Der schwarze Block als Lifestyle, nicht als Taktik
Posted by anarcholatina on 2023-07-14
(A provocation/response to „Der schwarze Block als Taktik, nicht als Lifestyle“; or, an outsider view of the German antifa movement in the 2020s.)
Content warnings: discussions of violence; paraphrases of fascist rhetoric; fashion and other girly things; Discourse.
1. Should the antifa movement even exist?
The obvious criticism of the antifa movement is that it’s incomplete: “anti” the “fa”, but for what? Polish antifa have done wonderful theoretical work on positive antifascism (see e.g. Majewska, Feminist Antifascism: Counterpublics of the Common), but the German antifa movement, on the one hand so large, on the other has remained parasitic on external political movements: either liberal-democratic, connected to parties like the Greens; or authoritarian-communist, connected to parties like the MLPD and the DKP; or autonomist, be it explicitly anarchist, or single-issue antifa squads.
May 8, 2022. Dortmund antifa call for a march to celebrate the defeat of the Nazis, and demand that the date be made a holiday. I hate working, and an extra holiday to rub their loss on the faces of the fashos sounds fun, so why not? We mask up and march, shouting slogans in a properly registered, peaceful protest—you know, the average German antifaschistische Aktion. Mid-walk, we pause for the talks, and the whole march is revealed to be an entryst operation of the DKP; only then, huge hammer-and-sickle flags are opened up, to the eternal exclusion of the Eastern European immigrants who walk with me; party flags start waving; some cadre starts discoursing that without the Soviet Union, who never did anything wrong, we’d all be living under Nazi rule by now, vote for us. I got distracted by anger and when I realise it all the anarchists and other cool people have bolted, leaving only a mass of red-scarves around me. I can’t go home alone, it’s Dortmund and nazis are snooping around—we stumble on one in the park, it’s fun to terrify the bastard—but I am forced to march under the DKP flags or become an easy target.
The antifa flag is made of a black flag and a red one, hoisted together; we unite to survive the common enemy. However, the DKP is my enemy too—or would be if it ever succeeded, which it won’t. But in a fantasy world where the DKP took power, they would immediately sicc the cops on my friends like all governments necessarily do, whether red or brown or green *cof* Lützerath *cof*; and we would molotov their cops and burn down their prisons, like we do all cops and all prisons. Given that the liberals and the authoritarians both fight for different goals than us, given that our projects conflict, then what’s the point of uniting under the antifa banner? Shouldn’t we anarchists fight fascism with anarchist squads, and let the tankies make their tankie hierarchies and the Greens set up some youth antifa organisation to try to make us forget they’re still selling out for coal? Nothing stops us from running a counterdemo under the anarchist no-flag; the MLPD can raise all the red flags they want on the next block away from me. And then you wouldn’t have a purely reactive movement like antifas, but a complete ideology, with a long-term strategy and constructive goals.
Antifas will usually reply that the point of the antifa movement, qua antifa, is self-defence: antifas are the firefighters, the paramedics, the tourniquet on the bleeding wound, the stopgap measure to an urgent, immediate existential need. Nazis are attacking us right now, and antifas are a protective shield. But are we, though?
March 2023: the Islamofascist-neonazi (?) gang in Dortmund invades a leftist occupation in Bochum, the Haldi, throwing stones and insults, marking territory with graffiti. The antifas post sternly worded tweets, share Instagram stories full of solidarity, thoughts and prayers. A few mates try to offer our bodies to gang up in case of more attacks, we offer to join the community defense force, or more. There doesn’t seem to be anything like that, though; everything is symbolic solidarity and ground-level confusion, nothing is organised, no one knows who to point us to. Unable to break into the cliques, we leave our contacts in case anything happens. Within the week Haldi is attacked again; the emboldened nazis break inside this time, blast pepper spray, draw a gun to people’s heads, terrorise, humiliate. No one calls us, nor call anyone else. After that violent attack, the antifas at last organise some self-defence. But it is too late now; the nazis don’t repeat the attack. They already won.
The antifa retaliation is… a demo.
Couple months before the attack, the Dortmund immigrant nazis (?) had posted on Twitter: “German antifa love to paste stickers, ‘antifa area’, do they think they can change reality with stickers? If I paste the flag of Morocco does Germany become Morocco?” Now don’t get me wrong, the graffiti wars are important and meaningful, but the fascists have reason to mock us on this one. “Antifa area” is borrowing the language of gangs, but no one fears German antifa the way they fear the Bandidos. The graffiti wars are meaningful, but the aggressive talk of antifas have become a subject of mockery at this point, all bark no bite. Antifa symbolism is battle-symbolism; as such, it is emptied of meaning if nobody is willing to risk their bodies to actually, well, fight the battles. Not metaphorically “fight” a symbolic “fascism”, but fight these fascists, fight Serkan Bergamo and Nick Herpich, fight Matthias Fischer and Hannes Loth, fight materially, tangibly, territorially.
2. Antifa macht Spaß
The very suggestion of a struggle beyond the symbolic will chill the air of the plenum (which isn’t so bad—at least if you do that something happens in a plenum, at least there’s some emotion, some life). Everyone will assume that either you’re a police infiltrator, or you’re so bad at opsec that you’re to dangerous to even talk to, like a leper.
(Anarchist ancestor Louise Michel: “tbh my favourite comrades are the agent provocateurs; they suggest the most interesting actions.”)
The thing about that military jargon so piously reproduced—“opsec”—is that a “sec” without any “op” is just an excuse to not risk your privileges. If all that your proud security culture achieves is complete paralysis and burnout, well, that’s you doing the State job for them, the cops don’t even need to start drama if your paranoia will start it spontaneously. (This is literally in the counter-insurgency manual, go read it; the fear and distrust is the point of the repression, it deliberately weaponises trauma). What exactly has the antifa movement achieved with its “blac block as tactic” the last couple years? Decades?
The thing about “tactic” is that it’s an empty word without strategy. The German antifa movement badly lacks direction, goal, structure: if the goal is to act as a shield against the nazis, then who do I contact to request community defence? When a worker asks me: “I get that the police is bad but if something happens who should I call?”, which phone number do I give? A dozen antifa organisations in the Ruhrgebiet, how come no one was there to fight for Haldi? It’s curious that there’s no federation of antifa bands à la FAU; the reason, I believe, is that no one saw a reason to set up organisation at a larger scale, because no one is willing to entertain the thought of what we would do with such an org.
If we organised we would be powerful. If we organised we could materially, territorially, tangibly fight off the nazis. The antifa are afraid to consider what that implies.
The elephant in the room is that German antifa are largely unwilling to risk violence or prison. This isn’t due to any personal failings of individual Germans, but to material, sociological reasons: the movement is largely dominated by middle-class white students, as a class not equipped to deal with the situation of violence, at all. The movement is a weekend movement, a “I have to work tomorrow” movement, because the academic or professional careers are sacrosanct, life without them seems unimaginable. I say this not to guilt-trip anyone, a social problem demands a social answer: How do we equip German antifas to handle violence? How do we find meaning in life beyond study-work-consume? How to be steadfast? Well, look at any group able to put their bodies under fire, able to face repression without breaking rank; from the Kurds and the EZLN to gangs and ultras, what do you see common to all combative groups? Group cohesion, communal values, meaning-building, a sense of the enemy, shared and clear goals. A distinctive way to dress, distinctive battle songs, rites, folklore, martyrs. A lifestyle.
Oh but that’s scary! That’s like a gang, a cult, we will devolve into hooligans! It’s toxic masculinity! (Sister if punching and guns are to be the province of boys, if good girls cannot use violence, consider where this line of thought will leave the women and femmes.) “My dad says that left-extremists are just the same as right-extremists, that we just want to have fun with vandalism and fights, I can never convince my dad, we have to improve our image”. Comrade you will never convince your dad, your dad is not the target audience for antifa, not yet. Trying to appease to the centre by watering down the antifascist mythos is a losing strategy. The AfD is currently the biggest rising power in the country, and they didn’t get there by trying to be moderate and reasonable; they got there by doubling down then quadrupling down and spewing Trumpian-level rhetoric about monstrous transgender groomers and barbaric Muslim rapists and 5G vaccines. Trump got elected against all odds, by blabbering about Mexican rapists and grabbing pussies. Bolsonaro got elected by promising to kill 30 thousand. We do not live in a “looking moderate” kind of age. If there’s a purpose for the antifa banner at all, it is to shift the Overton window in the other direction. We want the banner to be there for the people who saw the AfD polls and thought, “oh fuck, I have to do something”, for the people who are one smile and a wink away from being radicalised. For the average worker with liberal values you should instead work within the wider leftist political movements, with the union, with common causes.
And yes I know, there is a point in siamo tutti antifascisti; there is a powerful narrative in all the mockups of the antifa flag: the barista antifascista, the hacker antifascista, the Küfa antifascista… there is a point in advancing the fact that carework is antifascism, repro is antifascism, empathy and softness and art and love is antifascism; this is the path to positive antifascism, to a constructive politics able to provide alternatives to fascism. But this argument draws it power from the bite of the antifa movement. If the antifa flag isn’t fundamentally radical, the point implodes, and all these fun mockup logos fail the landing at what they suggest.
“Barista barista antifascista” only works insofar as there are antifas who punch nazis.
The biggest potential of the German antifa movement lies exactly in the parts where it loathes itself: The subculture, the music, the fashion, the romanticism, the longing for adventure, for breaking with the routine of a domesticated subservient life. If the antifas are to become an actually effective shield, if we are to stop shitposting on twitter and start actually winning, actually stopping the fascists on their tracks, we need much more of a #squad lifestyle, not less. Because the biggest difficulty of German movements, by far, is that nobody has “energy” to do anything, any proposal is met with tired sighs and shifty eyes, afraid to commit. Well if nobody has energy, then the Spaß, the hype, the gang feel, is the missing charger. The most effective antifa action in the area is Mob Action.
German leftists worry so much about their public image, about the centrist criticism that antifas are “only on it because es macht Spaß”. You should instead consider why is it that „Spaß“ automatically discredits a movement in your eyes; why do you believe joy is a sin.
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