The Left Berlin News & Comment

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Month: June 2025

de:presse

Independent Monitoring Group for German Media


11/06/2025

de:presse is an independent media monitoring collective established in early 2024. We analyze German media coverage, with a special emphasis on current affairs and the representation of systematically overlooked or marginalized communities. Our mission is to identify media bias, encourage accountability, and advocate for journalism grounded in accuracy, fairness, and ethical standards.

What We Do

We support both the public and civil society groups by monitoring and analyzing German press coverage. Alongside this, we run public education campaigns to raise awareness of media bias and help facilitate formal complaints against unethical reporting.

Our work is made possible through digital tools developed by Tech4Palestine, such as Accountable Media and NewsCord. These platforms have already led to headline corrections in major UK outlets. Building on that success, we aim to bring the same accountability to German media.

So far, our work has led to a growing number of formal complaints about biased media coverage. But much more remains to be done. Complaints only begin to have an impact when they reach a significant scale and can’t be ignored.

Why Complain About Biased Reporting?

Submitting complaints gives media outlets the opportunity to correct misinformation, reflect on internal biases, and meet their professional duty to report fairly and accurately. It also sends a clear message: the public is watching, documenting, and demanding accountability. Ethical journalism means exposing human rights violations and challenging disinformation, not repeating it. Every complaint helps push the media closer to that standard.

The Power of Collective Action

The more people take part, the greater the impact. Together, we can pressure media institutions to correct distortions and comply with both professional ethics and legal standards. When editors fail to act, complaints can be escalated to state regulators under press and broadcast law.

Even when change isn’t immediate, documenting media bias is essential for long-term legal and historical accountability. Media complicity in crimes, whether through incitement or the manufacture of public consent, has real-life consequences.

A key precedent is the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, which in 2003 convicted the heads of the radio station RTLM and the magazine Kangura for genocide, incitement to genocide, and persecution.

How You Can Take Action

Follow our analyses of biased reporting on Instagram and submit complaints through accountable-media.com—it only takes a few clicks.

For each case, we provide a ready-made complaint letter based on our analysis.

You can also support us by contributing to our database of biased media coverage. Just submit an article HERE.

Follow us on Instagram and Substack, amplify our work by liking and sharing our posts, and stay informed about future campaigns by subscribing to our newsletter.

Stop ReArm Europe campaign

An internationalist convergence


10/06/2025

On June 21st in The Hague the heads of government of the NATO countries will meet to decide in detail how much to spend on weapons production and with what money. 

The EU has already invited the states to “develop educational and awareness-raising programs, especially for young people, aimed at improving knowledge and facilitating debates on security, defence and the importance of the armed forces …”. The meeting most likely will set the tone for the Atlantic allies’ war mongering plans, specifically to reallocate these immense resources through draconian social budget cuts. 

On that same week and specifically on June 21st in all the capitals, networks of associations, committees, pacifist and political groups converge together to protest against it. The Stop Rearm EU European campaign will soon launch the dates of June 21st to the 29th as a week of agitation all over the continent. An international converging date is planned at The Hague on June 21st with a counter international forum.

Stop ReArm Europe is an international campaign started by various civil society and political groups which so far in Italy and Spain alone counts more than 600 associations, groups and political parties. Focused on anti militarism and the European commission politics of rearming and war, the campaign is autonomously organised in each city, place, country and it’s a great chance to converge under a main common issue.

The Concept for the Deterrence and Defense of the Euro Atlantic (DDA), conceived and implemented by the North American think tank The Heritage Foundation, serves as a guideline for the Nato allies’ capabilities to operate in peace, crisis and war. The relative peace dividend of the EU countries which went into social and civil infrastructure is down to about zero thanks to the U.S.A. and allies’ plans. “Confronting a deteriorating security environment” is the main propeller for such national, international and abroad plans. 

Such claims translate into locally locking into the discipline, the order, and the authority of the ruling classes over the rest of society. 

In the words of Simon Weil on deterrence: “What is defined as national security is a chimerical condition: in which a country would preserve the possibility of making war by denying it to all others” (Reflections On War, 1933-1943).

Authoritarianism and warmongering clearly go hand in hand, as we can see in Italy with the DL Sicurezza a securitarian law that heavily criminalises social conflict in any shape and form, and which just passed by a process of pre-imposed trusting votes by the government, while not been discussed at all in the parliament.

Similarly, we witness in Germany various dubious resolutions aimed at ethnically discriminating and repressing specific members of the population. The current chancellor is implementing the militarisation of the locomotive industry as for the Rheinmetall case. The remilitarisation of German society is felt in the abnormous violent repression against the peaceful pro Palestine movement as well as towards the dissent for the ruling class from the radical left. Meanwhile dissent expressed by the radical right and nazis is often left untouched.

In Italy and Spain, it is clear to the participants and supporters of the campaign that to be for peace is to be anti-militarist, anti-NATO, anti-fascist, anti-colonial, and anti-genocide. In the North of Europe especially in Germany these intersectional and internationalist issues don’t always go together.

The recently organised national dissent campaign No DL Sicurezza in Italy has brought together different generations and a variety of groups rarely seen in the last 5 years. Old school 70+ years old internationalists, whether feminists or autonomous insurgents, are sharing knowledge and organisational practices. 50+ years old people from the ‘no global’ movement at the turn of the millennia are sharing tactics with the 20+ and 30+ year olds of the XR and LGBT+ movements, supporting the 40+ years old workers of the GKN factory worker’s strike in Campo Bisenzio, and updating language and awareness with the massive NUDM transfeminist movement.

Berlin has an even richer chance to converge to include the many international struggles and experiences of the Palestinian, Kurdish and Syrian diaspora, the Arab Spring and Occupy assemblies of the 2010s, the recent and traditional Latin American grassroots movements, dissident Israelis, the former Yugoslavian Non Alignment heritage of the Balkans and so on.

Any form of fascism, capitalism and patriarchy supporting a genocide will generate more domination, violence, repression and censorship based politics everywhere, unless it is opposed, delegitimised and stopped. It is crucial to include the issues of freedom for Palestine, and the responsibilities for the genocide happening in Gaza, the wars in Sudan and in Congo, in the core of these bottom up European based movements to internationally organise and coordinate resistance based on anti militarisation, anti-fascism and freedom from war, exploitation and colonisation economies. 

Most importantly, we must remember that war itself is the exact opposite of solidarity, sustainability, equality and the growth of civil and social rights towards the commons, which define societies living in just peace and foster liberation for all.

Stop ReArm EU and the dates around June 21st are a great opportunity to organise and converge in Berlin to continue and expand the antimilitarist protests that started (again) with the Welfare not Weapons demo at Gesundbrunnen last May. 

17 June 1953, East German workers’ uprising

This week in working class history


On 16th June, 1953, building workers in East Berlin went on strike. The next day, more than a million people struck throughout East Germany, with demonstrations in 700 towns and cities. The initial demands were economic, but these were soon generalised, with demonstrators demanding free elections, the release of all political prisoners, and democratic trade unions. Soviet troops opened fire on protestors. 55 people were killed throughout East Germany and more than 15,000 arrested. 1,500 were given lengthy prison sentences.

In response to the Uprising, Communist poet/playwright Berthold Brecht, who was living in East Germany, wrote the sardonic poem The Solution, in which he asked: “Would it not be easier In that case for the government To dissolve the people And elect another?” He then hid the poem in a desk drawer and it was not published until 1959, 3 years after his death. Brecht supported the uprising but retained some loyalty to the East German régime. 

Western politicians used the uprising for Cold War propaganda – the street leading to Brandenburger Tor was renamed Straße des 17. Juni, and 17 June was declared a public holiday in West Germany. But some Western leaders were scared. US military officer Karl F Mautner recalls commandants saying: “Got to be careful that we don’t have a revolt spilling over into our part of the city.” This was, above all, a workers’ uprising against an authoritarian government and not an anti-Communist one.

The Uprising of 1953 was important as, at the height of the Cold War, it pointed a way towards a different sort of politics, of a fight not between West and East but between below and above – against rulers on both sides of the Iron Curtain. It was followed by uprisings in Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968, and Poland in 1980, just as workers in the West fought their own rulers. This was our fight, and we should not let Western propagandists claim credit.

“The Metaphorical Ship of the Zionist Entity is Sinking”

Interview with Yazan Eissa (Gaza Freedom Flotilla, Germany)

and

Yasan Eissa stands in front of a wall, hands clasped in front of him. He is wearing a keffiyeh and a necklace with a pendant.

Editors’ Note: This interview was taken on 8th June, the day before the occupants of the Madleen were kidnapped by Israeli troops on international waters. We will update you with more news as quickly as we can.

Hi Yazan, thanks for talking to us. Could you start by briefly introducing yourself?

My name is Yazan Eissa. I am a Palestinian in exile. I have been living in Germany for seven years already. I am a representative of the Freedom Flotilla in Germany and a steering committee member.

When did you become an activist, and why?

Although I’m not a big fan of the word “activist,” I can say that as a Palestinian, I’ve always resisted the occupation one way or the other. However, ever since October 7, the masks have fallen, not only for me, but for anyone else around the world. 

The governments of the world started taking sides. Capitalism has shown its colours, colonialism and Zionism have become more prominent in the way the governments respond to everything. It was just clear to me that I have to do as much as I could to cause a change in this world. 

How did you get involved with the Freedom Flotilla? 

I simply couldn’t take it anymore, sitting there being helpless. The inability to do anything pushed me to contact as many direct actions as possible, offering my help. I contacted the Freedom Flotilla repeatedly without response. When I found out that a steering committee member was moving to Germany, I contacted them and offered to help start the Germany team.

What inspired you specifically about the Freedom Flotilla compared to other efforts since October 7th?

What really stood out for me was that the Freedom Flotilla had started way before October 7th. It was about the siege of Gaza. It’s the values carried by this organization. Those people actually know about the struggle in Palestine. I realized that even more after joining and talking to them. They’re doing this for the right values and the right cause. 

I really wanted to join them because they were advocating for direct action. Different organizations have different approaches, but for me it was direct action that could make a difference. We could cause turmoil. We could start the butterfly effect. 

Can you tell us about your involvement with the Conscience?

The Conscience is a big ship, and, along with the Madleen, it was set to take almost 50 people to Gaza. I was one of the people who was willing to be a participant and go all the way to break the siege.

But as we were trying to get things started, the Zionist entity took notice of our movements and tried to stop us. First through bureaucratic warfare, then by removing a flag from a ship in international waters––breaching maritime law. They finally resorted to dropping a bomb on the engine of the Conscience and destroying it. They thought this would destroy our hopes. But 2 weeks later, we organised the Madleen to deliver the aid. 

I guess most people know about the Madleen because of the involvement of Greta Thunberg. How important or unimportant is her involvement? 

Speaking to Greta, I know for a fact that her values are in the right place. This is something that made me very comfortable having her on board. In the beginning, we asked her to be there as a prominent figure but not be on the ship. Then she decided: “this is something that I would stand behind. I want to be on the ship.” That’s something we hold a lot of respect for.

Prominent people are more than welcome to be on board, because this means more media and less risk of our comrades being attacked. It was a very strategic decision to make. Rima Hassan, a French parliamentarian, is also aboard. 

The Madleen is not able to take much food, and at the moment thousands of children are being starved to death in Gaza. Is this just a symbolic action?

A year ago, we were trying to deliver 50,000 tons of aid, using the Conscience and other ships. We know that even if we were to take a small ship and load it as much as we can with aid, it would not be enough for a single day in Gaza. 

But we’re doing our best, and that’s why we decided to create a storage area in front of the ship. We even bought barrels, filled the barrels with aid, and then just tied them on board the ship. When you see the pictures of the Madleen, you can see those brown, weird-looking barrels that are filled with aid. 

We also understand, regardless how much we take, it would not be enough for the humanitarian aid to Gaza. But it is not only symbolic, because our main goal is to break the siege on Gaza. We want to open the humanitarian corridor so other ships can join us. After that happens, the siege will be broken by land. From the beginning, our goal was to break the siege on Gaza. 

The Global March for Gaza is starting next week. How are you coordinating with what they’re doing? 

A strategic alliance has been made between the Global March to Gaza and the Freedom Flotilla. They simply share the same goal of breaking the siege on Gaza, so it’s very natural, very organic, that this would happen. As a grassroots movement, we decided not just to break the siege of Gaza by sea, but also by land. Having these all together adds to the idea that the siege is illegal and inhumane. 

How are people in Gaza responding to the Freedom Flotilla?

We have received a lot of support from Gaza; a lot of videos that are emotional and eye watering. They view any sign of hope, any uprising by free people, with happiness. Seeing that there is even the slightest reaction from the people in Gaza is so powerful and motivating for us.

Gaza is basically our soul right now, and our soul is slowly dying. They are killing people by the hundreds every single day. Any form of hope that comes from Gaza is amplified a million times and moves millions of free people around the world, causing waves of resistance from the outside. 

How easy is it for you to stay hopeful? 

It’s really not easy, especially with hundreds of people dying every single day. With every martyr who is killed by the Zionist entity, it makes it more difficult to be hopeful. However, it brings together communities, and makes us want to gather our strength and to move forward.

When we are not resisting, what are we doing? We’re sitting there at home alone, unable to feel, unable to move, unable to live. We experience a collective suicide that is experienced by every single individual on their own. 

We send out a little boat to Gaza, which gets reciprocated by a small hope from Gaza, which gets amplified a million times. This is the way that our energy keeps on adding up and multiplying and amplifying, and the hope starts lightning from this lighthouse. 

It is one fight. It is one monster we are facing. The only way to defeat it is by putting our hands together and fighting.

There’s been attempts to break the siege before, most memorably the Mavi Marmara, where two German MPs were on the boats. That got attacked by Israeli troops. What’s the likelihood that this will happen again? 

If we look at the different missions that came after 2010, the Zionist entity has realised that it’s not in their interest to go on the ship and kill activists and journalists. They had to pay for that.

I really think that because of the strong media presence that we have this time, because all eyes are on us and because the Zionists are losing the grip of their narrative, this will add to our security and hopefully what’s happening right now will not be similar to what happened on the Mavi Marmara.

Could you say a little bit about the change in narrative? Last month, we had Friedrich Merz, Annalena Baerbock, Emmanuel Macron, and Keir Starmer all saying that maybe Israel has gone a little too far. Why do you think that there’s been this shift in how our politicians talk?

Right now, we are reaching a phase where the masks are being removed, where the Zionist entity is losing its grasp of reality. People are seeing what has been going on in Palestine since 1948. They are looking back into the records and a lot of people around the world are starting to wake up; to realize. 

The metaphorical ship of the Zionist entity is sinking. And the partners complicit in this genocide, including Germany, have started to realize this. So it’s a way for them to abandon the ship, to save themselves a little bit by saying: “Now we realize what’s happening is a genocide. Now we realize that we are standing on the wrong side of history.”

One day or the other, the Zionist entity will fall. People are starting to lose hope in the Zionist narrative, and that’s why a huge shift in narrative is happening around the world. 

What are the different scenarios which could happen to the Madleen in the next couple of weeks? 

I think the best way for them is to actually let the ship enter and provide the aid, even if it means they would lose the inhumane siege they have been upholding all those years. The other alternatives would not help them. If they board the ship and injure any one of our comrades that would not come back positively on them. 

It’s also a possibility that they occupy the ship, take it to Ashdod port or Haifa, put the activists in prisons, and then deport them. Our comrades have practiced non-violent resistance. They know what to do there, and they will try their best to make sure that no one gets injured during this process. 

Another scenario, which is, in my opinion, the least likely, is that they would just drop a bomb and kill everyone on board. I do not think that would be a smart move for them, and that’s why I believe there’s a really small likelihood that this thing would happen. But once again, we’re dealing with the Zionist entity, and who knows how far they’re willing to push this.

What happens next? 

Since the beginning of the siege, our idea has been to keep sending ships until the siege is broken. I hope that we do not have to send even more ships, but we are going to send as many ships as we can to end this siege.

What is your next step, personally?

I want to be more part of this global uprising. I want to take part in the social movement of decentralizing away from the government.

I received my Bachelors in renewable energy engineering. Currently I am pursuing a Masters in electrical engineering. I think it would be beautiful if I’m able to use my knowledge and my skills to create electrical grids that are not connected to the government and used in a way that upholds human values and does not destroy the environment. 

This would be a form of launching point, or a base for more social movements where everyone is accepted; everyone is united. We live life the way it’s supposed to be, and then hopefully an example for humanity to just go deeper in that sense and build this new future that I am dreaming about.

What can people do to actively help the Flotilla?

What they need to realize is that this is not a fight for specific people. It’s not only the 12 people on board who are leading the fight. It’s a fight that involves every single person of the free world, and they are part of it. We have so much power in the collective. Putting our hands together and working together would move mountains and not just stones. Freedom Flotilla will soon publish a form for people to join us on the next mission, to participate in any way they can. 

Right now, we are approaching a very tense and critical time with the Madleen, because they are less than 24 hours away from Gaza. We have already been receiving threats by the Zionist entity. The latest threat is that they are going to deploy commandos to board the ship. Those specific commandos with the specific numbers and specific names have been involved in multiple war crimes in Gaza. They’re also going to employ ships and helicopters just to stop this small boat. So it’s going to be a very critical time.

What could be done right now is to not leave our comrades alone on the waters in that ship. Send letters to the government in Germany, for example. German citizen Yasemin Acar is on board that ship, and the German government is obliged to provide security for a German activist who is just upholding the ICJ laws and following the Geneva Conventions and the UN laws to provide humanitarian aid to Gaza. 

We should send as many letters and emails as possible to the German foreign office and the Zionist entity’s embassy in Germany. Maybe they won’t read them, but maybe we succeed in causing so much disruption in their system and jamming their signals with the phone calls that they are forced to have a look and see what is going on here.

This is only one of the things that we can do at this specific moment in the next 24 hours where times are critical. 

What is possible in Germany?

I was speaking to a German once, and he told me that what’s happening in Palestine right now is liberating us in Germany. It is making us wake up and see what Germany is doing to us. We do not in fact live in democracy. The amount of people whose houses have been raided by the police for standing firm for Palestine, these are things that should not be silenced.

We, as people, need to draw our boundaries, to tell the German government that this is not all right. If Germans believe in freedom of speech, it doesn’t come at an easy cost. 

Risks are part of it, but it is a global uprising, and it’s happening everywhere else in the world. It’s up to the German public now, whether they choose to be part of it or choose to be complicit in the genocide happening in Gaza.

A Warning for Poland

The far-right victory in the recent presidential elections shows that the left’s fight is a difficult one


09/06/2025

On the evening of June 1st, a sliver of hope appeared among those who wished for a president backed by a party other than Law and Justice (PiS), as the exit polls initially showed a narrow 0.6% win for the Civic Coalition (KO) candidate. The final results, however, revealed a different story: the conservative Karol Nawrocki won the election with 50.89% of the votes, beating his rival Rafał Trzaskowski, the liberal Warsaw mayor backed by the KO, by a difference of 369,591 votes.

The presidential elections, and in particular the second round, shed light on the ongoing political duopole in Polish politics. Over the past two decades, voters have usually faced the choice between the center-right and the far-right. PiS or KO. Many feel not represented, but defeated, discouraged by the “lesser evil” rhetoric. Passing big reforms will remain difficult due to the president’s right to veto governmental legislations. Having an ideologically opposed president in office has already impeded the centre-right government elected in 2023.

On one hand, the new president-elect is a conservative historian who has presided over the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) since 2021. The institute had been criticized for its alignment with a right-wing political narrative. Its one-sidedness amounts to the glorification of nationalist figures and sentiments, simultaneously erasing left-wing antifascist historical movements under the guise of “fighting communism.” His rival, on the other hand, although liberally aligned and with the experience of holding an important position as the capital’s mayor, did not refrain from using exclusionary talking points. Trzaskowski expressed support for the wall built on the Polish-Belarussian border keeping refugees from entering the country, opposed same-sex couples having the right to adopt—Poland is yet to see any legislation regarding same-sex marriage or civil unions, despite the topic being used in previous KO campaigns as early as 2011—and prioritized real estate developers over addressing the social housing issues in Warsaw.

As expected, European right-wing populists expressed their support for the emerging leader. Viktor Orbán, the Hungarian illiberal prime minister, congratulated Nawrocki on his “fantastic victory” and announced he is looking forward to working with him. For Marine Le Pen, the leader of the French far-right National Rally, Nawrocki’s win signifies a “disavowal of the Brussels oligarchy” and is thus good news. Backed by Trump and the MAGA movement, Nawrocki possibly opens the door for the Trump administration to influence Polish politics in times of uncertainty. These nascent cooperations might have a negative impact on Poland’s recently strengthened position within the EU and beyond.

Not only did Karol Nawrocki’s campaign center conservative Catholic values, anti-immigration, and anti-climate policy stances, but his opposition to Ukraine’s entry into the EU bloc could also impact the support for Ukrainian independence. Although the Russian aggression on Ukraine seemed to unite Poles in their support, recent months have shown a surge in xenophobic, anti-Ukrainian rhetoric. This poses a chance for far-right politicians like Nawrocki to harvest these sentiments and channel them into deepening exclusionary narratives, swaying the EU’s pro-Ukrainian position in the long run.

What is worrying is the fact that, in the first round of the presidential elections, ultra-conservative far-right candidates (excluding Nawrocki) received over 20% of the votes combined. One of them, Sławomir Mentzen from the libertarian party Konfederacja, received 15% of the votes. Although he did not officially encourage his sympathizers to vote for Nawrocki in the election’s second round, polls show that 90% of those who voted for him gave their vote to Nawrocki in the run-off. Without a doubt, Nawrocki’s anti-Ukrainian rhetoric echoed Mentzen’s postulates and helped him win over Mentzen’s voter base, which mostly consists of younger men.

In 2017, Nawrocki, then director of the Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk, reportedly vouched for Grzegorz Horodko, a neo-Nazi skinhead, after he was arrested in Denmark for allegedly attacking police after a Poland-Denmark football match. Horodko, associated with the illegal organization Blood & Honour, sports convictions for assault and visible Nazi tattoos. Nawrocki’s spokeswoman did not deny the report, and Nawrocki himself stated during a press conference that “Every citizen of the Polish state who is beaten by the police will be able to count on the help of President Karol Nawrocki.”

Exposures of Nawrocki’s connections with the criminal world were an important element of the campaign. The media discovered, among other things, that the candidate, under the pseudonym Tadeusz Batyr, published a book about Nikodem Skotarczak, known by the pseudonym “Nikoś,” a gangster in the Tri-City on the Baltic Sea (Gdańsk, Gdynia, and Sopot). Wyborcza also reported that at least three people from Karol Nawrocki’s social circle were connected to the activities of the most famous escort agency in the Tri-City. They were accused of such crimes as profiting from someone else’s sex work, drug trafficking and extortion—one of them is the same individual for whom Nawrocki was supposed to vouch after the Poland-Denmark match. In the final stages of the presidential campaign, Wyborcza published an article revealing how Karol Nawrocki helped a sex offender and took over his apartment, which he did not pay for in full and in the end donated to an NGO.

The now reinvigorated far-right movement threatens to further entrench conservative values and potentially isolate Poland from its European allies. As Karol Nawrocki assumes the presidency, Poland stands at a crossroads, potentially facing significant internal shifts towards increased conservatism and a re-evaluation of its external alliances. The support Nawrocki garnered across the European far-right, combined with his contentious past, suggests a future where Poland’s role in the EU will face increasing pressure. His ties to far-right elements, coupled with a history of leveraging state institutions for a nationalist narrative, indicate a challenging road ahead for democratic norms.

For those hoping for a progressive path, Nawrocki’s victory signals a critical need for sustained resistance and vigilance in defending fundamental rights and a pluralistic society. Especially women, as well as LGBTQIA+ people, especially trans people, will face further repressions. This is partly due to PiS’s anti-genderist policymaking, including the de-facto abortion ban in October 2020 backed by a party-aligned Constitutional Tribunal, and partly due to the current government under PM Donald Tusk not showing any effort to protect the vulnerable groups.

This election, propelled by a worrying surge in far-right sentiment and a willingness to appeal to divisive rhetoric, serves as a stark warning: it demands a clear-eyed assessment of the challenges ahead and a determined effort to safeguard progressive values. For the left in Poland and across Europe, this outcome underscores the urgent need to counter rising fascism with a unified vision of robust resistance.