Monday, 19th February 2024 – 4 Years Hanau. 5,30pm Commemoration, 7pm Demonstration- S-Bahn Sonnenallee
4 years ago, a right-wing extremist known to the police shot 9 young people in Hanau out of racist fantasies of extermination. Gökhan Gültekin, Sedat Gürbüz, Said Nesar Hashemi, Mercedes Kierpacz, Hamza Kurtović, Vili Viorel Păun, Fatih Saraçoğlu, Ferhat Unvar and Kaloyan Velkov. The German state and this society did not stop him. On the contrary: German society, the inflammatory media and the openly inhumane asylum policy and German Leitkultur of recent decades have created the breeding ground for an act that was brutal and shocking – but could and will happen again at any time. Dignity, equality, the fight against the right?
Not a chance. Scapegoats, projection surfaces, targets. Foreigners out, foreigners in, depending on what suits the market – and in between: Foreigners dead. The so-called failure of the authorities is not a failure – everything works exactly as it should. Just not for us, but against us. We know that. Racism is a reason of state. The consequence is resistance. Migrantifa now!
Racist normality
„Clan criminality“, tightening of asylum laws, raids on shisha bars, „kebab murders“, NSU – files closed, deportations, murder by police, Islamophobia – part of good manners in Germany, all bourgeois parties are moving to the right, migration as „the mother of all problems“, „Germany is abolishing itself“, more money for repression in the form of the police, military and judiciary. All so-called individual cases, such as Hanau, Solingen, Halle, NSU, are not cases, because Germany is as it lives and breathes: racist, exploitative and violent.
Exploitation needs racism
Racism against Muslims, Arabs, Kurds, Black people, Sinti*zze, Rom*nja and many Others – is necessary when it comes to the exploitation and over-exploitation of workers. Germans have a better position on the backs of migrant workers and those in the global South who manufacture products for our consumption at extremely low wages. German construction sites, German slaughterhouses, German fields, the low-wage sector, the inhumane camps, shitty working conditions and shitty equipment all send their regards. Working illegally for 5 euros an hour and being grateful for it, while customs destroy not the employers but the employees – you have to dehumanize people beforehand, how else can you justify it? Racism here is both an ideological glue and a fire accelerant that keeps German workers blindly loyal to a state that acts against their own interests. It’s so easy when you can step down while you have to bend upwards! The neoliberal lie of “you can make it, if you work hard enough” or “from rags to riches” is becoming increasingly implausible: one more worker foaming at the mouth with hatred of foreigners is one less worker foaming at the mouth with hatred of the system.
Consequences yok
Dozens of exhibitions, panels, demos, commemorations, political lip service, interviews, documentaries later, one thing stands above all: no justice, no consequences. It is not enough to kill 9 people for racist motives to be classified as right-wing extremist by the BKA. Right-wing terror should be shelved along with the myth of the denazification of Germany, or the NSU trio. The survivors and relatives from Hanau have approached the German state with 4 demands and charges: Remembrance, clarification, justice, consequences. This is the minimum that the brutal loss of a loved one for such barbaric motives should entail. It is not surprising that appealing to a „constitutional state“, which above all brings us injustice, will not bring justice. Where we cried out and mourned, the minister of the interior, Peter Beuth, made statements such as: the police did a „good job“ on the night of the crime in Hanau and the crime could not have been prevented. How they make a good job, we can see everywhere in Germany, e.g. Christy Schwundeck in Frankfurt, Oury Jalloh in Dessau, Bilel in Herford und Ibrahima Barry in Mühlheim. Consequences, yok.
We must organize against this!
“Those who fight against Nazis cannot rely on the state” – as the anti-fascist, anti-Zionist and German-Jewish survivor of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp Esther Bejarano said. She was commenting on the NSU and summarizing the constant „failure“ of the investigating authorities. What we need is resistance and our own solutions. Building common strength in our neighbourhoods, communities and movements – beyond the state, which will always be an oppressor to keep us down. The power lies with us and in our connections, where lives are sacred and we don’t sell each other out for profits or careers. What can Germany offer us? Migration and arms deals with Turkey, Israel and other authoritarian regimes, a few Black, lesbian or refugee party members who serve us the same plonk every year? They steal and alienate revolutionary slogans like “Jin Jiyan Azadî”, babble about a “feminist foreign policy” while they are taking part in the bleeding to death of the people in Palestine, Kurdistan, Sudan and Congo. Opportunistic showcase “Kanacks” blather on about the danger of Islamism. At the same time, left-wing forces are silenced and defamed to the maximum as soon as we stand up, organize, demonstrate and strike. Meanwhile, right-wing extremist groups, such as the Grey Wolves, are operating openly in the middle of Germany and right-wing groups are gathering ideologically and armed throughout Europe. Fascists wherever you look. No thanks, we are hungry for freedom, not for integration or nationalism.
What next?
Let’s demonstrate together on February 19th against the German racist status quo! Let’s fight for a society in which such a crime is not repeated and make February 19th a nationwide anti-racist day of struggle. Good Germans forget, they never see themselves as responsible, they always point the finger at others, they denounce their neighbours and then draw the curtains. They have collective amnesia and delusions of grandeur. We are not good Germans, we are class warriors. We put our finger in the wounds that this society denies. We are anti-racists, anti-fascists and internationalists. We say enough is enough, we no longer bend down, but stand firm, side by side with each other beyond identity and origin against a state that is always lurking with one knee in our necks.
February 19, 2020. The consequence is resistance, Migrantifa now!
