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Yes, the German Democratic Republic was socialist—and we have much to learn from it

Response to ‘Red Flag: No, East Germany wasn’t socialist—and neither is “democratic socialism”’


27/09/2025

DDR stamp featuring the bust of Karl Marx with a colorful cityscape in the background.

In early September, Die Linke leader Heidi Reichinnek made headlines after claiming her party’s vision of “democratic socialism” had nothing to do with the German Democratic Republic (GDR): “What we had in the GDR wasn’t socialism. At least not the kind my party envisions.” Germany’s conservatives soon jumped in to disagree: “The GDR was pure socialism. It was an unjust state.” Rather than counter this narrative, Nathaniel Flakin recently wrote an article which—though critical of her party’s programme of “democratic socialism”—agrees with Reichinnek’s assessment of the GDR. According to Flakin, “a society can only be described as socialist if it meets Marx’s criteria of evolving towards the abolition of classes and the state” and the GDR “did anything but wither [away].”

Underlying both Reichinnek’s and Flakin’s arguments are the anti-GDR talking points that have long been propagated in the Federal Republic of Germany (formerly “West Germany”). The GDR is said to have been thoroughly undemocratic or, as Flakin puts it, a “Stalinist state” ruled by a “privileged bureaucracy, obsessed with control.” The lack of democracy and “suppression of all criticism” was not only “an insult to human dignity”, it also “produced constant inefficiencies” and prevented “good planning.” The GDR is presented as a caricature of bumbling, self-enriching bureaucrats who could only uphold their ailing system through mass surveillance. Rather than being a point of reference that progressives can learn from, the GDR should be written off as nothing more than a “footnote of history” (Stefan Heym). Reichinnek and Flakin assure us that their versions of socialism will be different.

Decontextualization and distortion

Such arguments against the GDR follow a similar pattern. First, a real and concrete problem in the GDR is identified. It is then taken out of its historical context and greatly exaggerated, before being generalized as a core, indefinite characteristic of the “Stalinist state.” Historical developments are distorted and decontextualized to create the impression that the GDR was broken and chronically ailing society. Flakin does exactly this when describing the East German economy. It is indeed true that the GDR faced significant challenges such as raising labour productivity or finding an adequate mechanism for price setting in the planned economy. However, blanket statements about “constant inefficiencies” are simply inaccurate and misleading.

The GDR economy proved itself to be robust and efficient over its 40-year existence. From 1949 until 1989, not a single year of stagnation or recession was recorded. In fact, in a paper published by Professor Gerhard Heske in 2009, East Germany’s annual growth rate (4.5%) is shown to have exceeded West Germany’s (4.3%) during the era of socialist planning (1951 to 1989). Data on the production and consumption of consumer goods confirms that the GDR was able to achieve the official objective of “meeting the growing material and cultural needs of the population” and thus progressively improving living standards.

Detractors of the GDR invariably ignore the context in which this socialist state operated. Since Germany’s heavy industries had historically been concentrated in the western regions of the country and due to the heavy damage inflicted on eastern Germany during the end phase of the Second World War, the GDR was compelled to construct large-scale industries from scratch in the late 1940s. The means of investment for this endeavour had to be accumulated internally, for East Germany possessed neither overseas colonies nor foreign benefactors (in contrast to West Germany, which received massive capital inflows through the Marshall Plan). The GDR alone had to rectify the damage inflicted by Hitler’s war after the Western powers violated the Potsdam Agreement and suspended reparation payments to the Soviet Union in 1946. Western sanctions also meant that trade with the resource-rich Ruhr Area in the West was no longer possible. All in all, seventy percent of East Germany’s pre-war industrial capacity was no longer available after 1945, which meant that living standards and productivity in the East were only nearly half of what they were in the West.

Through the resolute effort of millions of workers and through the efficient socialist planning system, the GDR was able to increase the volume of investment more than three-fold during the decade of socialist construction in the 1950s. By 1989, industrial production had increased by a factor of 12.3, and the gross domestic product had quintupled. These achievements were made possible by socialist property relations and the scientifically grounded planning process: far from being syphoned off and consumed by an exploitative “privileged bureaucracy,” the GDR’s surplus product was accumulated in the public hand and consciously reinvested to accelerate industrialization and economic development. The intricate planning system was structured around the Leninist principle of democratic centralism: economists and planning specialists collected data and analysed international and technological developments to draft perspective plans for the GDR’s economy. Workers and mass organizations then collectively discussed and amended these plans at the factory and neighbourhood levels. These plans thus combined complex expertise with democratic legitimacy.

Flakin withholds the title of socialism from the GDR because it failed to fulfil Leon Trotsky’s pronouncement that “socialism must increase human productivity, or it has no historical justification.” Here again, Flakin not only ignores the disadvantageous starting conditions in East Germany, but he also distorts reality. The GDR was in fact able to achieve a permanent increase in labour productivity throughout its existence. Even during the 1970s, when foreign trade was greatly affected by global energy crises and the GDR struggled to balance domestic accumulation and consumption rates, labour productivity continued to rise, albeit at slower rates than in previous decades. Many factors contributed to this trend, including the serious shortage of workers (meaning that existing production capacities could not be maximally utilised) and the political decision to prioritize consumer goods over industrial investments after 1971. These factors did not, however, alter the socialist nature of the GDR. It would be prudent to learn from the challenges that previous socialist states faced rather than brush them aside with the claim that “next time will be different.”

It is important to emphasize that the aforementioned economic problems did not lead to the “collapse” of GDR. Despite unsettled questions around pricing policies, labour productivity, and accumulation rates, the GDR was able to meet its domestic and international obligations and pay all wages until its final days of existence. The infamous accusations of bankruptcy are part of the narrative that seeks to discredit socialist planned economies: in 1989, East Germany’s debt-to-GDP ratio (roughly 19 percent) was less than half of West Germany’s (42 percent). In truth, the GDR was able to fundamentally change the face of the formerly underdeveloped agricultural region of East Germany and—in the span of just 40 years—propel the country into the ranks of the top fifteen industrialised states in the world.

Undemocratic socialism?

Flakin and Reichinnek may disagree on Die Linke’s vision of “democratic socialism”, but they do agree on one thing: the GDR was certainly not democratic. This conclusion is easy to reach if one measures the GDR by the standards of bourgeois constitutionality: the separation of powers, the protection of private property, and equality before the law. Marxists have long argued that these principles were created by and for the capitalist class. Private property necessarily curtails democracy and limits popular rule over significant sectors of society. In a society divided into poor and rich, de jure equality can only lead to de facto inequality. Recognizing this reality, communists and social democrats in East Germany never sought to establish the GDR as a bourgeois constitutional state. They aimed to construct a fundamentally different type of democracy in which public ownership over the means of production would be enshrined in law and developed further by the people. The planning system was a core element of this idea: planning was understood as a social relation in which the people were to become increasingly active and conscious of their role as co-creators of society. Democracy was thus conceived of as a process, a continuous task to be deepened throughout the course of socialism.

 The foundation for the GDR’s socialist democracy was laid during the so-called “anti-fascist upheaval” of the late 1940s. The East German economy was radically democratized through a land reform that redistributed the aristocrats’ lands to the peasants and the expropriation of industrial monopolists, which led to the creation of Volkseigene Betriebe (“companies owned by the people”). Economic power was thereby devolved to the working masses. Far from being bureaucratic policies from above, these measures were carried out by the people themselves. The Soviet military administration made a point to entrust the German people with the task of identifying and investigating which companies and estates should be marked for expropriation. Tens of thousands of workers and peasants joined so-called Sequester Commissions and Land Reform Commissions to collectively scrutinize their employers’ participation in Hitler’s Third Reich. Suddenly, workers and landless farmers found themselves entitled to investigate secret business records and uncover the connection between capitalism and fascism. In West Germany, on the other hand, popular efforts to socialize industries and banks were quashed by the authorities, despite democratic referenda on the issue. The “anti-fascist upheaval” of the late 1940s and “socialist construction” of the 1950s were profoundly democratic in both content and form. The claim that such major social feats were achieved through oppression and coercion is nonsensical.

Flakin claims that the GDR “suppressed all criticism.” In countless interviews with former GDR citizens, we heard otherwise. The factory and neighbourhood committees were in fact places of heated and controversial debate. Whereas in capitalism, democracy stops as soon as you enter the workplace, democracy in the GDR began behind the door of the factory or office. As a “workers’ and peasants’ state”, the GDR guaranteed employees the right to participate in factory management as well as a long list of social rights such as health and childcare, company holiday resorts, and further education. Many of these rights were laid out in the Labour Law, which was passed in 1961 after some 7 million citizens discussed and suggested over 23,000 amendments to the original draft. These laws authorized the workers themselves to monitor company directors and ensure adherence to health protections and workplace democracy. Company directors did not own the factories and could not enrich themselves off the backs of the workers; they were de facto employees of the state and merely charged with the supervision of public property. Workers who felt mistreated could complain through their union or the popular Eingabensystem (“system of appeal”), which guaranteed citizens the right to a response within four weeks. The extension of democracy into the economy also impacted the countryside, where the creation of cooperative structures helped to not only democratize decision-making processes, but also offered farmers and peasants the previously unknown benefits of paid holidays, childcare, and cultural activities.

In the GDR, all areas of society were to be democratized by drawing the masses into everyday governing. Citizens had the right—and the means—to participate in decisions not only regarding the workplace, but also the education of children, the distribution of housing, the development of the neighbourhood, and legal mediation. A pioneering aspect of socialist democracy was the mass organisations, including the Free German Trade Union Federation, the Peasants Mutual Aid Association, the Democratic Women’s League of Germany, the Cultural Association of the GDR, and the Free German Youth. These organisations were connected and interwoven with all areas of society to ensure representation for different groups. The Women’s League, for example, was guaranteed representation in residential committees, schools, cultural centers, and parliament, where it helped advance women’s economic emancipation from men. In contrast to the unions and organizations in capitalist societies, the GDR’s mass organizations were not fragmented and treated as private lobby groups; they were political organizations empowered by the state to encourage the collective deliberation and implementation of socialist policies.

The judiciary, which in capitalist societies is typically far-removed from popular will, was also democratized in the GDR. So-called societal courts were set up in workplaces and residential areas to address conflicts and problems in direct and relatable ways. Members of the courts consisted of one’s peers, for they were elected by the people directly. Workers, teachers, scientists, craftsmen, and artists were all practicing law to help settle issues. Through the courts, the mass organizations, and the Eingabensystem, GDR citizens had many ways to bring about concrete changes in their everyday lives.

Recognizing these institutions as innovations of socialist democracy in no way precludes critical appraisal. It is clear when assessing GDR history that while certain periods were marked by rapid advances, others were characterized by stagnation. The latter phases should be analyzed in their historical context if we are to learn anything from them. It cannot be forgotten that the GDR was located on the frontline of the “Cold War,” with West German leaders openly declaring the intention “to do everything and to take every measure to retake [East Germany].” Nevertheless, socialist democracy is an evolving process in which citizens must increasingly recognize and use the means of production and the instruments of democracy as their own. This requires the consistent use and further development of established institutions. In the GDR, there are clear signs that this process slowed down towards the 1980s. But, again, such developments did not change the socialist character of the GDR. Rather, they point us to a problem that all post-capitalist states have faced in the past: how can revolutionary momentum be maintained in the long run to ensure that social relations continue to evolve? It is especially difficult when this necessity to open up institutions and broaden democracy comes into tension with the need to defend against counterrevolution and external threats. The GDR was by no means the only socialist state to face this challenge of balancing democracy with security, and it would be naïve to believe that future attempts to construct socialism will be free of it. As Lenin wrote in 1920: “The proletariat’s conquest of political power does not put a stop to its class struggle against the bourgeoisie; on the contrary, it renders that struggle most widespread, intense, and ruthless.” Praxis—not abstract speculation—is the criterion of truth. The idea that the state will immediately begin withering away under “true socialism” is a regression to the utopianism Marx and Engels criticized so sharply in their time. Instead of kow-towing to the ruling narrative and disowning the GDR, we must uphold it as Germany’s first socialist state. The collective efforts of millions of GDR citizens have given us four decades of praxis to learn from. By reclaiming this history as our own and investigating it on our own terms, we can gain a deeper perspective on the fundamental possibilities and difficulties that arise when constructing social, economic, and political models beyond capitalism.

Peace is not silence: Part 2

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


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?

Follow us on Instagram @hiroshima_palestine_vigil and @nagasakiforpalestine

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.


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


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


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.