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Groundbreaking People’s Tribunal at Berlin Biennale Highlights Art for Resisting Oppressionin the Philippines

KULTURFABRIK Moabit, 24 August 2025, from 4PM,


23/08/2025

On Sunday August 24 the Berlin Biennale will convene a groundbreaking People’s Tribunal on Art for Resisting Oppression—Philippine Cases. In a departure from traditional tribunals, this event will not only feature oral and written testimonies but also live performances by the artists themselves—each an act of resistance in the face of state-sponsored repression.

The People’s Tribunal brings attention to the power of art as a form of resistance against state repression through compelling testimonies from three brave witnesses— Mercedita Centeno de Jesus, Father Chris Ablon, and Reya Morgado—who have faced persecution for their art and activism in the Philippines. Some of these witnesses sought political asylum in Europe due to the severe political repression, including red-tagging they endured in the Philippines. Red tagging is the act of
labeling individuals or groups as communists or terrorists to discredit them, putting them at risk of harassment, violence, or even death.

Mercedita de Jesus is the mother of the forcibly disappeared activist Bazoo who has been missing since April 28, 2023. She describes that in the evolution of her artistic process, she “turned to art not just to cope with anxiety and depression, but to resist”.

Father Chris Ablon is a priest, advocate, and musician who was forced into exile under the Duterte Regime due to harassment and death threats. Now living as a political refugee in Germany, he continues to fight for migrants’ rights and the rights of all oppressed people.

For Reya Morgado, a cultural performer from the Manobo tribe and victim of red-tagging, “artistic expression is my resistance. Each performance is a political act—a call for freedom, human rights,
and justice. I want people to know: I exist. I am living proof of the harassment that continues.”

Alongside the personal testimonies, the Tribunal will include an expert witness statement from Catherine Abon shedding light on the broader context of political repression faced by artists and activists in the country. Ms. Abon is a volunteer coordinator of the International Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines (ICHRP-DE) and member of Alpas Pilpinas and Gabriela Germany.

This event aims to amplify the voices of those who have experienced firsthand the intersection of art and political struggle, while calling for global attention to the ongoing crisis of human rights in the Philippines.

Following the Tribunal is an open forum with activists from the convening organizations who are also calling on all Filipinos and allies to join the Duterte Panagutin Network and mobilize to The Hague in September for former President Rodrigo Duterte’s first International Criminal Court (ICC) hearing.

The event is part of the 13th Berlin Biennale production organized by ALPAS Pilipinas, Gabriela Germany, the International Coalition for Human Rights Germany Chapter (ICHRP-DE) and Berlin Philippines Solidarity Organization.

Contact: ichrp.germany@gmail.com; gabriela.alemanya@gmail.com
People’s Tribunal on Art Resisting Oppression: Philippines Case
When: 24 August 2025, from 4PM, doors open at 3PM
Where: KULTURFABRIK Moabit
Lehrter Str. 35, 10557 Berlin

Big Trumper is watching you: Republican doublethink and the Colbert cancellation

Trump-era censorship and Colbert’s cancellation expose Republican hypocrisy on free speech and satire


22/08/2025

Stephen Colbert Late Show Telephone Booth

Visit any far-right, Trump-glorifying online publication (which holds the same grim fascination as a shoestring-budget true-crime documentary on cannibalism), and it won’t take five seconds before the article bashes “the woke” and claims that liberals are infringing on free speech.  It’s the same tactics employed by alt-right online influencing grifters for well over a decade: insist the left as a monolith are shrieking, hysterical, and unreasonable. Then, any quote-unquote woke takes that are rolled out are treated as attempts to police, gaslight, and enforce a particular and threatening manner of thinking that will undoubtedly wind up brainwashing you. Trump et al. have weaponized The Left’s supposed hunger for indoctrination and cancellation to deflect any well-earned criticisms: it’s slippery and defies common sense, but has proven wildly effective. 

Years ago, when Trump had first been elected—it’s funny to think about now, since at the time it felt like the world had gone mad, and we hadn’t yet reached peak bizarro nightmare—a friend and I, during summer holidays from university, were heading to the club and struck up a conversation with our taxi driver. The conversation turned to American politics, as it is wont to do when you are nineteen, three glasses of vino deep, and covered in streaky fake tan. Our driver, much to our surprise, pledged his allegiance to Trump. We enquired (cautiously) why he felt supportive of a crass billionaire with a long history of racism and misogyny (not in those exact words, it was more of a barely-breathed, courteous cluster of syllables that sounded like a question). His response was that Trump was honest, because Trump told the truth: that, as a savvy businessman and a paragon of authenticity, he could lead America to a brighter future than any Democrats, who our driver insisted were worse than Trump, and also liars. 

I dutifully reposted Kamala Harris TikToks, bathed in BRAT green and hailing her as a diva during last year’s bleak election run—not because I was blind to Harris’s (or her administration’s) deep flaws and moral failings, but because 1) the devastation that could be wreaked by the Trump administration was (and has proven to be) terrifying, 2) the return of Trump to the White House would fan the flames of ever-rising conservatism, and 3) the TikToks were funny. But it’s fascinating to me that the Trump administration has amassed a following (from American Republicans to Irish taxi drivers) partially via piquing fear that The Left will smother free speech—especially considering it engages in that kind of policing itself. 

Recently, CBS Paramount announced the cancellation of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, a typical late-night talk show that has been trucking along successfully for almost a decade. The production company cited financial reasons for the cancellation—despite the fact that it topped the channel’s ratings. Indeed, insiders have suggested that the show was losing an estimated $40 million annually, but Colbert’s late-night peer Jimmy Kimmel has already called that figure out as “bullshit”. 

Nowadays, shows—even wildly successful ones—are being canceled left, right, and center, so this may seem like a non-issue, and Kimmel’s reaction a tad overwrought. This particular cancellation, though? There’s a strong whiff of dubiousness, one so pungent you don’t even need to put on a tinfoil hat to acknowledge. 

Colbert has described himself as a Democrat since as far back as 2004, and has frequently cited his faith as a committed, practicing Catholic as a guiding light and moral benchmark. For eleven years, he hosted The Colbert Report, a satirical skit revolving around a right-wing, bumbling, blustering, “well-intentioned idiot”, transitioning in order to succeed David Letterman as The Late Show host. Colbert invited and whole-heartedly embraced nuance: he crafted a character that was satirical, but not hollow. Within the multitudes of his mockery, he unspooled hypocrisy and hidden meanings from combustive slogans and conservative standings. He poked fun at his subjects, but also created a space in which humor could be extracted from unease and terror, and where he encouraged a certain agility in thinking, an impulse to navigate a brutal political landscape with poise instead of powerlessness. 

Unsurprisingly, Colbert’s political leanings have not endeared him to the Republican crowd, and he has been unabashed in his criticism of Donald Trump. Not that that is an anomaly—Presidents, government officials, and celebrities are well-trodden fodder for the late-night talk show hosts. Actually, they’re the bulk of what those shows consist of. They pick at and satirize current affairs and pop culture, generally striving nowadays for an array of snippets to go viral as shorts online. Personally, I think if you’re involved in politics or Hollywood, you should probably expect a spoonful of mockery on these shows, by virtue of the profession you’ve literally chosen. A host makes you look a bit daft, or critiques your shady moves? Maybe public sphere dwellers should just accept the condemnation and try to rise above. 

That’s too much to ask of Donald Trump, though, a man who is so incapable of rising above that he may as well take up permanent residence at the earth’s core. In mid-July, Colbert called out his own production company, CBS Paramount, on-air, describing its $16 million settlement with the Trump administration as a “big fat bribe”. The settlement followed Trump’s lawsuit protesting CBS’s use of two clips from Harris’s response to a question about the Middle East. The company saw the show’s executive producer refuse to apologize and stand down, followed by the departure of its CEO shortly afterwards. A range of scholars and constitutional experts advised that the lawsuit was frivolous, a misapplication of the law, and a violation of the First Amendment principles. Senators Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Ron Wyden wrote a letter to CBS Paramount’s chairwoman expressing their concerns that reaching a settlement with President Trump would essentially amount to bribery. “Paramount’s scheme to curry favor with the Trump Administration has compromised journalistic independence and raises serious concerns of corruption and improper conduct,” the letter reads. 

On July 17th, Colbert announced to his audience on air that The Late Show was canceled, emphasizing that this wasn’t even a case of replacement—the show itself had been unceremoniously slashed and would not be revived with a new host. The next twist in the tale came through Paramount merging with Skydance Media—a studio that requires approval from Trump’s Federal Communications Commission in order to take over from Paramount. Skydance has committed itself to rooting out CBS’s “bias”—which will be undertaken by steadily eroding the company’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices. Deeply ironic, considering the Trump administration’s allergy to diversity and inclusion of differing opinions and lack of censorship. 

Did Trump himself cast down the order that Colbert be axed? Maybe. Even if he didn’t issue the explicit decree, the pressure surely came under his administration’s unrelenting, tyrannic weight. And it’s totally at odds with what they have said they are for. Trump entered the arena back in the 2010s vowing to restore America’s greatness, presenting himself both as a straight-talking Everyman and as a messiah-like tycoon, ready to save the children from liberal “brainrot” and keep the country free and strong.

Whether or not he gave the word for Colbert to go, he reacted on Truth Social with predictable glee: “I absolutely love that Colbert got fired. His talent was even less than his ratings. I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next. Has even less talent than Colbert. Greg Gutfeld is better than all of them combined, including the Moron on NBC who ruined the once great Tonight Show.” (To digress momentarily, why does the President of one of the leading global powers write like the mean-girl parody Chanel Oberlin from Scream Queens?) 

On the July 21st episode of The Late Show, Colbert was joined by John Oliver, Jon Stewart, Jimmy Fallon, and Seth Meyers, his late-night comrades. Their succession of cameos underscored their unwavering loyalty, not just to Colbert, but to the right to satirize, the crucial importance comedy has in culture and the danger that may be posed if it’s stripped away. 

To be deeply predictable and quote George Orwell’s 1984, “Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them”. Rather unfortunately, this book continues to be relevant, and seems to illustrate the conundrum of a number of Trump supporters currently. “The Left wants to cancel us and brainwash us” seems to coexist with “Trump’s administration can and should dictate the contents of our media and roll back inclusion and equity”. Not all of his supporters think this, of course—I wouldn’t dream to say I understood the beliefs of such a sprawling group, all of whom have unique experiences—but there’s a definite chunk that can be found on the aforementioned alt-right websites. 

I spent a pathetic amount of time as a teenager on Tumblr—scrolling through fandom edits and aesthetic shoots, gorging on bite-sized social justice posts that gave me a dopamine hit and inflated my sense of superiority (mostly quashed now; nothing like adulthood to make you realize you’re an idiot). The waves of online discourse can absolutely be draining and over-complicatedly politically correct to the point that they sometimes loop all the way back around to being a touch offensive. Identity politics could be fraught, and accusations of “problematic” behavior were fired with all the force of an arrow from Katniss Everdeen’s bow. I also think that the tendency for people to weaponize therapy-speak after reading a singular Psychology Today article may have either been born on, or at least was popularized by, Tumblr. 

And yet, as trigger happy as we 2014 Tumblrinas could be, censorship wasn’t what was wanted. Maybe, due to being a blogging site mostly composed of hipster teenagers, the conversations weren’t exactly cultural resets, but they were discourse; it was an encouragement of debate and reflection and even, yes, conflict. The Tumblr girls could go toe-to-toe with a dissenter. Meanwhile, Trump and his cohorts have all the debating backbone of a cooked strand of spaghetti. Deflect, demonize, derail, and, when all else fails, cancel. Push people who challenge your words and actions from their platforms and establish a culture scared into bending the knee. 

The positive slant to take is that, now Colbert has been dropped, he’s going down swinging. After all, what does he have to lose? He has from now until next May to finish up his duties as host, and he has wasted no time whatsoever in telling Trump to go fuck himself. And since the cancellation, he’s seen a surge in ratings, as people who may never have watched an episode of a late-night show in their life tune in to signal support and see Colbert mock with renewed vigor. The gloves are resoundingly off, and no topic seems to be too treacherous for Colbert to tread. What will they do, fire him? 

And despite everything, I allow myself a small—an incredibly small, but still very real—bit of cheer. Trump and his cronies are shameless, but you don’t shut somebody up unless you care about what they’re saying; the whole point is for people to feel powerless, so they don’t keep talking. It’s not a victory, but it doesn’t have to be a defeat. Ironically, the controversy around Colbert’s cancellation has drawn more viewers to his still-airing show, which will spend the next year undermining Trump. As Colbert himself said in a monologue on 2016’s election night, “the devil cannot stand mockery”. Trump has a staggering amount of power. But he doesn’t have the same power his satirizers have, and his need to silence them proves it.

Legal Victory

German Federal Constitutional Court Ends Separation of Baby and Parents Over Palestine Solidarity


20/08/2025

A one-year-old child separated from parents over Palestine solidarity is finally allowed to re-enter Germany, according to the German Federal Constitutional Court ruling on 5th of August 2025, after a successful urgent appeal by the European Legal Support Center (ELSC).  

The court ruling means the German authorities are now obliged to allow the re-entry of the one-year-old child to Germany, after being separated for months from his Palestinian-Jordanian mother – a skilled worker in Germany with a valid visa permit – and forced to stay with his grandparents in Jordan.   

The case dates back to August 2024 when the baby was denied re-entry to Germany after he was initially deemed as a “security threat” in a letter from the German Embassy in Amman. Later, the German foreign ministry argued this was because of the mother’s alleged involvement with Palestine solidarity groups and an ongoing investigation by notorious German domestic intelligence service “Verfassungsschutz” (Office for the Protection of the Constitution). The ministry said while the child does not constitute a security threat to Germany, allowing the child to re-enter Germany could possibly constitute a “security risk”. This reasoning was accepted in two previous decisions by the Higher Administrative Court Berlin-Brandenburg and the Administrative Court Berlin. 

Three judges at the Constitutional Court have now decided unanimously that “..the continued refusal to allow entry exposes the complainant [the child], given his age of not even two years, to significant, irreparable harm” and ordered the Federal Republic of Germany to allow the child to enter the country. Furthermore, the court acknowledged that the previous decisions at administrative courts might constitute a breach of constitutional rights, namely the fundamental right to protection of the family (Article 6(1) and (2) sentence 1 of the German constitution). 

With this decision the family can now finally reunite after months of inhumane treatment and barely legal exploitation of migration laws.  

However, this is just a preliminary decision on the urgent appeal. The final ruling on the constitutional complaint will decide whether such separations of child and parents with unclear residency status constitutes a breach of constitutional rights, namely the fundamental right to protection of the family (Article 6(1) and (2) sentence 1 of the German constitution) or not. The decision on the parents’ residency status is also still pending at the administrative courts due to the secret services procrastination to conclude the “security investigation”. 

ELSC spokesperson Karim Bohnhoff comments: “This is an important ruling because we managed to end the family’s separation —something no one should ever have to endure. We hope this ruling will deter the German state from abusing migration laws to punish marginalised communities for their involvement in the Palestine solidarity movement and we will continue to push for a systematic change.” 

“Boiler Room you a punk ass bitch!”—Notes from the insurgency in rave culture

Anticolonial insurgency within rave culture bolsters a vibrant effort to boycott Zionist, colonial and capitalist institutions.

On a warm evening in July, cars unloaded partygoers outside Under the K Bridge, the venue hosting Boiler Room’s NYC party. They were greeted by a crowd of activists, ravers and Indigenous Land Defenders, bearing placards reading “Fuck a pro-genocide pipeline party” and “KKR colonizes, KKR kills”, referring to the hedge fund which now owns Boiler Room, along with 85+ music festivals. A TikTok records the moment an incoming ticketholder sees the protesters and learns in real time about Boiler Room’s new owner. “Don’t drop us off here!” she tells the taxi driver, amid panicked laughter.

Meanwhile, across NYC, designated counter-parties to Boiler Room at Mood Ring, Earthly Delights and Basement started opening their doors. A map of these parties had been circulated earlier on Instagram by the Boycott Room campaign, one of a rapidly expanding cluster of groups in nightlife driving the boycott of KKR-owned venues. At around 8PM, an actionist who had infiltrated Boiler Room jumped up on stage with a banner reading “Boiler Room + KKR fund genocide. Boycott now”.

“Actionists are just now recovering from the atrocious vibes of even a few minutes inside the genocide party,” Boycott Room reflected in a reel the next day. The aforementioned TikToker concurred. In an update story posted after the event, she expressed regret for entering it. “This shit high key felt like a different kind of hell. Anything related to pro genocide has an evil aura. We paid $400 for this shit. Boycott the Boiler Room.”

**

This is a snapshot of the global, anticolonial insurgency within rave culture. Autonomous direct action, mass refusal and withdrawal of labour. Expanding grassroots coalitions, growing DIY infrastructure. The humble, implacable and patient pulling at threads.

News of KKR’s acquisition of Superstruct Entertainment and its portfolio of venues had already been noted by the Flow Strike campaign in 2024. But the sale of Boiler Room to Superstruct in January 2025 brought the news to wider attention, through a virally circulated Instagram explainer by WAWOG Toronto and a direct action led by Wet’suwet’en people and Palestinians.

Six months later, the explainer and its diagram remain confronting. KKR, one of the world’s largest hedge funds, is almost comically evil. It has deep ties to the ”Israeli” colonial project—funding data, arms and land purchase companies in the entity, and the IOF itself via the ‘Friends of the IDF nonprofit. One of its Chairmen is David Petraeus, the architect of the US-led invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and former head of the CIA. It is also the main investor in the Coastal GasLink pipeline poisoning and destroying First Nations lands in the west of Turtle Island (Canada)—making it a target of Wet’suwet’en direct action since 2020.

A few days after the post landed, three DJs—Princess Elf Bar, DJ Myna and Shannon From Admin—withdrew from a Boiler Room in Sheffield, UK. A week later, the community began reckoning with Superstruct’s ownership of festivals popular with queer and underground artists like Mighty Hoopla, Sonàr and Field Day.

In March, Boiler Room announced a merch collaboration with FC Palestina and the Sameer Project, a Palestinian led mutual aid initiative. Just hours later, after being apprised of KKR, the Sameer Project issued a statement of refusal, which remains a core moral and political compass for the movement:

“We will always say no to any kind of normalization or ties with organizations linked to zionism in any shape or form. No zionist money comes without an agenda. […] Tomorrow KKR will turn around and be on the defensive about investing in Israel by saying they donated to Gaza through one of their acquired companies. They will say this to wash away their complicity.”

From there, the revolt rapidly expanded and globalized. Seven DJs pulled out of Boiler Room Istanbul. DAYTIMERS, a British South Asian collective, withdrew from Superstruct-owned Mighty Hoopla and Lost Village. EYRA, Animistic Beliefs and dj g2g individually withdrew from Sonàr. Dozens of their peers shortly followed suit. Half the Field Day line up dropped out. KAALO, a queer/femme-led DIY collective in Nepal, publicly dropped their Boiler Room collab. The Bay Area Boiler Room was cancelled after local pressure. Around half of the stages booked at Milkshake, a queer-centred festival in the Netherlands, withdrew, with a clear material demand: “As long as a festival is owned by KKR, we will boycott. We will not accept offsets or compromises.”

New developments arrive daily. The poles and focal points of revolt are always shifting. But in recent weeks, Brazil and Puerto Rico have seen major flashpoints, with local actionists getting Boiler Room events in both Saô Paulo and San Juan cancelled. “A global event backed by a big Zionist corporation stepped back because the scene got organised” said the group in Brazil. 

“Black, Indigenous, peripheral, Palestinian and dissident people united for a greater cause.”

“We refuse to let our culture be used to whitewash genocide.”

**

The revolt is massive, global and popular. It is overwhelmingly comprised of global Majority, trans, queer and Indigenous people from the underground. Most are unpropertied and precarious. The fees they forego in the KKR boycott are often needed to pay rent.

It is militant. Its basic, entry level premises are an to end capitalism, uncompromising support for Palestinian resistance, the dismantlement of the ‘West’, pan-Indigenous liberation, death to all settler colonies, including those on Turtle Island (the ‘US’ and ‘Canada’). Deviations from Al Thawabit, the core principles of Palestinian liberation, are rare and attract immediate, organic rebuttal. It does not have leaders. Its core tactics are boycott, direct action, disruption, sabotage.

A revolt of this scale and militancy within electronic music culture was not inevitable. Clubland, particularly in Europe, has complex relationship affinities with the project of the West. The raver is often targeted for co-option into the imperial project—whether, in the West, as a symbol of freedom and disinhibition against a racialised Other; or, in the Global South, as potential conscripts into a comprador class. The Zionist entity has endlessly sought to position Tel Aviv as, per Nerdeen Kiswani, “a beacon of light—progressive, diverse and full of life…making apartheid look like a party”. Given the intersection of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood with a settler music festival, many of us braced ourselves for a grim tide of reactionary ‘PLUR’ and ‘both sides’ takes from ravers and DJs.

That this did not materialise—or, more accurately, was quickly staunched—attests, at least in part, to reservoirs of resistance and anticolonial militancy within nightlife. These have been activated by the genocide, alongside a visceral, ancestral ick at the commodification of underground culture, most grotesquely typified by the extractive, colonial dynamics of Boiler Room.

The structural position of the DJ/raver, despite efforts at recuperation, is still, it seems, generative of dissent. Like queers (also experiencing a re-radicalisation over Palestine), ravers are at once unbearably central to, yet askance of, the operations of imperial capital.

But besides these undergirding dynamics, can anything be drawn from how the movement has shaped itself—and created the conditions for the current, ongoing escalation? Why are boycotts in electronic music popping off like nowhere else in global culture?

**

No gods, no leaders

Nothing in the movement has been rolled out from above, or according to any central formulas or scripts. Decision-making is not abrogated to representative bodies. There are no intermediaries who treat or negotiate on behalf of a base. The boycott has been built through the organic accretion of autonomous acts of refusal. The energy and spirit of these refusals and actions is never workshopped or uniform. This means it avoids the overdetermined feel of NGO writing. The texts emerging are idiosyncratic, embodied, vernacular, playful, which makes them memorable and resonant—inspiring action where more top-down forms of political communication might not. The centrality of trans DJs to the movement informs this corpus: see Cultural Solidarity’s latest video, MC’d by Black trans artists on the sidelines of the NYC Boiler Room strike fundraiser:

“Boiler Room, you a punk ass bitch. You always and forever will be a punk ass bitch miss thing. You’re not tearing it, you’re not eating, your mama a bitch, your grandmama a bitch […]”

Statements learn from each other, reuse and cite text, and over time a loose, shared set of premises and parameters have developed. But there is no hegemon, no disciplinary body, no notion of copyright. This means that groups and coalitions can spring up rapidly and unceremoniously. Trust is established quickly, through action rather than deliberation, because there isn’t a strong sense (at least yet) of requisite turfs, tributes to be paid.

Holistic scope, imaginative coalitions

KKR is a universal antagonist to life—an entity which, like ‘Israel’ and ‘the US’, despoils across geographies and scales: funding the Palestinian genocide, destroying Indigenous lifeworlds, corporatising raves, privatising healthcare systems and housing. These multiple, intersecting scales lead any actionist on KKR ineluctably to an anti-capitalist, pan-Indigenous frame, providing a guard against recuperation into empire.

This is generating new coalitions which disturb the idea of the raver as a dissolute, implied White imperial subject. The revolt is not confined to the dancefloor. Remember: it was Wet’suwet’en people in Toronto who kicked off the revolt, and they continue to be heavily involved. There is no hermetic sense of the raver as distinct from other embodiments. See also the important contributions of groups like the Muslim Social Justice Initiative and Nijjormanush to the Boiler Room boycott.

Community and mutual aid

By freeing action from organizations, the endless potential of grassroots activism is revealed. Take the Bay Area. After concerted community pressure, an alliance of local collectives, operating under the moniker B.A.S.S. (Bay Area Solidarity Strike), caused so many artist withdrawals that Boiler Room San Francisco had to be cancelled. On the same day as the cancelled Boiler Room, their DIY counter-party raised over $9000, helping cover strike funds in the Bay Area and beyond as well as supporting mutual aid efforts in Gaza.

This bottom-up approach created lasting, meaningful bonds within and across communities in the Bay Area. But its impacts reverberated nonlocally, too. The B.A.S.S. initiative was rapidly reproduced in New York City (Big Apple Solidarity Strike), paving the way for their own strike fund and direct action. These precedents later informed the mass withdrawal of queer artists from Milkshake festival in the Netherlands, and the solidarity collective which emerged from it (R.U.I.S), which is based on similar DIY and anticapitalist values. In a sweet circular moment, the OG Bay Area boycotters ran a zine sale to support the Milkshake action.

These humble acts of community building, while often enacted through acts of refusal and boycott, are constructive in the most literal sense. While local, they are not parochial, creating material, transnational networks of solidarity and care.

Be reasonable, demand the impossible

The Superstruct-owned festival is uncanny and insidious. Its moniker is a dead, floating signifier, communicating vague affective hooks: queer, surfer, punk, underground. We are invited to get our monodirectional kicks in a grey strip mall of tailored experiences. The early, medieval festival, a precursor to the rave, was a space where “the world turned upside down”—one of sexual license, dissolved classes, kings becoming peasants for a day. The KKR festival is the world reaffirmed in its grim, implacable realities—a crushing acquiescence to capitalist realism.

It is precisely this realism that the movement rejects, in theory and deed. Drawing on the Wages for Housework movement of the seventies, theorist Kathi Weeks extols the power of the “utopian, unreasonable demand”—which, rather than a predestined route to narrow wins or achievable horizons—constitutes an ongoing insurgency, a “process of constituting a new subject with the desires for and the power to make new demands”.

The ambition, scope and unreasonableness of the demand—an anticapitalist rollback of the corporate takeover of rave culture—is what gives this movement potency. It also makes it effective and, yes, strategic. Consider: the news about KKR was only popularised in January. Just 7 months on, the corporate festival circuit is in ruins. DIY culture is reviving everywhere. And a system of rewards, which prioritised acquiescence, guild thinking, the collegiate co-facilitation of bag chasing, is being wrenched apart.

Abdaljawad Omar, writing on new circuits of rebellion in the refugee camps of the West Bank (The New York War Crimes, Nakba issue, 2025), writes:

“The current wave of resistance privileges the act itself—the moment of resistance—as a political assertion not necessarily embedded in a coherent project. It insists on action even in the absence of a clear horizon. This is not a failure of thought but an exposure of the limits of our inherited narratives. It answers the question “What is to be done?” simply: Act—and when you are unsure, act more.”

It is, he continues, “a form of struggle that reveals the exhaustion of inherited frameworks and insists on staying with the rupture”.

As fascism and anticolonialism recrudesce in parallel, who would bet on received patterns or lessons from the inert 2010s? No leaders have led this revolt; no strategists mapped it or predicted it, or prognosticated a pallid sequence of little wins and KPIs. Instead, by pulling at threads with humbleness, insistence and patience, a small community has brought many seemingly impregnable dynamics—commodification, competition, celebrity—to a tottering fragility. 

As the international liberal order reveals its true contours, its insinuations within club culture are also becoming apparent. The credo of capitalist realism, that things must always get worse, that we must take the despoilation of our rituals, our communities, of all that is sacred, is facing non-acceptance. The consolidation of rave culture is not inevitable. Parties and festivals do not need to grow, become brands. Boiler Room does not have a right to exist. Per DJ and journalist Arielle Lana: “These platforms, they don’t need to be like the holy grail. We can dismantle them and we’ll still survive.”

Ravers for Palestine is an anonymous collective working to foster solidarity and resistance within electronic music culture. 

Red Flag: Why Trotsky still matters, 85 years after his murder

In his weekly column, Nathaniel Flakin honors the Russian revolutionary struck down on August 20, 1940

Mural of Trotsky on a wall. The paint is cracked.

85 years ago today, Leon Trotsky was struck down by a Stalinist assassin in Coyoacán in Mexico. As his grandson recalled in 2017, this was not the first attempt on the life of the man who founded the Red Army.

I’ve never understood why anyone on the Left would tell jokes about that ice axe. You never hear “canal jokes” about Rosa Luxemburg or “shotgun jokes” about Malcolm X. 

Some might accuse Trotsky of being a “splitter” due to his struggle against Stalinism. But Malcom X was no less a “splitter,” both from Martin Luther King and from Wallace Fard Muhammad. Rosa Luxemburg was a “splitter” par excellence, breaking with the PPS, the SPD, the USPD, etc. Splits in progressive movements happen all the time—the question is: which side is right?

Conspiracy theories

Dedicated Stalinists might call Trotsky a “traitor,” based on Stalin’s accusations that Trotsky collaborated with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. (When Stalin was allied with Hitler, he accused Trotsky of working for the British.)

During the Great Purges, 681,692 people were executed on charges of being part of Trotsky’s counter-revolutionary conspiracy. This would have been, by an order of magnitude, the largest conspiracy in human history—George Bush personally directing Osama bin Laden would have been a piece of cake by comparison. Yet even after many decades, not a scrap of evidence has been found showing that so many communists were secretly working together with their sworn enemies.

Both Germany and Japan were defeated, with their archives ending up in the hands of the Soviets and the Americans. If there was a conspiracy, then the U.S. and Russia have been keeping Trotsky’s secrets for over 80 years. In the Nuremberg trials, Soviet prosecutors interrogated Rudolf Hess, supposedly Trotsky’s contact man in the fascist regime. Thus, Stalin himself must have been part of the coverup too.

A handful of ultra-Stalinists still try to defend the Moscow Trials. The professor of medieval English literature (not history) Grover Furr has written numerous books that claim to prove Trotsky’s guilt. Yet as Doug Greene examines in a forthcoming book, Furr admits he’s never found any evidence besides the preposterous “confessions” of people showing obvious signs of torture.

Failed theories

A more “moderate” Stalinist might acknowledge that more than a few innocent people were killed, but that the murder of Trotsky and most of the leading figures of the October Revolution was a historical necessity to defend the Soviet Union and consolidate socialism.

But as the Left Opposition pointed out at the time, the suppression of all forms of proletarian democracy could only weaken the socialist project. Looking back from a century later, we can say that “really existing socialism”—rather, the rule of a privileged bureaucratic caste—alienated the masses of workers, who made no attempt to defend a system they supposedly controlled.

This is precisely why Trotsky is relevant today. While his contributions to Marxism are too extensive for this short column, many of his ideas were not original: he merely defended ideas first put forth by Marx and Lenin about the need for a socialist revolution to be international, for example, against the failed idea of “socialism in one country.” 

Trotsky was the most important Marxist to study the bureaucratization of the Russian Revolution—a social formation that had never existed before. His analysis of this degenerated workers’ state helps understand these non-capitalist, but also non-socialist societies. 

Trotsky in Berlin

Trotsky never had a strong personal connection to Berlin—his pre-revolutionary years of exile were spent in London, Vienna, Paris, and New York. Yet much later, while he was in exile from the Soviet Union on the Turkish island of Prinkipo (today Büyükada), he wrote piercing analyses of German politics in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

Trotsky’s writings on Germany are well worth reading today, as the Far Right is once again advancing threateningly. The Left Opposition argued for a workers’ united front against fascism, as part of a revolutionary strategy to topple capitalism. Perry Anderson has called these works “the first real Marxist analysis of a twentieth century capitalist state” and “unmatched in the field of historical materialism.”

In the TV series Babylon Berlin, Berlin’s Trotskyists of the 1920s are portrayed as isolated weirdos. In real life, however, the Trotskyist movement was made up of factory workers fighting to unite the whole working class in the life-or-death struggle against the Nazis. After they lost this struggle, Trotskyists remained active in the resistance and in the concentration camps. Even though most cadres were liquidated by fascism, a few survivors rebuilt German Trotskyism after the war––and were joined by many more young people after 1968.

Today, 85 years after one of the most heinous assassinations of the 20th century, is a good day to cast aside silly stereotypes and think about what Trotsky’s ideas can offer us for the struggle against capitalism today.

Red Flag is a weekly opinion column on Berlin politics that Nathaniel has been writing since 2020. After moving through different homes, it now appears at The Left Berlin.