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Month: November 2025

Trans Day of Remembrance

On mourning and the need to fight systemic transphobia


19/11/2025

20th of November 2025, marks the 26th Trans Day of Remembrance (TDOR). In this day, we honor the memory of the trans people whose lives were lost in acts of anti-trans violence.

The Trans Day of Remembrance was established on the 20th of November 1999 in the United States by Gwendolyn Ann Smith, in the memory of Rita Hester. Rita Hester was a Black trans woman and an active member in the trans community of Boston, providing education around trans issues.

Back then, Gwendoly Ann Smith declared: “Trans Day of Remembrance seeks to highlight the losses we face due to anti-trans bigotry and violence. I am no stranger to the need to fight for our rights, and the right to simply exist is first and foremost. With so many seeking to erase trans people — sometimes in the most brutal ways possible — it is vitally important that those we lose are remembered, and that we continue to fight for justice.“

These words still resonate with the situation of trans people 26 years later, then trans people are still exposed to a multifactorial violence, which makes their existence a (political) fight.

Indeed, the Trans Murder Monitoring project reported 281 murders of trans and gender diverse people in the world between October 1 2024 and September 30 2025.  Moreover, this research project has identified, analyzed and reported more than 5000 murders against trans people in the world since 2009, and 118 in Europe. Trans women are even more exposed to this violence: they constituted at least 53% of the murder cases identified by the TGEU. Trans BIPOC were also highly targeted, as they represented at least 73% of the murdered trans people. Moreover, 23% of the murders were identified to be against sex workers. Finally, the data from 2025 reveals that trans activists are becoming a specific target of trans murder.

These numbers are however only the tip of the iceberg, as murder of trans people are highly underreported. This is partly due to the fact that these murders are not categorized as murders of or against trans people, as trans people are often misgendered and their gender not recognized by the state institutions responsible of establishing criminality statistics. Moreover, violence against trans people is also multifaceted and often results in severe mental health consequences, including high rates of suicide among trans people.

Indeed, trans people are exposed, in the public as well as in the private space, to discriminations, harassment, insults, psychological as well as physical and sexual violence. In a survey conducted by the EU Agency for Fundamental rights in 30 European countries among more than 100 000 LGBTQ+ individuals, more than 60% of trans of 51% on non-binary and gender diverse respondents reported having lived discrimination in the past year.

Moreover, 26% of trans women and 23% of trans men declared that they have been attacked in the last five years, while 2 in 3 trans and non-binary respondents declared that they had experienced harassment the year before taking the survey.

However, less than 20% of the respondents declared that they had reported this violence to a state institution.

This is because trans people also face violence from the institutions that are, in the states’ narrative, supposed to help them, for example, the police institution. Moreover, in the study cited previously, more than one third of trans respondents declared that they had experience discrimination from the health care system the year before taking the survey.

The systemic discrimination and violence that trans people are exposed to -whether in the private sphere from family members, in the public sphere, or through state institutions- result in severe mental health consequences and higher suicide rates among trans people. Current research findings estimate that between 18 and 45% of trans young adults and youth have attempted suicide in their lifetime. Moreover, in the survey conducted by the EU Agency for Fundamental rights, more than one in two trans and non-binary respondents declared they have had suicidal thoughts the year before taking the survey.

As already mentioned, numbers on crimes against trans people are lower than the reality. Moreover, this summary does not exhaustively mention the different forms of violence trans people have to face every day. However, it depicts how violent states and societies still are toward trans people, 26 years after the first Day of Trans Remembrance. It is all the more important to acknowledge and remember this systemic violence as anti-trans laws, state-driven persecution, and measures that increasingly aim at the erasure of trans people continue to grow, as illustrated by the in anti-trans legislation in the US, and, for example, the German law project to register trans people and make their data accessible to states authorities.

On this Trans Day of Remembrance, we gather, mourn, and honor the memory of the trans people whose lives were lost in acts of anti-trans violence. Some also consider this day as a day of fight, as being trans is, in fact, an act of resilience and fighting. In Berlin, several events are organized today. Here is a non-exhaustive list of events you can attend to mourn and fight:

  • Berlin, S+U Neukölln. 17:30 à Rally, 18:30 Start of the protest. More infos here.
  • Berlin, Alice-Herz-Platz, 18:00. More infos here.

Note: Time and locations might be subjected to changes, follow news from the organizers to be up to date.

Red Flag: Berlin universities bend the knee for the AfD

In his weekly column, Nathaniel Flakin looks at unprecedented campus repression on the orders of the Far Right.


AFD Universities - Faschismus ist keine alternative

Last Wednesday, student assemblies were scheduled at Berlin’s three main universities. On November 29-30, the far-right party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is founding a new youth organization in the city of Gießen. The campus meetings were part of the antifascist mobilization to block the creation of “Generation Deutschland,” as the reactionary youngsters plan to call themselves.

But the same day, the administrations of both the Free University (FU) and the Humboldt University (HU) cancelled the assemblies after receiving complaints from the AfD. The official reasoning: universities are supposed to remain neutral regarding party politics. In the context of Germany’s history—in 1933, universities quickly subordinated themselves to the fascist regime and supported its genocidal policies — this “neutrality” on antifascism is nothing short of astounding.

Only the Technical University (TU) allowed the event to take place—but on the condition that “no statements about party politics” be made, so nothing about the AfD. Hundreds of students gathered and made plans to head to Gießen.

Useful Idiots

This is more than the latest episode in the Rechtsruck, Germany’s seemingly boundless shift to the right. As both an FU alumnus and a historian, I can say this campus repression is unprecedented. Berlin’s universities have always hosted political assemblies, from the 1968 youth rebellion to the 2009 Bildungsstreik (education strike).

University presidents capitulating to far-right pressure is an echo of what’s going on in the United States under Trump. This authoritarian turn on Berlin campuses did not fall from the sky—nor is it a result of the AfD’s influence among students, which thankfully remains vanishingly small. This is a direct product of the violent repression against pro-Palestinian protests. According to retired professor Hajo Funke, who started studying at FU in 1964, this was the worst repression since the university’s founding more than 75 years ago. 

When students peacefully protested against the genocide in Gaza, they were attacked by government ministers and big media. University leaders sent in heavily armed cops, who attacked young people with batons and pepper spray, and then pressed hundreds of charges against their own students. As I’ve reported, numerous Jewish students were also beaten and doxxed in the name of “protecting Jewish students.”

There were some liberals, useful idiots of the Far Right, who thought this assault on academic freedom would be limited to Palestine. But any attack by the state on student protests automatically strengthens authoritarian forces. Thus the supposed “fight against antisemitism” benefits the party of Beatrix von Storch, the granddaughter of Hitler’s finance minister.

Pseudo-Democracy

After the assemblies were banned, the discussion at TU was bewildering: according to multiple comrades, there was little talk about the censorship. Instead, pre-prepared speeches about the mobilization to Gießen were read out—as if students could simply ignore this unprecedented assault on their rights and continue with the agenda.

This is very much the modus operandi of Studis Gegen Rechts (Students Against the Right): While an event may be called an assembly, everything is carefully choreographed, with each speaker chosen and prepared beforehand. Students who wanted to speak about defending democratic rights were consistently “overlooked” by the chair.

The result is not an assembly at all, but a pageant—a simulacrum of direct democracy. It is a method that has been slowly introduced to Berlin over the last decade by self-described “organizers”: young bureaucrats working for Die Linke or the trade union ver.di who are often associated with the post-Trotskyist network Marx21.

The problem with this was visible on Wednesday: a pre-prepared non-assembly is incapable of reacting to new developments—all the speeches “from the floor” had been planned before the bans were announced. Such pseudo-democracy cannot fulfill the task of an assembly: a mass of people discuss and vote on how they are going to act.

The history of Berlin’s student movement shows us what a central role assemblies can play. On April 11, 1968, for example, over 2,000 people gathered in the exact same hall at TU to discuss how to respond to the attempted assassination of student leader Rudi Dutschke. They decided to march to the headquarters of Axel Springer’s far-right media empire, and tens of thousands joined in the Easter Riots. Direct democracy is key to mass action.

To fight the authoritarian turn today, we need the ideas and the energy of every single student. The efforts of even the most intelligent “organizers” will not be enough. We need proletarian democracy, where the masses make their own decisions and carry them out together.

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.

News from Berlin and Germany, 19th November 2025

Weekly news round-up from Berlin and Germany


NEWS FROM BERLIN

Die Linke launches its election campaign with Elif Eralp

Die Linke Berlin has selected Elif Eralp as its lead candidate for the Berlin elections in 2026. The 44-year-old has been deputy chair of the Berlin Die Linke since May 2025, as well as a member of the Berlin House of Representatives since 2021. There, the lawyer is deputy parliamentary group chair and spokesperson for migration and anti-discrimination. In her speech on November 15, Eralp emphasized her ambition to become Governing Mayor of Berlin and presented housing and rental policy as the most important campaign issue. Source: rbb

Liebknecht-Luxemburg commemoration may not take place in 2026

The traditional commemoration of the assassination of labor leaders Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht in 1919 may not take place in 2026, due to construction works. For 107 years, apart from the Nazi era, thousands of people have gathered at the cemetery in Lichtenberg on the second Sunday in January to commemorate those leaders who were murdered. The Lichtenberg district office has now informed the alliance of various left-wing groups, which has been preparing and registering silent commemorations and demonstrations for many years, that no permit might be granted for the large-scale event planned for January 11, 2026. Source: bz

NEWS FROM GERMANY

German rent calculator finds more than 140,000 cases of exploitation in 1 year

Around 146,700 tenants who have used Die Linke’s rent calculator in the past year found out that they were paying illegally high rent. The party is set to propose a Rent Law in the Bundestag. To mark the date, Die Linke has released figures about how many people have used the calculator and what results they found. In the first year, 220,000 tenants across Germany used the Mietwucher and around two-thirds found they were being overcharged. Moreover, among the tenants who found they were paying too much, half found that they were paying 50% over the maximum local comparative rent set by the rent index (Mietspiegel). Source: iamexpat

How many people belong to a trade union in Germany?

Trade union membership across Europe is on the decline, and this holds true for Germany as well. According to a new study from the German Economic Institute (IW), 20.2% of employees in Germany were members of a trade union in 2016, compared to 16,6 % in 2023. On the other side, while the number of union members has declined over that period, the number of people employed in Germany has risen. According to the IW, the decline can be explained, among other aspects, due to the low mobilisation of employees in small businesses, “atypical” modes of employment (such as part-time work), and employees with a migration background. Source: iamexpat

Military service in Germany: all young men must undergo medical examination

According to AFP information, an agreement was reached during consultations between the Federal Defense Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD) and representatives of the coalition parliamentary groups. The new model will require all 18-year-old men to undergo a medical examination. If there are not enough volunteers among those examined, a lottery will decide who must perform military service. Pistorius’ original model was initially based on voluntary service. Union MPs called for automatic conscription if the planned model failed to meet NATO’s recruitment targets. More recently, a proposal for a lottery to determine who must undergo medical examination has caused a stir. Source: bz

Fridays for Future demands more pressure for climate protection

Fridays for Future is criticising the German government and the EU for their climate policy. Protests happened on November 14 in over 60 cities nationwide, accompanied by actions at the UN Climate Change Conference COP30 in Belém, Brazil. The movement has called on the German government to exert more international pressure for climate protection. Climate activist Luisa Neubauer criticised the agreement between the CDU, CSU, and SPD to lower the air passenger tax in an interview with RBB and Deutschlandfunk radio. Neubauer spoke of “fossil fuel tax breaks” for airlines. Source: mdr

German government agrees on record debt for 2026

The German parliament’s budget committee has signed off on the budget presented by Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil (SPD). The exploding cost of Germany’s welfare system is supposedly putting pressure on the coffers — along with the billions of euros for rearming the Bundeswehr. The new borrowing of some 180 billion euros is the second highest in the country’s history, beaten only during the COVID-19 pandemic. It will be put to a final vote in the Bundestag. Government representatives, nevertheless, clearly looked pleased on November 14, even if, on the day before, the Council of Economic Experts had accused the German government of spending too little money on investment. Source: dw

NS auction in Neuss canceled

Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul (CDU) welcomed the cancellation of the planned auction of Holocaust documents in Neuss. The Felzmann auction house wanted to auction letters from concentration camp inmates, a Jewish star, and Gestapo papers on November 18. Following protests by the International Auschwitz Committee, the auction was canceled. Wadephul said he expects the matter to be clarified. He added that it must be ensured that the crimes of the Shoah are not used for commercial gain in the future. The auction house has not yet made a public statement. Source: wdr

That was Unframe 2025

Photo Gallery of the festival by Laura Steiner


18/11/2025

All photos: (c) Laura Steiner. Reproduced with permission

20 November 1975: the death of Franco

This week in working class history


Fifty years after the dictator’s death, Spain remains marked by the impunity of the Franco regime. The social movements that fought for decades against the dictatorship took to the streets during the so-called “transition”, only to face brutal repression from a state apparatus that was never purged of its fascist elements. This period was not the peaceful transition often portrayed, but one of intense social struggle met with state violence.

Various movements led this fight. Workers demanded fair labour laws against a Francoist elite; women fought for fundamental rights in the face of entrenched patriarchy; and the LGTBIQ+ movement confronted legislation that criminalised their identity. Students, youth groups, and neighbourhood associations simultaneously fought for educational freedom, voting rights, and housing justice, creating a powerful political fabric.

In contrast to these hard-won social advances, the political reforms were largely cosmetic. The 1977 amnesty law cemented impunity for the regime’s officials, exonerating judges, police officers, and torturers with the stroke of a pen. Key institutions, such as the repressive Public Order Court, were simply renamed, giving rise to what is critically known as the “Regime of ’78”.

This inherited impunity is still visible today. Francoist symbols and streets named after fascist leaders persist due to a profound lack of political will, not legal obstacles. The state’s effort to exhume the tens of thousands of disappeared from mass graves has been grossly inadequate, leaving civil society groups to lead the search for truth and identification.

This whitewashing extended into education, where for decades the dictatorship was sanitised as the “Franco era” and the 1936 coup was not even named as such. It was a deliberate strategy by Spanish elites—many of whom owe their fortunes to the dictatorship’s corruption—to hide the regime’s crimes and avoid accountability.

The economic legacy of the regime also endures. Major Spanish companies, such as the energy giant Naturgy, were built on the violent expropriation of property from those murdered by the regime. Francoist concentration camps, though not designed for industrial extermination, nevertheless served as instruments of political terror and forced labour, intended to crush opposition and instil lasting fear.