01/2022

This is the second part of this article. You can read part one here.

The complex nature of Western scholars in colonial times

It would be one-dimensional and anti-dialectical to ignore the scholarly and sweeping visions of some of the leading “Orientalists”. Sir William Jones, for example, first translated Kalidas of 400 AD (“the Indian Shakespeare”) from Sanskrit into English. He undertook his studies in 1785, in the colony of “British india”. In his book, India discovered, he declared Sankskrit “more perfect than either Greek or Latin”. It is true he was seen by Edward Said in a more diminished way than perhaps he deserved:

“He was appointed to ‘an honourable and profitable place in the Indies’, and (took) up a post with the East India Company (to) study to gather in, to rope off, to domesticate the Orient & turn it into a province of European learning.”¹

Another such individual was Adolf Bastian, the first Director of the Berlin Ethnological Museum – founded in 1873, out of the Kunstkammer of the rulers of rulers of Brandenburg-Prussia. Bastian was inspired by his mentors Rudolf Virchov and Alexander von Humboldt to embrace a natural science to understand a “unitary humanity of the world”. ²

This museum now contains more than 500,000 objects. Bastian strived to build “a universal archive of humanity,” which he believed was the key to revealing a total history of humanity.” He thought he was consciously trying to preserve the cultures of the world before modernisation (let us call it colonialism) destroyed their traces:

“Adolf Bastian’s mantra became: “the last moment has come, the twelfth hour is here! Documents of immeasurable, irreplaceable value for human history are being destroyed. Save them! ”

But though uncomfortable with it, even he was quite happy to accept funds from the German colonial administration after the state entered that game.

In contrast to Bastian, his heir Felix von Luschan openly avowed an imperialist view:

“Luschan eagerly harnessed colonial troops to collect body parts, and especially skulls… during the Herero Wars and subsequent genocide in German South West Africa (1904–7), Luschan … he asked for colonial troops to collect the skulls of the vanquished following any altercation … women were forced to scrape the flesh off the skulls of the dead.”

In von Lüschan’s book People, Race, and Language:

“[H]e lamented the loss of the German colonies during World War I. And he hoped the African section (of the) new Volkerkunde Museum in Dahlem… would be ‘the most beautiful and greatest monument for our colonial troops.”

And yet, Luschan was a divided man. For he also fought against racist views in general, impressing W.E.B.Dubois with his lecture in 1911 at the First Universal Races Congress in London, attacking “race science”.

In 1902, at the German Colonial Congress in Berlin he denounced myths of racial difference and the putative benefits of European influence, arguing that too often in Africa and Oceania “Civilization = Syphilization” and that European poison was summed up in the four S’s: “Slave trade, schnapps, syphilis, and shoddy goods.”

He understood why Benin had isolated itself during the nineteenth century, after seeing what active trading with Europeans did:

“[L]ike almost all African coastal towns, Benin completely shut themselves off from Europeans as they understood the tremendous danger they faced from the brutal slave trade of white savages… a poison that decomposes.”

His last book was unequivocal:

“All humanity consists of only one species: Homo sapiens; there are no ‘wild’ peoples, only peoples with different cultures than ours.”

Racists had argued the Benin Bronzes “could not be by negroes” as they were such masterworks. To the contrary, in his book on the Bronzes Luschan simply “dismissed the reports from the leading British scholars O. M. Dalton and C. H. Read of a mysterious ‘white’ man bringing these techniques to Benin centuries earlier” and avers instead that, “we have come to know a great and monumental native art in Benin from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which at least in individual pieces, is the equal of contemporary European art.”

Luschan referred to the Bronzes with glowing praise, claiming they were among “the most valuable discoveries that have been made in the area of art and technology of Africa.” Luschan’s analysis undercut racialized arguments about differences between Africans and Europeans, between “blacks” and “whites”, undermining colonial ideologies based on notions of biological racism.

Berlin’s Ethnological Museum becomes the Humboldt Forum

The Berlin collection had grown in leaps and bounds, as shown in the number of objects from African and Oceania – From 1880: 5,845; in 1895, 25,672; in 1905, 59,737. At its peak, it was almost an unrivalled force in terms of its acquisitions.

Of the Benin Bronzes, the British Museum received only a few hundred items from the Foreign Office in 1897. Most were sold by the state, but also some from British officers and soldier looters. The cost rose dramatically on the art market and the British Museum was priced out. This is how Berlin came to house so many Benin Bronzes.

In 2006 the old Berlin ethnological museum became the core of the Humboldt Forum. The newly unitary German state aggressively sought to erase marks of the DDR. The Palast der Republik was torn down and the Berliner Stadtschloss re-built. ³ The total cost of this project was an estimated 590-690 million euros, largely from the German state.

Individual capitalists – like Wilhelm von Boddien, a tractor tycoon from Hamburg, or the widow of retail magnate Werner Otto – also funded some 105 million euros – for the grand plan. Some consider the result a strange place:

“An imposing Disneyland castle minus the fun… to project an image of an idealised past…. an imperial palace, crowned with a golden crucifix, as a showcase for colonial booty…. This was the building, where Kaiser Wilhelm II resided as his troops committed genocide in Namibia and brutally suppressed an uprising in Tanzania in the 1900s.” ⁴

The grassroots movement “No to Humboldt 21! Moratorium on the Humboldt Forum in Berliner Schloss!” issued a challenge:

“We demand the suspension of work on the Humboldt Forum in the Berlin Palace and a broad public debate: The present concept violates the dignity and property rights of people in all parts of the world, and is Eurocentric. The Humboldt Forum opposes the claim of equal coexistence in the migration society.”

This fight was not successful, but it was part of a change in at least one section of German society.⁵ The anti-Semitism and vicious genocide of the fascist Nazi regime had been acknowledged in many ways, including on-going compensation to persons and to the state of Israel. Yet the silence on Germany’s role in African colonialism effectively comprises a “colonial amnesia”:

“Germans believed that they had nothing to do with the colonial exploitation of large parts of Africa, Asia or South America. They were innocent—so many believed—of the devastations brought about by European colonialism.”

“In 2004, the centenary of the genocide of the Herero and Nama peoples confronted a wide German audience with German atrocities of a hundred years before […] the official apology… sparked […] conservative circles [to] denounce the German Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development Wieczorek-Zeul, who had delivered the apology, as a ‘traitor.’” ⁶

The proliferation of anti-colonial sentiments and consciousness of German people, scholars and intelligentsia can be seen from perusing various websites including “Berlin postkolonial e.v.”:

“[M]any civil-society initiatives in the Federal Republic of Germany have worked towards a critical public discussion of the German colonial past.”

Anti-racist initiatives have been creative. In one example, a group of artists, dramatists and musicians known as “Kolonialismus im Kasten” put a downloadable, alternative self-audioguide to Berlin’s Deutsches Historical Museum (DHM) exhibits of the time of the German Empire:

“In our museum tours, we have addressed the history of German colonialism, which the local public hardly notices. We have shown that colonialism meant violence, racism and economic exploitation, but also produced fierce resistance. And we drew attention to the problematic presentation of German colonial history in the DHM… as if there were no connections between colonial history and popular culture, Reichstag debates or the development of science.“

Indeed, a change has taken place:

“This growing rumbling of protest in the public echoed the postcolonial discussions.” ⁷

The Current Situation

The movements in Germany and Berlin failed in their first goal – to prevent the building of the extravagant Humboldt Forum. But they were not isolated in Germany, or world wide. As early as 1983, the Minister of Culture in Greece, Melina Mercouri, had expressed in very emotive terms why repatriation of stolen art is so important to many nations today:

“This is our history, our soul. They are the symbol and the blood and the soul of the Greek people.” ⁸

This was, of course, directed at the ‘Elgin Marbles’ of the Greek Parthenon, held onto jealously by the British Museum. Neil McGregor, Director of the British Museum (2002-2015), and one of three founding Directors of the Humboldt Forum (2015-2018), rejected return in 2006:

“Repatriation is ‘yesterday’s question […] Questions of ownership depend on the thought that an object can only be in one place. That’s no longer true.” ⁹

McGregor is increasingly out of step now; his imperial pomposity in his popular books shows him as a colonial-excusing paternalist. The progressive trend in German museum culture was noted and applauded by Hochstadt in the American Historical Association. ¹⁰

President Macron of France asked two experts, the historian Bénédicte Savoy and the economist Felwine Sarr to investigate the looted African treasures in France. Savoy and Sarr recommended in 2018 that:

“’any objects taken by force or acquired through inequitable conditions’ by the French Army, scientific explorers or administrators between the late 1800s and 1960 be handed back […] Ms. Savoy said ‘Europe’s arrogance toward the legitimate desire of Africans to reconnect with their heritage is now a thing of the past.’” ¹¹

France will return 26 of the objects looted from Benin during a separate 1892 French invasion which made Dahomey a French colony.

It is hoped that an Edo Museum of West African Art will be built for 300 items “on loan from European museums, if the money to build it can be raised […]designed by Sir David Adjaye.” ¹² Germany announced it will return 11,000 Bronzes from around the country, most from Berlin. The Dutch also recommended this; likewise, Belgium’s pillaged objects are to be returned to the Democratic Republic of Congo. Britain remains obstinately silent. ¹³

Conclusion

Even this battle within the museums is not yet over, of course. As museum activist Matthew Vollgraf notes, there is still resistance from a co-director of the Humboldt Forum linked to SPD politicians:

“Prominent art historian Horst Bredekamp […] declares “postcolonialism” and “political correctness” to be nothing less than a prelude to fascism. In a February 22 article in the FAZ, “How Much Identity Can Society Tolerate?”, [Social Democratic politician Wolfgang] Thierse vents his frustration at a heterogeneous group of phenomena (with) leftist identity politics, from gender pronouns to the removal of statues and renaming of streets. Although he appears virtually oblivious to the obstacles and inequalities which many minorities face in Germany today.”

No doubt some of this repatriation attempts to dampen anti-racist calls, emanating from the banlieues of Paris. However cavilling is not for now. The extensive anti-racist movements of the last decades, especially since 2004 – has moved the needle. True more needs implementing in the daily grind of lives of immigrants and diverse peoples, but something of consequence has improved.

A longer version with fuller quotes and history will be available shortly at ml-today.com

Footnotes

1 Cited in Amrit Chaudhuri, ‘Two Giant Brothers’; London Review of Books; Vol. 28 No. 8 · 20 April 2006

2 H. Glenn Penny; ‘In Humboldt’s Shadow A Tragic History of German Ethnology’; 2021. Other quotes in this section are also taken from this book.

3 Thomas Thiemeyer, ‘Cosmopolitanizing Colonial Memories in Germany’ 2019 Critical Inquiry; Vol.45(4); p.967-990

4 Oliver Wainwright, ‘Berlin’s bizarre new museum: a Prussian palace rebuilt for €680m’; Guardian Sep 9, 2021.

5 Morat, Daniel, ‘Katalysator wider Willen: Das HumboldtForum in Berlin und die deutsche Kolonialvergangenheit’; Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History 16 (2019), S. 140-153

6 Michael Perraudin and Jürgen Zimmerer; ‘German Colonialism and National Identity’.

7 Thomas Thiemeyer, ‘Cosmopolitanizing Colonial Memories in Germany’, Critical Inquiry 45 (Summer 2019); 967-990.

8 This is our history, this is our soul. They are the symbol and the blood and the soul of the Greek people

9 Charlotte Higgins, ‘Into Africa: British Museum’s Reply to Ownership Debate,’ The Guardian, 13 April 2006.

10 Steve Hochstadt, ’Reckoning With Colonial History – A Berlin Museum Faces the Future’; Perspectives on History; Oct 2017, Vol. 55 Issue 7, p50-55

11 Farah Nayeri and Norimitsu Onishi; “Looted Treasures Begin a Long Journey Home From France”; New York Times; Oct. 28, 2021

12 Alex Marshall; A New Museum to Bring the Benin Bronzes Home’; New York Times; Nov. 13, 2020

13 Alex Marshall “As Europe Returns Artifacts, Britain Stays Silent”; Dec. 20, 2021; NYT