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All you need to know about German racism, free speech and adjectival endings

Interview with Jacinta Nandi about her new book WTF Berlin: Expatsplaining the German Capital


23/04/2022

Hi Jacinta. Thanks for talking to us. Could you start by saying something about yourself. How did a woman from Essex end up living in Lichtenrade?

I came to Germany aged 20 to improve my German. I was studying German at Exeter Uni. I moved back after my studies, and then I just spent 20 years fucking my life up.

Then gentrification kicked me out into Lichtenrade. I sometimes feel like I started the fire and then I got burned myself. When I came in 2000, all these Germans were telling me that 500 Deutschmarks a month for a 3 room flat on Kantstraße was too much. God knows what other people were paying in those days.

And now? It’s just not possible to live in the city and be working class, not if you want a new flat, which is what I needed for me and my 2 kids.

I was just fucking about really, when I got here. I was a classroom assistant, then I got pregnant at 23, I was on Hartz IV and then I became a TEFL teacher. Then all of a sudden, I’d been here a million years, Brexit happened, I had another kid and now I’m in Lichtenrade.

You also started on the comedy circuit?

Oh, yeah. I got into English language comedy by accident. I was doing all this spoken word stuff and people kept on billing me as a comedian. Around 2006, the English Theatre got us to do the Lab and put me down as stand-up comedy.

After doing that stand up, I started doing these shows with my ex-boyfriend called Prison Sex, and after that we did an English language Lesebühne called My English Class. But it wasn’t English language ex-pat comedy with the current super-macho environment. It was all just getting started. I mean, maybe there was a whole circuit I didn’t know about, but I think things were just getting going.

A couple of years later it was more toxic, more hateful, more sexist, more macho. As a woman in the audience, you had to have such a thick skin. You had to go in and listen to these boys saying that women were shit. Hours and hours of ‘ugly women are shit’, ‘pretty women are shit’, ‘sluts are shit’, ‘prudes are shit’.

One time, a friend of mine did a tiny skit about how comedians with guitars are shit. How someone who does a song with a guitar is not funny enough to be a comedian and they’re not good enough to be a musician. He had a guitar with him, it was a fucking joke. And this other white guy said “Oh, he went too far. I’m so offended. I’m not going to talk to him again. I can’t believe he could say that.”

We didn’t say triggered yet, but it triggered me so much. We women had to swallow so much hate just because we wanted to hear some funny jokes. Then you have to put up with 1% of what we put up with, and you have the audacity to be offended?

Everyone I complained to about it was, like “but someone who slags off women isn’t slagging off all women. When someone slags off a guy with a guitar, they really are slagging off all men with a guitar.” It was such bullshit. It was really annoying.

Then I went from English language comedy into the German poetry slam scene. I sometimes think I was a bit anti-American because I really blamed the white male Americans for the toxicity of the environment, the way they slagged off women. I found rape jokes unbearable, to be honest. But those American lads had given me such hard skin that I never really felt that poetry slams were that sexist. Looking back now, I think they were pretty sexist too, just slightly less hateful.

So, then, I went from the poetry slam scene to the Lesebühne scene, and I felt “this is really nice. It’s not that sexist at all”. And of course, now, after #MeToo, and all these kids who are much younger than me becoming really earnest and heartfelt, now I think the Lesebühne scene was also super-sexist.

American comedians were like “hahaha, women are so ugly, I had sex with an ugly woman, then I set her body on fire.” Whereas at the German poetry slam scene, the boys were all “Oh my god! I had sex with an ugly woman, and it was really disgusting and I wish I hadn’t”. And the Lesebühne boys were “I didn’t have sex with an ugly woman.” I felt like that was my journey.

The Lesebühnes seem more politically aware, but quite often when you perform, you’re the only woman. You’re the only person who’s not white, and you’re the youngest person there.

It’s lovely being the youngest person on at a Lesebühne, it’s like being a 42-year old teenager. The Lesebühnes aren’t woke, but they are political. A lot of people in the Lesebühne are anti-capitalist. They can be conservative about language sometimes, sure but they’re definitely not conservative in other ways.

But they’re still a load of white guys. And sometimes I feel like a bit of a performing dog, or even a traitor to the wokesters [laughs]. I go to a Lesebühne and I listen to all these white guys going “are we going to start saying Pfandflaschinnen?”, and I have this secret life as a woke ally, and I feel like a bit of a hypocrite sometimes.

How important is language?

It’s really interesting talking about the word “cunt”. As a British person, if you use the word, you’re not really being sexist, are you? Well, maybe you’re being sexist, but you’re not necessarily being misogynistic? Although recently I’ve got to say you see more and more British people on the Internet use “cunt” to refer to women. And, you know, I’ve only said that word in front of my mother once. Like one time. I said fuck all the time but cunt once – and it was by accident. Because, you know, even in British English, it’s this really strong word, right? Really strong, really forceful.

But I feel like in British English it doesn’t have this hateful, misogynist element to it that it does in American English. I remember posting this thing about Pooh and Eeyore after the British election in 2019. It said “I’m going to vote Tory because I wanna get Brexit done. And Pooh says to Eeyore “that’s because you’re a thick cunt”.

I knew when I posted it that Germans are going to think that this means “dicke Fotze”, but I still wanted the joy of posting it. And someone did comment underneath, “I can’t believe you’re posting this anti-women nonsense. Why are fat women to blame for the election?” Because the American word “cunt” and the German word “Fotze” really mean something else than the British word.

And when you’re British or Australian, and you want to use the word, and you’re in an international space, you really have to weigh it up with the fact that people are going to think that you hate women, and that’s why you think that word is ok. And are you okay with people thinking that?

It’s not just that. Also people in Britain say that any word which refers to the female anatomy is of itself sexist.

Oh, I’ve also heard that argument. That’s just stupid. In English you can call someone a tit or a twat or a dick or an arse. The sexist part is that cunt is the worst word, that cunt is such a bad insult with this idea of evil hanging around it. The idea that women’s bodies are ugly, dirty, dangerous. The ominous part of the word cunt – that is the misogynist bit. But it’s such a fun word to say.

When you’re just trying to describe someone like Richard Littlejohn? He’s just a cunt. What’s the German equivalent. Thilo Sarrazin? He’s a bit of a cunt. The word cunt ends the argument. We know this person now.

But language changes all the time, doesn’t it? I’m not going to be aged ninety on my own in a field with a banner saying cunt is not misogynist. If it starts to be in the next ten years that every time someone hears the word, they think it’s a misogynist slur, then I guess I’m going to stop using it. I think I have started using it less, if I am honest.

That’s not because I’m giving in, is it? I don’t mean cunt as a misogynist slur, but if 99% of the world understands it as a misogynist slur then I’m not communicating properly.

Do you think that you can do comedy about serious subjects?

Yes, and I think that this is a big difference between me and Germans. This doesn’t mean that I think Jimmy Carr’s Roma joke was ok. People are trying to say that he was doing satire, and he was trying to shock the audience and show a mirror to them. But the trouble is that them cheering means he failed.

But I really think the difference between me and most people in Germany, still after all these years, is that I think you can and maybe even should do comedy about serious things. I think you can joke about serious things. I think comedy can even change the world, you know? Like my last book about housework – I think the humour in that book was a weapon, really. Whereas Germans often seem to think that if you are being funny, that means you don’t really mean what you’re saying – or care about the subject.

Let’s go onto your new book. You’ve got a new book coming out.

And the book is coming out with Satyr, which is kind of like the Lesebühne poetry slam Verlag. So I mustn’t slag the Lesebühnes off too much! One of the reasons I wanted to do this book with Volker [publisher Volker Surmann] is because Volker and the Lesebühnes in general really do believe in freedom of speech, freedom of art, freedom of expression. They really believe in that stuff. They think you have the right to say almost anything.

And so I knew that with Volker I could do this mainstream comedy book explaining what Germany’s like, a funny, entertaining book, but I also knew he wouldn’t try and censor me from saying Germany’s racist, Germany’s a shithole, Germans are the worst. Like even if he doesn’t agree with me!

You’ve been outspoken about teachers being banned for wearing headscarves in German schools. Do you think this is just a German thing or is it more general?

I don’t know, really. I’m writing about Germany and this is the situation in Germany. I always think something doesn’t need to be specifically German for me to to write about it.

But what I think is really specifically German is people who are so into every other type of freedom except for the freedom of brown women to not show people their hair.

Like, people who are in favour for Freikörperkultur, where you’re allowed to get your tits out in normal parks and swimming pools, people who are in favour of white people being encouraged to wear dreadlocks without ever hearing any criticism why this is problematic. And then all of this freedom suddenly stops because someone doesn’t want someone else to see their hair in public. It’s crazy.

It’s absolutely nothing to do with women’s liberation at all. I do not mean by that that I find the headscarf completely unproblematic. Sometimes I think, you know, I would love to be fighting right now for teenagers who don’t want to wear the headscarf and their dads are forcing them into it. But how the fuck can I in Germany when it’s just acceptable that there is a job ban on a whole group of people?

I know people who get Botox and liposuction and wear high heels and they think the headscarf’s really sexist because women wear it and men don’t. Like, women also wear high heels and men don’t? And high heels fuck your body up a little bit more than the headscarf does!

I’m not saying I want anyone to wear a headscarf. I don’t care if people wear headscarves or not. But banning a bit of cloth from the top of your head just because that’s your religion? We live in a country of Religionsfreiheit. Is there freedom of religion in Germany or is there not?

Do you think that Germany is more racist, than, say, Britain?

It’s hard to tell, but I think that middle class educated white Germans are more racist than middle class educated white British people.

Things have changed a lot. I can remember someone asking me about 15 years ago in a bar in Neukölln if I thought the Turkish kids would steal our bags. When I said No, they said ‘you think I’m being really politically incorrect? You think it’s racism?’ I was like, no, I think it’s weird though. I think it’s the weirdest thing that anyone has ever said to me.

Back in the early 2000s, if you arrived at a party, and said some guy was coming on to you, bothering you, it was normal for someone to say ‘it must have been a Turk’. And when you were shocked, they were shocked that you were shocked. That’s changed, huh? People don’t come out with crap like that in polite society anymore.

But you still hear some fucked-up shit. People literally complain about kids starting school not being able to speak German, and then in the next sentence complain about kindergartens that are full of too many Roma kids. Where are these Roma kids meant to learn German?

Back to the book. What’s the one thing everybody needs to know about Berlin?

The Church Tax chapter is really important. So unsuspecting white people don’t get bogged down with Church Tax. It’s also about language. Can you get in there, I’m basically the modern Mark Twain? My top tip is: don’t bother learning the adjectival endings, just guess. They’re not important.

The book is a language and etiquette guide from someone who’s pretty shit at language and etiquette. It’s like an un-ableist version of the blind leading the blind. The unaware leading the unaware.

Where can people order your book?

They can order it from the publishers, Satyr Verlag. It’s also great for me if people go to their local bookshops and ask for it. And I’ll have copies to sell if you catch me at a Lesebühne!

Jacinta will be reading from her new book at the LINKE Internationals Summer Camp on 25th June. You can register for Summer Camp here.

No Democracy without Voting Rights for Everyone

Call for action for the Rally at Kottbusser Tor – Saturday 23rd April at 2pm


21/04/2022

Voting Rights for all: this is the demand of the Aktionsbündnis Antira (ABA, anti-racist alliance of action), the initiative Deutsche Wohnen & Co Enteignen, and “Nicht ohne uns 14%” (not without us 14%) at a rally on Saturday, 23rd April at Kottbusser Tor (at the corner of Adelbertstraße).

As well as demanding reform of voting rights on a national level, the organisations are above all calling on The Berliner Senat to respect the coalition agreement on local voting rights, so that people without German citizenship also have voting rights, if they have been living in Berlin long-term.

Garip Bali from ABA said: “the Berliner Senat must now honour their promises. If not, we will treat them as proven liars. Voting rights for everyone without conditions should be self-evident in a democracy like Germany.

Saniz Asimipour from the national initiative Nicht Ohne Uns 14% said: “we won’t let ourselves continue to be silenced. We no longer accept that every seventh person in this country is systematically excluded. To make voting rights dependent on citizenship rather than living conditions is simply undemocratic. Participation is our right, because we live here.”

Berta Den Ben from the initiative Deutsche Wohnen und Co Enteignen said: “the people’s initiative Deutsche Wohnen & Co Enteignen has experienced how many signatures were declared invalid. We live in this city and are directly affected by all decisions, but are not allowed to vote ourselves. For future referendums everyone who lives in Berlin must be able to vote!”

The following text is the call to action for Saturday’s demo.

Call to Action

Voting Rights for Everyone is a minimum for a democratic society. Exactly this minimum is missing in Germany, where 10 million people nationally (700,000 in Berlin) are excluded from this democracy, just because they don’t have a German passport.

For us, the fight for voting rights for all is part of our fight against every type of racism, nationalism, capitalism, patriarchy, displacement and poverty

In the coalition agreement of December 2021, the Berlin Red-Green-Red Senat promised to “create the conditions under federal law to enable active voting rights on the national and regional level, also for people without German citizenship”. But they have done nothing in more than 100 days.

To remind the Senat of its responsibility, we published a joint declaration on Voting Rights for All on 8 February, which was signed by 50 initiatives. We expected a response by the end of March.

But nothing came! Ignoring demands from civic initiatives is disrespectful and undemocratic  behaviour.

It has been shown time and again: we can’t expect anything from parliament if no pressure is applied from below.

We would like to apply exactly this pressure together with you. This is why we are inviting you to fight with us on Saturday, 23rd April for voting rights for all.

We say: Enough of empty promises! Voting rights must not remain a privilege.

Bring all your friends and let’s be loud together for the right to self-determination and a say in the decision making process.

With our rally we want to stress the following points:

  • We are demanding The Berliner Senat to honour its promises.

  • Voting Rights for Everyone without conditions should be self-evident in a democracy.

We are not just concerned about voting rights. For us, the fight for Voting Rights for all is part of our fight against every type of racism, nationalism, capitalism, patriarchy, displacement and poverty.

Without voting rights, people lack the possibility of acting for their right to political participation.

Voting rights must apply to everyone. The new government must support this in all forms – everything else is undemocratic!

Translation: Phil Butland

LIVE: How Can the Left Win (Again)?

Watch here from 7pm Berlin time


Play Review – Red Ellen

A new play about British socialist in the pre- and post-war years has clear parallels with today’s discussions.


20/04/2022

A UK Labour party avoiding association with street protests lest it undermine their electoral chances, timid in the face of a rise in Fascism but labelling anti-fascists as extremists, paranoid about infiltration and chiding a genuinely socialist candidate for being too radical? The current state of the parliamentary left in 2022? No, the year is 1933 and all this is laid out in the first ten minutes in a brilliant new play called Red Ellen which opened at Northern Stage in Newcastle earlier this month and tours till late May to Nottingham Playhouse, Edinburgh Lyceum and York Theatre Royal.

The titular character is Ellen Wilkinson for whom this was just one nickname, The Mighty Atom, The Fiery Particle, Elfin Fury being others. All four characteristics of diminutive size, red hair, dynamic energy and authentic commitment to socialism are captured and superbly portrayed by actress Bettrys Jones in the last 14 years of Ellen’s admirable, astonishing and tumultuous life.

The parallels with today’s Labour party are clear as a bell. Ellen believes the left is a spectrum, broader than just the “broad church” that some would say, extending beyond parliamentary confines into the streets and workplaces. Those with more party status, such as Herbert Morrison (played with nuanced precision by Kevin Lennon) believe in irreconcilable rival camps that threaten each others existence and certainly should never work in tandem, even against Nazism. Ellen is grassroots to the core but also an avid internationalist telling Morrison “Our first constituency is the world, as contradictory as it may be.“

All the major characters in the play were real people and include Albert Einstein, Ernest Hemingway and Winston Churchill. Aside from these big names, some of the most compelling exchanges take place between Ellen and probably lesser known real-life figures such as Otto Katz (a Czech Jew) and Isabel Brown (a Geordie Brit) both Communists. Ellen was also a Communist for a time, and a co-founder of the British Communist Party.

The dialogue here, as well as between Ellen, her sister Anne and Morrison, is needle sharp and entertainingly articulate. When Ellen pleads that “Labour isn’t the ruling classes.”, Isabel counters “Then they should stop acting like it”.

That Red Ellen opened in Newcastle is appropriate given one of her best known actions was organising the 1936 march from Jarrow (just down the Tyne) to 10 Downing Street in an attempt to illustrate the dire straits of her constituency’s 80% unemployment.

In co-ordinating the march Ellen is beset on the one hand by more of Morrison’s caution: “Hunger marches are associated with Communism” and on the other by Isabel’s wish to “drum up necessary revolutionary zeal” and her Stalin banners.

Although Ellen sincerely hopes and believes that the march will convince the government to change course, Isabel’s outlook on the possibility of prime ministerial compassion was proven right by history: “The problem isn’t that they don’t understand pet, it’s that they do understand, they just don’t care.”

As the action moves to Spain in 1937, the consequences of a divided left are shown to be darker than before. Grim infighting and summary executions show how doctrinaire the charming Otto and astute Isabel have become. Ellen estranges herself from the CP and throws in her lot more fully with Labour.

But the compromises become more apparent. Given responsibility for air-raid shelters in Churchill’s war cabinet, she is met with hostility by bombed out citizens who see her as responsible for the government’s inadequate provision. Later she laments to Isabel that she has made herself even smaller by “curtseying to the Queen”.

True to real events, the play does not just chronoligise facts. It is also a visually captivating piece of emotionally engaging theatre covering subjects like the difficulties for women in politics and family conflict about the care of an ailing parent.

This is the story of one woman’s tireless dedication but it also asks urgent questions of what we should expect from the left. It is simply a superb piece of writing by Caroline Bird, vividly directed by Wils Wilson and if you get a chance to see it between now and the end of May, do. Watch out for retours and revivals too.

Remaining dates in April and May for Nottingham and Edinburgh are here and the current tour ends at York Theatre Royal from 24th May – 28th May 2022.

Carol McGuigan is a socialist who stopped her subscription to the UK Labour Party this month, more about that later. She lives and works in Berlin.

How borderless is European solidarity?

Reports on Ukrainian war refugees show the role racism and Eurocentrism play in the Global North.


19/04/2022

Putin’s assault on Ukraine began in late February. Hundreds of thousands of people are leaving the country to save their lives. From politics to civil society, many in Germany have sided with the Ukrainians in solidarity. In Berlin, up to 500,000 people took to the streets to demonstrate against the war, just days after the beginning of the invasion. At first glance, this may look like a sign of solidarity. And of course solidarity with the Ukrainians is very good and necessary. But it is noteworthy how strong the emphasis is in the media, debates, and political discussions, on the fact that the war is taking place in Europe and that the refugees are white Europeans. This reveals the role that racism and Eurocentrism play in how people and politics in the Global North understand the world.

“We woke up today in a different world (…) It is an attack on our peace in Europe,” wrote German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens) on her Instagram page after Putin’s attack. But who is actually meant by this “we”, and in which world exactly have “we” woken up?

For whom is Europe actually peaceful?

Between 1991 and 2001, six major wars were fought in Europe. As a result of these wars, over 150,000 people lost their lives. The war in Bosnia and Herzegovina alone led to the flight and displacement of 2.2 million people. In the 1995 Srebrenica genocide, over 8,000 Bosniaks were murdered, almost exclusively men and boys. The massacre is considered the most serious war crime in Europe since the end of World War II. March 24 marks the anniversary of the 1999 NATO air war against the former Yugoslavia. War has always belonged to Europe. Nevertheless, these wars have never made their way into the memory of the dominant society.

The “lack of peace” is not limited to the Balkan states: Europe has one of the deadliest border regimes in the world. According to the Missing Migrant Project, between 2014 and today, over 23,490 fleeing people have drowned in the Mediterranean alone. Until today, at least 15 people have frozen to death on the Polish-Belarusian border. A year after a fire destroyed the Moria refugee camp, some 3,500 people are still living in a temporary camp on the Greek island of Lesbos. Europe is a nightmare for non-Europeans at its border. But this nightmare is not part of the collective consciousness of Europeans.

That this war is happening “in Europe” seems to be the most important aspect of the current situation for many people in the Global North. “This is not a place like Iraq or Afghanistan. It’s happening in a relatively civilized European country,” said CBS journalist Charlie D’Agata in his coverage of Ukraine. He describes “middle-class people who look like us.”

The talk of “civilized Europe” is deeply rooted in the European-colonial tradition. The so-called civilizing missions served as political justification for military interventions and colonizations intended to “modernize and westernize Indigenous peoples” and “spread higher culture.” These terms often appeared in colonial propaganda to justify the violence of colonial conquest.

Postcolonial critique describes how the Eurocentric gaze creates a universal definition of “us” and the “other.” “We,” that is, Europeans: with white bodies, civilized, with a capitalist economy, and in contrast to the “others”: “backward,” with Black, Indigenous, African, or Asian-Indigenous bodies and a bazaar economy. “Thus, all non-Europeans could be considered pre-European and at the same time on a certain historical chain: from the primitive to the civilized, from the irrational to the rational, from the traditional to the modern, and from the magical-mythical to the scientific. In other words, from non-European/pre-European to something that is Europeanized or modernized over time.” (Aníbal Quijano)

At the same time, what and who belongs to “civilized Europe” and who does not is fragile and changeable – the history of the German rage of conquest and extermination in Eastern Europe especially testifies to this, where millions of Jews fell victim to the Shoah and millions more “Slavic subhumans” were murdered, starved, expelled and exploited as forced laborers.

Whose tears deserve compassion?

The current emphasis on the European-ness, whiteness and supposed Christianity of the people fleeing from Ukraine, who are now selectively and temporarily “Europeanized” by some as part of the current solidarity, shows how the majority of Europe perceives people whose suffering is considered painful and who deserves European solidarity. Conversely, this explains the simultaneous silence about other human catastrophes in other parts of the world and European migration and refugee policies.

Since European integration, the definition of national identity has changed, expanding from nation-state borders to EU borders, thus creating a new European identity. Today, many identify themselves as Europeans. This so-called pan-European nationalism is shared by parties of the bourgeois center as well as some right-wing parties.

At the same time, the continuity of colonial power structures is reflected in current events: African students fleeing war in Ukraine were turned away at Poland’s borders, black people and people of color fleeing war were taken off trains by the federal police. There is talk of “real refugees”, of people from “our cultural circle”. In order to create capacities for newly arriving refugees from Ukraine, the Berlin Senate cleared housing container facilities in Reinickendorf.

But the racist-selective behavior does not end here: Eastern Europeans also often belong to the category of the racialized in Germany. Anti-Slavic racism and anti-Semitism (for example, about 45 percent of Jews in Germany have Ukrainian roots) have a long tradition in Germany and were particularly strengthened by the ideology of the Nazi era.

In recent decades, hard and poorly paid jobs have been reserved for people from Eastern Europe – in the asparagus fields, in the slaughterhouses, in home care; suddenly they are considered white Europeans who must not, under any circumstances, be put in accommodation with refugees from Syria or Afghanistan.

The anti-Slavic racism that justifies the extra exploitation of Eastern Europeans is now also increasingly directed against Russians: Supermarkets are removing Russian products from their shelves, Humboldt University in Berlin is no longer cooperating with its Russian partners. The German Academic Exchange Service is stopping all scholarships to Russia, and people of Russian origin are receiving hate messages.

All of this speaks to the relevance of intersectional and international solidarity that works across national borders and sides with the oppressed and marginalized. This means recognizing the simultaneity and interdependencies of different power relations. Out of nation-state thinking, against war everywhere in the world, on the side of civil society and above all the working class, which is hit hardest by sanctions, against racist-selective “solidarity” and for open borders for all refugees.

This article first appeared in German in Analyse & Kritik. Translation: Dillon Drasner. Reproduced with permisson.