75 years is not enough: Denazification now!

Nazis out – of offices, authorities, institutions, parliaments!

Nazis out – of the armed forces and police!

Nazis out – also in times of Corona!

Denazification is like cleaning up: it’s never done and you always have to start over again. We celebrate the 8th of May for the 75th time as the day of liberation from fascism. But Nazis are marching again, stirring up hatred in comment columns, in parliaments, in public authorities. Migration is again and again declared a problem or even the “mother of all problems” – in one of the richest societies in the world. People drown, are shot at the borders, forgotten in the camps. 53 hand-picked kids are allowed to come to Germany in order to break off the discussions about the other thousands.

Nazis take up arms and step up to anti-Semitic or racist murder. Racists teach at schools and universities. The right wing is organizing itself undisturbed in police, army, authorities, while anti-fascist and anti-racist work is being criminalized. And again and again, as if by order: the story of the disoriented solitary perpetrator and the debates whether there was a right motive for the crime in Kassel, Celle, Halle, Hanau. A deliberately chosen blindness of the authorities, investigating departments, public prosecutors, civil servants – and often also of the public. Instead of solved crimes and protection of victims, perpetrators are protected, victims and their relatives are accused, records are destroyed, clues are covered up, murders are trivialised and filed away.

The 8th of May is a historic day, which must finally become a public holiday here too, as Esther Bejarano demands – so that really everyone “understands that May 8, 1945 was the day of liberation, of the suppression of the Nazi regime“.

After that whole generations have said “Never again!” Never again fascism. Never again should racism, anti-Semitism, antiziganism, homophobia, right-wing and authoritarian ideology decide on life and death. Migrants, young people and the survivors of the Holocaust fought for decades for what was officially declared as completed after only a few years: for denazification and justice. In the years around 1968 against the old Nazis in families and institutions. In the decades of “guest workers” against the deprivation of rights and against the racism of the majority. In the 90s against the pogroms in the reunited Germany.

And today? On the 100th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in 1963 James Baldwin wrote in a letter to his nephew: “You know, and I know, that the country is celebrating one hundred years of freedom one hundred years too soon“. This also applies to the 75 years of liberation from fascism. There is still plenty to do.

In many places there are discussions about May 8th, many networks are preparing actions. Let’s join together, let’s go to places of memory and to places of anger. Think about local actions and decentralized campaigns, let everybody know, make it visible, whether online or offline, whether on your balcony or in the streets, on foot, bicycle or car parade, in front of the foreigners’ registration office, school, shisha bar or in the camp.  Of course with all due corona caution, but clear in the matter.

We want to make the actions visible under the hashtags #entnazifizierung and #migrantifa. Soon we will be together again in the streets, but solidarity knows no shutdown and no deceleration. 

The 8th of May: We begin and we carry on. There must be no final closure, no forgiveness and no forgetting. We stand up for a complete clarification of right-wing and racist murders and acts of violence! There is no such thing as solitary right-wing offenders! For equal social and political rights for all, for a society of many in solidarity! Yalla migrantifa!