In the UK, we hear a lot about a strong autonomous Antifa movement in
Germany. Could you give us a bit of an idea how this has come about?

The autonomous Antifa is part of the radical left movement which developed
following 1968. After the protests of the early 1970s had faded, the
radical left seemed to be in a dead-end. A large part of the left occupied
itself with the debate over the armed struggle of the RAF and other armed
groups, as well as with their conditions of imprisonment. Another part
organized in orthodox communist splinter groups. Although strong in
numbers, by the early 1980s both approaches had lost contact to societal
discourse and struggles.

The autonomous movement reacted to that with a changed concept of
politics. Change should be begun now, instead of waiting for a far-off
revolution to take place. The more anarchist outlook of the ‘autonome’ led
to a relocation of focus from class struggle to the sphere of
reproduction. Therefore struggles for adequate housing, over local
planning issues and against large projects like the construction of
Frankfurt Airport and a large Mercedes testing-road in Northwest Germany
became important. The struggle against organised Nazis had always played a
role for the radical left. Since the foundation of the NPD in 1969 and its
electoral success in the following years there had been protests against
its conferences and other events. An autonomous antifascism could follow
on this tradition.

Organised neo-Nazis were seen as posing a threat to the living conditions
of those on the radical left, who felt that their occupied houses and
autonomous youth centres were under threat. In addition, the struggle
against the neo-Nazis was understood to be a revolutionary struggle as the
Nazis were perceived as the storm-troopers of the pre-fascist Federal
Republic. This system would make use of the Nazis to suppress social and
radical left movements. In the 1980s it was possible to achieve wide
mobilisation with this analysis. In the early 1990s, however, as a wave of
pogrom-like riots and attacks on asylum seekers swept through the country,
the radical left found that with this analysis it was not in a position to
do anything against it. Racist and fascist ideas seemed to be held by a
large part of the population.

Under the impression that the autonomous movement lacked the ability to
intervene, many activists founded small autonomous Antifa groups. In order
to combine their potentials and become capable of action of a national
level, in 1992 they founded the ‘Antifaschistische Aktion-Bundesweite
Organisation’ (AABO) and a little later the ‘Bundesweites Antifatreffen’
(BAT). The AABO attempted to establish a stable organisation while the BAT
aimed purely at creating a network of autonomous groups. Both attempts
proved successful in mobilising large numbers of people against the few
Nazi marches which took place in the 1990s. Their meaning decreased
significantly, however, as nationwide mobilisation against Nazi marches
became problematic, due to the sheer number of marches taking place. In
addition, analysis hadn’t advanced much further from the 1980s. Antifa was
understood as ‘der Kampf ums Ganze’ (‘the struggle against the system as a
whole’): by attacking the most reactionary parts of society a blow would
be struck against the whole system. This lacking analysis was proved
dramatically wrong during the time of the Red-Green coalition.

When racist attacks in Germany peaked in the 1990s the state and police
became increasingly active against neo-Nazi groups. In 2000, you had the
‘Antifa-Summer’. What was that?

In 1998 the conservative government fell and was replaced by a coalition
of the Social Democrats and the Green Party. This government, unlike the
previous government, made the problem of neo-fascist organisation into a
political issue, as well as racist and anti-Semitic attitudes in society.
Following a failed bombing on a Dusseldorf Synagogue in 2000 came a wave
of repression against the organised right. The most important action
against the neo-Nazis was the government-initiated attempt to ban the NPD.
Although this failed in the end, because too many leading NPD members
turned out to be employed by the secret service, the trial led to a series
of investigations, confiscations and a large sense of insecurity in the
neo-fascist scene. In addition to this, the government pushed through a
row of legal changes, which limited the right to demonstrate, banned
certain fascist symbols and made it easier for the government to ban
organisations which were opposed to the constitution. In the end the
government made millions of Euros available for education against racism
and anti-Semitism. On a governmental level, the democratic parties in many
parts of Germany agreed not to work with representatives of the extreme
right-wing parties. The conservative party also often took part in this
agreement.

How was the state’s anti-fascism different from that of the Antifa
movement? Why was the state suddenly interested in tackling the neo-Nazi
problem?

The reasons why the state moved against fascist structures are complex. A
major reason is that the government had recognised that it was damaging to
the investment climate to have gangs of armed Nazis wandering the streets,
or to have fairly openly national socialist parties sitting in the local
government. This was especially the case as just at this time foreign
investment was urgently needed in East Germany, in order to halt the total
decay of the region’s economy.

But also important was that in the time of the Red-Green coalition the
German self-identity had changed. While the years after the war were still
marked by a denial of guilt, from the 1990s on Auschwitz and National
Socialism became an integral component part of the German identity. The
responsibility for National Socialism and the Shoah was not only
acknowledged but also turned into something which could be utilised for
the German identity. The reunited Germany, redeemed from its past
misdeeds, and with ‘the experience of two dictatorships’ behind it, could
enter the world as a democratic state. In this way the German attack on
Yugoslavia during its civil war was justified, as the Serbians were
supposedly planning a second Auschwitz for the Kosovans. On the other hand
the new German democracy refers to the Eastern Bloc, the ‘second German
dictatorship’, to stress the lack of alternatives to the bourgeois
capitalist system. In this tense relationship between a newly formed
totalitarianism theory and the striving for a good position on the world
market stands the new German political outlook. To this also belongs the
public memorials to the victims of National Socialism, as well as the
German victims of air raids and expulsions in a ‘European history of
suffering’. Also belonging to this are the interventions in Yugoslavia and
Afghanistan, as likewise the German push for the strengthening of the
European border regime. And, finally, also belonging to this are the
decided measures against neo-Nazis, who threaten the new German
self-confidence and the state’s monopoly of violence.

How did radical anti-fascists react to this? Did it strengthen or weaken
the movement?

The state’s action against neo-Nazis led the antifascist movement to an
identity crisis. If fascist and neo-Nazi groups had up till then been seen
as the storm-troopers of the system, who were supposed to suppress social
movements on the government’s behalf, now, at the latest, the radical left
had to confront the fact that Antifa was not ‘der Kampf ums Ganze’. A part
of the radical left denounced the state’s action as hypocritical. It was
pointed out that despite the state’s measures against neo-Nazis there
remained in society a right-wing consensus. This consensus was supposedly
based on a continuity of the concepts of national socialism, which were
still virulent in society. This would express itself in the ‘volkisch’
(blood based nationalism) German foreign policy, for example the early
recognition of Croatia and the support for the Palestinian cause, as well
as in a tendency to historical revisionism. The state’s actions against
Nazis were seen as hypocritical as the social structures on which both the
German national project and the Nazis were based, were left untouched.

Another part of the antifascist movement accepted that the struggle
against fascists offered no revolutionary perspectives and attempted to
sharpen their opposition to the system in other ways. In particular the
criticism of capitalism came into the foreground. Capitalism was now
analysed as a complex network of social relationships, which are
structurally prone to crisis. Neo-Nazis provided a negative solution to
this inherent tendency of capitalism towards crisis. This solution,
however, was based on a mistaken and structurally anti-Semitic analysis of
the way capitalism integrates individuals into society and therefore not
only had no emancipatory potential but had the potential to create
something far worse than bourgeois capitalist society. For this reason
neo-Nazis had to be fought, even though this fight had no revolutionary
perspectives. These should instead be sought in a confrontation with
bourgeois-democratic society.

While the following heavy debates seriously reduced the ability of the
radical left to mobilise for years to come, and the resultant insecurity
mobbed many antifascists to retire from politics, these tremors opened up
the critical examination of the left’s own positions and in the end led to
a strengthened theoretical confrontation with the basics of radical left
politics.

How, in your group, do you think of anti-fascism now? Did you
reconceptualise it to distinguish yourselves from liberal, bourgeois
anti-fascism?

TOP Berlin comes out of the tradition of autonomous Antifa groups and
still has in this field its greatest potential to mobilise. Accordingly we
have intervened in the antifascist movement and taken part in antifascist
protests. In the process we have always tried to insist on our own
critique of mainstream society. Two examples of this: On 1 May 2008 Nazis
demonstrated in Hamburg for ‘Volksgemeinschaft’ (blood based national
community’) and against capitalist globalisation. In meetings and texts
before the protest, we tried to work out a critique of the volkisch and
anti-Semitic positions of the Nazis. In addition, we took part in the
direct action against the march in Hamburg. Another mobilisation was
against the ‘Anti-Islamisation Congress’ organised by an extreme
right-wing party in Cologne, in collaboration with other European extreme
right-wing parties. We undertook a nationwide mobilisation with the
nationwide communist ‘ums Ganze’ federation, in which TOP Berlin is
organised. In articles and in our own congress we tried to work out what
role a culturalist understanding of society plays for the German national
narrative. With this we wanted to fight not only the thinly masked racism
of the extreme right, but also the everyday nationalism of mainstream
German society. As well, we presented a criticism of Islamism as a
reactionary crisis solution. The ‘ums Ganze’ federation took part in the
protests by organising a large demonstration on the eve of the congress.

These two mobilizations display well our approach. We take part in
antifascist protests, but try with theoretical content to lay a basic
critique and bring this into the movement.

What has that meant practically? Has the focus of your activities changed?

TOP Berlin was only formed in 2007 before the G8 summit in Heiligendamm.
Therefore our group positions haven’t been affected by the Antifa Summer.
But in contrast to its predecessor groups, Kritik und Praxis and
Antifaschistische Aktion Berlin, we try to initiate more of our own
campaigns, instead of following the fascists’ movements. In 2009 with ums
Ganze we have initiated an anti-national campaign with the motto ‘Staat.
Nation. Kapital Scheisse. Gegen die Herrschaft der falschen Freiheit’
(‘State. Nation. Capital. Shit. Against the dominance of the false
freedom’). As part of this campaign we have published a book on the
criticism of the state, organised a series of events on the critique of
the nation and called for a nationwide demonstration against the
celebrations of the 60th birthday of the foundation of the Federal
Republic of Germany. In the second half of the year ums Ganze and TOP
Berlin will mainly work on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin
wall and broaden our criticism of the nation to a criticism of real
existing socialism. Besides this we will hold our second Marx Autumn
School and devote ourselves to the second volume of Capital.


TOP (Theory. Organisation. Praxis) is a Berlin-based antifascist,
anti-capitalist group. They are part of the “…ums Ganze!” alliance
( http://umsganze.blogsport.de) which consists of more than ten groups from
all over Germany. Parts of this text are based on a paper written prior to
the G8 summit which can be found in English at www.top-berlin.net. To get
in touch with them write to mail (at) top-berlin.net.