Why is the Far-Right on the Rise?

The scarecrow of “populism” has been frequently placed into a narrative that is also dear to liberal intellectuals and politicians. According to this narrative, the rise of the “populist Right” owes to the putative support it has enjoyed from white workers and more generally from the “native” plebeian elements of European societies. Despite the blessings it delivers, the story goes, the train of development and integration that Europe has been travelling on has left some people behind, exposing them to the propaganda of “ethno-populists”. In a recent article Aaron Winter and Aurelien Mondon have done a great job detailing that this line of explanation is both untenable and class biased. In the last analysis, its essential function is to stigmatize the working classes for political immaturity, as they are consistently being represented to be “carried away” or “duped” by demagogues. Whitewashed, at the same time, are the undemocratic structure of the EU as well as the role of the political, economic and technocratic class in charge. At best, this liberal discourse sustains a lukewarm drive for reform, which is supposed to include the “left-behinds” and, consequently, exorcize the twin ghosts of populism and nationalism.

As a corrective to the idea of a plebeian mass support, Winter and Mondon convincingly argue that the growth of the far right is spurred to a considerable degree by mainstream media. The relation does not necessarily or mainly concern open support, it has more to do with the mainstreaming of the far right agenda: the mass media across Europe are not only giving platform to the nationalist and xenophobic rhetoric of far right parties, at the same time they have been systematically promoting and inflating issues that are conducive to the spread of far right politics, like the “refugee crisis”, “the immigration problem”, “Islamic terrorism”, “criminality” and “anomy”. This, however, must not be taken to mean that the phenomenon (along perhaps the parallel decline of the far left) is little more than a media bubble. For that would downplay the historical, political, social, economic depth of the current crisis, without which neither the far right nor the far left could have emerged out of the political margins. As the recent Euro-elections ratify, a salient aspect of this ongoing crisis concerns political representation, in particular the decline of the two political traditions that have monopolized national government in western Europe after WWII and largely engineered the EU project: the moderate (liberal, conservative, Christian-democratic) Right and the social-democratic Left. While elitism, corruption and a detachment from social reality may have played a role, they do not suffice as explanations for the decline of the parties that belong to these two great political traditions. Instead, it is necessary to take also into account their growing inability to uphold the mediating role between actuality (how things are) and ideality (how things should be), whose tension has nourished modern democracies from their birth.

The Waning Promises of Parliamentarism

Every social formation necessarily represents itself under the light of justice, that is, as a historical form that crystalizes or moves towards the right order of things. In the dynamic context of modern societies, and buttressed by the grievances and instability that phenomena like inequality, systemic exploitation, exclusion, marginalization, and destitution generate, the affective gap between actuality and ideality acquires an endemic, constitutive character. In this context, political parties have taken up the task of promising the best way to bridge this tensional gap, with parliamentary politics serving to promote different programmatic visions of justice through peaceful means and legally regulated procedures. It is in this sense that the mediation of the gap between actuality and ideality is flagged as a key dimension of modern democracy, next to legitimizing governmental power and organizing political competition in a consensual manner that forestalls civil conflict.

In these terms, the social-democratic left and the moderate right have been offering two hegemonic political alternatives, while both respecting the fundamentally sound (or more strongly, just) institutional structure of the modern democratic state. Of course, and here we move closer to their crisis, the ideological and political traits of these political traditions did not remain static. Far from it, they have merged towards the “center” and jointly rode the bandwagon of globalization under the aegis of a seemingly triumphant capitalism. In the context of the “post-democratic consensus” that transpired, political competition increasingly took the form of rivalry over efficiency. The best that the “new” Center-Left and Center-Right could promise was optimal management, i.e. that they are the most capable administrators of a historical process hailed for leading towards a cosmopolitan, prosperous and technologically advanced future. A pertinent way to conceive the European Union is as one of the salient forms of this new international order.

For millions of its inhabitants, though, Europe was not living up to the expectations nor did they enjoy all the fruits of the infamous “European values”. Expectedly, the many-headed crisis that came out in the open since 2008 has intensified the gap between how Europe is and how it should have been according to the evangelists of European integration. From the “peripheries” of Europe, like Portugal, Spain and Greece, to countries that are considered its core, like France and Italy, the ideal of a civilizational unit moving towards political unification and economic prosperity was foundering in the rocks of indebtedness, unemployment, austerity and a deeply uneven concentration of power and wealth within and among the member states. Moreover, since this tension is played immanently on the level of institutional forms, the dominant institutions of European social formations could not remain untouched. One such institutional form is precisely parliamentary politics and its leading parties. In line with the moral panic liberals tend to bring whenever trust towards parliamentarism totters, initially the prevalent reaction from below was not to fall for aspiring Bonapartes but to fight for a “real democracy”. Much more than positing a demand through the formal circuits of the state or prescribing an ideal that is to cure the ills of this world, an international movement flourished that set out to experiment how such a real democracy should be. From Plaza del Sol in Madrid to Syntagma square in Athens, popular assemblies sprung which, along with declaring their opposition to austerity, tried to reanimate the principles of equality and people’s power from empty formalities, which they have been largely reduced to in recent decades, into a lived, practical experience. It is too early to assess the legacy of the cycle of struggles at whose forefront stood the “squares-movement”. Yet, in the short-term, uprisings failed to produce institutions capable to act as organs of a new democratic regime or even to revitalize existing democracies. Likewise, they have failed to block austerity. And as it frequently happens after the regression of a popular surge of struggles, this double failure has opened the way to the far right.

Yet, liberal fears again notwithstanding, parliamentarism has not suffered the same fate as the parties that dominated it. Rather, once the first wave of popular mobilizations in Spain (with the Indignados), Greece (with the Aganaktismenoi) and every other country where anti-austerity movements emerged (e.g. Britain and Bosnia) ran out of steam (and indeed a similar pattern is repeated today with the Yellow Vests movement in France), parliamentary politics has reasserted itself and the rise of the far right is actually one of the mediums of this reassertion. For unlike the fascist movement of the interwar period (a difference that hasty identifications fail to register) the contemporary far right does not directly challenge parliamentarism. Instead, by channelling discontent in the formal conduits of protest-vote and by fostering hopes that their electoral victory will solve all problems, far right parties have served to shield parliamentary democracy from the critical attitude popular movements have shown towards representation and the potential of a more radical democracy that this critical stance carries. This is not to exclude the possibility of a more authoritarian turn, since this is arguably an immanent potential of the far right. But we are not there yet, and the more the threat it poses to democracy is inflated, the more the role of the far right in augmenting the existing undemocratic structure of European states is downplayed.

Neo-Archaic Visions of Past and Future Glory

While the crisis of political representation may be an important factor in the rise of far-right parties, it is not the sole one; the decline of one form does not automatically bring the rise of another, as the poor performance of the radical left testifies. Clearly, far right parties say something that sounds attractive to many of those disillusioned with traditional parties. Schematically, at the center of the far-right’s propaganda (and the same holds true for similar trends outside Europe) is a reassertion of the nation state as the effective solution to the problem of justice, i.e. the problem of giving to a social formation (or even life at large) its proper form. For if this problem at its heart contains the aforementioned tension between actuality and ideality, the far right prescribes a strong, protectionist and ethnically homogeneous nation state as the best form for bridging the gap between how things are now and how they should be.

Political projects do not emerge in a historical void and the apparent success of this key idea has been certainly boosted by real sociopolitical trends. On the one hand, the internationalization of capital has generated industrial wastelands inside Europe as well as facilitated the production of polyethnic societies through flows of immigrant labor. At the same time, the European Union has served to undermine whatever elements of popular sovereignty existed in favor of a centralized, bureaucratic structure of power. In this context, precarity, insecurity, anger, disenfranchisement have variably affected segments of the working and middle classes throughout Europe. Precisely, the far-right steps in to mediate these affects, shape them and channel them towards a conservative (nay reactionary) and nationalist direction. The populist trope of elite/people is fused with a nationalist and racist discourse in order to produce a singular imaginary threat, the “foreigner” (in Brussels, in the ghettos, outside the borders) and a single cause for all that is wrong today, the subversion of the national community. In this way, the far-right promises on the one hand to give back to native workers their dignity and on the other to protect the privileges of the middle classes but also, let’s not forget, the profits of national capitalists. Overall, by mobilizing the power of the familiar, the far-right acts as a vector for the reconstitution of a closed, national body.

Looking Forward, Looking Left

If the specter of masses assembling behind nationalist banners appears to be fleshing out in front of our eyes, a few years ago the prospect of popular mobilizations acting as engine for radical change also seemed to be on the agenda. The radical Left in its turn promised to play a catalyst role by entering a sort of dialectic relation with grassroots movements: joining them in the streets but also channeling them towards the existing state with the hope to democratize it. A trend certainly existed: SYRIZA in Greece, Podemos in Spain, a little later the leftwing turn of Labor in the UK; even in the previous European elections an identifiable presence was registered at the left of social democracy. But, instead of opening new horizons to popular movements, leftist parties practically served to curb them. Thus, if the booming fortunes of the far right are based to a considerable degree in their capacity to mobilize the power of the familiar, the decline of the radical Left has something to do with its failure to harness the energies of the new. For sure, the Left may also have failed to draw from its own tradition and assert effectively familiar forms it has once helped consolidate, above all, welfare and labor rights. But, unlike the far-right, a leftist project cannot base its success on a neo-archaic assertion of old forms. The promise that the Left carries can only be transformative. Even those things that deserve to be defended need to be integrated to a politics that responds to the problem of justice not by evoking an idealized past but by pointing forward towards a different future. Naturally, this is far more difficult, for such a future cannot simply be posited ideally, it needs to be built through the forms that develop today. The combined effect of systemic inequality and exclusion, endemic psychosomatic pathologies, mass population displacement, geopolitical competitions and environmental degradation poses severe challenges and the odds may certainly look adverse if not grim. But when were the odds ever really in favor of leftist projects? To see in the material reality of present injustice and in the multiform resistances against it the seeds of a new justice is a necessary quality for a radical Left worthy of its name.

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George Sotiropoulos holds a PhD in Political Theory and currently teaches and is a researcher at the International School of Athens. His book, A Materialist Theory of Justice: The One, the Many, the Not-Yet, is available now. He is a member of Void Network

source: https://medium.com

The post Between Past and Future: On the Contrasting Fortunes of the Far-Right and the Far-Left in Europe By George Sotiropoulos / Void Network appeared first on Void Network.

On the 14th of April 2018 the German fascist party “Die Rechte” want to organize a big event in Dortmund, Germany. Nazis and other fascists from all over Europe want to march in Dortmund, but also use the event to strengthen an already exisiting network. This demo shall be the start of a yearly event with changing locations. The nazis announced that they want to march in the city center of Dortmund. They want to start at 01:00pm (13:00) at Stadthaus.

The last couple of years showed us that the Dortmund police does quite a bit to make it possible that inhuman baiting can take the streets. It also showed that only anti-fascist and political pressure can force fascist out of the city center.

Let us be many antifascists and let us take care that they can’t march in the city center. On this day we will take the streets, the squares and the parks and we will offer a left community instead of racist, sexist and anti-semetic shit.

We call to come with us to Dortmund on April 14 and muck up the day for the nazis. In particular, we would like to invite people outside Nort Rhine Westphalia and Germany to travel and to participate in the counter-protests and actions. Sleepingspaces can be organized. If you need them, contact us.

And even if you do not come to Dortmund, the 14th is perhaps quite good as an anti-fascist day of action …

Mail for places to sleep to Emawtal@riseup.net (Blog: Emanzipatorische Antifa Wuppertal)

source: Enough is Enough!

The post International CALL OUT #Dortmund #Germany: Against the European-wide Nazi Demo on April 14 appeared first on Void Network.

Asheville Fm radio, based in western North Carolina, aired a fascinating interview with an anarcho-syndicalist named Denys, from the Autonomous Worker’s Union in Ukraine. In the interview, Denys debunks many of the myths surrounding the Euromaidan protests in Ukraine, and explains motives behind the stories and propaganda being circulated around the protests.

Why is the Free Association Agreement with the EU (which would mostly benefit the ultra-rich oligarchs of Ukraine) deliberately being construed as actual integration? Ukrainian leaders backed off from signing it at the last minute. Meanwhile, Russia is trying to pull Ukraine into her Customs Union by offering Kyiv a deal for promised purchases of billions of euro of Ukrainian products, and a 30 percent discount on Russian Natural Gas.
Denys explains that when the protests broke, the political class of Ukraine was taken by surprise. However, the opposition, a coalition leaning towards far-right (with fascist Svoboda being the most visible of them all) quickly regrouped and turned the street into their PR machine. The opposition had massive demonstrations in their plans, as fascist Svobodas leader declared in an interview in March 2013. Evidence emerged of the opposition leaders plans to overthrow the current government with the financial and political support of Germany’s conservative Angela Merkel, the EU leaders from Brussels, and with visible support of the United States, whose envoy, conservative John McCain was the guest star of the Euromaidan.
Two months after they started, Euromaidan protests started to wane, despite being forcefully encouraged by the conservative political elites and governments of Europe and the United States. These protests have been controlled by the politicians who took over the Kyiv City Hall, and in this video, we can see a neo-nazi white pride Christian cross, proudly displayed by the opposition in their “Revolutionary HQs,” the City Hall of Kyiv which they occupied earlier in December.

 
It’s hard to say who is more desperate – the government or the opposition, but the latter announced they would focus on the upcoming presidential elections, due in 18 months, though it’s not quite clear what candidate they’ll support. Fatherland sided with the ruling Party of Regions of the current president Viktor Yanukovych in backstabbing Vitali Klitschko, most likely to make room either for their man, Arseniy Yatseniuk, or for the leader of Svoboda, Oleh Tyahnybok (or maybe for Tymoshenko for whose release from prison, the West makes huge pressures).
Klitschko, already promoted by the conservative leaders of Europe as their favourite, announced he would run in the March 2015 presidential elections, a month before the Euromaidan.
However, Svoboda’s leader exposed their plans to take over Kyiv in a March 2013 interview which a month later was followed by street protests which failed to call for early elections for the mayor of Kiev, which would have led to the ousting of one of the allies of President Viktor Yanukovich from a powerful post.
7 months later, the opposition used the street protests against the government to gain power in Ukraine. The results have been very fruitful for the Svoboda party. On January 1st, the Svoboda party led a march of over 15,000 nationalists to celebrate the birthday of long dead nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera.

 
 Klitschko attempted to disassociate Euromaidan from the Bandera march, but this lacks meaning as he has allied with Tyagnybok and demonstrated his willingness to collaborate with the Svoboda party. Many participants in Euromaidan have expressed their disapproval of the Bandera march, yet many of the same people have expressed their desire to not split the protests, meaning they will still willingly collaborate with nazis. This has essentially allowed Svoboda to establish hegemony among Euromaidan attendees as well as the capital.
In this interview, Denys explains what are the real facts and how are they reflected in a labyrinth of deformed mirrors, which one must remove from their way to understand the reality of life in Ukraine, a country where “people are ill because the State is a Ministry, Court, Oligarch, Scoundrel and non-accountable Parliament all at once, with all the same personalities over and over again.”
The transcript of the interview with Denys has been slightly edited from the spoken language into the written one, for more clarity. The edited parts are in brackets. You may also listen to it here.
Denys: You must distinguish between the two Euromaidans. (In) the first one which (took place) on November 21st, middle class people (participated), who mostly wanted the signing of that European Union agreement. However, today (our note – two months later), most of the people who are on the streets are concerned with rather more practical issues, such as police brutality, which was shown on the night of December 1st, and generally they are not happy with the government and the president. So the European integration remains a wider issue, but today it’s kind of the second place.
(As far as) the pro-government protests (are concerned): the people (who participated in them) were taken by the government on busses and (brought) to Kyiv for the weekend. (These) protests were not honest. Many people who work for the government, like teachers, doctors and so on, were told by their bosses that they have to do it. So, it was like mandatory for them. I would not say this (was) a real protest. But (regarding) the people who support the Union with Russia and Belarus and Kazahstan, yes, there is such an opinion and, as a whole, the country is divided more or less 50-50 regarding the integration into the European Union or the Customs Union.
The problem is that the second position is just not very represented in mass media which lean towards the other direction (pro-EU). And generally those people (who support the Customs Union) do not have the habit of protesting. They live in smaller towns and therefore they are not (represented in the media as much as those who live in the capital).
Also (the supporters of the Customs Union) have very stupid political leaders, for instance the main political force, which had organised those protests (in favor of) the Customs Union, (had) as their main point of anti-EU propaganda (the claim) that the European Union will bring about the same-sex marriage, and non traditional things which supposedly would not be welcomed by the Ukraian population. They even invented the term “Euro-sodom,” like (in) Sodom and Gomorrah.
And the other political force which supports the Customs Union is the Communist Party of Ukraine, which for many years has had nothing to do with communism, its political programme and agenda (can be) rather described as conservative, just like a regular social conservative party. If you compared (them) with Marie Le Pen, you would not find much difference between them.”
Asheville Fm radio: Is in their wording and imagery a sort of call back towards the Soviet era and rejoining with other Eastern European countries?
Denys: “Yes, of course they speculate about it, because the bonds between regular people are still very strong. You know many people have relatives (in Russia), (not to mention things) like the common mass-culture. Many people watch the Russian TV channels, so that is much more common in the regular lives of people in central, eastern, and southern regions.
People in the Central and Southern region have many things in common with the Russians, in their lifestyle, and they don’t feel they are the same as the European people.
But at the same time, a large part of the (Ukrainian) population is now currently living abroad, in the European Union, especially in Spain, Italy, Poland and Czech Republic and Portugal. Mostly these are people from Western regions, but not exclusively.
Asheville Fm radio: With the supporters versus the detractors of the EU inclusion, I can see a dividing up according to social norms, as you mentioned, so people who are maybe more social liberal (are) maybe leaning towards the West with its more progressive laws and same sex marriages, and then on the right side you have more conservative, more orthodox leaning – it will be a different orthodox church than the Russian orthodox – I’m sure that, depending on where you are in the country or what industry you’re in, you’re going do more business generally with the East or the West. But would you say that both the positions are basically more towards liberalizing the economy and weakening workers’s rights within Ukraine, or is it sort of a false bind for workers in Ukraine?
Denys: First of all you talked about the prevailing social liberalism among the pro-EU (Ukrainians). I would not really agree with that. There is such an impression because the pro-EU protests are headed by the educated middle class people who do have a (sort) of more social liberal agenda.
But still it’s more like cultural right versus cultural right.
So, for example, regularly, people at the Euromaidan pray publicly like together, all together. Then again, (regarding) the same sex marriages (issue): most people who stand for the EU integration would never accept it.
(Indeed) the social issues regarding the workers’ rights are not on the agenda at all. The working class, as a class, does not take part in these events at all. The workers naturally do take sides, but they are not organized in class-like organisations, in unions, as such they just don’t participate in these events. And they have good reasons for this, because both sides just talk about the cultural, political issues, which don’t have any direct connection to needs of an average worker.
The protesters who support the EU have the utterly false impression about Europe as some paradise where everything is all right, everything is much better than in Ukraine or anywhere else. It’s useless to tell them about the protests within the EU, about the austerity programs. They just don’t listen and they would say, “Ah, so you would better join Russia, wouldn’t you!”
So this false choice is just overwhelming and I think the same could be said about the opposite side. The leftist agenda, the workers’ rights agenda, is just not present at any of these squares (where people protest).
Asheville Fm radio: That must be a rather a frustrating position. All right, I guess, as an anarchist, it might open all sorts of possibilities and questions, (when they say) “Well, you must be pro-Russia if you’re against this”, (could you say) “Well, actually there’s another way.” Do you find that opens up a lot of conversations for you?
Denys: “No. The people are very hyped-up, they are very nervous. Today and maybe all the other days of last weeks, you could be in real physical danger, if you start saying something like this because you’d be immediately considered a provocateur from the ruling party. Actually, there were a couple of such incidents at the Euromaidan, when people from different leftist groups were trying to do exactly what you’re saying, and some of them were beaten quite harshly, others were just pushed out. (This is) because regular people do show some interest sometimes, but the other problem is that the whole situation in the rank and file in the euromaidan, the security and the local managers (organisers of the protests), who do stuff, they are heavily infiltrated by the far right groups that actually have their own things to say to the left. And they have the trust of the normal, the political people, so if some new Nazi whom we know says, “Oh my god, look, these are communists, these are like provocateurs, I think they just support Yanukovych,” nobody would listen to you anymore. You’d be like pushed away.
This is the mass hysteria in which I do not think it is possible to do much agitation, although I think during the next year we’ll have much more possibilities, because given the awful state of Ukraine’s state finances, I think during the next couple of months, the protests could be transformed into something (closer to a) more of a social economical agenda.”
Asheville Fm radio: Let’s hope so. 
Can you talk a bit more about the Ukrainian political system, and what the spectrum looks like? What kind of parties should our listeners know about to get a basic understanding about the dynamics, and what the stances are on the Ukraine joining the EU or the Custom’s Union?
Denys: “The Ukrainian parliamentary politics basically consists of two large (political) parties – these two parties have pretty identical social, political and economical agendas. They both can be described as centrist-right populists. One party is the Party of Region, which is the ruling party, president Yanukovych is their chief, and the government consists of the Party of Regions’ members. The opposition consists of a bloc of three parliamentary opposition parties, which are basically the same, the only difference is that they speak Ukrainian. (These opposition parties) have their electoral base in the Central and Western Ukraine, while the Party of Regions (people rather) speak Russian, and they speculate on these cultural differences, since their voters live in the South and in the East. These are the parties which gather perhaps 60 percent of all votes. Also there is the “Communist” party of Ukraine, which I already told you about. And one of this so-called National Democratic Opposition is the Svoboda (party), which is translated as “freedom”, but actually is a far-right party, identical to the other far-right populists from the European countries actually. Most of the political parties which I described do support the integration into the European Union, including most of the businessmen who support the Party of Regions (the ruling paty of president Yanukovych).
Actually, during this year, there emerged an opposition, based on pro-Russian conservative grounds, inside the Party of Regions, but it was very severely suppressed. The would-be leader of that opposition, a member of the parliament, was expelled from the Parliament, on grounds that he rigged the elections in his constituency.
Up until the end of November everything said that Ukraine would sign that Association Agreement (with the EU) because everybody is interested in it.
Then things changed rapidly, as far as can be understood, when the president and the prime-minister looked at the figures and they just realized that they can’t do it because the trade was with Russia and because (of the situation of) the State’s finances – we don’t have money and the budget is just empty and we can’t afford the losses which would be brought about by that association Agreement. Obviously nobody read that agreement at all (until at that moment), because (until the moment they backed off), the prime-minister and the president were the main euro-optimists in the country.
Overnight then they became the main euro-skeptics.”
Asheville Fm radio: Was the International Monetary Fund’s restructuring plan a part of getting into the European Union, or was that a separate thing that suddenly came up about the same time for the Yanukovych’s party? 
Denys: “These are two separate things, which are united by the fact that the Ukrainian government badly needs money. So they’ve decided to press the European Union in order for them to help Ukraine negotiate for better conditions of (getting) a credit fund from the IMF.
This is because the IMF demands (the same measures) as they usually do for many countries. (They impose) very harsh conditions, such as rising the gas price for the population, and the devaluation of the national currency. And the government refused to do that that over the past years, and it would be certainly political suicide for any politician who would try to do that now, when there is one year left before the presidential elections.”
Asheville Fm radio: From what I understand the IMF demands a 40 percent increase of the price of natural gas in a country that is quite cold, right? 
Denys: Yeah.
Asheville Fm radio: That seems like political suicide. I can see that for sure. 
Denys: “The main political force in the far right scene in Ukraine today is undeniably the Svoboda party, if I would have to seek some comparison I would compare them to other eastern european far-right parties such as Hungarian Jobbik party (more on Jobbik: documetary, news report, and article) which I think American listeners may be aware of. There was a huge scandal when they got lots of votes a couple of years ago in Hungary. Svoboda (is) pretty much the same thing, it’s a political party which has its own project of a so-called “national constitution” (which would bring about) many awful things, such as the death penalty for the so-called “anti-Ukrainian activities,” without further comment. Basically anything contrary to that parties spirit could be considered “anti-Ukrainian.”
Today in the Euromaidan they are calling for a political strike, but actually what most people just don’t realize is that, in the Svoboda’s project of (a new) Constitution, the political strike is a criminal offense.”
Asheville Fm radio: It’s a state of exception for them, I’m sure. 
Denys: “Yeah. The paradox is that they’ve become extremely popular among the educated liberal middle class in urban areas, especially in Kyiv. So today Kyiv votes for Svoboda, as the Western regions of Ukraine do, because they just say, “Well, I don’t know what is their program like. I did not read anything (about it), but they look so harsh, they are such cool guys, and I’m sure that at least they would break the necks of those corrupt people who are now in the party (holding) power.”
This is, of course, very much reminiscent of the historical situations in other countries in 21st century.
I don’t want to sound too much in panic, but there are some similar traits, because regular bourgeois people from the middle class just don’t see anything wrong with it. And, to some extent, they are right, because, if the far-right wins over the country, these people would not feel any major difficulties (in their life). The main difficulties would be directed towards the far left, towards all the left parties and movements, and towards the ethnic minorities and racial minorities.
But normal people would not feel anything for some time (at least), and that’s the problem.
Also another interesting fact about (the Svoboda) party: they (went through) a rebranding, and now (they) call (themselves) “freedom”.  This is a generic word for the European right, but up until 2005 or 2004, they called themselves the Socialist Nationalist Party of Ukraine.” (our note: Actually the current Svoboda leader said at one point that every Ukrainian must become a Socialist-Nationalist.)
Asheville Fm radio: Do you have anything to say about the Ukraine National Assembly party?
Denys: “They’re not very influential now. They used to be a very powerful far-right party (back) in the `90s, when they really had their own para-military soldiers, and even a semi-army, and their fighters (participated in) the war in Chechnya, and in other Caucasus wars and in Transnistria, and, yeah, they were very scary. But today they are just mostly a club for the nazis who don’t like Svoboda.
Asheville Fm radio: I came across the website of Dimitrov Kutchinsky, that guy is crazy. There are also references to national-anarchism.
Denys: “Are you familiar with that concept at all?”
Asheville Fm radio: Yeah there are some idiots claiming to be that in the United States. In San Francisco, and New York and Chicago. Are they much of a thing in the Ukraine?
Denys: “Yes, actually yes. Because unfortunately this is a very popular trend – to mix with the leftist things, like (in adopting an) anticapitalism (narrative). The anarchist (position) is very trendy, cool and gives you some points immediately, but people mix it with national things, which also look very trendy and cool with the youth, mainly with teenagers who just don’t see any problem in trying to combine these things. And it’s especially funny in Ukraine because we have a very big myth about Makhno.
Today he’s an integral part of the national myth, he’s considered a nationalist, actually, because, well, he fought the Bolsheviks, therefore he must be for Ukraine, for independent Ukraine, and for the rule of the nation and so on. Obviously this is total bullshit, but this mythology is very popular and it adds to the popularity of that left-right synthesis, the third position actually, like Terza Posizione, (which is) the Italian fascist tradition.”
Asheville Fm radio: Yeah that’s the same phrasing that they use in the United States: third positionists. There’s also a lot of overlap of nationalism and regional bio-centric ecology, so that they seem to make invasions into Green Anarchism before they start to make it into the mainstream or before a lot of people became aware of who they were and what they were doing. 
Denys: “I understand that, but here in Ukraine, apart from the New Age things, they are also very fascinated by the proper fascists, such as Mussolini, for example. They somehow are trying to mix it with anarchism.
Also you may be aware of the split in the Russian anarchist movement recently?
Asheville Fm radio: No, I’m not actually.
Denys: “Well there was a big split and that is repeated in Ukraine too.
It’s the split between the anarchists who support the minority rights, the feminist struggle, they pay attention to general issues, to the minority rights to the ethnical minorities, and the other macho-anarchists who don’t like all this ‘feminist b….t.’ They say, ‘We are cool guys, we do lots of sports and we are the proper anarchists, we don’t want anything to do with those pussies.’
Unfortunately, this manarchism is also gaining a lot of popularity lately.”
Asheville Fm radio: Is that a phrase you use in Ukraine, manarchism?
Denys: “Oh, we know that it’s originated in the United States, but for the lack of better word, yeah.”
Asheville Fm radio: It was quite surprising to hear it, I mean your English is very good but also the colloquial, the subcultural terms that you’ve pulled, they’re quite good. It seems in the United States that that’s always been a trend, that’s a possibility and that’s happened over and over again where people split off and say, “Oh, we need to have action now, no, these other ideas will happen after the revolution, we can wait to talk about race or sexism after the revolution and we’re gonna make the revolution right now so that we’d get on to those conversations,” and it seemed to a lot of people, starting about 10 years ago maybe in the United States among insurrectional currents of anarchism that that was a thing that people were tending towards, but I don’t think that there was actually a split in the United States, thankfully, I think there are people who have that perspective but usually they get put in their place by other people pretty fast. 
They get called manarchists, and then internet videos are made about them and they are made fun of in public and then they don’t want to be that person anymore, hopefully.
Denys: “The difference is you don’t have such developed fascists, do you?”
Asheville Fm radio: No. 
I mean we have a lot of far-right leaning groupings in the United States, some of which are para-military such as militias, or the KKK, though they’re not very big anymore, there are large pockets of neo-nazi subcurrents, but for the most part these groupings are at the political fringes, and the mainstream of America would not listen to them, although there have been large upsurges in anti-immigrant perspectives over the last 10 years that have led to armed groups on the border with Mexico for instance that have been deputized in certain states. In a way that kind of reflects from what I understand the Kozaks as an armed civilian militia that’s trained and armed by the state in Russia? 
But, yeah, the integration of rasist and fascist elements, as (openly) fascists is not really a thing although people make the argument that the United States is a fascist State it’s definitely not Mussolini’s Italy and definitely not Hitler’s Germany. 
Denys: “We have an additional pressure from the right and more people just tend to confuse these things. You know, all these things are against the power, against the government and, yeah, (they are like), “I’m too lazy to read anything about it yeah, so I should go into the street, and not even go into the street, but merely go into the gym.” There is a (Denys told Revolution News that this is a true story) joke, (about) the Kyiv manarchist (and it goes), “The day before yesterday they’ve issued a call of unity among the Kyiv left in the face of the Euromaidan like “We should be united and go together and do something social to raise some social issues and so on, but that call for unity contained one note: that if we see people with a black violet flag they would be considered provocateurs and all the necessary measures will be upon them.”
Asheville Fm radio: And black and violet being the color spectrum from the anarcha-feminist?
Denys: Yeah, right.
Asheville Fm radio: To bring you back to the protests initially as it is the Euromaidan began November 21st with 2000 people gathered in occupying Kyiv’s Maidan, it is the Independence’s square, right?
Denys: Yeah.
Asheville Fm radio: And Maidan means square? 
Denys: Yeah.
Asheville Fm radio:  Can you talk briefly about the Orange revolution and the comparisons that have been made between the protests that are going on right now and the scale of these protests and maybe the lack of scale in the demands of the people on the streets?
And compare that to the Orange revolution?
Denys: “Well, one thing which was prominent in the Orange revolution events was (the focus) on one person.
Everybody was shouting, “Yushchenko” the name of the candidate for the presidential position and at that time all the left were criticizing the Orange revolution for this, (because) they did not pay any attention to other vital problems, they just shouted “Yushchenko” and they thought that he was the Messiah who’d get things done.
But today they don’t have even this and still they don’t pay any attention to the bread and butter issues. Large masses of people just have the illusion about the fairytale of Europe, which they want to join, like personally. And nobody says anything about the actual content of that (EU) Association Agreement.
Yes, now the mobilization of what I understand is already larger than in 2004 events, so potentially the opposition holds a vast resource, but the problem is they don’t really know how to use it.
We can read in the interviews of their politicians who took part in the Orange revolution, at that time, (how) the politicians controlled the crowd much more tightly.
For example, one politician recently gave an interview, and he said, “Do you know why at that time the euromaidan was entirely orange and now they have different flags of different colors? Well, that’s not a coincidence. It’s just because everyday (back in 2004) we brought there 300 fresh orange flags.”
They’ve controlled the crowd, they were giving them the flags and doing their organisational work more efficiently than now. Today the parliamentary opposition was just responding to a spontaneous mobilization, they did not order it and then they just did not know what to do, in the first few days. In this situation, then, again, the most prepared party turned out to be the Svoboda. Which is the only party that has its own rank and file activists, who can do things in the field. So they get the most benefit as for today, as it looks now.
Asheville Fm radio:  How has the media in Ukraine dealt with, interacted with the Euromaidan movement and what is the ownership structure like with the media in Ukraine. What sort of influences do different stations have?
Denys: Oh it’s a very interesting story because in 2004, during the Orange revolution, all the media were heavily censored in that regard and all the people were watching Channel 5. (This) was the only TV channel (broadcasting) all these events, because its owner was Petro Poroshenko, an opposition politician. Today the ownership structure is not any better for the opposition, but still all the main TV channels and generally all the main mass media are covering the story very closely. When it was that bloody crackdown all the main channels belonging to the richest oligarchs covered it almost live, showing these riot police beating up people and saying how awful this is and so on and so on.
This shows that the owners of the media are really not happy themselves with the current president, and this was a big news for most Ukrainians as well. Because there is a popular (belief) that all the oligarchs are behind the (current) president, but, as we can see now, recently, the business advisers of the Ukrainian President Yanukovych have really irritated the media moguls, who are the owners of large portions of the Ukrainian GDP. They are not really happy about the president’s family doing things they should not do with their business.”
Asheville Fm radio:  Talk about the group that you’re with, or the organisation. 
Denys: “It was founded two years ago, and it’s still not super big. But I would say that we really have had some development in quality as well as in quantity, because today we have two local (branches), one in Kyiv and one in Harkov – (this is) the second largest industrial city in Ukraine.
We have about 20-25 people in Kyiv and maybe like 15 people in Harkov.
These are not astronomical figures, but they are larger than they have been initially and I think we are growing. We see ourselves not as a political propaganda group, more as a class union.
We are guided by the revolutionary syndicalism principles, although lately our group is becoming more and more just anarcho-syndicalist. Earlier we had some trotskysts and some marxists but now I think that most of them are already anarchists.
But unfortunately we still don’t have any workplace organisations, because, according to the Ukrainian law, you must have at least 3 people at every local workplace. We have people from different areas who often don’t work anywhere officially at all, like seasonal workers or construction workers and so on.
That’s the problem and today we function in actuality more like a propaganda group, although we want to be an actual union more like IWW, that’s the model we look up to.”
Asheville Fm radio:  For any listeners who are not familiar with anarcho-syndicalism, would you lay that down, briefly, and how it compares and differs from revolutionary syndicalism?
Denys: “Syndicalism as a method (stands for the) negation  of parties and parliamentary politics, as an instrument of reaching any political goals. The main accent is laid on direct action instruments, such as strikes, demonstrations, occupations and so on.
The main issue of syndicalism per se is the strategy, which lies in connecting the political and economical struggle in the struggle of syndicates, of unions.
So, unlike trade unionism, the labor movement, or laborism like in Britain, syndicalists believe that unions should pursue political goals together with the economical goals, they should fight, for example, for high wages and together they should keep in their mind that they are fighting eventually for communism, for the downfall of capitalism.  In the syndicalist theory, this is called revolutionary gymnastics.”
Asheville Fm radio:  I’ve never heard that phrase before.
Denys: “The revolutionary gymnastics is everyday struggle for similar reformist things which at the same time develops the muscles of the working class. After these struggles, the workers come out of them more organized and higher level of class conscience.
During strikes and demonstrations, the working class consolidates and sort of trains itself for class battles, and for more important and more vital political battles which will come.
The revolutionary syndicalism unites basically any left anti-capitalist, while anarcho-syndicalism also implies that all the members of the movement share anarchist views.
Personally, I don’t think that anarcho-syndicalism is contradictory in any way to other forms of social anarchism.
Anarcho-synthesism is a school of thought which combines anarcho-communism as an ideal, anarcho-syndicalism as a method of reaching that ideal and anarcho-individualism as a base from which you evaluate your actions.”
Asheville Fm radio: Criticism that people might come up with is that it’s difficult to keep doing reformist work in the short-term even though it can get you better working conditions or less repression from the state, and keeping an eye towards conducting a revolution or not, just buying into the system you have to make better. 
Is that the criticism that you hear?
Denys: “Well, our answer today is putting forward unrealistic demands. For example, one of our program’s points is to demand the lowering of the retirement age for men and women equally to 50 years, making longer the yearly vacations (pensions), and shortening the working hours to 35 hours a week.
These demands are postulated in the social context in which the government tries to raise the pension age and (increase) the working hours.
But still it does not look as utopian to most people because they can sympathise with this – everybody wants to have longer vacation. This helps us to get in a situation, into a zone where our demands are not considered some lunacy while at the same time obviously if our government would try to make them real any government would collapse.
Another example is our current campaign for free communal transport in Kyiv.
It was a response to the Kyiv government’s decision to raise the price of metro and buses (fares) (by) 50 percent. Nobody is willing to protest, the left groups who want to capitalize on this they just say, you know, the regular stuff, “We are against the raising of the tarifs, we don’t see it as a necessary step.”
I think our tactic was better because we put forward the offensive demands, not the defensive ones. We said, “Actually, we want free transit.” And here is the budget of the Kyiv government and we can see that here and here are the money which can be redirected and spent so that it can grant all the inhabitants of this city free transit.
Of course, this demand is still “unrealistic” in terms of real politics.
But it creates some space where you can be revolutionary and reformist at the same time.”
Asheville Fm radio:  Your explanations have reminded me of the IWW’s push for the 4 hour work day, which they’ve played with for a long time. It’s like you say that to someone and they say, “That’s totally unrealistic, it’s not going to happen.” But then you break down the numbers and if everyone was actually working and profit would be redistributed in a certain way then that could work and that begs the question of what’s wrong with the system that makes us have to work so much.
How can anyone of the listeners outside of Ukraine support the work of the Autonomous Workers’ Union and support the people struggling against the EU and the Ukrainian government and Russian intersession.
Denys: “I think the most useful thing would be to actually do what you’re doing now – to try to dispel the myths about our current situation because as far as I can understand most of the anarchists in the Western countries are just super optimistic about the protests, they see it as the right path to the EU and (they think) we shall overcome. But, as I’ve tried to explain, the situation is not that simple, so I think first and foremost everybody should try to learn as much they can about every other struggle in the world. This is what I’ve tried to do and of course it’s not an original answer but the international solidarity can help. We know from our own experience that when some groups from other country stage solidarity protests however small it can be and it is very helpful. Our group has also staged lots of actions, demonstrations in solidarity with Greek comrades, Polish comrades and not only it raised up spirits, but it is a useful thing for building up networks and organisational cooperation. There is a thing called Red and Black coordination, I think it only unites Western Europeans in libertarian movements, but still it is potentially very useful and our union I think it’s going to join, by the way.
It would be good just to start communicating with each other directly and seeing the needs of each other.
Asheville Fm radio: You yourself just got back from a solidarity protest. Can you talk about that cause I was not aware of this massacre either. 
Denys: Two years ago, in 2011, all workers in several oilfields in Kazakhstan staged a strike. Their first demands were just higher wages and better working conditions. But after they were totally ignored by the government and by the employer, they were radicalized by the local trots and they’ve started organizing a national network of militant collectives, demanding the nationalization of the whole oil industry and the workers’ control, and putting forward some political demands as well. Anyway they were still largely ignored until August after their strike has lasted for half a year, the government started repressing them. First they’ve beaten up some activists, they’ve locked up behind bars the woman who had given them legal advice, but still they were holding on the main square of Zhanaozen, which is a small workers’ town, in the West of Kazakhstan. But on december 16th there was a huge celebration of Kazakhstan’s independence day. And exactly on that day the strikers were attacked by a group of thugs obviously financed by the governor of that region who opened fire on the crowd. And 17 people were dead, several dozens were injured. That’s the perfect example of the unity of the capital and the state. If an anarchist wanted to talk about how the capitalists and the state support each other there can be no greater example in the recent history.
Especially since it was the main state holiday, Independence day.
After that the government started closing even the liberal media and repressing even the established bourgeois opposition. (more on the massacre)
Also this massacre was just the starting point for the Kazakhstan’s regime to turn into something much more brutal than it was before that. Also in the sphere of workers’ rights just recently the Kazakh government has come up with new proposals. They want to ban all the independent trade unions, so if you have a union cell in a factory, this cell should be controlled and governed by the National Federation of Trade Unions, the relic from the Soviet state, which is obviously heavily controlled by the government. If you don’t have any relations to that federation, your union is just illegal.
The other “great” initiative is that they want to raise the pension age again for women to make it 63 years, and to put a legal ceiling on the wages – not of top managers, but on the wages of relatively well off working people in such sectors such as oil and gas, where the wages are on average higher than in other sectors.
And the funny thing, but of course nobody cares in the West about it, no capitalist democracy can be bothered by this at all, the Kazakh state owns companies that are listed (at the western stock exchanges, like the London SE).
and they have huge success on the stock markets, then again it shows that there’s no big difference between the capitalism in the West and the capitalism in the former second world, because this point is often made by liberal experts here in Ukraine. They say something like, “You have a wild capitalism in Ukraine, but somewhere in the realms of Western paradise there is a true humanist capitalism.”
As you can see this is all the global unified system.”
Asheville Fm radio:  If people want to learn more about you what website should we send them to?
Denys: It’s avtonomia.net.
http://avtonomia.net/
More reading: Euromaidan: The solution to Putin, or another fascist political coup?

Other earlier interesting interview of Dennys:
http://pratelekomunizace.wordpress.com/2014/02/19/maidan-and-its-contradictions-interview-with-a-ukrainian-revolutionary-syndicalist/

For those interested in listening to archived episodes from Asheville Fm radio, check them
out at thefinalstrawradio.noblogs.org. You can contact them with
content suggestions at thefinalstrawradio@riseup.net

source: 

The post Ukrainian anarchist dispels myths surrounding Euromaidan protests, warns of fascist influence appeared first on Void Network.

This article was written shortly after the occurrences in Hamburg. We cannot bring in all of the impressions this day has left us with and maybe others will draw different analytical consequences, which we look forward to reading and discussing. Our main aim is to try to explain the events from our antinational, anticapitalist perspective here in Germany, especially for our international comrades, who asked about information and who cannot follow everything due to language barriers.

A report from the working group “International Affairs” from Antifa AK Cologne
Greek version (ελληνική μετάφραση)

On Saturday, the police attacked and stopped a big autonomous demonstration called in defence of the social centre ”Rote Flora”  in Hamburg. The heaviest riots we have seen in years lasted the whole day and night, hundreds were injured or taken into custody. The organisers speak of a “political scandal”; the media discuss violence, the meaning of the constitutional right to assemble and violations against it by the police; for the radical movement, this further criminalisation of vital social struggles (coming after Blockupy 2012 for example) show that the front lines against state and capital might be hardening.

Who was calling for what?

Several organizations and initiatives called for demonstrations on Saturday which were all politically connected. The initiative for the asylum right of refugees, the “Lampedusa-Group“, called – as they have done frequently in the last few weeks – for an antiracist demonstration. This initiative has to be seen in the context of the refugees struggle, which has been taking place in Germany for a few years now. In Hamburg, it has created a large and vibrant political dynamic and drawn the supportive attention of various section of society, from the autonomous milieu to students and liberals.
A “right to the city”-initiative also called to gather and to protest, in particular against the eviction of the so called “Esso-Houses“, an old housing complex in Hamburg-St.Pauli with a few over 100 housing units, stores, clubs etc. This housing unit was sold to investors in 2009 who directly said that they wanted to bulldoze these buildings and create new, more profitable estates. The houses were evicted only six days before the demonstration, last Sunday (15th December)! The slogan of the protests that day was “Right to city does not know any borders”, this made clear the link to the antiracist struggle.
The biggest demonstration was expected by the initiative for saving the Rote Flora, the legendary autonomous centre in the gentrified district “Schanzenviertel” in Hamburg. The Flora has been threatened by eviction for some years now. Occasionally the owner clarifies how hardline he is and that there is now a discussion about the need for eviction. The situation of the Flora – one of the autonomous centres which refused to negotiate with the city administration and chose a strategy of resistance – is one of the most important symbols of the “right to the city” initiative not only in Hamburg, but in Germany. Furthermore, refugees around the Lampedusa-Group are in intense exchange with the alternative-autonomous scene around the Flora. All the issues for the day can be seen as being crystallised in the Flora demonstration (racism, exclusion from city development). The other demonstrations and assemblies wanted to join the Flora-Demonstration, which was set for the Saturday afternoon. Important to mention is also a strong support from the mobilization by antifascist groups.

The days before

The mobilisation had massive effects. Not only because of the traditionally large representation of the autonomous movement in Germany that comes together at the Flora-demonstrations, but because of the links between the topics described above, which are at the moment most relevant to the radical left in Hamburg. But the mobilization did not stay German wide. Many people from Europe, mostly from the autonomous scene, travelled to Hamburg. An aggressive demonstration was expected.
Politicians, local press and the police built the ideological groundwork for its total-escalation strategy in the days before the demo by playing on people’s fears in the media; Hamburg should be “worried about the city, which is in danger of being burnt down completely“, local press said.. The large crowds of christmas shoppers had to be protected. The police expected 6000 demonstrators, amongst them 3000 “ready for violence”. The eviction of the Esso-Houses in the days before heightened the tension. The police mobilized aggressively, including bringing in specialist riot police units from all over Germany.
On Friday, the police declared the zone of the inner city (St Pauli is not strictly in the inner city, so it was not included directly) as a “danger zone”. You can understand it as a temporary “state of exception”: anybody can be stopped, controlled and taken into custody with little reason needed. This “danger-zone” method is unusual in Germany and its last large use was during the Blockupy-protests in 2012 in Frankfurt. Last time this provoked huge amounts of popular outrage. With tensions rising, the organizers of the antiracist demonstration feared violent dynamics, especially provocated by the cops and replaced their demonstration with a rally instead.
Also on Friday, after an FC St.Pauli football match, a group of about 300 persons organised a spontaneous demonstration to the Reeperbahn (in the “Red-Light-District” close to Flora) and smashed the police station there with stones and paint bombs. The building and several police cars were damaged

Saturday: Warzone Hamburg

This added even more wood to the fire. Hours before the Flora demonstration started, the police had a massive presence in the area. Helicopters, riot police everywhere, 12 water cannons and a lot of tanks against barricades. People were stopped and taken into custody even before they could demonstrate. In the public many have said that this was necessary, especially because of the attack on the police station the night before. Most of the local media did not see these arrests as being a problem.
At about 2:30 pm the first speeches began, but the demo did not move yet. The police say 6000, press about 8000 and the organizers 10000 came together in the end. The demonstration only walked some meters (most people did not even start moving) before the front rows were stopped by the police brutally and without any warning. First there was some skirmish, and then the police fired the water cannon directly into the front rows. After that, stones, bottles, and fireworks were thrown at the police. All in all, after 30 minutes the police said the demonstration was now over.
The “official reason” varies between two versions. The first being that the demonstration started violently and too early. This is as ridiculous as it sounds, so another version popped up: just at the beginning some people threw stones from a bridge at the police. This is more realistic. Or is it?

Take above video, which documents how the demonstration was stopped. First it shows that there was no attack from the demo till the cops stopped it. In this image from the bridge, where the stones were supposed to be thrown, it becomes clear, that the train traffic is still rolling and with the exception of some photographers and spectators no people (I.E. possible stonethrowers) are to be found on this bridge.
The official reason for stopping this demo is extremely poor and it hints to the fact, that this early stopping was pre-planned. As well as attacking the front of the demonstration another riot police unit stormed the back of the demo, where the creative Right to the City bloc was situated. The police co-ordinated attacks on both sides.
The demo was over even before it started properly. Heavy rioting began, barricades were built. The Police used batons, pepper spray and a lot of water from those cannons, which were said to have been filled with chemicals. Even if not, the cold water, combined with the freezing weather and the high pressure with which it is shot make them extremely uncomfortable and dangerous. The cops kettled some thousand people in a big area close to the Flora.)
Even people living in the houses nearby who were not part of the demonstration could not get in and out of their homes. After two hours the police opened the kettle and people were free to go. The big group dispersed, a lot of smaller groups were trying to reach the Esso-Houses, which were seen as one destination to go to. Spontaneous demonstrations of many groups and further fights occurred on many
spots. The inner city was not reachable, but many areas, including the large Reeperbahn avenue were completely blocked by the police.

During the day, about 500 demonstrators were injured, some badly. Probably 300 were taken into custody, 19 charged. The police reported 117 injuries to their officers. We know about how these numbers are produced and expanded but this image of an uncosciousness cop show about the high levels of violence from the day. Furthermore, the press report large levels of damage to property, including party bureaus of the governing Social-Democrats, banks and luxury hotels.
The big, legal and authorised demo never happened due to police escalation. They do not even put this into question, just claiming that it was unavoidable because of the violence. Local and regional
press have hardly criticised the strategy of the police, mostly they believe the fairytale about the attacks on the police before the demonstration from the bridge or the front rows and therefore the necessity to never let this rally happen.

Political consequences

What does this event mean politically? How should we understand it? One mainstream argument, mainly pushed by the (left-)liberal press about the meaning of constitutional rights is a popular argument; This is the third time (after Blockupy 2012 and 2013) that large, nationwide protests from the left and radical left have been declared illegal and dispersed. Despite the fact that about 90% of all Nazi-demos are made possible by brutality against antifascists because it is “the constitutional right of the Nazis” to demonstrate. It seems some have more of a constitutional right than others. Nonetheless, this debate is accompanied by discussion about violence at demonstrations, which in many cases prevents widespread solidarity from German civil society towards anticapitalists who are being successfully criminalised.
This liberal outrage about the right to assemble can be taken as a discursive push against authority. The radical movement, though, should not reduce its arguments to the constitutional level and the book of law. Bourgeoise democracy always has been compatible with massive repression and exceptional actions which are seen to be needed occasionally to guarantee it. In Europe, most recently Spain and Hungary, the rising tendency of exceptional actions (against abortion, migration etc.) are put into “democratically legitimate” forms by passing them as law.
Still, this day could harden the front lines. Every time the German police state shows itself, many already politicized people are confirmed in their (very justified, as the day shows) belief of the impossibility of making peace with the state and become more radicalized. The ideological, German interpretation of “democracy” became obvious that same evening: as the official 8pm-news celebrated the freedom of Russian opposition activists, who fit neatly into their understandings of “Freedom” (of market and surplus production) and “Wealth” (for those who can be used for state and capital and therefore “earn” it), the demonstration in Hamburg was attacked brutally and was not even reported about.

Not out of the blue

But it would be naïve to believe that this development is a total surprise. It is rather the result of the ongoing criminalization and political defamation process against social struggles in Germany. Two central topics of the (radical) Left at the moment – which also were central in Hamburg on that weekend – are refugee and antiracist struggles and those surrounding housing . On these issues, the Left – despite the mistakes one can assert – could receive relatively more acceptance from civil society than usual. The central slogans are “No Borders”, “the City belongs to everyone” and “International Solidarity”.
Take the interventions against racist crisis discourse. By the slogan “We are here because you destroy our countries” the refugee-activists make clear, that the crisis is not to be personalized and projected on them, but should be seen as a crisis of the international capitalist system, its world market and its accumulation dynamics. The same can be said about the housing struggles. For years now, especially in Berlin and Hamburg, but increasingly spreading, initiatives get active and build up a good public standing without necessarily hiding a radical (i.e. revolutionary, anticapitalist) critique. They make clear that current city planning is not for those people who live in that city and need a roof above their heads, but for capital interests and against any imagination of a reasonable society. Living space is not treated as a need for everyone, but as a commodity which is commercialized at every cost.
These struggles and their message question and negate the strong national hegemony of austerity as current crisis management. In a time where Europe is building its fortress even higher to prevent migration with dramatic results and in a place where people are kicked out of their apartments because they cannot afford it and face the risk of homelessness and death, these are topics, where the radical Left in Germany (and beyond) with its radical critique can reach more people than usual.

flashback to blockupy 2013

These two struggles show, that the crisis is also in Germany and was never out of it. No state is immune to the everyday crisis of capitalism. The message is clear: the whole country – as depicted in the ideological national narrative – is not the “winner of the crisis”, but only some classes and groups and only by exploiting more heavily the others – within or outside national borders. Activists from all over Germany and beyond came together to express this critique in Hamburg and they were harshly criminalized and attacked, maybe on a new level we have not seen before. There was even hardly the well-known distinction between “violent” and “non-violent” protestors in Hamburg. This police action was a decision by the local, social-democratic government in Hamburg. But this policing method is not unique to Germany and not to be distinguished by local governments – be it conservative (as in Frankfurt against Blockupy), green and/or social-democratic.

In Europe and beyond

Seen in a European context the ruthless attack on the demonstration is no singularity. Repression, criminalization and political defamation are problems that radicals all over Europe and beyond have to face. Counterinsurgency, not only as a practical method on the street but also as a political act, is not just a national affair; secret services and police forces across Europe are in intense exchange. The German police are well known for their tactics but we are also seeing more authoritarian police responses in the UK, Greece and beyond. So the tactics we faced in Hamburg do not only concern us, but are common problems for social movements in other countries as well.
Links and Media
Photos on flickr: pm_cheung, boeseraltemann, presseservice_rathenow

source: 
http://beyondeurope.net/144/heavy-clashes-in-hamburg/

The post “Merry crisis and happy new fear – Heavy clashes in Hamburg” by Antifa AK Cologne appeared first on Void Network.