Our Silence Pisses Us Off!
From internationalist Anarchists Leipzig
*self-image/Manifesto*
Whether Palestine, Sudan, Congo, Yemen, Bangladesh or the Polish-Belarusian primeval forests and Europe’s outsourced borders in Libya, Egypt and Tunisia – terrible news of countless crimes and unimaginable suffering are coming from everywhere. Germany, truly a picture-book national power of the 21st century, is deeply involved in all these atrocities economically, militarily and politically.
From our internationalist anarchist perspective, we want to deal with these issues in this group, show solidarity and become active.
Special focus must be placed on the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the continuing oppression of Palestinians in the West Bank. Not only because death, abuse and destruction have reached unimaginable proportions, but also because the German state plays a central role in this. Germany unconditionally supports the state of Israel and Netanyahu’s right-wing extremist government and eagerly supplies weapons for all their inhumane acts. Large sections of the German population are adopting Germany’s interests, interpretations and goals. In addition, hardly any other protest movement is criminalized and ostracized as much as the Palestine solidarity movement: people are losing their jobs, subsidies and migrantised people can now be deported even for a like on the internet. Even the slightest deviation from the opinion defined as permissible by the state shows the state’s authoritarian face. After all, for the German media and state authorities, anyone who cares about Palestinians is an anti-Semite. Anyone who even slightly criticizes the existent Zionism and its consequences, as well as the right-wing extremist settlers, experiences hostility and repression. This is not only about the violence that emanates from the hand of the state through the police and laws, but also about the influence of tolerated media perspectives or deliberately one-sided reporting.
When it comes to the suffering in Gaza, only the German left is more silent than the German media, especially (Leipzig) anarchists. And we don’t mean the anti-German „anarchists“ by their own definition, because they are unfortunately quite loud (even if they should really question whether these two world views are compatible in any way). We don’t want to go into their nationalistic nonsense here, but rather refer to the rest of the „scene“. Where are you? Where have you been in the last 10 months? Most left-wing groups have said exactly *nothing* about the genocide in Gaza – made in Germany. But honestly, we haven’t done much for just as long: After all, it also took us 10 months to get to this point from individual expressions of solidarity, social media posts and maybe once a demo while tolerating „anti-German“ blockaders* in our structures. While in virtually every other country in the world, the left has put pressure on governments, stopped ships for arms shipments, blocked highways and shown practical solidarity with Palestinians, we have been – silent. Why? When asked about this, many people try to talk their way out of it: It’s all very complex, people don’t have time to deal with it right now, we can’t solve it anyway, but the German guilt… There is a great fear of saying something „wrong“, of being called anti-Semitic, of being excluded from groups, of jeopardizing joint political work.
But even if „anti-Germans“ are loud (after all, they have the support of the entire political spectrum from AfD to PdL), we must not make our political integrity and our solidarity dependent on what they accept. Let’s fight again – for solidarity and against every state, every oppression and every authority. Together. Across national borders. Internationalist and anti-nationally. Can we finally show that we are not in the same genocidal continuity as the state in which we live and thus regain the trust of our international comrades? This is exactly what we call on all people in organizations of social struggles and projects to do: Take a stand! Stand up to the anti-German (fake) hegemony in the structures of this city! Engage in these processes!
Who are we?
We are a group of internationalist, queerfeminist anarchists. We stand for the self-determination and self-management of all people, independent of all systems of domination, borders and nations, patriarchal oppression apartheid and exploitation. Especially in the belly of the beast, internationalism must again play a significant role, particularly within the left and libertarian socialists. No German government will voluntarily change anything about the neo-colonial exploitation of the countries of the Global South; it is much more important to build up counter-power here on the ground. Against the logic of nation states and their interests, against the power of borders, against the national „we“! For practical internationalism, for direct and cross-border solidarity with our class siblings all over the world!
We are currently a group of exclusively queer, mostly trans* people. At the moment, all of us are white and most of us have no migration background. We are therefore not directly affected by many of the mechanisms of oppression and discrimination that we deal with. Overall, our struggles are interlinked and cannot be seen in isolation from each other. However, this still means that we are shaped by our German socialization and the privileges that come with it and that we have to be critically aware of this. It is important for us not to appropriate issues and struggles as „white saviours“ and present the „only right“ solution to those affected, but rather to be in exchange with the people who are fighting these struggles, to create learning spaces that are sensitive to discrimination and to enter into complicity with a focus on common desire and grief.
What do we want?
We have come together as the group <<Internationalist Anarchists Leipzig>> to organize ourselves with an explicitly internationalist and anti-authoritarian, anarchist and queerfeminist reference. In doing so, we want to offer ourselves as solidary alliance partners to the already existing internationalist and affected-oriented groups, whereby our analysis may of course differ in (partial) aspects. However, this should not prevent cooperation and broad solidarity. We also want to support existing local and internationalist struggles both publicly and practically. In the (public) debate on various topics, we want to learn for ourselves, sharpen our analytical view of the various contexts and provide accessible information on our website. To this end, we want to open up the group to interested parties and internationalist people in order to offer a platform for points of contact, networking and exchange on an anti-authoritarian basis.
For feedback, questions or anything else you can write us an e-mail: internationalist_anarchists_le[ät]riseup[dot]net
You can find other (anarchist) Palestine solidarity groups on our website: https://internationalistanarchistsle.noblogs.org/english/shout-out/
