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Anger and Dismay in Palestine

Berlin Bulletin No. 189 May 23 2021


24/05/2021

It’s no great surprise that most German media, reporting on the Israel-Palestine war, was one-sided, bigoted and misleading. There were samples of fairer treatment at first, showing the demolition of Palestinian homes, the shutdown of a meeting place for young people, the far-right gangs marching in East Jerusalem chanting “Death to Arabs,” and the invasion of the al-Aqsa Mosque at the height of Ramadan with stun grenades, tear gas and “skunk-fluid” spray. There were even timid hints that Netanyahu’s provocations aimed at distracting attention, gaining popularity and avoiding a prison term, even if it led, as he certainly knew and planned, to a major round of violence.

However, the fairer reports dwindled as the media returned to “Israel’s need for self-defense, the right of every country” – with no mention of any similar Palestinian need. It equated rockets fired from Gaza, or those ten percent which pierced Israel’s protective “Iron Dome” and then wreck homes and cause deaths, with the constant, hour-long torrents of death and destruction blasted by one of the strongest military forces in the world into a small, densely populated confine, which could in no way deter the fighter-bombers and missiles, the drones circling low, night and day, over homes and families, for Gaza had no “Iron Domes” sent over by US arms producers. The media seemed largely to accept the huge disproportion, showing the mourning and heartbreak when a Jewish child was tragically killed by a rocket, but remaining almost silent about Palestinian children.

Ibrahim al-Talaa, 17, told of feeling it was the end for himself and his family.

“The Israeli warplanes bombed many different places in my area with more than 40 consecutive missiles, without issuing the prior warnings they used to issue in the past three wars. The sound of the bombing and shelling was so terrifying that I cannot describe it… As the bombs fell heavy and close, the house was shaking as if it would fall on our heads… My nerves collapsed and I was about to cry out, but I tried to restrain myself, just to give my family some strength. I saw my 13-year-old sister crying in silence. I hugged her for a while trying to cheer her up.”

Maha Saher, 27, a mother of two daughters, Sara, 4, and Rama, five months old, told how, during the heaviest of attacks, her daughter Sara wept uncontrollably, asking for her father to return home.

“I don’t fear death itself. But I fear to lose one of my children – or they to lose me…I fear they will target my apartment while we are sleeping, as they did with the al-Wehda street massacre.”

Israeli warplanes had bombed three houses on al-Wehda street on Sunday, killing 42 civilians, mostly women and children. “They then destroyed the street itself to prevent the ambulances and fire trucks from reaching the destroyed buildings and wounded people,” she said.

It was Al Jazeera which quoted one father: “We awoke in the middle of the night to the sound of the bombardment… Now only two of our family are alive. 14 members, women, children and men, are gone. Six are still under the rubble.”

For much of the world, the sixty-six dead Palestinian children remained little more than numbers, like the daily count of new COVID cases. There almost seemed to be media rules for one-sided reporting.

Ongoing descriptions of conditions in Gaza were equally rare. Unlike Ashgerod or Bathsheeba in Israel, there was a water shortage, an almost total lack of clean water. We were not told what three or less hours of irregular electricity meant for people with COVID whose oxygen containers need electricity – or incubator babies when generators stopped working. And aside from the days and nights of bombing, how many were told of the decades of enforced shortages, joblessness, isolation, hopelessness and abiding fear in Gaza?

Such one-sidedness might be blamed only on Israel for not permitting journalists to enter Gaza. For the few already there, at Associated Press and Al-Jazeera, bombs aimed at their building, after a 60- minute warning, destroyed equipment and prevented further pictures of Gaza from their rooftop.

However, German media bias is part of a larger picture with a long history.

Back in 1949 the newly-founded Federal Republic of Germany soon grasped that the worsening Cold War enabled it to welcome back all but the most notorious Nazis in every field: schools, courtrooms, the police, universities, top military posts, the diplomatic service, all political levels, even as chancellor or president and, in the most essential, basic power positions, the same economic titans who built up Hitler and fattened themselves on war profits achieved with mass slave labor.

But there were two conditions for acceptance in the western community of nations. One was loud espousal of democracy and freedom, with elections and a variety of political parties, as long as they were not too conspicuously pro-Nazi – and safely supported western free-market rule.

The second obligation was a repeated, wordy repudiation of anti-Semitism and total approval of anything said or done by the government of the newly-founded Israel.

Germany has held to this exercise in bonding. A key episode was the Eichmann Trial in 1961. Israel refrained from any finger-pointing at active former Nazis and Shoah-leaders, most notably Hans Globke, known as “the second most important man in West Germany”. In gratitude, Globke’s protective boss Konrad Adenauer agreed to help finance and build up Israel militarily, with 2 billion marks for a starter.

This policy, praised as admirable repentance, cemented the West German rebirth as an industrial, political, military bastion and attack base against the “Bolshevik East”. However, the obligations remained. Did Israel support Guatemalan killer troops with Galil rifles und Uzi machine guns, and all bloody dictators in Central America with weapons and surveillance equipment? Was it eagerly supportive of apartheid South Africa, also in weapons development? Was it the last remaining supporter in the UN of Washington’s illegal blockade of Cuba after even semi-colonies like Palau backed away? Take care! While progressive Jewish journalists in Israel opposed their reactionary government, the mildest utterer of criticism in Germany was quickly condemned as an anti-Semite! Or if Jewish as a “self-hater!” Ignore that rule at your peril – of almost total censorship and ostracism!

This applied most strictly to the expanding settlement of the West Bank. Roads shut down for Palestinians, with roadblocks and checkpoints at every turn, ever smaller shares of limited water supplies, family ties between Arabs in Israel, Gaza or the West Bank restricted by walls and Israeli soldiers, West Bank children jailed, even tortured for throwing stones, homes with panicked children smashed into at all hours and the recurring bombing of Gaza recalling World War Two (or Korea and Vietnam) – it was all defended, even welcomed by nearly every political leader, publication and journalist as “necessary self-defense of our eternal friend” – through thick and thin.

As the polemics against “Palestinian terrorists” increased, whose violent or non-violent rebellion against occupation justified every countermeasure, I turned, always a history buff, to a speech by President Andrew Jackson in 1833, when he asserted that the Indians “…established in the midst of another and a superior race… must necessarily yield to the force of circumstances and ere long disappear.” They soon did; the U.S. Army moved 60,000 Indians to arid territory west of the Mississippi, with thousands dying in the “Trail of Tears.” Are there no parallels today?

In November 1868 George Custer and his Seventh Cavalry attacked the Cheyennes and Arapahos and slaughtered 103 warriors, plus women and children. He reported “a great victory … the Indians were asleep… the women and children offered little resistance.” He boasted: “The Seventh can handle anything it meets … there are not enough Indians in the world to defeat the Seventh Cavalry.” We know what happened to him.

No, Hamas is not modeled after Sitting Bull or Crazy Horse. But don’t Custer’s boasts find echoes in loud words heard in the Knesset? And again we must face the question: Which are the terrorists?

In Pontecorvo’s film The Battle of Algiers about the fight for independence after 130 years of French oppression, explosives concealed in baskets kill innocent French civilians. To a bitter rebuke, the Algerian response was: “Give us your bombers and you can have our baskets.” Desperate desires for freedom and equality, with no available peaceful response to torture and repression, lead almost inevitably to violent responses – anti-apartheid bombs in South Africa or the explosive derailment of German trains, even with civilians, by antifascist French partisans. Rockets from Gaza were nasty and bloody, but what else was available against fighter-bombers? And with 12 Israelis killed, two of them children, but almost 250 Gazans, 66 of them children, I must again ponder: “Who are terrorists?”.

The world is grateful for the ceasefire, but the price for it was heavy. Beyond the tragedy of any human loss or maiming on either side, airstrikes in Gaza hit 17 hospitals and clinics, wrecked the only Covid testing laboratory. Fifty schools were damaged or closed, three mosques were leveled and 72,000 Gazans lost or had to leave wrecked homes. Water, electricity, sewage disposal are now almost hopelessly crippled, far worse than before.

As those eleven terrible days ground on, the German media (as in the USA and elsewhere) found it increasingly difficult to distort or ignore what was really happening. More and more people questioned the almost total support for Netanyahu by every party except the LINKE (and even it was sadly split on some aspects). As a result, as if by command, the focus was altered. It was not Gaza’s rockets that became Germany’s main enemy but again anti-Semitism.

Of course it existed and, as always, had to be fought, relentlessly, as part of a century-long struggle. Anti-Semitic attacks or actions have indeed increased in recent years – committed mostly by Germanic Nazi-types who hate Muslim “foreigners” as much or more than they hate Jews. In fact, “anti-Islam” attacks were in the majority, if only because so many more Muslims live in Germany than Jews. But also, perhaps, because there are neo-fascist nests ensconced in the ranks of the police, the armed forces – even in some of the high positions which fascists wholly dominated in postwar years.

Of course, Palestinian desperation inevitably spread to Germany among sons, daughters or cousins of those killed or again homeless in Gaza or suffering under repression in the West Bank and Israel.

A week ago I took part in a demonstration to oppose the bombing of Gaza, alongside many thousands, mostly young Palestinians and other Arabs living in the West Berlin borough of Kreuzberg. Anti-Israeli feelings prevailed in countless signs, most of them hand-made on cardboard. But I saw and heard not one example of an anti-Jewish nature, I saw no crossing of the line to racism. The atmosphere was determined but peaceful; the sunny weather lent almost a picnic aspect.

After two hours my feet gave out and I left for home. Then, in the evening news, I learned that at the end of the march some group had indeed shouted anti-Semitic slogans. This caused the police to step in – hard. Or was it because the huge crowd, though dutifully wearing the obligatory face masks, could hardly keep to full social distancing in the crowded streets? So the march, one of three in Berlin alone that day, ended in violence and many arrests. As for the shouters, it seems that some may have been far-right Turkish groups. Long experience also leads to a suspicion that they included, in part, some hastily recruited provocateurs, so at least the closing minutes of what had been a peaceful demonstration would provide the media and the politicians just what they wanted. They did. The sober, fair description of the event by a journalist on Berlin’s official TV channel was quickly deleted – and replaced by an amazingly abject apology for “biased reporting.”

This disturbed march became the centerpiece of a campaign fed by excited reports about stones thrown at a synagogue, anti-Semitic smearing of a few plaques, burning of Israeli flags in two cities, a punch to someone wearing a kippa. All nasty, but not very hard proof of what the media shouted: “Alarming Antisemitism on the Rise!!!” Yet under the klieg lights the politicians outdid themselves in their warnings, while always adding their defense of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state – but now tending to avoid direct mention of Benjamin Netanyahu. Who could admire him?

Interior Minister Horst Seehofer of the right-wing Christian Social Union, notorious for his efforts against refugees and immigrants, demanded “the full force of the law” against anti-Semitism.

Annalena Baerbock, the Greens’ candidate to be next German chancellor, interrupted her attacks on détente with Russia to visit a synagogue and declare that “I am shaken to hear that Israeli flags are being burned in Germany…In these difficult hours we stand firmly at the side of Israeli women and men…Israel’s security is part of German state reality“.

Armin Laschet, her Christian Democratic rival in the race for top office, not wanting to be outdone, demanded that the flag of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) be forbidden in Germany – although this secular, pro-Marxist organization rejects anti-Semitism.

A counter-demonstration was quickly organized at the Brandenburg Gate, where more political leaders added their anxious voices, denouncing burnt or torn flags and stones and again stressing Germany’s unalterable support for Israel’s right to protect itself. The dead children of Gaza went unmentioned.

It was a professor with Palestinian background who noted sadly: “I believe it is time for the people of Germany and the German elite to stop making Palestinian children in Gaza pay for the crimes of the German people against European Jews.” No halls were available for people with such ideas.

As for those Arabs demonstrating in Berlin; most of them, born here, could not be deported. But they had better watch their step! I could not help but recall the months after Pearl Harbor and how Japanese-Americans were depicted – and how they were treated! Or some Asian-Americans today!

So many people confuse the views and policies of some fanatics and some leaders, whether fundamentalist Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus or Buddhists, with large groups of very varied human beings in each category. To counteract this, in Germany, I would offer two suggestions – though without much hope of great success (except perhaps on a local scale):

Why couldn’t the Jewish Community in Germany state its disavowal of all repression of Palestinians in the West Bank, in Israel and in Gaza, its rejection of the accelerated settlement of West Bank areas, the discrimination of the Arab language within Israel, and the isolation and suffocation of Gaza – all policies of Netanyahu, his Likkud and other parties – and thus make clear that these are not “Jewish policies” and should not be Israeli policies. It could then call for a united front of both Jewish and Muslim groups and people in Germany to oppose all forms of anti-Semitism, Islamophobia or attacks against anyone because of color, religion or cultural differences. This might be the best way to oppose the sinister elements that have troubled Germany for so long, most terribly when in control, and still sinister when underground. Such a mass coalition could be a model for all of Europe and beyond.

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Previous Berlin Bulletins, a bio, photo and a list of my books, in English and German, are available at: victorgrossmansberlinbulletin.wordpress.com

Interview with a Chilean activist

Following massive protests in 2011 and 2019, 78% have Chileans have voted to remove Pinochet’s constitution


23/05/2021

Interview with Rafaela Apel Marcel in Los Molles, Chile

Hi Rafaela. Could you start by telling us who you are and where you are currently politically active?

Hi Phil. I am a Chilean-German and am 38 year old. I was born in Germany, grew up in Chile, then moved to Germany as a teenager. Now I’m in Chile again with my own teenage daughter.

Currently, I’m part of a small collective called “Cabildo Ciudadano” (Citizen Assembly) in Los Molles, a small village at the central coast where I live. The collective was originally created to organize just that, citizen assemblies, in order to start writing a new constitution, as what we are “just” citizens and not experts. But the news that yet another huge and ugly construction project was underway, buildings with hundreds of apartments to be placed just in front of the beach and just over the wetlands around the water channel between the mountain and the sea, forced the collective to focus on stopping this.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/fe8979_3d74b488b478431aa0d7741dac8a7836/360p/mp4/file.mp4

It is not just that the wetlands that will be destroyed with all their amazing flora and fauna. Hundreds of new apartments with all those summer visitors will also worsen the problem of water supply, drainage and electricity in the village. All those housing companies care about is money and they go on with their construction in spite of repeated protests and partial legal achievements of the citizen organizations in Los Molles.

You grew up as the daughter of Chilean political prisoners who fled to Germany. A couple of years ago, you returned to Chile. Why did you return, and was Chile what you expected it to be?

Yes, my parents were Communist Party members in the time of Allende and fled to Germany from the subsequent military dictatorship. They met for the first time in the city of Frankfurt-Main, where they remained politically active in solidarity with the Chilean people.

I was born in Frankfurt and my parents returned to Chile with me in the mid 80’s as Pinochet’s government started to give signs of decay. So I grew up in Chile and returned to Germany with my parents when I was a teenager. The first time they fled from the dictatorship, the second time they moved to Germany seeking better job opportunities.

Now, after 20 years living in Germany, explaining why I returned to Chile is a bit difficult. I think there are many reasons. My parents moved to Chile first, and being close to my parents is surely one reason. Generally, I think I put on my thinking cap and decided that the advantages of living in a country with this overwhelming nature and warm people outweighed the economic difficulties I partly knew that I would have. After all, living by the ocean and/or the mountains and having many friends also means a better quality of life.

On the other hand, after 20 years of living in Germany, I became very accustomed to having a living wage and the basic services ensured for me and my daughter. I now realize that I idealized a bit the things that I missed from Chile. I knew, of course, that life was harder in Chile than in one of the most prosperous countries of Europe, and I thought I was ready to face that fact. But coming back has actually been much more difficult than I expected.

Living in a rural area, the chances of getting a job contract in my profession are very low. Also, only now am I getting a sense of the living conditions in which most Chileans live and I am starting to really internalize the anger and impotence people feel here, even though I still don’t count as one of the poorest.

It’s like absolutely no service is functioning well while you work too hard long hours for what does not even amount to a living wage, all the while the wealthy are hoarding unimaginable sums of money, not only through exploitation, but also from stealing directly from people’s resources. Here you get a permanent sense of injustice. It’s like every day, one way or the other, you get a reminder that capitalism is an unjust society.

How much of the old Pinochet régime remains?

The constitution of 1980, written under Pinochet, is the most significant element remaining from the military dictatorship, because it preserved and guaranteed its ideological bases beyond its own temporal span.

In 1980 the AFP system was established which is a pension system run by investment funds and which came as a market friendly alternative to the redistributive and solidary character of the previous one. The AFP system requires high contributions and at the same time provides miserable pensions. It consists of personal and forced savings in individual accounts, which are not ultimately a solidarity fund.

Alejandra Matus, Chilean journalist and writer dedicated to the spread of information about human right abuses under Pinochet’s regime, explains in her book “Myths and Truths of the AFP” how that system makes it impossible to get decent pensions. Citizens have protested nationwide with the movement called “No+AFP” (AFP no more).

In 1981 Pinochet privatized the institutions of higher education which were previously free of charge. Neither the 2011 massive student protests nor the new leftist political organizations that emanated from them have been able to substantially change that.

This same year the “Isapres” were created, which are health insurance institutions run by the private sector to finance health care, which the majority of Chileans can’t access because of its high charges. For the rest of the people there is the state run FONASA which collects 7% of employees’ monthly income.

Since 1939 abortion under certain conditions was legal, safe and free, but in 1989 Pinochet criminalized the interruption of pregnancy under any circumstance. By the end of 2017 abortion was decriminalized, but only on three grounds: rape, risk of the mother’s life and unviable pregnancy.

Finally, the Chilean police institution with its military character and constant human right abuses is another thing remaining from Pinochet’s era.

How has Chile been affected by the “pink tide” in Latin America?

In Chile there was no “pink tide”, meaning the wave of somewhat progressive governments like Venezuela. With all the difficulties and failures of those governments, the fact that a huge amount of people, at least for a while, were participating in government decisions in a democratic way, makes them totally different from what happened in Chile under Bachelet’s presidency.

Her so-called “center left” government was the continuation of a coalition named “Concertación de Partidos por la Democracia” (Coalition of Parties for Democracy), a conglomerate of center left and center right parties that took power after the 1988 national plebiscite in which the majority of Chileans rejected Pinochet’s rule. Their objective was to reinstate democracy in Chile, and it is true that mass incarceration and the torture under Pinochet stopped, but they essentially continued Pinochet’s legacy and the whole project of establishing neoliberalism in Chile.

What the governments of the Concertación actually did was to administer, under the flag of democracy, the neoliberal project of the so-called “Chicago Boys”, a group of Chilean economists working with Pinochet who sought to drastically implement deregulation, privatization, and other free market policies.

Bachlet’s second term followed the massive student protests of 2011 and promised a series of changes, among which was the drafting of a new constitution and “free education”. But her government did little. Indeed, an example of their strategy to administer democracy under the motto “changing everything to change nothing” is the way in which they handled the 2011 student movement. Instead of providing free and quality education for all, the government limited itself to granting individual students a kind of loan for education, for which poor students had to apply.

So, after bureaucratic inspection, some poor students “won” their entry into university, which is obviously far from the student movement’s demand of education as a basic right. Out of the profound critique and the comprehensive proposals student leaders laid on the table, the government made nothing more than to grant a miserable coupon.

Bachelet suppressed further student protests and continued the repression of indigenous communities in southern Chile using Pinochet’s anti-terrorist law. In addition, the largest labor union federation (CUT) associated and collaborated with Bachelet’s coalition, with the Chilean Communist Party itself joining the government.

Looking from abroad this could be seen as a “progressive” government, given that the left is somehow in it, and indeed many people abroad thought that Bachelet was making significant changes, but the reality looks very different.

Can you tell us something about the recent protests in Chile which started as a protest against transport prices?

As young students heard the news that a subway journey would cost 30 pesos more, instead of responding with the typical submissive reaction they knew from their parents, they opted for civil disobedience and mass fare-dodging. They refused to continue seeing their parents pay more and more transportation fees while they didn’t even earn enough to pay other basic needs like education itself or health care, or sometimes even food. The minimum wage is at $320.000 pesos (360 Euros) although the prices of basic needs are partly comparable to European ones. Thus, having more than one job and going into debt is sometimes the only way to survive.

So student protests were seen by the wider population as totally justified and protesters went to the streets to support the children, among which were also their teachers. The protest rapidly transformed in a nationwide uprising, which was heavily repressed by Piñera’s government with some dozen deaths, thousands of young people arrested, some of which are still today in “preventive arrest” without a trial; people who lost their vision in one or both eyes as a result of pellets shot by police directly in their faces; scenes of torture in police and even in metro stations, etc.

One of the most significant slogans of the protest was “It is not about 30 pesos, it is about 30 years”, alluding to the decades of the so called “transition to democracy”, in which the savage neoliberalism implanted by the dictatorship was strengthened by both conservative and so called “progressive” or “center left” governments AFTER the official end of dictatorship in 1990.

Chile is currently voting for a new constitution. Why?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EF6RJESEBEU

At least since the 2011 massive student protests, there is a broad awareness among citizens about the need to change Pinochet’s constitution. Throughout the constitution, in every crucial issue the freedom of the market is favored over everything else — it is designed to make socialization of basic human needs impossible.

So every time social movements gain enough support to advance the cause of winning universal access to a service, the government in place brings the amendment proposal to the constitutional court, to which the court systematically responds by declaring the proposed amendment “unconstitutional”. For this reason, the drafting of a new constitution became a key demand during the 2019 unrest.

On November 15 of the same year, the leadership of all political parties, except for the Communist Party, signed the “Agreement for Social Peace and a New Constitution” – completely behind the backs of the people and even of their own party bases. This Agreement established obstacles for the Constitutional Convention.

The most criticized restriction has been the rule that established a quorum of ⅔ of the convention’s delegates for an article to be approved. For the opposition, this rule would make significant changes impossible, since just ⅓ of the delegates would be sufficient to have veto power, that is, to stop the approval of any discussed article. But there were also other restrictions, like the prohibition of revising international treaties or the character of the Republic, mainly undermining the Convention’s autonomy and sovereignty.

The referendum consisted of two questions: Do you want a new constitution? Agree/Disagree – and – Which type of organ should write the new constitution? Mixed Convention or Constitutional Convention.

78% of the voters were in favor of getting rid of Pinochet’s constitution and in favour of people’s ability to directly choose the totality of the constituent members in a “Constitutional Convention”, over the proposal of a “Mixed Convention” with a fifty-fifty share of popularly elected members and current members of the congress.

The constitutional elections in Chile have seen massive wins for independents. Who are these independents and what do they stand for?

I think the vote for independent candidates is a direct reflection of the general crisis of the political system, a crisis whose effects we have seen worldwide every now and then since 2011, with protests and occupations demanding, or better said, trying to establish more effective forms of participation in political decision making.

We have also seen this in the emergence of new political parties both to the left and to the right of the “two party system”, as in many countries around the world with that kind of low intensity democracy. It especially reflects the popular rejection of traditional political parties. People seem to reject both the parties of the opposed political wing (there were right wing independent candidates as well) and their own traditional leaders, opting for candidates with a political trajectory that is closer to social movements or at least for candidates with a “clean” political curriculum, free from corruption.

As for the massive vote for leftist candidates, I think the 2019 revolt has everything to do with it. “Chile despertó” (Chile has awakened), another frequently heard protest slogan, means that workers are becoming more and more aware of how economic and political elites are enriching themselves to the detriment of the people, which also translates into a growing awareness of who are their main adversaries in the political arena. Also, the many effects of the health crisis caused by Covid-19 in Chile intensified social injustices to the point of exemplifying them, this way contributing to said awareness.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiQ-DatYRkI

On the other hand, the difficulty of collecting thousands of signatures in order to put an independent candidate on the ballot meant that many independent leftist candidates opted to go to elections with the patronage of a political party. Some went with the Frente Amplio, others with the Communist Party, others chose to unite within an independent list, a tactic that in the end had very good results.

So, the point is that the massive vote for leftist candidates doesn’t necessarily mean a blind trust from the part of the voters of the leftist opposition parties, nor does it mean that their vote was nothing more than a “populist” vote, as some critics within the left are suggesting.

On the contrary, the fact that the independent lists got more votes than the Frente Amplio and the Communist party together, proves that voters are not blindly following any established political force. From the other point of view: this is the time for the Frente Amplio to prove that they side with the people.

The Communist Party, for its part, is now gradually recovering from a drop in credibility, mainly because of the good management of one of its members, Daniel Jadue, as mayor of Recoleta, a district of Santiago. Both Gabriel Boric from the Frente Amplio and Daniel Jadue (who, by the way, is of Palestinian descent) are looking forward to present their candidacy to the presidency.

It looks like the right wing will not win the one-third of the vote needed to stop constitutional changes. What will this mean in practise?

It was a two-day election. On Saturday, very few people went to the ballot boxes apart from the people living in districts that traditionally vote for the right wing, with a turnout of just around 30-35%. The reason was partly that many people feared that the ballot boxes could be manipulated overnight and preferred to wait until Sunday to cast their votes.

But on Sunday morning, the low turnout continued. Political television programmes started analysing the reasons for the low turnout and you could read the left wing on social media already starting to blame each other for the impending defeat.

Fabiola Campillai, one of the many people who were shot in the eyes and blinded during the 2019 protests, appeared on television seemingly disappointed by the low turnout. After all, what was the point of voting to change the constitution and then letting the right wing write the same one with a few cosmetic changes? Were protesters imprisoned, injured and tortured for nothing?

I think this was the turning point, because many people suddenly feared a right wing victory and ran to the ballot boxes a few hours before closing, with many people from poorer districts even denouncing the low availability of public transportation to get to them.

Some election result facts:

  • The Constitutional Convention will be made up of 155 Convention members, 81 women and 74 men;
  • The ruling party concentrated 63% of campaign financing for Constituents, but only obtained 24% of the seats;
  • Piñera’s government lost key governorships and mayorships;
  • Rodrigo Mundaca, historical social fighter for water rights, won the governorship of Valparaíso in the first round;
  • The Christian Democratic Party won only 2 seats in the Convention;
  • The corrective mechanism of Parity in the Convention was applied more to integrate men than to integrate women;
  • There will be at least 6 LGBTIQ constituents;
  • The far-right Republican Party failed;
  • An ancestral authority of the Mapuche People, Machi Francisca Linconao, will be writing the new Constitution of Chile.

Nobody expected these results. The right wing parties together didn’t even reach the ⅓ of the votes needed to be able to veto the approval of any discussed article of the new constitution. That’s one of the most surprising results of the election. Also, it is now more than evident that the ruling coalition has lost its electoral base, a condition that is making them consider withdrawing their candidacies.

Together with the right wing, the candidates of former president Bachelet’s ex-coalition mentioned above, the now non-existent Concertación, were the big losers of the election. So here we have two main political pillars of the prevailing regime losing their electoral base completely.

Now, with this unexpected change of circumstances, some are saying that it wouldn’t be tactically wise for leftist movements to bring down the rule of the 2/3 , because then it would be easy for the right wing together with the renegades of the Concertación to obtain a relative majority without there being a veto power to stop them. Instead, the left should expand the repertoire of participation by incorporating and recognizing decisive, participatory, consultative and binding mechanisms towards citizens.

What is the state of the Chilean left? How well prepared are they to benefit from the changing mood?

I think the future of the leftist forces is directly linked to their ability to correspond to the popular aspirations manifested in the 2019 unrest. What this election definitely demonstrated is that the destituent power of the revolt is very well alive and kicking and that the overwhelming majority of the population wants radical changes. The left will have to avoid hesitating when it comes to putting up a fight for those changes, and to avoid giving in to the pressures of both the right wing and the ex-Concertación.

Regarding the Constitutional Convention, the terms established by the Peace Agreement do not make this task very easy. In general, the fact that there is no common radical (constitutional) program behind which leftist forces would unify, results in immediatism, electoralism and subordination to the politics of the transition. But the “Chile that has awakened” is going to punish opportunistic politics from leftist parties as well. Leftist forces will need to push for a break with the Peace Agreement’s restrictions, opening up the constitutional debate towards popular and left organizations and also to the general public.

In spite of the sudden delayed participation in the election, the ultimately low turnout (about 42,5%) requires further analysis. The votes of confidence for the new constitution and the convention are fragile votes, and their steadiness will depend a lot on how the convention unfolds and on the new mayors’ performance. In Chilean society, there is a deep skepticism expressed in the high abstention of particularly young voters, who voted in the plebiscite for a new constitution written by popularly elected constituents but did not mobilize to elect its representatives.

As I said earlier, now is the time for the left to show which side they are on and to act. Whether the left is well prepared for this task remains to be seen.

A final question: we are seeing great upheavals in Palestine, say, or in Colombia. To what extent is this reflected in Chilean politics?

In Chile, there is a huge community of Palestinians, the largest outside the Middle East. Palestinian migration to Chile goes back to the 19th century. They were initially met with ostracism, but were able to establish themselves over time as successful merchants and entrepreneurs.

The Palestinian community in Chile today represents a wealthy and educated elite that is able to influence politics and state foreign policies, regularly bringing the Palestinian Cause into the agenda using their institutional positions. Palestinian descendants are active for the rights of Palestinians and the liberation of Palestine. I think this is also the reason why the Palestinian Cause is very well understood by the Chilean left.

With the growing number of migrants from other Latin American countries and with the waves of mass anti-neoliberal protests throughout the world that started a decade ago, there is a growing consciousness among the Chilean left of the need to put an eye on popular movements in other countries and of the importance of internationalism to push for radical transformations.

However, there is still a lack of international networks. One major difficulty is to concentrate on a complex national reality and, at the same time, understand and get involved in a different, also complex context.

What’s happening in Palestine or Colombia is met with interest in Chile as well. Popular outbreaks or advances for the left, especially in the continent, make the Chilean left hopeful and people are increasingly able to draw parallels between the movements happening abroad and their own.

URGENTLY NEEDED: LESS “PROFITABILITY” AND MORE HUMANITY

A third look at housing issues in Berlin


21/05/2021

It’s been a momentous three months since I last examined major issues related to housing in Berlin and developments in my Reichenberger Straße neighborhood. In this interval, the most noise was generated by the German Constitutional Court ruling that the rent cap law (Mietendeckel) – in vigor for a scant five months – was “null and void.” That setback for tenants stimulated more support for the “Deutsche Wohnen & Co. enteignen” (DWE) campaign to socialize the largest profit-oriented housing companies. In my kiez, other events reflect a social rights crisis.

Mietendeckel

First, the Mietendeckel. Beginning on 23 November 2020, Berlin landlords had to unilaterally reduce all rents exceeding the legally permissible square-meter price (not counting heating costs). Despite warnings of the need to put aside the amount “saved” as a result of the rent cap, many tenants are now having difficulties paying the arrears. Not only did the COVID-19 pandemic erode or annihilate livelihoods, but also some 60,000 new leases were signed while the rent cap was in effect. Landlords were betting (and doing everything they could to ensure) that Berlin’s pioneering new law would be overturned. They provisionally charged new tenants legal rents but forced them to sign leases stipulating considerably higher “shadow rents” (Schattenmiete) should the rent cap be overturned.

In the wake of the decision, the six municipal housing companies, along with the private Vonovia and Heimstaden companies, announced they would waive repayment. (Each tenant must get that in writing.) Financial help for paying arrears is available in the form of grants (repayable without interest) and subsidies. The Berliner Mieterverein (BMV) has an FAQ in English regarding the decision. Since the issue is very complicated and the legal basis is not always clear, any demands to pay arrears or a higher rent should be checked.

On 14 April, an announcement was made that the long-awaited decision about the Mietendeckel would be made public the following day. That night, many Berliners slept fitfully. Given the mighty real estate lobby and the political parties that challenged the law, perhaps the decision was foreseeable. Nonetheless, the outrage and distress it caused was so great that by 6 pm on 15 April, 14,000 people had gathered at Hermannplatz to protest. I wore my purple and yellow DWE vest, with petition lists in my hand instead of a camera, although I knew there’d likely be great photos to take. Sure enough: The façade of an apartment building overlooking the demonstration was a perfect illustration of the moment. From the top floor, a bespectacled old man scrutinized the crowd. Two floors beneath, a henna-haired middle-aged woman leaned far out her window, enthusiastically banging a pot – and between them a head-scarved woman around 40 stood still a long time behind her closed window before pulling the curtains shut and disappearing. On the building’s first floor, as if frozen, a young girl stared blankly at the crowd. That evening, many people approached me, eager to support the DWE referendum: Now more than ever!

Political reactions to the over-turned rent cap also followed immediately, with parties acknowledging that high rents are a problem. Because the decision solely focused on Berlin’s lack of jurisdiction to pass such a law – rather than its content – the main positive outcome of the debacle is the new, broader demand for a national rent cap, along with more support for DWE.

Deutsche Wohnen & Co. enteignen and housing cooperatives

However, true to form, conservative politician Mario Czaja began a misinformation campaign in Marzahn-Hellersdorf, “explaining” that DWE also plans to socialize the housing cooperatives (Genossenschaften), which with around 200,000 Berlin apartments represent 12 per cent of the city’s total housing stock. Individual cooperatives are also misrepresenting the DWE campaign and could cause considerable damage. This despite DWE’s statement: “We are specifically only concerned with ‘profit-oriented companies’ [and] want to expand the public sector, which also includes cooperatives… [which] should be preserved along with other forms of collective residential property.” Although DWE took legal action to force Czaja to cease and desist, that won’t end the debate – especially if the referendum passes on 26 September. On the DWE blog, someone posted that many of the cooperatives behave as if they’re part of the private market although their raison d’être is to serve the common good, while many, especially older, coop members are discovering that their housing costs have risen significantly.

Meanwhile, reading the October 2020 issue of the Berliner Mieter Gemeinschaft e.V.’s Mieter Echo magazine has provided me insight into the six municipal housing companies, which sociologist Andrej Holm describes as following “business logic,” noting that they’ve fallen far short of their goal of building 6,000 new apartments annually. Marcel Schneider observes that between 2001 and 2018, “social” rents in Berlin rose faster than incomes and concludes that social housing tenants are financing the acquisition policy of the former GSW (social housing company) apartments that the city sold for a ridiculously low price to “locust” investors in 2004. Joachim Maiworm analyzes their supervisory boards: As stock companies (Aktiengesellschaft, AG) or limited liability companies (GmbH), public housing companies must operate profitably (wirtschaftlich). Although the city is supposed to ensure that the companies fulfill their public service obligations, “the selection of supervisory board members shows that there is a lack of political will to manage public companies for the common good…. Despite their social welfare mission, the public sector ultimately acts like a private company.” Maiworm concludes that a new public structure is needed to ensure that.

Also in that issue, Rainer Balcerowiak enumerates public housing company subsidiaries whose activities are beyond any government influence. These companies work with private corporations, including Deutsche Wohnen, managing private investments, negotiating loans and engaging in other activities that cannot be described as “serving the common good.” Balcerowiak also finds that for that, “Sustainably changing the structures of the municipal housing market requires bundling both the existing housing stock and new construction activities under direct municipal responsibility, in a state-owned enterprise or an AöR (public-law institution).” This represents a major challenge to Berlin housing that is not yet getting attention. That inevitability, however, could be another reason why the real estate lobby and conservatives and neoliberals are so upset.

The temperature of the discussion about Berlin rents did not drop when, on 10 May, the DWE campaign published its proposal for a law regulating the socialization process. The referendum is about requiring the city to pass a law socializing the major profit-oriented housing companies that each own more than 3,000 units; it does not propose a specific law. However, DWE’s bill shows that socialization is affordable by means of “compensation bonds” to be repaid through rental income (minus maintenance costs) over 40 years. That sounds unlikely to ever garner the votes needed… until you read that such bonds can be transferred and traded on the market, which means bondholders can sell them and receive full compensation much sooner. Socialization can be accomplished without expensive loans or city funds. Compensation is based on the “fair-rent model… based on the maximum affordable rents for households at risk of poverty…. The affordable net rent per square meter […] varies according to amenities and residential area.”

The bill guarantees “public service use” as stipulated by Article 15 of Germany’s Basic Law and permits the owners to receive the highest compensation allowed for that. According to Sebastian Schneider, who was in charge of developing the proposed law, “This […] makes socialization and new construction possible.” DWE maintains that in the wake of the overturned rent cap, socialization is the only way to stop the rapid and inexorable rise of rents. Of course, the proposed law is very detailed, covering concerns such as the risk of companies evading socialization through complicated and opaque business structures and the re-privatization of properties – and remains open to debate and improvement.

We are entering the last month of signature collecting. This huge effort on the part of more than 1,700 volunteers and the core group who have been working on this issue for years must not have been in vain!

As I write, I’m feeling very anxious. It will soon be clear whether the Berlin Senate and the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district support all residents or if they’re captive to monied interests. That’s because the two months’ deadline for exercising the right to pre-emptively buy a building (Vorkaufsrecht) in my Reichenbergerkiez expires today, 19 May. Back in mid-January, the local news radio reported that Reichenberger Straße is a perfect example of how long-term tenants are being forced out. In a story that’s unfortunately neither new nor exceptional, Inforadio described a building around the corner whose tenants are being priced out by modernizations made by the new owner: “Look at a map of the city and this street from above. You can practically make a Monopoly board out of it,” says Patrick Neumann, 43. “All the major real estate players who manage or sell or convert houses are represented here.” Like so many other private citizens, the freelance copywriter has had to become a tenant activist, fighting to save his building from being converted into condominiums.

On the very same block, the left-wing “alternative” Meuterei bar was evicted in early April with a huge – and costly – police presence. It wasn’t the same extremely violent scene as for Syndikat in Neukölln, but it was almost as bad. My euphoria over reading “Lause bleibt” (as I mentioned in February) has also evaporated with the realization that that’s a rallying cry – not the affirmation that the political and artistic initiatives, NGOs, craftspeople, families and communal flats in the old industrial property in the next block will be able to stay. (More to come.)

R108 lebt

But Reichenbergerstraße 108 (“R108 lebt!”) presents terrifying evidence that one group is replacing another here. Forgive me if these days I think more of settler colonialism than of “gentrification.” There are similarities. A few weeks ago, the Tagesspiegel weekly newsletter for Kreuzberg explained that the building (from 1986) had been sold to a firm in Hamburg that specializes in transforming ordinary flats into luxury apartments. In this case, the building’s 20 apartments are inhabited by people from Germany, England, Greece, Ireland, Lebanon, Morocco, New Zealand, North Macedonia, Poland, Singapore, Spain, Syria, Turkey, and Palestine.

In recent years I’ve been mentally noting all the imposing pre-war apartment buildings I pass on my bike, wondering if they’ve already been sold and are undergoing pricey modernizations – and sure that it won’t be long before they are. But the photo of the building at Reichenbergerstraße 108 shocked me: No distinguished Altbau, its weird shapes look unlikely to create any comfortable interior spaces. The oddly colored, graffitied building remind me of social housing in Paris. It totally shatters the model of what speculative investors have been buying. Why would anyone buy R108?

The following Saturday, as I approached the tenants’ sidewalk rally, I was thrilled to hear a woman addressing the crowd in Arabic. For me, that was a first. Although the event had been formally ended, a good 50 people were still milling around and being photographed holding bright signs: R108 lebt. To say that their building is full of life is an understatement. Kreuzberg’s Baustadtrat (Building Counselor) Florian Schmidt, who has promoted the district using its right to pre-emptively buy apartments to prevent tenants being evicted through expensive modernizations, was quoted by the Tagesspiegel: “If we don’t exercise our option to buy this building, no one will understand what that instrument is for.”

The building’s website explains that its international character means Berlin has to pre-emptively purchase the building to justify the city’s image as tolerant, international, and inclusive. Furthermore, the government’s stated aim of increasing social cohesion will be furthered by defending the building’s “tolerant and inclusive group of tenants”: If not there, then where?

Another argument pushing the city to exercise its right of first purchase relates to income. The investor has refused to sign an Abwendungsvereinbarung that would protect tenants from condo conversions and renovations that jack up rents. Most of the building’s tenants have modest incomes that make them especially vulnerable to the forces of gentrification. This is a social justice issue. Profit motives threaten to push out residents of modest means although Berlin’s governing program states that one of its key tasks in fighting homelessness and social exclusion is to ensure adequate affordable housing. Along with 23 adults, 20 children and teenagers also live in R108. An urgent appeal to the Berlin Senate from 20 local groups and numerous neighbors e explains: “For children and adolescents, displacement means the particularly painful loss of their familiar school environment and friends.” Rent increases and displacement risk impoverishing families at the same time that the city government says it is tasked to intensify “its efforts to combat family and child poverty.”

Case closed.

You would think.

However, when Hubert Trockenbrodt, one of the tenant organizers, escorted me to the rear of the building, I understood the real rub and true threat: Behind the kooky building designed by Johannes Uhl of “NKZ” fame (the sprawling apartment building that straddles Adalbert Straße at Kottbusser Tor), where the children once played stands an elegant new construction with 27 apartments and an underground garage. From the backyard of Reichenberger Straße 108, noise and exhaust from the new neighbors’ cars waft upwards to the apartments – instead of children’s voices. The kids now have to play in the street.

Along the new building and extending to the old brick wall at its rear is healthy, untrampled green grass and a small playground. New owners taking in that view from their spacious balconies will feel worlds away from the grungy, graffiti-smeared building that fronts Reichenberger Straße. They could well be in the suburbs! Tenants from R108 with whom I spoke have had no meaningful contact with their new neighbors: They meet only at the garbage bins. In Berlin, I know of no more glaring example of one social group replacing another. Crass!

Buy R108 now!

The Berlin Senate is reportedly buying fewer and fewer buildings pre-emptively – at the same time that fewer and fewer owners are agreeing to sign Abwendungsvereinbarungen to provide tenants temporary protection. The Berliner Zeitung quotes MP Cansel Kiziltepe saying that it’s about the Senate making available 320,000 € to top off the purchase price – less than the going price for a single apartment in the neighborhood. In a D Day press statement, R108 lebt announced to the perspective housing company owner that to help make the purchase more affordable, the tenants would forego renovations for 10 years. If only they can stay in their homes.

Riding my bike everywhere means that I haven’t been going through all the doors I see open in my neighborhood to explore the huge, deep blocks. But that’s key to understanding what is happening here. Last week, in one backyard I discovered three almost finished townhouses: A worker said that the three-story 200m2 attached homes (with cellars) will be rented for 3,000 € a month. Not far from there, behind a massive 10-story apartment block on Wiener Straße, another new building is nearing completion. There are no on-site developer signs, but my online research revealed condos for sale. And while I was looking, I found another large new home in a backyard in my kiez going for 1,345,000 €.

A study just published by the market research institute empirica confirms that in 2020, nearly two-thirds of all new rental apartments went for more than 14€/m2. Since 2012, the share of new apartments in that price range has quadrupled while the number of lower-priced rentals (max. 10€/m2) has halved. This is explained by the quintupling of the cost of land since 2010. The city’s good intentions – first made in 2014 – have been totally ineffective. Construction of new social housing (6.50€/m2 net rent) is way below target, and while private developers must offer 30% of their apartments at affordable rents, they are only for people with Wohnungsberechtigungsschein (WBS). Anyone who earns too much to qualify for a WBS but is not a big earner is left out in the cold.

With the steep rent rise of recent years attributed to the overall lack of apartments, the major issue is how to resolve that. The neoliberal mantra “Build, build, build!” is not going to help those who most need housing.

The new apartment buildings I’ve discovered near me look attractive and are set in fairly leafy backyards. But the “solution” of building inside blocks – Verdichtung (consolidation) – risks reproducing conditions reminiscent of Berlin’s infamous Mietskaserne (tenements). In Lichtenberg, tenants of a HOGOWE (city housing company) apartment complex dating from 1976 have been protesting the construction of 50 apartments in an area that once was green and shady. Residents only learned of the new building from the sound of saws felling their cherished trees – 55 in all. They fear being confronted by new walls – not nature – outside their windows. (That happened to me in New York.) One positive aspect of the building plan is that it includes no space for parking: According to HOGOWE, car ownership is unnecessary because the area is well served by public transportation. That’s fine – as long as good public transportation is easily accessible, and there’s secure, weather-protected storage for bicycles.

Berlin Autofrei

This brings us to a second referendum campaign that’s just getting underway: Berlin Autofrei aims to reduce the use of private cars within the S-Bahn ring through a law governing “road use based on the common good.” Air quality would be significantly improved, noise levels reduced, and pedestrians, cyclists, and other forms of transportation would be safer and have more space.

In recent years, Berliners have been counting the number of cars parked for very low fees or nothing at all (Whaaat?!) in their neighborhoods. I first heard about this activity in the North-Neukölln Schiller Kiez where volunteers calculated just how much space parked cars occupy: 6.5% of the kiez’s entire surface area! Playgrounds occupy merely 1.2% and green areas 1.5% – in a neighborhood where less than a third of its residents own cars. The Berliner Zeitung reports that 1.3 million private cars are registered in Berlin (population ca. 3.8 million). Try to get your head around that.

The land now occupied by parked cars could be used for playgrounds, schools, and while Berlin Autofrei doesn’t mention this, housing, too! Aware that improving the environment will cause more people to want to live in the city, the campaign website states: “A better life through fewer cars must not lead to rising rents and displacement. The social composition of neighborhoods that have fewer cars must be protected.”

We need not accept that the (perceived) scarcity of land for building means that Berlin’s extraordinary Tempelhofer Feld has to be nibbled away: We can contribute to climate protection and climate justice by building affordable housing in space now used for parking cars. Unlike the Mietendeckel, there is no question that the city has jurisdiction in this matter: German states (Berlin is a “city-state”) are responsible for laws governing public streets and roads. Furthermore, Berlin’s constitution makes the city responsible for protecting the environment. Like for DWE, in the first stage, the initiative has to collect 20,000 signatures (by the end of June) and then have it approved, before 7 per cent of eligible voters demand the referendum be put to a vote that could be held in 2023.

Changing Cities, Changing Berlin

In a similar vein to Berlin Autofrei are the kiezblocks: city neighborhoods that have no through traffic. Inspired by Barcelona’s “superblocks” and Dutch “compartments,” Changing Cities is working with residents of Ostkreuz and the Samariterkiez in Friedrichshain, as well as 12 neighborhoods in Pankow to reclaim public space by reconceiving the way streets are used. Last week, Karl-August-Kiez became the first model project in Charlottenburg.

In late April, “Cities for Rent: Investigating Corporate Landlords Across Europe,” a huge multi-author and multi-lingual study on the housing market in 16 major European cities, was published. The German text begins by remarking a strange and growing phenomenon: London evenings are becoming steadily dimmer due to the growing number of uninhabited apartments. This creepy development is financially worthwhile for their international owners: Even empty, they’re good investments.

Berlin is identified as an indicator of developments in the European housing market. While major differences exist, all 16 cities suffer the growing presence of international mega-housing corporations and market forces – and clueless politicians. In most of the cities, the populations have increased since 2010, as have housing costs. In Berlin, though, housing costs have risen higher: 64 per cent for existing apartments and 51 per cent for new flats. A lack of figures makes it impossible to make exact comparisons, but on average, European city rents have risen (just) 14 per cent and purchasing prices 26. The study presents tons of fascinating details, including the fact that between 2007 and 2020, more money was shelled out for apartments in and around Berlin than in London and Paris combined: 42 billion €, mostly by German investors. That’s changing, though.

Speaking of foreign investors… What’s Signa – the Austrian corporation that owns Karstadt on Hermannplatz – up to these days? It seems I see their signs everywhere: At the bottom of Schönhauser Allee, and near Klosterstraße… The 134m-high office building on Alexanderplatz has been granted a preliminary building permit: Construction should begin in summer. Although Signa claims their project fulfills “high energy standards,” in the Tagesspiegel of 18 March 2021, Ralph Schönball explains that “towers consume far more resources than normal buildings because of the complex construction, additional emergency exits and the higher proportion of areas exposed to the weather.” There’s also the Signa high rise planned near the Gedächtniskirche… and my Karstadt on Hermannplatz.

On 14 May, Signa announced that Karstadt will not be razed! Instead, Signa’s going to keep Karstadt’s original steel structure and add two floors and two 56-meter high towers… in wood. Project director Thibault Chavant claims the new plan will save 70 per cent more carbon emissions than conventional structures. Sounds like green-washing. It is not clear that the new project represents sustainable building – and in any case, it will still massively gentrify the neighborhood. Tell that to mayoral candidate Franziska Giffey, who praised Signa “for brilliantly taking into account all the concerns and fears.”

This brings us back to the crux: What sort of a city should Berlin be/become? When Signa was still planning to rebuild the original mammoth Karstadt building from 1929, Berlin’s Senator for the Economy, Ramona Pop, gushed about how that would attract tourists. Let’s go shopping! Giffey continues to regard the revised plan “as a measure to counteract online purchasing.” How likely is that?

As for tourists….

The violent evictions of Syndikat and Meuterei showed that tenant protesters are considered criminals. The eviction hearing rescheduled for the Kisch & Co. Bookstore in Oranienstraße (that I discussed in February) was finally held on 22 April – in a high-security courtroom. Only eight accredited journalists were admitted, and no one younger than 16. (The same was true for Potse, the popular youth center in Schöneberg, whose eviction has just been postponed.) MP Canan Bayram, who is fighting for commercial rent protection, was kept out.

The energetic and creative protest campaign of several years ended outside the Moabit criminal courthouse with a witty opera. Inside, just 23 minutes after the hearing began – that neither the mysterious owner(s), a real estate investment trust with an address in Luxembourg, or their lawyers attended – it was all over. In vain, Kisch & Co. lawyers claimed that, like residential tenants, small businesses should be protected from Berlin’s skyrocketing rents. I’ve since heard that the same investor has bought the two buildings across the street. How distressing. As for Kisch & Co., there is no point in appealing the decision: It would only be confirmed and an appeal cannot delay an eviction. (?!) While anxiously awaiting news of that date, bookstore owner Thorsten Willenbrock is searching for new premises in the neighborhood. Finding an affordable space measuring 140 m2 will be hard.

So much for one cultural site in my kiez. After surviving several owners and threatened evictions in the 30+ years since Köpenicker Straße 137 was first squatted, fears are mounting that the alternative housing project’s Wagenplatz (trailer site) will be evicted. While the owner’s plans remain unclear, the pressure is not: The price of the land has risen ten-fold in the past decade – to 6,500€/m2. On its website, “Köpi” research explains that the current owner owes 3.2 million € in back taxes to Zossen (a small city south of Berlin that offers the lowest corporate tax rates in Germany). Köpi staged a protest weekend on 15-16 May and plans a rally on the 25th. The trailer site’s day in court is 10 June. The district parliament (BVV) may manage to rescue it ­– but it won’t be easy.

Köpi research notes that evicting the queer/feminist housing project, Liebig 34, in October 2020 with 2,680 cops cost at least 1 million €. Add to that the cost of evicting Syndikat and Meuterei… “Does the city of Berlin really want to spend this amount of money on evictions rather than finding a way to protect alternative, self-organized spaces that offer immense value to the cultural diversity of a city?”

Art-washing

Berlin’s appeal has long been its alternative culture and spaces. For three decades, Köpi has attracted international artists, especially musicians, and visitors. Why destroy it?

Most probably because of greater financial rewards. Kunst Block & Beyond, a group of art and culture producers, addresses the fact that artists and art institutions have both unwittingly and knowingly allowed themselves to be used to market Berlin and improve the image of the real estate and tourist industries. Some sorely regret that. Others explain that they’d accepted the offer of a venue because they were pressed for time – and thereby embellished the image of another developer active in Kreuzberg. Pandion describes itself as “involved in the development, realisation and sale of high-class residential and commercial properties.” Near Moritzplatz, two large Pandion buildings are nearing completion: The “Grid” office building and “The Shelf.” The company’s English-language website says the latter offers a “total of 18,000 square metres [and] 680 […] as low-cost space for small businesses, art and culture.” The German page mentions just 221 m2. But the developer’s generosity is evoked in both English and German: “The existing buildings were handed over for temporary use by artists.”

Kunst Block & Beyond criticize artists’ involvement in neoliberal structures – in “art-washing deals.” The activists discovered that Pandion’s 250 million € project (two buildings totalling 28,000 m2) was co-financed by loans from a bank that was bailed out during the financial crisis with 13 billion € of taxpayers’ money. Before being sold for a pittance to a US private investment fund, the bank fired most of its employees. Kunst Block & Beyond point out that the same company, which in 2017 reaped 24.4 million € in profits (4 million € for the owner), is now encroaching on a neighborhood where 80 per cent of the children are poor, 55 percent of the population requires transfer payments, and unemployment is twice the Berlin average. They ask: “When a 250-million-€ private development is co-financed by a bank that was bailed out by taxpayers’ money, what is private and what is public?”

Pandion’s marketing and PR manager informed me by e-mail that, “with great effort,” a tenant has been found who will engage in “social mediation…also for the neighborhood” in the 221m2 space. (In response to my query regarding the size discrepancies in English and German, the English page has been corrected.) But the e-mail signature tipped me off to a new private “volunteer” initiative of Pandion, along with a real estate industry lobby, an asset management company, “property developers of high end residential accommodation in Berlin,” a company specialized in property sales and rentals, and one of Berlin’s “most successful influencer networks” – whose website features a photo of Berlin’s Senator for the Economy! To be invited to join the network, you’ve got to be a “boss” or a “creative,” over 21 years of age… and pay a yearly membership fee of 900 €. Transiträume Berlin exists to promote the use of temporary spaces for artists. Artists and cultural promoters: If you want a place of your own, don’t engage in (more) art-washing!

Gentrifying former refugee camps

As I write, loud sounds drift up from the street to my sixth-floor office. Traffic lanes in the street are being redrawn; behind the building I see trailers arriving. Construction of “Campus Ohlauer Straße” is finally beginning… on an historic site in the history of refugees in Berlin: directly in front of the old Gerhart Hauptmann School, which in 2012 was squatted by protesters evicted from their camp on Oranienplatz. Two years later, also under massive police presence (that I didn’t experience because I was traveling at the time), most of the refugees in the “self-governing” project were evicted. After that, a refugee hostel was opened – where I became friends with a family from Libya. (Rubina, the mother, finally managed to land an apartment that’s too small for five but much preferable to sharing a communal kitchen and bathroom.) Near me, according to its website, HOWOGE is constructing 120 apartments for refugees, students and low-income families, a residential community for homeless women with children, a day-care center, and a bicycle garage. Half of the apartments are subsidized. Only half? Which of these groups doesn’t need help paying rent? The concept and architectural plans have been changed many times. Mal sehen…

Unfortunately, the future of the green area at the Treptow end of Reichenbergerkiez is uncertain. Ratibor 14 is a bucolic business park that includes 20 wood and metalwork, car, bicycle and car workshops, a Wagenplatz, a playground, and Jockel Biergarten. Next door is a day-care center for 200 children. But the city has decided to use the land to build a five-story modular collective accommodation (Sammelunterkunft) for 250 refugees in “concrete high-speed construction” (Beton-Schnellbau) – a housing model that has been widely dismissed in favor of decentralized housing for smaller groups of refugees. Ratibor 14 has nothing against refugees, but they want them to be properly housed and reject having two vulnerable groups played off against each other – especially in service of the long-term aim of gentrifying the area. In an article by Tim Zülch in Neues Deutschland from June 2019, a metalworker and activist from Ratibor 14 views the involvement of Berlinovo (in the business of furnished apartments, an important contributor to rising rents – see my first article) with misgivings: “We expect the simplified procedure for building refugee accommodation will be used to convert the MUF [modular housing for refugees] on the Ratibor premises into lucrative furnished apartments for students or other groups as quickly as possible.” Two years later, there’s no news.

To be monitored: Housing for refugees and the future of Wagenplätze.

Get active

With the rent cap overturned, the need for real solutions to the crisis of unaffordable rents is more pressing than ever. Here are a few opportunities to express your concerns:

On Sunday, 23 May, the Gegen Mietenwahnsinn – Jetzt Erst Recht! (Fighting Rent Madness – Now More than Ever!) demonstration starts at 1 pm on Potsdamer Platz. Principle demands include commercial rent protection to protect neighborhood bookstores and bars, late-night stores (Spätis), and the like from being replaced by cookie-cutter chains and big companies, as well as a rent moratorium and the waiving of arrears. Bring your face mask and pot lids!

(On the demo flyer, I’m thrilled to read the address of the person responsible for the press: Lucy-Lameck-Straße! The street that once commemorated a German colonialist who brutalized Africans resisting his murderous policies now honors the first woman minister of Tanzania.)

On Saturday, 29 May, there’s a “Right 2 the City for All” rally at Tempelhofer Feld at 3 pm: “Voting rights for all, housing for all, right to the city for all.“ Organizers say the demo aims “to politicize the lack of representation in the DWE referendum for those without a German passport and highlight the discrimination that migrants and racialized Germans experience in the housing market.”

At 2 pm on 29 May, the Parkplatz Transform initiative is holding a demonstration on reducing the number of private cars in the city center. Details to come here.

PS. In the morning after Day D, I again check online for news of Reichenbergerstraße 108 – and discover that one of the apartments in the new rear building (108a) is for sale: 600,000 € for 93m2! Still no news of the fate of R108.

Finally, at 4 pm, I find the sad news: All our fervent hopes and vigorous efforts were in vain.

Wirtschaftlichkeit trumps Menschlichkeit yet again.

©Nancy du Plessis 2021

Criminalising the Left

A violation of freedom of the press which should be a source of national and international outrage


16/05/2021

The German domestic intelligence agency, known as the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz [Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution] or simply as Verfassungsschutz, is comparable to such agencies as the FBI or MI5. One of its central remits is monitoring organisations considered potentially dangerous or anti-democratic, whether on account of ties to organised crime or ideological extremism. These include mosques and their congregations, far right gun clubs or anarchist groups.

One of the more high-profile cases involved the NPD (National Democratic Party of Germany), a neo-Nazi party. It has become largely irrelevant since the rise of the AfD (Alternative for Germany) but was for some years considered sufficiently dangerous to justify a ban. The protracted legal process was ultimately stymied because the investigations had been overly dependent on confidential informants. In some cases they were so influential as to compromise the integrity of the enterprise, as the intelligence agency was effectively running party activities. The parliamentary petition to prohibit the party was rejected by the constitutional court first in 2003 and then, after a renewed attempt in 2013, once more in 2017 – this time because the party was now considered too insignificant to constitute a real threat to democracy.

Numerous MPs belonging to Die Linke [The Left Party] were under intelligence observation between 2007 (the year of the party’s foundation) and 2013. Certain members had even been spied on since before then. Since 2019, the AfD as a whole has been granted this dubious honour at the lowest level (as a Prüffall, ‘case for assessment’), and parts of its Thuringian branch at the next-highest level (as a Verdachtsfall, ‘case for suspicion’).

The daily newspaper junge Welt [Young World] has existed since 1947, and was the leading publication in the GDR as well as the official voice of the communist youth organisation FDJ (Free German Youth). Following German reunification, years of uncertainty passed in the hands of various publishing groups. It briefly folded, but re-launched in the early 90s with a new publishing house (Verlag 8. Mai) and cooperative ownership. It is now the largest leftist newspaper, with a clear anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist position that sets it apart from other significant left-wing publications such as the taz.

On 13 March this year, the editors and publisher of junge Welt addressed an open letter to the heads of all parliamentary parties. In it, they revealed not only the fact that the paper is under observation, but also the effects this has on its dissemination and survival:

  • In several cities, the paper is not allowed to rent advertising space in public transportation.
  • The German rail service (Deutsche Bahn) refuses to allow the paper to rent advertising spaces in stations.
  • Several radio stations refuse to broadcast paid commercials.
  • A major supermarket chain tried to prevent the paper from being sold in its branches.
  • A printing shop refused to print a magazine whose publisher had already paid and provided a ready-to-print file because it contained an advertisement for junge Welt.
  • At the University of Frankfurt, it is forbidden for junge Welt to advertise that it can be bought at kiosks.
  • Numerous libraries block access to the junge Welt website.
  • In some prisons, junge Welt is listed as a forbidden publication and not delivered to subscribers.
  • Teachers dealing with the subject of daily newspapers who mention junge Welt have encountered problems that have caused them to take legal action.

In every single one of these cases, the reason given for these restrictions is the same: the newspaper is under intelligence observation and/or appears in the annual intelligence report.

So what are the grounds on which the Verfassungsschutz maintains this observation of Junge Welt?

After the newspaper sent its open letter to senior MPs, the parliamentary group of Die Linke sent an enquiry to the government asking this question. As well as naming the restrictions faced by the newspaper listed above, they also referred to a judgement by the supreme court in a dispute between the far-right weekly Junge Freiheit [Young Freedom] and the state of North Rhine-Westphalia in 2005. The court had ruled that publishing the paper’s name in the intelligence report would be a violation of the constitutional right to freedom of press, a violation of the right to communication and an unacceptable restriction of its possibilities for dissemination and economic survival. The ruling emphasised that it was undemocratic to allow only publications representing a certain area of political opinion. It also pointed out that even if individual authors express potentially anti-democratic views, the publication itself could not necessarily be held accountable for these, and any such cases would require specific examination.

In a democracy that promotes freedom of press, one should be able to take these principles for granted. Whatever the political orientation of a publication, anything short of outright criminal incitement or conspiracy must be permitted, whether the authorities approve of these views or not.

On 5 May, two days after World Press Freedom Day, the parliamentarians received a response from the government. Because of junge Welt’s ‘extremist’ efforts to oppose the ‘liberal-democratic order’, the letter stated, it was important for the public to be informed of its activities. The paper’s classification as an extremist publication was based on the following arguments:

  • junge Welt is a daily paper with a clear communist orientation. Its Marxist convictions have the implicit goal of replacing liberal democracy with a socialist/communist societal order.
  • One of its revolutionary Marxist principles, the division of society according to production-based class membership, goes against the guarantee of human dignity; individuals must not be reduced to a ‘mere object’ or subordinated to a collective. The unconditional assignment of a person to a collective, an ideology or a religion, however, shows a disregard for the freedom of the individual.
  • The paper’s Marxist orientation is further demonstrated by its reliance on the ideologies of Marxists-Leninist classics, especially by Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, Marx and Engels. This is underlined by the choice of topics and intensity of treatment, which does not reflect a broad spectrum of political opinions; instead, junge Welt disseminates its own subjective truth and seeks to create an antithesis to the wider public sphere [Gegenöffentlichkeit].
  • With a daily circulation of 23,400 copies (27,000 on Saturdays), junge Welt reaches a substantial readership and can therefore disseminate its extremist, anti-constitutional views widely. These are augmented by the amplification of members of ‘extremist’ left-wing organisations at home and abroad, who are given the opportunity to air their revolutionary ideology. This characterisation is broadly applied to numerous national liberation movements. Because junge Welt does not distance itself from such views, they can be assumed to represent its own positions.

There are a number of variations on these themes on events and parties with which junge Welt is associated, as well as its purported sympathies with regimes classified as undemocratic. But the gist is clear from this list: the newspaper, which is not a political organisation but a journalistic product, has been stigmatised by state authorities for its Marxist, internationalist and anti-imperialist orientation. The report emphasises the dangers of its potential influence and asserts the need to undermine its material success. Ironically enough, the government justifies violating the laws of the free market and free competition by restricting the paper’s accessibility and visibility. What sort of capitalists are they?

Perhaps it is surprising that a state in which the principles of social democracy supposedly play an important part should permit such a suppression of leftist discourse while giving more leeway to far-right ideology. The unsavoury truth, however, is that Germany’s de-nazification was only superficial, and leftovers from those days have combined with neo-liberalism to produce a harmful cocktail. What better illustration of this could there be than the infiltration of state structures by far-right elements?

Perhaps the most visible example of this is the case of Hans-Georg Maassen, who was president of the Verfassungsschutz from 2012 to 2018. Public hostility towards him became most pronounced after he downplayed the racist violence at riots in the eastern city of Chemnitz in 2018, but he had argued for more restrictive immigration policy in his doctoral thesis as early as 2000. Around the same time as the riots, it also became known that Maassen had regular meetings with the AfD to give the leadership advice on avoiding intelligence observation. He is alleged to have shared information with them from the agency’s 2017 report before it was published.

By the summer of 2018, there was sufficient outrage at the sum total of Maassen’s exploits. He also made efforts to prevent access to files concerning the escaped senior Nazi Alois Brunner that same year. Finally the Interior Minister, Horst Seehofer, was forced to retire Maassen. In his farewell speech, Maassen painted himself as the victim of a leftist conspiracy to unseat him using fake news. In recent social media activities, he has propagated coronavirus denial and disseminated information from far-right sources.

Doubts about the integrity of the Verfassungsschutz predate Maassen’s tenure. The string of racist murders carried out by the terrorist group National Socialist Underground (NSU) between 2000 and 2007 (referred to in the tabloid press demeaningly as the ‘kebab murders’ for the Turkish background of many victims) became more widely known after the group was uncovered in 2011, and two of three principal members were found dead. It became clear that investigations had been impaired by a mixture of incompetence, complicity and concealment. Much is still unknown, but the revelations don’t show the police or the intelligence agency in a favourable light.

After Maassen’s departure, between 2018 and 2021, death threats and hate mail signed ‘NSU 2.0’ were sent to various individuals in politics, culture, the media and the justice system. Most were directed at women, who had either spoken out against far-right extremism in general or represented plaintiffs in the NSU proceedings. A lone culprit was found in early May. With indications that personal information on the recipients had been acquired through the police; as well as the existence of associated police chat groups with explicit neo-Nazi content; it is extremely unlikely that he acted on his own.

It is no secret that the police are more frequently hostile towards leftist protesters than those on the far right. As recent coronavirus protests have shown, they often show sympathies with far-right demonstrators. It is also no secret that the security establishment in general, from the police and intelligence agencies to the Interior Ministry, have often been at best inattentive to the dangers of far-right violence and at worst complicit. What is less known, however, is that the only leftist daily newspaper in Germany with a wide circulation is being observed, obstructed and prevented from doing its work by those who claim to protect constitutional democracy. This violation of freedom of press should be a source of national and international outrage.

Photo and Video Gallery – Demonstration on the Day of the Nakba – 15 May 2021

Photos: Daniel Anton, Nahed Awwad, Georgiana Darcy, Doris Ghannam, Paul Grasse, Brian Janßen, Jan Maas, Maire Kelly, Yonatan Miller, Kiefah Muhaisen, Joel Schalit, Azyade Lili SD, Jamila Al-Yousef and Fidaa Al-Zaanin


15/05/2021

Photos: Daniel Anton, Nahed Awwad, Georgiana Darcy, Doris Ghannam, Paul Grasse, Brian Janßen, Jan Maas, Maire Kelly, Yonatan Miller, Kiefah Muhaisen, Joel Schalit, Azyade Lili SD, Jamila Al-Yousef and Fidaa Al-Zaanin