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The Left Berlin Events in May and June 2025

Left Journalism Day School, Summer Camp, Jihadi Music, The Return of Palivision and much more


29/04/2025

The Left Berlin is organising a whole series of events in the next couple of months – so many, that it’s hard to keep an overview. This article summarizes everything we’re doing and why. 

Early May

We’re kicking off May at the 1 May festival at Mariannenplatz, in front of the Bethanien building, where we will have a stall between 11am and 6pm. At the stall, you have the first chance to buy Palivision tickets (more below), as well as our new t-shirts and a leaflet explaining our upcoming activities (please take a bunch to give to your friends). It’s also an opportunity to meet the people behind The Left Berlin and talk to us about how you can get more involved.

At the festival, we will be holding a raffle with prizes including Palivision tickets, a t-shirt, and tickets for Gyrovision V, the boycott-friendly Eurovision Alternative, organised by the Corner Späti podcast and the Irish Bloc. We will be announcing the winners of the raffle at 6pm at the stall, but if you can’t stay that long, just leave your contact details, and we’ll let you know if you’ve won.

On Friday, 2nd May it’s our next Film Club, where we’ll be showing and discussing the film Tantura in the Agit buildings, Nansenstraße 2. We will continue to organise Film Club every month, and have a great programme planned. But we are negotiating a larger venue, which may need us to change the time and day. We’ll publish more information in our Weekly Newsletter as soon as we know more.

On Saturday, 10th May we’re co-organising the demonstration Social Spending instead of Military Spending. The demonstration has been organised as a response to Rheinmetall subsidiary Pierburg’s decision to convert their factory in Wedding to producing military hardware. The demonstration starts at S-Bahn Gesundbrunnen at 3pm, and will visit the factory before a final rally at Leopoldplatz.

On Sunday, 11th May, it’s our monthly Political Walking Tour. Our usual tour guide, Nathaniel, will not be in Berlin during May, so we will welcome back Izzy Choksey who used to give tours for us. Izzy will be taking us through the history of Social Movements in Berlin. The tour starts at 2pm at the Martin-Luther statue at Alexanderplatz (Karl Liebknecht Straße 8).

Palivision

Last year we had the idea of organising a solidarity concert for anyone who wanted to boycott the Eurovision concert because of Israel’s involvement. Within 4 weeks, we pulled together a concert with 12 acts and several political speeches, which raised €2,000 for the European Legal Support Centre. You can read our report on how we did it here, and see videos from the Event here.

One year on, Israel is still committing genocide in Gaza, and is still being treated as a normal state by the Eurovision organisers. So, on May 17th, we are organising Palivision 2. Some things will be the same as before – we welcome back Asper Casper and Uday Al Shihabi, who both contributed great performances last year, but this year the sets will be longer and we have more artists from the Middle East region.

We also have a new venue. We would like to offer particular thanks to K19, who stepped in at the last minute as our original venue cancelled on us (such is the experience of trying to organise a pro-Palestine event in Berlin). K19 is at Kreutziger Straße 19, near the Samariterstraße U-Bahn (U5). The event starts at 7pm. All proceeds from Palivision will be donated to the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF).

You can reserve your Palivision ticket online and pick it up at any of our events, starting with our stall at the 1st May festival. There will be a small contingent of tickets available at the door.

Küfa and Talk on Jihadi Music

On Sunday 25th May, we will be holding a Küfa (kitchen for all) in Bilgisaray, Oranienstraße 45. Cook together, eat together, and meet international activists in Berlin. The money raised at the Küfa will be used to finance The Left Berlin activities. We work on 100% voluntary labour and are not funded by any political organisations or NGOs. Simply running our website and newsletter costs money, which we must find somewhere.

As part of the Küfa, we are pleased to welcome Asha Vare who will give the talk Jihadi Music? Towards a Framework for Understanding Music Associated with Palestinian Armed Resistance. The talk is based on Asha’s research at Cambridge University and was first given at the British Forum of Ethnomusicology’s annual conference. 

In the talk, Asha will be exploring the meaning of songs associated with armed resistance for Palestinians living in the West Bank, looking at genre-labels as discourse – examining the motivations and implications of terminology to describe music, and challenging North Atlantic research conventions and characteristics of Palestinian music and resistance.

Food will be available from 5pm and Asha will be speaking at 7pm. If you’d like to help with the cooking, please come a little early. All donations will be appreciated. It is events like this which enable us to carry on doing what we do. 

Journalism Day School

Saturday, 31st May sees the return of another old favourite. In 2021 and 2022 The Left Berlin editorial board organised two day schools open to experienced journalists who wanted to share their experiences and new writers who were looking for some tips. You can read about the results here and here. We’ve decided to organise another Left Journalism Day School, this time in Karl Liebknecht Haus on Rosa Luxemburg Platz.

Come to talk about everything from using Canva to make online pictures, to writing book and film reviews, from videos on social media, to conducting an interview. Particular highlights include Nick Babakitis from Corner Späti talking about how to make a podcast, and Palestinian journalist Farah Maraqa on political journalism – particularly ethics and norms.

The Day School will conclude with a keynote speech introduced by Palestinian journalist Hebh Jamal and Tina Lee, editor-in-chief of Unbias The News. Hebh and Tina will be speaking on how the media manage consent, paying particular attention to how the German media portray Palestine. Participation at the Journalism Day School is free, but book your place early to ensure there is space for you.

Summer Camp

Once a year, The Left Berlin spends a week-end in the countryside discussing politics, socialising, and having fun. This year’s Summer Camp will be on 7th – 8th June and in a new venue – the Haus des Wandels in Steinhöfel. Please note that this is more remote than our previous venue, so it’s easier if you sleep over, but free accommodation is available on site.

As usual, Summer Camp is a mixture of small workshops and big talks. The first major talk is the kick off for a series of meetings we are planning with the Bloque Latinoamericano on The Left After the German Elections.  Early advertising for Summer Camp said that we had invited Ferat Kocak, a regular visitor of Summer Camp, to speak. Unfortunately, Ferat is on holiday that week-end so we’re still working on the speakers.

The second major talk will be on Repression against Palestinians and their allies in Germany. Confirmed speakers so far are Palestinian refugee activist Majda Qandil and a representative of the Irish Bloc. We are in talks with Benjamin Düsberg, the lawyer representing the Berlin4 who is being threatened with deportation for their pro-Palestine activities, and hope that Benjamin will confirm soon.

There is also a series of workshops from Germany, Namibia, and reparations to Reproductive Justice, taking in organising migrant workers, decolonial feminism and Myanmar. You can see a list of planned workshops in the Event description. Note that we are still in the process of booking speakers, so dome subjects may change.

We need to be aware how much food to provide at Summer Camp so will be asking for a contribution for the food in advance. More information soon in our Newsletter and on our website.

Regular Events

On top of all this, we will continue to organise our regular events, like our Book Club, Reading Group and Political Walking Tours. We also have monthly meetings to plan our activities open to anyone who is interested in what we do (more information about this in the next section).

In Book Club, we go through a book, discussing each chapter. In the current Book Club we are discussing Walter Rodney’s How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. We will be discussing chapter 5 on Sunday, 11th May, and the final chapter on Friday, 23rd May. Book Club usually takes place on the second and fourth Sunday of the month (note the different day on May 23rd to avoid clashing with our Küfa) in the Agit buildings, Nansenstraße 2.

In our Reading Group, we discuss a series of texts about a suggested subject. On 16th May, we will be discussing How to effectively fight against Fascism, and on 13th June Decolonial Feminism. The Reading Group normally takes place on the third Friday of the month, also in Agit. Subjects for both Book Club and the Reading Group are taken in a Telegram group for regular attendees. If you come to any meeting, we can add you to the group.

On Sunday, 15th June, Nathaniel is back for the next Political Walking Tour. To celebrate the anniversary of the 1953 East German workers’ uprising, we will be visiting sites important in the development of East Berlin. The tour starts at 2pm at U-Bahn Strausberger Platz, outside the exit to Andreasstraße (in front of Andreasstraße 46). The Political Walking tour normally takes place on the third Sunday of the month.

Get Involved 

The Left Berlin is an informal and independent group of mainly non-German international activists based in Berlin, and we are always looking for people to join us and get more involved. On the first Monday of each month we have a Coordinating meeting to plan our activities in Ferat Kocak’s office, Schierker Straße 26. The meetings are open to anyone who is interested in our activities.

The website theleftberlin.com and Newsletter are run by an Editorial Board which has a weekly online meeting and an extended face-to-face meeting roughly once a quarter. If you are a writer, translator, editor, or would like to be one, please contact us at team@theleftberlin.com. We also accept pitches for articles (you can read some guidelines here). 

If you have any ideas about how we can improve our work or the website and Newsletter, please contact us either by e-mail or by visiting any of our events, starting with our stall on 1st May. You can also keep informed about what we are doing by subscribing to our Newsletter, which goes out every Thursday lunchtime, joining our Telegram info channel, or following us on Instagram.

The Great Gatsby 100 Years Later

The relevance of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s most famous work today on its centennial


28/04/2025

Great literature, Ezra Pound wrote, is news that stays news. The Great Gatsby illustrates this well. Let’s start with one clear example, before we get to all the rest.

Early on in the novel Tom Buchanan identifies himself to us as a racist bigot when he blurts out, ‘Civilization has gone to pieces …Have you read The rise of the coloured empires by this man Goddard?… Well, it’s a fine book…The idea is if we don’t look out the white race will be—will be utterly submerged…It’s up to us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will have control of things…we’ve produced all the things that go to make civilization—oh, science and art, and all that. Do you see?’ This sentiment was  printed in a novel published in 1925.

And now we have two leading figures from Reform UK, a far-right party, in 2025; James McMurdock, who said that ‘the murder rate’  was ‘better in medieval England than Africa today’, That is how civilised our society is, that is how gentle, even handed, fair and good we are as a people.

 ‘We take it so much for granted that we think the rest of the world is like that,’ McMurdock continued, ‘We already know what needs fixing because it didn’t used to be’.

Another speaker, Max Harrison, membership coordinator at Reform UK’s head office, spun a narrative of decline,  ‘This is about our community, our culture, our history, our heritage, our traditions, our Christianity and our values. We are in societal decline. Our communities are broken. Our children go to schools and are fed poison. Our streets are lawless and everything about our lives is getting increasingly worse.’

News that stays news.

Since 1925 many people have been beguiled and dazzled by the shiny surfaces of the ‘Jazz Age’ and Fitzgerald’s depiction of it. One of those surfaces is the way in which the novel is attracted by one of the great myths of the USA. That it is the place where dreams can be fulfilled, where James Gatz, poor boy from the Midwest can become Jay Gatsby; possessor of vast wealth and a vision of lost love regained.

Except, of course, that the glitter of those surfaces just conceals the tawdriness beneath. Because, with one exception, this novel is populated by characters who are false. They are liars, thieves, gangsters, adulterers, racists, antisemites, cheats, killers, bad drivers. One of the triumphs of the novel lies in the way it ruthlessly, almost savagely rips away the facades behind which corruption and violence simmer. 

Baseball occupies a place in US culture in which a chimerical belief in fair play and honesty, mixed with a hint of heroism, function as a haven of sorts from the unfairness and the cheating beyond the stadium. It’s nonsense, of course. So it is unsurprising that in this book we meet the gangster who ‘fixed the World Series.’ Gatsby, we come to understand (and then perhaps forget), has raised his mansion with cash from proximity to extractive capitalism and gangsterism. Raised the mansion to charm back his lost love. And when he has retrieved her and shows his treasures, she responds not with words of love but repeated admiration for his closet full of beautiful shirts. The book’s litany of houses, apartments, cars, libraries in which the owner has had the ‘good taste’ to not cut the pages of the volumes on the shelves, remind us repeatedly that the cruel wonder of commodities is that they replace human connection with relationships to objects.

Through the voice of Nick Carraway (incidentally, magnificently reproduced by Tim Robbins in an audiobook) these people and the fabrics of their existences are exposed. He demolishes the vulgar, violent racist Tom Buchanan. For all their attractiveness, he recognises Daisy Buchanan and Jordan Baker for the hollow ciphers that they are. He situates the gangster Meyer Wolfsheim with the observation that he wears cufflinks made from teeth. He is forensic in his clarity of vision.

But. But we would be very naïve readers to believe everything (or perhaps even anything) Nick tells us. He asserts his honesty so much that it seems that he doth protest too much. He is, along with the others, a racist and a misogynist. He asserts his heterosexuality but in a fleeting lacuna within the narrative seems to have had sex with another man. More, much more importantly, he works in that great con game that would four years later shatter the world economy and plunge millions in poverty and desperation. Nick is a bond salesman. Perhaps his one saving grace is his rejection of an offer to engage in some insider trading.

News that stays news.

It all shatters and disintegrates. It is brought low by bad driving, murder, cowardice and fatally misplaced loyalty. At the heart of that is the wrecked life of George Wilson. Eking out a living on the edge of the ‘valley of ashes’, emotionally and often physically abandoned, the book hovers at the site of his grief for his dead wife even as the other characters rush away. Even that still moment, though, is cast away when George murders the wrong person and then kills himself.

At the conclusion of the book Nick Carraway is alone with two insights. 

First, is that perhaps the only way to redemption is to return to that passed moment before the Dutch sailors arrived at New York in an example of the magnificent prose of the novel—‘For a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.’

Nick then moves to the recognition that this is an impossibility, no matter how much we wish for that utopian return to a time before all that the USA had become by 1925—all that the USA has become by 2025. Gatsby’s redeeming feature, for Nick at the end, is his attempt to grasp that past, even as it drifts away, even as its futility becomes more apparent.

News that stays news.

Second, Nick comes to a clear understanding of Tom and Daisy as they move to protect their status and wealth against any intrusion. He has stood in the dark, watching them through a lit window and comes to this conclusion:

‘They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.’

Time for us to refuse to clean up their messes any longer.

Red Flag: Wedding Says No to New Weapons Factories

In his weekly column, Nathaniel Flakin tells us the long rebellious history of a car factory now used to make munitions.


27/04/2025

Wedding is full of old factory buildings, many of which have been converted into art spaces, such as the Pankehallen or the Gerichtshöfe. But the Pierburg factory on Scheringstraße, right next to Humboldthain park, is an exception. It is an old factory that is now… a factory.

Pierburg makes car parts, but it belongs to the German weapons consortium Rheinmetall. Their stock price has been soaring as the German government commits hundreds of billions of euros to new weapons — and they need new facilities to make demand. Hence, the Wedding workshop is going to be retooled to make munitions.

This isn’t an isolated case. In Görlitz, a factory currently making trams will soon roll tanks off the conveyor belts. According to the Red Cross, weapons factories can be considered as legitimate military targets. Who would want such a thing in a residential neighborhood, next to a public swimming pool? That’s why a demonstration against this will take place on May 10.

But this factory has a history going back to the 1850s, when this area became known as the Red Wedding.

Revolutionary History

The facility on Scheringstraße once belonged to the Berliner Maschinenbau AG (BMAG), founded by Louis Schwartzkopf. While they made all kinds of metal tools, their specialty was torpedos, which they provided to the German navy in two world wars.

However even while they were producing instruments of war, the workers there struggled to stop war. During World War I, Berlin’s munitions workers went on strike again and again. This workforce was particularly militant: they would put down their tools and march to nearby factories to pick up more workers. Of the 33 elected representatives here, 32 were independent socialists or Spartacists.

One of the leading worker-activists was Erich Habersaath, a 25-year-old toolmaker and a leader of Berlin’s socialist youth. When the revolutionary wave reached Berlin on November 9, 1918, Habersaath was marching at the head of a massive demonstration toward the Maikäferkaserne, the old “Beetle Barracks” on Chauseestraße (where the foreign intelligence service BND now has its headquarters). With their red flags, these workers called on the young soldiers to join the uprising.

The Berlin insurrection was largely peaceful. But at this barracks, officers shot into the crowd, killing Habersaath. Eleven days later, he was buried at the Cemetery of the March Fallen in Friedrichshain, where you can still see his grave. In 1951, a street in the East Berlin part of Wedding was named Habersaathstraße. That was in the news recently when a building on that street was occupied by homeless people.

Workers’ Interests

What do workers in this factory think today? I don’t think anyone can say for sure. But the millionaire bureaucrats who run the metalworkers’ union IG Metall have been generally positive about the German state’s rearmament. This kind of military Keynesianism, they say, will guarantee good jobs. 

Individual workers have every interest in well-paid, secure jobs — but the working class has no interest in producing elements of destruction. As German cities crumble due to austerity, money is being spent on things to destroy other factories.

Unions need to call for jobs — but also for workers’ control of the factory. The producers themselves, in consultation with working people across the country and the world, should decide what is needed. We need neither car parts nor bullets, but trams, trains, and e-bikes. We need schools, hospitals, and above all affordable housing.

The workers of Scheringstraße have shown, again and again for the last 150 years, that they have the power to not only shut down production of arms, but to radically change society. The demonstration on May 10 should help workers start to recognize this unstoppable power, even if it is currently latent.

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 on Friday at The Left Berlin.

“If They Discover That I Am An Activist Directly, I’ll Be Killed”

Interview with Congolese climate activist Daniel Kalalizi


26/04/2025

What is your name and what do you do?

My name is Daniel Kalalizi. I am a student of Physics in Bukavu, capital of the South Kivu province, in eastern Congo. I’m also a climate activist here in the Congo. I  work with many movements, local organizers and some international organizations.

Before the rebels of M23 arrived, our activism was about plastic waste and to oppose the use of plastics in our city, because they are very dangerous to our health. They destroy lakes, we don’t have as many fish due to plastics. Which is why, last year, before the capture of our area by the M23 rebels, we held many campaigns, actions, meetings with the local population about the use of plastics, and its consequences. And there was a rise against plastic waste.

As a physicist, I also worked with a local organization to transform our plastic waste into a cement replacement to be used for pavements.

And what has changed recently?

I’ve run many campaigns about climate change in our area and had many articles written. But it is very hard for me to move or do anything as an activist due to the occupation of the M23 rebels here, in our eastern part of Congo. They took our area two months ago. They began in Goma and one month ago they came here, to Bukavu city, the capital of South Kivu. The schools stopped due to the dangerous situation in which we were plunged. 

They fought against our defense forces, the FARDC — the army of the Congo. They fought right here in our village, where I am now. The rockets landed on the roads near our house. Since their arrival here in Bukavu and Goma, everyone has been anxious. Activists were killed and now we don’t have any in our area because if they discover that you are an activist, you will be killed directly. Because of our activism, they think that we are against their movements and that we  oppose their struggle. They kill people in whichever manner they want. 

What do the rebels want in your area?

Their first quest is to control the area because when you control the area, you can do whatever you want there, because you are considered the owner. When they are in our city, our area, they control it. 

When the war in the Congo began, it began here in its eastern part, over our mines. As we are here in the eastern part of the Congo, we have the highest level of mining and they want it. In North Kivu, in Goma, they mine and what they mine is sold in Rwanda for a low price. It is blood mining. To obtain it was to pour the blood of innocents.

We know our country. We say no Congo, no phone. That phone that I am using here was made by Congolese mining. No Congo, nothing.

They are also taking tax. If you sell flowers in the street, you will have to give something to them as tax. They control the tax, the mining, and the land. They do whatever they want. They control the movement of people, they control schools, they do whatever they want. 

They say in their speeches that they are liberators, but liberators don’t pour out the blood of innocents. They are killing people with their weapons, they are taking people by force. They are not liberators.

And what’s your personal situation?

Some of my friends who are activists, they’re in another area. I am still alone here as an activist among persons with whom I work. People don’t study very well. We have nothing to eat. If they discover that you are an activist, you will be killed. If they discover that I am an activist directly, I’ll be killed.

My friends and fellow activists have already gone because they have passports. But among our circle of activists, I’m alone and stranded here because I don’t have a passport. And without one I can’t leave. In Kinshasa I would have an opportunity to get my passport and to travel as I want. I have missed many, many occasions to participate in conferences outside Africa because I don’t have a passport. But now, as we are in this war, it is even more difficult  for me to get one.

But we are in the eastern part of the Congo, and Kinshasa is in the western part of the Congo. It will be very difficult to arrive in Kinshasa. So I have to go to the border of Rwanda, and there I can get a document which replaces a passport. This document can also allow me to travel to Rwanda and from there to Kenya or Ethiopia. From there I can take the plane and arrive in Kinshasa. 

But something which can be difficult is to have money to pay for transport in the plane. But if I have the money I can even go tomorrow and get my passport.

What are your plans if you get your passport?

I just wish to be in security, wherever that will be. But I would like to return here to continue my studies, even if we are not studying like we studied before the occupation. We were working and fighting for our country, for climate justice, for peace in our country. But the people who are here, occupying our area, came here and destroyed everything. But we will fight injustice in our area.

My target is to save my life by obtaining these documents which will allow me to do whatever I can. And I would be very very grateful for any solidarity that can help me to get there.

If you would like to support Daniel, you can donate to this fundraiser.

The Revolution Will Not Be Authorised

51 years since the Carnation Revolution, its inspirational memory has become a battleground.


25/04/2025

“Your Excellency, General Director, I hereby inform you that yesterday, 25 April 1974, several workers skipped work, evoking a revolution in the country. I would like to clarify that this revolution was not authorised superiorly […]. Since in the current legislation, absences due to revolution are not foreseen, I submit the matter to your consideration, certain it will receive the deserved attention.” – Ambrósio Silva, a public servant, head of the 3rd Section, complaining to his superior about the Carnation Revolution

On that April day, Europe’s longest dictatorship came to an end. During its more than forty years of existence, the regime’s single party, Acção Nacional Popular (National Popular Action, ANP), kept all political activity down to a minimum or condemned to clandestinity, with no freedom of expression or association. 

The regime’s favourite tool, the so-called “blue pencil”, came to symbolise the censorship that covered books, press, music, and theatre. Beyond political expression, the material conditions weren’t any better. In 1970, half of the Portuguese population didn’t have running water, around a third had no electricity, and one in every four people couldn’t read or write; 64% of whom were women. 

Those who dared to voice any sort of opposition to the Estado Novo (New State) would either have to seek shelter in exile or face persecution by PIDE/DGS — the state police, which is said to be modelled on the Gestapo (with some officers doing “training” visits to German camps), and relied on a deep network of informers. PIDE routinely carried out mental and physical torture on its prisoners including interrogation, sleep deprivation, beatings, or forcing them to stand up for hours on end. These took place both in the country in prisons such as Caxias, Peniche, or Aljube, as well as abroad in places such as Tarrafal, a concentration camp for disobedient military officers, communists or other enemies of Salazar’s regime. 

The song is a weapon — and the flowers, too

The “unauthorised revolution” was a coup led by the Movimento das Forças Armadas (MFA – Armed Forces Movement) to overthrow the dictatorial regime, whose lead figure following Salazar’s death in 1970 was Marcello Caetano. 

On 25 April 1974, MFA proclaimed in a national radio broadcaster that the “hour of liberation” had come. Earlier the same day, they had already used the radio to kick off operations, playing two songs by Paulo de Carvalho (E Depois do Adeus) and Zeca Afonso (Grândola, Vila Morena) as code signals for the military to take control of various strategic points throughout the country. In Lisbon, led by Salgueiro Maia, the most threatening action was happening: Caetano was hiding in Quartel do Carmo, from where he was eventually forced to surrender and head into exile. 

Despite the requests to stay home, people took to the streets — some scared, but the majority in support of the coup, in what would become immortalised in pictures tinted with red and carnations. The revolution, which is also called the Carnation Revolution, has a name born out of serendipity. It was a regular Thursday morning for Celeste Caeiro, on her way to work, at a restaurant that happened to be celebrating its first anniversary. Upon arrival, she was sent home and told, “a revolution is underway”. On her way out, she took some flowers with her — red carnations — meant for the restaurant’s commemoration. On her way home, passing by a group of soldiers, one asked for a cigarette. Instead, she offered him a flower, which he placed in the barrel of his gun. Others followed him, and soon the florists in the area were handing out carnations to every man in a uniform, universalising the revolution’s symbol. 

In the aftermath of 25 April 1974, the National Junta of Salvation (a subgroup of the MFA) was formed and promised free, democratic elections. In the weeks and months to come, they abolished the PIDE and censorship, and started the transition towards democracy. The period’s goals would become eternised in the “3 Ds” slogan: decolonisation, democratisation, and development. 

During 1975, the National Junta of Salvation was replaced by the Council of the Revolution, and the PREC (Ongoing Revolutionary Process) was in place. The period was known as “hot summer” due to the political and social turmoil. Banking and other sectors were nationalised, workers organised to take over companies and businesses, lands and farms were occupied. The country was divided between supporters of a revolutionary path and a more moderate one, and several political and intellectual figures visited the country in a sort of “revolutionary tourism”. In April 1975, exactly one year after the revolution, the first free elections were held to elect a Constituent Assembly, with 91% of the population participating. This was the first time women were allowed to vote. The dreams of the 1975 hot summer were crushed by the 25 of November, as liberals led a counter-coup which ended the PREC and the revolutionary period.

25 April started in Africa 

Despite the presence of the April Captains (as the MFA leaders became known) as the main pillar in the revolution’s memory, the origins of the rebellion spirit have their roots in the armed struggle that was going on in the colonies. Independence from the Salazarist regime was not given or conceded — the people in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau were taking back power. 

By the time the revolution came, Portugal had been involved in a colonial war for 13 years, with estimates pointing to 45,000 people dead and 53,000 injured. Despite the huge military costs (44% of the total state budget between 1971 and 1973), the country was having a hard time suppressing the liberation struggles. 

Some of the April Captains had fought in Guinea-Bissau, where the PAIGC had already declared independence in September 1973, and in Mozambique where the army was losing to the guerrillas from FRELIMO. The Portuguese men who were being sent to what were effectively death sentences had begun to realise that the war was lost, and that they were on the side of the oppressor. 

Fuel was added by the February 1974 publication of the book “Portugal and the Future” by General Spínola, where he argued that negotiated autonomy for the colonies was necessary as the colonial wars could not be settled by force. Inspired by this argument, around 300 officers organised the Armed Forces Movement which planned the April coup.

Memory is a fragile thing 

Every year since 1974, people have filled the streets across the country on April 25, holding red carnations, shouting slogans and singing popular, revolutionary songs. The Carnation Revolution, as the main pillar of Portuguese democracy, has been an undeniable truth. That was, until the far-right narrative made its way into the popular discourse, 50 members of parliament were elected for the party Chega in 2024. The far-right party is not only racist, sexist and xenophobic, but it also draws inspiration from Salazar’s regime. They even used the slogan “god, homeland, family” (one of Estado Novo’s catchphrases) in earlier campaigns, and try to draw similarities between the far-right and what they call the “far-left”. 

Beyond their electoral results, Chega’s danger especially lies in the infiltration of its narrative in society. Recent studies have shown that hate speech against immigrants is stronger and that hate-based attacks are more frequent than before. One of the ways in which this is visible is in the dispute over 25 April’s memory; for around 50 years, it was held as a marker of democracy and the founding moment of the history of the country. More recently, some equivalence is wrongfully being sought between 25 April and the counter-coup on the 25 November. Starting in 2019, the liberal and conservative parties have attempted to mark it as an official commemorative date, using slogans such as “25 November always, communism never again”, in a appropriation of the popular “25 April always, fascism never again”. 
Portugal is faced with severe social problems such as a rocketing housing crisis, low wages and the destruction of the national health service, to name a few. These haunt the 1974 promise for a just, complete democracy. This is also why people will take to the streets today, and next year, and the following one, holding red carnations up high and singing “The Song Is A Weapon”. But April is not just a faraway memory for those who were there; it is a lighthouse for all the months to come, for all those who are loyal to its meaning.