When the German government insists on ramping up military spending to the tune of half a trillion euros, European leaders assure us this isn’t about shoring up billionaires’ profits. No, they say, militarism is necessary to defend our freedom, democracy, and basic rights.
But rearmament isn’t very popular. Germany’s unflinching support for the genocide in Gaza is opposed by up to 80 percent of people. So in their struggle to defend their “democracy,” imperialist politicians have been attacking our democratic rights.
In Berlin, police repression has become completely unhinged. The US government has carried out unprecedented attacks on freedom of speech, such as the attempted deportation of Mahmoud Khalil. Even in France, where the authoritarian-centrist president Emmanuel Macron recently began criticizing Israel and announced plans to recognize a Palestinian state, the judicial apparatus is taking aim at pro-Palestinian voices.
On Wednesday, the rail worker and union activist Anasse Kazib will appear in a Parisian court on charges of “apology for terrorism.” If convicted, he faces up to seven years in prison or a fine of €100,000. His “crime” consists of a few tweets criticizing EU and French leaders for their support for mass murder.
The son of Moroccan immigrants to France, Kazib has been fighting for the rights of fellow rail workers for over a decade, organizing protests and strikes against privatization plans and pension reforms. He has run as a candidate for the Trotskyist organization Révolution Permanente.
The French state has investigated different left-wing politicians, including Rima Hassan from the European parliament (and more recently the Gaza Freedom Flotilla), for tweets about Gaza. The persecution of Kazib is a test to see how far they can go in criminalizing opposition. If he is convicted, it will make it harder for anyone to speak up against the genocide — and if he is victorious, then it will throw sand in the gears of repression.
This is why over 1,000 public figures declared their solidarity for Kazib, including the Nobel Prize winners Adolfo Pérez Esquivel and Annie Ernaux. Well-known activists and and artists like Angela Davis, Tariq Ali, Pablo Iglesias, Adèle Haenel, Yanis Varoufakis, Nancy Fraser, Brian Eno, and Ken Loach signed the petition, as did leaders of the Palestine solidarity movement like Mohammed el-Kurd, Rashid Khalidi, Noura Erakat, Ilan Pappé, Chris Hedges, Abby Martin, and Norman Finkelstein.
There will be rallies in defense of Kazib on Tuesday, the day before the trial begins, in over a dozen cities worldwide. Activists in Berlin will gather at the French embassy at the Brandenburg Gate, on June 17 at 17:00.
At a rally in Paris last month, Kazib spoke to 2,000 people about the need for internationalism. “If we are not profoundly internationalist today,” he said, “we will be nationalist tomorrow”. As the big capitalist powers lurch toward ever greater conflagrations, they will try to whip us into a national frenzy. But the main enemy is at home. We need to stand with revolutionary worker-politicians like Kazib, and with everyone who is being targeted for solidarity.
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.
