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Which side are you on?

Response to “Red Flag: Defend Iran, but don’t support the theocracy!”

orwellsky
09/03/2026

History does not always offer a variety of stances one can take. For instance, what to do in face of imperialist attacks on a country whose internal politics and system of governance we do not quite like? If one is inclined to assert her political convictions, she is inevitably faced with some hard choices. Such choices are especially uncomfortable in the age of indefinitely customizable consumption of goods and information. We are not used to compromises; we just have to customize and optimize each choice down to the last detail.

Of course, ambivalence is always a way out. “Well, it’s too complicated.” It is, however, frowned upon among progressives.

The other way out—more popular, gratifying and utterly dishonest—usually entails intricate intellectual gymnastics, but can be narrowed down to “Yes, but…” statements. A recent piece by Nathaniel Flakin for The Left Berlin on the US-Israeli attacks on Iran is a prime example:

“[…] while we support the resistance against imperialist attacks, as socialists we also fight for the political independence of the working class. This means we never give political support to capitalist governments […].”

Marx and Engels would roll in their graves were they to hear of such gross abstraction in their names. Like it or not, we live in a world of nation-states. And in the case of Iran, like it or not, the “resistance against imperialist attacks” is organized and delivered by the state. The Iranian state enjoys wide—and currently increasing—support from the general population, including the working class. That is despite serious grievances and ongoing struggles and contrary to Flakin’s claims as well as the skewed image one might get from the Iranian lumpen diaspora.

The core problem is simple enough: a country is attacked by the genocidal forces of imperialism. Which side are you on? At this level, there is no distinction between the country, the state and the nation. And it matters not what the state is formally called and/or how we choose to describe it—the Islamic Republic, the regime, a capitalist anti-communist theocracy etc. etc.

The principled anti-imperialist stance would be: we stand with the country (i.e. the nation and their state) and we unequivocally reject the imperialist aggression. Period. That would also be the strategically wise position, as it allows a potentially broad coalition with all those who agree on that principle. Alas, strategically wise positions are not Marxists’ forte, and Flakin’s piece reads mostly like an attempt to bash the author’s least favorite Marxist organizations around the world.

Aside from the fellow Marxist bashing, the article has passages bordering on nonsensical, typical of such pseudo-progressive gymnastics:

“A handful of socialist groups in imperialist countries […] go beyond the elementary need to stand with Iran’s resistance—they say the working class should give political support [to?] the Islamic Republic. This [?] spreads illusions in a semi-colonial bourgeoisie and ultimately weakens the struggle against imperialism [emphasis added].”

I have read that passage several times and I still have no idea what it means. But if there is anything bourgeois to point out here, it is Flakin’s deference to Financial Times (for Marx’s sake!) on Khamenei’s culture and literacy.

The more troubling aspect of the piece is the utter ignorance it channels through a grossly orientalist gaze:

“This government draws its legitimacy from god, even though Iranians do not appear to be very religious.”

As already mentioned, the political mythology (theology) of the Iranian state does not matter here and now. Iran—the land, the nation, the state—is under attack by imperialists. Which side are you on?

Moreover, the claim that Iranians are not religious simply betrays a fundamental lack of understanding of the Iranian culture and history, and the central role of religion (spirituality) throughout the millennia of the Iranian civilization, including before Islam.

Finally:

“ ‘The Communist International must enter into a temporary alliance with bourgeois democracy in the colonial and backward [emphasis added] countries, but should not merge with it, and should under all circumstances uphold the independence of the proletarian movement even if it is in its most embryonic form.’

“That’s the Marxist and Leninist policy today—and it’s defended by Trotskyists.”

Aside from invoking the Marxist deity (who’s being religious now?), that passage betrays Flakin’s ultimate ignorance about Iran, a country that was never colonized. I shall not indulge the ultimately colonial adjective that follows.

Perhaps all of that could be ignored as secondary at this time, but the graphic published with the article reveals, perhaps coincidentally, the troubling nature of its supposedly anti-imperialist stance, which is hard to ignore. The photo shows a US Navy ship firing a Tomahawk missile on the first day of the attack. Taken from the ship’s helm, it is literally the imperialist perspective.

Sometimes history has only binary choices to offer.

Which side are you on?

The hidden ingredients in your food delivery

How do you like the taste of exploitation?

T. Giddins
08/03/2026

We live in an age of ingredient obsession, where labels are read like confessionals and the exact origin of what we consume becomes shorthand for responsibility and wellbeing. “Organic”, “unprocessed”, “corn-fed”, “free-range” and “farm-to-table” are everyday aspirations in parts of society privileged enough to find morality on the supermarket shelf. Oils are ranked, grams are counted, transparency is requested at every stage, and for some the small print on packaging becomes more important than the price tag.

But when we don’t feel like cooking, we open an app and order dinner from a system built to keep its own less-than-palatable “ingredients” off the receipt. The small print that would, if it existed, mention extremely inhumane working conditions, social security fraud, risk pushed onto workers and customers, and a subcontracting business model that prizes entrepreneurial “freedom” over the people who prop it up.

How the subcontracting model works

In Germany’s food delivery sector, this is a structure which companies such as Wolt, Uber Eats and Lieferando have increasingly shifted toward. Lieferando was long considered a shining example in the industry, with the majority of its drivers directly employed by the company and having works councils in place. However, last year they announced plans to lay off 2,000 couriers.

When this happens, permanent contracts are phased out, the directly employed riders are let go, and the delivery work is outsourced to external fleets that appear days later offering the same jobs back, only now with fewer rights, lower wages, and little in the way of insurance or sick pay. On paper, the employer has changed, but on the street everything looks identical. It’s a murky world, even for Lieferando’s high-vis orange branding.

Once riders are in the subcontracting maze, they report to a so-called fleet manager who—despite being their de facto boss—offers no contract, insurance, or security. More often than not, it’s just a WhatsApp number, a delivery app login, and the hope they don’t block you or disappear before payday. If they do, you have no proof you ever worked, only the absurd risk of being fined (or worse, deported) for unauthorized employment you never got to choose. Meanwhile, the multibillion-euro platform that actually directs your labour shrugs and points at the subcontractor, who points at the fleet manager, who’s likely pointing at the departures timetable in the nearest airport.

“They call it subcontracting, but it’s not,” says Lieferando Works Council (LWC) leader Samee Ullah. “We’re just pushed into the hands of middlemen so they can make money. In Germany a subcontractor usually gives you instructions for the job. Here the instructions still come from Lieferando or Uber Eats but employment rights and protections disappear.”

The extra ingredients in your food order

Trying to understand any business model that relies on legal loopholes to exist can feel complex and labyrinthine—which, of course, is the point. To help unpack it, we’ve highlighted the things everyone should be aware of before tapping “order now”.

Here are the extra ingredients in your delivery that don’t appear on the receipt.

1. Conditions of forced labor

The delivery apps sell a story of flexible side hustles and entrepreneurial freedom. What they actually rely on is a workforce that can’t afford to walk away.

In Germany, most of the riders aren’t hobby cyclists topping up a comfortable income. They’re migrant workers and international students whose right to be in the country is tied to a fragile combination of paperwork and payments.

Increasingly drawn here by aggressive marketing promises of affordable education and high-paying tech jobs, many have to open a “blocked account” and deposit €12,000–14,000 before they even land. By the time they’re riding through winter traffic, they’re already in the red.

Add to that the cost of cramped, overpriced rooms, private university fees, and limited access to other legal employment, and the fear of falling behind is never far away. If riders default on tuition or fail to prove sufficient income, they don’t just receive a stern email from a bank—they risk losing their student status, their visa, and their legal right to remain in the country.

This is not a labor market where people can weigh up offers and choose the best one—it’s a trap in which saying “no” can mean homelessness, debt collectors, or worse, deportation. So, when your food arrives a few minutes early, it may well have been carried by someone riding not just against the clock, but against a countdown built into their passport and bank account.

2. Theft from the social state

If a restaurant failed to pay VAT, we’d call it tax fraud. When delivery platforms and their fleets hollow out entire sections of the welfare state, it’s called innovation.

Germany’s social safety net—health insurance, pensions, unemployment benefits, and paid leave—depends on employer contributions tied to formal employment. But in the subcontracting world of the delivery sector, large platforms are allowed to step delicately around many of these obligations.

Riders are reclassified as “self‑employed”, pushed onto the books of the aforementioned small fleets, and hired under “contracts” that amount to little more than WhatsApp or Telegram messages.

The end result is simple: less money goes into the collective pot. Health insurance funds are deprived of contributions, pension systems lose out on payments, and accident insurance is left to pick up the bill when a rider is hit by a car. These costs don’t disappear, they’re pushed onto the public.

And then, when the numbers don’t add up, the same racist politicians who cheered on entrepreneurial freedom turn around and blame migrants for stretching the system.

3. Delivering while sick

When it comes to food and eating out, we’ve every right to be concerned about potential contaminants. We expect regulators to keep salmonella, listeria and mold at bay. If a kitchen cuts corners, we talk about hygiene scandals and public health.

In a normal employment relationship, health and safety laws are meant to guarantee that people don’t have to work while they’re ill—that they can stay home with pay and not gamble their rent on a blocked nose and a fever. In the subcontracting world, these protections are non-existent, because riders are hired through opaque fleets and middlemen who think of sick pay and workplace safety as little more than a fantasy.

For customers, that means something very simple: there’s no real guarantee that the person bringing your food could afford to stay home when they’re ill. If they have a temperature, a bad cough, or a stomach bug, they almost certainly ride anyway because not riding might mean not eating, not paying tuition, or not meeting the conditions of a visa.

4. Risk for profit

Delivery apps like to describe themselves as neutral intermediaries. They don’t own the kitchens, they don’t own the restaurants, and crucially, they don’t even own the bikes. This absence isn’t an accident—it’s by design.

Everywhere you look in the delivery chain, risk is pushed downwards. Riders are expected to rent or buy their own e‑bikes, often paying around €150 a month just to keep the wheels turning. An e‑bike becomes a depreciating asset workers can’t really afford but have to shoulder if they want the job. If the bike is stolen or if the battery disappears while they’re running up four flights of stairs to drop off a pizza, that’s their loss.

And once bike rental and equipment costs are factored in, many riders report that their effective earnings fall close to—or even below—Germany’s statutory minimum wage, despite the promises of competitive pay.

Even the act of charging a battery becomes an unpaid hazard. Sometimes they just get warm and buzz, but other times they explode into flames and turn a shared flat into a blackened shell. No push notification pops up from the app to say: “By the way, one of our riders lost everything last night so that you could get your burger on time.”

When accidents happen—crashes, fires, long‑term injuries—the costs fall either on the individual or on the public services that patch them back together. The platforms that orchestrate the work keep their hands clean and their balance sheets light. Everything that might go wrong is quietly billed to someone else.

5. Speed over safety

Food delivery lives and dies on the promise of speed. This urgency is marketed as convenience but in reality it’s backed up by a systematic refusal to invest in safety. Many riders have been in Germany for only a few weeks or months but are legally allowed to drive or ride on licences from countries with completely different traffic patterns. Instead of training, the companies provide little more than a branded jacket and an app login.

For Aju John, a Berlin-based lawyer and researcher who’s supported delivery riders in legal disputes, that combination is not accidental—it concentrates the risk on those least equipped to carry it.

“This is a job that even those with no experience are easily able to get into. They are especially attractive for those whose previous work experience and education are not valued in the German job market. Even those with no experience of the circumstances on German roads. Neither the fleet partner nor the platform corporations provide them with any training. In the first six months of your stay here, you are actually allowed to use an Indian driving license to drive around in Germany, and deliver for such companies. These are completely different driving circumstances. And who bears the risk of a traffic violation or an accident happening at that time? It’s either the worker or the state, rarely the corporation that is profiting off this risk.”

The last ingredient in your takeaway is not just someone rushing through the rain. It’s a system in which other people’s safety is routinely traded for speed and convenience.

So what can we do?

The point of all this isn’t to say “never order food again” and cut people off from one of the few income sources available to them. But if you care about what’s in your food, it’s time to care about the labour architecture that gets it to the door. There are a few concrete things we can all do to help:

1. Back the riders’ petition and follow LWC.

Lieferando’s Works Council is working on a petition demanding that the company halt outsourcing plans, protect existing jobs, and commit to direct employment with full social insurance contributions and enforceable labour rights.

Add your name to their contact form here to get the petition emailed directly to you once it’s ready. For more information on the Lieferando workers fight, please follow and contact the group through here.

2. Practice everyday solidarity.

If you order, tip generously and in cash. It’s one of the few ways to get money directly to riders without a cut being taken on the way.

3. Support the broader fight against subcontracting with UAS.

United Against Subcontracting is a collective of workers organizing to improve the conditions for precarious workers in Berlin and across Germany. Follow them here.

Survival as a business model

It’s common to call standing shoulder to shoulder on a crowded platform, or waiting for a rush-hour train to a secure job, the “rat race.” If that is our benchmark for stress, what do we call the race delivery workers are expected to run?

This isn’t about people who arrive in Germany being naïve or unaware, as part of the press would have you believe. It’s not a story about poor personal choices. It’s about a system that concentrates the risks at the bottom, strips away stability, and then treats the outcome as personal responsibility. Please sign the petition, tip well, and enjoy your meal!

The article was modified on March 11 to update the status of the LWC petition.

School Strike: 5th March 2026

Report and photo gallery

Phil Butland
06/03/2026

On Thursday 5th March, 50,000 school children throughout Germany skipped school to demonstrate against conscription. This is the second school strike against Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s gradual introduction of compulsory military service. During Merz’s recent White House visit he promised to support Donald Trump’s wars and made it clear what increased German militarism really means.

Following a law passed last year, all Germans are now sent an “invitation” to join the army on their 18th birthday. It is widely believed that this is being used as a stepping stone towards full conscription. The German military is already sending soldiers into schools to spread propaganda for joining the army.

Young Germans, however, are resisting – speaking on the Left Berlin radio show, school pupil Carla said: “people my age – students, young people, children, feel that this decision has been made above their heads. We haven’t had the chance to vote yet … People are just frustrated because a decision which forms our future has been made completely without us.”

In Berlin, between 6,000 and 10,000 demonstrated. A group of parents carried a banner from Eltern gegen Wehrpflicht (parents against conscription) and some teachers wore jackets from the GEW (Education and Science Workers’) union. Clara, a teacher, told The Left Berlin that she was demonstrating “because the government is spending billions on more weapons at the same time they are cutting education. This means that we are unable to serve our students, and then they are sent to the military to shoot at other people. I am proud that my union is supporting the strikes.”

The bulk of the demonstrators were young, often very young. Many wore keffiyahs and Palestinian flags were dotted throughout the demo – a sign that even in Germany, movements are mobilising and standing up for Gaza. After police banned the chant “Merz, leck mein Eier” (Merz, lick my balls), chants against the police followed. Other home-made placards attacked both Merz’s support for Trump’s wars and the fascist AfD. While some called for peace, others said: “No war but class war.”

Iranian demonstrator Chapoole was worried about Merz’s support for the bombing of her country, saying: “There’s nothing more colonizer-like than to force your own version of a ‘dream-like country to escape to’ on 90 million people by supporting bombing them and destroying the infrastructure they stayed behind to build despite all odds, while you and your family line escaped.”

Ferat Koçak, a Linke MP who was at the demo, said: “It was a very powerful school strike and many young people who were not all politicised came together and actively confronted conscription, against war crimes worldwide and against wars worldwide. When the police ban a chant which uses teenage slang, this is the authoritarian politics which we know and is part of the move to the right in society.”

The next school strike will be on the 8th of May – the 81st anniversary since the liberation of Europe from Nazi fascism. Nessa, from the No to Military Conscription alliance and one of the organisers of the strikes, stated: “We want to connect it to anti-fascism and the rise of right-wing extremism. We want to remind everybody how you can fight back. Everything is connected”.

Nessa hopes that on the 8th of May, parallel school strikes will be taking place in other countries. This is hopefully the start of a new international movement which fights both conscription and militarism in general.

All photos: Guy Smallman www.guysmallman.com

Protecting Fascists: Neo-Nazis in Germany’s military and police

German military and police forces harbor extensive neo-Nazi networks that threaten public safety

Rowan Gaudet

This article is the third piece in the series Neo-Nazis and Anti-Fascism in Germany since the 1990s. The rest of the series can be found here.

Overlaps between neo-Nazis, Germany’s military, and police forces are not new. Scandals break disturbingly frequently, often to a chorus of promises from the relevant authorities that they will stamp the problem out. Looking at some of the most prominent scandals from recent decades, the same people who Germany’s politicians claim are meant to protect us look more like a threat themselves. Whether its army officers planning false-flag terrorist operations and training neo-Nazi networks, or Sicherheitbehörde with thorough ties to neo-Nazi networks and rendered incompetent by their own racism, Germany’s military and police forces have a violent recent history.

Bundeswehr and the Uniter Group

While the current government continues to pump increasing amounts of money into the Bundeswehr, its employees greet each other with Hitler salutes, place swastikas around their workplace, and wear SS uniforms for themed parties. In one of the more recent scandals at the end of 2025, 19 soldiers of an elite unit were fired for showing the Hitler heil alongside sexual misconduct. Germany’s defense minister, Boris Pistorius, stated that he was “shocked”. Except these acts are anything but surprising. In 2024, the army registered 280 cases of suspected right-wing extremism, although we can assume many cases were not reported. Of those that were, only 97 resulted in the offending soldier’s dismissal.

The extent of the problem can be illustrated through the story of Uniter, a former registered Verein [club] in Germany with extensive ties to the military and far-right networks. Founded in 2012 and led by André S., an elite kommando in the Bundeswehr, Uniter was described as a prepper group and a cult—one ceremony allegedly included drinking red wine from a human skull. It carried out weapons training for its estimated 2,000 members across Germany, and printed badges so that they would be able to recognise each other after “Day X”. One of their shooting competitions was named after a Turkish man murdered by the neo-Nazi NSU Complex.

Their work was organised through numerous group chats, mostly broken down on geographical lines. These group chats served as broader networks for Uniter, who led the chats while maintaining a degree of separation from them. Not everyone who was in the chats was a member of Uniter. The “Nordkreuz” chat, focused on northern Germany, is the most notorious. One member, Marko G., is a police officer who runs a private shooting range. He made the news in 2019 when 55,000 bullets and an uzi gun—which is illegal in Germany—were found on his property, most of which had been stolen from the Bundeswehr and police. The uzi was reported as stolen from a Bundeswehr unit, but when Marco G. claimed in court that he bought it at a street market, the judge took his word for it. Mecklenburg-Vorpommern’s internal minister, Lorenz Caffier, even trained at this shooting range and bought a gun from Marco G.

The story of Franco A. is another example of how deep the problems are rooted into the German army. A member of the group chats who knew the leader André S., he was reportedly not a member of Uniter, although he had two of their “Day X” patches at home. Franco A. was educated in the elite Saint-Cyr military academy in France, one of the handful of German soldiers selected for the program every year. As reported in a lengthy New York Times article, in 2013, he submitted his masters thesis to the program in which he argued that the Jewish Torah was the origin of all subversion and a plan by which Jews would achieve world dominance. Migration to Europe, he argued, was diluting racial purity and should be considered a form of genocide. When the thesis was reviewed by French and German commanders, the French commander recommended he be removed from service. The German commander, who held decision making authority, simply made him re-write the thesis and submit it again, saying he had gotten carried away.

Jump to 2017, and the now elite German soldier Franco A. was caught retrieving a gun he had hidden in the Vienna airport. Upon running his fingerprints, the police received a match to a refugee named David Benjamin. The year before, Franco A. had put on a fake accent and registered himself as a refugee, claiming he was a Syrian Christian of French descent. Investigators found a list of further potential targets at his house, including the Antonio Amadeus Stiftung, and various politicians. He was sentenced to 5 years in prison for planning a false-flag terrorist attack. Uniter has since been disbanded, and the group chats shut down. The vast majority of the group chat members, however, have not been outed or faced any repercussions.

If the actions of Uniter shocked Germany, more concerning is that many more soldiers with similar views appear to still be in the Bundeswehr. Ammunition continues to disappear from the Bundeswehr at an alarming rate, and sieg heil scandals and cases of suspected right-wing extremism pop up regularly in the military. It is hardly a stretch of the imagination to believe that another group chat already exists, and that other plans are already being struck.

Police, Verfassungsschutz and the NSU Complex

The problem is not limited to the military. In May 2025, the federal government admitted that at least 193 German police officers were currently under investigation for right-wing extremism or conspiracy theories. Police officers regularly make the news for things like passing on information to neo-Nazi cells, misplacing more than a ton of ammunition which most likely went to neo-Nazis, or meeting in a bar with the neo-Nazi responsible for arson attacks targeting migrants and anti-fascists in Neukölln. Racist beliefs are widespread in the police: one recent government-backed study found that men who looked Arabic or Turkish were assumed by police to be lacking in respect. The racist beliefs held by many police officers are not only dangerous because of the power the officers hold, but also because of how it impacts their investigations. The government study mentioned above states that “police can fail to recognise ‘non-Germans’ as victims of hate crimes[…] In the worst cases, there can even be a reversal of blame.”

These problems extend to the Verfassungsschutz as well. The German intelligence service for internal affairs, its name literally refers to the protection of the constitution. The apparatus has the powerful ability to declare organisations as extremist or hostile to the German constitution—whether the group is left-wing or right-wing—and therefore place them under intrusive observation. But the Verfassungsschutz itself has run into controversies for its connections to the far-right, including an ongoing debate on whether its staff can be members of the AfD. In an ongoing political drama, the organisation has even begun to collect information on its former head, Haans-Georg Maaßen, due to his right-wing extremism.

The mixing between neo-Nazi movements and Germany’s security forces has been documented for decades, but in 2011 the suicide of two men in a camper van outside of Eisenach brought a new wave of attention. The two men had just attempted to rob a bank and, realising they were about to be caught, killed themselves. From here it did not take long until the third accomplice was found alive, and reports emerged in the German press of a right-wing terror group that had been active for over a decade.

The National Socialist Underground (NSU, or NSU Komplex) had murdered 10 people; 8 men with Turkish backgrounds, one Greek man, and a police officer. They also carried out arson attacks and bank robberies across the country. It is also possible there are more murders, which have not been tied to them. The murders were carried out in part to provoke fear in migrant communities. Tellingly, even before 2011 many of these murders made the news, and people had recognised a pattern. But instead of suspecting right-wing racist murders, the media described them as Dönermorde (döner murders). The police recognised the pattern in that the victims mostly had Turkish backgrounds, and drew the conclusion that these were gang murders. While the police was thrown off by racist assumptions, the Verfassungsschutz was deeply enmeshed in the far-right circles of the NSU.

It turned out that the Verfassungsschutz had already infiltrated these networks with so-called V-Leute. V-Leute are paid informants who report back on the groups they are members of. The sheer volume of V-Leute in the neo-Nazi scene has led to the critique that the Verfassungsschutz was effectively bankrolling the NSU. Yet instead of drawing on these informants, when the murders came to light a member of the Verfassungsschutz reacted by shredding the files of 7 V-Leute who might have relevant information, as one staffer later admitted in court. Another Verfassungsschutz staff member, Andreas T., was even present for one of the murders. He was sitting in an internet cafe, chatting about an affair on a dating website, while Halit Yozgat was murdered in the next room over. Andreas T. claimed not to have noticed, something that Forensic Architecture later argued was impossible. To this day, the exact extent of networks and people supporting the trio who carried out the murders is still unknown, although several supporters have been tried. Some evidence, such as the NSU’s extensive database of potential victims filled with detailed notes (“Good target, but too old”) and some 10,000 entries, points to a much larger support complex than has been uncovered so far. What exactly the Verfassungsschutz knows about the NSU is also still unclear.

The thorough failure of the police and Verfassungsschutz was a partial reason for why the NSU murders have become so entrenched in discussions of far-right violence, but also for the wave of activism which resulted from the murder spree. Much of this work has gone through NSU Komplex Auflösen (Unraveling the NSU Complex), a group made up of activists and family members of the victims, which organised a grassroots tribunal under the same name to counteract the failures of the state. This organising work anchored the NSU Komplex into German discourse, while also providing the platform for attempts to provide clarity and knowledge about the NSU Komplex, such as the Forensic Architecture work on Andreas T. These efforts brought not only more information about the attacks into public discourse, but also actively created space for the voices of the family members.

What we don’t know

News of another cache of ammunition or another group chat with racist memes still breaks regularly in Germany. The AfD has a growing relationship to Germany’s civil service, which includes the police, Bundeswehr, as well as teachers; they had 220 civil service members stand for them in elections between 2020 and 2025. For every leaked police group chat like this one uncovered in 2023, filled with memes of sexual violence, racist jokes, and started by a Polizeioberkommissar (police chief inspector), there are an unknown number which have not made the news. While we know about the 20,000 rounds of munition that were stolen from the Bundeswehr at the end of 2025, the Nordkreuz story highlights that small amounts of ammo slip into the hands of neo-Nazis on a regular basis. Each scandal that breaks is a sign of the still growing but largely still invisible ranks of neo-Nazis in positions of authority in Germany—until the next attack.

Red Flag: Defend Iran, but Don’t Support the Theocracy!

In his weekly column, Nathaniel Flakin calls for anti-imperialism but not campism.

Nathaniel Flakin
03/03/2026

As the United States military and its Zionist proxy bombard Iran, murdering hundreds of civilians, we revolutionary socialists are neither pacifists nor neutral. We stand on the side of the country under attack by imperialism. A defeat of the U.S. and Israeli aggressors would give courage to oppressed and exploited people around the world.

Thomas Friedman’s claim that Iran is “the biggest imperialist power in the region since 1979” is absurd. Friedman, an advocate of the Iraq War and a friend of the House of Saud, has been responsible for far more carnage in the Middle East than any Iranian leader.

Yet while we support the resistance against imperialist attacks, as socialists we also fight for the political independence of the working class. This means we never give political support to capitalist governments — even those in the Pentagon’s crosshairs.

A handful of socialist groups in imperialist countries, such as the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) in the United States or the Kommunistische Organisation (KO) in Germany, go beyond the elementary need to stand with Iran’s resistance — they say the working class should give political support the Islamic Republic. This spreads illusions in a semi-colonial bourgeoisie and ultimately weakens the struggle against imperialism.

A Capitalist Theocracy

Iran, a dependent capitalist country, is not, as Western propaganda would put it, uniquely “evil.” Iran executes thousands of citizens each year and oppresses women with myriad patriarchal rules — but in this, the Islamic Republic is no different than Saudi Arabia. The latter is an ally of the self-proclaimed “free world” while the other must be “liberated” with cruise missiles. Imperialist policies have nothing to do with human rights.

As the Financial Times acknowledges, Ali Khamenei was more cultured than the illiterate buffoon Trump or the corrupt cynic Netanyahu, who do not seem to believe in anything. These two did not even pause their genocide in Gaza while accusing Khamenei of mass murder.

Yet even while we recognize that Khamenei was no more evil than his imperialist counterparts — and a lot less dangerous — we cannot ignore the fact that he headed a repressive state apparatus that banned unions and shot at protestors. This government draws its legitimacy from god, even though Iranians do not appear to be very religious.

Despite its rhetoric, the Islamic Republic is not an anti-imperialist force — it does not represent “a taking back of natural resources and a restoration of rights and dignity,” as the PSL puts it. Iran is a capitalist country in which the means of production are owned by billionaires. Iran’s government, like those of some other semi-colonial countries, does not question a world order based on plunder by the Great Powers — it simply wants a slightly larger piece of the pie. Even Iran’s support for anti-Zionist forces in the region has more to do with geopolitical calculation than anti-imperialist conviction.

It’s absolutely wrong to say that the Islamic Republic is the “product of the people’s revolution of 1979,” as the KO puts it. The truth is the opposite: there was a genuine people’s revolution, with the working class organizing itself in shoras (councils), showing the possibility of a socialist transformation. The clergy led a counterrevolution and massacred thousands of communists so that the bourgeoisie could remain in power. The Islamic Republic was reestablished to ensure that Iran’s workers could be exploted.

Back in 2009, the PSL did acknowledge that the Islamic Republic is “staunchly anti-communist” and had carried out a “bloody campaign of repression … against leftist forces.” They went so far as to recognize that the “Islamic Republic represents the capitalist class” — but they claim it represents the “nationalist sector” of the capitalist class, which workers should support against the “comprador sector” of their exploiters. This Stalinist class collaboration can only lead to defeat — support for “nationalist” capitalists does not lead to liberation.

PSL, KO, and other “campist” groups call for support for the Islamic Republic without being able to point to a single socialist group in Iran that shares their position. This is obvious: communists in Iran are subject to arrest and torture. PSL and KO are supporting a government that would throw them in jail if they tried to set up shop in Teheran.

A Working-Class Perspective

Modern campism is based on a terrible lack of imagination. While campism historically offered uncritical support to Stalinist states (where, at the very least, capital had been expropriated), today’s campists tend to serve as cheerleaders for any capitalist government in conflict with U.S. imperialism. This is based on a vision of the world where the dividing lines are between states and nations. If U.S. imperialism is the dominant power, then the only force that can oppose it are weaker states.

Yet the world’s real dividing lines are between classes. It is the working class, if it constitutes itself as an independent political force, that can lead all oppressed people in the struggle for liberation.

When the PSL, the KO, and other campists support the Islamic Republic, this logically implies that Iran’s working class should obey the authorities and cease all efforts to organize for a better life. Campists believe this powerful proletariat, which toppled a dictatorship in 1979 and shook the foundations of imperialist domination in the Middle East, has no role to play today.

A bourgeois government’s “resistance” to imperialism will always be partial. By defending private property, all capitalist states defend the economic foundations of imperialism. The only way to break with imperialism would be for a workers’ government to nationalize the means of production and the natural resources in Iran — but the Islamic Republic suppresses all unions and organizations with this perspective.

This is just one example of how an “anti-imperialist” bourgeois government represses and weakens the working class — holding down the one force that could actually defeat U.S. imperialism.

Permanent Revolution

Iran’s self-defense against U.S. and Israeli aggression is progressive — a U.S. victory would further subjugate the people of the region. Workers and leftists need to be part of that defense. But as part of an anti-imperialist struggle, we must question the strict limits placed by the Islamic Republic. This means, for example, mobilizing women, in spite of Khamenei’s obscurantist ideas about women’s role. It means calling for strikes in both the region and in the imperialist centers to stop the war machine.

The working class must aim to lead the struggle against imperialism. This is how an anti-imperialist defensive war can be transformed into a socialist revolution — this is the perspective of permanent revolution, a perspective that was becoming visible in 1979-80. It was the mullahs who crushed workers’ self-organization back then — and there is no reason that workers should trust them today.

Some left-wing supporters of Iran see themselves as “Marxist-Leninists.” But speaking at a congress of the Communist International, Lenin emphasized the “the need to combat Pan-Islamism and similar trends, which strive to combine the liberation movement against European and American imperialism with an attempt to strengthen the positions of the khans, landowners, mullahs, etc.” Instead, he thought communists should remain an independent force in the anti-imperialist struggle:

“The Communist International must enter into a temporary alliance with bourgeois democracy in the colonial and backward countries, but should not merge with it, and should under all circumstances uphold the independence of the proletarian movement even if it is in its most embryonic form.”

That’s the Marxist and Leninist policy today — and it’s defended by Trotskyists.

Red Flag is a weekly opinion column on Berlin politics that Nathaniel has been writing since 2020. After moving through different homes, it now appears at The Left Berlin.

Reminder: Join the school strike against military service this Thursday at 11:00 at Potsdamer Platz!