This text builds upon the previous blog posts, and the goal is to outline a strategy on how to proceed in regards to the “rise of fascism” which is currently occuring in Europe.
Content warning for: fascism, ableism, transphobia, xenophobia.
That people who are not directly affected by the rise of fascism to just look the other way when fascism takes hold, or continue contributing to the stuff takes the fascism or military utilizes is very disturbing to watch.
The only people who seem to care are those that already barely have any resources because of discrimination, because they know they’ll be next. And even among them, there isn’t 100% consensus about that.
People hate to have to do hard additional work against fascism on top of still having to do their regular job/work. Which is understandable from a short-term PoV, and horrifying from a long-term PoV. And this effect looks strong enough that people will probably react to fascism way too late. Capitalism (and the ruthless-ification of it by dropping safety nets and such first, by “centrist” right-wing political parties) feed into that.
Like, the only people who seem to be on-top of what’s currently happening regarding this are migrants, trans people, disabled people and radical leftists. i.e. those, whose very existence or at least funding is already threatened, even just by current center-right governments.
I think a large reason for this is the control of most media companies (incl. most social media) by right-leaning people.
From a German perspective, it looks like we’re already in the phase “the clock is ticking”. As soon as the current government came into power, it directly started attacking leftist NGOs and such. It feels like only by luck that they didn’t implement their planned measures against trans people. They’re currently attacking basically all poor people and migrants, and pulling funding from leftist initiatives almost everywhere, tho particularly in rural areas.
Albeit up for some debate, I think it is safe to say: The fascism already started. CDU and AfD are already cooperating in some places, and just copying policies elsewhere — and people unfortunately seem to treat the latter as “better” even tho it is actually more dangerous; because sure, you can outlaw the AfD with large amounts of effort, but its effect would just vanish if the CDU has just copied all of it by then.
And the alternative parties have also started copying.
And with broad-scale attacks already happening, I have no hope left that this would change if the AfD came into power.
Cure, you would get phenomena like in the USA where entire cities are attacked in a kinda symbolic manner, and they do, of course, resist. But that’s because it’s an attack against them, and their lifestyle.
Almost only the people under attack do resist large-scale. That’s the problem.
It would be absolutely not unexpected if e.g. the CDU just tried to rollback the SBGG, and tried to retroactively also invalidate all updates made via that or the older TSG. Sure, one could probably fight that in court. One (many) would still easily be trapped in bureaucratic and legal system hell for many years. And without valid identification documents, good luck trying to flee.
Also, given that there are already efforts underway to ramp up for war, that’s also a way to trap citizens. etc.
And like, passports are one thing. But this also applies to certificates, degrees, etc. which are all bound to official names.
e.g. require employers for professions with any specialization / certificate / degree requirements to only accept people with “matching” documents (patrolled via customs authority, which kinda already does something very similar).
It’s not like there’s much of a ceiling to authority sadism.
It almost looks like a playbook series of probable events: - Make it impossible to exist while poor. - Make it harder for people to travel outside of the country, or almost impossible. Perhaps with a twist of “either trapped inside or outside, and if you’re outside, you’re not allowed to vote (perhaps we delay our snail mail so much that it looks like an accident)”. - Make the military the “savior” that employs the poor, force the poor to join.
In general, I think a good strategy would be the following: - Fight against every new proposal that furthers a right-wing agenda. I would count everything that furthers nationalism, militarization, authoritarianism, strict identity checking everywhere, etc. - But the former is not sufficient, and might not be sustainable, so also work on setting up exile structures outside Germany before stuff gets actually difficult, that can pick up when German NGOs… stop
Like, it currently is way easier to both plan for escape, gather necessary documents, setup support structures that don’t require the German democracy to remain functional, etc. Than to try to do that after it already got impossible to get funding, find work, get appropriate healthcare, or leave the country.
The government is already just blatantly and ruthlessly ignoring laws, relying on them being upheld is not a good long-term strategy.
My own context is essentially: - I’m already trying to prepare for a state where becomes incredibly hard to get documents verified / obtain certified copies. Sure, that’s non-trivial as a process to “break”, but it could also being done randomly. - I’m surrounded by people involved in NGOs and grass-root like projects, so I think it makes sense to plant the idea/meme that working on exile infrastructure is worthwhile.
The main problem is mostly that creating exile infrastructure is hard when you don’t know where, given that the same problems of increasingly fascist governments are happening in extremely many places.
Thereby, I propose: Make exile infrastructure (primarily for radical leftists, migrants, disabled people, trans people, and perhaps a few other groups that might easily also be targeted by fascist efforts very early) everywhere.
It won’t become useless just because of a fascist take-over somewhere if one has a whole network of those across Europe, and such communal infrastructure could facilitate resistance both before and afterwards.
It could also aid in making fascist takeover harder altogether, by providing alternative media that is locally and Europa-wide well-connected, something which currently seems a bit lacking.
I doubt the infrastructure of Chaos & CCC has enough reach, it is too strongly bundled to the DACH area. Even if it would have enough reach, it isn’t radical enough, and I doubt its aims could be expanded enough (without breaking the infrastructure by some defection) to cover the entire ehm “problem”.
Local anti-fascist organizations often can be enough for the “local” part, but their international networking is often a bit subpar outside of individual initiatives for collaboration.
And they’re often unfortunately very vulnerable to funding cuts by local governments (see e.g. wtf is happening in Saxony, etc.).
Same with university-bound infrastructure. Most universities won’t be able to resist authority pressure long, esp. not when threatened via funding cuts.
All of these problems mentioned in the last 3 paragraphs are “of course” already occurring.
Those who have the ambition to fix the problem unfortunately usually don’t have enough money to fix the problem. It’s hard to pay for an organization membership, which the organization needs due to lack of gov. funding, when one barely has enough money to survive. Sure, these people could work excellently with very low funds, but without larger funds, their impact is too small.
Sure, I can program and understand mathematics somewhat well. I also can debug stuff, which is more broadly applicable. But for the most part, it feels as if my skills are largely irrelevant because I have no clue how to gather people and momentum, and bootstrap an organization. I did try on several occasions, never successful. And there aren’t really any organizations that I know which actually have the problem mentioned above even just remotely in scope (in order to join).
In summary, I am already nostalgic for the present, given that it can only get worse for the next few years. Such a messed up state to be in.
Music: You Gotta Get Through Me by Rabbit Junk
tbh so much leftist stuff is so dependent on government funding it wouldn’t be able to survive a complete funding cut from government funding for even just a year. And a funding cut can be provoked by any org along the funding chain, from EU, country, down to local level, often every lower level has to apply to the upper level for the funds, so this can happen very easily. Most of them don’t have any even remotely sufficient alternative funding.
One wouldn’t even have to outlaw anything, most of it would just vanish or get displaced (merged into larger orgs elsewhere which could hold on for longer, still hampering accessibility and usability along the way) as soon as the funding gets cut.
As soon as repression and such ramps up, even those who originally had funding might easily run into trouble when their members get cut off from funding/work.
Overall, the more intermediates there are that don’t share the same goals, the more threatened every outpost and associated organization becomes.
Like, leftist projects housed in places owned by leftists or organizations staffed solely by leftists will be safe for much longer than those where even the landlord is critical and only in it for the money.
One could easily say, way too many leftist projects would just fold upon the smallest pressure from local governments or organized longer-term fascist attacks.
The “leftist landscape” is already folding in urban regions with right-wing local governments.
Radical leftist groups often would survive, given that they’re often ineligible for gov. funding from the get-go, but they’re not sufficient as a resistance. They’re too small, and too few, and lack networking.