Does the enemy lie to the right? A discussion about the current series of attacks on Green offices in the Federal Republic of Germany
The following text was prepared and published by the new German-language website “Aufstand!”, the birth of which we had communicated with the translation of their introductory text, and refers to an uninterrupted series of attacks and defacements against the offices of the governing coalition party “Die Grüne”, the Greens, that are taking place all over Germany; the latest attack in chronological order dates back to November 7, 2022 when, during the night, the windows of two offices of the Greens and an office of the Social Democrats of the SPD in three different districts of Berlin were attacked with hammers.
A series of attacks on the offices of the governing party, the Greens, is sweeping through the Federal Republic of Germany these days. Sometimes windows are smashed, sometimes the facade is defaced with paint, sometimes there are communiqués, sometimes political slogans are left behind, sometimes not. All of these attacks have something in common: They are an attack against a party that in recent months has increased arms spending, exported weapons, supported wars, but whose policies have also further impoverished people, continued to poison and destroy the environment in which we live-especially through wind turbines, continued to operate nuclear and coal-fired power plants, built liquefied natural gas terminals, and so on. All of this with the arrogant smiles typical of those who are warm and full-bellied, dispensing people with the classic hypocritical advice from politicians who evidently live on another level outside of reality regarding what to do to save on shower, heating and electricity consumption. Meanwhile, these political Greens have not been sparing themselves, signing contracts for new colonial energy projects, further strengthening European borders, persevering with their murderous practices and continuing to promote investments in domestic militarization. The consequences of the Greens’ policies are proving once again (nothing to be surprised at) far more dramatic than the conservative policies of recent years. Faced with a predominant focus on the part of militant antifascism in siding against the populist right wing represented by the AfD (in fact among other things politically less influential than its leftist counterpart currently in power)-and at the same time, however, not hesitating in the face of broad “antifascist” alliances with Green organizations and their youth structures-, these “antifa” should certainly ask themselves the question whether, in fact, they are nothing more than a para-state bastion along the lines of the various communist and fascist thugs of the late 1920s. That then fundamentally this question should be asked by many among those who in fact only wish for a state with a slightly different and agreeable political form.
Of course, there is no doubt that the young people of the “Antifa” party and their non-party but slightly cooler-looking allies represent the last force to be relied upon in the fight against any eco-fascist aspirations, and fortunately there are quite a few people who seem to have noticed, indeed, said even more explicitly that the Greens are by their very nature the enemy of any momentum toward freedom and as such they can be attacked and must be attacked if they are not to stand idly by while this bunch of politicians try to salvage, by rendering them harmless, all movements that tend toward freedom. And so, in recent months there have been more and more attacks on Green headquarters, claimed by anarchists or even by a so-called “left,” that left that perhaps has not yet completely abandoned its brain at the ballot box.
In Berlin (https://sozialerzorn.noblogs.org/post/2022/10/06/b-ihr-seid-die-krise-parteibuero-der-gruenen-eingeworfen/), Leipzig (https://sozialerzorn.noblogs.org/post/2022/08/17/scheiben-an-gruenen-buero-eingeschlagen/) and elsewhere, people have decided to make their reasons in attacking the Greens known. Well, these people are fighting for freedom-which is not the petty bourgeois concept of the “freedom” of parties, capital and the state to deceive individuals. The Green headquarters in Hamburg also suffered an attack that expressed its reasons with slogans such as, “How dare you,” “Stop coal,” “Lützi,” and a yellow X that were stamped on the Hamburg Green headquarters on the evening of Oct. 19, 2022. A clear message that sounds a bit begging, but nevertheless remains unequivocal. Then there are a series of attacks whose message is unambiguous, but whose motives have never been made known by the perpetrators. In Munich, for example, the windows of a Green Party office in the Schwabing-West district were stoned and smashed twice by unknown persons, once in July and once in October. No message. No communiqué. No arrests. But what is there to explain? And there is certainly no need to speculate on who might be behind this act, let alone whether its motives should be considered “impure.” Things could perhaps be different-as long as it is not a fabrication of what some confused minds rather aptly call “Lügenpresse” [Ed. Literally means “lying press,” an expression very much in vogue in Germany since the early 1900s used, depending on the historical phase, by Catholics, German war governments in World War I and World War II, the labor movement, various plotters of all eras, and which lately is mostly attributed to language used by right-wing populist and extreme right-wing circles. This term however is generally used to refer to what is considered enemy media propaganda]-in the case of the burning of a bench in front of the office of Green Party Family Minister Lisa Paus in Berlin’s Charlottenburg district. An office located on the ground floor of a residential building and an action that occurred while a worker was still present in the office. This attack does not seem to speak a language particularly of freedom, but rather that of a militaristic logic in which collateral damage is willingly accepted, even for the mildest blows against the political enemy. The fact that the logo of the NSU [Ndt. Nationalsozialisticher Untergrund-National Socialist Hlandestinity is a neo-Nazi terrorist group that carried out several armed and explosive attacks against foreign-born people in Germany between ’97 and 2011] was traced in the immediate vicinity of the office may reasonably suggest that in this case this was not an action carried out by someone who carries an ideal of freedom in his heart.
But the obvious fact that there may be enemies of the Greens both within the spectrum of political parties and outside the array of power should not lead one to doubt that something very different may be going on right now: namely, a wave of attacks against the Greens, inspired by a need for freedom. A need that neither the left nor the anarchists have a monopoly on and that becomes dangerous precisely when it spreads among the exploited and excluded in society and prompts them to attack those who oppress them.
Of course, the Greens and their “lying press” assistants know this very well. And perhaps that is why they have decided, in reaction to the series, hopefully just beginning, of attacks against them, to frame them as coming “from the right,” as “anti-democratic” (and they certainly are, but isn’t hostility to democracy first and foremost an expression of the struggle for freedom?) and consequently as “authoritarian” or even “fascist” by their very nature. Perhaps this is an overestimation of the Greens, who are really as stupid as they pretend to be when they say, for example, in reaction to the aforementioned attack on their Hamburg headquarters, “Of course we were shocked. But we suspect that it did not come from the left.” I believe, however, that it would be a mistake to consider only their stupidity. No, what the Greens are trying to do is to use confusion over the issue of an already empty political identity of their enemies to weaken the wave of attacks against them. It is understandable that, as freedom attackers, one does not want to be confused with authoritarian forces. However, we must be careful not to let the press and the Greens, or our enemies in general, have the power to judge where and when such doubt arises. By trying to disguise the attack against them as a so-called “false flag” action, thus under a false flag from the right, the Hamburg Greens are clearly trying to present themselves as legitimate allies of the radical left’s politics. And even though there already seems to be a lot of confusion among The “radical leftists,” since they then actually make such alliances – to tell the truth, it is precisely this kind of confusion that is one of the central problems of the very essence of the so-called radical left and one of the reasons why, from the point of view of anti-authoritarians, it is then necessary to distance oneself from it -, the success of this strategy would be fatal. For an alliance with the Greens today, perhaps more than ever before, is a total betrayal of any subversive idea. In the face of these efforts by the Greens, fortunately, the only appropriate response is amusement: Let us make sure that the attacks on the Greens do not stop. Let us make sure that we speak a clear language through our actions and that it is always and everywhere directed against all authority, escaping any militarist logic. And perhaps first of all: let’s not get caught up in the logic of the spectacle. Let us not be lulled by the lies of the press, but let us develop our understanding of the world in which we live. Let us flush all left-right frontalism down the toilet and instead seek, in word and deed, those allies who speak the same language of freedom as we do, who share the same idea of it and the struggle to achieve it. For an attack on the Greens, like any attack on domination, remains first and foremost such; and just because power seeks to develop alternative narratives so as not to lose its grip in the face of such attacks through a left-right classification of actions that speak for themselves, we should not make the mistake of falling for this miserable attempt at counterinsurgency.
May the Greens drown in the sea of hatred towards their murderous, colonial and social-chauvinist policies made of borders, war and environmental destruction, and may all technocrats, fascists, democrats, Leninists, whatever their name, drown with them!
[Published in german at: https://aufstand.blackblogs.org/2022/10/30/der-feind-steht-rechts/ | Published in italian at: https://lanemesi.noblogs.org/post/2022/11/14/il-nemico-sta-a-destra-un-ragionamento-sullattuale-serie-di-attacchi-agli-uffici-dei-verdi-nella-repubblica-federale-tedesca/]
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(IT) Il nemico sta a destra? Un ragionamento sull’attuale serie di attacchi agli uffici dei Verdi nella Repubblica Federale Tedesca
(EN) Does the enemy lie to the right? A discussion about the current series of attacks on Green offices in the Federal Republic of Germany
(DE) Der Feind steht rechts? Ein Kommentar zur aktuellen Serie von Angriffen auf Grünenbüros in der BRD (“Aufstand!”)