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Month: September 2025

Now is the time of Monsters

Why horror films speak to a time of crisis


23/09/2025

Marxists have often talked about the pinnacles of revolutionary cinema – the Italian neorealists’ anti-fascist films, Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers. This article is not about those kinds of films. In fact, horror as a genre tends to be avoided, either simply because it is gruesome or because it is written off as exploitative and misogynistic.

But there is social critique in horror films – particularly in the new wave of the past decade, with films such as Get Out (racism), The Babadook (grief and motherhood), His House (migration) and Sinners (the African American experience in the South). Recent horror films have dealt with specific issues: Danny Boyle’s 28 Years Later confronts Brexit Britain’s isolationism; in Blink Twice a billionaire’s private island is the site of horror for young women; Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite tackles class, exploitation and lack of solidarity.

Two years after the overturning of Roe v Wade, which ended the federal constitutional right to abortion in the US, two mainstream horror films involving forced pregnancy and state/church conspiracies – Immaculate and The First Omen – were released.

Yet neither film was as scary as the real story of Adriana Smith, who, earlier this year, died from blood clots on the brain while pregnant in the US state of Georgia and whose body was kept on life support as an incubator until an 800g baby could be excavated from her corpse.

At a time like now – with genocide, threat of nuclear war, climate emergency – feelings run high. And horror has a particular ability to express things that are normally repressed. The fears and dread, feelings and desires that are socially unacceptable, that don’t fit the heteronormative binary model of gender and the family. Bodies that don’t fit the ideal we are used to seeing on the big (or small) screen. Taboos. So, even the trashier end of B-movie horror can speak to us in unexpected ways.

As a teenager, I watched a very silly (and certainly very problematic) 1960s zombie film in which a man was commanded by voodoo witch doctor to pull his own head off. The special effects were laughable – a wax head splattered with paint-like fake blood. But the image haunted me. After all, what is work under capitalism if not doing someone else’s bidding in a trance-like state for eight hours a day? Horror can use strange and extreme metaphors that relate to the everyday horrors of the system.

Another factor in the recent horror revival, and particularly for the new feminist horror studies, is that there is something very attractive about the unruly, untamed, disobedient creatures we meet in horror films. Women fuelled by rage and not willing or able to suppress it. Like Alex in Fatal Attraction, who says, “I will not be ignored, Dan.”

Horror fans are reassessing old films. The so-called “Hagsploitation” films of the 1960s and 1970s are one example. These films, such as Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? feature middle aged women who are refusing to grow old gracefully and therefore become monstrous in their unruliness. In Strait-Jacket (1964) Joan Crawford plays a woman who has just been released from an asylum 20 years after axe-murdering her husband and his lover. Her attempts to overcome the stigma of mental illness and to find her place in the world again are incredibly relatable. You root for her even as the axe murders begin again… I first saw this film at an International Women’s Day screening, where the organisers handed out inflatable axes so we could all hack along with the on-screen murders. There can be a joyful sense of community at such collective screenings.

Another film recently plucked from obscurity by feminist film scholars is Cindy Sherman’s Office Killer. In this 1997 art-horror Carol Kane plays a meek office worker who is forced to work from home. But her home is a site of trauma and going to the office each day was her only escape. Driven to breaking point, she starts killing her co-workers and bringing them home to her basement, where she places their bodies at desks with telephones. In the evenings she arranges them on the sofa to watch TV with her. Just like the opening scenes of the 2002 film 28 Days Later showing a deserted central London, this felt like Covid times, despite being made years before.

The Marxist film critic called Robin Wood wrote in the 1970s that there is no better genre than horror to express and contest the oppressive nature of capitalism. Our culture operates by forcing us to repress every thought, impulse and emotion that goes against the “normal” standard of bourgeois ideology. A genre that tends towards extremes, like horror, can undermine that. And this is true whether the films are consciously anti-capitalist or critical of the status quo or not.

Horror has more than doubled its market share of the US box office in ten years, from 4.87% in 2013 to 10% 2023. Much of this comes from the big franchises like Malignant and Paranormal Activity. These films are not especially interesting. But there have been mainstream films that are more challenging. Sinners (2025) is the highest grossing original horror film since 2018, with worldwide box office takings of $366 million. Sinners is not pure horror, but a mix of genres. Director Ryan Coogler uses supernatural elements like vampires and voodoo to explore the legacy of colonialism and slavery and the persistence of African American culture and art.

It stands in a tradition of black horror. The 2019 documentary Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror tells the story of this filmic tradition, asserting that the first black horror film was D W Griffiths’ racist epic, Birth of a Nation (1915), in which a white actor in blackface portrays black men as violent sexual predators who need to be lynched.

Horror Noire documents the absence of black representation in horror films through to the 1950s – unless we count the implied blackness of monsters such as King Kong. But a key turning point came in 1968 with the release of Night of the Living Dead, George Romero’s zombie movie starring African American actor Duane Jones as the hero. The interviewees point out the visual links between the self-appointed mobs and armed police depicted in the film and those on the streets in the real world at the time, attacking anti-racist protesters and enforcing segregation.

It is interesting that horror audiences in the US are 15% more likely to be African American and 23% more likely to be Latinx. Perhaps this links to the experience of racism and oppression, among other factors.

Get Out (2017) is one of the films that marked the horror revival. In it, Chris (Daniel Kaluuya), a black photographer, travels with his white girlfriend to visit her family, only to gradually realise they are planning to auction off his body to their wealthy white friends. It is a satirical film about racism hidden behind a liberal façade.

Director Jordan Peele was planning to mirror the bleak ending of Night of the Living Dead, in which the black hero survives until the last moment only to be killed by the authorities. But during the time he was developing the film, Trump got elected and Black Lives Matter intensified, and he changed it to a much more satisfying conclusion. Peele says he felt compelled to put an argument that black people can survive if they have back-up!

Some of the symbolic language Peele uses in Get Out has become part of the lexicon. In the film, Chris is hypnotised by his girlfriend’s mother and falls into “the sunken place” – a place where he is trapped and unheard. He must escape the sunken place to be free.

This is the power of film – one visual metaphor can encapsulate a feeling or experience that is hard to express in words.

At a recent academic conference, I heard a talk by a woman who had documented her long journey to endometriosis diagnosis through clips and fragments from horror films, specifically haunted house films. She explained how disorientating chronic illness can be, especially when undiagnosed, how you don’t trust your own senses and no none believes you. She found connections with haunted house narratives when she couldn’t find a language elsewhere to express her experiences.

Body horror as a subgenre has a particular appeal for those who face oppression based on their gender or sexuality.

The Substance, directed by Coralie Fargeat, made a huge impact for an independent film. It takes to extremes the idea of the beauty industry and wanting to stay young forever. Norwegian body horror/fairy tale The Ugly Stepsister upturns the story of Cinderella to examine the violence of beauty standards.

Trans film writers Caden Mark Gardner and Willow Catelyn Maclay’s book, Corpses, Fools and Monsters: The History and Future of Transness in Cinema (2024) has several excellent chapters on horror and related films. The chapter on The Silence of the Lambs points out that Hannibal Lecter’s cannibalism is somehow represented as less disturbing than Buffalo Bill’s desire to change his gender. Maclay, who is intersex, has written about how she felt seen by the main character in sci-fi horror Under the Skin, in which Scarlett Johansson plays an alien in outwardly human form, but without all the working parts. She can’t be fully woman or fully man and this distressing realisation leaves her isolated and lonely.

The 2023 book Queer for Fear by Heather Petrocelli focuses on the community-building side of horror film screenings. Petrocelli documents how, in big cities across Canada and the northern US, you can find midnight screenings of horror films for queer audiences who find affinity with each other while watching these “othered” beings on screen.

A similar phenomenon is happening now with feminist horror networks. The Final Girls Berlin Film Festival exhibits films by women, non-binary and LGBT+ filmmakers. Podcasts such as Monstrous Flesh invite film experts and enthusiasts to discuss old and new horror films from a fresh critical perspective.

To return to where we started: “now is the time of monsters” is a liberal translation of part of a quote from Italian revolutionary Marxist Antonio Gramsci. (The old is dying and the new cannot be born. In the interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms/phenomena appear.) Gramsci was writing from prison in Fascist Italy in 1929, as Europe was struggling between workers’ revolution and fascism.

This kind of gothic language runs through Marxism. Marx himself uses it when describing capitalism: “Capital is dead labour, which vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks.” And it has a “werewolf hunger for surplus labour”.

More recently, Chris Harman wrote in Zombie Capitalism (2009):

“Faced with the financial crisis that began in 2007, some economic commentators did begin to talk of ‘zombie banks’ – financial institutions that were in the ‘undead state’ and incapable of fulfilling any positive function, but representing a threat to everything else. What they do not recognise is that 21st century capitalism as a whole is a zombie system, seemingly dead when it comes to achieving human goals and responding to human feelings, but capable of sudden spurts of activity that cause chaos all around.”

Is it any wonder that we have been culturally immersed in zombies for 20 years now? 28 Days/Weeks/Years Later, The Last of US, The Walking Dead…

This is post-apocalyptic horror about survival and found family in a destructive and unsustainable system.

We live in an unstable world; it is going to get more unstable. Hunger is rife, environmental destruction is increasing, violence surrounds us every day, and mental health is under tremendous strain.

If you want to read the signs about how people feel about this situation – watch some horror films. You will find fear and anxiety – but also rage and anger, also the refusal to be buried (literally!!), the refusal to accept the repressive norms that are forced onto us.

By nature, horror films tend to be bleak. They often don’t have happy endings. They often leave things unresolved, but that in itself poses a question to us. We are not going to resolve those questions in film first – we resolve them in life. That’s our job as revolutionaries and as activists, to find ways through the horror of capitalism.

Films mentioned:

  • Sinners (2025)
  • 28 Years Later (2025)
  • The Ugly Stepsister (2025)
  • The Substance (2024)
  • Blink Twice (2024)
  • Immaculate (2024)
  • The First Omen (2024)
  • His House (2020)
  • Parasite (2019)
  • Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror (2019)
  • Get Out (2017)
  • The Babadook (2014)
  • Under the Skin (2013)
  • 28 Weeks Later (2007)
  • 28 Days Later (2002)
  • Office Killer (1997)
  • The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
  • Fatal Attraction (1987)
  • Night of the Living Dead (1968)
  • Strait-Jacket (1964)
  • The Birth of a Nation (1915)

Recommended recent books on horror film:

Corpses, Fools and Monsters: The History and Future of Transness in Cinema by Caden Mark Gardner and Willow Catelyn Maclay (2024)

Queer for Fear: Horror Film and the Queer Spectator by Heather O. Petrocelli (2023)

Women Make Horror: Filmmaking, Feminism, Genre edited by Alison Peirse (2020)

House of Psychotic Women by Kier-La Janisse (expanded edition, 2022)

Horror Noire: A History of Black American Horror from the 1890s to Present by Robin R. Means Coleman (second edition, 2022)

Robin Wood on the Horror Film: Collected Essays and Reviews by Robin Wood (2018)

Return of the Monstrous-Feminine by Barbara Creed (2022)

I Spit on your Celluloid: The History of Women Directing Horror Movies by Heidi Honeycutt (2024)

1 October 1965 – Attempted coup in Indonesia leads to Suharto dictatorship

This week in working class history


In the early morning of 1st October 1965, six Indonesian generals were captured and either immediately shot, or executed later. A seventh general escaped. Those responsible for the operation then took control of the radio station in Jakarta and announced that they, the “30th September movement”, had stopped a planned coup against President Sukarno. Sukarno had come to power as part of the anti-colonial struggle and enjoyed the support of the Communist Party, Islamist groups, and others.

Little-known right wing General Suharto appointed himself Supreme Army Commander on October 1st. Suharto’s vicious reaction was described by historian Vincent Bevins as: “the state-organized extermination of civilians who opposed the construction of capitalist authoritarian regimes loyal to the United States.” By March 1966, Suharto had taken control of Indonesia, imposing a CIA-backed military dictatorship. He would stay in charge until he himself was overthrown by a popular uprising in 1998.

Under Suharto’s rule, at least 500,000 people were killed (some claim that the real figure is nearer 1,500,000). One million leftists were sent to concentration camps, where many were tortured. A CIA report even went so far as to call the aftermath of October 1, “one of the worst mass murders of the 20th century.” The number killed was equivalent to those killed in Rwanda in 1994, but Indonesia received nowhere near the same media attention, even though in terms of population it was the fourth largest country in the world.

Suharto was backed to the hilt by Western governments who were bogged down in the Vietnam War and feared Communist expansion in the Global South. With 3 million members, the Indonesian Communist Party, the PKI, was the third largest in the world (after China and the Soviet Union) and Sukarno had been increasingly dependent on Chinese aid. The CIA provided Suharto with death lists. His assumption of power also paved the way for US companies like Goodyear to move to Indonesia and exploit prison labour.

Indonesia was a symbolically important country for the US to assert its authority. In 1955, a conference had taken place in Bandung in Indonesia for newly decolonised states trying to attain independence from both the US and the Soviet Union. Years later, in 1975, Suharto’s troops massacred over 100,000 people in East Timor. This October, as Indonesians take to the streets once more, the country’s history reminds us that their fight is not just against a corrupt government but also against murderous imperialism.

Siege of Fortress Europe

f.Lotta is repoliticizing the central Mediterranean and fighting for freedom of movement


22/09/2025

Fortress Europe has never been so hostile to the freedom of movement. This has been illustrated by a recent case where the self-proclaimed Libyan coast guard delivered an unprecedented attack on an SOS Mediterranée vessel, directly targeting survivors and humanitarian workers in international waters.

Cases like this, however, are just the tip of the iceberg, with many other instances of detentions, boycotts of SAR (search and rescue) operations, and escalating violence towards people on the move and the people in their support. The current debate in politics and media is trying to mask the state violence of the racist and deadly border system by framing it as a humanitarian issue—which it is not. It’s a conscious political decision, and that’s why this time we go to the central Mediterranean not as humanitarian workers but in a political act.

In the system we live in, freedom of movement will never simply be granted to us—which is why we need to fight for it. And that is exactly what hundreds and thousands of people taught us 10 years ago in the summer of migration. Through direct action, they showed us in a grassroots movement how to defy borders. They showed us how to set fire to the racist and deadly system called an EU border. This is what we want to pay tribute to and get inspiration from. Some anniversaries should not go down in silence. The struggle for unconditional freedom of movement did not end in 2015; it continues today more urgently than ever—across the whole world and in the central Mediterranean Sea, the world’s deadliest migration route.

To resist the current status quo and to project a radically different political horizon, we will set off in a few days from Lampedusa with around 10 to 15 boats. We will sail 30 to 40 nautical miles southwest and form a solidarity chain to repoliticize the space that has become an open graveyard over the last years.

Each boat will be a flag-bearer of one campaign previously developed by a land group, connecting different local realities and struggles. They each have a different focus under the overarching message of freedom of movement, such as campaigns against the Libyan-Italian memorandum, for a free Palestine, against voluntary return programs, and the criminalization of those supporting people on the move. All campaigns can be found on our website.

Parallel to the main action south of Lampedusa, there will be protests all over Europe: f.Lottines. They will take place on land and sea and can take any form—a rally, an occupation, or a sit-in in front of the local deportation centre. For now, we have several protests in mid-September taking place in Italy, France, Cyprus, and Germany, such as in Berlin on the 13th of September. At around 4 pm, we will start from Lohmühleninsel and, after a quick stop at Oberbaumbrücke, we will go along the Landwehrkanal to spread f.Lotta’s message. There will be several pit-stops along the canalside, featuring brief interventions of our collectives. Currently, Chkoun, de:criminalize, WeSmellGas, Free Hanna solidarity group, FACQ, Klima4Palästina, and Abolish Frontex are involved. The groups carry the goals and demands of several interlinking causes, from Palestine in support of the Global Sumud Flotilla to decriminalization of migration and migration solidarity to freeing all antifas and more.

Our struggles for freedom of movement are one!

This decentralized organization helps us to amplify our message and connect our struggles all over Europe. Our message is: If Europe is building a fortress, then we will be there to put it under siege.

f.Lotta is spontaneous, horizontal, grassroots and self-organized. Our aim is to make Fortress Europe fall, as well as the ground it builds its walls on—racism, colonialism, capitalism, imperialism, and patriarchy.

Thoughts on a language of politics in the cultural sphere

The rhetoric of resistance in Germany and Italy


21/09/2025

A demo by Italian GKN workers holding a banner which reads "Coordinamento donne GKN"

When Berlin’s “Red-Black” (SPD/CDU) coalition government announced massive cuts in certain areas of cultural funding last winter (studio spaces, exhibition fees, art in urban spaces, diversity funds), I followed the protests of artistic interest groups like the Council of the Arts and the BBK (Berufsverband Bildender Künstler*innen) from afar, in Italy. Coincidentally, I was in Berlin when ver.di called for a large demonstration on February 22 against the Berlin Senate’s austerity policy (which affected not only the cultural sector, but also social services, education, and science). After the BBK had carried culture to its grave in front of the Red City Hall in December with a coffin (an astonishingly hackneyed symbolism), I now dreamed of a broad, democratic, intersectional manifestation of resistance. About 5,000 people gathered at the Neptune Fountain on Alexanderplatz, and a Palestine bloc was not allowed to participate. The language of the speakers made me depressed; it sounded like self-incantation: Berlin needs culture. Berlin is culture. Was/is that the language of fighters?

This alarm at the lack of language, or rather its helplessness, accompanied me in the following months. All the more so because this disproportionate attack on the cultural infrastructure was preceded by two years of “silencing” cultural institutions: not a word to/with/about Palestine in institutions that receive public funding. And everyone obeyed eagerly—even though neither the raison d’état nor the Bundestag’s BDS resolution have legal status. Was the silence of cultural institutions regarding state censorship of voices critical of Israel and Palestinian voices after October 7 a symptom of a lack of solidarity in the cultural sector, or was it the result? In any case, deep disappointment and bitterness set in. Nothing in Berlin’s cultural scene is the same as it was before October 7, 2023.

And then, a year later, there were massive 12% cuts to the public culture budget. The austerity policy will negatively affect the working conditions of tens of thousands of cultural and educational producers in the city in 2025, 2026, and 2027. As radical cuts to the culture budget are set to continue through 2026, sites like Berlinistkultur announce various network meetings, actions and dates. On December 20, 2024, BBK issued a statement following the House of Representatives’ decision to cut funding: “We will continue to fight for the professional interests of artists: we will remain in dialogue with the administration, politicians, and cooperation partners and work to ensure that all studios can remain in the program, that diversity and variety can be lived out, and that art in urban spaces is secured.”

It sounds as if there has been a temporary rift between long-standing partners. This is apparently what grassroots artistic representation sounds like after decades of a consensual “cultural nation” whose achievements were envied by many colleagues around the world. Who speaks from what position when (massive) conflicts arise between the state and a hyper-professionalized and institutionalized cultural scene? Who speaks to whom at a demonstration? Is it about defending the status quo or about the self-empowerment of cultural producers in a phase of conflict, of attack? Is it “only” about interests or the common political space? Who shows solidarity with whom? Apparently everyone with “Berlin”. Der Rat für die Künste (the Council for the Arts) shared an open letter against the funding cuts, along with a comment: “Berlin is the city of art and creativity. Let’s not allow it to lose its artistic soul and future”—but is Berlin a label, a bubble, or the sum total of social conditions?

The structural situation of artists in Italy cannot be compared to that in Germany. State infrastructure has never become as broad and far-reaching here, contemporary artists receive little support, and independent projects are often dependent on a system of public competitions, alongside commercial operations and corresponding networks. For three years, the Meloni government has been intervening massively in the work of institutions and public media through personnel policy, placing post-fascist associates (some from the “Youth Front” of what was the fascist Movimento Sociale Italiano party) in the management of museums, theaters, biennials, juries, etc. After the election in fall 2022, the “left-wing” cultural scene was immediately targeted, which was to be disciplined, purged, and standardized in terms of identity (God, family, fatherland). The state-owned public broadcaster RAI was brought into line with “Telemeloni”.

Below the government level, the politics “from above,” however, there is a network “from below” in Italy that can be activated again and again and is writing its own unofficial history: from the partisan movement against fascism in 1943-45 to the traditional nationwide network of Case del Popolo, the activists of the Centri Sociali in the 1990s, local grassroots unions fighting for migrant workers, and ecological initiatives. Solidarity with the disregarded rights of the Palestinian people and opposition to Israeli genocide are loudly manifested in all villages and cities, and in voluntary initiatives from all sectors. In the political arena, this energy of resistance never finds institutional forms, remaining extra-parliamentary. At the grassroots level, however, the sparks of autonomous resistance continue to fly latently and intersectionally.

The most prominent example is the collective of the former GKN factory in Campi Bisenzio, which has been occupying the former auto parts factory for four years to protest job losses and demand a self-determined ecological conversion of production. From the first day of the occupation, neighbors and colleagues from other companies showed solidarity with the strikers. Agricultural collectives brought food, and—in the opposite direction—the collective sought national and international alliances with Fridays for Future, local youth initiatives, flash mobs for Palestine, migrants in the neighboring textile industry in Prato, and other groups. They issue public shares to finance an alternative cooperative, organize an annual festival of workers’ literature, and have a combative, radical, solidarity-based language, trained by the tradition of the metalworkers’ union.

“Vogliamo tutt’altro” (We want everything different)—under this slogan, resistance flared up in Rome at the beginning of this year against another identitarian personnel decision by the Meloni government for the general management of Rome’s theaters. An open letter from the movement declares: “We are artists, workers, and employees in the theater sector. We are mobilizing to denounce the poor state of our country’s cultural institutions and the gravity of the events of recent months: public offices filled through maneuvers bordering on illegality, riot police guarding public theaters, an inconsistent and incompetent city administration in Rome, structural job insecurity, and a lack of places dedicated to research and artistic production.” An Instagram page and a blog were immediately set up to communicate all demands, protocols, and actions (e.g., online meetings with thousands of participants).

In early summer, the next disaster struck: the partially reappointed jury of the national competition for the spettacolo/danza sector, an essential source of funding for many independent groups in the country, announced its decisions: the ratings of numerous renowned performance groups and festivals had suddenly fallen below the required score. The evaluation criteria had been changed, and contemporaneity and artistic risk were suddenly no longer decisive criteria. Many groups across the country are facing closure. Actors from the field of lavoratori della spettacolo (theater workers) expressed frustration with changes to their working conditions, with one person stating that “we are currently experiencing a violent delegitimization of art.” On July 21, a meeting was held in 16 cities across Italy. Here are some short excerpts from the extensive minutes:

“We are angry, toxic, and furious, and we want this anger to be translated into political action.”

“We have all been excluded since our training; there is a problem of structural elitism in our world—it is not just a question of fascists in government, but a classist and racist system that has grown over decades.”

And declared actions:

“Strengthen the power of dissent and continue to imagine another world.”

“Organize study and self-education groups.”

“Be intersectional, connect struggles with each other.”

“Open up a supranational level: In Europe, these issues are already being considered, especially the connection between armament and cuts in public spending; create connections.”

A first national assembly took place in Rome on September 8.

I am not comparing the actions and rhetoric in Rome and Berlin in order to idealize one side over the other, but rather to learn from them. Why are cultural workers in Berlin, Cologne, Munich, and Dresden isolating themselves from one another, even though they are all affected by the same political strategy of cutting funding for the cultural sector? Why are there no intersectional actions and solidarity movements in Germany with those affected in the social and education sectors? Why do demands focus only on their own field, without including parallel developments—right-wing violence in the Berlin area, ecological rollback, militarization, “culture war”—in their arguments?

Why does the cultural scene ignore social antagonism in order to (futilely) preserve the status quo? Why is there no political language that reflects society, the common good, and possible alliances? Why is there never any talk of “work”?

According to Hannah Arendt, power is not that of the rulers, but the ability to communicate collectively and agree on collective action. It is the potential for the public shaping of the community, i.e., the political. Political responsibility is not a moral obligation, but an existential necessity that arises from participation in the political sphere. The public sphere is the space for discussion, debate, and decision-making. The public sphere is a space of conflict.

In her reflections on infrastructural critique, Marina Vishmidt speaks of the “conditions of possibility” within and beyond the artistic field, of the necessity of transforming self-sufficient cultural logic into antagonistic logic and of engaging with the space of social struggles and the world of work, i.e., of developing a materialist theory of the “conditions of possibility.”

Daniel Baker, artist, curator, and art theorist of the GRT (Gypsy, Roma, Traveller) community, said years ago in a conversation that the idea of art as a tool of everyday life “is less about art and design as a way of improving life and more about a way of living, in which creative practice is integral—a bottom up process rather than top down”. He continued that “the idea of a closer alliance between the practices of art and of living has implications too in terms of the reclamation of art from the privileged arena of the museum and the art world where emphasis is placed upon market interests and hierarchies of knowledge—the segregation of intellectual, cultural and financial capital”.

The art “bubble” is part of the infrastructure of platform capitalism, as is the flexible personality of artists, their suitability as soft ambassadors of politics in neoliberal times.

In order to be able to think and speak politically again, we need collective self-empowerment, a different understanding of power, that of the collective sovereign, not that of the dependent.

The Last Chance

Why we are marching at the Palestine demo on 27 September


After two years of genocide in Palestine, the official discourse begins to crack. Between the truth in the mainstream media and institutions in Germany and the political and economic practices of the so-called ‘democratic’ state, there is now an intolerable gap. A gap between the civilising narrative of Western human rights and the reality of Gaza, the West Bank and the wider Middle East region. We know the pictures. We know the figures. We know those who send the weapons, who design the drones and who open fire on hungry children, executing them as they search for water and food. There is no doubt about what reality is.

The opportunistic shift of the narrative to a ‘humanitarian crisis’ stems from the need of colonisers’ societies to maintain their moral superiority over peripheral countries. But behind this lie the most terrible crimes against humanity. Now they need to calm public opinion from “the North”, to reset the Western ‘civilising’ discourse. Right-thinking citizens and elites can wash their hands of guilt while continuing to benefit from genocide and supremacist domination. However, the cloak of complicity is beginning to fall away.

The root cause of every genocide lies in the voracious pursuit of profit and control over a territory’s resources. The genocide of our generation is driven by the agreement between Western governments and the arms industry.

Katherina Reiche of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection (Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Klimaschutz – BMWK), claims the arms industry is not only a matter of national security policy, but also a window of opportunity for the economy and innovation. Both  show a total decline in Western values. Today, Germany is the second largest exporter of arms to Israel after the United States.

The proposed solution to the crisis in Europe’s economic model is to transform car factories into arms factories. Thus, the “Keynesianism of war” establishes itself as the economic model to follow. Economic and political leaders know how to produce nothing but death in pursuit of their interests.

Death is financed with our taxes, through cuts in social benefits and social and cultural infrastructure, all to ensure the exorbitant profits of the global bourgeoisie. Including Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, billionaire of MAGA, to Moritz Döpfner, son of media entrepreneur Axel Springer, to name but a few.

All this shows that the protection of the Jewish people has nothing to do with the current situation, but with the greed of the bourgeoisie. Germany has a historical responsibility to the Jewish people – Just as it does to the Herero and Nama peoples, the Slavic peoples, the Roma and Sinti, the LGTBIQ+ community and the countless socialists and communists, political opponents murdered by this state in concentration camps and in gas chambers. Just as it now has to the Palestinian people.

Our role as the popular Left

In October 2024, as Bloque Latinoamericano, we spoke out about the need to create new fronts. These must  engage broader sectors of society to break the media siege surrounding the genocide and normalised repression of the Palestinian and migrant communities. We also called for the transformation of social and labour spaces into places of dispute.

We therefore welcome the alliance and joint mobilisation within the framework of ‘Zusammen für Gaza’ on 27 September 2025. This call offers a tool to transform more spaces into territories of dispute such as our work, our football club, our family gatherings, etc. Specifically, we call on everyone to spread the word about this call, to discuss and promote mobilisation in the different spaces we inhabit.

Since October 2023, the massacre in Palestine has led hundreds of thousands of people to become interested in politics and criticise the status quo. For the younger generations, their introduction to politics is closely linked to Palestinian liberation.

That is why we from the Left must do ensure that this crisis of Western common sense makes way to a heroic and revolutionary stage of creation, where genocide is not part of the elite’s arsenal of options.

We also know, as a revolutionary political organisation, that the opportunistic political shift of some does not aim at the complete liberation of Palestine and its people, nor at their inalienable right to return to their land. That is why we demand that full solidarity  during the march with the people who are repressed: the Palestinian communities from here and everywhere.

You, elected politicians, do not represent the will of the migrants living here, and with each passing day you lose the support of the popular majority. Each one of you, by voting and signing to send one more single weapon, one more piece of ammunition, one more tank, is a war criminal, an accomplice to genocide, and will be condemned in one way or another. We will not forget.

Those who do not take now to the streets to denounce the genocide will go down in history as accomplices. You cannot ethically distance yourself from those who “did not know” where the full trains were going; to and had not asked themselves what was burning in the steppes of the USSR. Western moral superiority is not only a weapon of colonisers and oppressors, but also an excuse for not facing reality. Those who do not fight do not feel their chains.

Enough with neutrality, we must end the immobility and fear of raising our voices. There is no such thing as fair colonisation, there is no right to massacre and starve a people. There is no forgiveness for slavery, plunder, dispossession, genocide, imperialist war, nor for the destruction of the social system to finance the industry of death and private property for the 1% of the world.

As long as there is no justice for the Palestinian people, there will be popular struggle and resistance.

When Palestine is free, we all will be freer.

This is a translation of an article in Spanish from The Bloque Latinoamericano website. A German version of the article is also available. Translation: Ana Ferreira. Reproduced with permission.