George Orwell described a totalitarian dictatorship thus: “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
Germany is not yet fascist, but we nonetheless have to deal with political gaslighting at the level of 1984: politicians and media demand that we don’t believe what we see with our own eyes. They will show images of heavily armed cops punching pro-Palestinian protestors… and claim in a voiceover that it was police who were attacked. They will quietly admit that Israel attacked Iran in defiance of international law… and still insist that “Israel is defending itself.”
In German, this is called Täter-Opfer-Umkehr: reversing victim and offender.
In this video from December 14, 2023, you can see Zionist provocateurs at the Free University (FU) of Berlin shoving, punching, and yelling “Nazis” at pro-Palestinian protestors (all of which is illegal under German law). They then proceed to destroy posters showing Palestinians murdered by the Israeli army (similarly banned).
Yet Berlin’s public prosecutors must be Orwell fans. Watching the video, you might think you see the young person in the white vest and leopard-print shirt being spit at, hit, and insulted—aren’t they reacting with a level of patience that would make Jesus blush? Yet Baki Devrimkaya, about to start training to become a nurse, has been charged with assault, and has to appear in court next Thursday, July 17, at 8:30.
After pro-Palestinian students occupied a lecture hall at FU, Devrimkaya was the subject of a right-wing smear campaign, leading to death threats in social media and even intimidation on the street.
This is being framed as a case of “antisemitism.” While it’s true that the attacker from the video was himself the victim of a much-publicized assault the following year, there are also multiple reports about him physically attacking pro-Palestinian students at FU.
H.P. Loveshaft, a Jewish student who was next to Devrimkaya at the protest, tried to get between the provocateurs and the protestors, and was himself shoved around (he’s the one with rainbow-colored hair in the videos). “I should have taken off my glasses,” he recalls thinking. Was this Zionist attack on an anti-Zionist Jewish student also an example of “antisemitism”? Left-wing Jews like Loveshaft, who was born in Moscow and grew up in Israel and the United States, are ignored and slandered by German media.
It’s near impossible to say with any certainty what Germany’s Jewish community thinks about the genocide in Gaza. The government claims that all Jews support Israel, yet this lacks any empirical basis. Jewish students have been part of every pro-Palestinian protest at FU, and the occupation of a lecture hall in late 2023 was no exception. Right-wing media claimed that a pro-genocide agitator was excluded “because he was Jewish.” This is ridiculous, not only was he inside the hall, but he was disrupting an event co-organized by Jewish students opposed to genocide.
Devrimkaya’s case is not isolated. The German state has spent 21 months banning demonstrations, beating protestors, and cancelling artists. This has led to an official reproach by the Council of Europe’s Commissioner for Human Rights. Hundreds of FU students have faced criminal charges from their own university for protesting. As one retired professor put it, this is the worst repression in the university’s 75-year history.
This is not a uniquely German problem. In the US, the Trump administration, following Biden’s lead, has been attacking campus protests for Palestine, even attempting to deport students for exercising their right to free speech. In France, the state has been prosecuting Anasse Kazib and other politicians for criticizing the government. In the UK, the government has declared Palestine Action to be a terrorist organization.
In Germany, however, the last few months have seen courts rejecting some of the most absurd charges against Palestine solidarity activists. At Devrimkaya’s trial, we will see whether judges will allow us to believe our own eyes—or whether we must repeat that every Zionist act of aggression is really just “self-defense.” We should attend the trial to support victims of right-wing violence—and to defend our right to believe our own eyes.
Red Flag is a weekly column on Berlin politics that Nathaniel Flakin has been writing since 2020. After moving through different homes, it now appears at The Left Berlin.
