The Left Berlin News & Comment
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The AfD and the Working Class
Ten million Germans voted for the far-right AfD in the Bundestag election in February. Very many of them were ordinary people, workers. What does that mean for the left?
On election night in February, one figure stood out for me: the number of workers voting for the AfD. According to exit polling, the far-right party took 38% of manual workers’ votes nationally, ahead of the Christian Democrats (22%) and the Social Democrats (just 12%). In the AfD’s strongholds, the figure must be even higher.
Alongside an ideologically motivated core, the AfD is clearly attracting the votes of substantial numbers of workers. That sets it apart from classical fascism, whose base was the petty bourgeoisie and the lumpenproletariat (the middle class and the unemployed).
The Trade Unions
Support for the AfD raises new and challenging questions within the trade unions, although there is scant public discussion about them. As one trade union official in eastern Germany told me, “Union members voting AfD is nothing unusual these days.” In fact, there are workplaces where AfD supporters are among the most bolshy. Notably, these tend to be AfD voters but rarely members.
There are also places where significant numbers of trade union members reject their union’s opposition to the party. The metalworkers’ union is reported to have lost members after its flags were seen at the blockade of the AfD’s national conference in January. At the mass demonstrations against the AfD before the elections, led by Die Grünen and Die Linke, the trade unions seemed to be downplaying their visible, organised presence. That said, a large proportion of the participants were also union members.
Electoral Geography
The electoral geography tells us more. The AfD’s best results read like a map of the worst byproducts of neoliberalism: the deindustrialised east (but not prospering Leipzig and Dresden), the poorest cities (Gelsenkirchen), and the struggling peripheries (the Bavarian Forest). The same applies within the cities, too: few AfD votes in Berlin’s gentrified middle-class quarters, many in the high-rise estates on the outskirts (Marzahn, Hellersdorf, Hohenschönhausen). The latter used to be solid strongholds for Die Linke.
The pattern reappears within Berlin’s boroughs, too. Prenzlauer Berg is green, but its neglected social housing is an island of AfD blue. In Tempelhof, Spandau, and Neukölln, the AfD’s best polling station results were all in medium—and high-rise housing estates on the city’s outer periphery—Waldsassener Strasse (28.4%), Südekumzeile (31.2%), and Frauenviertel (25.0%), respectively.
The Provinces
Where I live – in small-town Brandenburg – the AfD got 35% across the board. For the moment, there is little sign of a change in the atmosphere. There is not much talk about politics at all. When there is, it is generally to grumble about the price of food, second-hand cars, petrol and butter, wind turbines, and the Greens’ heating regulations (Heizungsgesetz). The farmers’ protests in early 2024 were a talking point and were seen positively. In some quarters, there is anger and disdain over Germany’s role in the Ukraine war. There are milieus where resentment over the Covid lockdown policies is still raw. Intriguingly, there is a conspicuous overlap between the anti-war and Covid-sceptical circles.
There is certainly grumbling about refugees, too. It would be mistaken, though, to attribute every objection to animus against people of colour. Part of the sentiment mirrors the discussions in Germany’s Turkish communities, for example, where the idea that immigration should be reduced is not uncommon. Some of those complaining about hotels being converted into refugee accommodation point to the very large sums of public money being funneled into the hands of a few very wealthy property owners.
I witnessed an interesting conflict in 2017 when the refugee issue was still new. A petition went around one village, objecting to the local hotel being converted into mass accommodation. It turned out that the council had initially promised to rent people’s spare rooms and underused holiday lets to house refugees. Locals who had looked forward to a little extra income were aggrieved that the decision had been overturned. It’s complicated…
Contradictory Ideas
Are the AfD’s voters all committed reactionaries and racists? Is it really that simple? An exit survey gives us some insights. 18% of AfD voters think it would be good if only Germans lived in Germany. 9% want all migrants to leave Germany, even those who are naturalised. These sentiments give us an indication of the size of the hardcore, out-and-out racists. Those figures would represent an election result of 4% and 2%, respectively. Which is roughly what open neo-Nazi parties got in the past.
On the other hand, 42% of AfD voters think the party should distance itself more clearly from the extreme right. Moreover, 84% say the party is in the middle of the political spectrum, not on the right. 85% say it is the only party they can vote for to protest against the established parties. 39% said they voted AfD because they were disappointed with other parties. The figures are contradictory in places, but that is no surprise.
AfD voters worry more about making ends meet than the supporters of any other party. Three-quarters of them fear they won’t be able to pay their bills or keep up their standard of living. The AfD attracts more men than women. Age-wise, it is strongest in the 25-59 group and notably weak among the retired.
It is hard to say how closely the AfD’s voters are connected to the party. There is little sign that the ties are generally strong.
We must consider the AfD’s significant vote as a symptom of broader underlying developments. On the one hand, large sections of the population are deeply alienated from all the established parties. These include significant parts of the ‘classical’ working class – not just manual workers but all those furthest from the credentialed professions. Alternatively, much of what currently passes for ‘the left’ revolves around the ‘better’ white-collar occupations (and, to an extent, even managerial). Geographically and socially, there is little contact between the two. Further, on the ‘left’, there is often little understanding that material issues are of genuine importance (pay, energy bills, food prices).
Frustration and Alienation
A significant section of the working class has had enough of the way things are, the stress and insecurity of existence under neoliberalism: low pay, stagnant or falling standard of living, food inflation, fuel poverty, difficulty getting medical appointments, the prospect of poverty in old age, fifteen euros an hour for skilled factory work; the list is endless.
This boils down to a deep sense that ‘they’ just don’t care about ‘us’. ‘They’ are all the mainstream parties and most (if not all) state institutions. There is a deep alienation from the established parties and the mainstream political process as a whole. This lies behind much of the AfD vote, non-voting, and part of the BSW vote.
Conversely, any party that parleys with the establishment is rejected. That certainly applies to Die Linke, which has placed great emphasis on participating in state governments. The recent Bundestag election saw its former strongholds in eastern Germany reduced to university towns and student quarters. It may have laudable slogans and policies but is not perceived as credible about implementing them. After all, the mainstream parties talk a good game, too. For many who oppose Germany’s shockingly rapid militarisation, Die Linke’s vote for war credits was the last straw. But no real surprise, given the party’s lack of backbone over the Ukraine misadventure.
The BSW’s sudden loss of support in the autumn after it entered state-level coalitions in Brandenburg and Thuringia was arguably also due to its loss of credibility after joining established power structures.
Migration as a Cipher
Ordinary people have been let down and neglected by all the mainstream parties and institutions, including the trade unions. The successive betrayals are particularly clear in the former East Germany. After reunification, CDU Chancellor Helmut Kohl promised ‘flourishing landscapes’ and left behind a deindustrialised wasteland. Voters turned to the SPD and were rewarded with Gerhard Schröder’s trashing of the welfare state. They moved left again in the mid-2000s, flocking to Die Linke, which joined and led regional and local governments across the east – to privatise social housing and administer austerity policies. They have all failed us dismally. At the end of that process – and in the absence of a credible left alternative – it is not surprising if some people follow the Pied Piper.
In that sense, the migration issue serves as a cipher for all the wider social and material problems we are told are unsolvable (or non-existent). If ordinary people felt their lives were good and improving, there would be little or no fuss over migration.
Drive a Wedge
There is an important question lurking behind the whole discussion. Does the vote for the AfD represent a real and significant shift in allegiances? Is it more a transient symptom of a period where old loyalties are crumbling (or have crumbled), but a real pole of resistance is yet to emerge? Only time will truly tell, but we still have to act now based on one or other assessment. My money is on the latter.
It is a tragedy that the far-right, anti-migrant AfD has been able to capitalise on the mood of frustration and anger. Ten or fifteen years ago, that was the Left Party’s constituency. Those who pushed the Left Party towards respectable reformism bear a great responsibility for subsequent developments.
The labour movement has a long and proud tradition of overcoming prejudice and discrimination through joint struggle; that should be our lodestar. Working class resistance always involves discussing and challenging backward ideas.
With so little class push-back, the current situation offers few opportunities. We should grasp those that do appear: Would there have been possibilities around the BVG transport strikes? Or the facility management dispute at the Charité teaching hospital? Or for tenants’ committees in the big housing estates?
One example to examine would be the experience of the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vests) in France from 2017 to 2019. That movement emerged out of the same social and geographical constellation we are dealing with now: alienated populations in neglected, austerity-wracked regions. Ideas adapted as the mass struggle played out, and new alliances formed. The vast and militant protests included many from migrant communities, along with considerable numbers who had voted for the far-right National Rally.
Essentially, we should be looking to drive a wedge between the organised racists and fascists (who we should continue to fight tooth and nail) and their voters. Condemning anyone who ever voted for the AfD as an out-and-out Hitler Nazi is not only factually incorrect; it is also thoroughly counterproductive.
Parts of this article were previously published on Counterfire.
77 years ago today, Zionist militias ethnically cleansed 800,000 Palestinians from their homes. The event, known as the Nakba (catastrophe in arabic) is commemorated every year by Palestinians and their supporters. As Israel’s current destruction of Gaza has showed, the Nakba did not just happen on one day, but is a continuing experience, both for the Palestinians whose families were expelled, and those who continue to live in a state of apartheid.
The Nakba was preceded by a number of massacres, such as in Deir Yassin village on April 9th, when 93 Palestinians (including 30 babies) were murdered by Jewish forces, and many were raped. One week after the Nakba, on May 22nd, Jewish soldiers occupied the village of Tantura and shot between 110 and 230 Palestinians. Ilan Pappe reports: “The Jews gathered all the women and children, in a place where they dumped all bodies, for them to see their dead husbands, fathers and brothers and terrorize them.” Many other acts of terror were used to force the Palestinians out.
One of the ironies of the Nakba is that most Jews fleeing the Holocaust did not want to go to Israel, which their leaders told them was an uninhabited desert. They wanted to go to countries like the USA and Britain, but these countries were implenring racist laws to restrict migration. The first of these laws was the British Aliens Act of 1905, introduced by AJ Balfour, the same man whose Balfour Declaration led to the formation of apartheid Israel.
By 1949, about 500 Palestinian villages and towns, and tribes had been destroyed and nearly 1 million Palestinians were forced to leave. The Israeli Absentees Property Law of 1950 expropriated their homes. There are now around 7 million Palestinian refugees, many of them in the 58 refugee camps in surrounding countries. Show your solidarity with them at the events which have been organised, including a demonstration today (4pm at Südstern).
“Eurovision is about getting very impassioned about something that does not matter”
Interview with Ciarán Dold from Corner Späti and Gyrovision
Phil Butland
14/05/2025
Hi Ciarán, thanks for talking to us. Can you start by just briefly introducing yourself?
I’m a comedian and researcher and probably better known as a podcaster with Corner Späti. We attempt to cover European politics from a left-wing and less serious perspective. We’ve been doing this for about 6 years now.
And now for the fifth time, you’ll be doing Gyrovision. Let’s start with the question I keep hearing, and will not work in a printed interview. How do you pronounce Gyrovision?
That is debated. One of Corner Späti’s co-hosts is Greek, and he gives out to me about pronouncing gyrovision with that hard English “G.” He’s informed me that it is actually pronounced “Eurovision.”
But I like calling it “geero-vision.” So, the official pronunciation of Gyrovision is with a hard G.
And what is Gyrovision?
When we started Corner Späti, we had a focus on Europe. And I’ve always felt that the unifying aspect of “European culture”––with heavy quotation marks––is actually Eurovision.
A lot of people on the right will say that it’s Philosophy and Christendom and Architecture and all that very dodgy stuff, when, in reality, I still think it’s Eurodance, and Cascada, and teenage binge drinking in front of your local rinky dink funfair. And Eurovision, I think, represents that quite well. I wanted to show my co-hosts Eurovision through my eyes.
We had to wait a year, because when we started the podcast in 2019, and BDS had called a boycott because Israel was hosting. And as much as I love Eurovision, it’s not more important than solidarity with the Palestinian people. The following year was the pandemic year, and we had to cancel last-minute.
Finally, in 2021, we started doing our own commentary on the Eurovision. That’s how Gyrovision started. We always made this joke that Gyro was the substitute word for a cheap knockoff version. I think the joke started originally as GyroDisney instead of EuroDisney, but then expanded to this.
Then last year, we did a boycott-friendly version. We try to make something as close to Eurovision as possible, without giving the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) any money or attention.
Before we talk about the boycott, there is a difference between Gyrovision and other comedic coverage of Eurovision in that you actually enjoy this shit. What is it about Eurovision that you like?
Part of it is definitely that I am Irish, and we have a, er, relationship with Eurovision. Ireland is currently, although probably not for long, joint first place with Sweden in most of the Eurovision wins of.
I have very nostalgic childhood memories of people in my street getting together to watch Eurovision. In Ireland, it would always be the first sunny day of the year. People would have barbecues in the garden, and then you’d go inside to watch the telly and see this contest happening.
People usually say it’s rubbish, but end up watching it regardless. It’s one of the most-watched live events in the world, more watched than the Super Bowl. Yet no one likes talking about it, which I find fascinating.
It scratches all the itches of music, pageantry, geography, and a fair amount of politics, even though they try to deny that’s there.
And yet most of the coverage talks less about the songs and more about who votes for whom and who doesn’t vote for whom.
People will say: “oh, Greece and Cyprus always vote for each other, it must be corruption.” And yeah, corruption has happened, especially with Azerbaijan, but it’s more because there’s a lot of Cypriots in Greece, and there’s a lot of Greek people in Cyprus who watch it at home.
You can also explain that with the UK and Ireland. The UK often gives points to Ireland, but Ireland doesn’t give points to the UK. People say “that must be the history,” but it’s more that there’s probably just more Irish people in the UK than there are British people in Ireland.
For a lot of countries, it’s very high stakes. This is the only international representation they have. A lot of countries like, famously Moldova, are not successful at sports. They take Eurovision very, very seriously, because it’s the only time Moldova is really represented on an international stage.
This means that they often have an outsized performance at the competition. I would describe Moldova’s characteristic at Eurovision as being drunk at the opening scene of a Wes Anderson movie. That’s the vibe their music usually gives. And it’s a lot of fun.
Every year, there’s always been some low level calls to boycott Eurovision because it features Israel. And these calls have been largely irrelevant. Last year, it was different. How did Gyrovision deal with the genocide?
A lot of these calls fall on deaf ears, because Eurovision has a very intense casual viewership. People usually just watch. Most people who watch Eurovision are watching it because there’s nothing else on telly that night.
There are super fans, but most people are very casually engaged, including the people who call for boycotts, who usually call for a boycott way too late. I usually see calls for kicking Israel out in March or April. But Eurovision 2025 was set in stone in September 2024. It’s a very slow moving and bureaucratic process.
The usual rule for BDS is they’ll only call for a boycott when Israel hosts Eurovision. As far as I understand, there isn’t an official boycott this year, probably because BDS is asking a lot of people right now or they think they are.
Last year, I knew a boycott was coming for obvious reasons. We listened to people saying what they wanted to do, and we said, “Fuck it. We can do this without the EBU getting any money”. We were able to get the songs in a way where EBU doesn’t get any money and we did the Eurovision ourselves. People voted. Obviously, we don’t include Israel and Azerbaijan for their various war crimes.
What are your criteria for who you don’t include? You exclude Israel and Azerbaijan. But you let people vote for Britain who are responsible for their fair share of war crimes.
Israel and Azerbaijan have used Eurovision for soft power reasons. Last year, the Israeli president intervened to make sure that Israel went to the competition. They take this stuff very seriously.
I think people recognize that for all the crimes the various other countries commit, I don’t think they would care all that much if they weren’t in Eurovision anymore, but Israel really seems to care.
This is probably the only thing where Israel is really relevant on the international stage. It’s the only thing where they’re represented as a country. They’re not big World Cup players. I never hear anyone talk about Israel in the Olympics, because it’s usually just America and China getting all the medals.
Irish-South African professor Patrick Bond makes pretty much the same argument, saying that the sports boycott was really important for South Africa, but if you want to hit Israel you’ve got to hit Eurovision.
Yeah. And unfortunately, I see that cynically deployed by Eurovision super fans who feel a little bit guilty, but they still want to watch the Eurovision. They say that no-one’s calling for a FIFA boycott of Israeli clubs.
But this is not relevant. You have to direct your energy somewhere. And unfortunately, Eurovision is the place. All this can also be said for Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan is also not very relevant in various sports, but they are relevant in Eurovision.
Plus there is a call for a FIFA boycott, even if it won’t hit Israel as much. Coming back to the way in which Israel tries to weaponize Eurovision: can you say something about last year’s and this year’s Israeli entries?
Last year’s entry was Eden Golan. It was less about the artist and more about the song itself. The song was originally titled October Rain, and as soon as that title was leaked, everyone on Eurovision fan media was saying: “Oh, fuck no. We know exactly what this is”.
I believe that they were initially trying to provoke the European Broadcasting Union into kicking them out, like they had done with Belarus. Then, when it looked like Iceland was about to send a Palestinian musician, Israeli President Herzog went to the national broadcaster Kan and said, “Change the lyrics.” That’s how we got the song Hurricane. When it was performed, it was booed live at the arena.
Now, I boycotted last year. That was a very easy decision for me. I’ve had these politics around Israeli Apartheid for a very long time. But I also heard a lot of reports of people going to Eurovision 2024, saying: “Music is music. Let’s leave politics out of it”, then leaving the competition saying: “Oh God, fuck Israel.”
So it served as a weird, radicalizing event for a lot of people. There was also a lot of shenanigans backstage, which goes into a whole other set of drama.
This year there’s Yuval Raphael. She was at the Nova music festival on October 7th 2023. She is considered a survivor. Her song is called A New Day Will Dawn. And they’re very much trying this year to once more redirect the conversation onto Israeli victims of this conflict at the expense of Palestinian victims, of whom there are many more
That’s how the song is being instrumentalized this year. Both are trying to elicit sympathy from a European audience, which, from what I’ve seen, is failing. But unfortunately, institutions are just putting up with Israel’s presence in this competition.
But there is more of a vocal call for boycott, for example from over 150 former Eurovision contestants including an Irish winner. Do you get a sense that something is changing?
Unfortunately, I don’t think anything has changed. Last year, the comparison that was often made was that Russia was kicked out after their invasion of Ukraine. But the EBU only banned Russia after ten national broadcasters in Eastern Europe, Central Europe, and I believe the Netherlands, threatened to pull out of the competition unless Russia was kicked out. It got a lot of institutional support.
Kicking Israel out has had a lot of support from fans, casual viewers, musicians, and people who are just staff at these events. Also songwriters, but who remembers the songwriters? Unfortunately, there’s still not enough institutional support.
If anything is changing, the unsung hero leading the charge is actually the Slovenian national broadcaster. They’re being the most vocal about this, and dragging in other countries like Spain, Norway, and Ireland.
The Slovenian national broadcaster started asking: “Why is Israel here? Can we talk about that? It doesn’t feel right.” The national broadcaster in Israel has broken a lot of EBU rules, and for this reason alone, they should be kicked out, regardless of any moral conversation about Palestine. They have been given a green light on a bunch of other rules that they’ve broken, such as independence from government propaganda, or promoting military things.
Do you have any tips for Eurovision? I know you’re very fond of the Australian entry.
This year I’m enjoying how horny the Australian entry is. I love how explicit you have to be when you do innuendo in a Eurovision Song. You understand that most of the audience don’t speak English as a first language, so you are very direct.
In Eurovision, these are 20 something songs that you will never listen to in your spare time. They do not reflect your actual music taste, but you are going to pick your favorite song from the bunch, and then you are going to start yelling at everyone who disagrees with you. It’s about getting very impassioned about something that does not matter and shouldn’t matter and should just be a bit of silly television.
How can people listen to songs and still observe the boycott?
There are two ways to do this. One, unfortunately, is Spotify. You can listen to all the songs in Eurovision this year but the money goes to the artists’ record label. And when we say money, we mean a fraction of a cent. We know how Spotify works. But that money does not go to the EBU.
The second way would be to use an online platform called Invidious, which is a no-tracking mirror of YouTube. None of the advertising revenue is counted by YouTube, because it hasn’t tracked you.
Let’s move on to Gyrovision. What will happen at Gyrovision and why should people go?
I and other hosts of Corner Späti will be doing commentary over the songs. We make our own opening ceremony. We make our own postcards, which is Eurovision terminology for the little bit that happens before the song plays showcasing the country.
We do all this to show you Europe through our somewhat sardonic lens. We do the usual stuff like dressing up, drinking, and dancing, all in the name of donating money to the Palestinian charities Heal Palestine and The Ghassan Abu Sittah Children’s Fund.
It’s for people who don’t take Eurovision very seriously. As much as I am a fan, I learn about it so that I can just kind of joke along with it in a knowing manner. It should be a lot of fun.
And this year, Gyrovision isn’t on the day of Eurovision, it’s the day after.
Yes, this year it is on the Sunday, because since we’re boycotting it doesn’t actually matter when we host it. It’s from 6pm till 10pm at Lark Berlin. Because it’s on Sunday, we are ending a little earlier.
You can come along and vote for your own songs, just like a real Eurovision, and we’ve got someone who’s made a little app for us to tally the votes.
Because it’s on the Sunday, people can also come to Palivision on Saturday, and we’re not competing like last year.
Absolutely, the feud that happened last year, we were just circling each other, staring daggers.
Is there anything else you want to say that we haven’t said,
Just that I am a fan of the Eurovision Song Contest, and I represent the type of person who could watch Eurovision again if the European Broadcasting Union actually kicked out Israel. I am the market they are missing out on.
I hear a lot of people talk about Eurovision from a perspective of “I never watched anyway”. I don’t think that’s the kind of voices that the EBU needs to hear. They need to hear from more people like me who say: I would watch, but you fucked up, so fix it.
Let’s organize. Let’s resist.
The Left Berlin Speech at the Demo Against German Militarism (10th May 2025)
The Left Berlin
13/05/2025
Dear Comrades, Berliners of every background and fellow resisters —
We gather today in Berlin — not just any city, but a city built on the ruins of war.
From the devastation of World War II to the walls that divided its people, Berlin is a living memory of what militarism does.
And yet — here we are again.
Rheinmetall, Germany’s largest weapons manufacturer, has announced plans to convert its plant in Humboldthain — right here in the Wedding neighborhood — into a military production site.
What used to make car parts will now produce components for tanks and armored vehicles — tools of war, machines of death.
Let’s be clear: this is not just one factory.
This is part of the largest rearmament campaign in Germany since the Second World War.
More than €100 billion will be funneled into the military by 2028.
And it’s happening fast — in budgets, in public discourse, in laws, in political decisions and in the propaganda of the media.
And we must remember what German militarism has meant in history.
It meant colonial massacres in Namibia and Tanzania.
It meant two World Wars, genocide, and entire cities turned to ash.
It meant tanks rolling into Poland, Yugoslavia, Russia, North Africa — death in the name of empire and order.
And currently it means fuelling and supporting Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
With German military equipment!
With our tax money!
We have learned this lesson once. We will not let it be forgotten.
Right now, the media and political class are busy selling us a new fear:
“Russia might invade Germany.”
“We must be ready for war.”
Let’s be clear: This is pure propaganda and warmongering.
There is no scenario in which Russia — exhausted by its war in Ukraine, economically isolated, diplomatically weak — invades Germany, a central NATO state surrounded by U.S. military bases, nuclear weapons, and the most powerful alliance in the world.
But this fantasy of invasion is useful.
It justifies skyrocketing military budgets.
It justifies arms exports.
It justifies expanding the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) reach from Eastern Europe to the Indo-Pacific.
It keeps the weapons factories full, and the public scared.
This isn’t about defending democracy.
This is about defending Western imperial dominance — U.S. power, NATO control, and profits for arms manufacturers like Rheinmetall and Lockheed Martin.
And who pays the price?
Not the politicians.
Not their children.
It is all of us!
It is our youth who will be sent to die in wars they didn’t start and never chose.
It is the working class, the migrants, the poor, the racialized — who are always told to fight while elites get rich.
It is the population of Ukraine and Poland, always caught in between the imperial power game.
We will not let our populations be used as pawns in their wars and geopolitical aims.
Our responsibility as people of any citizenship status in Berlin is NOT to blindly obey political decisions such as the current militarization just to “integrate” to German society or avoid “standing out”.
Our responsibility is to stay informed, think critically, take action against the processes that lead to war and destruction. And to remind Germany of its criminal military past.
We say no to NATO. No to brainwashing. No to war. No to militarization.
Today, Rheinmetall profits while people fleeing war — from Afghanistan, from Sudan, from Palestine, from Syria — are met with walls, prisons, and silence.
Refugees are criminalized. Deportations intensify.
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
With that money, we could:
Build a Berlin of welcome — and we mean for all, not just for white Europeans.
But that future will not be handed to us.
It must be fought for.
Because militarization is not waiting.
It is moving quickly — into schools, into law, into policy, into culture.
And the longer we stay silent, the louder the war drums get.
So we must act. And we must act now.
We — the people of this city —
Germans and internationals.
Workers, renters, students, refugees.
We have a responsibility in this historic moment.
To stand up.
To speak out.
To organize from the ground up — in our neighborhoods, our classrooms, our cafés, our mosques, churches, synagogues, our unions and workplaces.
We must expose Rheinmetall.
Pressure the politicians.
Interrupt the war economy with people power.
And make one thing clear:
Berlin will not build war machinery.
Berlin will not fund genocide.
Not in our name.
Not in Wedding.
Not in Berlin.
Berlin is not a weapons hub.
Berlin is a city of memory and solidarity. This is our city! And we will not be silent!
Let’s organize. Let’s resist.
Thank you. Danke. Shukran. Teşekkür ederim. Gracias.
Solidarity forever.