On The Reproduction of German Imperialism at the Beyond Europe Camp

‘’If one more person wearing an antideutsche t-shirt initiates a conversation with me in German I’m going to punch them in the face’’ – Unnamed Camp Participant number #27

‘’I wish there had been more non-Germans here’’ – The only thing said by an Ums Ganze member I will ever agree with

The ‘Beyond Europe Camp’ was a weeklong camp in the North East of Greece, attended by Libertarian, Anti-Authoritarian and Anarchist groups and individuals. It was created with the intent of sharing skills and experiences between various different European Groups, and assisting the local people in their struggle against the ecological destructive open pit gold mine there.

The camp was neither a resounding success nor an abject failure. I do not believe that we concretely assisted in their struggle against the mine, but the locals who participate in the struggle seemed to appreciate our presence and willingness to put our bodies on the line for their struggle. In terms of the workshops some were mediocre at best, but some were fantastic, and I met some great people. But the elephant in the room throughout the whole camp, and number one point of discussion among those I spoke with, was the completely uncritical attitude the camps German participants (Who form the majority of the camps participants) had to their relative position in European Society, and their continual reproduction of German Imperialism, especially within the Greek context, and especially among so called ‘’Anti-Germans’’.

While most of the rest of Europe are also participants in the Imperialist exploitation of Greece, it cannot be ignored that Germany holds a special place as the number one instigator and beneficiary of the exploitation of Greece. The handing over of Greek regional airports to German Companies, something directly insisted on by the German state in the latest round of Greek Austerity, on a 40 year ‘concession’ nearly directly mirrors the infrastructure ‘concessions’ of the 19th Cen (Such as the British seizure of Hong Kong on a 99 year lease). Those who used to take ports now take airports.

The German Radical Left is aware of this, at least in the abstract sense, that they are big baddies, and they should engage in pointless guilt about it, while romanticising the Greek struggle. But if the attitude of many of Germans at the Beyond Europe Camp is at all representative of the Radical Left, they have not taken this abstract knowledge to attempt any form of concert transformation of their behaviour.

The most explicit and disgusting example of the reproduction of Imperialist Attitudes in the Camp came from the so called ‘German Time’. After the Mountain Walk to see the Gold Mine near the beginning of the camp had to leave late because people were late, many within the camp would start to refer to the times of events as being at ‘’10:30 German Time’’. ‘German Time’, was meant to contrast with the previously ‘Greek Time’, and to emphasise that people should be on time. Because you know, haha, the Greek are lazy and bad workers and so always late while the Germans are hard workers who are always on time because they know the value of good work.

Hilarious, really.

You can of course make jokes about the stereotypes that oppress and separate people. But to do this you have to in some way deconstruct the dominant discourse, and just repeating a reactionary attitude with a wink at the end is really insufficient for such. And of course such stereotypes should not just be offensive to the Greeks, for the stereotype that Germans are hard workers who take their jobs very seriously means nothing more than being a good slave to capital, something which International capital is very much trying to ‘break into’ the Greek people.

Another example that reaches into parody is a complaint made by a German comrade when they were informed that there were going to be TV Cameras at the demonstration. They said that there had been a lengthy debate in Germany about this for years, and they had reached the conclusion that they should not have TV Cameras at the demonstration, and so they were shocked that the organisers could have permitted such. The fact that we were not in Germany, we were in Greece, and that this was a camp of people from many different European Nations and not a German Summer Holiday Camp, seemed to have slipped their minds. It also showed a complete lack of awareness that this was not a struggle of which we were not protagonists. Rather it was one we had been invited to participate in and that by accepting such an invitation we were accepting that these people would have different political practises to our own and that we had not right to dictate to them.

I would also prefer if there were not the TV Cameras of mainstream bourgeoisie media at the demonstration, and that there were only the Cameras of Comrades, who know not to publish faces without permission, not to livestream etc. (Such practises have the added benefit of moving money into the movement, as if the mainstream media wishes to report on the issue they must pay Comrades for their photos and such.) But I also respect the local’s right to gain their struggle as much media attention as possible, and if the presence of the cameras disturbed me so badly I could simply refuse to attend the demonstration. We also acknowledge that local political practises come of out differing materiel realities, and that Greek systems of surveillance are far less sophisticated than the ones in Britain and Germany, and so a different level of caution is appropriate.

These two examples are ones that are particularly egregious and notable, but there were very many low level examples of such throughout the camp. From initiating conversations in German, to when spoken to in English replying in German, to when we are having a conversation in English (A language we are both completely fluent in) attempting to switch into German after hearing I have a German name. Regardless of whether not these people were able to speak German or not, we were at a camp that was supposed to be one that was uniting people from across Europe, with the agreed common language of English, and continually attempting to switch into German when you were perfectly capable of speaking English is not appropriate. (Of course for those who were only confident in speaking German, the dynamics are decidedly different, but we should not pretend that the number of these people at the camp was a large one.)

Another tension within the camp came out of the presence of the so called ‘antideutsche’ at the camp. The antideutsche are a phenomenon that is decidedly alien to those who have not lived in German, or have had it explained in great length to them. To those who do not know antideutsche is an ideological position within the German Radical Left, which due to a reaction against Anti-Semitism with the German Left (Something that was an immense problem for the German Left) and fears of a ‘Fourth Reich’ after the reunification of Germany, decided that in order to cull the fascist threat they must support Israel and America, and oppose the struggle of the people of Palestine in order to ensure that Germany does not regress into Fascism.

It should be noted from the start that for an ideology that seeks to call itself ‘Anti-German’ that it is an inherently German centric ideology that centres German experience while ignoring everything else. Anti-Germanists know that Israel and America are not nice states, and that the ‘bad thing’ of supporting them is justified by the fact that if good things happened instead (The end of the genocide of the people of Palestine, the weakening of US Imperialism) this may lead to the US and Israel being too weak to combat an emergence of German fascism. In other terms Anti-Germanism is nothing more than reacting to the guilt of one genocide (The Holocaust) by supporting another (That of Palestine by Israel). Nothing about Anti-Germanism is Anti-German, these so called Radicals have the same foreign policy as their Government, and their refusal to struggle for Palestine lets their arms companies profit off the murder of Arabs by Israel, or in other terms, German Imperalism. If anything is going to lead to a remergence of German Fascism it will be their uncritical support of Western Imperialism.

Within any other European country the idea that Zionists and supporters of the USA would be tolerated within the Radical Left is absurd, but those who oppose the antideutsche seem to be willing to do so, where the divide seems to be nothing much more than ‘Something you argue about when you’re drunk’, as oppose to something that should be a fundamental unreachable divide. If those German organisations who participate in the ‘Beyond Europe’ formation really wish to create a pan-European network of Autonomous Radicals then they need to deal with both their own Chauvinism and the ‘antideutsche’ problem in their ranks.

Long Live Palestine!

Long Live Anti-Imperialist Struggle!

Death to America!

Death to Israel!

Death to the West!