The Left Berlin News & Comment

This is the archive template

Peace is not silence: Part 2

Continuing our conversation with voices from the Hiroshima Palestine Vigil and Nagasaki for Palestine

TG Durutti
24/08/2025

A group of 17 people stand in front of the Hiroshima Atomic Bomb memorial holding various signs. There are candles and signs on the ground as well.

In the first part of our conversation, members of the Hiroshima Palestine Vigil reflected on the origins of their nightly gatherings, the reception they’ve received in the city, and their belief that peace must be redefined, not as the absence of war, but as a refusal to look away, wherever violence is taking place.

In this second part, the discussion turns to the deeper historical layers beneath Hiroshima’s “peace” narrative—layers formed not only by the memory of the atomic bombings, but also by Japan’s own history of imperialism and colonialism. Much of this history remains unspoken in official remembrance: Japan’s occupation of Korea, Taiwan, and much of Asia; its use of forced labor and sex slavery from across the region; and the discrimination that continued long after the Asia-Pacific War ended.

In Nagasaki, for example, tens of thousands of Koreans and Chinese were brought under colonial rule and forced to work in arms factories, mines, and shipyards. Many were killed in the atomic bombing, yet their stories remain marginal in national memory. Survivors were denied Japanese citizenship after the war, excluded from equal compensation, and often faced language barriers and bureaucratic hurdles that prevented them from receiving support. This selective remembrance—the centering of some victims while erasing others—shapes how Japan understands its past, and in turn, how it responds to violence in the present, most starkly the genocide in Gaza.

Here, the Vigil’s members—Rebecca Maria Goldschmidt, a Jewish and Filipino anti-Zionist artist and Sailor Kannako, an artist and clothing store clerk from Hiroshima; are joined by Lisa and another member of Nagasaki for Palestine (NFP). Together they draw parallels between the forgotten victims of Nagasaki and the silenced voices in Gaza, reflecting on how histories of both victimhood and perpetration must shape solidarity today.

Do you see similarities between what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and what’s happening in Gaza, not only in the destruction, but also in how the victims are spoken about or potentially even forgotten?

Rebecca: There are many parallels simply in the everyday, desperate reality of the situation of Gaza and the aftermath of the bombs: the mass death, the lack of food, thousands of orphaned children, contamination, cultural and societal collapse, psychological and physical illness and disease, no work, the terrorization of civilian communities and the crushing of morale to force defeat.

Additionally, even though they were used during wartime, the atomic bombs were part of the US weapons development and testing program and part of the 2,000+ nuclear weapons tests that were done worldwide. The US and Japanese governments also relentlessly studied the hibakusha up until this day. The data they gleaned from the effects of the bomb on the human body (and still do, as the studies continue) provides them with priceless data that continues to inform technological “progress”.

Palestine, as we know, is also a laboratory to develop and improve “battle-ready” weapons on a human population and document their impacts. What connects Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Gaza is not the fact that they are all “locations of bombings”, but the context of their destruction as part of a legacy of weapons technology development and testing, and the ideology of white supremacy that necessitates, designs, and enacts these horrors.

Japan’s own imperialism and settler-colonial endeavors during the war also parallel the occupation of Palestine. Japan has more in common with Israel than it wants to admit—the overt massacre of babies and children, intentional starvation, sexual violence, prisoner torture, etc. I don’t see the Hiroshima-Nagasaki victims as being forgotten at all, I see them as being deified and their stories utilized to justify re-militarization, despite struggling for decades to be seen and heard. I see the millions of victims of Japanese imperialism—1 million Filipinos, 2 million Vietnamese, 10–20 million Chinese, etc.— also being eclipsed by the stories of Hiroshima-Nagasaki victims. Even the Korean and Chinese hibakusha are erased by the Japanese victimhood narrative.

Most people in Japan don’t know the details of their own family’s participation in imperial war crimes, and the government actively advances historical revisionism. This is just one reason why we have seen such a rapid rise in anti-foreigner hatred and open xenophobia during Japan’s recent elections.

Do you think confronting these erased histories could change how Japan responds to the genocide in Gaza or other struggles for justice today?

Rebecca: Japan has cultivated both a self and public image of pacifism, but with the 80th anniversary of the bombs, a lot of hidden stories are coming to light that are challenging this “nation of peace”.

I came to Japan to better understand the Japanese military occupation of the Philippines that I had heard about from my grandmother. Why was it that no one talked about it even if it was the most violent period in Filipino history? Most Japanese people I talked to had no idea there even was an occupation in the Philippines. That was shocking to me, so when the Gaza genocide started, it made sense that people ignored it. Of course within the anti-war movement there are many Japanese people who are confronting these issues head-on, whether around Okinawa or the sex slavery issue. I have a lot of respect for them as I also take responsibility for the shameful actions in my own zionist family history. I can see the overlap between people who acknowledge Japanese historical atrocity and can draw parallels to what is happening again in Gaza and in other colonial contexts.

Recently in Japan, politicians or famous people have been making revisionist comments, like the Battle of Okinawa “wasn’t that bad”, or that the rape of Nanking never happened. I think in order for any society—Israel, Japan or Germany—the first step toward “atonement” is acknowledging that these crimes are real. In the case of Gaza, however, denial continues, despite this being the most documented genocide in history.

Clearly both “Peace education” and “Holocaust education” systems have failed miserably. Even if people do know what happened, no one was taught what to do when it starts happening again—just look at the ICE kidnappings in the US or the poor treatment of migrant workers in Japanese detention.

In all these contexts, political education around state power, the roots of racism and ethno-supremacy, how “victimhood” is weaponized, necrocapitalism, the list goes on—all of this must be exposed alongside the images we see, otherwise we really are just on a carousel of repeated atrocities with more efficient technology every time. Just “knowing” is not enough for people to take action. There has to also be a sense of political agency and a culture of caring for other people who might not look or act like you, but whose lives are still inherently valuable.

Nagasaki’s victims included many Korean and Chinese forced laborers whose suffering is rarely centered in the city’s memorials. What do you think this says about whose suffering is recognized, and whose is left out, in Japan’s culture of remembrance?

Lisa from NFP: In Nagasaki, it is believed that around 20,000 Koreans and about 650 Chinese laborers were exposed to the atomic bomb. My grandmother recalled that Korean laborers also worked outside the weapons factory she was in, but she had no idea what became of them after the bombing.

At the same time, the hypocenter of the atomic bombing in Nagasaki, Urakami, was located about 3km from the center of Nagasaki city. It was home to many Kakure Kirisitan, hidden Christians, who had preserved their faith in secret through over 250 years of persecution. However, as reconstruction efforts prioritized the city center, many of them were left behind, unable to receive adequate medical care or compensation due to poverty, social discrimination, and isolation.

In Nagasaki, there are relatively few testimonies from Christians in Urakami who survived the atomic bombing. Testimony collection and oral history projects have often focused on survivors living in the city center or those who were more socially visible, leaving many marginalized voices unheard. I believe this represents a significant difference in the culture of memory between Hiroshima, where the city center was the hypocenter, and Nagasaki.

Anonymous from NFP: Many Chinese and Korean people who were forced to work in Mitsubishi’s arms factories and related facilities in Nagasaki had been kidnapped by the Japanese army during the occupation. I can only imagine how difficult it must have been for their families to find out about their situation after the bombing.

There are separate memorials for Chinese and Korean victims in the corners of the Peace Memorial Park, and ceremonies for them are held separately. There is also a separate museum that exhibits not only information about the bombing victims but also the crimes of the Japanese army in the Asia-Pacific region before and during the war.

As a Japanese person who grew up in downtown Tokyo in the 1980s, I did not learn these facts in school. I hope that the standard Japanese education curriculum will teach them, so that we can truly regret what must be regretted, instead of trying to forget.

In light of this selective remembrance, how do you think we can build genuine solidarity today? Not just symbolically, but in material or political terms? For example, how should solidarity with Palestinians be demonstrated beyond words or gestures?

Sailor Kannako: To me, solidarity means to empathize with others and to keep acting in ways that complement each other’s shortcomings. To do this, I think it’s necessary to face our own experiences and continue to speak in our own words, with our own feelings, so that emotions such as regret and anger—the triggers of empathy—don’t fade away. I have seen the suffering of the Palestinian people ignored and misunderstood by the international community for many years.

In Japan, when women experience sexual violence, their complaints are often not believed, and it’s often said the victim was at fault. I’ve had a similar experience, and I imagined that Palestinians have felt a similar deep regret and anger. That feeling made it impossible for me not to take action. If the world that once hurt me is now hurting someone else, my wounds will never heal.

People in Gaza are now asking, “What crime have we committed?” I think those who were burned by the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki must have been filled with that same regret and anger. My experience may be insignificant compared to their pain, but it’s connected. I believe that only by trusting our own feelings and summoning the courage to speak about Gaza in our own words can we build strong bonds of empathy and create lasting, enormous solidarity.

What do you wish people outside Japan understood about Japan’s relationship to Palestine, or about protest in Japan in general?

R: Protest in Japan is usually considered a nuisance, laughable, something done by irrational people. The Japanese public is also generally unaware of the reality of what is happening in Palestine and Gaza. Therefore, the people who are taking the risk to speak up, often against the wishes of their families, workplaces, and communities, are actually pushing up against massive societal and cultural pressure.

No one is a hero, the genocide is still ongoing, and I still think we could do much more from Japan—but the people who have fought bravely for Palestine in Japan against their own set of constraints do work very hard. Everyone tells us about the one guy in Tokyo who stands alone every day on the street yelling about the genocide. Yes, he’s awesome, but the story is misleading because he’s not alone! In Tokyo, there is a strong solidarity movement led by Palestinians, and there is an extensive network throughout Japan, even in very rural areas, that is cross-cultural, intergenerational, and interfaith, trying its best to be intersectional and inclusive.

Every movement has its internal struggles, but we are proud to be part of a truly unique moment in history. The movement for Palestine in Japan did not start on Oct. 7, there have been decades of researchers, artists, students, and activists who have supported and engaged with Palestinians and I feel grateful to be part of this lineage. We are standing with the Palestinian people and the entire world against domination, fascism, and up against a lot of our own ghosts. But we continue to fight in the tradition of many of our ancestors, from the anti-war and anti-nuclear movements, the student, women’s, queer, and environmental movements, and other decolonial peoples’ struggles for dignity, equality, justice and liberation.

Finally, are there any ways people can support your groups?

Buy the zines written by young people in Gaza that we have translated into Japanese:
Gazagazagaza.base.shop

Make a donation to one of the projects we have been supporting:
@GazaSoupKitchen
Challenge Classes
Eman Al-haj Ali GoFundMe

Never stop talking about Palestine!

“Boiler Room you a punk ass bitch!”—Notes from the insurgency in rave culture

Anticolonial insurgency within rave culture bolsters a vibrant effort to boycott Zionist, colonial and capitalist institutions.

Ravers for Palestine
20/08/2025

On a warm evening in July, cars unloaded partygoers outside Under the K Bridge, the venue hosting Boiler Room’s NYC party. They were greeted by a crowd of activists, ravers and Indigenous Land Defenders, bearing placards reading “Fuck a pro-genocide pipeline party” and “KKR colonizes, KKR kills”, referring to the hedge fund which now owns Boiler Room, along with 85+ music festivals. A TikTok records the moment an incoming ticketholder sees the protesters and learns in real time about Boiler Room’s new owner. “Don’t drop us off here!” she tells the taxi driver, amid panicked laughter.

Meanwhile, across NYC, designated counter-parties to Boiler Room at Mood Ring, Earthly Delights and Basement started opening their doors. A map of these parties had been circulated earlier on Instagram by the Boycott Room campaign, one of a rapidly expanding cluster of groups in nightlife driving the boycott of KKR-owned venues. At around 8PM, an actionist who had infiltrated Boiler Room jumped up on stage with a banner reading “Boiler Room + KKR fund genocide. Boycott now”.

“Actionists are just now recovering from the atrocious vibes of even a few minutes inside the genocide party,” Boycott Room reflected in a reel the next day. The aforementioned TikToker concurred. In an update story posted after the event, she expressed regret for entering it. “This shit high key felt like a different kind of hell. Anything related to pro genocide has an evil aura. We paid $400 for this shit. Boycott the Boiler Room.”

This is a snapshot of the global, anticolonial insurgency within rave culture. Autonomous direct action, mass refusal and withdrawal of labour. Expanding grassroots coalitions, growing DIY infrastructure. The humble, implacable and patient pulling at threads.

News of KKR’s acquisition of Superstruct Entertainment and its portfolio of venues had already been noted by the Flow Strike campaign in 2024. But the sale of Boiler Room to Superstruct in January 2025 brought the news to wider attention, through a virally circulated Instagram explainer by WAWOG Toronto and a direct action led by Wet’suwet’en people and Palestinians.

Six months later, the explainer and its diagram remain confronting. KKR, one of the world’s largest hedge funds, is almost comically evil. It has deep ties to the ”Israeli” colonial project—funding data, arms and land purchase companies in the entity, and the IOF itself via the ‘Friends of the IDF nonprofit. One of its Chairmen is David Petraeus, the architect of the US-led invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and former head of the CIA. It is also the main investor in the Coastal GasLink pipeline poisoning and destroying First Nations lands in the west of Turtle Island (Canada)—making it a target of Wet’suwet’en direct action since 2020.

A few days after the post landed, three DJs—Princess Elf Bar, DJ Myna and Shannon From Admin—withdrew from a Boiler Room in Sheffield, UK. A week later, the community began reckoning with Superstruct’s ownership of festivals popular with queer and underground artists like Mighty Hoopla, Sonàr and Field Day.

In March, Boiler Room announced a merch collaboration with FC Palestina and the Sameer Project, a Palestinian led mutual aid initiative. Just hours later, after being apprised of KKR, the Sameer Project issued a statement of refusal, which remains a core moral and political compass for the movement:

“We will always say no to any kind of normalization or ties with organizations linked to zionism in any shape or form. No zionist money comes without an agenda. […] Tomorrow KKR will turn around and be on the defensive about investing in Israel by saying they donated to Gaza through one of their acquired companies. They will say this to wash away their complicity.”

From there, the revolt rapidly expanded and globalized. Seven DJs pulled out of Boiler Room Istanbul. DAYTIMERS, a British South Asian collective, withdrew from Superstruct-owned Mighty Hoopla and Lost Village. EYRA, Animistic Beliefs and dj g2g individually withdrew from Sonàr. Dozens of their peers shortly followed suit. Half the Field Day line up dropped out. KAALO, a queer/femme-led DIY collective in Nepal, publicly dropped their Boiler Room collab. The Bay Area Boiler Room was cancelled after local pressure. Around half of the stages booked at Milkshake, a queer-centred festival in the Netherlands, withdrew, with a clear material demand: “As long as a festival is owned by KKR, we will boycott. We will not accept offsets or compromises.”

New developments arrive daily. The poles and focal points of revolt are always shifting. But in recent weeks, Brazil and Puerto Rico have seen major flashpoints, with local actionists getting Boiler Room events in both Saô Paulo and San Juan cancelled. “A global event backed by a big Zionist corporation stepped back because the scene got organised” said the group in Brazil.

“Black, Indigenous, peripheral, Palestinian and dissident people united for a greater cause.”

“We refuse to let our culture be used to whitewash genocide.”

The revolt is massive, global and popular. It is overwhelmingly comprised of global Majority, trans, queer and Indigenous people from the underground. Most are unpropertied and precarious. The fees they forego in the KKR boycott are often needed to pay rent.

It is militant. Its basic, entry level premises are an to end capitalism, uncompromising support for Palestinian resistance, the dismantlement of the ‘West’, pan-Indigenous liberation, death to all settler colonies, including those on Turtle Island (the ‘US’ and ‘Canada’). Deviations from Al Thawabit, the core principles of Palestinian liberation, are rare and attract immediate, organic rebuttal. It does not have leaders. Its core tactics are boycott, direct action, disruption, sabotage.

A revolt of this scale and militancy within electronic music culture was not inevitable. Clubland, particularly in Europe, has complex relationship affinities with the project of the West. The raver is often targeted for co-option into the imperial project—whether, in the West, as a symbol of freedom and disinhibition against a racialised Other; or, in the Global South, as potential conscripts into a comprador class. The Zionist entity has endlessly sought to position Tel Aviv as, per Nerdeen Kiswani, “a beacon of light—progressive, diverse and full of life…making apartheid look like a party”. Given the intersection of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood with a settler music festival, many of us braced ourselves for a grim tide of reactionary ‘PLUR’ and ‘both sides’ takes from ravers and DJs.

That this did not materialise—or, more accurately, was quickly staunched—attests, at least in part, to reservoirs of resistance and anticolonial militancy within nightlife. These have been activated by the genocide, alongside a visceral, ancestral ick at the commodification of underground culture, most grotesquely typified by the extractive, colonial dynamics of Boiler Room.

The structural position of the DJ/raver, despite efforts at recuperation, is still, it seems, generative of dissent. Like queers (also experiencing a re-radicalisation over Palestine), ravers are at once unbearably central to, yet askance of, the operations of imperial capital.

But besides these undergirding dynamics, can anything be drawn from how the movement has shaped itself—and created the conditions for the current, ongoing escalation? Why are boycotts in electronic music popping off like nowhere else in global culture?

No gods, no leaders

Nothing in the movement has been rolled out from above, or according to any central formulas or scripts. Decision-making is not abrogated to representative bodies. There are no intermediaries who treat or negotiate on behalf of a base. The boycott has been built through the organic accretion of autonomous acts of refusal. The energy and spirit of these refusals and actions is never workshopped or uniform. This means it avoids the overdetermined feel of NGO writing. The texts emerging are idiosyncratic, embodied, vernacular, playful, which makes them memorable and resonant—inspiring action where more top-down forms of political communication might not. The centrality of trans DJs to the movement informs this corpus: see Cultural Solidarity’s latest video, MC’d by Black trans artists on the sidelines of the NYC Boiler Room strike fundraiser:

“Boiler Room, you a punk ass bitch. You always and forever will be a punk ass bitch miss thing. You’re not tearing it, you’re not eating, your mama a bitch, your grandmama a bitch […]”

Statements learn from each other, reuse and cite text, and over time a loose, shared set of premises and parameters have developed. But there is no hegemon, no disciplinary body, no notion of copyright. This means that groups and coalitions can spring up rapidly and unceremoniously. Trust is established quickly, through action rather than deliberation, because there isn’t a strong sense (at least yet) of requisite turfs, tributes to be paid.

Holistic scope, imaginative coalitions

KKR is a universal antagonist to life—an entity which, like ‘Israel’ and ‘the US’, despoils across geographies and scales: funding the Palestinian genocide, destroying Indigenous lifeworlds, corporatising raves, privatising healthcare systems and housing. These multiple, intersecting scales lead any actionist on KKR ineluctably to an anti-capitalist, pan-Indigenous frame, providing a guard against recuperation into empire.

This is generating new coalitions which disturb the idea of the raver as a dissolute, implied White imperial subject. The revolt is not confined to the dancefloor. Remember: it was Wet’suwet’en people in Toronto who kicked off the revolt, and they continue to be heavily involved. There is no hermetic sense of the raver as distinct from other embodiments. See also the important contributions of groups like the Muslim Social Justice Initiative and Nijjormanush to the Boiler Room boycott.

Community and mutual aid

By freeing action from organizations, the endless potential of grassroots activism is revealed. Take the Bay Area. After concerted community pressure, an alliance of local collectives, operating under the moniker B.A.S.S. (Bay Area Solidarity Strike), caused so many artist withdrawals that Boiler Room San Francisco had to be cancelled. On the same day as the cancelled Boiler Room, their DIY counter-party raised over $9000, helping cover strike funds in the Bay Area and beyond as well as supporting mutual aid efforts in Gaza.

This bottom-up approach created lasting, meaningful bonds within and across communities in the Bay Area. But its impacts reverberated nonlocally, too. The B.A.S.S. initiative was rapidly reproduced in New York City (Big Apple Solidarity Strike), paving the way for their own strike fund and direct action. These precedents later informed the mass withdrawal of queer artists from Milkshake festival in the Netherlands, and the solidarity collective which emerged from it (R.U.I.S), which is based on similar DIY and anticapitalist values. In a sweet circular moment, the OG Bay Area boycotters ran a zine sale to support the Milkshake action.

These humble acts of community building, while often enacted through acts of refusal and boycott, are constructive in the most literal sense. While local, they are not parochial, creating material, transnational networks of solidarity and care.

Be reasonable, demand the impossible

The Superstruct-owned festival is uncanny and insidious. Its moniker is a dead, floating signifier, communicating vague affective hooks: queer, surfer, punk, underground. We are invited to get our monodirectional kicks in a grey strip mall of tailored experiences. The early, medieval festival, a precursor to the rave, was a space where “the world turned upside down”—one of sexual license, dissolved classes, kings becoming peasants for a day. The KKR festival is the world reaffirmed in its grim, implacable realities—a crushing acquiescence to capitalist realism.

It is precisely this realism that the movement rejects, in theory and deed. Drawing on the Wages for Housework movement of the seventies, theorist Kathi Weeks extols the power of the “utopian, unreasonable demand”—which, rather than a predestined route to narrow wins or achievable horizons—constitutes an ongoing insurgency, a “process of constituting a new subject with the desires for and the power to make new demands”.

The ambition, scope and unreasonableness of the demand—an anticapitalist rollback of the corporate takeover of rave culture—is what gives this movement potency. It also makes it effective and, yes, strategic. Consider: the news about KKR was only popularised in January. Just 7 months on, the corporate festival circuit is in ruins. DIY culture is reviving everywhere. And a system of rewards, which prioritised acquiescence, guild thinking, the collegiate co-facilitation of bag chasing, is being wrenched apart.

Abdaljawad Omar, writing on new circuits of rebellion in the refugee camps of the West Bank (The New York War Crimes, Nakba issue, 2025), writes:

“The current wave of resistance privileges the act itself—the moment of resistance—as a political assertion not necessarily embedded in a coherent project. It insists on action even in the absence of a clear horizon. This is not a failure of thought but an exposure of the limits of our inherited narratives. It answers the question “What is to be done?” simply: Act—and when you are unsure, act more.”

It is, he continues, “a form of struggle that reveals the exhaustion of inherited frameworks and insists on staying with the rupture”.

As fascism and anticolonialism recrudesce in parallel, who would bet on received patterns or lessons from the inert 2010s? No leaders have led this revolt; no strategists mapped it or predicted it, or prognosticated a pallid sequence of little wins and KPIs. Instead, by pulling at threads with humbleness, insistence and patience, a small community has brought many seemingly impregnable dynamics—commodification, competition, celebrity—to a tottering fragility.

As the international liberal order reveals its true contours, its insinuations within club culture are also becoming apparent. The credo of capitalist realism, that things must always get worse, that we must take the despoilation of our rituals, our communities, of all that is sacred, is facing non-acceptance. The consolidation of rave culture is not inevitable. Parties and festivals do not need to grow, become brands. Boiler Room does not have a right to exist. Per DJ and journalist Arielle Lana: “These platforms, they don’t need to be like the holy grail. We can dismantle them and we’ll still survive.”

Ravers for Palestine is an anonymous collective working to foster solidarity and resistance within electronic music culture.

In memory of Ozzy Osbourne

Looking back at Ozzy Osbourne’s incredible and notorious legacy

Brandon Warner
02/08/2025

He built the foundation for an entire musical genre so beloved by its fans that it has taken on many of the characteristics of a religion. His show The Osbournes established the template which created, for worse or for worse, reality TV as we know it. He urinated on the Alamo resulting in a decade-long ban from San Antonio, snorted ants up his nose, and, intoxicated beyond belief, “mistakenly” bit the heads off of two doves which he had intended to dramatically release during a meeting with record label executives. He left us with such memorable quotes as “I am Burrito Man” and “Who the fuck is Justin Bieber?”. He was one of the world’s most beloved performers whose influence transcends genres and styles. After years of struggling with Parkinson’s disease, after surviving a quad accident, and after decades of substance abuse, Ozzy Osbourne, the Prince of Darkness, has made his last bow sober and surrounded by love. His funeral procession was accompanied by tens of thousands of devoted fans crying “Ozzy Ozzy Ozzy oi oi oi!” through the streets of Birmingham. Ozzy’s final performance raised over 190 million dollars—to be split between Birmingham Children’s Hospital, Acorn’s Children’s Hospice, and Cure Parkinson’s—surpassing every other charity concert in history, including 1985’s Live Aid—a truly rock’n’roll exit to the man who exemplified the rock’n’roll life.

John Michael Osbourne was born to a working-class family in Birmingham, England on 3 December 1948. Raised in an area where the only possible futures seemed to reside in factory labor, “Ozzy” met bass-player Terence “Geezer” Butler after posting an ad in a local music shop (“Ozzy Zig Needs a Gig”). The two musicians eventually united with guitar player Tony Iommi and drummer Bill Ward, forming the Polka Tulk Blues Band, then the band Earth, before finally settling on the name “Black Sabbath”. Inspired by the effect horror films had on people, the band crafted an image that was ominous and frightening, with Ozzy bringing a fitting dash of comedy into the mix.

Known for his showmanship and stage antics—from hoisting the late-great guitar hero Randy Rhoads into the air mid-solo to the silly but somehow contagiously energetic jumping jacks and clapping of his later years—an Ozzy concert was a spectacle indeed. A man of contradictions, Ozzy Osbourne always seemed comically out of place surrounded by the wealth and privilege he enjoyed for much of his adult life, resulting in hilarious moments like this gem where he reflects on his working-class character and determination to do his own chores from his Beverly Hills mansion while being served meals that look like they should be in an art gallery instead of on a plate.

Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath!

Formed by Osbourne, Iommi, Butler, and Ward, Black Sabbath laid the foundation for heavy metal music while surrounded by the tense and constant beats of Birmingham’s industrial machinery. In fact, industry played more than a symbolic role in the development of Black Sabbath’s sound—guitarist Tony Iommi lost bits of his fingers in an accident on his last day of work at a sheet metal factory. Persevering with a set of plastic fingertips he made for himself, the new difficulties of playing led Iommi to detune his guitar, slackening the strings, resulting in a much darker tone. Combine this with Bill Ward’s swinging drumbeats, Geezer Butler’s bluesy baselines and ominous lyrics, and Ozzy Osbourne’s melodies and incredible vocals, which managed to haunt even as they soared, and you have the perfect recipe for a heavy metal origin story.

Black Sabbath released a total of nineteen studio albums with numerous lineup changes between 1970 and 2013, though it is the original Ozzy-fronted lineup that produced the band’s most successful work. The band’s self-titled debut was a groundbreaking mixture of horror-inspired blues and rock’n’roll. The artwork on Black Sabbath perfectly captures the mood of the album, with a menacing figure gazing directly at you against a busy and unsettling background. The title track opens to the sound of rain and is premised on a tritone, the so-called “devil’s interval”. Osbourne’s haunting voice enters with fearful questions:

“What is this that stands before me?
Figure in black which points at me
Turn ‘round quick and start to run
Find out I’m the chosen one
Oh no!”

Heavy metal was born.

The band’s sophomore album Paranoid featured what would become some of the band’s most famous songs, the title track becoming a radio hit. Fueled by the growing sentiment against the invasion of Vietnam, “War Pigs” continues to serve as a powerful protest anthem and has been covered by artists ranging from Faith No More to T-Pain. Then there is “Iron Man” (no, not the Marvel character), with its thundering riff that, to this day, is often the first thing new guitarists learn to play (making it the bane of music store employees around the world).

The Ozzy-fronted Sabbath continued to release a number of now classic albums including Master of Reality, Vol. 4, and Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. However, after the release of the band’s eighth album Never Say Die! internal frustrations, drug abuse, and accusations against Osbourne’s notorious unreliability reached a pinnacle. Osbourne was kicked out of the band and replaced by Ronnie James Dio, who would eventually reform the band as Heaven and Hell.

Ozzy Zig needs a gig (again)

Following his dismissal from Black Sabbath and a stint of coke-fueled melancholy, Osbourne got back on the horse and began putting together a band for his solo debut with the assistance of the notorious music manager Don Arden and his daughter Sharon Arden (now Sharon Osbourne). The album Blizzard of Ozz featured the talents of Don Airey on keyboards, Bob Daisley on bass, Lee Kerslake on drums, and Quiet Riot’s Randy Rhoads on guitar. Daisley’s excellent writing and Rhoads’ blistering guitar skills, which injected an element of high-speed “classical” music into Osbourne’s blues-rock style, paved the way for success. Blizzard of Ozz would eventually be certified 5x platinum in the United States and contained several of Osbourne’s greatest hits—what rock playlist is complete without “Crazy Train”?

Osbourne’s solo success continued with the followup album Diary of a Madman and its creeping but mesmerizing title-track, alongside more bombastic hits like “Over the Mountain” and “Flying High Again”. Then tragedy struck. In 1982 the band’s tour bus driver, Andrew Aycock, offered to take Rhoads and Rachel Youngblood (who was in charge of make-up and costumes) on a flight in a small airplane. Behaving recklessly, Aycock clipped the tour bus with the wing of the aircraft, where Ozzy and Sharon were then sleeping, breaking the plane’s wing and leading to a fatal crash that killed Aycock, Rhoads, and Youngblood. Rhoads’ tenure with Osbourne, his display of musical genius and his charismatic showmanship which meshed so perfectly with Osbourne’s stage persona, have become permanently sewn into the tapestry of heavy metal mythology.

A long farewell

Those who have been following Osbourne’s musical career for a long time have likely seen the musician’s “last” show a number of times. From the “No More Tours” tour in 1992 (undone by the 1995 “Retirement Sucks Tour”) to the comically titled “No More Tours II” in 2018, plus Black Sabbaths’ “The End” tour in 2016-17 (following the band’s release of 13, the first album with Osbourne since 1978) one might be forgiven for thinking that Ozzy Osbourne would go on playing forever. And in a way, he did—living up to the principles of heavy metal excess, Ozzy quite literally rocked right to the end.

Osbourne’s final show, the “Back to the Beginning” charity event in Birmingham, was an homage to heavy metal history and Ozzy’s defining role in it. The event brought together a veritable “who’s who” of rock royalty. Hosted by the guitar legend and socialist activist Tom Morello, band after band took the stage showcasing the development of the genre pioneered by Osbourne and his Black Sabbath bandmates over five decades ago. Each band was afforded time to play some of their own hits plus covers of Ozzy or Black Sabbath songs (Halestorm’s rendition of “Perry Mason” and Slayer’s performance of “Wicked World” were notable highlights). Metallica’s James Hetfield praised metal’s founding fathers, stating “without Sabbath there would be no Metallica” during a set which saw metal’s largest act dish out some Black Sabbath deep cuts.

Osbourne took to the stage on a throne and, despite his physical impairments, still managed to exude a tremendous amount of energy and emotion from his seated position. Seeming to tear up during his final performance of “Mama I’m Coming Home”, Ozzy thanked the audience proclaiming “you have no idea how I feel, thank you from the bottom of my heart”. It was an incredible farewell, and before the fun got underway Ozzy was even able to witness Slipknot’s Sid Wilson make a marriage proposal to his daughter Kelly Osbourne (in typical fashion, Ozzy didn’t miss a beat, joking “Fuck off! You’re not marrying my daughter!”). After his passing, Sabbath cofounder Tony Iommi acknowledged the mounting challenges to Ozzy’s health and remarked that Ozzy likely “just held out to do that show”, determined to say one final goodbye.

A career of controversies

Unfortunately, the “Back to the Beginning” event was not without controversy. A recorded appearance by Marilyn Manson, the infamous shock-rocker embroiled in a number of sexual assault and abuse allegations, brought boos from the otherwise jubilant crowd. Further booing emerged with the appearance of Disturbed frontman David Draiman, a notorious Zionist who has been photographed signing Israeli artillery shells as that state continues its genocidal campaign against the people of Palestine. A number of pro-Zionist writers have attempted to claim Ozzy himself as one of their own following the singer’s death. An op-ed by one Nicole Lampert celebrates Ozzy’s “defense of Israel” on the grounds that he has twice performed there and that his wife Sharon has regurgitated Zionist talking points, for example through her ridiculous criticism of Kneecap.

Ozzy sometimes remarked on his distance from political matters, a privilege for someone whose luxurious life was largely managed for him. While it doesn’t seem sufficient to accuse Ozzy of holding any specific beliefs purely due to Sharon’s remarks (and while the conflation of Ozzy’s and Sharon’s actions has been a frequent source of sexist accusations within the discourse of the metal community), it is also insufficient to use his notorious irresponsibility as a shield from criticism. Sharon arrogantly dismissed criticism over Ozzy’s playing in Israel on the grounds that “we play where we want to play”. Equally frustrating is the presence of Ozzy and Sharon’s signatures on a letter demanding an inquiry into the BBC over a documentary it released on Gaza, alleging “bias against Israel”. Those attempting to claim Ozzy as a “fierce Zionist” through appeals to the beliefs of his wife seem to reject both the agency and responsibility of both individuals. Whatever Ozzy’s views might have been, it is sad that his actions were such that they provide Zionists with any claims at all—and hiding behind Sharon is no excuse.

Moreover, many aspects of the “rock ‘n roll” lifestyle were notoriously problematic and Ozzy was emblematic of many of them throughout his long career. Sadly, it is still common for fans of the genre to brush many of its worst excesses under the carpet as “just how it was”. Arguably the darkest chapter in Osbourne’s life was the attempted murder of Sharon after the Moscow Music Peace Festival in 1989. Having completely lost his mind and any semblance of self-control to the various substances he was abusing (“God only knows what combination he was on”, recalled Sharon) he allegedly stated “we’ve come to a decision that you’ve got to die” and attempted to strangle his wife, who was able to fend him off and signal for help. He woke the next morning in jail, completely oblivious to what he had done. Sharon dropped the legal charges against him with the insistence that he cease drinking—her dedication to rehabilitating her husband probably saved his life.

Ozzy’s legacy

Throughout his life, Ozzy played a huge role in launching the careers of many other musicians—Mötley Crüe is perhaps the biggest example. Then, of course, there was the legendary Ozzfest which Ozzy and Sharon kicked off in 1996 and continued more or less annually until 2018. The festival generally had a main stage, headlined by either Ozzy or Black Sabbath, with support from a number of heavy metal heavyweights like Slayer and System of a Down. Then there was a second stage to provide space for smaller bands to carve out a name for themselves. This proved fortuitous for a largely unknown nine-member ensemble out of Iowa during Ozzfest ‘99: Slipknot is now one of the most successful metal bands of all time. That is Ozzy’s legacy—not just the invention of an entire genre, but his love of shining the spotlight on others, ensuring that the party he started back in ‘68 never stops.

That party is now a global phenomenon. From its roots in Britain’s industrial heartland, metal has spread around the world and, as it developed, bands began to integrate the genre’s basic elements with their own cultural influences. Across Latin America, the rebellious nature of the music found new life as a way to express outrage at dictatorial regimes and the intense feelings of alienation shared by so many. Brazil’s Sepultura, arguably the most prominent band emerging from such circumstances, came from an impoverished working-class background and grew to become one of heavy metal’s most successful acts. The band formed the same day that founding member Max Cavalera heard Black Sabbath’s 1972 release, Vol. 4, for the first time.

Metal has also been the subject of academic inquiry—a collection of scholarly work on metal history titled Metal Rules the Globe is full of interesting analyses about the genre’s development in China, Indonesia, Japan, Norway, Singapore, and more. The genre Ozzy helped birth has been analyzed in a number of ways regarding its relationship to class, gender, power, mysticism, and nationalism. It has also exploded into countless metal subgenres (and sub-subgenres, and sub-sub-subgenres, like “Polish Blackened Death Metal” which under no circumstances should be confused with “Atmospheric Black Metal”, “Swedish Melodic Death Metal”, “Speed Metal”, “Symphonic Metal”, or “Stoner Metal”). Ozzy’s legacy has evolved in so many directions that metal-loving anthropologist Sam Dunn produced several documentary series cataloguing the ever-evolving “Heavy Metal Family Tree”.

You can’t kill rock’n’roll

One of Ozzy’s most charming characteristics was his unassuming simplicity and the fact that, despite being a bona fide rock’n’roll god, he never stopped being a fan. Watching him onstage, as his health deteriorated over the years, he simply radiated energy and passion for what he was doing. When he could no longer run around the stage he began to run in place, doing jumping jacks and clapping his hands. When he was confined to a throne for his final performance, struggling with Parkinson’s disease and unable to hoist himself up, he rocked back and forth, tapping, stomping, anything he could manage. Whether one looks at Ozzy’s earliest performances or those of his later years, it is always clear that no matter how much fun the audience was having—he was having even more.

Rest in Power, John Michael Osbourne.

Brandon Warner is a Marxist activist with a background in philosophy and sociology. He is based in Berlin.

The Romanian anti-communist memory wars

Romania’s new president is famous for defeating the far-right in the recent elections. Now he is playing into their hands

Andrei Belibou
26/07/2025

Two months into his term, Romania’s new president, Nicușor Dan, has chosen his first hill to die on. No, it’s not an ardent fight against the government’s catastrophic austerity measures, even though these contradict Dan’s explicit campaign promise that VAT would not be raised. Dan has decided to make his first public and legal presidential intervention by repeatedly challenging a new law project that would increase penalties for promoting and distributing fascist and far-right materials.

This might come as some surprise. In May, Dan’s victory in the Romanian presidential elections hit international news as a much-needed sign that the European right-wing surge could be stalled. After an eventful electoral season decided through lawfare, the independent mayor of Bucharest appeared as a centrist, liberal, pro-European savior who stopped the fall of yet another country to extremist rule. Dan has now refused to promulgate a law against fascism voted in by Parliament — first by sending it to the Constitutional Court; and upon his challenge being rejected by the Court, by announcing that he would send it back to Parliament for redrafting.

This showcase of presidential stubbornness is, however, not shocking. Although Dan defeated a far-right candidate in the presidential elections, his personal history and political profile are clearly conservative. More importantly, his challenges to the law fit into the mainstream of Romanian memory politics, a mainstream that legitimizes far-right opinions and historical figures under the justification of anti-communism.

The Legion

Dan’s fig leaf throughout this scandal has been his insistence that he is not willing to accept fascist points of view, and that his concern is rather with the lack of concrete definitions in the law, bringing up a specific example in a public statement about the issue:

“In the town of Făgăraș [Dan’s hometown] there is a small association dealing with the promotion of the [anti-communist] Resistance in the Făgăraș Mountains […]. Among the members of the Resistance in the Făgăraș Mountains are a few persons who in their past had been part of the legionary movement. The question is: does this association have a legionary character or not? Because the law does not tell us. And, if it does have a legionary character, should these people go to jail or not? Because the law tells us that, if you set up an association with a legionary character, you have to go to jail. I think not, I think that it is legitimate to promote the anti-communist Resistance in the Făgăraș Mountains.”

Dan’s accusation that the law does not clearly spell out what a “legionary character” is can immediately be disproved by looking at the text itself. Part of the justification put forth by the MP who proposed the law is that it would close loopholes in the existing legislation with “a better definition of some notions,” including “legionary.” And the definition offered in the draft law is nothing if not concrete, referring to membership in the “fascist organization in Romania that was active in the period 1927-1941 under the names ‘The Legion of the Archangel Michael,’ ‘The Iron Guard,’ and the ‘Everything for the Country Party.’”

The Legion, the main far-right organized movement in interwar Romania, is at the center of Romanian memory politics and polemics. A nationalist, antisemitic, Christian Orthodox movement, the Legion reached mass membership among peasants and students under the charismatic leadership of “Captain” Corneliu Zelea Codreanu. Legionnaires got together in work camps where they built local civil and religious infrastructure. These camps and local “nests” also promoted Orthodox mysticism and paramilitary organizing, which ultimately manifested in high-profile political assassinations carried out by fanatic legionnaires.

Scared by their growing power and electoral success, the dictatorial King Charles II cracked down on legionary organizing and had Codreanu assassinated under the cover of a failed attempt to escape arrest. Charles, however, was himself forced out of the country by General (later Marshal) Ion Antonescu. Antonescu went on to become Romania’s military dictator during the country’s participation in WWII on the side of the Axis powers, allying himself with the Legion to proclaim a National Legionary State.

This alliance was however short-lived, as tensions between Antonescu and the Legion came to a head with the latter attempting a coup in January 1941. The legionary rebellion quickly became a two-day pogrom that killed 125 Jews in Bucharest. After the rebellion was quashed by the army, the Legion’s leadership fled the country and thousands of its members were imprisoned. Those legionnaires that remained free continued to participate in Romania’s antisemitic atrocities, such as the June 1941 Iași pogrom.

Although defeated and disbanded, legionnaires and the legionary ideology continued to act and to capture the Romanian imagination. Already based on a fascist-cum-Orthodox death cult, legionnaires embraced their imprisonment as a form of martyrdom. Others took refuge in monastic life, as monks or lay inhabitants of sympathetic monasteries.

Their true glorification, however, began after the 1944 coup, when Romania turned against Germany, and gradually came under communist control. Many legionnaires took refuge in the mountains and organized into armed groups, fighting against the Red Army, and later against the forces of the new Romanian communist state. Anti-communist resistance was extinguished by the early 1960s, but accusations of legionary membership or sympathies became one of the main justifications for political imprisonment in Romania throughout the communist period.

Even so, the dividing line between communist and legionnaire is not as clear as it might seem. The communist regime, for instance, instrumentalized imprisoned legionnaires, co-opting them as torturers in the infamous prison “re-education” programs of the 1950s. And even as the Legion remained the regime’s scarecrow, Romanian communism itself became more and more nationalist, in ways that closely resembled interwar fascist discourse.

Saints and heroes

The Legion’s post-1989 legacy is marked by this paradox. On the one hand, Nicolae Ceaușescu’s nationalist communist party produced the ideological framework and even the members of many far-right parties and organizations of the 1990s and the 2000s. Communist elites who became post-communist politicians overnight continued calling their adversaries “legionnaires”, as for instance during the violently repressed student protests of the early 1990s. They had little interest in giving this floating signifier any substantive content, or in risking their own nationalism being interrogated by a real inquiry into the Legion.

On the other hand, the Romanian search for non- and anti-communist historical narratives settled on a romanticized interwar period as the last milestone of a European trajectory interrupted by the external, Oriental imposition of communism. This left little space for a critical engagement with the far-right movements of Romania in the 1930s, or with the sympathies that many of the cultural elites—now also recovered as the authentic expression of Romanian values before and beyond communism—expressed for these movements.

The lack of a reckoning with the Legion’s historical role and legacy allowed a different type of memorialization to develop and become mainstream. Former legionnaires, or their descendants and sympathizers, latched onto the communist condemnation of the Legion to paint an image of heroic martyrs. The (auto)biographies of jailed legionnaires became narratives of Orthodox suffering at the hands of an atheist (judeo-)bolshevism, peppered with stories of suffering, self-sacrifice, and saintly revelation.

The idea of “prison saints” took its place as a central trope in stories of repression and violence. All of this happened with the active participation of the Romanian Orthodox Church, where (former) legionnaires have played important roles in its monastic branch, the main source of leadership within the Church. Through the Church, the “saints” moniker became literal, as several legionnaires were recently canonized.

Outside of prisons and monasteries, the main vector for the memorialization of legionnaires has been their resistance against communism. The participants in the resistance had diverse motivations. While many of them were indeed legionnaires fighting out of conviction, or to avoid prison, others were members of other political parties, were royalists, or were simply resisting nationalization and collectivization. Regardless, the armed groups that took refuge in the mountains have gained mythical status in Romania, with their image folding into romantic narratives of bandits or hajduks.

Legion sympathizers, however, have managed to take over the memory of communist oppression and anti-communist struggle, claiming, for instance, that 75% of all political prisoners were legionnaires. They have used the resistance—an absolute force for good in Romanian historiography—to whitewash fascist holdouts as heroic underdogs. At the same time, the centrality of legionnaires in narratives of resistance turns anti-communism itself into a legionary action, infusing statements of support for the anti-communist resistance with implicit apologia for the Legion.

Electoral triggers

This is where Dan’s intervention comes in. Although he does not explicitly name it, the association that the President most likely is referring to when questioning the new law is the “Ion Gavrilă Ogoranu” Foundation. Ogoranu, a native of the Făgăraș area, was the leader of a legionnaire youth group, arrested in 1941. When the communists took power, he led a relatively long-lived armed resistance group and gained fame by evading arrest for decades.

The foundation, set up after his death, is far from the local initiative that Dan tries to present it as, but rather a mainstay of national debates on memory culture and the legacy of legionarism. Its secretary, Florin Dobrescu, was present at parliamentary debates over the new law project; and the Foundation filed its own complaint about the law project to the Romanian Ombudsman and to the Constitutional Court. Dobrescu also publicly thanked Dan for his intervention, calling him an “authentic democrat” and a “president of all Romanians”.

The dilemma that Dan presents to the public is whether this foundation, honoring an anti-communist hero, has a “legionary character” only because that same hero happens to have been a member of the Legion. Rather than musing over what “character” is, however, the dilemma can very easily be resolved by looking at the activities of the Foundation’s secretary. Dobrescu is currently under investigation for organizing memorial services for Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, who, having died 10 years before Romania became a communist republic, could not have been an anti-communist fighter. Dobrescu not only organized the services, but also officiated parts of them, leading attendees into performing Nazi salutes.

These services have been taking place for years, but they only received public attention in 2024. While far-right groups, movements, and publications have been growing since the 1990s, it took the shock of two far-right politicians’ near victories in the recent presidential elections to trigger the Romanian state into action. When Călin Georgescu took everyone by surprise and won the first round of the elections in November, journalists uncovered his vast connections to neo-legionary work camps and memorial associations, including the Ogoranu Foundation.

After Georgescu’s victory was invalidated by the Romanian Constitutional Court due to alleged Russian interference, and Georgescu was banned from participating in the re-run, his place was taken by another far-right candidate, George Simion—who qualified for the run-off, only to lose to Nicușor Dan. A more established politician than Georgescu, Simion was already known for his far-right positions, but investigations also uncovered that he was embedded into neo-legionary networks, including monasteries and associations. Among them: the Ogoranu Foundation.

The growing strength and influence of Legion sympathizers had been going largely unnoticed or accepted by Romanian authorities. The new legislative project was meant to strengthen the application of the existing laws criminalizing the propagation of legionary and fascist materials, and the denial of the Holocaust or of war crimes. Between the years 2022–2024—a period of intense organizing leading to the last elections—no person was prosecuted for Legion sympathies. Among those who slipped through the cracks was Georgescu himself, whose 2020 declaration that Ion Antonescu and Corneliu Zelea Codreanu were “national heroes” led to an investigation, in which the charges were ultimately dropped. It took Georgescu almost becoming president for him to be prosecuted for propagating fascist ideas.

Dan now seems to have hit the ideological and legal brakes on a long-awaited police crackdown against the far-right, a crackdown legitimated by his own electoral victory. This is not, however, a deviation from the President’s own political orientation. Most famously, Dan left the Save Romania Union—the party that he co-founded—over their embrace of same-sex marriage, with which he disagrees. This attitude goes back to 2000, when, before he became an activist or politician, he published an article declaring himself a nationalist and condemning “homosexual behavior” in public as damaging “traditional values and thus my collective, legitimate identity.”

More directly relevant is Dan’s refusal to rename Mircea Vulcănescu Street when he was Mayor of Bucharest. The street bears the name of a Romanian intellectual and subsecretary of state in the Antonescu government who was condemned as a war criminal in the post-WWII communist trials. After the Elie Wiesel Institute for the Study of the Holocaust got a court to order the renaming of the street, the city government—led by Dan—announced that it would appeal the decision, following concerted media and public campaigns coordinated by online far-right groups.

Dan’s centrism, like all centrisms, leans right. His problems with fascism seem to be vague accusations of violence and extremism rather than its more substantive contents. In a December 2024 interview, when asked whether the Legion was “good” for Romania, he condemned its use of political assassinations, but had to be repeatedly prompted by the interviewer to finally also condemn its antisemitism. And his recent decision to challenge a law approved by both the Parliament and the Constitutional Court echoes his actions as mayor. In both cases, he clearly sees his own judgments as superior to those of others. As he declared after his constitutional challenge was rejected, he is still of the “opinion” that more than half of the new project is “unconstitutional, even if the Constitutional Court said something else”, continuing to make a political intervention under the guise of a legalistic one.

Memory politics

Does Dan personally hold right-wing convictions? Yes, he has told us as much, and there is no reason to ignore him. Convictions are not the only driver of his vehement intervention against the law, however. The President’s position within Romanian memory culture is a key aspect of his own legitimacy as a leader and politician.

Although his electoral victory meant the momentary defeat of the far-right, it was far from being an antifascist victory. Dan won the election as an anti-communist, rallying against social services, public spending, civil servants, and state-owned companies. His appeal as an activist-turned-politician was built on his claim to dismantle the corruption and clientelism that have plagued Romania due to its inability to shake off its communist past.

Amidst Dan’s defense of fascist anti-communist resistors, a poll was published showing that over 50% of respondents considered communism to have been a good thing for Romania, and over 66% considered Ceaușescu to have been a good leader. Romanian commentators and politicians responded by raising a paranoid moral panic. The director of the institute running the poll attributed the results to “Russia’s hybrid war”. The president of the state’s Institute for the Investigation of the Crimes of Communism once again called for a law that bans communist symbols. Dan himself used the poll results to rally against manipulation and disinformation, stressing how “fragile our memory culture is”, and the “duty to learn from the past”.

Dan cannot actively condemn the Legion without also undermining his own legitimation in a rabidly and unilaterally anti-communist memory politics. But anti-communism as both common sense and as state policy has been the main legitimating ideology of the far-right today. Just as a Ukrainian Nazi-collaborator veteran was applauded in Canadian Parliament because he was anti-Soviet (today read as anti-Russian), so too are Romanian Legionnaires memorialized as having been on the right side of history.

This is also where the usefulness of legal solutions hits its limits. Yes, it is good to protect those vulnerable to far-right speech and attacks, and it is good to have the state break down organized neo-legionary groups. But the fact that so much Legion sympathy has gone unprosecuted is not due to the weaknesses of one specific law, but to the fact that investigators and lawmakers are themselves part of the anti-communist apparatus that is right-wing, almost by definition. After all, another law, passed in 2017 by Romanian Parliament, establishes a memorial day for “martyrs in communist prisons” using language taken directly from neo-legionary propaganda.

Even commentators who claim to appreciate the effort to fight against the far-right decry that communist speech is not covered, either in this law or in another—a conflation that is inaccurate and harmful. And as the recent Czech example shows, the outright banning of communist symbols and messaging is always around the corner in Eastern Europe. While a true effort to learn from the experiences of communist states involves dealing with their violence and failures, the total erasure and demonization that has been the mainstream so far has only led to deadly capitalism and to the rise of the far-right.

And this is exactly what is happening in Romania right now. Dan tries to play the role, as one journalist puts it, of an anti-communist “enlightened nationalist” who can assuage the cultural grievances that Georgescu and Simion rode on to almost take power, without falling into extremism. At the same time, the government he legitimated and put in power is enacting austerity measures that will deepen the inequalities and divisions in Romania to new lows—all the while increasing military spending, including on new defense contracts with Israel.

Another recent poll shows that the Alliance for the Union of Romanians, Simion’s far-right party, has strengthened its lead over Dan. It might seem ironic that the same social and economic conditions that led Romanians toward accepting communism as a good thing for the country also led them towards voting for a far-right that draws its legitimacy from anti-communist resistance. But Romanian communism has been emptied of its social policies and achievements, of its large-scale programs of progress and construction, as projects of a leftist, socialist vision. All that has been left of its culture within the Romanian public consciousness is its nationalism, its sovereigntism, its personalist rule: converging with the narrative of the contemporary far-right.

Romanians do not want the lack of freedom that marked their pre-1989 existence, but the security and the welfare that they had before capitalism and neoliberalism. As the center actively guts these services to adapt to capitalist forces, and as it also hollows out all memories of communism, the only place to invest these hopes is the far-right. Unless a different, positive project of well-being arises, uniting Romania’s past with Romania’s hopes for the future, the far-right will continue to monopolize the country’s political imagination.

Who is killing the Sudanese?

The Sudanese have taken to the streets in revolution against military rule, braving utter and ceaseless brutality.

Ibrahim
14/06/2025

Al-Bashir’s men, his security apparatus–the Janjaweed militia, and the military, and the state police, have stained their hands with Sudanese blood. They ignited a proxy war, fighting for expansionist imperialist ambitions to control and compete for Sudan’s resources and exploit its geopolitical position.

About six years ago, in the second half of December 2018, Sudan’s cities rose up against the policies of privatisation and rising prices of basic goods, especially bread. Citizens of Atbara, ‘the city of iron and fire,’ burned down the headquarters of Sudan’s ruling National Congress Party, headed by General Omar al-Bashir, who had usurped power for more than thirty years.

The 19th of December was like the storming of the Bastille–the protests quickly spread to all other villages and cities in Sudan until they reached Khartoum, the capital, where daily, day and night, centralised demonstrations were held in its three neighbouring cities, Khartoum, Omdurman and Khartoum Bahr. Citizens gathered in neighbourhoods, schools, universities, official and popular football fields, mosques and industrial areas without ceasing, despite the killing, bullets, arbitrary arrests and forced disappearances.

Arbitrary arrests and enforced disappearances

After mobilising citizens for five months, from December to April, the resistance succeeded in besieging the General Command building on 6 April 2019. They then carried out a sit-in, known in Sudanese circles as the General Command sit-in, and persisted, withstanding bullets and continuous assaults. After five days the security committee was forced to arrest al-Bashir and held him in a “safe place”, and proceeded to announce the setting up of a military council to run the country for two months or more.

The resistance rejected the council and demanded full civilian rule, according to the Declaration of Freedom and Change. The security committee, which began to call itself the Transitional Military Council (TMC), stalled negotiations, while the revolutionaries refused to leave the sit-in and rejected all attempts to circumvent the demands of the revolution.

On 3 June, the security committee brutally dispersed the sit-in with excessive force, killing hundreds of people and dumping their stone bound bodies in the Blue Nile.

Despite the rising death toll, persecution, internet and telecommunication cuts, and media blackout, the Sudanese revolutionary forces regrouped successfully, calling for a million-man demonstration on 30 June 2019 in Khartoum.

On that day, the crowds exceeded expectations, as Sudanese people came out from all parts of the country and from the three cities of Omdurman, Khartoum and Bahri, and declared their rejection of military rule, and their continued struggle for freedom, peace and justice.

The Berlin conference is Africa’s renewed curse

In Berlin, the German Foreign Ministry called a conference on Sudan, where it invited Sudan’s neighbouring countries, as well as Britain and America, but did not invite a single Sudanese person. Here, they started to promote a partnership government between the military and civilians, which was against the will of the revolutionary masses. Through Ethiopia and the intervention of the African Union and IGAD, negotiations between some opportunists affiliated with the revolution and the military council resumed. These negotiations were supported by the so-called international community, and a transitional government was imposed in the name of partnership between the military and civilians, on the basis of which General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan became head of the Sovereign Council (the collective head of state of Sudan), and his deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, and Dr Abdullah Hamdok became prime minister and the executive authority.

The partnership supported by the “international community”–which was rejected by a large sector of the revolutionary forces, lasted for two years, during which, the prime minister changed his government twice, adopted IMF policies, and raised subsidies for the disgruntled. They also repealed the law rejecting normalization with Israel and went as far as receiving and meeting Israeli leaders in Khartoum. This caused widespread demonstrations and protests against the policies of the Transitional Partnership Government. All these events, in addition to the obliteration of the justice files, increased the gap between the Hamdok government and the revolutionary street. The Islamists and their allies came up with new names and plans, encouraging Burhan and his deputy to overthrow the Freedom and Change Government in a military coup on October 25, 2022.

‘Down with the tenth, down with the tenth, we don’t want military officers in power.’

From the dawn of the coup, the resistance to the new coup began. People came out early in the morning from everywhere, rejecting the coup and the return to military rule. Groups of resistance youth headed to the main streets and blocked them, and some headed to the General Command, but were shot dead before they could enter and occupy the command. More than twenty unarmed peaceful demonstrators were killed that day. This made clear their bloody intention to monopolise power, which increased the ferocity and seriousness of the resistance in overthrowing military rule and breaking the evil cycle forever.

The resistance committees in the neighbourhoods led the resistance and set the overthrow of the coup as a priority and put forward the slogan “No partnership, no negotiation, no legitimacy”, and mobilised the street against the coup and weakened it completely. Under the pressure of the revolutionary street, Burhan released Abdullah Hamdok and a group of detainees and signed a new agreement in which Burhan promised to return to the civil transition path and correct the course of the revolution, something that the revolutionaries completely rejected and continued to demonstrate and protest daily for a year. Burhan was unable to form an executive government as the people continued to reject his rule. Burhan refused to hand over power and killed more than 300 young men and women demonstrators in the streets of Khartoum, Wad Madani and other cities in cold blood.

International complicity

Minister Abdullah Hamdok had passed a decision authorising the arrival of a special UN mission ‘UN Integrated Transition Support Mission in Sudan (UNITAMS)’. Led by a German expert, Volker Peretz, who had worked in Syria for years. From the early days, Mr Volker tried to play the role of mediator between the military and the revolutionary forces, with a clear bias towards the military, looking for a new partnership. The Sudanese reject his approach completely, but Volker and his international community have always worked against the will of the Sudanese people. Volker mobilised the AU, IGAD, Britain, America and Germany, forming a tripartite and quadripartite mechanism. The framework agreement sharply polarized the political actors and revolutionary forces, with some opportunists affiliated with the revolution supporting it and the radical revolutionary movement representatives in the resistance committees rejecting it.

The Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the Janjaweed militia, agreed to the framework agreement and Burhan refused to sign the security and military reform clause in which the RSF proposed to integrate its forces into the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) over a period of ten years. Military skirmishes began on the border with Central Africa and at Marawi Airport, until a war broke out on Saturday morning, 15 April (28th day of Ramadan), in the capital Khartoum. In the sports city, the airport, Omdurman and Khartoum.

The RSF broadcast a statement saying that it had taken control of the presidential palace, radio and television, leaving only a few parts of the General Command, after which it announced its complete victory and seized power, this time in the name of democracy and against Islamists.

The coup did not succeed and the Janjaweed suffered the biggest failure–they filled Khartoum with their armies and soldiers from everywhere, they took control of citizens’ homes, stole and looted them, expelled their families and barricaded themselves in them. The army bombed their camps, so they barricaded themselves in homes and hospitals, which Burhan also bombed without the slightest concern for the citizens. The war quickly spread throughout Sudan.

Hundreds of thousands were killed in Khartoum, Darfur and Gezira State. Nearly ten million Sudanese were displaced between displaced people in Sudan’s cities and villages and refugees outside the colonial borders.

In the war for gold and water, everyone is fighting by proxy

The United Arab Emirates is unabashedly supporting the RSF militia–financially, militarily, and through media. There are reports proving their funding of the militia, providing them with modern weapons and anti-aircraft weapons, building field hospitals in Darfur and Chad to treat the wounded and injured RSF mercenaries, in addition to supporting Haftar in Libya and the Russian Wagner forces. The UAE also mobilised its allies in the region, in Uganda, Kenya and Ethiopia, to put pressure on Burhan in order to pass their agenda.

On the other hand, the Islamists, who were ousted from power, found their way into the conflict, declaring their explicit and direct support for Burhan in his holy war, “the war of dignity”, against the militia, “the militia that came out of their womb”. Burhan found himself under their grip, heading to Turkey, the stronghold of the remnants of the former regime, and automatically directing himself to Al-Burhan, who a little while ago was crawling to normalise with Israel, has only the resistance camp with little support from the Ukrainian army, which officially said that it helped him come out of hiding and supported him with weapons in Khartoum and Darfur to limit the arrival of gold to Russia and the UAE.

In short, after two years and more, the war in Sudan has moved out of the logic of internal social conflict and turned into a global proxy war, led by the comprador in which the machines of global capitalism and its desire for expansionism and control over Sudan’s resources and geopolitical location. The imperialist expansionist proxy war against Sudan, its people, its revolution and its wealth.