Defend solidarity!
UNITED AGAINST RACISM AND FASCISM
We have no time for that. But neither can we choose the time when we need solidarity.
We call for self-defence and solidarity – in Saxony and beyond. We have to protect ourselves before we can save the world.
To do so, we certainly won’t rely on parties that promote state racism
through ever new asylum laws and financed Nazi terror. It’s as simple as
that: If the Right aims to show what they are capable of, we will show
that we stand together. That we recognize clearly what is happening.
That we are aware of what it means to defend one’s own life and
existence – for many of us this is not the first time. We carry on.
We are here, in Saxony and elsewhere. We keep on coming, today and tomorrow and in the future. Those who don’t like it, will have to get used to it. Anyone who aims to prevent this, hazards enormous political consequences: The dead at the external borders of Europe, the series of murders by the state-sponsored “National Socialist Underground”, innumerable attacks on refugees and their shelters, deportations, the global expansion of the camp system and attacks on solidarity initiatives, on civil sea rescue and on antifascism. The price is division and deprivation of rights, walls and violence. The price is social fascisation – a process already in full swing in Saxony. Anyone who wants to stop this, will not be able to find the answers in the Wahl-O-Mat, but must focus instead on the innumerable, often invisible stories of migrant, anti-fascist and solidarity struggles. This is also where the possibility of another world begins, always and everywhere. We switch on the lights and turn on the sound – Saxony is worse and better than you expect.
The problem is not migration
Let‘s talk about the shift to the right. Because not migration, but the nascent fascism is the problem. The everyday conditions in many parts of Saxony are neither remnants of a past Germany nor an operational glitch in an otherwise ‚normal‘ society. They are part of a right-wing continuity – and therefore a possible, imminent future (not just in Saxony, but) everywhere. The fear of taking to the streets in some areas at night, the racism in schools, the self-evident distrust of authorities and institutions: In Saxony, we are experiencing the radicalisation of a social violence that might begin with racism, but will not stop there. The antisemitic attacks in Chemnitz and elsewhere, the AfD’s campaigns against social institutions, theatres and the free arts, as well as the attacks on feminism and LGBTIQ* struggles – all this points to it. Not to forget the long list of pogroms, torch-lit marches, and assaults, with dormant police aside: in Heidenau, Freital, Wurzen, Zwickau – and of course, in Chemnitz, where all boundaries were crossed.
All this has been played down and tolerated for years by Prime Minister Kretschmer, his CDU government and the intelligence service. But the old and the new Right are not just “worried citizens”, they are the instigators of fear and terror. They beat, murder and hate us: the migrants, the antifascists, the youth culture, the feminists, the artists, the disorder. They hate us, because we are different or because we are not afraid of different or new things. They hate anything that questions the calcified social structures based on family, nation, factory. They declare the society of the many to be the enemy – not the mastery of the few. Thus, their narrative of human inequality is dangerously productive, stabilising the conditions of social hierarchy and of exploitation along racist and gendered axes.
And that’s exactly why the old and the new Nazis are the radicalisation of the things that surround us every day. They also have powerful friends. The new fascism – in Saxony, Poland, Italy, Brazil or Hungary – is not falling from heaven, but is being fuelled from above. The rich, the security authorities and the governments are part of the new right-wing boom all over the world. Let us therefore make it unmistakably clear: It’s not a happy perfect world that we are just defending against the AfD and the Nazis. This very normal society is a very normal world of deportations, of state racism, of chain tolerations and discrimination, of the dead in the Mediterranean and of the criminalisation of solidarity. It is a world of weapons exports, of global inequality, of colonial and sexual exploitation, and of murderous politics.
You must choose – defend solidarity!
But that’s not all. Let’s talk about us. There are still so many who fight every day against the zeitgeist and the right-wing hegemony. Who won’t back down. These are people who don’t cower before the Right, who don’t duck away. In Bautzen, Döbeln, Zwickau, Chemnitz, Plauen, Borna, Görlitz, Ostritz, Dresden, Leipzig and many other places: There is also something different, there are open doors and open arms. Those, who might be standing with their backs to the wall sometimes, but have by no means lost, those who keep holding each other. Who‘ve been here for decades, going along different paths than along those of right-wing brutality. And they exist everywhere, these stories of untiring migrant self-assertion – reaching from contract work to the summer of migration. The stories of all those among us who have managed it despite everything, who have not allowed themselves to be sent away, to be deported and to be brought down.
Many of us would have left here long ago if we hadn’t been restricted by residence requirements. Many of us had to – and many of us wanted to stay. We just as simply exist here as do the solidarity-based antifascism and an active civil society. A society which unequivocally says, despite threats and attempts at intimidation, that in Saxony, too, everyone can decide – not just at the ballot box, but every day. We stick to that: This is our claim for what is now to come. But at the same time, we must prevent the right-wing from enabling an AfD government to march through. That is the least that is now and still possible.
Let’s start with the obvious: Defend solidarity – together and in new coalitions! Solidarity is more than a word. Solidarity is the most beautiful relationship in the world. Solidarity means that our different stories, positions and experiences are not an obstacle to a common struggle. Quite the opposite. The desire to fight together is more than just an act of desperation. This can be the beginning of a great friendship. A friendship of self-organised groups and initiatives refusing to be intimidated to speak up, and to live. That dare to name what is there. And that do not follow the right turn, but stand up against it daily. We are more than we think!
We call for
– a common, nationwide block at the nationwide #unteilbar demonstration on August, 24th, in Dresden! Defend solidarity – United Against Racism and Fascism!
– for a tribunal in Chemnitz from November 1st to 3rd, where we present the perspective of the NSU victims and the voices of migrant struggles against those of the perpetrators. Indicting racism!
– for collecting donations for solidarity projects in East Germany. Put your money where your mouth is!
– for an anti-fascist, anti-racist and migrant sisterhood! Those who want to fight together, must know each other! Come together, make dinner, concerts, go to camps and organise buses and rides for the demonstration on 24th of August – from Saxony, from everywhere!
– for swarming, networking and the support of self-organised anti-fascist, migrant and anti-racist initiatives.
– for resistance, in case the Saxon CDU or another party starts negotiations for a coalition with the AfD
– for a countrywide action meeting on July 28th in Dresden, where we will make concrete plans and think about the next steps