A-Infos (en) Aotearoa (New Zeland), Anarchist journal Imminent rebellion #9 - Behind German Borders

An interview with Miss X and Miss Y, two anarchists from Aotearoa who have been 
living in Berlin for the last two years ---- Terrorism ---- Virtually mirroring 
the police raids here in October last year, there have been a number of arrests 
under terrorism laws, known as 'Paragraph 129a' in Germany. Could you tell us 
briefly about the situation? ---- Paragraph 129a was created in the 1970's to 
fight the Red Army Faction and covers membership or support of a terrorist 
organisation. The law employs a very loose definition of terrorism and grants 
the police and state security wide powers of surveillance. Only 3% of 129a 
investigations in the 1990's have resulted in convictions, however the view into 
the left and the fear it creates makes these investigations worthwhile.

The people arrested last year are accused of being members the Militant Group 
(MG), which carried out arson attacks on predominantly military and government 
targets, such as a Jobcentre. Currently the seven people facing 129a have all 
had their investigations downgraded to 129, which relates to criminal 
conspiracy. The four people sitting in investigatory detention have all been 
released.

Insofar as you can discern, what has been the wider 'public' response to the 
arrests? Is there much scepticism, or is the official version generally accepted?

Well, of course it depends on what you mean by wider public response, which also 
has to be seen in a context of the raids which took place just before the G8, 
where the police were using tactics the Stasi also used to use (for example, 
taking scent samples).

One of the people arrested under the anti-terror law was a university academic 
(Dr Andrej H.), which was not a good public relations move for the police. 
Justifications for his arrest include that, for example, he had access to 
university libraries (!), and that phrases and keywords (ie. 'gentrification') 
from academic papers authored by him also appeared in communiqués. Further, he 
had written articles about the 'Militant Group,' which had been doing actions 
against gentrification. It became an issue of academic freedom.

What has been the response to helping out those arrested under 129a? Have there 
been anti-129a campaigns? What has been the focus, and what actions have been 
organised?

The anti-129a campaigns have been taking place all over Germany. On one level 
basic prisoner support, on another focusing on the abolishment of the law 
altogether, and on another challenging the growing surveillance State, which is 
growing more and more extreme here.

What has been the general discourse of these campaigns? There was a kind of 
split here over the October raids between civil rights groups who called for a 
more measured response from the police and even a 'fair trial,' and the more 
radical left who simply demanded charges to be dropped. Of course, it has been 
the civil rights discourse which has received the media attention. Has a similar 
struggle existed in Germany?

I think there has been a much harder line taken over here, which is not to say 
the civil rights discourse isn't there, but it's certainly not as prominent. 
Also, the main response from the radical left to the repression wave has not 
been 'they are not terrorists' but 'we are all terrorists' which is far more 
useful in challenging the basic premise of state power and law. It's a more 
offensive position than to say 'our friends are innocent — drop the charges.'

The October raids here made really explicit the barbarity of prisons, and this 
has precipitated some prisoner-support work, with an Anarchist Black Cross being 
set up here in Wellington and some of those the arrested met inside being 
directly supported. Presumably, with such a repressive history, many such groups 
already existed in Germany, but has this new wave of attacks spurred a 
resurgence of prisoner support work? What form does this take?

It's true Germany has had for some time now an anti-repression infrastructure; 
it's unfortunately essential, since the German state is well practiced at 
imprisonment. It's also not the first time such charges have been bought against 
people. There are several different anti-repression networks in Germany and 
numerous smaller groups which have long histories in prisoner support. For 
example Rote Hilfe, ABC, and ARAP (a group working specifically on prison and 
gender non-conformity). In Berlin there is also a legal team to call when your 
friends get arrested at demos, for example. And of course Out Of Action, the 
newest group, who deal specifically with trauma from police repression.

While the 129a attacks did spur increased prisoner support actions, so did the 
imprisonment of anti-fascists which occurred more recently. Pre and during the 
G8 there was also a big repression wave.

Prisoner support work ranges from demos outside prisons, visiting prisoners, 
fundraising (every second left-wing party in Berlin is a soli for anti-rep 
work), graffiti, setting fire to police cars, writing letters, demonstrations, 
exhibitions, publications ...and taking action against the things the prisoners 
were also fighting against.
Autonomists

The German 'autonomists' greatly outnumber the anarchists in Germany. Can you 
tell us a bit about the autonomist movement, and how it differs from the 
anarchist movement in Germany?

Autonomist is a broad term that means many things to many people. It is a 
movement that can be traced directly back to 1968. It has a very strong 
sub-cultural element which is a strong advantage but also a strong disadvantage 
(in that it can be criticised as too alienating, inward looking and youth 
based). The movement is definitely a lot weaker now when compared to the 80's 
and early 90's.

Ideologically, autonomists are similar to many anarchists — there is a focus on 
direct action, 'propaganda by deed' and militance. Autonomists also tend to form 
together around issues rather than forming organisations that exist for the sake 
of themselves, waiting for something to act on. There is much more emphasis 
placed on building infrastructure such as social spaces, living projects and 
communes. This has helped to build the strong subculture.

Autonomists are also much more interested in building their own political base. 
There is also a lot of solidarity work, but autonomists are primarily concerned 
with their own liberation and not acting as activists or social workers.

In contrast, anarchists in Germany are more concerned with more 'traditional' 
anarchist organising, such as syndicalist union building.

The German autonomist movement has no rigid ideological line and its focuses 
have changed over the years — to the point where some 'old' autonomists are 
unhappy with people today even using the same name. You also have many younger 
autonomists who are embarrassed by the earlier movement, for example with 
anti-semitism and anti-americanism. You will also find groups defining 
themselves as 'post-autonomist' in critique.

In contrast to anarchists in New Zealand, the autonomist movement has been 
influenced by Marxist (Frankfurt School etc.) writers, such as Reich, Adorno 
etc., with a clear anti-hierarchy basis.

The strong anti-democratic and repressive tradition in Germany has also shaped 
the autonomist movement. Autonomists tend to work in small closed groups which 
are very difficult to infiltrate. It also makes it very hard to get involved in 
the political scene when you don't know anyone.

What sort of activity was occurring at the height of the autonomist movement 
during the 80s and early 90s? Was the peak primarily triggered by the fall of 
the Wall?

The big activities were anti-nuclear, which were quite militant, squatting and 
over environmental actions such as against the destruction of forest around 
Frankfurt for an airport extension.

Re-unification was important in changing the autonome movement but for a few 
different reasons. In general, it was a period of extreme change and upheaval. 
It opened up new spaces, and the peak of the squatting movement came at this 
time — the really big squatter fights of the mid nineties in Berlin almost all 
took place in the former East, where almost whole streets were occupied by 
autonomists. But these fights with the police, from which the Black Block first 
emerged, also led to processes of legalisation of the houses and subsequently a 
de-radicalisation. People found themselves increasingly in a situation which was 
one of defence, and not pushing forward.

But also important was the need to respond to growing fascist movement in 
Germany, which reared it's head for the first significant time since WW2 when 
the borders between East and West Germany came down. Although there had been 
anti-fascist work happening before this, it was mostly in response to people who 
had been active in WW2, but who still had positions of power in post-war 
Germany. After reunification things started to get really nasty in a pressing 
way — there was between 1991 and 1992 a series of violent racist attacks, 
including pogroms against refugees homes, and murder, starting in the East, but 
spreading also to the West. People realised that, far from being on the edge of 
revolution, they were at the opposite.

How do the autonomists — in rejecting (in part) the 'activist' role, focussing 
on building infrastructure, and working in small groups. etc. — how do they 
relate with the anarchists who are focussed much more on traditional organising? 
What are the (interesting) points of contention?

The two movements cannot always be so easily separated. Although there are far 
fewer people who would identify as anarchists than autonomists, there is often 
not a clear line drawn. People work together, groups bleed into each other and 
crossover. But of course this is not to say there aren't criticisms of each 
other. On one side, autonomists have been criticised for not paying enough 
attention to theory (or having patchwork theory), and for having a lack of 
continuity. On the other hand, anarchists have been criticised for being stuck 
in tradition and not adapting to new situations, for example not giving enough 
focus on gender issues.
Squatting

You've been involved quite a bit with squatting in Germany. What has your 
experience of squatting been, and how do you feel squatting and other 
'infrastructure' projects are important to the anarchist project?

Squatting hasn't existed in any public sense in Berlin for a decade, although 
it's still possible if done quietly. There were huge squatting waves in Berlin 
in the 70's Cold War wastelands of West Berlin and then in East Berlin after the 
fall of the wall. Hundreds of houses and entire streets were squatted. Since 
then most of the squatted houses have either been evicted, legalised through 
rent contracts or bought by the occupiers. So it is really more accurate to 
speak of autonomous or free spaces rather than squats.

More than 50 autonomous spaces still exist in Berlin, many of them under threat 
of eviction despite the legalisation processes of the 1990's. Many of these 
projects are living-only spaces, but quite a few also have social spaces like 
bars, meeting rooms, workshops, concert spaces, 'sport' rooms and cinemas. A 
typical house project would have about 25 people living in the house. The free 
spaces play an important part in the political scene, acting like a social glue. 
They are spaces to organise and create in, to argue in, to de-stress after 
demos, to make things happen and to figure out ways of living collectively 
together. People also live in 'wagenplätze' (house truck squats). (Not to be 
confused with anything hippy at all — inner city truck squats can be extremely 
beautiful, more reminiscent of madmax than a gypsie fair). And there are also 
many projects and collectives in the countryside.

Since the fall of wall there has been an extremely aggressive transformation of 
Berlin into a cosmopolitan 'creative' city. Entire neighbourhoods are being 
gentrified. Poor people are pushed out to the outskirts of the city and areas of 
wasteland occupied by trucksquatters are being turned into office blocks and 
luxury apartments. Many social spaces are acutely threatened through 
gentrification and are fighting not only for their own spaces and houses but 
also their neighbourhoods.
The Queer Scene

Gender queer activities seem quite popular in Germany, and I've seen quite a bit 
of printed materials that are challenging gender boundaries/norms, sexism, and 
so on. Could you tell us what the motivations are behind this, and how the 
movement(s) is organised, and how it relates to other radical politics?

The Queer scene in the radical left is quite a big influence on the left scene 
in general, and there are several house projects and wagenplätze in Berlin where 
only women-lesbian-transgender people live. Likewise there is also 'tuntenhaus' 
(literally 'fag/queen house'), a house project open to queer men.

There is also a strong sex-positive element in the left queer scene — from 
Multisexual parties in squat bars (queer punk!) to (informal) make-out parties 
after scream-core concerts in the basement of social spaces.

The queer scene has been responsible for changing many people's opinions around 
sex and pornography, to the extent that there is now an annual feminist porn 
festival in Berlin with many people from the radical left submitting DIY queer 
films.

There is a strong emphasis on destroying traditional notions of gender binaries, 
based on ideas that gender is a performance not tied to sex, and that you can 
change it at will.

In contrast to the mainstream gay and lesbian scene in Berlin (who let gay and 
lesbian police officers lead the most recent pride march), the radical queer 
scene is not contained in itself but connected to many different struggles — 
squatting, anti-racist work, anti-deportation etc. And it's hard to separate 
anti-sexist work in the radical left from pro-queer work.

We didn't really answer your question about the motivations, but we see this as 
self evident in you question :-) We are not really sure about why there is a 
such a strong queer scene in Germany — society is not so different to that in 
New Zealand. Perhaps it is the continuation of the sexual revolution in Germany, 
which was huge compared to other countries in Europe.
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
http://ainfos.ca/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/a-infos-en
http://ainfos.ca/en