Germany:
For Workers Mobilization Against the War Drive and Police-State Measures!

Against Social Democracy (SPD, Die Linke and Satellites) and All Brands of Reformism – Build a Revolutionary Multi-Ethnic Workers Party!

BERLIN, May 1 – In the midst of the vicious genocide committed by the United States and Israel against the Palestinian population in Gaza – for which Germany, as Israel’s second largest arms supplier, is co-responsible – obligatory support for Zionism has officially been declared “Staatsräson” (in diplomatic jargon raison d’état, or a matter of state overriding any other considerations). The severity of the repressive measures against any and all defense of the Palestinians stands in stark contrast to the dwindling support of the population for this monstrous war crime.

Heading up those banned under this precept was Samidoun, the Palestinian nationalist defense organization. The list of demonstrations and assemblies that have been banned or attacked in Germany since October 7 is long. The most recent are the brutal dispersal of the April 20 Berlin demonstration against arms deliveries to Israel and, a week earlier, the protest against the storming of the Palestine Congress.

On April 12, the Palestine Congress in Berlin was busted up by 900 cops. This highly anti-democratic attack was directed against organizers, invitees and participants alike – solely on the basis of “thought crimes.” It was a brutal warning to all those who might oppose the German bourgeoisie’s war drive and the impoverishment that has accompanied it.

After a massive smear campaign, supported by an alliance ranging from the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) to the Left Party (e.g. former Berlin state minister for culture Klaus Lederer), the Congress was harassed, surrounded by cops, assaulted and then dispersed. The Palestinian surgeon (and rector of Glasgow University) Ghassan Abu-Sittah was denied entry at the airport and his video message to the congress was cut off and banned by the police. Former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis was also banned from speaking.

Udi Raz, a leading member of Jewish Voice, was arrested at the Congress. The group’s bank account was frozen – like Jewish bank accounts in the Third Reich. Prayers in Arabic and singing in Hebrew were also prohibited. What’s next? A ban on the words salaam and shalom, the cognates (closely related words) for peace in these two Semitic languages? Then came the April 26 dispersal of the protest camp in front of the Reichstag against the genocide in Gaza.

The repression by the German imperialist state, along with its recent campaign against Muslims and the systematic scapegoating of refugees for the suffering caused by the crisis of German capitalism, is all putting wind in the sails of the fascistic Alternative for Germany (AfD), who are the real antisemites. The AfD is at the forefront pushing many of these repressive measures, from the banning of Samidoun to the planned expulsion of dissident students from Berlin universities, which must be fought with strikes by faculty, staff and students.

The AfD and open fascists swimming in its wake are protected, financed, supported, held in readiness and used by sections of the capitalist class to ultimately secure capitalist rule and smash the organizations of the working class. The fascist danger and the racist terror associated with it will not be defeated by large rallies together with bourgeois forces or at the ballot box, and even less so by blacklists [of prohibited pro-Palestinian speakers]. On top of which, the police throughout Germany are notoriously infiltrated by fascist elements. Calling on the bourgeois state to ban the fascists is not only futile, it is downright suicidal.

The organizers of the “anti-fascist” mass mobilizations that were held across the country in January and February, touched off by the exposure of a secret fascist/reactionary meeting in Potsdam last November to plan future mass deportations of “foreigners,” were in no way opposed to the accelerated deportations that the ruling coalition had just decided on at that time. At these rallies Palestinian flags were generally banned, while Israeli and German flags were of course not. In some cases (e.g., Munich and Berlin), pro-Palestinian demonstrators were excluded.

These demos were based on the popular-front principle “All together against fascism,” which blurs the class line against the bourgeoisie. Calls to base the demonstrations on the DGB labor federation or to “organize from below,” as Klasse gegen Klasse (Class Against Class, German affiliate of the Trotskyist Fraction) advocated in a January 23 declaration, do not call this class collaboration into question, but rather give it a “left” cover. Fascism must be defeated on the streets and in the factories through hard class struggle and the organization of workers self- defense.

An Attack on One Is an Attack on All

German federal chancellor Olaf Scholz has announced the deportation of immigrants “on a grand scale.” The working class, with its large immigrant component, must not allow itself to be divided. It must oppose the all-party campaign (Thuringia prime minister Bodo Ramelow from the Left Party is already on board) against refugees and the accelerated deportations, and fight for full citizenship rights for all immigrants, along with class-struggle measures to prevent deportations.

“Defense” minister Pistorius declares that Germany must “become fit for war.” Economics minister Robert Habeck, who just declared himself “armaments minister,” believes that “there are too many strikes for less and less work.” Transport minister Volker Wissing emphasized even more clearly that “there is war in Europe. This wage conflict [rail workers strikes] must not become a security risk.” The working class must mobilize against the double war of German imperialism and NATO in Ukraine and the Middle East, the accompanying criminalization of opposition and threats against trade-union struggles.

The ruling class has thrown down the gauntlet: it’s “pensions or rearmament.” The workers have the power to smash this all-sided offensive of the bourgeoisie. We not only have the power, it is in our most fundamental class interest to stop the transport of war material to Ukraine and Israel.

But the trade-union bureaucracy is fanatically loyal to the aims of German imperialism. So Scholz easily persuaded the misleaders of verd.i (service workers) and IG Metall (metal workers), the largest sections of the DGB labor federation, to support more arms shipments to Israel, to the Zionist genocidal warmongers in Gaza, and for the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. This is pure class betrayal. These unions should instead use their power to stop such shipments!

Repeated strikes in local transport, on the railroads, in the port of Hamburg and at the airports have shown the strength of the working class. There is an urgent need to fight, and that means sweeping away the bureaucratic parasites. This requires a revolutionary, Trotskyist program and leadership.

The attempt to build up the Left Party as a “left” social-democratic partner in order to pressure the SPD has been a miserable, demoralizing flop. The Left Party is a political corpse that cannot be revived. The Alliance for Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW), for its part, is a bourgeois populist party that, despite some rhetoric about reviving the welfare state, is openly pro-capitalist and anti-socialist. While the BSW warns the German bourgeoisie against provoking Russia, it is nevertheless a proponent of “European” imperialist militarization. Wagenknecht and (her husband) Oskar Lafontaine are notorious enemies of immigrants and refugees.

Against this across-the-board offensive by the bourgeoisie, a revolutionary leadership must be built that is not afraid to swim against the tide. Karl Liebknecht’s battle cry during the First World War, “The main enemy is at home,” still applies today. Class-conscious workers must defend both the Palestinians and Russia against the Zionist and imperialist wars, which ultimately aim at a counter-revolutionary war against the Chinese bureaucratically deformed worker state. To prevent the looming World War III, and to dispel seductive dreams of an impossible “peaceful coexistence” with world capitalism, the Internationalistische Gruppe, German section of the League for the Fourth International, is fighting to build a Leninist-Trotskyist vanguard party dedicated to world socialist revolution. ■

To contact the Internationalist Group and the League for the Fourth International, send e-mail to: internationalistgroup@msn.com

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