The gentle embrace of censorship

The gentle embrace of censorship

From Integration Nightmare

In Berlin on February 24, the Ukrainian diaspora is holding an action on the anniversary of the start of the full-scale invasion. Local groups (mostly made up of immigrants from Belarus/Russia) have called to join this action in the format of an anarchist bloc, in response to the Pramen collective's call for this kind of action across Europe. One of the comrades involved in the preparations for the action today threw me the information that their call was removed from the local indymedia without any comments – the German indymedia is still alive and actively filled with various content, from authoritarian left to anarchist. It's hard for me not to comment on such a situation.

For an anarchist from Belarus, the very concept of censorship is not difficult to understand. Political contradictions become more important than any talk about freedom of speech and pluralism. It is not difficult to understand censorship from the so-called “left” wing of the political spectrum. Having been born in the Soviet Union and living under Lukashenko's “social dictatorship”, every politicized person understands that freedom of speech exists somewhere far abroad, while in Belarus it is necessary to keep one's mouth shut. However, getting censored by the left in Germany is a separate achievement for anarchists from Eastern Europe. It is a simple world in which anarchists fleeing persecution are once again shut up, not by authoritarian powers, but by those who, pretending to be comrades, bravely engage in solidarity sabotage.

That said, the German indymedia continues to be a pretty friendly place for so-called anti-militarists – radical left-wing arrogants who believe that the people of Ukraine and anarchists have no right to resist the Russian invasion with weapons in their hands. I don't know how many times I've had to listen to legends about the need for dialog within the movement and how ready these very antimilitarists are for it.The reality is much simpler, and the censorship of the call on indymedia once again shows that 2 years later no one is looking for dialog, but prefers consolidation of the information field with isolation of certain parts of the anarchist movement in the hope of their extinction.

Except that German leftists are betting on the mistaken notion that anarchists from Eastern Europe will shut up. The revival of the anarchist movement after the collapse of the USSR, as well as its further development, took place under constant conditions of censorship, repression, and attempts to isolate us from society. Those who remained active under Lukashenko's or Putin's regime can certainly find their way around the left liberal German political field. And many of us did not believe in left unity anyway, because, unlike many Western activists, we remember our history and those who destroyed anarchists after the fall of the monarchy in Russian Empire.

There are 8 Comments

For all the back and forth on this subject I wonder how often anyone, anarchist or leftist, has tried to address it in a way that makes sense of the way that the camps are talking at cross purposes and invoking different pictures of reality with their repetitive rhetoric.

For people like this author and WP, the issue is whether Ukrainians have the right to resist the Russian invasion. (Not clear to me who says they don’t.)

For the rest the issue seems to be that expressions of solidarity with Ukraine in the west are all too easily folded in with the way that mainstream politicians and governments support Ukraine, for instance as support for the $100billion WWIII bill that is supposed to pour weapons into Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. (It’s true that the concept of local autonomy does sort of disappear from this perspective.)

And furthermore can we categorize the social bases of these perspectives, beyond throwing around rather tiresome accusations that those who disagree with us are merely different flavors of “imperialist stooges”?

Anon writes, "For people like this author and WP, the issue is whether Ukrainians have the right to resist the Russian invasion. (Not clear to me who says they don’t.)"

This is disingenuous. Lots of anarchists say they *would* be for Ukrainians right to resist the Russian invasion, but*not* so long as Ukraine has a state and has a capitalist economy, and is getting aid from Western imperialists. Since this is the case, in the real world, these anarchists are not *in fact* for Ukrainians resistance to the imperialist Russian invasion.

The Ukrainians have the right to get aid from wherever they can (as the Palestinians have the right to get weapons from the reactionary theocracy of Iran). That the Western imperialists are using them for their reactionary purposes is true but not the point. It is the Ukrainians who are fighting and dying for their own national independence, not US or German soldiers, as it is Ukraine which is being bombed and blown up and its people massacred by the Russians, not US or German people.

If we believe in the national self-defense of the Palestinians, then we should believe in the national self-defense of the Ukrainians. And anarchists who say so should not be censored by the authoritarian left.

do 'we' believe in the national anything? does self defense have to be national?

When people who are not "we" believe in nations, and are being genocided, do you stop supporting their seld-defense because they're not anti-nationalists?

Most people killed in Gaza see themselves as Palestinians, most people being killed in Ukraine as Ukrainians. Most of the dead and knidnapped children, or adults for that matter, do not see themselves as anarchists. Do you know whar makes it hard to spread anarchist anti-nationalist thinkinf in such areas? Being dead.

i wouldn't presume to criticize the individual nationalist while they're getting it in the neck, no. especially if it seems they're an otherwise normal person with relatively little power. i'm also not much for preaching the anarchist gospel, least of all when people obviously have much more immediate problems.

but performatively speaking on behalf of that hypothetical innocent civilian/regular person, is something many of our enemies do all the time

eh i agree with warmonger wayne on this one. i have read the anti-militarist perspectives and while i think i agree with their points, i don't agree with indymedia censoring ukrainian solidarity efforts organized by antiauthoritarians.

i am tempted to rehash aspects of the arguments (instances of u.s. military support for YPG, palestine) but i'll just leave it at saying the call should not have been taken down, and that if berlin indymedia have a good reason for doing so, they should post an explanation.

Really interesting how you talk about censorship in the current protest scene in Germany and say nothing about the extreme suppression of the Palestinian cause there. Almost as if it’s not on your mind at all. I wonder why that is? Are you anti-deutsch?

Nope, and in fact I wrote about the problems with antideutsch several times in the blogs prior to 2022. This days I just don't have time and energy to talk about it with germans or internationals. The situation is fucked up, and I think there are voices of comrades who wrote about it way better than I would ever be able to...

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