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How dangerous are the Reichsbürger?

The recent coup attempt may have seemed farcical, but the growing Nazi threat in Germany is very real


13/12/2022

Recent police raids have led many people to question the strength of the Reichsbürger, the right-wing organisation which was accused of planning to overthrow the German state. 25 people were arrested, including a prince, a former MP for Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) and an opera singer, who the Reichsbürger were planning to install as Germany’s new Minister of Culture.

The Reichsbürger’s beliefs are abstruse, and include the idea that Germany is under occupation. They believe that the last valid German state existed under the Kaiser and call for a restoration of the monarchy. Comparisons have been made to the pro-Trump demonstrators on 6th January, and QAnon.

A US-American friend recently contacted me in consternation. How can any movement in the 21st Century call for a return to the monarchy? Here is what I think: the Reichsbürger represent a form of reactionary anti-capitalism, which sees capitalism as a problem, not because it exploits workers, but because it offers a limited form of social mobility.

They blame the current instability on “new” capitalists, who come from the wrong sort of families. Instead of moving forwards, they want to return to a time when everyone knew their place, and your position in society was determined at birth. Their love of the monarchy dovetails well with fascist authoritarianism.

Many people first became aware of the Reichsbürger during a Covid demonstration in August this year. As 40,000 people took part in a demonstration through Berlin on a protest led by right-wingers, a group carrying imperial flags and Nazi symbols split off and marched on the Reichstag.

As the Guardian reported at the time: “The Reichstag building, where German MPs meet, has a powerful symbolic role in the country. The domed building was burned down in 1933 in an act that enabled the Nazis to destroy what remained of German democracy between the two world wars.”

In this article, I would like to argue against two problematic reactions that I have seen on social media: some suggest that Germany has returned to 1933 and the Nazis are about to seize power. Others say that the Nazi threat is just something cooked up by right-wing media to win support for the German state.

While we shouldn’t overstate the problem, the Left ignores the Nazi threat in Germany at its peril. Particularly in the light of recent far right gains in elections in Italy and Sweden, we should see that the attempted coup, apparently by a few individuals, as the tip of a much more dangerous iceberg.

How strong are the German Nazis today?

At the moment, the main Nazi threat in Germany comes not from the Reichsbürger but the AfD. The groups are sometimes linked – the arrested included not just former AfD MP Birgit Malsack-Winkemann but also Christian Wendler, who has been an AfD local councillor in Saxony.

Just over a year ago, the AfD was the official opposition party in the German Bundestag to the SPD-CDU “Grand Coalition”. Although the AfD vote dropped to “only” 10.3% at last year’s elections, they are currently consistently polling at 14%. Some polls put their support as high as 15% or even 16%

In Eastern Germany, these figures are much higher. The AfD are polling at at least 20% in each of the 5 East German States, lying in first place in three States or second in the other two. This is all happening at a time when the AfD is moving rapidly to the right. While the AfD was always a party with Nazis in it, the Nazis in “Der Flügel” (the wing) around Thüringen leader Björn Höcke are slowly taking over the party.

At the same time, the far Right has been building a street movement. In October, the AfD organised a march of 10,000 people through Berlin in a demonstration against the politics of the German government. This was largely unopposed with only 1,400 protesting against it.

One of the characteristics of many European Nazi organisations, such as Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National, has been their concentration on populism and electoral politics. While they still have their (often hidden) street fighting cadre, these do not (yet) have the same strength of the SS and SA in Germany in the 1930s. We are currently seeing signs that the German Right is starting to adopt a slightly different strategy.

This is the lens through which we should see three recent protest movements which have taken to the streets, particularly in Eastern Germany – on Covid, war and inflation. In each case, the far Right, aided by a divided Left, has tried to play a leading role. I will now go into each movement in a little more detail.

Covid

The German government’s reaction to the Covid crisis was never the roaring success depicted in memeland. Most workplaces were never closed, and people were forced into overcrowded trains to go into work. Meanwhile, playgrounds were arbitrarily closed, and Germany’s death rate was, at best, similar to in most other countries, despite a better-resourced health service.

Nonetheless, the default reaction of most Germans was to observe the lockdown and respect the health of their neighbours. Demonstrations in Germany effectively stopped (the first major left wing demo since the Covid outbreak was for Black Lives Matter in May 2021). This made it difficult for the Left to mobilise.

The far right had no such scruples. A movement developed, known sometimes as “Querdenker” (alternative thinkers), elsewhere as “Coronaleugner” (Corona liars). Tens of thousands of “Querdenker” demonstrated against lockdown. The composition of these demonstrations, and their organisers, was not the same in all areas, but the far right was there from the start,

As Christine Buchholz, then a LINKE MP, argued at the time: “Members of the AfD and NPD, as well as adherents of the Reichsbürger movement – and neo-Nazis – can all participate in ‘Querdenken’ without objection. Fascism and racism are styled as ‘opinions’ to be accepted. In a published manifesto, ‘Querdenken’ declares: ‘We are non-partisan and do not exclude any opinion.’”

Protest researcher Peter Ulrich noted that “it wasn’t just convinced Neonazis who were marching. But it was people who are clearly not bothered that organised Neonazis were regularly there.” Ulrich went on to say that this had the potential to force people who are undecided or have no hard ideology towards far right positions.”

Some of the Left, most notably LINKE MP and talkshow favourite Sahra Wagenknecht argued that the Querdenker demonstrations could be co-opted by the Left. This followed Wagenknecht’s attacks on refugees and is part of a mistaken strategy to address AfD voters by adopting reactionary politics. The truth is, though, that it was only the Right who profited from the Querdenker mobilisations.

War and the Ukraine

Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine initially provoked two well-attended demonstrations in Berlin. The problem was, that these demonstrations meant different things to different people who attended them. Alongside anti-imperialist banners, you could see home-made posters calling for more German militarisation. Such a contradictory movement was never going to hold.

The “liberal” government tried to appeal to the latter faction. One of its first acts was to double the military budget and pledge an extra €100 billion to military spending, an act which you could compare to SPD MPs voting for war credits in 1914. Yet there have been no demonstrations of a comparable size since the first month of the war.

The Left – both inside and outside parliament – was unable to fill the anti-war vacuum, and was split between (at least) 3 different factions. One stream is sympathetic towards, even apologetic for Putin. Of course, not everyone denounced by German media as a “Putin-versteher” (Putin understander) actually supports the Russian dictator, but some really do.

A significant part of the leadership of the German anti-war movement has been soft on Russia. Some, but by no means all, see Putin as the continuation of their old USSR allies, and have refused to condemn the invasion of Ukraine. Some even argue that the invasion was necessary. Because of the legacy of Cold War politics, this tendency is stronger in Germany than in most other countries.

As a reaction to the first group, a second emerged, which included part of the revolutionary left. This group quite rightly argued that imperialism is a world system, and that anti-imperialists must oppose Putin’s adventures. But, despite stating that there is more than one imperialist country, they remained largely silent about imperialism in their own country, with many of them calling for sanctions, and even the delivery of NATO weapons.

Increasingly, these two parts of the anti-war movement have come to mirror each other, spending increasing amounts of time and energy attacking each other rather than the imperialist powers. This is not a strategy which is able to win over people who are worried by the very real threat of nuclear war. A third group – which opposed both Putin’s invasion and NATO’s attempt to join the war by proxy, was just not large enough to fill the gap.

This result was, as Albert Scharenberg reported, that “the AfD has successfully linked up with widespread criticisms of the German government’s sanctions against Russia — especially in the eastern states. Economic ties to Russia are traditionally stronger in eastern Germany, and in many areas, small- and medium-sized businesses have been mobilizing to protests against the sanctions.”

Inflation

All this has been exacerbated by rising inflation, which has stood at at least 10% for the last three months. The last time that German inflation went above 10% was following Currency reform in 1948. If anything, perceived inflation has been even worse. At the beginning of Autumn, every time you visited a supermarket, prices had gone up again.

Building a campaign against inflation provides a twofold problem for parts of the left. If you have been celebrating weapons shipments to Ukraine, and holding banners which say that rising oil costs are a price worth paying, you shouldn’t be surprised when people who can no longer afford to heat their small flats do not see you as a natural ally.

Furthermore, this is happening on the watch of a government which is dominated by the “left wing” SPD and Greens. The LINKE strategy at last year’s election was aimed at joining a coalition government, so all serious criticism of its neoliberalism rivals was dropped.

In the East, where the far Right is doing particularly well, the situation is exacerbated by die LINKE being part of a coalition government in 3 East German States. In Thüringen, the home of Björn Höcke, the state president, and deporter-in-chief is Die LINKE’s Bodo Ramelow.

This means that many Easterners have more than one reason to see Die LINKE as an establishment party. To some, it is the Stasi party of the old DDR. To others, it is responsible for the current austerity politics. This does not make it a natural partner in the fight against capitalism and inflation. This allows the far Right to take a lead, as it has in the fights against Covid and war. Tagesschau described the recent demonstration in Dresden against rising prices as a Pegida comeback.

What has all this to do with the attempted coup?

The specific coup plot for which people have been recently arrested was almost certainly the work of a few marginalised people. This does not mean that it was not relevant. As LINKE leader Janine Wissler tweeted: “even if the coup plans of the Reichsbürger sound megalomanic, unfeasible and confused, this does not make them harmless cranks. Remember the killers of Utøya, Halle and Hanau”.

Wissler is referring to three cases in Norway and Germany of murderous gunmen who had links to neo-Nazi networks. Each attack was portrayed in the press as the work of a “lone gunman”. These murderers were not alone, nor are the Reichsbürger, who are estimated to have 21,000 members. Many are armed and 2,000 are described by state authorities as “ready to commit violence”.

One of the arrested Reichsbürger is a former army colonel. This comes after reports that the German army has a Nazi problem. In 2020, a whole division of the German special forces was dissolved following reports of Nazi activity. This is not the basis for a Fascist coup, but does show that we have more to worry about than 25 strange individuals.

Added to this, there is the memory of the NSU, the Nazi cell which murdered 10 “foreigners” while receiving state support. The police reacted by harassing the victims’ families, while the press reported the killings as “Döner murders” and blamed the victims. Under certain circumstances, the German State and press are prepared to support violent neo-Nazis.

But we are not in 1933, when German President Hindenburg appointed Hitler as Chancellor. Then the ruling class needed the Nazi stormtroopers to crush the workers’ movement. This is not the current situation. A better comparison is not 1933, but 1923, when Nazis in Munich carried out the unsuccessful Beer Hall Putsch. This short-term failure was an important step in the far Right building up the power which they were to wield 10 years later.

History is made by individuals, and never exactly repeats itself. Germany’s future depends on what we do, both as individuals, and as part of the political Left. We can stop the far Right, physically if necessary, but also by offering political alternatives which are more attractive than those offered by the Reichsbürger, the AfD and their fellow-travellers. For the sake of humanity, we’d better hope that we are up to the task.

Taking Stock of the Greenwashing Spectacle.

On the way forward after COP27


11/12/2022

COP27 is over. For over two weeks, delegates from around the world gathered in the gated community of Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. Under the slogan, “Together for implementation”, the parties aimed to agree on concrete measures that would keep the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees, while simultaneously addressing the increasingly pressing issue of loss and damage, exemplified by floods that left one-third of Pakistan under water this summer. This article breaks down what did and did not come out of COP27, while addressing the dystopic political circumstances under which the summit took place. Finally, I reflect on the way forward for the climate justice movement in light of next years‘ COP being hosted by an authoritarian petrostate – the United Arab Emirates.

The results of COP27 in Egypt were mixed, to put it mildly. On the one hand, the parties agreed to set up a fund for loss and damage within the UN system. This is no small feat and can be seen as the culmination of campaigning by activists and vulnerable countries for over thirty years. It was the achievement of a united G77 that brought western countries – albeit kicking and screaming – to an agreement on setting up the fund. However, how and whether the fund will be filled remains to be seen. Countries of the Global South know all too well the script of rich countries pledging to deliver large sums of climate finance that fail to materialise, as was the case with COP15’s $100 billion yearly target in Copenhagen in 2009.

Even if expectations might have been low in advance of this year’s COP, the overall response to the crisis was dismally inadequate. As an example, oil and gas was not even mentioned in the final declaration. Thus, the well over 600 fossil fuel lobbyists that had been frequenting the conference venue at Sharm El-Sheikh – a record number – could go home with a substantial feather in their cap.

The fossil fuel lobby was not the most sinister component of this COP, however. Behind the scenes, an army of security personnel closely watched even the very restricted protests occurring within the “blue zone”, the area that hosted the negotiations. Delegates got a small taste of the Sisi regime’s obsession with surveillance through wire-tapped taxis as well as an official COP27 app from the Egyptian presidency with the capacity to severely infringe upon the privacy of any of its users. As if that was not enough, the COP venue itself was run by a company with direct ties to Egypt’s foreign intelligence service.

Sharm El-Sheikh is a dystopian city, where the urban sprawl of luxury resorts, casinos and private beaches have led to serious environmental degradation of the unique marine environment surrounding the city. Far removed from the rest of Egyptian society, both in terms of geography and prices, it provided a remote outpost that could be fully isolated from disgruntled citizens who might consider protesting during the megaevent. 

The regime of General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi is obsessed with making sure that upheavals like the 2011 Tahrir uprising will not happen again, and has doubled down on surveillance and arbitrary detentions, filling newly built prisons with ever more political prisoners. His authoritarian counter-revolution is even leaving its mark in the country’s urban fabric. Parks and green areas in Cairo are being razed to make way for highways while a completely new administrative capital is being constructed in the outskirts of Cairo. The megaproject is being overseen by the military, and will place the state machinery in a comfortable distance away from any disgruntled masses in Cairo – the same collective agent that led to the downfall of the Mubarak regime in the 2011 revolution. With public space disappearing, the very material foundations for a new uprising are to be quenched. 

The spectacular combination of securitization and a complete lack of environmental planning is also clearly present in Sharm El-Sheikh, where a wall was built around the city. The wall, yet another aerial encroachment into the lands of the indigenous Sinai Bedouins, was built without drainage, causing a sweeping flood when it gave in to heavy rain.

These accounts are not given to raise an “orientalist” critique of Egyptian society that casts its rulers and administration as inherently despotic and incompetent. Rather, the current Egyptian reality cannot be abstracted from long lines of imperialism, economic dependency and contemporary military aid from western powers.

In a brilliant essay, Egyptian writer Omar Robert Hamilton (2022) describes how the Sisi regime survives: “The state seems like a body on life support, a series of tubes running in and out of it, foreign doctors occasionally administering steroidal loans or applying structural adjustment chemotherapies. We study the tubes, the infrastructure, the industrial and commercial networks running in and out of it to understand how it is being kept alive.”

The COP27 presidency was seized by the regime as an opportunity to get more “support tubes” in the form of foreign currency, industry deals with foreign countries while greenwashing its image.

Taking stock of COP27, we can conclude that while certain battles were won, we are still losing the war against climate change. Even though there were campaigns in solidarity with Egyptian activists and political prisoners, no significant concessions were given from the authorities. The high-profile author and Egyptian revolutionary Alaa Abd el-Fattah remains imprisoned, despite calls from a wide international community for his release. As the world turns its eyes away from Egypt after the COP, it is important that the left in other countries sustains pressures on the Sisi regime by challenging military aid and corporate relations with the country. Unlike Alaa, we have not yet been defeated, and still have the agency to challenge the neoliberal military dictatorship from abroad, an action that comes only at tremendous personal costs inside the country. 

Socialists of earlier times recognised that the struggles for “bourgeoisie” freedoms, such as freedom of expression and assembly, were not in themselves sufficient. However, without political freedom – the light and air of the working class – the wider struggle for a truly free society cannot be won. This also holds for the climate struggle, and therefore solidarity with Egyptian activists is part of how we can avert climate catastrophe: by building people’s power and strong links of solidarity.

The next COP will take place in Dubai, a city built on the foundations of modern slavery and fossil capital. Whatever levels of surveillance experienced by the delegates to the COP in Egypt will be outdone in terms of sophistication from the UAE, a state with a dismal record of human rights violations. 

In response to the climate summits’ dwindling civic space, and to the COP turning increasingly into a spectacle of greenwashing, prominent author and climate activist Naomi Klein has advocated boycotting COP28. This call presents difficult considerations for social movements and activists who have fought tirelessly to put a just transition on the COP agenda for decades. They would certainly not want to see the proverbial baby thrown out with the bathwater. Whatever stance is taken in this debate, it will be important to listen well to the voices coming from our comrades in the Global South, whose livelihoods are disproportionately affected by the failure to act.

No matter what path that is chosen with regard to the left’s position on next climate summit, some things are clear: the climate crisis is upon us, but forms of resistance are multiplying and diversifying on a global scale. No single climate summit will ever be enough. Rather, a pathway that averts the grimmest future scenarios will have to include a multitude of strategies and agents, as described in Kim Stanley Robinson’s brilliant novel The Ministry for the Future (2020). 

Whether or not civil society and social movements will amass in Dubai or in decentralised counter-summits next fall, the climate justice movement must increasingly lift up the banner of political freedom and forge bonds of solidarity with migrant workers and political prisoners in the UAE. A thorough assessment of the degree to which this will be possible in Dubai should guide the decision on whether to attend or boycott COP28. 

Bibliography

Day X and The Decaying German Political Consensus

The police operation to liquidate the extreme right Reichsbürger sect is the clearest indication yet of a political order at risk of implosion


08/12/2022

It was the day meant for talking about the German coalition government. It was the first anniversary of the Social Democrats, Greens and Liberals taking charge of the largest economy in the Eurozone. About the government which promised an unprecedented sum for military expenditure.

This Wednesday, the Bundestag was taking stock of a decision that was being punished in the polls. Despite this, the media led with the biggest raid against the extreme right in the history of the country.

The searches took place in the early hours of the morning in 130 houses and offices in eleven states of the country. These were accompanied by similar actions in Austria and Italy. According to the Attorney General’s office, the 25 detainees were part of a terrorist organization planning to storm parliament, stage a coup d’état and impose a new government for which they already had some candidates.

Interior Minister Nancy Faeser thanked “more than 3,000 police officers” for “their dangerous action today to protect our democracy”. The fifty or so suspects wanted to impose a monarchy in Germany, headed by Prince Heinrich XIII of the Reuss-Greiz house. Heinrich, a real estate businessman, was arrested in Frankfurt, and an arms cache was reportedly found in his palace in Thuringia.

The Berlin judge belonged to the right wing of the AfD, the so-called Flügel… In September 2021 the AfD won the Thüringen elections, helped by speeches from Höcke about “bloodletting” which would lose “some parts of our population” who did not want to participate in the authoritarian government …

According to the public prosecutor’s office and information leaked to der Spiegel, the Minister of Justice was to be a Berlin judge named Birgit Malsack-Winkemann, who was a member of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in the German parliament. Malsack-Winkemann was also arrested at her home in the wealthy district of Wannsee.

There were reports that an opera singer was to be the Minister of Culture. A pilot, several doctors, businessmen, and army reservists made up the cadre of alleged coup plotters seeking to re-establish a Deutsche Reich, a German empire.

The group apparently fits into the ideology of the Reichsbürger, translated as “citizens of the realm”. The Reichsbürger are a quasi-sect which believes that the Federal Republic of Germany is still occupied by the victors of World War II and rejects all of its institutions. Some of its members even carry passports, driver’s licenses or money invented for such a Reich.

According to far-right experts, the Reichsbürger began to radicalize in 2010 and since 2016, when one of them killed a policemen, they have been listed as dangerous. Reichsbürger members have been found with weapons caches and plans to overthrow the government. The Reichsbürger have a variety of beliefs, but are not the only forces behind the disbanded group. This arrest has shown that their political plans also includes maintaining a street presence.

Protests against Germany’s foreign policy, against arms shipments to Ukraine and against sanctions which punish the German economy are being organised by a mix of neo-Nazis, conspiracy theorists, new right and anti-Vaxxers. These people have united in a terrorist group, which is also organising through social networks.

The Berlin judge belonged to the right wing of the AfD, the so-called Flügel. The most prominent member of die Flügel is Björn Höcke, a politician from the state of Thuringia. In September 2021 the AfD won the Thüringen elections, helped by speeches from Höcke about “bloodletting” which would lose “some parts of our population” who did not want to participate in the authoritarian government which he thinks that Germany needs.

Höcke’s project, which only has space for Germans, follows an extremist conspiracy theory which plans enforced repatriation. This is an ideology which reflects the anti-refugee protests which swept the country after the arrival of hundreds of thousands of people via the Balkan route in 2015. This is how the AfD became the third force in the Bundestag.

The movement named Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West (PEGIDA) and its marches played a key role in creating the ideological breeding ground from which several far-right terrorist groups were born, attacking refugee shelters and even going so far as to murder the CDU politician Walter Lübcke in cold blood. Lübcke was a member of Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic party,.

One of the terrorist groups also had plans to provoke a civil war on Day X and set up their alternative state. These plans were uncovered after the arrest of a soldier named Franco A. who intended to pose as a refugee in order to provoke such an attack.

These PEGIDA protests, which had most support in former East Germany, were based on campaigns against the building of mosques in the early 2000s. During the pandemic, right-wing protests were transformed into marches of vaccine skeptics and people complaining against anti-vaccine measures. There was also a radicalization among the anti-vaccine movement that resulted in the assassination attempt on the current Minister of Health, Karl Lauterbach.

After German reunification, the right-wing extremists were at their strongest thanks to the power vacuum in the East of the country. Former Stasi employees report that information gathered by the Stasi was not properly passed on to the new German authorities. As a result, several pogroms took place in the East and a terrorist group called the NSU was formed. The NSU murdered immigrants throughout the country. The exact involvement of the secret services has still not been clarified.

In the early 1990s, the extreme right was still a rather marginal phenomenon, even though racism and xenophobia already had a strong hold over a large part of the population. The protest movements that have continued since then have led to a regrouping of the extreme right, ideologically supported by the so-called New Right of the Identitarian Movement, with the group of thinkers around the so-called Institute for State Policy.

While the Right is heating up the atmosphere and gathering forces, the Left looks unable to offer an answer to the discontent. One part of the progressive electorate votes for the Greens and another for the left-wing party Die LINKE.

The Greens are pushing military escalation and believe that the country has to sacrifice part of its welfare. Die LINKE in a deep crisis, with one part supporting the government’s measures in line with NATO, while another part is even considering the formation of a new party.

In troubled waters, the Right is rubbing its hands together and the Christian Democrats are once again leading the polls. The extreme Alternative for Germany (AfD) is also gaining support and would become the fourth power in parliament. This would still not create a CDU-AfD majority. In any case, until now, no party has collaborated with the AfD at the federal level.

The news of the raid on Wednesday also overshadowed the lecture given the day before by Clemens Fuest, president of the Leibniz Institute for Economic Research (ifo), entitled “Why the German and European models are in danger”. The expert warned that high energy prices after abandoning the cheapest Russian sources result in a “welfare loss” and that the state will have to ensure that these prices are lowered to prevent more companies from leaving the country.

Food inflation is much higher than the official total and in a situation of further inflation and crises the extreme right could continue to rise in the country.

This article first appeared in Spanish on CTXT. Reproduced with permission.

Imperial Legacy of Labour practices in the Gulf states

We cannot let countries like Britain make accusations of human rights abuses without first engaging with how their countries would not exist as they do today without such practices


07/12/2022

Doha Skyline

There is currently a lot of media attention on Qatar. On the BBC’s news homepage, 20 percent of the stories concerning FIFA World Cup are on politics of Qatar (1 out of 5 at the time of writing), the rest naturally being about football. This is probably more than the average day during your average world cup. Calls to boycott the world cup have been many and it is undoubtably a good thing that Qatar’s human rights record has been brought to light, especially in the context of tightening relations with Germany (and other western European countries) and the energy crisis. Germany’s Economics minster Habeck was in Qatar in May and the Chancellor Scholz was in Saudi Arabia, both with eyes hungry for oil and gas.

As has been well reported, Qatar had almost none of the necessary infrastructure to host the World Cup when then FIFA president Sepp Blatter announced in 2012 that their bid was successful. So began an enormous project to build 7 stadiums, a metro network (with the support of Deutsche Bahn), hotels and much more (including even a completely new city). For this, Qatar required a huge amount of manual labour. More specifically, foreign labour.

The majority of the migrant workers in Qatar and the Gulf are from South Asian countries such as India, Bangladesh and Nepal, with a large, increasing number from Africa. The majority of these migrants workers fall under the kafala system which has recently entered the public consciousness. The “kafala sponsorship system” is used throughout the Gulf to organise migrant labour and has long been a concern of human rights organisations not just as an issue in Qatar, but across the region.

In this article we consider the history of the kafala system, to understand it as part of the legacy left behind by the British after the collapse of the empire and the realities of how it is lived today by migrants.

The Kafala System

The kafala sponsorship system is widely used throughout the middle east. It involves a sponsor (usually a citizen or company) who sponsors a migrant, affording them entry to the country in question and the right to work for the sponsor. The sponsor is then legally responsible for the worker. The crux of the system, as Omar Hesham AlShehbi writes, is that the state ”delegates the authority needed for a migrant to enter the country to the citizen employer”. He goes on to outline, the entire bureaucratic-legal complex has four components:

  1. An entry visa
  2. An exit visa
  3. Certificate to change job or leave the country
  4. Sometimes surety/money deposit from the Sponsor

As is laid out in AlShebis article, each of the above levels originated during the British colonial era.

In the early 20th century, in order to manage colonised populations and labour forces, the British were already running a system of entry and exit visas to facilitate moving across the British defined boarders of Iraq, Iran and Jeddah, as well as Bahrain (which was a ‘British Protectorate’ as of 1861). Individuals living under British jurisdiction, when not British citizens, were classified as either “locals” or “foreigners ”.

Pearling has been present in the Gulf sea for thousands of years and in the early 20th century the industry to collect pearls was rapidly growing. Divers working on the ships already faced extremely repressive working conditions and debt bondage. The Pearling industry required large amounts of labour and at the beginning of each season, large numbers of migrants would arrive to work on pearling ships. Managing the flow of the divers became urgent for the British authorities and the sponsorship system was born.

Ship captains were the sponsors and workers were most often people from the Indian subcontinent, then occupied and ruled by the British. Ship Captains acted as surety and were responsible for the eventual departure of the worker.

Oil was discovered in Bahrain in 1932 (by the Bahrain Petroleum Company, founded in Canada by the company which went on to become Chevron) which saw an increase of inward flow of migrants, again particularly from the Indian subcontinent.

The fact that the majority of workers were arriving from the Indian subcontinent is a direct consequence of the ‘Indian indentureship system’ of the British Empire.

Of this system, academic Shirleen Anushika Datt writes: “The Indian indentureship system was created to replace the previous system of slave labour; enforced by British government, the system was created to sustain its colonies and sugar plantations overseas. The British created the Indian indentureship system specifically as a source of cheap labour after the emancipation of slavery. When the Indian indentureship system was abolished after 80 years of operation, 3.5 million Indians had been removed from their ancestral lands and scattered as far as the Caribbean, Africa, Asia and Oceania.”

The sponsorship system solidified and spread throughout the Gulf. In 1946, the oil discovered in Kuwait the year before began to be exported. The oil industry in Kuwait procured the vast amount of labour needed using the same sponsorship system as in Bahrain.

In 1961, Kuwait gained independence and the sponsorship system officially became the kafala system. Over the next decade, the rest of the Gulf gained independence from Britain, the last being Qatar in 1971, and in each of the new regimes, the dealing with ‘foreigners’ was delegated to the sponsorship of citizens.

The reality of the kafala system today

The kafala system as it exists today still bares many of the signs of its colonial past. Most workers in the Gulf are from southern Asia, but an increasing number of East Africans are choosing to emigrate to the Gulf in search of work. While men most often work in construction or as security guards, women are most commonly brought in as domestic workers.

Around 180,000 Ugandans and Kenyans migrated to the Gulf last year in search of work, with around 200,000 Ugandans currently working in Saudi Arabia alone as of August this year. This is encouraged by the governments given the economic incentive: Uganda generated roughly 5% of GDP through remittances from workers employed in the Gulf in 2021. It is facilitated by a large number of companies offering the service of bringing together people in search of work and kafala sponsors.

Abuse is rampant, one poll finding that 99% of Kenyans in the Gulf are abused. Those who make it home report of horrific accounts of physical, sexual and mental abuse and cases of organ trafficking are increasing. The increasing number of unexplained deaths has caused the Ugandan government to halt the registering of new labour export companies and to launch an inquiry to investigate the working conditions .

The reality of what awaits these migrants when they arrive is not unknown to them, they are not naïve, nor are they fooled by the advertisements of beaches and luxury airplanes by companies looking to sell their labour. The Lugandan name for someone who migrates to these richer countries is nkuba kyeyo – the one who sweeps.

The money is simply much better than what is available for them should they choose to stay and find work in their home countries. A Ugandan domestic worker in Saudi Arabia earns around €225 a month after a bilateral deal between the governments, much more than at home. And while one may be aware that there is a chance of finding oneself in a dangerous situation, the economic draw of the much-needed money and manipulative practices of the labour export companies are proven very successful.

Why This History Matters

The wealth provided to the Gulf states by the worlds addiction to fossil fuels is then used to generate more wealth by exploiting the populations of other countries. The bureaucratic and legal systems required to procure this criminally cheap labour on the scale which we currently see is something learned directly from the ex-colonial powers.

Indeed, as we have seen, it was a program handed to the leaders of the newly independent states from the British colonial rulers. It is the basis of racial capitalism and is something we cannot let governments here in the global north continue to ignore. Both as an ongoing issue and as the material basis for the relative privileged experienced in the Global North. One important example for us on the British left is that Attlee was founding the NHS and other pillars of the British welfare state with wealth extracted from the colonies.

The old colonial powers still play a continued role in this story. London has always been the destination for extracted wealth, both from resources and labour. Not only in the form of property, but also services like the PR company Portland Communications UK who aim to sanitise your countries ‘Brand’, like the Qatari government has done. Portland Communications UK was set up by Tim Allen, a political advisor to Tony Blair.

The British Empire was always an empire of corporations, with the British state ensuring that the maximal amount of wealth can be extracted by the British capitalists, where most of this wealth remains, albeit hidden away in British overseas territories such as the Cayman Islands and Bermuda (See Kojo Koram’s Uncommon Wealth for an excellent account).

All the while the British working class experience the ‘Imperial Boomerang’ of Foucault, building on work by Césaire, which sees techniques developed to oppress colonised populations brought back to be used against the working class in the metropoles of Western Europe.

As we call for international solidarity for workers experiencing the horrors of the kafala system in the Gulf, we must know the history. We cannot let old colonial countries, like Britain, throw cynical accusations of human rights abuses while refusing to engage with how their countries would not exist as they do today without such practices.

Film Review – Fragile: A Feminist Romcom Portrayed Through Male Experience

Fragile conveys themes of masculinity and feminism with an expanded scope of experience through the romcom genre


05/12/2022

The red curtains part dramatically to reveal a surfer shirt and tight red pants. The person sporting them strikes a pose.

“What a behind!” and “I could go surfing on that!”, ring out from the seats in front of the dressing room, as the onlookers appraise the new outfit of their friend, Az.

Az has just been broken up with, so of course he needs a makeover. His friends Raphaël, Ahmed, Kalidou and Lila are of course there to help. The scene, like many others in Fragile, a film by French-Algerian director Emma Benestan, takes traditional gender roles and turns them on their heads. It’s not uncommon to see a film that confronts gender norms, but it is uncommon to see one that does it this well.

Fragile distances itself from other films dealing with similar themes by incorporating questions of identity and behavior in subtle ways. Too often, movies that attempt to engage with these topics end up relying on stale narratives that seem to scream ‘Men can be sensitive too!’ through the inclusion of a character, or characters, that act more ‘feminine’, while the rest of the cast exhibits more normative behavior. Instead, each character in Fragile is dealing, individually and together, with the meaning of their own fragility. They engage the audience in a unique way that dives into societal issues tackled through believable situations, and portrayed by a group of friends you could meet down your block.

That group dynamic is one aspect that carries the film through the familiar ups and downs of a romantic comedy. In one of the first scenes, Az proposes to his girlfriend Jess by placing a wedding ring in an oyster (which she subsequently chokes on). Everything in the scene is set up so Jess’ answer doesn’t surprise the audience. She was late, seems flustered and distracted, and doesn’t notice how nervous and attentive Az is being.

The issue of class and wealth also adds an additional layer of fragility to the characters… The divide is accepted by the characters and not overstated in the dialogue, but it adds a visible undercurrent to peoples’ interactions with each other.

From the subsequent scenes, it’s clear where the movie is going. It follows a classic romantic comedy plot set in the coastal city of Sète, France; the audience is taken from a breakup all the way through to the realization that true love was right there all along. The film, however, remains anything but boring. Even in the scenes where the audience can sense the betrayals that are about to occur, the spot-on comedic timing in the conversations between the characters turns the narrative into something fresh and new.

Another aspect, naturally, is the title theme of the movie – that of fragility. The character most obviously dealing with it is Az, as he navigates the emotional rollercoaster of love and loss. Throughout, those around him are nearly constantly poking fun at the various trials he’s going through, but doing so in a way that shows that they care deeply about him. This is most obvious in Az’s all-female family, who seem to humor Az, while also telling him that men are the worst.

In fact, most of the male characters are working within the same framework – that of women degrading them for their macho behavior, even when they didn’t do anything. It’s perhaps most interesting in how the dynamic plays out between Raphaël, Ahmed, and Kalidou, the other men in the friend group. They simultaneously all have their, often hilarious, macho moments, but also show their sensitive sides. This is especially apparent when Lila, the only woman amongst them, has something to say.

Lila is also dealing with her own fragility, which the audience never gets a full picture of. She hints at a life in Paris, and a story of heartbreak, but doesn’t go into too many details. Throughout the film she’s clearly still healing from a recent emotional wound, and it gives her character a maturity that the others in the group don’t have. Though she’s not the main character, her story could have been fleshed out further. At times it felt as if her motivations weren’t entirely believable – she puts herself in very vulnerable positions in exchange for some, admittedly delicious-looking, sweets.

Of course that’s not all she was motivated by, but knowing a bit more about her would have added to her dynamic with the friend group, with Az, and with Az’s family. Lila also repeats the mantra that men are the worst throughout the movie, yet still ends up doing the bulk of the emotional labor. It’s a situation immediately recognizable to many womxn*, and it would have been good to see more of that reflected in Lila’s character.

The issue of class and wealth also adds an additional layer of fragility to the characters, as something that nearly everyone is collectively dealing with, but is rarely mentioned. There’s a clear divide in Sète between the life that Az’s friends and family live, and that of the wealthier residents. Jess, Az’s love interest from the beginning of the film, has joined their ranks by landing a role in a (hilariously portrayed) crime TV show. The divide is accepted by the characters and not overstated in the dialogue, but it adds a visible undercurrent to peoples’ interactions with each other. Like with many of the gender themes, the audience is shown, rather than told, how the different societal strata impact the characters’ lives.

These intertwining and interlocking themes make this film one for a wide audience. It’s cheesy, but not lame, complex, but not complicated. It’s also hilarious, and holds space for people of any gender to identify with the characters and their fragility.

Fragile is playing at Filmrauchpalast and b-ware! Ladenkino. But be warned: just because you’re seeing a feminist film doesn’t mean the line for the women’s bathroom will be any shorter.