It’s getting cold. That’s why it’s so important for us to come closer together and share our fear, anger and hope here today.
But we too have become accustomed to the cold. For many years, we have become accustomed to the reports of deaths in the Mediterranean, to the sealing off of the EU’s external borders and to the tightening up of Europe’s inhuman asylum politics.We have become accustomed to the obstruction and criminalization of see rescuers and church asylum, to the fact that there is no reluctance to deport people to Iran or Afghanistan are not deterred. To declaring Turkey, Morocco and Tunisia safe third countries, to the shifting Europe’s external border to death zones such as the Sahara Desert. To the fact that it comes as no surprise to us when the CSU copies from Italy’s neo-fascist head of government Meloni the idea of setting up detention centers including a morgue for thousands of refugees in non-EU country Albania as a “deterrent”. To the fact that even a SPD chancellor announces in the SPIEGEL that he “wants to deport on a large scale” and that the Greens support the de facto abolition of the right of asylum by the EU. To the fact that the British government has long been planning with its Rwanda model, what Sellner dreams of. To the fact that there are no more red lines.
We have become accustomed to the deportation of colleagues, neighbours and friends who have lived and worked in Germany for decades. To the hatred and incitement spread by newspapers and social media channels and to the language of the right-wing cultural struggle that has long arrived in the midst of society. To the fact that the AfD has been fought for years by the CDU, the SPD, the Greens and the FDP with an attempt to overtake it in deed and word from the right. To the fact that their supposed firewall has long since collapsed and that their answer to the escalating crises of capitalism is also Fortress Europe.We have grown accustomed to global double standards of human rights and glaring global injustice. We have become accustomed to the disregard for our own lives and even to passing on the disregard on a regular basis. We have become so used to the fact that, in the debates on the Middle East, even the fight against anti-Semitism has been effortlessly instrumentalised into a racist and anti-Muslim campaign.
It’s a good thing we’re here together. A sign that we haven’t gotten used to everything yet. And a sign of our hope that we who meet here are not yet used to all this.The documentation of the contents of the meeting of leading fascists by the CORRECTIV editorial team has once again shown that the fascist AfD must be fought by all means. Not that the “revelations” are really new findings. And yet the CORRECTIV report is only the straw that breaks the camel’s back, as the open agitation has been unbearable for years. Still, it makes us angry again. Today, we are finally venting our anger, our fears and our worries on the streets.
Perhaps this CORRECTIV research has awakened us and reminded us that many of the outrageous demands of the right have long been implemented by those bourgeois parties that are now posing as great anti-fascists.We must not fall back into our habit, into the latent and manifest violence that it embodies. Nor must we fall back on the defence of a state governed by the rule of law, which does not have equal rights for all, which is systematically enforced by Nazis and right-wing structures. A rule of law that deportes people to countries like Afghanistan, bans demonstrations, and persecutes anti-fascists and climate activists with an harshness never seen towards the rightwing. We must not fall back on defending a normal state of affairs in which security is to be established by the police and the military rather than by justice and participation. We do not want a “defensive democracy” that seeks its enemies not only on the right but also on the left. A democracy that plunders other countries and leaves them in a state in which it may still survive, but certainly cannot live, only to stop all those who subsequently leave their countries with border fences. We do not want to defend a global capitalist order that drives itself deeper and deeper into catastrophe and whose only response is war, isolation and authoritarianism. We should defend and fight for something else: a diverse, socially just society of mutual respect and dignity for all.
We want to be united with all those who do not want to defend the rule of law, but the society of the many. With all those who know about the falsity of the racist crap about segregation, because we say: everyone who is here and wants to come here belongs here. With all those who know the falsity of the neoliberal nonsense of diversity, because it is not about an open society of participation, but about cheap, migrant labor.With all those who every day overcome the European border regime with its countless fences and walls, deserts and seas. With all those who are fleeing the wars, the catastrophes and the conditions of constant death that capitalism carries into the world. With all those who oppose the failed attempts of lethal control with their living resistance. With all those who fight for the conditions and the right to stay and go.
Let us come together, as we do today. Let us oppose the fascists of the AfD, but let us also oppose coldness and habit, against authoritarianism from the center and against the racist normality. Let us continue to defend the diversity and openness that we have already fought for, and let us not stop fighting until the ice of isolation, segregation and violence is broken and has given way to our vision of a society of many, of solidarity, of concern and of participation – a society of life.Interventionistische Linke Frankfurt, Januar 2024
www: frankfurt.interventionistische-linke.org
mail: frankfurt@interventionistische-linke.org
x: @iLfrankfurt
insta: ilfrankfurt
