Dear Siraj,
apologies for the delayed answer. Thank you for your thoughtful
message. I'm neither a political theorist, nor can I say anything
about police strategy. I also cannot answer your recurrent question
re: who is benefitting from restrictive police actions. - Over the
past ten weeks there have been demonstrations in Berlin regularly in
solidarity with the people of Palestine and against the terrible
Israeli military campaign in Gaza, the last one was two days ago, on
Sat 23 December at the central memory site of Brandenburger Tor, and a
few days earlier there were a few hundred people demonstrating for a
similar cause at the more mundane Hauptbahnhof, the main train
station. Various Berliners join these demonstrations.
What I can perhaps say something about is this question:
What were once acceptable protest placards
are now charged with being signifiers of 'hidden antisemitism' e.g.
the placard with 'From the river to the sea, we see equality', or
'From .... to ....' (left blank).
In my view, this change came with two events on 7 October. The first
event was the Hamas-led attack on Israel and the murder of around 1200
people in Israel, as well as the hostage-taking of over 120 people.
The brutality of these attacks has been deeply shocking, and the fact
that Hamas themselves distributed photo and video footage of civilians
being massacred made this even more disturbing than it already was. It
was reminiscent of the darkest moments of humanity, among which are
not only the Shoah, but also pogroms like the deliberate and genocidal
killings of Jews in many different places in Europe, in the decades
and centuries before. Only that these murders mostly went unrecorded,
for fear of retribution, and maybe also out of shame for something
that was deemed wrong even by the perpetrators?
Due to the atrocities of 7 Oct, the claim "From the river to the sea"
has taken on a different meaning. Until then, it was regarded as a
barely veiled threat (to create a Palestinian state from the Jordan
river to the Mediterranean, i.e. by eradicating the state of Israel)
that was seen as drastic, but maybe the respective placards carried at
earlier demonstrations were sometimes tolerated because it was hard to
imagine that there was a realistic chance for something like this to
happen; would pro-Palestinian forces even have the actual political
will to execute such a plan, or was it ('From .... to ....') just a
maximalist demand, made under the presumption that eventually only a
partial solution would have to be found in negotiations? Thus one
possible assumption until 6 October.
However, since 7 Oct, the will to actually destroy the state of Israel
and to kill its inhabitants seems to have become a more realistic
possibility. And it seems hard to imagine that people who have been
carrying placards through Berlin during the last weeks, placards
making the claim ('From .... to ....'), are not also aware that what
they are saying will now be read differently.
The second event that changed the connotation of the protest placards
you mention is the fact that, on that same evening, there was a group
of people in Berlin-Neukölln celebrating the Hamas-led attacks. This
celebration may have been even more crucial for the changes in police
and public tolerance that you are observing. It is morally outrageous
to imagine that there was a public demostration cheering the mass
murder which had happened on that day. Personally, I don't have words
for it. I cannot speak for anybody else, but from what I know about
the German post-WW-II psyche, this event (this public "celebration")
is one of the darkest moments in recent German history.
Since you are asking, I take the liberty to suggest that maybe your
reflexions on the reactions to the demonstrations of the last 10 weeks
should take this into account.
(About the following I'm not sure, but I have a sense...: The shock of
witnessing these "celebrations" is not a sign of Othering those
pro-Hamas demonstrators; I think the full force of this shameful
moment comes from the fact that it happened here, among us, by people
who live in this city, people who belong to the "We" of the Berlin
inhabitants. Many of us have years, sometimes decades of experiences
with the Berlin sociocultural mix, and most of us here were new
arrivals at some point. - Unlike you, I think that the psychological
drama you are witnessing and describing is not an issue of "Them", but
of "Us".)
I may not have been paying sufficient attention, but I am yet waiting
for somebody to say that they feel ashamed about the crimes committed
on 7 October. Not because they were among the thousands of people who
participated in the attack, but because they feel ashamed how the
rightful cause of the Palestinian people has been tainted by these
attacks, and how something utterly awful has been done in the name of
a future, free Palestinian state. - When will somebody mention the
progrom, by this or some other name, and maybe use one or the other
adjective to offer a sign of rejection or moral indignation?
Regards,
-a
Am 21.12.23 um 10:38 schrieb Siraj Izhar via nettime-l:
Thanks for extending the post on the silence on the rising fascism,
@Podinski.
Can some-one (who?) address the realpolitics of this for those who
break out of the silence on the rising fascism? Or try to in
concrete ways.
In recent weeks in Berlin has seriously forsaken any claim to
liberal dissent and protest seeing individual protestors being
dragged out of Palestine solidarity demos (the neck hold dragging
out seems the common method in my documentations). What were once
acceptable protest placards are now charged with being signifiers of
'hidden antisemitism' e.g. the placard with 'From the river to the
sea, we see equality', or 'From .... to ....' (left blank).
I see flyers, placards, banners being unpacked, unfurled, checked
and photographed by police prior to entry to a solidarity demo for
Gaza to prevent any violation of the Staatsraison. For any mention
of the protected term Israel at a Palestine demo.
The numbers of arrested at each demo are then published in msm
(which is the only coverage to be expected there, as x numbers of
arrests).
What exactly is the real purpose of this theatre and who is making
political mileage out of all this?
The space of permitted dissent and opinion in a pluralist society
has collapsed. It means regular raids on private homes mainly in
Neukölln, Wedding etc - immigrant neighbourhoods. It has become a
hunt. Expression of resistance becomes meaningless when everything
is charged with genocidal intent on behalf of a memory culture with
its own genocidal past.
And in the past few days ramped up police raids on poorly resourced
leftists anarchist homes like @zora_berlin, and solidarity cafes
like Karanfil. We see the references in the media of archaic 60s/70s
Palestinian groups like the PFLP, of Leila Khaled alongside tags of
'Israel haters', numbers of arrests and so on.
https://www.bz-berlin.de/polizei/170-polizisten-im-einsatz-razzia-gegen-israel-hasser
Again who is making political mileage out of this theatre? and the
nature of the threat it poses.
But on all this, let's talk here not just about the silence in the
current situation in Berlin but also the noise that lives off it and
amplifies itself. And of the types of silence in the face of an
ongoing genocide played out on screen and social media. Of who then
is staying silent and who is making noise?
The silence of the endowed, those with rights is never the same of
silence of those with conditional rights - of residency and so
forth, the silence of the precarious. One silence does not know the
other. The Staatsraison is playing with this so different silences
entwine with the silence of fear and a fear of silence. German
society is becoming segregated by differentiations of silence. In
workplaces, at schools, universities. Segregated by those who fit
its memory culture and those who don't.
And yes there is always a residual silence in every society aka
apathy, indifference but there is also a manufactured silence and
there is a complicitous silence (scratch a liberal and a fascist
bleeds).
'Genocide, what genocide,
not sure it's a genocide....'
'It's complicated.'
Of course that it could be a genocide that comes with the
displacement of a people left without rights, a displacement that
still has no relation to, and therefore no memory in Germany's
post-reunification memory culture is a silence?
(Which is why Nakba commemorations have to be banned?)
Public space for Palestine, solidarity with Gaza is invariably
equated with risk of antisemitism to be met with summary force of
the Staatsraison.
We see this most clearly with the Palestine solidarity meeting/
occupation against an unfolding genocide (or what genocide?, it's
complicated...) organised at the Free University Berlin. The
university called in the police to clear the space with total force
and then put out this tweet:
https://twitter.com/FU_Berlin/status/1735655031486001342
"The Free University of Berlin has no place for anti-Semitism,
racism and discrimination."
"The Free University of Berlin is not a lawless space."
"The Free University of Berlin is a place of debate"
In other words: To those affected mentally by watching a genocide,
you must stay silent. There will be no public expression of it as
protest.
But let's get to the core. Unlike Ukraine, the silence is here
useful. Because every raid on a solidarity space, every smear on
Palestine solidarity in public space is converted into the noise
that is becoming pervasive but inaudible (the silence of the endowed).
There is so much to pick from but here's one:
https://x.com/janfleischhauer/status/1720810560214712458?s=20
(In translation, "I may be mistaken, but most Germans think in these
pictures: “We have nothing to do with these people and we don’t want
to have anything to do. Why are they here?”)
Is it permitted to ask if his grandparents were saying the very same
words in the 30s? - as there is no policing here.
Then, take this: 'Free Palestine is the new Heil Hitler'
https://www.welt.de/podcasts/welt-talks/article248996436/Mathias-Doepfner-im-Gespraech-mit-Rapper-Ben-Salomo-ueber-den-wachsenden-Antisemitismus.html
The vital point to note is WHO now is free to make comparisons with
the Third Reich in Germany today? And make noise on the rising
fascism.
How surprising then that the subjects (or the only possible subject)
who can critique this state of affairs to break the silence and make
noise happen to be Jews in Germany. Candice Breitz, Masha Gessen and
so many more, against whom the entire apparatus of the state culture
industry has to be mobilised for daring to compare the realities of
Palestine today with Germany's Nazi past, i.e. its own fascism.
But God forbid if an Arab, or a non-native Other should make such
comparison - that would be met by instant summary unpersoning. It's
becoming defacto. The unpersoning of the undefended, the 'imported
antisemitism' of the immigrant Other as antisemite by which an uber
German liberalism can differentiate itself through its memory
culture. Which is where the real silence of the undefended is at
work now?
So can we begin to dissect the realpolitics of silence and noise in
the contemporary German liberal-sphere and its direction? as the
silence on the rising fascism? (as Podinski phrased it). For that
it's worth reading the essay by Samantha Hill posted on Gessen and
Arendt with her assertion of a necessity to revoke:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/dec/18/hannah-arendt-prize-masha-gessen-israel-gaza-essay
Siraj
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