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Changing the heart and soul

Reflecting on how neoliberalism has changed society in the past 45 years (for the worse)


06/04/2026

Black and white photo of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher playing the drums.

Have you ever tried to hum your alarm tone in the middle of the day? Despite it being one of my most listened-to songs, the daze in which I usually find myself listening to it means I can never quite recall what it actually sounds like. Anyway—whatever it sounds like—it went off at 6:15am, it being a weekday.

I’m a teaching assistant who is regularly assigned to various schools around the city to cover for others who are sick or on holiday. Sometimes I’ll be at a school for a week or two, though often just a couple of days. My assignments are mediated by a ‘recruitment agency’ (read ‘middle-man’) and when a school needs a supply teacher, they contact the agency, who links them up with me. Sometimes this means waking up and getting ready for work before knowing whether I will actually be working or not. On this particular day, the call didn’t come. These middle-men often charge schools up to twice the amount they pay the teachers, amassing huge profits from state budgets for doing very little.

I could continue writing this as a piece about another example of how private companies drain public money and fill the pockets of shareholders with profits skimmed off the top. But I would like to talk about how the above scene of a fruitless wakeup call—the uncertainty, the middle-men, the isolation—is a small piece reflecting a larger social revolution that was launched in the 1970s, and became dominant the world over in the decades that followed.

In the UK, supply teachers like me used to belong to a pool managed by the local council. A school in need of a supply would be linked up with one by the council and the school would pay a standard fee. No room for profits—simple.

In 1979, the new Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, decided that these systems were inefficient and should be subject to ‘marketisation’ along with the rest of the economy. This meant opening up previously unexploited areas for the private companies to insert their tendrils. The public pools of supply teachers were almost completely replaced by commercial agencies in England and Wales, a few of which now dominate the market, and supply teachers the rare access to secure work and pension schemes. A typical story of the neoliberal revolution.

And yet, it would be a mistake to view neoliberalism as an amoral project. Thatcher was a social engineer who viewed economic policies as the tools with which to change society. “Economics are the method,” she told a Sunday Times reporter in 1981, “the object is to change the heart and soul.” So, 45 years later, are our hearts and souls changed?

The neoliberal view of the human condition is one where the threat of destitution hanging over our heads is what disciplines us into waking up to our alarms; where the possibility of poverty motivates our sense of personal responsibility; and where the distant chance of amassing a fortune encourages us to strive. The outcome of a collectivist society, they say, is one of lazy individuals; the outcome of the individualist society is a wealthier collective. Thatcher even claimed, “There is no such thing as society. There is only the individual and his family.”

So this was the vision, and for us to view ourselves as individuals in competition with each other, social bonds had to be broken and reorganised. Trade unions—an organising focal point outside of the state—were systematically weakened, markets were deregulated to allow the accumulation of huge private fortunes, and people were encouraged to become shareholders and homeowners. Each family was to become an island. Whether the family next door was struggling was none of our business. It almost feels too obvious to state that we aren’t better off because of it.

And yet the project has never been discredited. That is because the transformation was so total that it now passes for common sense. Think of the black-pilled crypto-investor who sees an investment portfolio as his path to wealth and comfort; the young couple living with a parent and working extra hours to get on the housing ladder and start their very own family unit; and the newly-qualified professional, endlessly refining their CV to be noticed among a sea of applicants for a single opening. Each is absorbed in an inward struggle, yet together they could demand luxury, housing, and employment for all. This is the neoliberal social revolution.

The revolution was complete when other visions of society became utopian and unserious. By the 1990s, the basic questions of how we structure our economies and social worlds were considered settled, and economics underwent a makeover. No longer was it ‘the method’ of achieving a particular moral vision of society, but rather it was a neutral science of experts arguing over the right formula that would send us soaring towards prosperity. Economists began to model themselves on natural scientists, as if they were meteorologists tracking wind-patterns and predicting hurricanes. Economics stopped being a means to an end, and became the end in and of itself. This is perhaps the neoliberal revolution’s greatest achievement.

To see this is to demystify economics and understand how it shapes our social worlds—from the uncertainty of daily life, to the routines of work, and the ways we relate to others. Seeing the systems behind our daily routine confirms what we already feel: that the atomised conditions we live in aren’t natural. Unlike the weather, economies are shaped by human hands, and so can be remoulded.

If economics is the method, then building associations on the ground alters the balance of power, whether it be through tenants’ unions, community projects, or mutual support in our workplaces and neighbourhoods. Each is work towards a movement capable of taking the reins of our economies and commanding a different society into being. It means trying to live, as far as we can, as though the society we wish to see already exists.

In the words of Howard Zinn, “the future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvellous victory… small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.”

Journalism and Control in Ukraine

Is Ukrainian journalism different from journalism in your country?


05/04/2026

First, one group of journalists writes that the president has signed a decree introducing a minute of silence. Now, every day at 9:00, the entire country must fall silent in memory of the victims of the war. These texts usually include an exhaustive list of who can be considered a victim. As you might expect, the men who died while trying to escape conscription are not included in that list.

Then a second wave of journalists joins in. They add details: pedestrians and vehicles must stop in the street for exactly 60 seconds during the minute of silence. Violations may result in a fine.

Later, a third wave appears – the debunking one. It turns out that kids in public schools are not required to kneel during the minute of silence. It turns out that fines will not be imposed on pedestrians, but only on drivers, and only in exceptional cases.

Be that as it may, the very idea of a minute of silence could be quite worthy. There is nothing wrong with honoring the memory of the dead. It becomes repulsive only at the moment when grief is turned into an obligation.

***

I scroll through the news in bed at night. My eyes hurt, but I keep going. And suddenly I catch myself thinking that reading news about nuclear war no longer scares me, it entertains.

The modern world is suffering from vision problems. A new symptom is the inability to plan. In 2026, I cannot say where I will be in five, seven, or ten years. I cannot even be sure within what borders the country that issued my passport will exist or whether it will exist at all.

What will happen to the EU? Will the United States leave NATO? What will become of NATO if that happens? What will happen to Russia after Putin? Will there be a third world war? And if there is, will it bring about the end of the era of nation-states?

Ukrainian journalism makes almost no attempt to answer such questions. It does the opposite: it clouds the future with sugary propaganda that produces new corpses on the battlefield. Then it publicly takes offense when someone criticizes the customer of the propaganda – the authorities.

Society is not the same as the state. But Ukrainian journalism persistently pretends that there is no difference between the two. It also never tires of repeating that no one is interested in cultural news. News about science drowns in reports about inflation, prisons, and the front line. This is not an accident, it is a mechanism.

Mikhail Bakunin believed that the liberation of the people begins with education. Modern journalism makes education unfashionable, placing thieves, celebrities, and scandals on a pedestal. Today I want to hold a mirror up to contemporary Ukrainian journalism, because its reflection is the best proof of its worthlessness.

***

A few facts about culture that no one cares about.

During his lifetime, Vincent van Gogh sold only one painting – The Red Vineyard. It was bought by the Belgian artist Anna Boch in 1890 for about 400 francs.

In his short life, van Gogh managed to paint around 900 works and more than a thousand drawings. He died an unrecognized artist.

Today, his paintings are worth tens and hundreds of millions of dollars.

The problem with journalism is that it is almost always interested only in what has already been recognized. What is already expensive. What has already become success.

But culture almost never looks important at the moment it is happening.

***

Symbolic initiatives are increasingly replacing real problems. Streets are being renamed. Sometimes even cities, though mostly small ones. All of this is explained by a noble goal: get rid of the Soviet legacy.

But journalism is not only about transmitting facts. It is also about a critical view. Questions. Is this necessary? What will it change? Perhaps the same resources should have been directed to the front?

Journalism, like the judicial system, is supposed to be impartial. But when news outlets are funded by political parties, impartiality becomes a luxury.

And as for the judicial system… try for a moment to imagine that the biblical line “judge not, and you shall not be judged” was meant literally… about courts. That changes a lot, doesn’t it?

***

On social media, a woman writes that her husband has been mobilized. She has one newborn child. A rented apartment. Almost no money. She asks: what should she do?

Society remains calm. It believes that the state acts fairly. After all, everyone knows that men with three or more children are not mobilized. If she has fewer than three children, then she should manage. The state must have decided this for a reason, and therefore there must be good grounds for it.

After some time, another post appears. Another woman writes that her husband has just been mobilized. She has three children. She also asks: what should she do?

Society remains indifferent, because it believes that the state is fair. If her husband was mobilized, then the children must not be his. Ukrainian journalism does not cover this.

***

A separate genre of Ukrainian journalism is news about how the world admires Ukraine. An ambassador of some country says a few polite words, and soon an article appears.

The headlines sound almost religious: “the world applauds,” “the entire internet laughs at Russia,” “Ukraine is protecting Europe from World War III.” Sometimes a single Facebook post is enough to turn it into the reaction of all humanity.

With politicians, it is even simpler. They write an emotional post, and journalists republish it as news. The politician is irritated. The politician is outraged. The politician is proud.

This is how the news feed gradually turns into a strange genre: a transcript of other people’s emotions presented as reality. And this is a subtle form of control through emotions.

***

From the perspective of anarchism, there is no mystery here. The state demands sacrifices, and society rushes to justify this demand. When reality does not match the rules, people do not question the rules, they begin to question people.

This is how power works: it shifts responsibility onto the victims themselves. The state does not even need to defend itself. Ukrainian journalism does it for it.

***

Control rarely looks like control. More often, it looks like a news feed. Some topics disappear, others are repeated until they begin to seem like the only ones that matter. This is how a field of attention is formed.

In the morning, you open a news website. The front. The front. Support from the whole world. A scandal involving a politician. A drunken fight. By evening, you are already convinced that this is what reality consists of.

Not because you were forbidden to think about anything else. Simply because no one reminded you of anything else. And meanwhile, somewhere, hiding from forced mobilization, a new van Gogh is wasting away in poverty.

This is exactly how one form of power works – the management of attention.

***

But there is another kind of control – a commercial one.

Suicide, death, deep analysis – all of this is too dark. Too pessimistic. And if advertising money comes not from political parties but from brands, brands do not want to see their ads next to something sad.

Pessimism does not sell well. Intellectualism does not sell well either. But there is one problem: it is difficult to be truly intellectual and not arrive at pessimism.

***

Ukrainian journalism is less and less about enlightenment and more and more about service. It no longer explains the world, it transmits the language of power. Orders. Slogans. The “correct” emotions. Questions disappear; instructions remain: how to think, what to feel, whom to support.

Journalism, which was supposed to expand the space of thought, begins to patrol it. In the end, it turns not into an observer of power, but into its inconspicuous assistant. This assistant does not wear a police uniform, but it has the same instinct for control.

And here a simple question arises: is Ukrainian journalism different from journalism in your country?

The state rarely forbids thought directly. It is much more convenient when journalism does it for the state. And so it happens that the eyes see the decaying corpse of the state, but the nose does not smell its stench, and therefore the brain thinks that everything is fine.

Explore more from Ilya Kharkow on his website. 

Read Hidden Stories or support the work here.

“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

and
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.