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“We ask you to support the Russian resistance and give it a voice”

Interview with Russian Activists in Berlin and Russia – Part 2: Conscription and Sanctions


10/10/2022

This is the second part of an interview with Russian activists. You can read the first part, which includes an introduction to the interviewees, here.

Putin has mobilised 300,000 reservists. Will there be more in the future?

ALEXANDER: My feeling is yes. But I hope no. I do feel that neither Russia nor Ukraine will give up and this could end very badly.

NIKITA: In my organization alone they tried to recruit almost 700 people, one third of all people working there. All my colleagues were talking about going to the frontline, buying equipment, especially good boots, because all of them got army training in the past, and technically they were in the first or second wave of mobilization.

MARIA: It will depend on the success of the Russian army and on the whole war situation. As there are massive losses now and the army is being forced to retreat, the mobilization will continue and there will be more mobilized people in the future. Maybe not right now but in 2-3 months.

DARJA: Even now there are rumors on the net that more than 300,000 have been mobilised.

FAR ACTIVISTS: We don’t know for sure how many are mobilized in reality. And even with these probable 300,000 there’s no understanding about how they’ll be used i.e. how long will they be trained, if trained at all. There are reports that they should even buy their own clothes and medicaments

The ethnic minority of the Crimean Tatars received 80% of the subpoenas in Crimea, being only 12% of the population of the whole occupied region.

Not all of the mobilized people seem to be willing to join the war. We have videos of almost happy new soldiers, but also videos of violence between mobilized people, and reports of all the mobilized getting drunk. It’s already hard to organize this first wave.

Who is being conscripted?

MARIA: It really doesn’t depend on the social group – the Ministry of Defence is just trying to execute the plan so they are trying to conscript every man they can find and scare into joining the army ignoring health issues, age and occupation.

VLADISLAV: Officially they are saying that everyone who served in the military and are under 35 are current targets. People from top universities or from rich/middle class families usually find a way to not serve (postponement because of the higher education, weak health, avoidance, cheating). The lower class is targeted mostly.

ALEXANDER: Everyone below 50 probably. I personally know two white-collar men with no military experience – they got conscriptions this week. Of course it is not a guarantee they will be sent to Ukraine

DARJA: It is not uniform across regions. Crimea or the Chechen Republic seem to mobilize proportionally more people than Moscow, for example.

FAR ACTIVISTS: According to law almost any man (or a woman with war related specialty, i.e. medical) could be mobilized. Some officials publicly claimed that students, people with chronic diseases, elders and IT specialists are exempt from the mobilization”. The laws and official statements have changed many times and vary from region to region.

Some regions face a bigger wave of recruitment. The ethnic minority of the Crimean Tatars received 80% of the subpoenas in Crimea, being only 12% of the population of the whole occupied region. Overall the poorer the region, more people are taken. Also proportionally fewer people are called from big cities, because it’s easier to suppress protests in the countryside.

But people receive subpoenas regardless of the rules and seem to be taken anyway. It seems they just take those who are easy to take, sending subpoenas en masse and are making ridiculous mistakes in the process, like summoning the dead or disabled men.

But we know who will definitely not be called up – State Duma deputies, since they have been given a proper reservation from the government.

What does conscription mean to an ordinary Russian person?

MARIA: Most people don’t want to participate in this war. Some of them are trying to hide or leave the country, some of them say that if they are conscripted they will go to the war to avoid ending up in jail.

ALEXANDER: (1) If I am drafted, I will realize that I am actually going to die (2) If the regular army can’t, what can I do?

OKSANA: Those who don’t try to escape conscription mostly believe that they should protect Russia from NATO and many of them don’t understand how they can escape. Most people in Russia are very poor and cannot afford to quit their jobs and hide – this would affect their families badly.

FAR ACTIVISTS: Patriarchal stereotypes like “a real man should serve in the military” are quite popular in the Russian countryside and are especially dangerous during the war time. They combine well with the idea that the real aggressor is not Russia but Ukraine (or, better said, NATO behind Ukraine), and that we need to bravely protect the country.

Many men cannot afford to lose jobs and hide, so they just obediently answer the war summons. The legal option of saying “no” is almost non-existent now, and most people lack the information anyway.

Women take an active part in the anti-war movements, partaking in street protests, picketing, performances, painting graffiti… especially in the regions. OVD-Info (an independent Russian human rights project) reported that not less than 51% of protesters detained on September 21 were women.

KONSTANTIN: For families of the conscripted, in many cases it’ll mean the loss of the breadwinner, either temporarily or permanently in the very worst cases. I am sceptical about measures the government promises to take to support those families.

We are hearing reports of long queues at the Finnish and other borders. What is the situation for men trying to avoid conscription? How is the EU reacting?

ALEXANDER: People spend 2-3 days in queues in Kazakhstan and Georgia to leave Russia. Some people drop off their cars or sell them for 5 or 6 times less than they are really worth – it seems to be faster to cross the border on foot

VLADISLAV: Some countries are hostile, like Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania. Some are just unfriendly. Some are neutral. From what I heard, only Germany said that it will help Russians who are trying to escape conscription. However, most Russians don’t even have visas to the EU, and the only way to get there is by car through hostile/unfriendly countries.

FAR ACTIVISTS: Plane tickets are extraordinarily expensive, so people choose to commute by car or by bus. The most popular destinations now are land borders with Kazakhstan, Georgia, Finland and Mongolia, with Kazakhstan being the most popular choice.

Some men are not allowed to cross the border, it is not always clear on what principle. The government has also started to install new “mobile recruitment offices” on the borders with Kazakhstan, Georgia and Finland, you can get a subpoena directly at the border.

It is upsetting to hear that Finland intends to significantly restrict the number of Russians who can enter the country. Baltic countries have also shut down the borders. We understand why this happens – in 2014 Russian “tourists” (but actually agents and fighters) played a role in a Donbas conflict.

The Russian opposition abroad and activists heartily thank our Eastern neighbours for welcoming Russians in dark times like this. EU reaction was ambiguous as we see that Eastern European countries are not willing to accept Russian escapees. Germany announced that it will help those who escape mobilization, but the details are not worked out and this doesn’t function in practice. It is also relatively hard to apply for political asylum and humanitarian visas as many Russians lack records of direct persecution.

What is the role of women in the fight against conscription and repression?

OKSANA: I don’t see much difference with men… Women are in a little bit safer position as they will not be mobilized during the protest, but they still can be imprisoned up to 15 years for this…

FAR ACTIVISTS: Women take an active part in the anti-war movements, partaking in street protests, picketing, performances, painting graffiti and so on. They are the main force in the protests against the war, especially in the regions. OVD-Info (an independent Russian human rights project) reported that not less than 51% of protesters detained on September 21 were women.

Some actions across the country like “Women in black” are women-oriented. As many men flee the country now, women are the ones who see them off and stay inside of Russia and are left to deal with the horrors of Putin’s regime.

How have sanctions affected everyday life in Russia?

DARJA: Of course, some familiar goods have disappeared, and the real incomes of the population have fallen sharply, but on the whole, this is more of an inconvenience than a catastrophe.

FAR ACTIVISTS: The results of the sanctions for an ordinary person are different across the country and depend on the person’s income and area of work. For example, the car industry is heavily affected, as well as tourism and aviation. However not so many people even from these industries have lost their jobs (yet), up until now many are on a forced vacation and still get salaries.

VLADISLAV: Production of cars stopped in Russia. Prices for cars went into the stratosphere. It is now VERY difficult and pricey to fly outside of Russia to most countries with some exceptions. Visa/Mastercard is not working outside of Russia for Russians. It is extremely difficult to move to another country because of this.

MARIA: For the middle and upper-middle class, sanctions made travelling extremely hard and expensive, and increased prices on electronics and some brands. But you need to understand that 70% of Russians don’t even have an international passport to travel. For them sanctions led to the increasing prices on everyday products and the disappearance of life-critical medicines.

What makes me the angriest is that these sanctions didn’t affect most of the rich and powerful. They still can fly their private jets, they still can buy expensive things (that became only a little more expensive but who counts, right?). They still have all the rights and privileges.

ALEXANDER: I do not suffer from sanctions and don’t see any significant changes in my daily life. Instead of increasing poverty in Russia, they could find ways to negotiate with our leaders

Are right-wing and Nazi groups active in Russia? How?

KONSTANTIN: Nothing I’ve ever witnessed personally, but I am pretty sure there are such people/groups, as in nearly any other country. I don’t want to seriously judge how strong it is compared to other countries – nothing extraordinary I would say.

FAR ACTIVISTS: There is patriarchal and nationalistic “Male State”, banned as extremist by a Russian court. Community members are active on the internet, they are famous for harassment, threats and persecution of women with feminist views, LGBT people and people of color. The group started with targeting of women who acted “inappropriate” in 2016, by 2021 the group threatened and organized online attacks on two Russian companies because they used African men and women in the marketing campaigns.

The “Russian Imperial Movement”  promotes ultra-nationalist and white supremacist views and has international ties. It has its own training camp for men, where they learn to fight. A few small nationalistic groups, like “Rusich” take part in the war directly. Some of the known members of “Wagner Group”, a Russian private military company that doesn’t exist officially, also have ties to neo-Nazis and right extremists.

Some Russian neo-Nazis also take part in this war on the Ukrainian side. Their unit is called “Russian Volunteer Corps” (do not confuse with the “Freedom of Russia Legion“, which consists of ordinary Russians who defend Ukraine), The Russian Volunteer Corps is organized by far-right militants who fled from Russia to Ukraine after 2014.

Most Russians don’t know anything about these groups and their activities.

Help Ukraine to win. FAR stands for the right to resistance, in which we recognize that defense against military aggression cannot be non-violent.

What can people in Western Europe do to support you? (both the opposition in Russia and people fleeing the country)?”

KONSTANTIN: The strategy of introducing the sanctions against Russia should be reconsidered. The rule of thumb should be: they must primarily affect the people directly responsible for the war and the repression, rather than Russian population in general. So, entry ban for certain Russian officials and their close relatives – good. Take their properties outside Russia – excellent! Extend the list to the known supporters of the regime without official status – nice!

But obliging companies who serve people with food and IT to stop operating in Russia? Who is this pressurising? Forbidding flights between Russia and Europe can’t help stop the war or harm the regime.

Our colleagues in German institutions are sometimes required to avoid co-authoring journal papers with those in Russia. Although I understand emotional grounds of those measures (many Russian institutes officially issued very shameful pro-war statements), this only contributes to isolation between Russian and outside communities, causing harm to both.

I want to stress one important thing that many outside Russia may not quite agree with: if the life of people in Russia gets worse because of sanctions they won’t go to make a revolution. Most of them will just further blame the Western countries. The poorest ones will continue to struggle to survive. The middle class will limit their ambitions, some will move away from Russia. None of this will cause the fall of the regime, neither end of the war.

OKSANA: Many people in Russia don’t believe that the war will stop if Russia stops. They are scared of NATO and the “West” and think that if Russia gives up Ukraine, the war will continue inside Russia.

It is very difficult to prove to people that stopping the war and admitting that it was a mistake to start it is the right move. I think it is important to show ordinary Russians that Western Europe doesn’t want them to be killed and enslaved and starve to death and that we are not really enemies and no one has a goal to eliminate Russia and Russians.

ALEXANDER: I believe that Western Europeans should urge their leaders not to escalate the conflict and do not support EU decision to supply weapons to Ukraine as it only increases the number of deaths. I consider Ukrainians as a brotherly nation and the United States to be the true evil here.

MARIA: Stop “cancelling” Russians and spreading the word that all Russians are bad, and support the president and this war. It’s simply not true and for an average Russian person this cancelling only makes them believe that the government and Putin are right about how EU is afraid of Russia and therefore want to wipe it out. Instead of cancelling, make EU entry easier for people fleeing the country. At the moment it’s almost impossible to receive a Schengen Visa in Russia and therefore go to EU.

VLADISLAV: I can’t imagine what can be done outside supporting the opposition. As for the people leaving Russia – the first problem they face is lack of options how to get away, and the second is the extreme difficulty to get your money out of the country. So it would be great if Boeing/Airbus and flights to EU and other countries returned and if it would be possible to pay with Russian cards abroad. But I doubt that anything from that list can be done.

FAR ACTIVISTS: Help Ukraine to win. FAR stands for the right to resistance, in which we recognize that defense against military aggression cannot be non-violent.

It is not easy for Ukrainians who were deported to Russia even to get to EU borders as they lack money, information and sometimes documents. There are volunteers who will try to help them, but the process is dangerous and slow so many Ukrainian refugees are still in Russia. Making it easier to pass the EU borders for them would help.

A lot of people left Russia through Kazakhstan, Armenia, Uzbekistan etc, some of them want to apply for European visas. Many have found study or work opportunities since February, but didn’t finish their visa application processes in Russian. They are being asked to return to Russia to apply for their visas. It would be nice if they could do that directly through embassies in these countries, because returning to Russia is not safe.

There is also a fear in the regions that the Russian authorities will declare those who fight against the regime Islamic or other types of terrorists and extremists, and the European public will support this as it happened during the Chechen wars. We ask you to support the Russian resistance and give it a voice, especially to the people from the regions.

The withdrawal of companies that have something to do with Internet connectivity is a major problem, because without the Internet we’ll have no means to fight propaganda properly. There’s a petition about that.

The names of the interviewees have been changed for obvious reasons.

 

“We cannot eat natural gas”: An interview with Texan environmental activists at the Ende Gelände climate camp

An interview with Elida Castillo, Josette Hinojosa and Chloe Torres about the effects of fracking and LNG terminals in their home of Texas, USA.


09/10/2022

This is a shortened version of the original interview, which can be found here, originally broadcast on Radio Helsinki.

This year a climate camp took place in Hamburg from 09.08 to 15.08 involving over 40 organizations. Ende Gelände was there to organize mass actions of civil disobedience. All actions were directed towards twelve new planned LNG (Liquified Natural Gas) terminals at Hamburg Port. Gas is much worse for the climate than CO2, and it’s obtained by fracking. This pumps different chemicals and water at high pressure into the ground, to get at the gas. It is so negative for environment, climate, and health impacts  that it is forbidden in Europe. Now, Europe wants to import this from North America.

Elida Castillo is the Program Director for Chispa, which is active in Corpus Christi, Texas, around climate justice.

Josette Hinojasa lives in Brownsville, Texas, and is a member of the South Texas Environmental Justice Network, as well as a member of Chispa.

Chloe Torres is from Corpus Christi, Texas. She is the organizer of the campaign against export of fossil fuels for the Texas Campaign for the Environment.

Tamara Ussner:
You came here for the climate camp and for the climate actions. Where do you live and how does fracking affect your communities?

Chloe Torres:
Where I live, it’s known as the Coastal Bend region because we hug the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. While we don’t have any fracking currently where I live, fracking still impacts our everyday lives. In Gregory, Texas, Cheniere LNG exports more LNG than any other facility in the USA. Cheniere is the top exporter of LNG in North America. Because I am an organizer, trying to build a base of people that oppose this facility. We do that by talking to people who live less than a mile away from this exporter. The stories are really terrifying. When LNG facilities burn off excess gas, they partake in a process called ‘flaring’. This results in a huge ball of fire, lighting up the night sky – making it look like daytime. That’s how bright it is. It shakes their windows. It keeps them up at night. It scares their children.

Many people move here for a lower price, for a nice home. But the realtor don’t tell them they are going to live right next to this fire-ball. The flare is ugly and alarming, but it also emits thousands of pounds of pollution. These include volatile organic compounds, carbon dioxide, sulfur oxide – pollutants linked to cancer, linked to skin and eye irritation, and respiratory illnesses. This in an area where children and the elderly are already disproportionately impacted by respiratory illnesses such as asthma. It’s a nightmare for many who they think they’re moving into this nice quiet area to raise their families, instead they move into a new cancer alley.

Tamara Ussner:
Is it a dry area? I mean, we are at the time right now where the half of the world is burning, so that it is a pretty high risk as well.

Chloe Torres:
Yes, the area is drier than usual because, climate change impacts our daily lives, our regions, in so many different ways that we could have never foreseen. Luckily, there hasn’t been a fire yet. But that is always the risk that people are forced to accept to live in that area. It’s either you normalize it – deal with it every day, or you leave. And leaving for a lot of people is just not an option. A lot of people say we’re all going to be climate refugees in the next 2030 years. But climate refugees are already exist and some are in Texas.

Tamara Ussner:
How does Fracking and LNG affect your communities?

Elida Castillo:
I live less than 8 miles away from Cheniere LNG’s facility, and definitely see the large plume of this flare. It causes a lot of health and environmental issues, but they also take a lot of subsidies from taxpayers. Cheniere is one of the largest recipients of tax abatements and tax subsidies in the state. In this very low-income community, taxpayers in the area pay a lot of money to have these facilities there. Many families like mine have been there for generations and LNG is relatively new, built within the past five years. They target our area and promise that they’ll build a facility safe for the communities, that it’s going to create job. And they pretend we’re going to benefit so much when it’s actually the opposite.

We live in communities with a large number of uninsured people who have to work two to three jobs just to put food on the table because the cost of living is high and wages are low. But they’re exacerbating the problem by this facility that takes a lot from the community and uses a lot of bay water for the cooling towers. That pollutes our water. But also these increased exports cause more pollution in our water from tankers fueled by crude oil. Like a car, whenever you drive tankers, you get emissions. Large, very large crude carriers and LNG tankers leave  poison in the water. And that’s the fish that we eat and sustains fishing and tourism industries. It’s causing more soil erosion. And we’re in an area prone to hurricanes, where enough land and sea grasses could mitigate the impact. So those hurricanes cause more and more damage.

Tamara Ussner:
Why is it that such facilities are mostly built in low-income areas?

Elida Castillo:
Affluent people have the means to watch the news or have relationships with political leaders and they will organize and fight against it. When they look at low income communities, they come in with this narrative and say, “oh, we’re going to do great things for your community. We’re going to donate money to different organizations. We’re going to fund your food banks, we’re going to help your schools.” And in these areas people don’t have the time to be following permits, because in Texas, they make it very difficult for you to speak out against these projects. They put the notice in the papers, and hardly anybody gets the paper anymore. They don’t publicize it on social media. Objections must be in person. There’s not enough notice. There’s not any translation provided unless you request it.

So  community members just don’t have the time or ability to stay on top of it. Even as organizers, it’s very difficult to keep track of all the permit applications for all facilities in the area. Just imagine the average person who’s just trying to put food on the table.

In the Gregory community where Cheniere was built, many regular community members don’t have advanced degrees. They run for city council or run for Mayor. And so they say to the companies – “that sounds good”. Because either they or family worked in the industry before, and they trust the state to protect them.

Tamara Ussner:
Yeah, we know how well that works under Ted Cruz. So how is it at your home?

Josette Hinojosa:
We’re the last piece of Texas coastline that is not completely industrialized. There have been five proposed projects here. However, only one is still fighting for a chance to come to life – Rio Grande LNG. So we haven’t been affected directly as Elida or Chloe in that sense. However, this is a fight all across Texas because it shouldn’t even exist. If it’s not permitted here in Europe, then why is it that we continue to jack the shit out of our state?

So we haven’t seen them yet, but there are high demands coming in from Europe to produce more because of this energy crisis over the next two to three years. But it should indicate that we need to transition, and  do it now because we can no longer be destroying our homelands, our water supply, our air quality, each and every single time these people come in.

A friend moved to where Elida and Chloe are in Corpus. And she’s like, I can’t get rid of these allergies. But it’s not allergies. It’s your body adapting to the chemicals in the air.

Tamara Ussner:
How exactly does your fight on the front lines there look like against LNG and fracking and those industries?

Josette Hinojosa:
So far, the struggle is real. It’s been a process of trying to delay these corporations from getting their funding. So building global alliances with people in France, Australia and Ireland were instrumental in helping us to talk to banks and ask them to divest from these projects. Some of them still have not, but many of them. They’ve heard us and  listened to the human side of things, saying ‘hey, this is wrong’. And the struggle really lies in the leadership that we have, local politicians  really comfortable with allowing these industries to come in because they refuse to educate themselves. We’ve hosted events to educate them. We’ve invited city council members. They don’t show up. They completely and totally side with these companies.

That’s a clear indicator that these people are getting bought out by these companies. We’ve heard from locals that they take them out to wine and dine them. So this is why they’ve already had their minds made up even before they’ve heard reason.

Chloe Torres:
We’re scrambling for most of the year. There’s no rest because we don’t just have LNG export, we have crude oil exports, we have petrochemical facilities. The largest ethane steam cracker of its kind in the entire world. We are also dealing with proposed desalination facilities. The city Corpus Christi is pursuing those desalination facilities because 80% of our water is used by heavy industry. So they sold all of our water away, and they say, “oh, well, we need to produce more”. We want to have an uninterruptible water supply for our residents. However, we do not use a fraction of the water that heavy industry uses. They want to build four but this water will not be for residents. Our population is not growing that fast.

So a lot of our work is going door to door in and getting people to the door and talking to them about their experiences: “What is your reality living here? Do you like living here? What would you change about it if you could?” and invite them to the next event. Usually a workshop or a teaching. “How well do you know this facility operating within a mile from you that you see every day on your way to work?”

It looks like leadership development. So many people are afraid of power. They see power as this inherently bad thing that when people have it, they are just corrupted. But we teach them that we need power to fight back because we don’t have money. We don’t have the political networks of these companies. But we have each other and many different skills and resources, human resources, to bring to our collective struggles. We train people on how to canvas, how to speak with neighbors, how to plan a direct action, how to participate in a direct action, how to handle the more administrative ‘boring stuff’. A movement needs those to be sustainable. All these different skills really make or break a mass movement of people. So that’s what our work looks like, a lot of outreach and teaching people not to be afraid of themselves and the power that they hold.

Elida Castillo:
I think we all have the same goals: organizing the communities, educating them, creating awareness of how these facilities impact daily life. What does a permit application look like? What does giving public testimony look like? Explaining what the different agencies overseeing the oil and gas industry do. In Texas, that is the Railroad Commission –  that’s very misleading.

Being here in Hamburg, participating with Ende Gelände, we formed this alliance with them last year when three LNG terminals wee proposed. Now, unfortunately, because of the war in Ukraine, there’s more. And showing our community, there’s no way that we are wrong when this community over here has the same story. This community on the other side of the globe has the same story. Who’s actually lying here or misleading or misinforming?

We remind the community that this is our home. So many industries have come, built here and then filed bankruptcy and left. We’re left to pick up and do the cleanup. We demand better. We deserve better because ultimately, we cannot eat natural gas.

It’s building up that power. That’s what the fight looks like for us, so that we can educate the community. And then they go back and they start pushing back and asking questions. These facilities don’t want people to be in the know. And so we fight back by saying, ‘look, you have every right to be angry. You have all the tools at your disposal, and let’s change this because our planet cannot sustain this’.

Tamara Ussner:
What does state repression look like regarding direct action or action in general?

Elida Castillo:
The current law says you can be jailed up to ten years as a federal offense. The most stringent offense for ‘blocking critical infrastructure’. To block something that’s going to harm our communities and kill us, they would fine us and jail us. We’re told, you cannot fight for a better community, but you also can’t complain. And we can’t afford to have our European allies freezing. But we don’t care about you dying. That’s what oppression looks like in our communities.

Josette Hinojosa:
Now they’re trying to silence us. They ignore our emails to the county commissioners’ meetings, or conveniently ‘lost’ them at times. Now they will not read anything that we submit in public comment,  but you must physically be there in person. More barriers for people. What if they are disabled? What if they are not able to physically be there? And many of us work, like myself, I have to work to support my children, yet I am part of the public. What if I wanted to leave a public comment? Well, they’re not going to consider it at all. So it’s a form of silencing us. It’s gotten to the point of violence at school board meetings. It can be very discouraging, but it’s also makes me want to fight back even harder.

It’s not okay. And it’s quite scary, because what does that say about our voice? They’re trying to silence us by violence. Isn’t that what our country is known for, our freedom of speech? But freedom of speech for who? Clearly it’s not for brown, indigenous BIPOC people. And they make that abundantly clear when they enact violence on our people.

Cloe Torres:
The state works with local federal, county, border patrol, law enforcement. The prison industrial complex in the United States is completely suffocating. That’s why we have to use every tool in our toolbox that doesn’t necessarily look like getting arrested like it does in other countries. We have to be a little bit more innovative in building people power. So it looks like creating art, looks like  non-political events, but still politicizing and radicalizing people, through talking about our experiences and validating the daily fear people live with.

Yeah, I’ll say to all organizers and activists out there that just be very careful. It may seem kind of paranoid or ‘extra’ to protect your identity when you’re in the street demonstrating or when  posting online. But it really can come back to get you. The Port of Corpus Christi where I live, is the number one exporter of fossil fuels in the USA, they’re huge. They have a huge amount of capital. They also have their own police force. They hire Ex and current FBI agents to work with them. One day I posted a pretty non-abrasive rhetorical statement about the court going to hell for what they did to the Black residents of Corpus Christi. They were pushed out of their homes to make way for corporations and profit. A day later, my father says that an FBI agent had come to our apartment complex looking for me, to talk to me about how my Facebook status update being interpreted as a domestic terrorist threat. So you can be incarcerated over a Facebook status. As Josette said, we think we have freedom of speech in the United States, but when it’s pushing back, when it’s critical of the status quo and the powers that be, you lose that right. So, yeah, just everyone be more careful than you think you should.

Tamara Ussner:
What do you expect or hope for regarding the European climate justice movement?

Elida Castillo:
We hope to form stronger alliances because right now the narrative is that we need to help our European allies. If they transition away from fossil fuels, then that kind of takes away the wind out of the sails of that argument. President Biden, said he’s committed to environmental justice in our communities, but at the same time when the war in Ukraine happened, he authorized Cheniere to increase exports.

So if we can have more support from our European allies and less dependence on fossil fuels, especially those from the Global South, and find ways to transition away from this, it’ll be much appreciated. Holding true to environmental justice means to amplify the voices of the people in the Global South to demand of European governments: “You don’t like this happening in your country? Don’t import it from those who are being silenced and don’t have that voice.”

One more thing. If your government starts talking about hydrogen and carbon capture storage and utilization and green hydrogen, and we’re going to start importing this, be very wary. Because what they’re doing is they’re getting influenced by the oil and gas industry on our side of the world, who use these measures to continue exploiting communities. They’re claiming,”we can solve the climate crisis using this technology to stay in line of that 1.5 degree Celsius”. That’s only going to further harm communities already being harmed by fossil fuel industries. So question things if it sounds too good to be true, and question where they’re going to be getting these resources from. And just stay in touch with us. Thank you for all you’re doing.

Josette Hinojosa:
If our goal is to try to stay within that 1.5 degrees Celsius, then Europeans must recognize that time really is of the essence. Right now is the time for action and pushing hard for renewables. Because while there may be an energy crisis possibly lasting two to three years, it’ll be over in those two to three years. But within that time you guys can transition and push your leaders to do renewables. That helps us on our end because right now ancestral lands are being destroyed, communities are being directly affected by these fossil fuel industries. There is just no more time to second guess or to try to make profit off of this. This is all about short-term profits. No one is seeing how in the long run this affects all of us and it will come back to haunt Europeans if we don’t do something now. So that is the big ask, please push your leaders. Don’t listen to everything that you hear coming from our presidents and leaders because they are bought and sold by corporations, the politicians, most of them are bought and sold.

We need that truth to be told – they would rather build alliances through oil and gas and get a quick profit instead of thinking about the people. But we are the people, including Europeans. It is incumbent upon all of us to act. But especially here, because you all could do something great and help us in the long run by pushing away from fossil fuels and from hypocrisy. Our children cannot wait to see what’s going to happen. We cannot wait to see what’s going to happen. We know what’s happening. The world is on fire. We can no longer entertain these fossil fuel industries. We have to break ties and these cycles. There’s just absolutely no better time than now for Europeans.

We all have trauma. We all carry all of this together. But there’s one thing that we all have and can show one another – kindness and compassion and love. We can build a better world and you guys could help us and lead that movement. It inspires me to see the Fridays for Future. I have two daughters. One of them is 18. She’s disabled. And so a lot of the times the disabled community children are the ones that get forgotten about. I like to believe that if my daughter had that capacity, she would be right here with me demanding a better future. And that’s why I fight for her, because she doesn’t have a voice in this and I have to be her voice. And so this fight is important because that’s all I have. That’s all I can give my children. And all I can do is just fight for a future that they deserve and to fight for a future for the rest of the children. So as a mother and as a parent, I just ask other parents to please stand up. Fight for your children, fight for your grandchildren.

Cloe Torres:
Like Josette was saying, I really hope that the European climate justice movement rejects this idea that has been around for 400 years: That we can sacrifice some people for the sake of ourselves, for the sake of our comfort, for the sake of our desires. That mentality led to colonization, to slavery, incarceration, exploitation. We have to, every single day, reject that part of our imagination while using our hands, our minds, to create something that is in service of that just world that we all hope for, right?

The only impossible demand is that we’re not brave enough to voice and to fight for. So you may think that what you have to contribute is not enough. It’s not a traditional skill that people that study mass movements like to romanticize. But I promise you have something within yourself that you can use to help. And it’s not about just showing up one day at a demonstration, at a protest, and taking your pictures and going home and posting them online and feeling really good about yourself.

Yeah, that is cool. But what you have to do is you have to look for the organizers. You have to look for the people who are already building that world that you say you want and you get with them and you talk every single day and you build something every day, and you invite a new person every single day. The only way we’re getting out of this is if we have enough people to no longer ask nicely, to ask politely – while we’re dying; to demand that they see our humanity. We take it. We use our power and we take what we want un-apologetically, like they do, like the fascists do, like the conservatives do, like the liberals do. We do that and we’ll get everything we want. I need people to not reinvent the wheel, but to look for the people who are already building the world that you want to see and work with them every single day.

“Putin is making sure that the opposition is not united”

Interview with Russian Activists – Part 1: Protests in Russia


08/10/2022

Hello, thanks for talking to us. Could you start by introducing yourselves?

VLADISLAV: I’m a 32-year-old man working in tech at one of the best universities in Russia.

DARJA: I’m a 33-year-old woman from a small village in Lugansk. I moved to Moscow in 2011 and am an unemployed product manager and analyst.

OKSANA: I’m 32 years old, half-Ukrainian and half-Russian. I have a 4-year-old son. My grandmother and uncle still live near Donetsk and are sometimes under attacks.

MARIA: I’m an IT specialist living in Moscow.

KONSTANTIN: I am a 34-year-old scientist working in experimental high-energy physics. I did military studies in a civic university and got a reserve lieutenant rank without any actual military service.

NIKITA: I’m 23 years old, I am currently doing my master’s degree in forestry. I also work in the forest industry in Krasnoyarsk

FAR ACTIVISTS: We are a small group of activists from Feminist Anti-war Resistance (FAR), a Russian movement that was founded on 25 February as a response to the Russian invasion in Ukraine. We are just ordinary people, originally from different republics and regions of Russia, but currently we live abroad. We keep in touch with our friends and relatives as well as other FAR activists inside our home country and are pretty involved in what’s happening there.

ALEXANDER; I’m a 27 year old investment manager from Moscow, currently staying in Uzbekistan

A few weeks ago, Russian activists were pessimistic about resisting Putin’s repression. Now there is a new wave of activity. What is the current mood in Russia?

VLADISLAV: Fear, depression.

ALEXANDER>: In general, partial mobilization has frightened everyone, even ardent supporters of the current regime. Males are running away from the country.

There is too much fake news in Russia currently, but official president statements and real actions seem to be quite different as territorial commissariats have their own KPIs for military recruits and so they send military notifications even to those who have no experience of army operations.

KONSTANTIN: I do not really think that people have become more ready to resist Putin since the start of mobilization. What many of us now do (or plan to do) is to avoid being conscripted, by any means – first legally (getting some official status), then sometimes via illegal actions like ignoring a draft notice.

Many people are prepared to do this, but only a small fraction associate what’s going on with Putin’s failures and blame him for that. I am not sure if this mood can be easily converted into massive protests against Putin’s regime in the near future.

DARJA: Many want to leave or have already left the Russian Federation. Nevertheless, I meet a lot of people who hold opposite views; for example, among my relatives or in communities of mothers.

MARIA: It’s too early to tell, because some of the pro-government people just started to understand that something is wrong because of the mobilization, because of the army failures, because of contradicting news and official messages.

But it’s a very, very long process so this new wave is a good sign. But it’s not enough and won’t lead to any significant changes yet. There are several reasons why:

  1. There is one security camera for every 7 people in Moscow and 40% of them recognize faces – so it’s very hard to hide.
  2. Russia has 5,5 police officers for every 1,000 people.
  3. Russia has still been receiving weapons from other countries since late September.
  4. Just read a few stories about torture in Russian jail to get an idea about the cruelty level.

It is hard to participate in protests in Russia without ending up in jail – and this makes your activism pointless. So far, not enough people are ready to act to overcome all these barriers. People are living quite a good life and they are not ready to throw it all away, especially if they have children.

FAR ACTIVISTS: Most of our friends are against the war ­– they experienced shock and pure panic when the mobilization began. Many of those who could afford to leave Russia were dubious after the invasion, but they are now trying to leave in a hurry. For those who were “uninterested in politics”, and “mild” supporters of the government, it was also a shock. But some of the people who support the war see this as an opportunity to win more quickly.

Independent surveys in Russia can only measure the war support with indirect questions, and it’s estimated that about 90% of Russians refuse to partake in surveys. So, it’s not easy to truly see the whole picture. However, it is certain that on average, people are increasingly frightened and depressed.

The mobilization led to a wave of more active protesting. During last months, most protests were mainly the quiet, “partisan” type or kitchen talks, but this time, people took to the streets. However, the acts of repression are increasingly violent as well, and this wave seems to be subsiding.

How widespread are the protests? Are they just in the big cities?

VLADISLAV: Even in big cities they are very small. There is a very high risk of being put in jail for going to a protest. Some independent media say that men caught at protests receive subpoenas to military offices right there, to be sent to war.

DARJA: I think those who are against are afraid to go, or do not believe in their ability to influence anything. There were protests a couple of days after the announcement of partial mobilization in Makhachkala, but they were suppressed.

KONSTANTIN: I live in a small city (below 100,000 inhabitants), and do not see any public protests. We had 2-3 small protests of up to 40 people in late February /early March. This is even smaller than earlier protests in the city during last few years, but I’ve been aware of no others since then.

At the same time, I’ve observed some forms of “quiet protest” here, such as anti-war graffiti. This is sometimes quite noticeable; e.g., there was a Ukraine flag painted on a wall that is hardly accessible but clearly visible from a very large area. It was painted over by city services in less than a day. However, it is difficult to judge how many people are actually doing it.

FAR ACTIVISTS: According to the news, protests happened in 42 cities as of September 21. The most active protests happened in the Dagestan region on September 25. Since many people were drafted from central Russia, a number of protests took place there as well. People were detained in Novosibirsk, Ulan-Ude, Tomsk, Khabarovsk, and Yakutsk.

In Yakutsk, for example, approximately 400 (mostly women) rallied by dancing a traditional circular dance called osuokhay. It is difficult to say how big the protest in the countryside is. The internet isn’t available everywhere.

Who is leading the protests? How large and effective is the Russian opposition?

KONSTANTIN: Only small local activists without any serious political experience are able to organize protests, but they do not have enough skills, and the protests will eventually fail, unless they become really very massive and get out of control. That’s only my vague and very subjective feeling though.

OKSANA: Russian opposition is highly suppressed, and I don’t really know the names of the people who are organizing protests now. I get info about the place and time of the protests from friends incidentally in personal discussions.

FAR ACTIVISTS: Putin made it impossible for any public opposition leaders to rise and gain enough support. The famous cases are the assassination of Boris Nemtsov in front of the Kremlin in 2015 and the attempt to poison Alexey Navalny in 2020. Navalny is alive but in prison now.

Any public opposition leader could be in danger of arrest or even worse scenarios, so many have left the country, and the current protests’ organizers remain anonymous. People spread information mainly through public Telegram channels and encrypted chats in Signal and Matrix. We unite in small groups very carefully, because trusting the wrong person could lead to prison, beating, and torture, and could put our relatives in danger.

MARIA: Right now, all the opposition leaders that were really able to change anything are in jail or dead. And not only the leaders – some key members of their teams as well, so the opposition is quite chaotic now. Some of the organizations and people are still trying to continue their activities, but mostly online. Their vlogs and podcasts are aimed at explaining what is really going on, how the government is lying to us, and how the propaganda is working.

The Financial Times reported that there were arson attacks against army recruitment offices in 16 Russian regions. Are you able to say more about this? What other actions are taking place?

NIKITA: The arsonist of the military enlistment office was detained in Krasnoyarsk. He turned out to be a 23-year-old guy. Оn 3 October he threw Molotov cocktails at the military commissariat of the Soviet and Central districts and fled. Also, when I’m walking in the street, I see a lot of anti-war stickers and graffiti.

FAR ACTIVISTS: Arson attacks against military buildings didn’t start with the mobilization; such attempts have been made since the beginning of the war. The mobilization incited a new wave of these. Wikipedia maintains a map of the new attempts, and there’s a fascinating video example from Uryupinsk. One of the interesting cases is an arson attempt with Molotov cocktails by an 11th grade schoolgirl from Kazan, Tatarstan.

Other brutal actions are mostly random. In Irkutsk region, a man shot an army recruitment officer. There was a suicide case after receiving a subpoena in Veliky Novgorod and a failed attempt of public self-arson in Ryazan.

The usual smaller “partisan” actions also continue – stickers and graffiti on the streets, delivery of home-published newspapers (i.e. FAR’s “Women’s Truth”), leaflets, etc. Cars, monuments and banners with “Z” signs are burnt, get painted over or smashed from time to time. FAR receives anonymous stories about the quiet sabotage of pro-regime actions, even by lower ranking officials. And, of course, there are people who try to stop the trains carrying military equipment.

How is Putin dealing with the opposition?

KONSTANTIN: Harshly. All opposition politicians with any real power who remained in Russia are jailed. The only exception that comes to my mind is some members of Yabloko party, like Lev Shlosberg, but they seem to balance on a very thin blade to not say or do anything that would trigger them getting sent to prison immediately.

People who show up at rallies in big cities are arrested en masse and get sentences of up to 15 days in prison, with the risk of criminal prosecution in case of repeated arrest.

OKSANA: Putin considers the opposition to be traitors and “Western” agents. This opinion is quite common among people in the country, especially the elder part of society – my parents and grandparents have called me a traitor dozens of times just for disagreeing with Putin’s politics.

VLADISLAV: Opposition leaders are treated badly. Most active leaders are put into prison or scared out of the country. He is making sure that opposition is not united.

FAR ACTIVISTS: Currently, male protesters receive subpoenas to army recruitment offices. The usual strategy also continues to apply: activists are charged with something (i.e., protesting, posting online, and even “likes” on social media) and go to jail, protesters get beaten in the streets, in jails, and sometimes at home. There’s a risk of being deprived of parental rights.

The beating is harsh and inflicted randomly, regardless of person’s sex. Sometimes it leads to serious injuries. There was a recent case of sexual violence by a police officer against a male protester, a poet Artem Kamardin.

The conditions in detention centres are harsh: they are cold, dirty, sometimes overcrowded, with sometimes no mattresses to sleep on (or very old ones with insects, blood stains, etc.). Often the road to the detention centre takes several hours in the back of ”avtozak” (prisoner transport vehicle), with no water, food or toilet.

The laws do not apply to you, of course. You get constantly called a traitor, do not get any medications, and your belongings can be returned damaged following your detention.

Part 2 of this interview, on the effect of conscription and sanctions, will be published on theleftberlin.com soon. The names of the interviewees have been changed for obvious reasons.

Between Colourful Balloons and The Riot-Police

Last November, thousands took to the streets against the PKK ban


06/10/2022

Berlin – Yellow, red and green balloons float over Hermannplatz in Berlin. It is the 27th of November, 2021. Some thousands of people gather on the square to protest under the slogan “Cancel the PKK ban! End the war – find political solutions!” They plan to march through Berlin. The date of the protest was no coincidence. Exactly 43 years earlier was the founding of the working class party in Kurdistan (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê) – abbreviated PKK. Also not a coincidence was the date of the party’s ban, on the 26th of November 1993. To protest against this, people had gathered at Hermannplatz.

Many of the protesters appeared with paper signs, banners and flags. Most of them
were painted in the colours of the Kurdish freedom movement: yellow, red and
green. Alongside the main demand of an end to the PKK ban, there were also calls for the release of Abdullah Öcalan, one of the founders of the PKK. Already at the opening demonstration, the the police started their first advances against a few activists. The police alleged that the protestors had some flags with the symbols of YPJ and YPG on them, which are the self-defence units of the Kurdish freedom movement. Also, all pictures of Abdullah Öcalan amounted to “a bankruptcy declaration for a democratic state like Germany”, said Martin Dolzer. He is the director of the demonstration and the one who registered it.

Dolzer has many years of experience with the registration and direction of large demonstrations. He said that the cooperation level from the police on that day was one of the worst he ever experienced. The ex-politician (2015-2020 Mayoralty in Hamburg) said that the police aggravated the protest from the beginning. But the state troops didn‘t set special conditions for the situation at the Hermannplatz, according to Dolzer. Nevertheless, they forced him to start the rally directly. At that moment the police already threatened him with the dissolution of the rally, Dolzer told us afterwards.

FLINTA* Block declares: PKK means feminist revolution

Only a few meters further, as the rally reached Sonnenallee, the demonstration was halted by police. Near the tip of the self-declared FLINTA*-Block (Women, Lesbian, Inter-, Trans-, A-Gender) , around 30 police officers get ready. A few moments later, they ran into the demonstration to rip the front banner away from the demonstration block. It’s one of two banners that the police would seize over the course of the day. By the time the demonstration reached its end at Oranienplatz, they would add three paper signs, snatched from the rows of demonstrators to the total. The reason for their interventions was that “the imprint had criminal content according to the Freedom of Assembly Act”, the police of Berlin stated later. The text of the front banner of the FLINTA*-Block showed in big letters „Weg mit dem Verbot der PKK“ (“Down with the PKK-Ban”) on the left and the right side of the banner showed a star in the style of the Kurdish freedom movement.

After the stop, the rally continues further along Sonnenallee. From the FLINTA* Block come chants of”Jin, Jiyan – Azadi”, which means “Women, life – freedom”. On a banner high over the crowd “The defence of life is not illegal” can be seen. Next to the text it shows a woman from the Kurdish resistance fighting units, behind her, colorful flowers. All around the raised banner were Ialso a lot of signs holding the words,: “PKK means feminist revolution”.

Around 5,000 people showed up at the rally despite a steady drizzle and the corona pandemic, according to Dolzer. The police stated there were around 2000 people. All in all, the rally was very creative and colourful. But there was also a massive presence of the black-clothed riot units of the Berlin police. Afterwards, the leader of the rally criticised the massive amount of police units around the demonstration. Publicizing the meaning of the demonstration to the streets of Berlin was made nearly impossible, according to Dolzer.

The big number of police units is a normal thing at pro-Kurdish rallies in Germany, the activist Mazlum S. Bavli told us in a background conversation. Especially at the rallies against the PKK ban, there is always a massive police accompaniment. This year, as in many others, the North Hessen native was on the streets of Berlin. The demonstration against the PKK ban has became a tradition for him, the 33-year-old told us. To him, it is very important to “show a symbol against the PKK ban, even if it is grueling.” But it’s not only the demonstration that has a long tradition. The police presence and and tough methods against protestors are also an annual procedure. Bavli, who is also personally affected by the PKK ban, told us about violence against protestors that happens every year “in one way or another.” The state is investigating Bavli in a 129b-case, meaning he is suspected of being part of a terrorist organisation outside of Germany – a claim that is baseless, he says. The hardline methods of the police would still be seen this year.

As the rally enters Oranienstraße, some activists lit fireworks and distress flares from a roof. Below they unrolled a big banner with the symbol from the forbidden PKK on it. Everybody except the police found this measure of solidarity to be in goodwill. During the last part of the rally, hostilities against the pro-Kurdish demonstration also arose. While many people leaned curiously out of their windows to watch the mass of people go by, some of the residents of Oranienstraße showed the so-called ‘Wolfsgruß’. The hand gesture is the symbol of the ‘Gray Wolf’, a militant fascist Turkish organisation. In Austria, they have been declared a terrorist organization, and this sign is forbidden – making it is a criminal offense. But in Germany, there is no such ban to this day. The crowd reacted to the right-wing radicals with chants of “up with international solidarity”. Also, one banana peel found its way in the direction of the window from where the “Wolfsgruß” came.

The march reaches the endpoint at Oranienplatz, the place of the last demonstration. During the last few meters, some people inside the demonstration were lighting some smoke flares. As the rest of the crowds entered Oranienplatz the activists lit some bigger flares in the Kurdish colours of yellow, red and green.

The police reacted. Hundreds of helmeted officers storm into the crowd at multiple points. The situation turns hectic, and people get arrested. In total 22 people were arrested on this day, police said. The number of harmed people on side of the activists is unclear. The police stated that there were no officers hurt that day.

Demonstration organizers blame the actions of the police as provocation. The police strategy at Oranienplatz seemed very similar to the strategy the police used at the G20 summit in Hamburg in the year 2017, Matin Dolzer said. At that time Dolzer was a politician in the parliament of Hamburg. He accompanied the protests against the G20 as a parliamentary observer. After the G20 in Hamburg, the police were fronted with critics from many sides because of their hardline tactics. For the 55-year-old, the police action at the endpoint in Berlin was the peak of a day with disproportionate police behaviour. “It was just a provocation against the activists. The police wanted to escalate the situation”, Dolzer commented afterwards. While some political statements and music came from the speaker van, a classic Kurdish ring dance takes shape at Oranienplatz – because of the corona pandemic, with strangely large distances between people. The police continue arresting people. Demo officials walk through the gathering, reminding people of the mandatory mask rules. All these situations together paint a ludicrous picture.

The activist Mazlum Bavli told us that a journalist got arrested, too. Some videos on Twitter underpin the allegations against her. In the video, you can see the arrest and it is clear hear that the person points out to the officials that she is a journalist, followed by a wobble and the end of the video. When we confronted the Berlin police with this case, they said that they have no knowledge about an arrest of a journalist.

Overall, he is satisfied with the rally, Bavli said. He was most pleased by the diversity of people who took part in the protest. “So many different people who are standing behind the same claim – that gives us strength”, said the young man, who is himself active in a Kurdish cultural organization. In the next years, he will come to Berlin again in November. Although he hopes for more critical relations between Germany and Turkey with the newly-elected German government, he has no hope for a change in the case of the PKK ban in Germany. From his point of view, the pro-Turkish legislation in Germany is based on economic and strategic interests. According to the political science student, a change in the parliament in Germany can‘t change that.

PKK-ban since 1993: The background

What is hidden behind the urge to overturn the PKK-ban in Germany? What brings
so many people to the streets of Berlin every November?

For Martin Dolzer the answer is quite clear: “The demand is a justified one. Because the PKK stands for democracy and peace.” In 2010 Dolzer published his book “The Conflict between the Turkish and Kurdish. Human Rights – peace – democracy in a European country?” The PKK ban is also part of the book. According to the German constitution, the PKK actually should be supported, said Dolzer. It’s in the name of European human rights. Germany is, besides Turkey, the only country in the world that is so repressive against the Kurdish freedom movement and the PKK. Such a prohibition policy is known in no other country in the world. In a background talk, Dolzer stressed the situation in Belgium. In that country, the PKK has a combatant status. That means the PKK is treated as a war party.

From Dolzer’s point of view, the PKK has this status quite rightly, because the PKK is forced to fight. In the older days peace negotiations failed because of Turkey, he stated. The last time was in the year 2013. During the rally, a group of lawyers from Berlin made it known that they wanted to start some legal actions against the PKK ban in Germany. Whether or not it will be effective, we will see over time. There was a lawsuit against the listing of the PKK on the European Terrorist List. On the 15th of November 2018, the court found that the listing was unjustified. So they took the PKK off of the list from 2014 to 2017. But there was no direct impact of the court decision.

Similar to Bavli, Dolzer also claims that the German prohibition policy is the result of pro-Turkish behaviour. From his point of view, there is a German contingent that has an interest in a Turkish military focus on Kurdish Lands. Mostly on the lands where the people try to live in democratic federalism. “In so-called ‘failed states’ it is cheaper to buy gas and oil, then it is from a stable democracy”, Dolzer said. Bavli sees Turkey as a big economic partner of Germany. The Turkish state is one of the biggest clients of the German weapons industry. In addition, around 6,000 German companies operate in Turkey, Bavli stated.

Political reactions from the traditional economic ties are just a logical step in this case. The PKK ban is one of them. The strong economic boundaries between the two states are also the main difference between other countries, for example, France or Belgium. One of the results of the PKK ban in Germany is paragraph 129b. Dolzer is convinced that the paragraph is not compatible with the German constitution. The reason for his opinion is that the decision that gets pursued, is up to ministries and the government itself. But in Germany, there is a separation between the court, law enforcement and politics. The law says: “In deciding, the Ministry shall take into account whether the efforts of the association violate the basic values of a state order that respects human dignity or the dignity of a human person or the peaceful coexistence of peoples and, when all the circumstances are considered, appear reprehensible.”

“It is a fatal sign for democracy when it comes to the point that people who organise protests can be charged for 129b”, Dolzer summarised. In a democracy, it should be desirable that people stand up against war.

Mazlum Bavli who sees himself confronted with a 129b charge, agreed with Dolzer’s point of view: “The paragraph was used before to criminalize Turkish leftists and Kurdish activists. For legal protests, they go to jail for years in some cases. To sell bus tickets is enough to get a charge.” On the other hand, it is necessary for Germany to fight against right-wing terrorism in Germany. But Paragraph 129b has never done anything against fascist terror in Germany because it isn’t used for that, Bavli said. It remains to be seen if there will be some movement on the PKK ban in Germany. In the meantime, the tradition of coming from the whole of Europe to Berlin in November to protest against it will probably remain.

Can we have class struggle without identity politics?

Review – Fractured: Race, Class, Gender and the Hatred of Identity Politics by Michael Richmond and Alex Charnley


05/10/2022

After decades of virulent polemics, is the tide turning on identity politics? Looking at the Pluto Press catalogue, it would seem that there is hope for that. In May, Pluto was the European publisher of Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò’s hit book Elite Capture: How the Powerful Took Over Identity Politics (And Everything Else). Pluto’s September releases include a new book that cuts identity politics some slack. Fractured: Race, Class, Gender and the Hatred of Identity Politics provides an earnest exploration of identity’s political importance, supported with thorough historical evidence and a willingness to answer flippant anti-wokeness with theoretical arguments.

Fractured is authored by Michael Richmond and Alex Charnley, co-editors of Occupied Times and its successor magazine, Base. The two want to go beyond the use of “identity politics” as a “political smear,” using it instead as an entry point into a diagnosis of the UK and US left. Refusing to accept the premise that identity politics is divisive in itself, Richmond and Charnley set off to analyze the fractures that structure societies and social movements along the lines of race, class, and gender. Identity politics does play a role in that, but against a class-reductionist common sense, Richmond and Charnley argue that it bridges more than it divides. What sets Fractured apart from the hundreds of publications on identity politics that come out every year is a commitment to take it seriously as a source of radical solidarity, in the past as well as today.

This means that Fractured is not about a vague, amorphous zeitgeist that could refer to anything from the “trans ideology” to tearing down slaveowners’ statues, depending on the target of one’s ire. Although such subjects are discussed throughout the book, the core of the argument is a close analysis of the source of identity politics: Black feminism. Chapters two and three of the book detail the development of this radical tradition in the US and the UK, respectively. The term “identity politics” itself was first coined in the 1977 “Black Feminist Statement,” authored by the Combahee River Collective. What the Collective theorized and supported was Black feminism as an autonomous tradition challenging the whiteness of feminism and of socialism, and the maleness of Black nationalism. For Richmond and Charnley, this separates identity politics from fixed “identity-thinking” from the start. Radical politics, for Black feminists, did not mean affirming individualized categories, but challenging them.

Identity politics is an attempt to confront exclusions and fractures, to trouble immutable categories, and to create an “identity of purpose,” a term that Richmond and Charnley borrow from Ruth Wilson Gilmore. In the UK, Black and Asian feminists were developing their own radical critique at the same time as the Combahee River Collective. As this took place during rapid changes in the nature of global capitalism, the book emphasizes that identity politics is not the abandonment of class politics that it is usually painted to be. On the contrary, the “Black Feminist Statement” was written in direct dialogue with socialism and Marxism. British Black feminists such as Hazel Carby were also responding to the changing class composition of Britain in the 1970s, when Black and Asian women were restructuring labor, but unions were lagging behind in their organizing strategies.

It is this idea that identity politics can help us understand and deal with class composition that drives Fractured. The other chapters in the book spell out its importance. We need a politics of identity because capitalist society is not reducible to relations of production and a homogeneous waged working class. Racism and sexism are real forces that fracture and divide people’s personal and political existences. Unfree labor, unrecognized reproductive labor, as well as direct violence along racial and gender lines have marked the development of capitalism as much as industrial exploitation. Chapter one brings this reality to the fore by detailing the importance of racialized enslavement to the British Empire and the United States. It also centers, however, Black agency in fighting against slavery and for its abolition, and the importance of this long history to antiracist movements today.

Chapters four and five turn their attention to borders and to the nationalism of early labor movements. If British socialists at the turn of the 19th century defined themselves against Eastern European Jewish immigrants, American workers at the same time were also organizing against, not together with, precarious Chinese laborers. Chapters six and seven focus on 1919, a year of “race riots” in both the US and the UK. The authors again show that labor was more often on the side of the aggressors than on that of the attacked. All this is peppered with references to contemporary examples of anti-identity politics, from racist reactions to Black Lives Matter protests, to Britain’s new Police Act, to trans-exclusionary “feminism.” In these histories, Richmond and Charnley seek and find examples of alliances and solidarities built through the labor of organizers and activists. But the fact that these solidarities take work and effort supports the larger point: showing that divisions are real, not superficial impositions on the working class by scheming capitalists. As such, leftist politics must work with them through identity politics, and not simply dismiss their existence.

The theoretical and historiographical breadth of the evidence that Richmond and Charnley bring in support of this argument is impressive. But while it is necessary that any serious discussion of identity politics relies on such concrete examples, the scope of the book also burdens what could have been a much more streamlined argument. Take chapter three, for instance. The discussion of British Black feminism is interrupted by a six-page detour into the complexities of labor and suffragism almost a century earlier. The point that “Black and Asian feminist critiques of ‘white feminism’ in the 1970s can be understood as a revision of earlier critiques of imperialist suffragism” is well taken. But the chapter already draws out debates about gender, race and class, Marxist historiography, carceral feminism, patriarchy and reproductive work, sectarianism, and a few other concerns. I cannot help but wonder whether this historical excursion added anything to the point being made. Indeed, in the theoretical and historical thicket, it is sometimes easy to lose track of that point.

The same is true for the whole book, as the authors slalom through the turn of the 19th century, the 1970s, and the present day in the US and the UK. While these contextualizations are needed to nuance polemics about identity politics, expecting just one book to cover all this ground is an ambitious task. This is perhaps due to the wide scope of the “hatred of identity politics.” Richmond and Charnley rally against all forms of antiwokeness, be they from aggrieved white reactionaries, colorblind liberals, or class-reductionist leftists. That ostensible socialists, conservatives, and white supremacists end up propagating the same anti-diversity talking points is something that we have not reckoned with enough. Confronting all of them in just one book, however, comes at the expense of a clearer target.

Richmond and Charnley write, for instance, that Tory appeals to the “white working class” and the class-reductionist left are predicated on “the same oppositions between ‘identity politics’ and class.” But do Vivek Chibber and the Conservative Party really share an analytical basis? And, more importantly, can they both be addressed in the same way? Criticizing racist labor movements and showing that identity politics is a generative response to changing class compositions might be proper arguments for economistic leftists. But the same strategy does little against those who premise their hatred on the belief that change in class composition itself is the problem and that nationalism is the natural answer.

Nevertheless, Fractured’s merit is to have found a common thread throughout these different hatreds, one that clarifies and contributes to progressive debates. Anti-wokeness, on the left, center, and right, deals in false and exclusionary universals. It papers over real differences within liberal societies and within the working class. Reactionaries might embrace such exclusions, but for leftists this should be a wake-up call. The takeaway is that “calls for the ‘unities’ of unspecified pasts, contrasted against today’s betrayals of class universalism” are not only empirically dubious, but also actively harmful. Categories such as “working class” or “womanhood” have never been pure universals. They are fractures solidified as reactions to capitalist violence and division – fractures that identity politics, despite the reputation it has gained, wants to overcome.

Richmond and Charnley refuse to simply continue the polemics in their book, and bring in histories, examples, and theories. They show that Black feminism and identity politics have already been fighting to defeat empty, nostalgic categories, and that we all need to learn from them. As overwhelming as Fractured’s historiographical trajectories may be, they make an impact as examples of “revolutionary times” and “experiments in radical universality.” This impressive book brings badly needed concreteness to debates that too often consist of sweeping generalizations. In doing this, it points toward radical possibilities in the here and now. Because, even though Richmond and Charnley tell histories of racist violence, hardened borders, and exclusionary identity categories, they do not wallow in defeats. Rather, they want us all to learn the lesson that Black feminism teaches: “We have only this world, a wrong world, with which to work.”

Fractured is available from the Pluto Press website.