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“The state is not going to save you”

Part two of our interview with Migrantifa Berlin discusses the politics of language, commemoration politics and the basis of an anti-racist movement

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03/04/2026

This article is the seventh piece in the series Neo-Nazis and Anti-Fascism in Germany since the 1990s. The rest of the series can be found here. It is also the second part in a two-part interview with Migrantifa Berlin, the first part is available here.

You are a migrant group, but you work in German. For some of our readers that might seem contradictory. Why is working in German important?

Mala: We actually discussed this question for a very long time – what terminology we want to use, and how we define ourselves as a group. The basic points that we arrived at were, first, that we understand ourselves as a group for all people affected by racism, and we intentionally formulate that in a very open way. But in reality – and especially as the group developed over the years – our language politics mainly follows from the actual composition of the group.

We are not a diaspora group. We are not a group made up of people who all come from the same country and organize together in exile. Most of us are second or third generation migrants – often described as people with a Migrationshintergrund [migration background] in Germany – and most of us were largely socialized here. Given this, using English as our main language would actually exclude many people. We do have comrades who mainly speak English or who speak German as a second or third language. But if we decided to run the entire group in English, in the hope of attracting a different kind of migrant community, we would lose just as many people. Especially considering the kind of neighbourhood work we do and the neighbourhoods that we come from, German is simply the common denominator. It makes us more broadly accessible than working in English would.

Sam: And specifically in Berlin, English can create a different kind of accessibility in many spaces. For example, in refugee self-organization the working language is often English. But for the areas we are active in – Kreuzberg, Neukölln, and Wedding – and especially for the communities we come from, German is simply the more practical language.

Mala: I’ll tell you an anecdote. I once went to a café with my parents where everyone working there only spoke English. Totally fine. My mother tried to order in German because she only speaks Turkish and German. When she realized that the person only spoke English, she smiled and tried to communicate by pointing at things. And the waitress was really unfriendly about it – rolling her eyes and everything. And I thought: this is exactly what you mean about the traditions that certain languages stand in. In Berlin, English isn’t just inclusive – it’s also the language of very privileged expats who come here and then roll their eyes at my migrant mother when she wants to order in German. 

I think that anecdote captures a lot. What about other languages? How multilingual is your work?

Sam: A lot of it comes down to translation. Over the years, especially in our neighborhood work, we’ve tried to translate almost everything we distribute in writing. But importantly, we translate into the languages actually present in specific districts. Arabic and Turkish are very prominent languages, but Berlin – especially towards the north and the east – has many other languages as well. The open composition of our group reflects that reality quite well, and our membership often mirrors the communities present in Berlin. 

In addition to this multilingual aspect, it’s also important for us to confront reactionary or conservative tendencies within migrant communities. Examples include clearly naming Turkish fascist structures, or understanding how such groups sometimes try to appropriate Palestine solidarity. In such cases we insist on a left revolutionary perspective, which often means saying “neither this nor that” – because there are very few well-developed analyses that aren’t either state ideology, or something similarly limited. So we also argue internally and debate a lot. Being affected by racism doesn’t automatically produce a political position; we still have to develop one. For example, working together with Sudanese comrades can challenge simplistic narratives about an “Arab identity” being inherently liberatory. 

You mentioned political education as part of your practical work. Could you say what kind of educational work you do? 

Sam: We try to use concrete political developments as entry points for broader analytical and historical discussions. For example, around the anniversary of the Hanau attack, we ask: “why do we say Hanau is not an isolated case?” We turn that into an open educational format explaining these continuities, similar to what your series is trying to show. I think that many of these cases and experiences haven’t been very present in people’s minds, regardless of whether they grew up here, or whether they haven’t been in Germany very long. The longer the group exists and the younger the membership gets, the more we notice that many of them have never even heard about Rostock or the NSU. So we try to constantly return to the question: what tradition do we see ourselves in, and how does a historical understanding help us respond to what’s happening now? 

Mala: Especially in the German left there’s often this distinction made between theory and practice. We don’t really see it that way. We need to know our history, and we need to be able to analyze the situation we’re in. To do that, it’s important to learn things and to know things, which means reading and exchanging ideas with each other. The point of being in a group isn’t to be the smartest person in the room or the one who talks the most. As a group we have the ambition to learn together: sharing texts, reading them together, giving presentations, having discussions. It’s the responsibility of the group to create that space, because people come from very different backgrounds. 

In Germany generally, but also in Migrantifa’s work, commemoration seems to play a much more central role than I’m used to from my home country. What is the purpose behind this focus on commemoration?

Mala: Well, it becomes important in Germany, a country where our lives count for less, and where there is often no official remembrance at all. To be clear, our goal is not to fight for official remembrance. What we want is for these things to not happen in the first place. But in the 1990s you could have a chancellor saying we “don’t want mourning tourism here”. Or when Emiş Gürbüz, whose son Sedat Gürbüz was murdered in Hanau, raises questions about the actions of the police while speaking at an official memorial, they are attacked by all the German parties. In a context where people are murdered and their lives erased, it’s important that we take the space to ensure these people are not forgotten. That space doesn’t really exist in Germany otherwise. 

But we don’t stop there. That’s why on the anti-racist day of struggle, February 19th, we hold both a commemoration and a demonstration. It’s not only about creating a space to mourn and remember our siblings. It’s also about understanding and analyzing why this happened and what we can do to prevent it from happening again. 

Sam: And I think on another level it also has a lot to do with our approach to political action. If we were a mostly male group, or one that didn’t operate with a feminist basic consensus, the kind of commemorative and mourning work we do would probably look very different. Because I think many people’s first emotional connections – the things that bring them into political action – are often overlooked. In the classic narrative of left political action, it’s all about anger and the urge to act. But what often gets lost is grief and the feeling of being overwhelmed. We try to connect to these feelings. When we say things like “from grief to anger” or “to remember means to fight”, we don’t mean that the first has to disappear for the second to happen. We see them as necessarily connected, and we try to create spaces where that connection can exist. 

One good example of resistance to state authority over who can be mourned is the small memorial at Oranienplatz for victims of police violence and racist violence, which was installed in 2020. For two years it was repeatedly torn down by the district authorities every few weeks or months. It’s not even a large monument. This memorial pushes back against the idea that people affected by the violence of this state should only mourn quietly or privately. Instead, remembrance, grief, and memory can produce resistance.

Where do you see things going in terms of Germany’s political situation, including the rightward shift of institutional politics and growth of neo-Nazi groups?

Sam: One really important lesson from 2020 is not to accept easy liberal answers. That’s a role we still have to play, especially in antiracist spaces. Refusing to buy into these narratives that say we just need more diversity and inclusion, or more party members in Die Linke or Die Grünen, in order to defeat the fascists. I’m exaggerating, but in many subtler ways this is still being sold to us. And I think we have to keep intervening there and saying “the state is not going to save you”. Instead, we have to act and let analysis guide us.

Mala: Very often when people talk about the Nazi period, they like to imagine that they themselves would have been in the resistance. People imagine difficult times as this huge catastrophe that suddenly crashes down on them, which is the point at which they imagine they would act. But that’s not how it works. If the AfD were in power, it would be bad, but Germany didn’t need the AfD to ban the KPD, to help build Frontex, to let thousands of people drown in the Mediterranean, and to tear people out of their sleep and put them barefoot onto deportation planes. This is already happening.

And what do you think the Left should focus on in this situation? What would you say to your comrades reading this?

Sam: Connect struggles. Because the forms of state violence we face are the same. Many of the forms of repression that have targeted Palestine solidarity, Rote Hilfe or the Budapest Komplex in recent years, for example, were developed over the decades before with Kurdish comrades, and even before that with the persecution of other leftists. Seeing these continuities in the present as a point of connection is important. This means developing forms of action that involve much more coalition-building than might be comfortable. Like sitting down with a union, where not everyone has perfect anti-racist vocabulary, but it’s clear that the strategic or political goal is shared – we need to focus a lot more on that. 

And I think what’s really important in the Berlin context is to take neighbourhoods along when we take to the streets. Not to get caught up in this split between politically active people and the odd public sphere; this idea makes us vulnerable. That’s what neighborhood work is about.

Mala: Yeah, everything is fucked up, but we shouldn’t fall into dispair. We can’t do everything at once, but every person can contribute a little, or at least keep the little flame burning towards revolution. This flame is kept alive through us.

“People believe that there’s something terrible going on in Gaza and nothing is happening to stop it”

Interview with Mimi, mother of Daniel from the Ulm 5


Hi Mimi. Thanks for talking to us. Can you start just by introducing yourself?

I’m the mother of Daniel, who is one of the Ulm five. I’m from Dublin but currently living in London.

The trial of the Ulm 5 starts on 27th April. What is your perspective about what is happening?

Five young people are accused of engaging in a direct action at Elbit systems in Ulm, South-West Germany. Their aim was to prevent genocide – as Elbit is the main suplier of weapons to the genocide in Gaza. Property was damaged. No-one was hurt.

They stayed at the site and waited for the police to arrest them. Nobody was hurt in the action, and they were arrested peacefully. Since they were arrested on September 8th, they have been been in five different prisons in Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria.

We’re not allowed to speak with the people we visit about the case. So when I visit Daniel, I haven’t had a single conversation with them about the issues. But I do know that post-October 7th, Daniel, like so many people, was protesting in Berlin for nearly two years.

They were becoming increasingly concerned about how the police were treating protesters, and about how protests in Berlin and elsewhere in the world was doing nothing. Everybody was just talking, and the genocide was ramping up with tens of thousands of people killed, even tens of thousands of children.

It must be difficult trying to support Daniel when you’re living in a different country

It’s a huge strain on the family and on the families of the others in the five who are from other countries. We’ve just made a decision as a family that we need to visit Daniel at every opportunity that we have.

We’re only allowed to visit once a fortnight for 30 minutes, but we travel to Ulm for those 30 minutes every fortnight, because keeping that connection going is absolutely crucial.

Can you tell how Daniel’s morale is?

From what I can see, Daniel seems really well-focussed. Daniel is wry, funny, observant, thoughtful, even though they are in solitary confinement, 23 hours a day in a single cell with almost no access to any reading matter of choice.

They get just one hour a week in the gym, and that hour a week doesn’t always happen. It’s a very brutal experience for people who haven’t been convicted of anything.

I have family background in Germany, and know a lot about Germany, but I didn’t know about Untersuchungshaft and pre-trial detention. You can be put away for months on end in solitary confinement, on a suspicion alone. These five are going to have been in U-haft, some in solitary, for almost for 11 months before this trial is over

And they haven’t been convicted of anything

They’ve been through repeated bail appeals – Haftprüfungen and Haftbeschwerde. Each time the judges in various courts have heard these, they’ve given us a sense into their thinking. In a judge-only trial system, I’m concerned. Because they’re musing on all kinds of things about the nature of the action, the character and motivation of the defendants, and their likely behaviour were they to be released – all without hearing evidence from the defense.

But from a local level, up to the Oberlandesgericht in Stuttgart, each time they rehash or come up with with new ideas about why the five should not be allowed to be released. I don’t see the evidence.

There’s a campaign around the Ulm five. What are the primary demands of the campaign?

From day one, the lawyers have been asking for them to be released out of pre-trial detention. This action, for which they have not been convicted, caused only property damage. Nobody was hurt.

They’re alleging that these people are members of a criminal organization, which brings with it Section 129, with these incredibly restrictive surveillance activities that the police engage in. That’s part of the very difficult conditions that they’re being held in because they can’t speak about the case- They also have all of their letters surveilled. There’s a translator and police representatives present in every visit.

My ask would also be for people to attend the trial and observe it, because the media have been remarkably quiet on the topic up to now, and I would like there to be eyes on this trial, so that people can see not just the law play out, but also justice happen.

What are you specifically doing as part of the campaign? You’re visiting Daniel. You’re speaking at meetings. What else are you able to do?

I’m quite involved with a group of families, we’re looking to see how we can support prisoners and support one another as families. It’s extremely difficult when you’re having to go through this as a family and visiting somebody abroad for a 30 minute visit,

You’re based in London. Do you see parallels with what’s happening with the Ulm Five and with Palestine action in London?

I am not aware of any connections between them. But I do see a criminalization in Germany of protest and an increasing ramping up of the use of Section 129. Recently UN Special Rapporteurs called out Germany for using Section 129 against climate protesters.

This sense in multiple countries that protest should be shut down is really my core concern, the idea that citizens need to be stopped from protesting, that’s my biggest ask of all. Why is Germany using a rule that comes with huge restrictions on people’s liberty to create an air of menace around people who see an issue of justice.

In the case of Letzte Generation, it’s about the future of the planet. We haven’t been able to speak with the Ulm 5 about their motivation, but I understand it to be about the genocide. The world is standing by. And the German state’s response to it has been to use Section 129 to shut them down completely.

And do you think that Germany is being worse about this than other countries?

I think we’re seeing repression around the world ramping up. I don’t think it’s exclusive to Germany.

What can people do to support the Ulm five. They can go to hearings. Is there anything else that people can do?

Our big ask is for there to be support at the trial. Repeatedly in the bail hearings, the judges have used the mere presence of protesters to claim that this constituted evidence of a professionally run organization. I find it absolutely astonishing that people protesting about the criminalization of human rights defenders are supposed to constitute some kind of evidence of an organization. It makes no sense to me whatsoever.

But even though judges are attacking protesters, you do want people to be there?

Yeah, because If we melt away and hide, that’s presumably what some people want. What I would really like is for there to be more visibility for the fact that over half of Germans believe that there’s a genocide happening in Gaza, and that was as of last year. I’ll bet you that number is higher now. Over 60% of them believe that there are war crimes taking place in Gaza.

Now you have to ask yourself, if that’s what people in the country believe, then what are we doing here? Why are we throwing people in jail? I find it sort of incomprehensible, really.

Do you think that people know about the case?

No.

Staatsräson makes things really complicated in Germany. It often confuses people, it creates the idea that you can’t criticise Israel. And I think the confusion of criticism of policies and actions of the current government of Israel can make people feel uneasy.

That doesn’t take away even in that context, over half of people in Germany see genocide in Gaza, and over two-thirds see war crimes taking place. People believe that there’s something terrible going on in Gaza and nothing is happening to stop it.

When and where are the court cases going to be?

The court hearings start on 27th April. Unfortunately, the court has seen fit to schedule the trial on 16 random days across 3½ months from the end of April until the end of July. So a Monday here, a Friday there.

Do you think this is deliberate?

I have no idea as to what the Court’s reasoning for this is.

Where will it be?

It’s going to be held in Stuttgart, in the State Security chamber at Stammheim. For a case of property damage where nobody was even vaguely hurt in any way.

Do you have any final words?

I’m Daniel’s mum, so along with supporting the other families, all my attention and focus is on visiting Daniel, hoping that Daniel’s doing okay.

The Ulm 5 families have set up a number of financial appeals to help them travel to the court hearings. Please give generously to at least one of the following appeals:

Relearning the ABC DEs

The Academic Boycott Campaign Germany


01/04/2026

Across Europe, university campuses remain key battlegrounds in the struggle for Palestinian liberation. This is particularly true of German universities, where a new movement is emerging from the growing wave of solidarity with Palestine to reshape the political landscape of academic responsibility. The Academic Boycott Campaign Deutschland (ABC DE) brings together students, researchers, academics, workers and staff to redefine accountability and solidarity in higher education, and forms a nationwide coalition for a long-term academic boycott of Israeli academia and institutional complicity at German universities and institutions.

Exposing academic complicity

Israeli universities are embedded in the Israeli state’s military-industrial complex and actively contribute to the occupation of Palestinian land and the apartheid and genocide of Palestinian life. German universities and academic institutions serve as strategic partners in the Israeli colonial apparatus. Through access to research, funding, infrastructure, and scientific and political legitimacy—including programs such as the German-Israeli Project Cooperation of the DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft or German Research Foundation, a publicly funded organization with an annual budget of over 3.3 billion Euros, which offers significant support to research in science, engineering, and the humanities) —hundreds of collaborations link German academia to Israeli institutions. 

German higher education is thus directly embedded into the political economy of growing militarisation and the material reproduction of Israeli apartheid. Beyond simply buttressing Israeli research initiatives, these partnerships normalise the ongoing occupation and genocide of Palestinians. Advocating for Palestine and challenging institutional complicity within German academia is not a simple matter of “freedom of expression” but of moral and ethical responsibility. As state-funded institutions, German universities are not neutral: they are instruments of state policy that require close scrutiny, especially amid genocide.

Why academic boycott? 

The Academic Boycott Campaign targets the intellectual infrastructure that sustains Israeli apartheid and occupation. ABC DE’s objective is to confront these institutions’ complicity directly and to raise political questions universities can no longer ignore: how is public money being used? Which research agendas does it serve? What moral responsibility accompanies academic freedom? 

Aligned with PACBI (Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel), ABC DE acts on Palestinian civil society’s call to boycott, sanction, and divest from entities enabling the apartheid state of Israel. 

In particular, ABC DE calls on universities to: 

  • Disclose, review, and terminate complicit cooperation agreements with Israeli state institutions embedded in the military‑industrial complex.
  • Acknowledge the genocide of Palestinians and uphold international law.
  • Adopt boycott measures through democratic structures led by students and academics.
  • Build real and lasting partnerships with Palestinian scholars and universities.
  • Guarantee free discussion about Palestine without police repression on campus.
  • Cease all forms of military research.

Universities must be spaces of critical research and learning, not partners in genocidal warfare or militarised violence. Academic boycott is an act of material solidarity with Palestinian self-determination and a direct challenge to the ways public and research funds enable war crimes.

The Academic Boycott Now Conference in Berlin, January 23-25, 2026

The campaign was launched at the Academic Boycott Now Conference in Berlin, which was held between January 23-25, 2026. The conference featured three days of lectures, workshops, and other collaborative events which analysed the role of Israeli and German academia in maintaining the ongoing occupation, apartheid, and genocide. Outside of these events, representatives from collectives at 35 universities and institutions around Germany met to develop and ratify a framework for a coordinated, nationwide academic boycott campaign.

Over the course of the weekend, seven speaker panels probed the realities of academic complicity; the growing militarisation of universities in Germany and abroad; the imbrication of academia with settler-colonial modes of extraction and exploitation; and the possibilities for solidarity and coalition-building in the struggle for Palestinian liberation. Collectives also participated in workshops hosted by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI), as well as in skill-sharing sessions. These events allowed organisers from across Germany to exchange experiences and strategies for fighting academic repression, conducting research into academic complicity, and developing media campaigns. 

Of particular note was the conference’s keynote lecture by Dr. Maya Wind, author of Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom and postdoctoral researcher at the University of California-Riverside; and Dr. Mezna Qato, director of the Margaret Anstee Centre for Global Studies at Cambridge University.  Drs. Wind and Qato outlined the continued urgency of a boycott of Israeli academia, emphasising the ways in which Israeli universities remain integral to the settler-colonial project of the Israeli apartheid state. Through specialised training programmes, weapons development, and various forms of knowledge production, Israeli institutions are not only complicit in state violence—they actively enable and sustain the ongoing genocide of Palestinians. 

The necessity for a nationwide academic boycott

In July 2025, UN Special Rapporteur Francesa Albanese published her report “From economy of occupation to economy of genocide” (A/HRC/59/23), detailing how corporations and public institutions—including German universities—profit off of the genocide in Gaza. Germany’s highest-ranked university, the Technical University of Munich (TUM), was explicitly named as a direct collaborator with Israeli weapons technology development.

According to the report, TUM and Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) received more than $868,000 to co-develop green hydrogen aerial refuelling technology, which is directly relevant to IAI military drones used in Gaza. Beyond this specific partnership, countless similar collaborations have been detailed in thoroughly researched reports and investigations by the collective Academics for Justice Munich. 

Similar patterns can be seen at numerous other German institutions: A report by the collective Not In Our Name TU exposed how the Technical University in Berlin coordinated the MedWater project between 2017 and 2021, under Germany’s Federal Ministry of Education and Research. Calling the project “Water as a Global Resource,”  TU Berlin partnered with Israel’s state water company, Mekorot, the backbone of what Al Haq and other groups have called  “water apartheid.” The project materially supported Israel’s apartheid water regime and violated international and German law, using 1.8 million € of public funds.  

Beyond the campus

Universities have always been political spaces. During apartheid rule in South Africa, students led the boycott movement in Germany and in other states in the so-called Global North, which in turn put significant economic and material pressure on governments to disavow the Apartheid government. ABC DE continues this legacy of student activism in its current campaign. Today, the struggle unfolds in a context where basic conditions for dissent are under attack. Irene Khan, the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of Expression and Opinion, warned during her visit to Germany in late January and early February that freedom of expression in the country is clearly threatened. This is especially true in the context of pro-Palestine organising in academic, cultural, and artistic spaces, through criminalization and surveillance.  

Yet the amplified repression of pro-Palestinian voices on university campuses must be understood alongside other affronts to German civil society. In Bavaria, a planned amendment to the Higher Education Innovation Act would introduce uniform expulsion and ban re-enrolment for students found to be repeatedly “disrupting university peace” through protests and other forms of activism. The same amendment sets provision for similarly penalising students who violate the Bavarian state’s ban on “gender-inclusive language,” such as using an asterisk, colon, or other grammatical forms to indicate gender neutrality. In this way, attacks on pro-Palestinian activism must be understood as a litmus test for the repression of all marginalised groups in Germany. By reasserting German universities as sites of struggle, the academic boycott seeks not only to expose institutional complicity in the ongoing genocide and apartheid, but also to redefine academic labour as collective struggle. 

What’s next?

The signatories of ABC DE’s campaign resolution represent student, faculty, and academic staff collectives from over 40 groups at universities and institutions around Germany. Since the formal initiation of the campaign in late January, ABC DE has continued to cultivate networks and working groups which allow these collectives to coordinate nationally, and has developed relationships with organisations working to end academic and institutional complicity abroad. 

One major initiative of ABC DE is to support the PACBI-led campaign to exclude Israel and complicit universities from Horizon Europe, the European Union’s “key funding programme for research and innovation.” Between 2021 and 2024, Israeli universities and academics received over €1.1 billion in funding through Horizon Europe. These funds have directly supported the development of weapons technologies used in the ongoing genocide: for example, €50 million in Horizon Europe funding underwrote the development of the Skylord drone system, which has been deployed by the IDF in Gaza.

On average, Israel has received more funds through this programme than any European country. However, since 2025, Horizon support to Israel has dropped by nearly 70%—a strong indication that targeted organising and activism against institutional complicity is effective. While ending the Horizon Europe programme would require unanimous support from all 27 EU member states, a simple majority vote could suspend the funding programme in order to encourage a formal review of Israeli academia’s role in the ongoing genocide. ABC DE assists PACBI’s mobilisation in multiple ways, including developing thorough research reports of complicit Horizon Europe partnerships on German university campuses, and assisting collectives in communicating with faculty and university administrators. 

Between April 20 and 26, 2026, ABC DE will coordinate the first-ever Israeli Apartheid Week (IAW) at institutions across Germany. First held at the University of Toronto in 2005, IAW is an annual week-long initiative on university campuses which seeks to highlight the Israeli apartheid regime’s human rights violations while celebrating Palestinian culture and resistance. Universities across Germany will host events including lectures, panels, workshops, film screenings, info stands, teach-ins, poetry readings, research sessions, and more. Information about publicly accessible events will be shared on ABC DE’s Instagram account (@academicboycottnow).

Conclusion

At a time of deep repression on German university campuses, as Palestinian voices are systematically silenced, an intellectual and institutional boycott campaign is not merely a symbolic gesture. It is a deliberate, organised strategy grounded in the fundamental principle that no institution can claim moral legitimacy while enabling genocide and apartheid. 

Hell is Light

Learning German at 40


I am German by nationality but I had spoken no German before I turned 40. I moved to Germany almost four years ago, turned 41 a few months ago, and I have just passed my B1 level in German.   

I have been German by nationality since the age of 6, and since then I have had a paradoxical relationship with my German passport. On the one hand, I have been privileged to have a passport that allows me mobility; on the other hand, I have lived my whole life burdened by it. I have been stopped, interrogated and held at checkpoints, borders, roads and airports around the world: Palestine, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Greece, Romania, Hungary, Germany—ou name it. It was always this hollow and empty question that tries to box people in tiny notebooks and tracking devices called passports: Where are you from? How do you hold a German passport but speak no German? You are Palestinian but you were born in Jordan? It is like these border security officers have never heard of globalisation or Israeli-settler colonialism before. 

My family comes from a small village in The Colonised Territories of the West Bank in Palestine, called Kafr Al Deek (the village of roosters). A rural village of almost 6 thousand people. Most family names in Palestine tend to take after animals and professions, like Smith or Fisher in English, and Müller or Hahn in German. My father (born before The Nakba/The Catastrophe of 1948) came to Germany during the 1960s as a guestworker from Palestine, studied mechanical engineering, married and had kids with a German lady and worked in Germany for over 20 years before he got divorced with two kids and returned alone to The Levant in the early 1980s as a project manager. My mother had then been exiled from Palestine to Jordan subsequent to the 1967 Arab-Israeli war (The Naksa/The Setback). I was then born in Jordan, and we spent my childhood travelling between Palestine, Jordan and Germany. Aged 16, I could travel by myself with a green German document/passport. So, during spring and summer vacations, my family came to Germany, and I went to Palestine alone. This continued till I moved permanently to the United Kingdom in 2005, aged 20. By then, I had solely spoken Arabic and English, even though we always had Germans and Arab-Germans at our house. During these gatherings, my father spoke German, my mother communicated in Arabic, and I in English. Between 2005 and 2021, I finished a Master’s in World Literatures, a PhD in Postcolonial Literature and Cultural Studies, published two books and numerous articles, and English technically became my first language. I rarely spoke or wrote anything in Arabic, and the only things I could say in German were: 

ich verstehe kein Deutsch (“I do not understand German”), Eckball (“corner kick”), Scheiße (“shit”), Schnitzel and Rouladen and Wurst (all food dishes and recipes), and probably counting from one to ten. 

I am a Palestinian with a German passport: the worst nightmare for an Israeli. Allegedly, I am an extension of both Hitler and Arafat. How lucky! Germans might not find this funny. I have realised that Germans are not big fans of sarcasm. I however have found many sarcastic and funny linguistic contrasts between German and English. For example, Hell is German for light in English. Träume is German for dreams. Gift is German for poison. Wo (sounds like “who”) means where, and Wer (sounds like “where”) means who. Tief (sounds like “thief”) means deep, and Dieb (sounds like “deep”) means thief. Fast is German for “almost”. Chef means “boss/manager”. Kind means “child”. Rock means “skirt”. Bald means “soon”. Brand means “fire”. And Wand means “wall”. I have an endless list of these translations that creates a wall of synonyms that are in fact antonyms hitting you severely with mind games every time you try to shuttle between languages and answer to a question on the spot. Stating numbers in German, furthermore, resembles that in Arabic, but opposes English. Numbers in German are gigantic in writing, nonetheless, and you are not allowed spaces to breathe in-between tens and hundreds and so on. For example, 9999 writes as follows: neuntausendneunhundertneunundneunzig. I indeed have 9999 problems in German, but numbers are not even one of them. 

German is not that bad though. It is one of the most philosophical languages in the world. German has significantly contributed to existential philosophy and metaphysics. Namely and famously, for example, Martin Heidegger’s philosophy of Dasein (sein means “being” and da means “there”), which he adopted for the meaning of existence. Also, Johann Goethe’s concept of Weltliteratur (“world literature”), as he envisioned a world where national literature is less important compared to a transnational and intracultural exchange of global ideas and letters. Other examples can be found in compound German words such as Weltschmerz, which is a German word that means “world pain”. Weltflucht is German for “escaping the world”. Schadenfreude is a German word that expresses joy derived from the misfortunes of others. Zweisamkeit expressesa state of feeling lonely together with someone else. German can also be, surprise surprise, very compassionate and cute. Schatz means treasure and is often used to call someone’s beloved, like “baby” or “darling”. Ciao Kakao is used to say goodbyes and literally translates to “ciao cocoa”. Frühjahrsmüdigkeit expresses a state of fatigue generated by change of seasons and weather. How empathetic, considerate and vulnerable! There is more: Heimscheisser means someone who can only poop at home. Eier Schaukeln literally means “swinging my balls”, which implies doing nothing or relaxing. German can also be fun, like Legos, where you get to mix-and-match different words and come up with whole new meanings. Examples of such compound words are: Handschuhe (hand + shoes) means “gloves”, Flugzeug (flying + thing) means “airplane”, Streicheleinheit (to stroke + a unit + of cuddles) is used to suggest a session of cuddles. 

II

Our classroom started with 15 students mainly from Iran, Ukraine, Russia, and Nigeria. The beginning was very relaxed and slow-paced. On our first day, we were taught how to write an E-mail in case of absence. I raised my hand and asked if we could start with the alphabet instead. We were then asked to introduce ourselves: name, country of origin, and age. The teacher pointed out each of the students’ countries on a map of the world behind her, but not Palestine. I did not make much of it. Perhaps she forgot. Perhaps she wanted to be “politically correct”. I could have raised my hand and said something, but we were not allowed to speak in English. Plus, I had already created enough tension with my first request to start with the alphabet. You could cut the tension in the classroom with a knife. All of the students in the classroom were refugees and asylum-seekers except for two: one of whom was from Türkiye and the other from Serbia, and they had paid for the classes from their own money. The rest had either temporarily lived in hotels or were still awaiting decisions on their asylum-seeking applications and lived in camps. What am I? Technically, I am not a refugee. I did leave England because of all the complications in the aftermath of Brexit, but I quit my job and still came here willingly to visit my family and stay. An immigrant? Why are we labeled a billion branches of being migrants when we are abroad, but Americans and Germans are called “expats”? “First World” privileges extend, apparently, from veto to language. Wait! Germany is not even one of the five permanent members (The USA, China, France, Russia, and The UK) to have an absolute veto over Security Council resolutions in The United Nations. 

We had two teachers who rotated certain weekly days between them, and they were two of the sweetest and most helpful instructors who did everything they could to make German as tolerable as possible. I am also indebted to the German government for paying for my German language courses. I had to apply to the German immigration and refugee office to be granted funding. The application form required a mandatory section to fill in the applicant’s country of origin. It had neither Palestine nor Germany amongst its options. Palestine is not recognised by Germany as an independent state, and you cannot be granted a German nationality without passing an official B1 (Level 3) German test in the first place. What am I? Who am I? I attached an extra piece of paper and explained my situation to the Refugee and Immigration Office. 

Once upon a time, I woke up, like Frantz Kafka’s claustrophobic and insomniac Gregor Samsa, to find myself a Palestinian exile. Human by nature, German by nationality, Jordanian by birth, Palestinian by descent and origin, and writing in English, I have problems answering the question “where are you from?” Such question boxes one within boundaries and asks you to name geographies and places on the geopolitical map of the world whereby it inhales you to be associated with the whereabouts of an accident called Birth, or an absent presence that is called History. On the one hand, having to state singular places surely glorifies the triumphalism of geography and cultural borderlines; on the other, it marginalises the celebration of multiple cultural experiences. No singular or brief answer will ever suffice to answer such a question. It is rather the transitory metamorphoses throughout various and diverse cultural experiences that should count. 

III

The classroom became bigger. Syrians, more Ukrainians, more Russians, Indians, and more Iranians joined in. Instead of 15 students, we became over 25. The classroom was equipped enough, but from my experience in teaching, language classes should not normally exceed 15 students per class. Germany however was still receiving refugees in abundance. Its involvement in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict has cost its economy dearly. Uncalculated bonding with everything American has also cost Germany dearly. And I am not only talking about politics and economy here. Even national German radio stations play American music 24/7. German socialist culture risks being diminished by American Pepsi-Colaisation and McDonaldisation (the process where fast-food principles—efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control—dominate American society, driven by capitalist expansion). Even German Schlager music (German pop music) is being replaced by American hip-hop in German Christmas markets. Last year, 50 Cent’s Candy Shop echoed in Hamburg’s city centre, the second largest city in Germany, through loud speakers for 3 months in a row. Hamburg is certainly no American ghetto, but it is slowly turning into one. DHL is American, German politics are becoming more and more American, German Christmas markets and play fairs are turning into American fun parks. Germans, however, frown and are upset if you spoke to them, god forbid, in English. Some will even claim they do not understand English when in fact they do. 

“I’ll take you to the candy shop, I’ll let you lick the lollipop, go ahead, girl, don’t you stop, keep goin’ til you hit the spot.” At its core, 50 Cent’s song serves as a metaphorical exploration of desire and attraction through the playful imagery of sweets where a girl is being seduced by candies to eventually become the provider’s bitch. This imagery very much sounds like a fitting metaphor to the American-German relationship on so many levels: politically, economically, culturally.  Did you know that German students are learning about current American propaganda in their German schools this very day? My friend’s son has just come back from an exchange school programme in America. The first cultural event on the tour: a visit to the Coca Cola factory. How fascinating! 

Back to the classroom. The German language has two main types of articles—definite (der, die, das / “the”) and indefinite (ein, eine / “a/an”). These definite and indefinite articles change based on gender, number, and cases. While there are only 3 nominative singular forms, there are roughly 11-12 total variations (der, die, das, den, dem, des, ein, eine, einen, einem, eines) which extend across nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive cases. I promise you, this is not black magic or some sort of Voodoo curse. This is basic 101 German grammar. What I do not understand, however, is the following: why is a skirt (Der Rock) masculine and a pair of trousers (Die Hose) is feminine in German? And why is a fork feminine (Die Gabel), a spoon (Der Löffel) masculine, and a knife (Das Messer) neutral? Well, this is Germany; you do not get to ask the questions. You only do as you are told—unless you are American. Or alternatively, you learn how to be independent, or an orphan, from this children’s German song: 

The child: Wo? Wo? Wo? (Where? Where? Where?)

Wo ist meine Mama? (Where is mother?)

Wer hat sie gesehen? (Who has seen her?) 

Bist du meine Mama? (Are you my mother?) 

An adult female: Nein, du musst weitergehen! (No, you must move on!) 

Towards the end of the course, our teacher tried to motivate us by asking us to study hard for the national German language test. She made sure to remind us that passing this test will make sure we do not waste any more money of the German taxpayers. What about the taxpayer’s money, I thought, that goes to Israel and its ammunition overseas? The taxpayers work, taxes are deducted from their salaries, the German government sponsors Israel, Israel kills, bombards and destroys Palestinian homes and land, then Palestinians end up studying German in Hamburg. I am here because THEY kicked us out from THERE. I am HERE because tax money HERE sponsors killers THERE. My being here is the result of German guilt from killing Jewish people who have been replicating what had been done to them by Germans in the past to the Palestinians now. Antisemitic? Well, antisemitism is a European concept created when Jewish people were kicked out of Europe by white people. In fact, Jewish people lived and prospered happily in Iraq, Palestine and other parts of the Levant and West Asia till the establishment of the Zionist movement in the late 19th century. Most importantly, you cannot accuse me of antisemitism every time I am angry. You are trying to dehumanise me, and I am trying to revoke that. It is called resistance to imperialism. 

Back to the classroom. I wanted to pass my national German language test, nonetheless. I am very goal-oriented. I also speak Arabic: a language with over 10-million-word variations and overly complicated grammar; whereas English and German put together barely add up to a million. I wanted to challenge myself to learn something new after 40, add a further cultural identity to my existence, and experience what it feels like to be a student again after 20 years of being a teacher. I also wanted to narrow the cultural distance between myself and German society. After all, language is identity. It is a cultural entity, not only a linguistic means of communication. This, however, turned out to be very naïve. I passed the test. Yet, I am now just an Ausländer (German for “foreigner”, and literally translates to outsider) with a B1 language certificate. Nothing has changed. Normalisation of repression and oppression in Germany will still go on, whether I know that a spoon is masculine or not. I just wish Germans were as free and liberating in their politics and attitude as they are with their bodies and nudity, i.e. their free body culture (Freikörperkultur / FKK). 

And so, I am forced to be in rainy Germany instead of sunny Palestine, never sure who I am or where I belong—but hopefully not for too long. Because, as Germans say: “Alles hat ein Ende, nur die Wurst hat zwei” (Everything has an end, only the sausage has two). 

Love & sexuality

A Marxist analysis


“I don’t need paradise Leo, nor eternal love.

I want a world so reasonable that one can live in it as a human being.”

– Rosa Luxemburg, 1899

It’s one of humanity’s oldest illusions that love exists outside of history and regardless of the relations of production. We like to believe the heart “follows no rules” as if it floated above the material world. But the heart beats in a body that works, eats, suffers, and survives within social relations. And that means love, even in its most tender form, is shaped by the world in which it lives.

We don’t love in a vacuum. Our tenderness, jealousy, and sense of “home” are not timeless emotions. They are historical products, changing with the way we produce and reproduce life. As Marx wrote, even our most intimate feelings are “social relations expressed in persons.”

When Engels argued in “The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State” that the monogamous family arose from the man’s need to pass on his property, he wasn’t saying love is a lie. He was saying it is formed by property, labour, and power. Therefore, it can be changed by changing the material conditions.

From sharing to inheritance

Early hunter-gatherer societies shared resources, childcare, and responsibility. There was no concept of “mine and yours,” and no family unit in the modern sense. Love and care were part of collective life. Engels called this stage “primitive communism” a time before class domination, when production and reproduction were shared.

Humans lived as nomadic peoples back then. Accordingly, the accumulation of possessions would have been disadvantageous. They tended to live more from hand to mouth. The idea of private property did not exist back then.

That changed with the rise of agriculture and herding. People began to settle, cultivate, and accumulate.

The invention of the plough in particular enabled humans, for the first time, to produce surpluses. Operating the plough was physically demanding work that was hardly possible during pregnancy and breastfeeding. Before that, women had been able to gather and hunt even while pregnant. With the invention of the plough, the division of labour changed fundamentally. Friedrich Engels described this development as “The world-historic defeat of the female sex.” 

This was the birth of private property, and with it, the first great divide: production became men’s domain, reproduction women’s. The family emerged as the basic unit of ownership. The woman, once a co-producer, became responsible for the reproduction. And love became a function of inheritance.

This new concept of property demanded heirs. In order to determine the line of inheritance, it had to be clear who the two progenitors were. This resulted in the regulation of female sexuality.

Surplus created storage; storage created ownership and new roles within the society. Some produced the surplus others coordinated it. This new role of administration was the very first start of classes. Some started to gain control over the surplus while others produced it. 

What had once been a communal relation became a private institution. The family taught obedience, possession, and moral duty preparing people for a world organised by domination. The so-called “natural” roles of man and woman were anything but natural. They were historical tools for stabilising property and hierarchy.

The moral economy of marriage

Ancient societies built entire states on this logic. In Greece, the citizen was “free” only because others were not. Men debated in public; women were confined to the house, their bodies part of the machinery of reproduction. Rome perfected this system: the pater familias owned not just land and slaves, but his wife and children. Marriage was a legal contract, not a romantic choice.

When feudalism replaced the empires this logic stayed, only now, God was its guarantor. The Church sanctified property through marriage. What had been a contract became a „sacrament“. Behind the holiness of the family stood the same economics: inheritance, land, and lineage.

The troubadours of the Middle Ages invented “courtly love,” that great European myth of passion and virtue. But it was never a real emancipation, just a poetic mask. Knights sang of love to ennoble themselves, not to challenge the system. The lady was muse, not equal.

In this world, the woman’s chastity secured property; her silence kept peace. Feudal morality turned economic dependence into moral duty. The poorer you were, the more “virtuous” you were expected to be.

Industrial love and bourgeois rebranding

With capitalism came the factory and a new family form. The industrial revolution separated what had long been connected: home from labour.

The bourgeois family became the smallest cell of capitalist reproduction. The man went out to work for wages; the woman worked inside, unpaid. 

At the same time marriage was no longer just an economic arrangement; it was supposed to be about “choice,” “feeling,” “the heart.” But this freedom mirrored the market itself. The free love of the bourgeoisie was simply the free competition of capitalism, dressed up as romance.

Love became the emotional compensation for alienated work. The home was a small oasis in a world of profit and exhaustion. But the price of that illusion was high. Women’s unpaid labour childcare, cooking, cleaning, care work became a hidden foundation of industrial wealth.

The idea of “romantic love” was, in truth, a rebranding of the idea of a family functioning for the production. The product was the same as before gendered division of labour but now it came with a prettier label. He earns, she cares, both perform. The marketing campaign was so successful that we still believe it.

The idea of family and gender roles changes with the change of the ‘Relations of Production’. 

Swiping left – a new era of intimacy?

Today, the old structures wear new masks. The factory walls have fallen for many, but the work hasn’t disappeared –  it’s just moved into our homes, our devices, and even our emotions. The flexible worker must also be a flexible lover.

The contemporary self is a brand. We curate, optimise, sell ourselves. Dating apps promise endless choice and algorithmic destiny, yet what they deliver is a new kind of conformity. Desire is endless, but connection is rare.

We are no longer bound by law or religion but by comparison by the constant demand to be desirable, independent, self-sufficient. Relationships become joint ventures; breakups resemble business dissolutions. Care work is sometimes outsourced, underpaid, and still feminised. The promise of equality has not abolished dependence, it has privatised it.

New forms of relationships

In Germany, alternative relationship structures such as polyamory, open relationships, and co-parenting arrangements have gained increasing visibility in recent years. While reliable prevalence data remain limited, surveys indicate a growing openness toward non-monogamous relationship models. For example, a 2022 YouGov survey found that about 10–15% of respondents in Germany reported that they could imagine being in a non-monogamous relationship, while younger respondents were significantly more open to such arrangements. At the same time, Germany has experienced substantial increases in housing costs and general living expenses over the past decade, particularly in large urban areas. 

Within changing material conditions, new relationship forms such as polyamory are neither a coincidence nor an escape from the system. As rents rise and the cost of living becomes unaffordable for many, it is increasingly impossible for people to plan for children or to establish families in the traditional sense. Out of these material contradictions, new ideas emerge. It is understandable that concepts such as polyamory and co-parenting are gaining traction precisely in these crisis stages of capitalism. For many, this may even appear to be a progressive way out of the constraints of capitalism. Yet they too are a consequence of material conditions. The idea of creating an island in the sea of capitalism may seem like an acceptable solution for individuals; however, within a system based on exploitation and oppression, we can neither live freely nor love freely, because we continue to move within its predetermined structures. Regardless of whether these conditions lead people to choose more progressive relationship models. 

At the same time, a reactionary movement can be observed regarding the expression of family life and gender roles. On social media in particular, there has been a growing visibility of so-called “tradwives” and “alpha male” influencers who promote a return to traditional relationship models and gender hierarchies. These conservative family structures and role expectations can also be interpreted in connection with broader processes of militarization and rearmament. A society that prepares for military conflict often relies on and reproduces more rigid and conservative gender roles. More broadly, periods of crisis within capitalism tend to produce social polarization, which is also reflected in the organization and imagination of intimate relationships.

Every historical era produces the forms of relationships it economically requires.

How to liberate Love

To love freely, we must live freely. That doesn’t mean moral liberation; it means transforming the material basis of life. When work is no longer coercion, love no longer needs to be compensation.

Love, in this sense, is not a sentimental issue. It’s a question of the material conditions and the production relations. 

If, as Marx wrote,  ‘being’ determines consciousness, then a different kind of being –  collective provision, time, and security will produce a different kind of love. This isn’t romantic idealism; it’s political realism.

The bourgeois world sold us love as a brand for work and hierarchy. To change the branding we must change the system itself. Otherwise we only create islands to escape without realizing that there is no way to escape. When property and exploitation recede, love changes, too. It stops being the branding of a system and becomes the practice of solidarity.

Only then can Luxemburg’s dream become reality, not an eternal love, but a world so rational, so just, that we can finally live, and love, in it as human beings.