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Palantir’s accelerated digital fascism

A leftist reading of the Palantir Technologies manifesto


05/05/2026

The well-known and controversial technology firm Palantir Technologies recently published a manifesto. The document is neither a technical paper nor an economic vision. It is an explicitly political document that announces a new phase in the trajectory of digital capitalism, a phase in which it has abandoned its claim to neutrality and decided to reveal its full ideological face.

Palantir is not an isolated case. It is one of several major technology companies that sell their technologies to systems of repression and human rights violations. As such, it has been condemned by international human rights organizations, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

Most damning of all, reports have revealed a direct partnership between Palantir and the Israeli military, where Palantir, like Amazon, Google and Microsoft, has supplied data and targeting systems used in military operations in Gaza, making these companies effective partners in documented war crimes against Palestinian civilians.

The manifesto is a declaration of a project for a digital fascist alliance, one that does not rest on traditional violence alone, but on digital surveillance and repression, data analysis, artificial intelligence and manipulation of public opinion. An alliance whose crimes are embodied today in their clearest form in Trumpism, its alliances and its aggressive wars.

1. From Silicon Valley to the White House

Peter Thiel, co-founder of Palantir and the most important financial backer of Trump’s political career, is not merely a businessman who supports a political candidate. He is the ideological mind that gives this project its political logic, and who has openly declared that freedom and democracy are incompatible.

This alliance is no coincidence. It is a fusion of two projects that share a single goal: the concentration of power in the hands of a financial and political oligarchy that believes itself to possess a “natural right” to govern its own societies and those of others.

This alliance finds its institutional expression today in what is known as the technological acceleration movement, which includes Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and others, who are moving in a coordinated manner with the second Trump administration.

What unites them is not full ideological uniformity, but class position and shared interest: the abolition of any regulatory or democratic constraint that limits their capacity for accumulation, domination and expansion of control.

2. The Manifesto

Palantir described the manifesto as a summary of its chief executive Alexander Karp’s book “The Technological Republic”. Within a few days it received millions of views and angered many people.

But anger must not be content with emotional reaction, for the strongly right-wing manifesto deserves a precise, left-wing reading, a reading that goes deeper than indignation.

The manifesto contains 22 points, constructed with deliberate architectural precision. Some points appear moderate or even humane on the surface, such as calls to respect politicians’ privacy or to avoid taking pleasure in an opponent’s defeat.

But these points are neither innocent nor coincidental. They are the calculated facade used to win over the hesitant reader and give the manifesto a “balanced” appearance before it reveals its true face. What appears logical in the manifesto is therefore not proof of its balance, but further proof of its cunning.

The manifesto is, in short, about promoting a comprehensive ideological agenda centered on militarization, domination and a hierarchy between civilizations.

3. Fatherland, Conscription, Control, Racism

Point 1 asserts that “the engineering elite in Silicon Valley has a moral obligation to participate in the defence of the nation.” This moral framing is not innocent. When military and security contracts are presented as a “moral duty”, social pressure becomes a mechanism to compel engineers and programmers to serve the war and repression machinery. Any dissenting voice within technology companies is silenced in the name of “patriotism.” This is the transformation of individual conscience into a commodity in the service of the military-security state and its institutions of repression and surveillance.

Point 2 calls for a “revolt against the tyranny of apps”, meaning the rejection of consumer technology in favour of deeper security and military systems. This is not a critique of consumer capitalism, as it may seem. It is a call to redirect technological capacity towards the war and surveillance machine rather than the entertainment market.

Point 5 declares that “the question is not whether AI weapons will be built; the question is who will build them.” This closed logic aims to eliminate any debate about refusing the militarization of technology. When the choice is presented as “us or the enemy”, the possibility of saying “no to weapons altogether” is erased. It is the same logic used by Cold War administrations to silence peace movements and restrict left-wing organizations. It returns now in digital disguise.

Point 6 demands that “conscription should be a universal duty” and calls for reconsidering the fully volunteer military in favour of mandatory conscription. This demand reveals the manifesto’s fascist face: when the state fails to recruit volunteers to fight its wars, it resorts to institutional coercion and calls it “shared responsibility.” Most revealing of all is that the company demanding young people sacrifice their lives in defense of “the West” simultaneously earns billions of dollars from the war contracts in which those young people die. Duty for all, profit for the few.

Point 17 claims that “Silicon Valley must play a role in handling violent crime.” This proposal appears pragmatic on the surface, but at its core it is an expansion of private security companies’ powers to bypass the state’s role and transform themselves into an independent force for social control. It operates according to profit logic rather than legal logic, independent courts and democratic accountability.

Point 20 demands “resistance to the pervasive intolerance towards religious belief.” This point does not spring from a genuine defense of freedom of conscience. It is an opportunistic use of religious discourse to build an ideological alliance with conservative and religious currents that are most receptive to mobilization behind war projects.

Point 21 is the most revealing of the manifesto’s deep ideological dimension when it declares that “some cultures have produced vital advances, while others remain dysfunctional and backward.” This sentence is the theoretical foundation of colonial racism, which justifies domination, occupation and the killing of peoples under the guise of “rational management of civilization.”

This logic does not differ fundamentally from “the white man’s burden” that justified colonialism in earlier centuries. It is reproduced today in the language of algorithms and big data. What makes it more dangerous than its predecessor is that it does not require visible colonial forces. A database and a targeting algorithm are sufficient.

4. The Algorithms of Death

Reports have revealed that Palantir has established strategic partnerships with armies and security institutions to build targeting databases that are actually used in military operations. In Palestine, the use of artificial intelligence systems to build targeting lists is extensively documented. This has led to massacres of civilians in Gaza.

What the company calls an “intelligent targeting system” is in practice a machine for administering killings with industrial efficiency. Killing no longer requires a responsible human decision. It requires an algorithm, sufficient data and a green light from an apparatus that is not subject to any democratic accountability.

Most important in this context is that the use of these systems cannot be separated from the discourse that justifies classifying entire societies as backward or threatening. The crime does not begin with the bomb. It begins with the classification.

The danger of the model that Palantir is building lies not only in its direct military applications. Even more dangerous is what can be described as the “surveillance society”, when control becomes internal rather than external.

When an individual knows they are being monitored at every moment, they begin to impose surveillance upon themselves. They change their language, avoid sensitive subjects, distance themselves from radical dissenting ideas. This voluntary self-surveillance limits and weakens left-wing and progressive movements from within, without any need for arrests or direct restrictions.

5. The Left-Wing Alternative

The Palantir manifesto is not merely a document from a technology company. It is an alarm bell that progressive forces must hear clearly: the battle over the future of technology is no longer lurking in the wings. It has stepped into the open.

The fundamental question is not how technology is used. It is who owns it and who determines its goals. Technology will not become a tool for emancipation as long as it remains in the hands of digital monopolies allied with right-wing, war and repression projects.

Any serious discussion must begin with the necessity of collective ownership over digital infrastructure, and with subjecting algorithms and artificial intelligence to genuine democratic control that represents the interests of peoples rather than monopolistic elites.

It is not sufficient to produce intellectual criticism without building actual technological alternatives: social platforms free from monopoly and repression, search tools that respect the privacy of all users, artificial intelligence systems managed in a democratic and transparent manner. These are not hobby projects for the future. They are an urgent strategic necessity.

6. Technological Disarmament and the Silence of the Workers

Building alternatives alone is not sufficient unless it is accompanied by an organized campaign to strip the monopolies of their technological weapons. Just as the historical workers’ movements fought to disarm capital in factories and on farms, there is today a need for an equivalent struggle to collectively wrest lethal algorithms, targeting systems and mass surveillance from the grip of these companies.

This struggle takes several forms: boycotting their services, exposing their secret contracts with governments, prosecuting their leaders before international courts for complicity in war crimes, and pressuring public institutions to sever their ties with these companies.

It is striking and deeply suspicious that the Palantir manifesto does not mention a single word about workers, trade unions, the right to organize, or the strike. This silence is not accidental. It is an admission that the fascist technological project cannot confront the workers’ question, because workers alone, if they organize themselves, are capable of halting the production lines of death. A general strike in Silicon Valley or even in Palantir’s own offices is this project’s nightmare.

7. Digital Fascism by Its True Name

The Palantir manifesto clearly reveals that we are facing a new form of fascism: the alliance between monopoly capital and aggressive national political power, and the use of violence, repression and civilizational hierarchy to protect this alliance from any popular threat.

The only difference is that this fascism’s tools today are algorithms, big data and artificial intelligence, and it is precisely this that makes it more closed and more difficult to resist than what came before.

While Palantir CEO Alexander Karp finishes his philosophical manifesto in his elegant office, the algorithms his company has built continue their work of identifying targets, tracking migrants at borders and supporting the machinery of militarism across the globe. Philosophy and crime are two sides of the same coin.

The struggle for social justice and emancipation passes today inevitably and substantially through the struggle to liberate technology from this aggressive class alliance. It is not a technical question or an abstract ethical question.

It is a political question all the way through, and part of a historical struggle over who shall have control of the future.

6 May 1943: The birth of Andreas Baader

This week in working class history


May 6th marks the 83rd birthday of Andreas Baader, founding member and one of the leaders of Rote Armee Fraktion (RAF), an anti-imperialist guerrilla group that tried to denazify Germany through armed forces. Followed by the anniversary of his comrade’s death, journalist Ulrike Meinhof, on May 9th, and the birth of the RAF itself in May 1970, this week and month are a heavy time to reflect on the influence and legacy of the RAF in Germany.

With a criminal record for petty offenses, Baader arrived in Berlin in his early 20s, had links to Kommune 1, and was part of the 1968 student movements. Radicalized by the police killing of the student Benno Ohnesorg,  Baader soon made a name for himself in the left-wing scene. In Berlin, he met Gudrun Ensslin, a communist writer, who became his partner in life and crime. The pair joined the APO (Extra-Parliamentary Opposition) and planned and carried out arson attacks in department stores, which led to their imprisonment.

During a subsequent visit to the prison for an interview, the group met Ulrike Meinhof, who was already a renowned left-wing journalist at the time and also a member of the APO. After Baader’s escape and a visit to Palestine in 1970 to learn about resistance, weapons, and liberation movements, the RAF members returned to Germany for the 1972 Mai-Offensive, which consisted of bomb attacks against US army bases, police headquarters and, ultimately, against Axel Springer publishing house.

The group then went into hiding. Whilst Baader, Ensslin, and other member Raspe were  apprehended by the police in Frankfurt, Ulrike Meinhof remained at large for longer. The RAF continued their resistance behind bars in the form of hunger strikes, and then were transferred to the high-security wing of Stammheim Prison, in whose courthouse the Ulm 5 were recently brought to trial. Remaining RAF members’ acts, intended to release the prisoners, proved in vain: the occupation of the German Embassy in Stockholm, the kidnapping of Hans-Martin Schleyer, former SS-officer and Chairman of the Employers’ Association, as well as the hijacking of a Lufthansa aircraft.

In 1976 Ulrike Meinhof hung herself in her cell; the following year in October, Gudrun Ensslin and Andreas Baader were found dead as well, the latter with a shot in the back of the head. The state said it was meant to look like murder; the comrades said that it was. To this day, the Rote Armee Fraktion remains one of the most significant anti-imperialist movements in Germany in the fight against fascism and its oppressive anti-democratic laws, restricted fundamental rights, police authority and violence, and the nazification of the government and the state. Politics that echoes eerily familiar in today’s Germany.

German trade unions clamp down on Palestine activism

Repression in Berlin – report #9


A leaked memo reveals how Germany’s largest union body consorted to exclude pro-Palestinian speech at this year’s May Day demonstration. In an internal strategy paper, the Leipzig branch of the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB) lists various “unacceptable” and “inappropriate” political positions, slogans and symbols, most of which entail supporting Palestinian liberation.

The document split pro-Palestine symbols and slogans into two types. The first category is “completely unacceptable” and would lead to immediate removal from the protest and reporting to the police. These include: the red triangle, denying the Zionist state’s existence, the slogan “From the River to the Sea Palestine Will Be Free,” any relativisation to the Holocaust (such as the claim that israel is currently committing a Holocaust-like crime against the Palestinians) and antisemitic statements such as “Israel, murderer of children.”

The second category is “inappropriate but not criminal,” in which case, the memo notes, stewards should either ensure that the individuals are not visible at the front of the protest, or that they simply leave. These include: Palestinian flags, Palestinian keffiyehs, “one-sided portrayals of the Middle East conflict” and flags and symbols of “problematic groups.”

The document then refers to several pro-Palestinian and communist groups as “potential disruptive elements,” categorising them as “authoritarian/anti-Semitic leftists.” The Socialist German Workers’ Youth (SDAJ) and the Communist Party (DKP), are considered “problematic,” while Young Struggle, Zora, Handala, Communist Organisation (KO), Gewerkschafter4Gaza and Communist Aufbau (KA), are labeled as “highly problematic.”

In 2024, during the Munich May Day demonstration, as different groups chanted for Palestinian liberation, the DGB leadership stated to the press: ”They are not part of our movement, and we do not share their views.” Meanwhile that same year, in Berlin, the DGB leadership tried to exclude pro-Palestinian representation by issuing a pre-demonstration statement banning all national flags. Despite the attempted repression, on the day, many participants chanted for Palestine and were thereafter told by stewards that pro-Palestine slogans were antisemitic and even reported to the police. Towards the end of the demonstration, the stewards, collaborating with the police, violently tried to separate this bloc from the rest of the protest, pushing demonstrators and pulling at banners.

This year, Berlin’s May Day demonstration, organised by several internationalist, leftist and communist groups, and proudly in support of Palestine, was met with a different kind of repressive hurdle. A few hundred meters after the protest left Oranienplatz, it collided with a large concert taking over the route, leaving extremely limited space for protesters to pass and find their way through. It was only after hours of efforts and resilience from the organisations, stewards and demonstrators that the protest was able to carry on together. The concert in question was organised by Die Linke. Several organisers called out this event as sabotage, sowing division and part of a broader strategy of appeasement.

“We have to shut down their business”

Interview with Nikodem Kaddoura from the Bridges of Resistance camp in Hamburg


Hi, thanks for talking to us. Could you start by introducing yourself?

Sure. My name is Nikodem Kaddoura. I’m part of the campaign Stop Nakba Now!. We’re a nationwide campaign that is confronting Germany’s complicity in the genocide in Gaza.

Today we specifically want to talk about the camp that you’re organizing in Hamburg, running up to Nakba day

Right. There is an action week from May 9 to May 16 in Hamburg. There will be a protest camp at the Moorweide throughout the week, and on the 16th, there will be a nationwide protest gathering near to the port of Hamburg.

Who’s gonna be speaking at the camp?

We’re currently still in the announcement phase on social media, but we’ve already confirmed a number of speakers. These include Yasemin Acar, Judith Scheytt, Fabian Goldmann, Fabian Lehr, Alena Jabarine, Elisa Baş, Hebh Jamal, Riad Othman and many more.

There will be many more speakers contributing to around 40 workshops and panels throughout the week. You can find the full and continuously updated program on our website.

Why a nationwide protest camp in Hamburg?

We have to look at the last two and a half years. There have been many protests and a lot of important organizing and a large solidarity movement gathered on the streets. Solidarity is important, but at the same time many of us are asking: what comes next? Solidarity isn’t the goal. It’s the first step that is necessary, but we need something after which we can hold on to, something that allows us to move from outrage to strategy.

That’s why we have to disrupt the complicity of Germany and the genocide in Gaza. It’s not enough to only address the complicity in the abstract. We want to make it visible through protests, political education and direct confrontation with all the structures that sustain the apartheid, the genocide, and all the systems in Israel.

When we look at Hamburg, we have to say that complicity isn’t only political. It isn’t just the government or Staatsräson. It is also economic and logistical. There are whole chains of complicity, and companies are profiting from the suffering of Palestinians, as well as from other people across the Global South.

In that context, the port of Hamburg is a central hub where these chains converge. In the last three years, 17,000 boxes of ammunition were shipped from Hamburg to Israel. And these are only the ones we know about. Because of the lack of transparency, this is probably only the tip of the iceberg. We don’t know about the technology and all the other military goods that were shipped to Israel.

This is a specific material complicity. Our question is not whether Germany is involved. We ask whether we are ready to confront the infrastructure through which that apartheid, settler colonialism, and genocide are maintained?

Our campaign is called Stop Nakba now. When we talk about the Nakba, we have to be clear that it’s not a closed chapter of history. The Nakba is still ongoing. It is a continuing process of displacement, ethnic cleansing and settler colonial violence against Palestinians.

What we’re witnessing today in Gaza didn’t begin two and a half years ago. It must be understood as part of a much larger history – includingf Zionist settler colonialism, forced displacement, oppression, mass killing, and now an act of genocide. This is why the Action Week is placed around the memorial day of the Nakba. We want to address the complicity to support the Palestinians.

Last year, we had the largest demonstration in Germany for Palestine ever. Six days later, the ceasefire was called, which we know wasn’t a ceasefire, but it demobilised the movement worldwide. How do you think we can win back the people who were demonstrating in September and are no longer on the streets?

I think it’s connected to the point I made earlier. We have to give hope to the people  giving logical next steps. When we’re talking about the solidarity movement that wants to free Palestine, we will not liberate Palestine within German borders. But in Germany, we have the responsibility, at least, to disrupt the systems that enable apartheid, displacement, and genocide. If we’re serious in this solidarity, then we have to weaken these structures and oppression that make this violence possible.

On the other hand, it’s very important to combine our struggles. Our protest camp is being held under the motto Bridges of Resistance. The focus should be on the connection to other struggles, including international struggles and social struggles here in Germany. These struggles are not separated. They are deeply connected. That’s why we want to gather not only a big mass but also a diversity of people from different struggles.

Are there any specific struggles you want to talk about?

If we look at the austerity and the situation of social services in Germany, we can see this very clearly. We are constantly told that because of the debt break there is no money for housing, for education, healthcare, environment or social infrastructure. At the same time, billions are being forced into militarization.

How is it possible that Rheinmetall last year made a record profit while wages are under pressure, and more and more people are living under increasingly difficult conditions? How is it possible that there’s always money for war but never for people’s needs?

We also want to address the school strike movement because young people are facing climate collapse, militarization, austerity, racism and repression. But these aren’t separate issues. They are connected through a system that prioritizes profits over life. If we are serious about building resistance, then we have to build bridges between these struggles. They are part of the same system, and they have to be fought together to achieve the goals of liberation.

One of the interesting things about the last school strike, particularly in Berlin, was the number of demonstrators wearing kuffiyahs and carrying Palestine flags. This is new in Germany. What concrete links are you able to build with the school strike movement?

We will have students at the camp to give workshops, and we will try to directly address the school strike movement. As you said, in Berlin there was massive solidarity with the Palestinian struggle. Even in Hamburg, there was a big solidarity movement.

We have to connect, because I have hope in our young generation. It’s time now to change something within the system, and to change the system.

If people come to the camp, what can they expect?

We will have plenty of political education, discussions and networking. And we will talk about direct action – How can we disrupt these chains of complicity? How is it possible for us to change something within our borders?

As I said, our responsibility here in Germany is to build a movement that is strong enough to disrupt the global war machine. We need to cut off the material support that is necessary to sustain apartheid and genocide. This is how we can  create a ground for Palestinians to be able to continue their resistance against the Israeli regime and to liberate themselves We planned a whole action week to discuss these things and also to take some first practical steps.

The aim is to build a movement that can put real pressure on the structures enabling militarisation and violence, and to create conditions that support ongoing resistance.

How many people are you expecting at the camp? It’s during the week, so some people will be working.

Hopefully as many as possible, I hope that throughout the week hundreds of people will be at the camp, thousands at the protest. I hope we will be 10,000 and more. Who knows? It’s a very important campaign, and we have to gather in front of their doors. Hamburg is, as I said, a central hub for the maintenance of the Israeli structures, of their part in the genocide. So we have to go directly where it hurts them.

There’s a national demonstration being called for the day after Nakba day. Originally in Berlin, people said: we’ll do a Berlin demonstration on Nakba day, and then we’ll come to Hamburg. Now the Berlin demo is going to be at the same time as the Hamburg demo. This is a shame. What should we be telling people now?

It’s up to the people. But I can only address the last two and a half years. We’re protesting on the streets, addressing politicians, maybe in front of the Bundestag or Brandenburger Tor, but at the end, it’s only symbolic. We’re protesting and addressing politicians who will not change anything.

We have to be the change we want for our people, and we have to bring the change. We have to ask: who iscomplying with genocide? It isn’t just the politicians, it’s the companies. These are the value chains of goods being shipped to Israel. We have to address these people – and not only address them, but also confront them.

That’s why we have to go to Hamburg in front of their doors, because the biggest companies involved in this genocide are located in Hamburg. We have the German offices of Merz. We have Hapag-Lloyd. We have MSC. We have plenty of companies making billions of profits in the last two and a half years who are still doing their businesses without any disruption.

And there are also the ports from which the weapons are sent

Yes

There have been a number of camps recently –which is a welcome development – from organisations like Shut Elbit Down. Some of these camps have been shut down or attacked by the police. How likely is it that you’re going to have any problems?

Hopefully not. We have good enough lawyers who we’ve been working with for a long time. They are in solidarity with the Palestinian movement and our activism  in Hamburg. We most probably will not face any repression, because at the end, if the state will try any repression against us, we know that we will win a legal process in court.

All of these repressions are an act of weakness from the state, because they are afraid of our activism. They know that our work can hurt the government and this capitalist system.

What’s going to happen after that? You say this is not just about having a symbolic demonstration. It’s not just changing minds but also changing practice. What do you think can happen as a result of the camp?

ther countries like Greece or Italy, have a big movement of port workers who have blocked shipments. This is where we have to start – first with this week, to make the complicity visible and create awareness for this topic, then to go on and try to disrupt them.

Every single Euro they make from the suffering of the Palestinian people, has to be revenged. It can’t stay like this. We have to shut down their business, like when you talked about Shut Elbit Down. We have to shut down all the companies which are making profits from the genocide in Gaza and throughout the whole Global South.

What can people in Berlin do to support the camp and demo?

We have two pages on social media. The one is the campaign account – Stop Nakba Now. The other one is the camp account: Bridges of Resistance. Stop Nakba Now also has a website. You can stay up to date from these channels. There are pickup points in Berlin, so people who want to join this campaign can pick up material, like posters or information sheets to share throughout Berlin.

Is there any transport organized from Berlin?

We have organised two buses that will bring people from Berlin to the rally in Hamburg. You find information about times and tickets on our website. 

Is there anything we haven’t covered that you think we should talk about?This week will be expensive, and we are a grassroots movement, so we don’t have a lot of money. We have a crowdfunding campaign. We need every single euro or every single cent that people or organisations are able to donate. We listed the costs we have so that people can understand why we need the money and for what the money will be used.

A Failed Kafka Musical

Berliner Ensemble’s Kafka-inspired “Talmudic Vaudeville” fails due to German state censorship of non-Zionist Jewish identity.


04/05/2026

On paper, K. sounds just like the kind of play Berlin would need right now. The “Talmudic Vaudeville show inspired by Kafka’s The Trial,” with text and music in German, Yiddish, and Hebrew, just finished a run at Berliner Ensemble, Bertolt Brecht’s old theater in central Berlin.

I saw a performance on April 27 — the same day the anti-Zionist group Jüdische Stimme (Jewish Voice) won an injunction against Germany’s domestic secret service. The agency founded by Nazi war criminals had been referring to these Jewish leftists as “extremists.”

The irony makes it clear: there is a lot to be said about Jewish culture in Germany today.

The German bourgeoisie is made of numerous Nazi billionaires whose wealth can be traced back to the Holocaust. Today they don the mantle of philosemitism to support another genocide. They sell weapons to a colonial enclave in the Middle East, but swear their only goal is to “protect Jewish life.” If any Jews voice objection, the black-gloved fist of a German cop will keep them quiet — all in the name of “fighting antisemitism,” naturally.

Accelerated by the genocide in Gaza, Jewish identity around the world is being torn down and rebuilt. A partial Zionist consensus that existed for a generation after 1967 is melting away — traditional anti-Zionist leftist ideologies of the Jewish Left are reemerging from its ashes. Surely Kafka, the great assimilated Jewish-German artist of the 20th century, could offer some material to think about such screaming contradictions.

Kafka’s relationship to Judaism and Zionism was ambivalent. “What do I have in common with Jews?” he wondered. “I hardly have anything in common with myself.” Yet he was fascinated by the competing Jewish revivals going on around him, studying Hebrew and attending Yiddish theater in Prague.

A modern staging of Kafka could try to reflect how today’s ideological tensions echo those of the author. But no. Despite a stunning performance by Kathrin Wehlisch as Joseph K., this is a standard version of The Trial, more than 100 years after the story’s publication. In vain one waits to see some nod to the world we live in. How about a right-wing German judge condemning a Jewish immigrant for antisemitism? Kafkaesque!

To create an air of originality, the standard play is interrupted by Yiddish pop songs of a century ago — beautiful but random. On top of this, the audience reads a short story and diary entries from Kafka as he lay dying in a sanatorium. There are Klezmer melodies and poems by Heinrich Heine. Kafka’s short story “The Penal Colony” is read in full, so that K. is executed twice for no apparent reason.

There are brief moments of creativity, such as when K.’s advocate thunders in Hebrew from inside a Hekhal:  “Thou shall have no other advocates before me!” But these are few and far between. Coming in at over three hours, it’s an exhausting mishmash with nothing to say about anything. 

An artist like Daniel Kahn might have done something profound with a Yiddish-language Kafka musical — but Kahn is too radical to get a big stage in Germany today. K. is Jewish culture as the German bourgeoisie wants it: dead, meaningless cosplay. German philosemitism is superficial: Any engagement with Jews (or those who present themselves as Jews to German audiences) is strictly subordinate to the country’s imperialist interests. 

The German establishment regularly cancels Jewish artists — not just radical leftists, but even famous artists like Nan Goldin or even comedians like Nathan Fielder. Only the German bourgeoisie really knows what antisemitism is, after all. So this innocuous Kafka production is the only thing that gets past the censorship.