Where’s the logic?

Why is this a fact of life on every Mayday in Berlin Kreuzberg? Standing on Mariannenplatz, the noise level suddenly dropped as a solid block of black-clad people advanced down the street, taking up its entire width. Walking behind a banner emblazoned with ‘Kapitalismus zerstören’, the first 400 or so protesters wore hoodies, shades and had their faces covered with black bandanas. To my right, a bystander must have made a provocative comment: one protester peeled off and stood nose-to-nose with the man before being pulled back into the mass by some of the others. As they progressed, an amplified voice boomed out: ‘Lässt euch nicht auseinander treiben!’ (‘Don’t let yourselves be split up!’). No-one was remotely trying to split them up – most bystanders were studiously ignoring the whole lot, or deliberately avoiding eye contact. Several children were crying. After the initial packed mass of black, the rest of the protest march began to look more like I imagine a protest march would look: people weren’t masked, they were smiling and carrying banners and giving out leaflets. A noticeable sense of relief passed through the square.

That was at 19.30. By 20.30 police were being bottled. By midnight, some of those black-clad protesters had actually managed to rip up paving stones as weapons, burnt several cars and tens of bins, thrown Molotov cocktails, been tear-gassed, pepper-sprayed and truncheoned. Over two hundred were arrested, probably many more injured. Both policemen and protesters were seen with what one news channel referred to as ‘gaping head wounds‘. The Kottbusser Tor underground station was closed; substantial portions of the streets in Berlin’s second poorest district were wrecked. Many of the shops and flats around ‘Kotti’ were smashed up – most belong to second and third generation Turkish-Germans so often the target of Neo-Nazi violence. Ironic then, that the forums of Anti-facist organisations that understandably proliferate in Germany were key in the organisation of this ‘protest’. All the banks in the area had boarded up their windows, and Kreuzberg is in any case hardly a gleaming commercial district. With no legitimate targets, protesters smashed, broke and burnt whatever was around. They somehow managed to tear down a traffic light. Reports state that police worked in groups, charging into the mass of rioters to break them apart and arrest individuals. This was apparently not a case of containment: the police obviously reckoned that a passive approach would result in more damage and injury. The protesters branded this ‘provocation’.

The 1st of May is a great day in Kreuzberg – the streets are lined with stages, DJs and bands play all day, cocktails (not the molotov kind) are available for 3 euros, there is much dancing, families bring their kids. The police have an extremely low-visibility approach – until the evening, the only ones I saw were four genial and rather elderly coppers who were designated the ‘Anti-Conflict Unit’. Of course, the 6000 police in operation were around – they were sat in vans in the side streets a distance away from the festivities. In Britain, they would have been watching events on CCTV. However, Germany has nowhere near as many cameras in public spaces: essentially none, which according to common consensus is how people want it. Groups of black-bandanas moved unmonitored though the crowd carrying the distinctive red/white/black flag of either anti-fascist/anti-capitlist/radical left wing groups. The demo was official and registered, beginning at 18.00 at Kotti. But anyone who may have desired to walk at the front, but didn’t have the requisite gear, didn’t have a chance. As I observed round the corner at Mariannenplatz – this wasn’t a demo. It was a military operation designed to intimidate: a black bloc.

Some context is required here. Talk to someone of 30 up in the UK about ‘radical leftwingers’ and they will probably have in mind figures such as Arthur Scargill or Tony Benn, chief movers behind the ‘loony-left’ policies which drove Britain round the bend to the extent that even Margaret Thatcher was a better option. All of which seems extremely quaint and endearing when one considers what ‘radical left’ means in Germany right now. Often described using the term ‘Autonomen’ (i.e. followers of the Autonomism political philosophy), theirs is a brand of radicalism warped into a bizarre combination of ad-hoc anti-everything sermonising on one day and all-out gang warfare with Neo-Nazis – or more likely the police protecting them – the next. Germany history being what is is, anything remotely associated with enforced discipline or the perceived infringement of free speech triggers an entirely understandable repulsion. Hence the police defending Neo-Nazis’ right to demonstrate, and the ensuing conflict with the Autonomen, who hate the skinheads (which you can pretty much understand), but hate the police more for protecting them (which you can’t: apparently the left-wingers and anarchists want a society without rules, apart from the rule that you can’t disagree with them about anything). This then leads to German police adopting increasingly military protective gear and things just get worse. There are of course various justifications for violence in the name of political protest: propagande par le fait, and the more extreme reading of the direct action approach. But come on people: you live in a country so intent on letting people express their opinion that they protect Nazi marches, and you think you need to burn cars to make your point? Martin Lurther King and Mahatma Ghandi advocated direct action, neither had this in mind.

Whatever they believe, the Autonomen have left Kreuzberg in tatters. And watching the shopkeepers sweeping the glass of their broken windows away, I find it very, very hard to believe that the Autonomen want anything but the excitement that danger and wanton destruction bring. I hope they’re happy.