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United Against Fascism!

Immigrant organizing, uniting leftists and collective action in Berlin


30/04/2025

“We are like quinoa grains. Alone, the wind disperses us. But united in the same pot, the wind cannot move us. It will shake us, but it will not topple us.“

Dolores Cacuango (Indigenous Ecuadorian leader)

1. Another First of May: the rich even richer, the extreme right, and the world on fire

We live in dark times. Every day we receive news that seems straight out of a dystopian future, but which describes our current reality. As food prices rise, rents skyrocket, and wages stagnate, ever more images of war, genocide, and environmental catastrophes flood our screens. The global situation is complex and, at the same time, alarmingly clear in one respect: the wealthiest 1% of the population seizes every opportunity to get even richer by exploiting and destroying people and nature.

Since the pandemic, the wealth of billionaires and global inequality continue to rise. On average, in 2024, each billionaire’s fortune grew by $2 million a day. The ten richest men increased their wealth by $100 million a day, while 50% of the world’s population lives on less than $5 a day. It’s a scandal that the gap between those of us who toil away the day, working precariously, and those who steal our jobs is widening every day!

We are witnessing and experiencing the accelerated reconfigurations of neoliberal capitalism that manifest themselves as authoritarian shock therapy. Less and less money for bread and more and more money for weapons! The ruthless greed of those at the top, seeking to secure the profit rate, doesn’t fear death, but rather the death of those bodies and territories considered disposable: the Palestinian people, migrants drowning in the Mediterranean, forests on fire…

The oligarchy, in Latin America and elsewhere, has never needed to be in government to exercise its dominance, as it possesses not only the means of production but also the hegemonic media and the increasingly sophisticated tools of financialized capitalism. However, today, big business, within its national-global framework, is increasingly assuming direct political control, as evidenced by the explicit alliance between corporations and far-right politicians.

Trump’s inauguration party at the end of January 2025 left us with a bitter glimpse of the authoritarian international scene. While Silicon Valley’s “Trump bros” championed the xenophobic leader, the anarcho-capitalist Javier Milei and the far-right drug trafficker-president Daniel Noboa, along with their respective “first ladies,” posted selfies on Instagram to boast about their front-row seats. A month later, at the Conservative Policy Action Conference (CPAC), to the cheers and jubilation of the far-right audience, Milei offered Elon Musk his infamous chainsaw “to dismantle the state bureaucracy.” These alliances, clear examples of neoliberal austerity and authoritarian radicalization, symbolize the new capitalist ways of carrying out exploitation and repackaging its aesthetics.

Worldwide, in imperial centers as well as the peripheries and resistance zones of the South, authoritarian neoliberal governments are dismantling social systems and attacking historic gains of popular movements. The destruction of the state as the guarantor of social security is in full swing everywhere. Argentina under Milei is up in arms against ruthless cuts to education, healthcare, gender equality policies, and much more. Enforcing this austerity, the repressive forces of the state even brutally beat retirees in the streets. In Ecuador, which is approaching almost a decade of authoritarian neoliberal regimes, the belated unity of the left was unfortunately not enough to defeat the fascism that fraudulently imposed itself at the polls in April 2025. If Argentina is a test laboratory for repressive neoliberalism, Ecuador is a sacrifice zone, where the narco-right murders Afro-Ecuadorian children to fill their pockets with bloody dollars. In memory of Josué, Ismael, Saúl, and Steven, our struggle continues!

Noboa’s banana shipments arrive with cocaine at raves in a Europe that also bets more on death than life. In Germany in particular, the “grand coalition” between the Christian “democrats” (CDU/CSU) and the authoritarian “social democrats” (SPD) did not hesitate to cut social benefits from childcare infrastructure to cultural projects. The icing on the cake has been their openly xenophobic policy, not only restricting immigrant rights but also advocating for our mass deportation. Given this situation, it does not surprise us at all that the neo-Nazi AfD party has established itself as the second-largest political force nationwide in the February 2025 elections. There is no need for the AfD in the grand new-old coalition between the CDU and SPD, because these parties are only democratic in name. We denounce this loud and clear: their government plan enhances the far-right attack against us, the immigrants, and those at the bottom!

Thus, the authoritarian state grows under the guise of a supposed democracy. The Europe of the upper echelons is re-arming to the teeth to radicalize this phase of capitalist accumulation, focusing industrial reconversion on the manufacture and export of sophisticated weapons. Wars abroad and an iron fist within! The German state has never de-Nazified itself and has always been repressive. However, since its exacerbated participation in profiting from the genocide in Palestine, it has become even more repressive, and its police force, even more savage. And fundamental rights, from the right of assembly to free expression? Trampled. We will never forget that they want to prohibit us even from mourning. Fascist boots trampled on the candles of the vigils on Sonnenallee when we mourned so many dead in that bloody autumn of 2023. This escalation of violence affects a society that, due to the rising cost of living and growing uncertainty, is increasingly pressured and outraged. In Germany and around the world, precariousness is spreading. The working class and increasingly the impoverished middle class are having to cut back on basic needs like food and clothing to make ends meet.

This harsh reality is no coincidence. It’s the result of a system that concentrates wealth at the top and generates poverty at the bottom. It’s the global breeding ground for the rise of far-right movements with fascist practices or aspirations.

2. Fascism is not to be debated, but fought? But, it is people who vote for the fascist, right?

Without a doubt, we are experiencing a period of right-wing political proposals globally. From the highest echelons of power, the authoritarian solution to the crisis is being consolidated, and parties of all stripes, seeking to maintain their good ties with these elites and appeal to their lost bases, interpret their political and media role by simply saying that society has “turned right.” A form of fatal, self-fulfilling prophecy.

Despite the widespread belief that fascism reigns among the popular sectors, it is essential to differentiate between right-wing parties and the people who vote for them today. In most cases, those who vote for or begin flirting with the right do so not necessarily because they are ideologically convinced, but rather as a response to the capitalist context of uncertainty, instability, and fear, as described previously.

We are facing a complex challenge. Although people often diagnose social problems the same way we do (“There are no decent jobs, my children can’t access quality public education, I’m afraid to go out, etc.”), it’s in the interpretation of who is to blame and what the solution to the crisis would be that the fascist right is winning the battle. According to Milei, the blame lies with “the shitty leftists,” according to Noboa, with the “drug-trafficking leftists,” according to the AfD and the grand coalition, with us immigrants.

The fascists are Milei, Noboa, and the AfD, but we on the left are doing ourselves no favors if we label as fascists the delivery driver who can’t make ends meet in a suburban neighborhood of Buenos Aires, the mother worried about her children in Guayaquil, or the worker in Brandenburg who needs to understand why his wallet is emptying even as the calluses on his hands grow. Our historic task is to re-interpellate these sectors, creating collective spaces where we can understand the many faces of the capitalist crisis and once again point the finger not at each other, but at the true culprits: the exploiters up high. Only by proposing and jointly building a social project that resolves our social problems and motivates the majority to fight for a dignified life can we avoid the real danger of a fascistization of society as a whole.

Classical fascism in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s emerged at a time of capitalist crisis as a way out of the liberal institutional engineering resulting from war, inflation, and falling productivity. It also emerged as a response to the rise of communist parties. This gained it the support of politicians, businessmen, and religious figures around the world. Thus, fascism developed as the elites’ emergency brake to prevent the popular sectors from seizing their privileges. Despite what Trump and Milei crudely shout, fascism and communism are not the same. At the same time, fascist regimes, proposing a new way of organizing society, the total state, and the economy, have managed to permeate society as a mass street movement. Let us recall the Voluntary Militia for National Security in Italy, better known as the Blackshirts.

The global far right is heterogeneous, and its fascist aspirations and practices vary. While some actors seek to revisit a supposedly glorious past by applying the same neoliberal recipes and using the same old hate speech, we are increasingly confronted with sophisticated expressions that are being articulated in areas of life they previously didn’t reach, such as youth movements and cultural spaces. We’re not just talking about governments or political parties, but about grassroots movements and TikTok influencers. Far beyond the electoral sphere, there is also a danger of social fascism in everyday life that we must avoid at all costs. We can start by separating the wheat from the chaff. Of course, we are fighting the leadership of the global far right parties. However, with knowledge that this isn’t always possible in terms of security, we must now more than ever talk to the precarious people who are voting for the right.

What we are experiencing is a profound crisis of capitalism and the rise of authoritarian conservative projects that seek to justify neoliberal austerity. Like any political process, this one is not totalitarian, but rather an evolution of political and class struggles. It will depend on us to prevent this slide toward terror from increasing, making fascism the only way out. It will depend on whether we organize, fight, and build an alternative to capitalism or not.

For immigrant communities, creating solidarity networks to help us with everyday problems is a daily routine. Like the work of small ants, we politicize these needs to raise our collective voice in the face of injustice and to propose self-organized solutions and alternatives for society. This is why we are excited by the popular leftist movements in Germany that are breaking out of their bubble and increasingly investing in grassroots work. This is the way forward. For example, the door-to-door campaign by comrade Ferat, from Die Linke in Neukölln, even managed to motivate young people to come from other cities to support us. At the Bloque Latinoamericano, we know that when you are passionate about a horizon of social transformation, camaraderie and collective construction become a profound part of your life. We invite comrades from leftist movements and parties in Germany to continue renewing their organizational strategies and to engage more with immigrant leftists. No one can save themselves alone, which is why we need to create broad alliances, from the left and from below, to truly build collective power/Gegenmacht.

3. Who is the number one enemy of the German state? It starts with “immi” and ends with “grants”

Migration to Europe is not a random phenomenon; it is a direct consequence of Europe’s plundering foreign and economic policies. Environmental destruction, military interventions, “free” trade agreements, and globally exploitative relations force people to leave their countries and their families. By demonizing immigrants, right-wing and “centrist” parties in Europe attack us. They foster racism and divide society, blaming us for their fate and hiding the true reasons for the capitalist crisis we are experiencing. They say we are to blame. That migrants steal their jobs, that we import antisemitism, that we fail to integrate, that we must “re-migrate”… This is the right’s strategy to divide the German and immigrant working classes.

However, it’s clear: Germany and other European countries need migrants as cheap labor, disempowered and silent. The entire system of immigration laws—whether in asylum procedures, “cultural” au-pair programs, or work visas—is designed to force immigrants to accept precarious jobs and threats. No matter how poorly paid or how terrible the conditions, the important thing is that we work and keep the German economy running. Furthermore, we should be grateful and bow our heads; grateful because things would be worse for us back home. First they expel us from our territories, then they exploit us here. And on top of that, they want us to smile. Our cuisine and our dances — they like that. But when our voices join together to demand our rights and our dignified place in a society we also built, that’s when we become undesirable.

Structurally, migrant workers are employed in precarious and non-unionized sectors. It is primarily feminized bodies, women, and LGBTQIA+ individuals who bear the brunt of flexible and covert exploitation. Immigrants are overrepresented in areas such as logistics, caregiving, agriculture, and gastronomy, often under the “Amazon model,” which entails maximum exploitation with minimal social and labor security. In these sectors, attempts at union organizing are not only ignored but actively combated, through practices of defamation and criminalization, such as union busting in the cases of Tesla or Gorillas/Getir.

Structural exclusion has many causes: lack of access to affordable housing, bureaucratic obstacles such as the vicious circle of the Anmeldung process, language barriers, lack of awareness of labor rights, temporary residence permits, extreme working hours, and immigration legislation that can lead to deportation at any moment. However, unions, which should be a tool for the working classes, have not implemented a consistent policy to address migrant workers, focusing only on higher-income sectors. Both time and the far-right are advancing, but unfortunately, political and union interest in representing this large and growing segment of the working class in Germany is not.

It’s critical that we understand that this reality doesn’t only affect immigrants. If companies can constantly operate under the threat of bringing in cheaper workers from abroad, everyone’s wages will decline!

In the media and in political debates, especially around elections, we observe a growing and dangerous trend that directly attacks us: from the so-called “center” to the far right, there is a consensus to present migration as the cradle of all evil. The leadership of the AfD, CDU/CSU, and SPD parties and their spokespersons in academia and culture are radicalizing anti-immigrant sentiment, turning us into scapegoats for economic insecurity, social tensions, and political crises. What they seek with this is to divide workers and direct hatred toward the most exploited sectors. As long as we all look down and fight among ourselves, those at the top will continue to rejoice and profit from their businesses.

We make a resounding call: Anyone who truly wants to fight for better living conditions in this country must join our struggle to improve the living conditions of immigrants! This is the only possible way for all wage earners, regardless of their origin or passport, to live a dignified life.

The precarization of the labor market goes hand-in-hand with the escalating repression exercised by the supposed reason of state, the German national security doctrine. The escalation of the criminalization of popular and anti-colonial struggles in Germany has reached alarming levels. Deportations of refugees from Afghanistan and Syria have been commonplace for years. Those of us who come from territories like Abya Yala carry the historical radar in our bodies to understand the cruelty with which empires decide which bodies have the right to move freely around the world and which, the darkest, are always racially profiled, expelled, and considered disposable.

Since the genocide in Palestine entered its deadliest phase in 2023, immigrant communities, particularly the Palestinian and anti-Zionist Jewish communities, and all of us who stand in solidarity with them, have been repressed, criminalized, and intimidated. The current case of the threat of deportation against the four activists (European and American) in Berlin marks an authoritarian advance, not because previous cases are less relevant, but because it sets a precedent that the rights of even the citizens of countries considered allies of the North will no longer be respected. We are facing a cruel experiment by the fascist state that seeks to test our limits: how far can repression go without encountering social resistance?

The authoritarian monster is effective. The neoliberal arm takes away our bread and our roof, while the repressive boot kicks us far. The exploitation/criminalization that today affects migrants, left-wing activists, and the Germans in solidarity who extend a hand to us in the face of injustice is the testing ground for the most fascist politics of tomorrow. If the authoritarian state succeeds in undermining the basic democratic rights of people in solidarity with Palestine now, many other sectors with different demands will be hit hard tomorrow, perhaps without even realizing when the debacle began… The technologies of surveillance and death used today at borders and against refugees will tomorrow affect the whole of society: activists, strikers, artists, intellectuals, organized civil society, and all those who dare to aspire to a dignified life.

Immigrants today are being stigmatized as a threat to democracy and “German culture,” and therefore, as the state’s number one enemy. In the face of this onslaught, it is more important than ever that all sectors of the popular movement unite and form alliances of all kinds to tell fascism: not one inch more!

4. What can be done?

In a multifaceted crisis like the current one, an abyss opens before us: an abyss called fascism. But every crisis is also a moment of rupture, a space for transformation. Amid fear and uncertainty, there is the possibility of dreaming of alternatives and putting them into practice collectively. As the Bloque Latinoamericano, we do grassroots work with the Latinx community in Berlin and solidarity work with our territories in Abya Yala/Nuestra América every day. In these dark times, we are committed more than ever to continuing to sow political community so that we can not only resist all the attacks of the right wing from within our organizational and social structures, but also build the socialist world we dream of.

On this May 1st, 2025, we reclaim the historic struggle of workers of all ages and latitudes and join this day with our collective calls and demands to confront a turbulent world:

  • It is necessary to build a broad space for dialogue between the left, both within and outside of institutional and electoral politics. The left must be present in the streets, workplaces, cultural spaces, and parliaments. Political change only emerges from this intertwined foundation.
  • Unions must once again become political and combative actors. Their central role in social transformation can no longer be ignored. They must fight for social rights, for the political participation of migrants, and for climate justice. They must also open themselves to new alliances with social movements, with migrant communities, with all those who otherwise lack an institutionalized voice. Unions must open themselves up to and seek out immigrant workers, not just by giving them quota space, but by fighting alongside them.
  • The coordination of social movements (migrant, feminist, anti-racist) and unions within a left-wing party like Die Linke is fundamental. Our social struggles must be channeled into political proposals with tangible impact. This is only possible through bonds of trust and real alliances, not symbolic politics.
  • The migrant perspective must be understood as a transformative force—not as a marginal or decorative issue, but as the center of a new left project for society as a whole. Bloque Latinoamericano in Berlin is a living example of this collective voice. The political participation of immigrants must become a central task of the left in Germany and elsewhere.
  • Within these spaces of articulation between society, movements, and parties, we need to continue investing in transformative political education and innovate our strategies of visibility and presence—not only to overcome passivity, but also to open up new perspectives for action. It’s not enough to criticize; we must make the alternatives we desire and build visibly and viably.
  • International anti-fascist networks are essential. Left-wing movements must coordinate globally and strengthen each other. The German left can and must be part of this global exchange.

After decades of neoliberal individualization, the greatest challenge of our generation is to organize people who do not yet perceive themselves as part of a collective fabric, but who suffer similar hardships and fight similar battles. It is time to unite, far beyond borders. We must identify our common struggles and wage them together, with love, strength, and joy. What we need is a broad and united alliance: of immigrants from all over the world, of racialized Germans and white Germans in solidarity, of unemployed and working people, of salaried employees, the self-employed, and the precariously employed.

This May 1st, we take to the streets of Neukölln as a migrant bloc: against fascism, war, and poverty wages! We fight for a world where it’s not the richest 1% who decide our lives. A world where we, those at the bottom, collectively shape the just and democratic society we desire and deserve. Even if they try to expel us or divide us, we will remain here, sustaining this country with our work and our dreams, and uniting more than ever to create collective power.

The night is dark, but we have always been guided like stars by the magic words of our ancestors, our leaders, our families, and our comrades in struggle. No matter how great the enemy, how powerful their weapons, or how weak our forces seem, we will continue to build community, fighting and dreaming because this is what our people and our history have taught us. Side by side, we will continue paving the way for hope, until the sky turns red. Long live the migrant workers, long live all those who struggle!

This article first appeared in Spanish on the Bloque Latinoamericano website. Translation: Tigris Vici. Reproduced with permission.

The Left Berlin Events in May and June 2025

Left Journalism Day School, Summer Camp, Jihadi Music, The Return of Palivision and much more


29/04/2025

The Left Berlin is organising a whole series of events in the next couple of months – so many, that it’s hard to keep an overview. This article summarizes everything we’re doing and why. 

Early May

We’re kicking off May at the 1 May festival at Mariannenplatz, in front of the Bethanien building, where we will have a stall between 11am and 6pm. At the stall, you have the first chance to buy Palivision tickets (more below), as well as our new t-shirts and a leaflet explaining our upcoming activities (please take a bunch to give to your friends). It’s also an opportunity to meet the people behind The Left Berlin and talk to us about how you can get more involved.

At the festival, we will be holding a raffle with prizes including Palivision tickets, a t-shirt, and tickets for Gyrovision V, the boycott-friendly Eurovision Alternative, organised by the Corner Späti podcast and the Irish Bloc. We will be announcing the winners of the raffle at 6pm at the stall, but if you can’t stay that long, just leave your contact details, and we’ll let you know if you’ve won.

On Friday, 2nd May it’s our next Film Club, where we’ll be showing and discussing the film Tantura in the Agit buildings, Nansenstraße 2. We will continue to organise Film Club every month, and have a great programme planned. But we are negotiating a larger venue, which may need us to change the time and day. We’ll publish more information in our Weekly Newsletter as soon as we know more.

On Saturday, 10th May we’re co-organising the demonstration Social Spending instead of Military Spending. The demonstration has been organised as a response to Rheinmetall subsidiary Pierburg’s decision to convert their factory in Wedding to producing military hardware. The demonstration starts at S-Bahn Gesundbrunnen at 3pm, and will visit the factory before a final rally at Leopoldplatz.

On Sunday, 11th May, it’s our monthly Political Walking Tour. Our usual tour guide, Nathaniel, will not be in Berlin during May, so we will welcome back Izzy Choksey who used to give tours for us. Izzy will be taking us through the history of Social Movements in Berlin. The tour starts at 2pm at the Martin-Luther statue at Alexanderplatz (Karl Liebknecht Straße 8).

Palivision

Last year we had the idea of organising a solidarity concert for anyone who wanted to boycott the Eurovision concert because of Israel’s involvement. Within 4 weeks, we pulled together a concert with 12 acts and several political speeches, which raised €2,000 for the European Legal Support Centre. You can read our report on how we did it here, and see videos from the Event here.

One year on, Israel is still committing genocide in Gaza, and is still being treated as a normal state by the Eurovision organisers. So, on May 17th, we are organising Palivision 2. Some things will be the same as before – we welcome back Asper Casper and Uday Al Shihabi, who both contributed great performances last year, but this year the sets will be longer and we have more artists from the Middle East region.

We also have a new venue. We would like to offer particular thanks to K19, who stepped in at the last minute as our original venue cancelled on us (such is the experience of trying to organise a pro-Palestine event in Berlin). K19 is at Kreutziger Straße 19, near the Samariterstraße U-Bahn (U5). The event starts at 7pm. All proceeds from Palivision will be donated to the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF).

You can reserve your Palivision ticket online and pick it up at any of our events, starting with our stall at the 1st May festival. There will be a small contingent of tickets available at the door.

Küfa and Talk on Jihadi Music

On Sunday 25th May, we will be holding a Küfa (kitchen for all) in Bilgisaray, Oranienstraße 45. Cook together, eat together, and meet international activists in Berlin. The money raised at the Küfa will be used to finance The Left Berlin activities. We work on 100% voluntary labour and are not funded by any political organisations or NGOs. Simply running our website and newsletter costs money, which we must find somewhere.

As part of the Küfa, we are pleased to welcome Asha Vare who will give the talk Jihadi Music? Towards a Framework for Understanding Music Associated with Palestinian Armed Resistance. The talk is based on Asha’s research at Cambridge University and was first given at the British Forum of Ethnomusicology’s annual conference. 

In the talk, Asha will be exploring the meaning of songs associated with armed resistance for Palestinians living in the West Bank, looking at genre-labels as discourse – examining the motivations and implications of terminology to describe music, and challenging North Atlantic research conventions and characteristics of Palestinian music and resistance.

Food will be available from 5pm and Asha will be speaking at 7pm. If you’d like to help with the cooking, please come a little early. All donations will be appreciated. It is events like this which enable us to carry on doing what we do. 

Journalism Day School

Saturday, 31st May sees the return of another old favourite. In 2021 and 2022 The Left Berlin editorial board organised two day schools open to experienced journalists who wanted to share their experiences and new writers who were looking for some tips. You can read about the results here and here. We’ve decided to organise another Left Journalism Day School, this time in Karl Liebknecht Haus on Rosa Luxemburg Platz.

Come to talk about everything from using Canva to make online pictures, to writing book and film reviews, from videos on social media, to conducting an interview. Particular highlights include Nick Babakitis from Corner Späti talking about how to make a podcast, and Palestinian journalist Farah Maraqa on political journalism – particularly ethics and norms.

The Day School will conclude with a keynote speech introduced by Palestinian journalist Hebh Jamal and Tina Lee, editor-in-chief of Unbias The News. Hebh and Tina will be speaking on how the media manage consent, paying particular attention to how the German media portray Palestine. Participation at the Journalism Day School is free, but book your place early to ensure there is space for you.

Summer Camp

Once a year, The Left Berlin spends a week-end in the countryside discussing politics, socialising, and having fun. This year’s Summer Camp will be on 7th – 8th June and in a new venue – the Haus des Wandels in Steinhöfel. Please note that this is more remote than our previous venue, so it’s easier if you sleep over, but free accommodation is available on site.

As usual, Summer Camp is a mixture of small workshops and big talks. The first major talk is the kick off for a series of meetings we are planning with the Bloque Latinoamericano on The Left After the German Elections.  Early advertising for Summer Camp said that we had invited Ferat Kocak, a regular visitor of Summer Camp, to speak. Unfortunately, Ferat is on holiday that week-end so we’re still working on the speakers.

The second major talk will be on Repression against Palestinians and their allies in Germany. Confirmed speakers so far are Palestinian refugee activist Majda Qandil and a representative of the Irish Bloc. We are in talks with Benjamin Düsberg, the lawyer representing the Berlin4 who is being threatened with deportation for their pro-Palestine activities, and hope that Benjamin will confirm soon.

There is also a series of workshops from Germany, Namibia, and reparations to Reproductive Justice, taking in organising migrant workers, decolonial feminism and Myanmar. You can see a list of planned workshops in the Event description. Note that we are still in the process of booking speakers, so dome subjects may change.

We need to be aware how much food to provide at Summer Camp so will be asking for a contribution for the food in advance. More information soon in our Newsletter and on our website.

Regular Events

On top of all this, we will continue to organise our regular events, like our Book Club, Reading Group and Political Walking Tours. We also have monthly meetings to plan our activities open to anyone who is interested in what we do (more information about this in the next section).

In Book Club, we go through a book, discussing each chapter. In the current Book Club we are discussing Walter Rodney’s How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. We will be discussing chapter 5 on Sunday, 11th May, and the final chapter on Friday, 23rd May. Book Club usually takes place on the second and fourth Sunday of the month (note the different day on May 23rd to avoid clashing with our Küfa) in the Agit buildings, Nansenstraße 2.

In our Reading Group, we discuss a series of texts about a suggested subject. On 16th May, we will be discussing How to effectively fight against Fascism, and on 13th June Decolonial Feminism. The Reading Group normally takes place on the third Friday of the month, also in Agit. Subjects for both Book Club and the Reading Group are taken in a Telegram group for regular attendees. If you come to any meeting, we can add you to the group.

On Sunday, 15th June, Nathaniel is back for the next Political Walking Tour. To celebrate the anniversary of the 1953 East German workers’ uprising, we will be visiting sites important in the development of East Berlin. The tour starts at 2pm at U-Bahn Strausberger Platz, outside the exit to Andreasstraße (in front of Andreasstraße 46). The Political Walking tour normally takes place on the third Sunday of the month.

Get Involved 

The Left Berlin is an informal and independent group of mainly non-German international activists based in Berlin, and we are always looking for people to join us and get more involved. On the first Monday of each month we have a Coordinating meeting to plan our activities in Ferat Kocak’s office, Schierker Straße 26. The meetings are open to anyone who is interested in our activities.

The website theleftberlin.com and Newsletter are run by an Editorial Board which has a weekly online meeting and an extended face-to-face meeting roughly once a quarter. If you are a writer, translator, editor, or would like to be one, please contact us at team@theleftberlin.com. We also accept pitches for articles (you can read some guidelines here). 

If you have any ideas about how we can improve our work or the website and Newsletter, please contact us either by e-mail or by visiting any of our events, starting with our stall on 1st May. You can also keep informed about what we are doing by subscribing to our Newsletter, which goes out every Thursday lunchtime, joining our Telegram info channel, or following us on Instagram.

The Great Gatsby 100 Years Later

The relevance of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s most famous work today on its centennial


28/04/2025

Great literature, Ezra Pound wrote, is news that stays news. The Great Gatsby illustrates this well. Let’s start with one clear example, before we get to all the rest.

Early on in the novel Tom Buchanan identifies himself to us as a racist bigot when he blurts out, ‘Civilization has gone to pieces …Have you read The rise of the coloured empires by this man Goddard?… Well, it’s a fine book…The idea is if we don’t look out the white race will be—will be utterly submerged…It’s up to us, who are the dominant race, to watch out or these other races will have control of things…we’ve produced all the things that go to make civilization—oh, science and art, and all that. Do you see?’ This sentiment was  printed in a novel published in 1925.

And now we have two leading figures from Reform UK, a far-right party, in 2025; James McMurdock, who said that ‘the murder rate’  was ‘better in medieval England than Africa today’, That is how civilised our society is, that is how gentle, even handed, fair and good we are as a people.

 ‘We take it so much for granted that we think the rest of the world is like that,’ McMurdock continued, ‘We already know what needs fixing because it didn’t used to be’.

Another speaker, Max Harrison, membership coordinator at Reform UK’s head office, spun a narrative of decline,  ‘This is about our community, our culture, our history, our heritage, our traditions, our Christianity and our values. We are in societal decline. Our communities are broken. Our children go to schools and are fed poison. Our streets are lawless and everything about our lives is getting increasingly worse.’

News that stays news.

Since 1925 many people have been beguiled and dazzled by the shiny surfaces of the ‘Jazz Age’ and Fitzgerald’s depiction of it. One of those surfaces is the way in which the novel is attracted by one of the great myths of the USA. That it is the place where dreams can be fulfilled, where James Gatz, poor boy from the Midwest can become Jay Gatsby; possessor of vast wealth and a vision of lost love regained.

Except, of course, that the glitter of those surfaces just conceals the tawdriness beneath. Because, with one exception, this novel is populated by characters who are false. They are liars, thieves, gangsters, adulterers, racists, antisemites, cheats, killers, bad drivers. One of the triumphs of the novel lies in the way it ruthlessly, almost savagely rips away the facades behind which corruption and violence simmer. 

Baseball occupies a place in US culture in which a chimerical belief in fair play and honesty, mixed with a hint of heroism, function as a haven of sorts from the unfairness and the cheating beyond the stadium. It’s nonsense, of course. So it is unsurprising that in this book we meet the gangster who ‘fixed the World Series.’ Gatsby, we come to understand (and then perhaps forget), has raised his mansion with cash from proximity to extractive capitalism and gangsterism. Raised the mansion to charm back his lost love. And when he has retrieved her and shows his treasures, she responds not with words of love but repeated admiration for his closet full of beautiful shirts. The book’s litany of houses, apartments, cars, libraries in which the owner has had the ‘good taste’ to not cut the pages of the volumes on the shelves, remind us repeatedly that the cruel wonder of commodities is that they replace human connection with relationships to objects.

Through the voice of Nick Carraway (incidentally, magnificently reproduced by Tim Robbins in an audiobook) these people and the fabrics of their existences are exposed. He demolishes the vulgar, violent racist Tom Buchanan. For all their attractiveness, he recognises Daisy Buchanan and Jordan Baker for the hollow ciphers that they are. He situates the gangster Meyer Wolfsheim with the observation that he wears cufflinks made from teeth. He is forensic in his clarity of vision.

But. But we would be very naïve readers to believe everything (or perhaps even anything) Nick tells us. He asserts his honesty so much that it seems that he doth protest too much. He is, along with the others, a racist and a misogynist. He asserts his heterosexuality but in a fleeting lacuna within the narrative seems to have had sex with another man. More, much more importantly, he works in that great con game that would four years later shatter the world economy and plunge millions in poverty and desperation. Nick is a bond salesman. Perhaps his one saving grace is his rejection of an offer to engage in some insider trading.

News that stays news.

It all shatters and disintegrates. It is brought low by bad driving, murder, cowardice and fatally misplaced loyalty. At the heart of that is the wrecked life of George Wilson. Eking out a living on the edge of the ‘valley of ashes’, emotionally and often physically abandoned, the book hovers at the site of his grief for his dead wife even as the other characters rush away. Even that still moment, though, is cast away when George murders the wrong person and then kills himself.

At the conclusion of the book Nick Carraway is alone with two insights. 

First, is that perhaps the only way to redemption is to return to that passed moment before the Dutch sailors arrived at New York in an example of the magnificent prose of the novel—‘For a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.’

Nick then moves to the recognition that this is an impossibility, no matter how much we wish for that utopian return to a time before all that the USA had become by 1925—all that the USA has become by 2025. Gatsby’s redeeming feature, for Nick at the end, is his attempt to grasp that past, even as it drifts away, even as its futility becomes more apparent.

News that stays news.

Second, Nick comes to a clear understanding of Tom and Daisy as they move to protect their status and wealth against any intrusion. He has stood in the dark, watching them through a lit window and comes to this conclusion:

‘They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.’

Time for us to refuse to clean up their messes any longer.

Red Flag: Wedding Says No to New Weapons Factories

In his weekly column, Nathaniel Flakin tells us the long rebellious history of a car factory now used to make munitions.


27/04/2025

Wedding is full of old factory buildings, many of which have been converted into art spaces, such as the Pankehallen or the Gerichtshöfe. But the Pierburg factory on Scheringstraße, right next to Humboldthain park, is an exception. It is an old factory that is now… a factory.

Pierburg makes car parts, but it belongs to the German weapons consortium Rheinmetall. Their stock price has been soaring as the German government commits hundreds of billions of euros to new weapons — and they need new facilities to make demand. Hence, the Wedding workshop is going to be retooled to make munitions.

This isn’t an isolated case. In Görlitz, a factory currently making trams will soon roll tanks off the conveyor belts. According to the Red Cross, weapons factories can be considered as legitimate military targets. Who would want such a thing in a residential neighborhood, next to a public swimming pool? That’s why a demonstration against this will take place on May 10.

But this factory has a history going back to the 1850s, when this area became known as the Red Wedding.

Revolutionary History

The facility on Scheringstraße once belonged to the Berliner Maschinenbau AG (BMAG), founded by Louis Schwartzkopf. While they made all kinds of metal tools, their specialty was torpedos, which they provided to the German navy in two world wars.

However even while they were producing instruments of war, the workers there struggled to stop war. During World War I, Berlin’s munitions workers went on strike again and again. This workforce was particularly militant: they would put down their tools and march to nearby factories to pick up more workers. Of the 33 elected representatives here, 32 were independent socialists or Spartacists.

One of the leading worker-activists was Erich Habersaath, a 25-year-old toolmaker and a leader of Berlin’s socialist youth. When the revolutionary wave reached Berlin on November 9, 1918, Habersaath was marching at the head of a massive demonstration toward the Maikäferkaserne, the old “Beetle Barracks” on Chauseestraße (where the foreign intelligence service BND now has its headquarters). With their red flags, these workers called on the young soldiers to join the uprising.

The Berlin insurrection was largely peaceful. But at this barracks, officers shot into the crowd, killing Habersaath. Eleven days later, he was buried at the Cemetery of the March Fallen in Friedrichshain, where you can still see his grave. In 1951, a street in the East Berlin part of Wedding was named Habersaathstraße. That was in the news recently when a building on that street was occupied by homeless people.

Workers’ Interests

What do workers in this factory think today? I don’t think anyone can say for sure. But the millionaire bureaucrats who run the metalworkers’ union IG Metall have been generally positive about the German state’s rearmament. This kind of military Keynesianism, they say, will guarantee good jobs. 

Individual workers have every interest in well-paid, secure jobs — but the working class has no interest in producing elements of destruction. As German cities crumble due to austerity, money is being spent on things to destroy other factories.

Unions need to call for jobs — but also for workers’ control of the factory. The producers themselves, in consultation with working people across the country and the world, should decide what is needed. We need neither car parts nor bullets, but trams, trains, and e-bikes. We need schools, hospitals, and above all affordable housing.

The workers of Scheringstraße have shown, again and again for the last 150 years, that they have the power to not only shut down production of arms, but to radically change society. The demonstration on May 10 should help workers start to recognize this unstoppable power, even if it is currently latent.

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

“If They Discover That I Am An Activist Directly, I’ll Be Killed”

Interview with Congolese climate activist Daniel Kalalizi


26/04/2025

What is your name and what do you do?

My name is Daniel Kalalizi. I am a student of Physics in Bukavu, capital of the South Kivu province, in eastern Congo. I’m also a climate activist here in the Congo. I  work with many movements, local organizers and some international organizations.

Before the rebels of M23 arrived, our activism was about plastic waste and to oppose the use of plastics in our city, because they are very dangerous to our health. They destroy lakes, we don’t have as many fish due to plastics. Which is why, last year, before the capture of our area by the M23 rebels, we held many campaigns, actions, meetings with the local population about the use of plastics, and its consequences. And there was a rise against plastic waste.

As a physicist, I also worked with a local organization to transform our plastic waste into a cement replacement to be used for pavements.

And what has changed recently?

I’ve run many campaigns about climate change in our area and had many articles written. But it is very hard for me to move or do anything as an activist due to the occupation of the M23 rebels here, in our eastern part of Congo. They took our area two months ago. They began in Goma and one month ago they came here, to Bukavu city, the capital of South Kivu. The schools stopped due to the dangerous situation in which we were plunged. 

They fought against our defense forces, the FARDC — the army of the Congo. They fought right here in our village, where I am now. The rockets landed on the roads near our house. Since their arrival here in Bukavu and Goma, everyone has been anxious. Activists were killed and now we don’t have any in our area because if they discover that you are an activist, you will be killed directly. Because of our activism, they think that we are against their movements and that we  oppose their struggle. They kill people in whichever manner they want. 

What do the rebels want in your area?

Their first quest is to control the area because when you control the area, you can do whatever you want there, because you are considered the owner. When they are in our city, our area, they control it. 

When the war in the Congo began, it began here in its eastern part, over our mines. As we are here in the eastern part of the Congo, we have the highest level of mining and they want it. In North Kivu, in Goma, they mine and what they mine is sold in Rwanda for a low price. It is blood mining. To obtain it was to pour the blood of innocents.

We know our country. We say no Congo, no phone. That phone that I am using here was made by Congolese mining. No Congo, nothing.

They are also taking tax. If you sell flowers in the street, you will have to give something to them as tax. They control the tax, the mining, and the land. They do whatever they want. They control the movement of people, they control schools, they do whatever they want. 

They say in their speeches that they are liberators, but liberators don’t pour out the blood of innocents. They are killing people with their weapons, they are taking people by force. They are not liberators.

And what’s your personal situation?

Some of my friends who are activists, they’re in another area. I am still alone here as an activist among persons with whom I work. People don’t study very well. We have nothing to eat. If they discover that you are an activist, you will be killed. If they discover that I am an activist directly, I’ll be killed.

My friends and fellow activists have already gone because they have passports. But among our circle of activists, I’m alone and stranded here because I don’t have a passport. And without one I can’t leave. In Kinshasa I would have an opportunity to get my passport and to travel as I want. I have missed many, many occasions to participate in conferences outside Africa because I don’t have a passport. But now, as we are in this war, it is even more difficult  for me to get one.

But we are in the eastern part of the Congo, and Kinshasa is in the western part of the Congo. It will be very difficult to arrive in Kinshasa. So I have to go to the border of Rwanda, and there I can get a document which replaces a passport. This document can also allow me to travel to Rwanda and from there to Kenya or Ethiopia. From there I can take the plane and arrive in Kinshasa. 

But something which can be difficult is to have money to pay for transport in the plane. But if I have the money I can even go tomorrow and get my passport.

What are your plans if you get your passport?

I just wish to be in security, wherever that will be. But I would like to return here to continue my studies, even if we are not studying like we studied before the occupation. We were working and fighting for our country, for climate justice, for peace in our country. But the people who are here, occupying our area, came here and destroyed everything. But we will fight injustice in our area.

My target is to save my life by obtaining these documents which will allow me to do whatever I can. And I would be very very grateful for any solidarity that can help me to get there.

If you would like to support Daniel, you can donate to this fundraiser.