In August thousands of people will travel to Dresden to stand up together in one big demonstration called #Unteilbar. If you haven’t heard about it yet, most probably you are living in a bunker and somehow you got this magazine by accident from your neighboring bunker. Mobilization for the demonstration is going full scale. Presentations, concerts and other public events are trying to mobilize as many people as possible to stand together for an open and free society and many other good things.
You can actually read their organizational call for Saxony on the website: unteilbar.org. We would live that part to you. It is not something particularly bad neither it is something extremely inspiring. At least for us.
Rule of law
There are for sure certain things that we can’t agree with. For example concerns about attack on the rule of law in the country. This is something really far away from the social or anarchist agenda. Rule of law have been established in Germany and other countries around the world to keep status quo. The fact that the laws are working against the poor and have little influence over power structures proved itself through generations of anti-capitalist struggle. The revolutionaries of 19th and 20th century were standing on the ground of revolutionary moral rather than laws that were and are organized by the ruling class.
Attack on the rule of law is not something negative from our perspective. Actually those attacks are the ones that were moving society further and further. Those are well known to the general public through labor, women, black liberation or LGBT struggles of 20 century.
Let’s not forget that the modern laws on extremism are also part of this rule of law. The laws that are undermining any attempts to bring down capitalist system of exploitation. Those trying to rise up are directed into moderate currents away from extremism into the swamp of bureaucracy of the german state which at the end of the day breaks the fighting spirit.
As anarchists we are extremists in this system as we demand radical changes to the current status quo. We don’t want things to be as they were in golden age of welfare state. We want the world without states and capitalist exploitation and this is already as extremist as it can be in the eyes of rule of law.
All in all we do see attack on the rule of law as an essential part of establishing a just and free society.
Saying all of it we do not believe that people who wrote the call originally were thinking about those things. We believe that attack on the rule of law is addressing attempts of conservatives to demolish those basic rights that were taken from the state through social struggles and eventually ended up as laws. Such as laws against discrimination.
However when we rely on authoritarian system (which state is with all it’s vertical of power) to guarantee our rights it is a matter of time when those rights will be questioned by the new generations taking over such an authoritarian system. In the modern days the social contract is transforming not because of changes in the society, rather because of changes in the ruling elites and we can see that on the example of CDU that was for quite a while a liberal party ready to help refugees in 2014-2015 and turning to party desperately trying to be conservative enough for the AfD voters transforming policies around Germany into direction of extreme right.
AfD, AfD, AfD
There is a lot of different materials on the website of #Unteilbar available mostly in German. In the part of statement there is a text written after european elections in Mai, that were happening the same time as communal elections in Saxony. In the text we can see a lot of thoughts on the current situation with AfD and their success in the region.
As a counter power against AfD #Unteilbar sees a broad civil society union of different social movements, churches, trade unions, antifascist groups and social initiatives. This is perspective that is brought through many other texts. We do need to unite between different groups to stop AfD march to power.
Interesting is that all of it should be taken in context – die Linke, Green Party and some members of SPD are also supporting #Unteilbar and have their place in the demonstration: there will be a block of political parties. Participants should be progressive than AfD?
You don’t have to go through the history of political achievements of those parties to remember that SPD was the party that helped CDU to push repressive police law in Saxony that will allow extension of political power of police as well as creation of instruments that can and will be used against political organizers. Die Linke and Green Party did pretty much the same in other lands of the country.
Or remember that if you live in the house owned by Vonovia most probably it was sold by the city council controlled by those “progressive” parties that were at some point the driving power or privatization of the city in Saxony and all around Germany.
In that context focus on AfD is becoming not just a fight against ultra-right party (which again CDU is trying to play over), but also turns into election campaign for those so called progressive political parties.
We do not deny that AfD is a problem, but it is a problem that resulted from dozens of years of conservative politics in the country as well as destruction of socialist, anarchist and grassroots movements and their replacement with vast NGOs structures as well as state organizations.
There is no point in abandoning you critic of other parties because ofthe fear of people voting AfD. Our political ideals and goals shouldn’t be defined by the color of the ruling party. We still strongly stand for grassroots organizing and political parties shouldn’t have space in those movements.
Let’s do a big demonstration!
Going away from the website we also see problem in organizing one big demonstration to address all the problems that are raised by those participating in #Unteilbar. It might be quite empowering to march with dozens of thousands of people on the streets for some in Saxony. We hope it can put more energy in the younger generations to get involved in the political struggles!
However we also do understand that this demonstration will have really small effect on the coming elections and power dynamic in Saxony for the years to come. The happy liberal family of different contradictory groups won’t be able to resolve the problems that are standing in front of us not only in this land but also all around the world.
We do need strong anti-authoritarian and anarchist movement that can fight back authoritarian tendencies with not happy songs about how we will overcome, but with direct actions and organizational forms that are resistant to authoritarian overtake. We have to carry our values and fight for them not to save the world of today, but to bring the world of tomorrow.
Stay at home because #Unteilbar is not good enough for you?
Despite all of our critic we do see a lot of positive moments in the whole Unteilbar story. Although the platform today is dominated by liberal voices there are a lot of groups involved in the whole union that present serious organizational efforts towards radical changes. And no, we are not talking about Verdi or DGB. We are talking about smaller antifascist, feminist, ecological groups and organizations that are participating in the Unteilbar.
We also believe there is space to present our ideas and talk to the people over the possible future. A lot of people who are going to join the demonstration are those who have their own independent perspective on life and are quite open for conversations and search for alternatives to the current situation.
We, as anarchists, cannot ignore such a huge organization efforts and we should bring inside in contrast to liberal values of freedom the true value of freedom where no human is a master of the other.
So join the demonstration and don’t be afraid to bring your own messages to it. Be creative and act within the demonstration. Join the antifascist and anarchist groups and spread the message of understanding and love!..