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25,000 Berliners drown out a fascist rally with techno
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| Vernon Wanderer |
https://qz.com/1290682/afd-rally-in...h-techno-music/
Photos in article.
| quote: | Berlin’s clubs and clubbers brought their thumping techno to the streets on Sunday to go head-to-head with a rally organized by the right-wing political party Alternative for Germany (AfD).
The AfD rally of around 5,000 marched from the city’s central station to the Brandenburg Gate, but found themselves outnumbered five to one, and their chants of “we are the people” drowned out by the 25,000 counter-protesters and sound systems blasting music. The counter-demonstration was organized by the “Stop the hatred, stop the AfD” alliance, a broad collection of political parties, unions, and civil society organizations.
The AfD, which is virulently anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim, swept into Germany’s parliament for the first time after the general election last September. It is now the third-largest party in the Bundestag. It initially said it expected a turnout of 10,000 at its “for the future of Germany” march on Sunday, but later revised that number down to 5,000. Around 2,000 police kept the peace Sunday, with just one minor injury reported.
Around 100 clubs organized the “Bass Away the AFD” demonstration, with DJs playing on trucks and floats on the Spree river. Berlin has long been known for its dance club culture, and the atmosphere was not unlike the famous German love parade techno festival, which originated in the city. But this time the message was serious: The AfD, with its racism and hatred, has no place in Berlin.
“The Berlin club culture is everything that Nazis are not,” the group said in a statement. “We are progressive, queer, feminist, anti-racist, inclusive, colorful, and we have unicorns.” |
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| DJ RANN |
This was ing great.
It is worrying to see the rise of right emboldened again (albeit somewhat by a guy a who doesn't care about politics, just making money off idiots lol) but to see people use gay music to drown it out is fabulous.
I winder if this might actually be a return of the love parade in Berlin. I always thought it was a total mistake to move it away, and the result was tragic.
Switzerland has the Street parade and they've always managed 1m+ people on the streets of a smaller city. I don't see why Berlin couldn't handle it. |
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| Sand Leaper |
| quote: | Originally posted by DJ RANN
I winder if this might actually be a return of the love parade in Berlin. I always thought it was a total mistake to move it away, and the result was tragic.
Switzerland has the Street parade and they've always managed 1m+ people on the streets of a smaller city. I don't see why Berlin couldn't handle it. |
A Love Parade today would be 100 % co-opted by virtue signalling corporations, same way it was the last couple of years or so before the Duisburg debacle (or, if you ask Wolle XDP or Achim Szepanski, for about the last 25 years. See: parade). It'd also have to be flanked by LEGIONS of security to not be a complete sitting duck for another truck attack, effectively taking all the edge off of the protest aspect.
I certainly have no love for reactionaries like AfD. They'd be a similarly big thumb on the head of German techno as the DDR was before the wall fell, should they gain enough power. However, I'm not sure what a Berlin techno protest in 2018 is supposed to accomplish, considering that it is now largely driven by the same neo-liberal idpol that has a solid foothold in establishment politics already. There's a part of me that wonders whether a Love Parade now would really just be a call to uphold the status quo. I say this since the working class in Germany have now lurched to the right so much (AfD won its seats largely due to votes from the run down, brain drained parts of East Germany).
I'm sure Woony will correct me on some of this, though, as I haven't been clubbing in Berlin for a while now. |
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| SYSTEM-J |
| quote: | Originally posted by Sand Leaper
neo-liberal idpol |
I don't have any love for identity politics, but I'm surprised to see you conflate the movement with neo-liberalism. Speaking anecdotally, I would have said there's a considerable overlap between identity politics acolytes and the kind of amateur socialists who think the answer to every social problem is simply to tear down globalised capitalism. Unless I'm misunderstanding your point. |
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| Sand Leaper |
| quote: | Originally posted by SYSTEM-J
I don't have any love for identity politics, but I'm surprised to see you conflate the movement with neo-liberalism. Speaking anecdotally, I would have said there's a considerable overlap between identity politics acolytes and the kind of amateur socialists who think the answer to every social problem is simply to tear down globalised capitalism. Unless I'm misunderstanding your point. |
Yeah, I should probably have been more precise there. In the US, the people I am talking about are often called "progressives". It is definitely a new offshoot from US-centric liberal policies (hence my "neo" tag), but they are at the same time far more friendly towards socialism than a traditional liberal would be (some of them even like Antifa due to their "no borders, no social constructs"-schtick).
That said, my impression is that progressives on the whole have very little class conscience. They're raised on often highly watered down Frankfurt School revisionism rather than traditional Marxism, where the idea is simply to deconstruct the greater narrative that we've previously used to structure society around. This is why they are so much more concerned with race and gender rather than economics and class, and this is also why it is easy for centrist governments to pander to them, since it requires little to no reform of the current economic model.
For the record, I'm not a communist. I don't want to live in a totalitarian state. I just think we need to do better than capitalism at some point if humans are to survive. |
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| DJ RANN |
You make some great points but at least in terms of the USA (since you brought it up) Socialism doesn't even exist even in the most watered down sense; People think Bernie Sanders is some Socialist crusader simply becuase he wants medicare for all, a system which still heavily subsidises the profits of pharmaceutical companies, or that Obama was a "socialist" for creating an insignificant tax penalty for not singing up to a for profit healthcare system.
I even find it hard to see the remnants of socialism in the UK these days. Granted it's a world ahead of the USA but when I hear people bat the word socialism around in 1 st world countries I honestly think they have no idea what the term actually means in physical application. |
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| wotyzoid |
| quote: | Originally posted by Sand Leaper
I'm not a communist. |
I am.
| quote: | Originally posted by DJ RANN
You make some great points but at least in terms of the USA (since you brought it up) Socialism doesn't even exist even in the most watered down sense... |
Easy there with the sweeping generalisations, rann, we do have the great policies of FDR. |
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| Vector A |
| I'm pretty sure wotyzoid is the only tankie around these parts. |
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| wotyzoid |
| I'm not so much of a tankie, I'm more of a "let's all starve together and love each other" kind of communist. |
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