Anarchist participation in the farmers struggles in Berlin on Jan 15

From de.indymedia.org
February 15, 2024

They Tried to Bury Us, They Didn’t Know We Were Seeds!

As anti-capitalists and anti-authoritarians we joined the call from farmers for blockades and protest on Monday 15.01.2024 in Berlin. We welcomed the farmers in the city at a point on a demo route through Friedrichshain. With banners, slogans, fireworks, and flyers, we expressed our solidarity in the early stage of the demo. Our banners said: Berlin heißt die rebellischen Bäuerinnen willkommen [Berlin welcomes the rebellious farmers] and Solidarität mit den Landarbeiter*innen [Solidarity with the agricultural workers] with anarchist and antifascist symbols.

As migrants, workers, unemployed, and anarchists we see tendencies within the farmers‘ struggle that are part of our fight against domination and exploitation and refuse to leave them to be co-opted by reactionary elements. We want to make it clear that we don‘t agree with the positions of all the farmers who participated in these protests and we stand critically with many of them. But we find many elements of this struggle that correspond to our own struggles for liberation. As part of this antagonistic movement, we want to link this struggle to others and to create moments where potentially combative elements of the struggle could thrive. We want to come together, to support and empower each other in order to broaden and connect our struggles.

The action was divided into two parts. After this day we discussed and evaluated the action as well as sharing our feelings towards it. We tried to summarize this discussion.

Frankfurter Allee – Welcoming farmers in the morning of the protest.

The plan of the first action was to welcome the rebellious farmers and agricultural workers, and it was found successful in our evaluation round afterwards. As most of the reactions from the farmers and other workers were largely perceived as positive. Some were apparently surprised to be greeted enthusiastically in the city by people with visible antifascist and anti-authoritarian positions. They smiled, waved back, honked their horns in support, and took pictures of the greeting. The few middle fingers and head shakes were rather amusing and made us laugh - some of us found that at least our message was clear that we do not stand in solidarity with those.

Brandenburger Tor - Protest report.

At the manifestation in front of the Brandenburg Tor, our feelings varied between excitement and insecurity. The reason behind these feelings became clearer when it was discussed in our evaluation round. It must be expressed that the morning action was planned within our frame and boundaries, that made it easier for us to join the protest more or less under ‘’our terms’’. The aim of our visit of the manifestation on the other hand was to get an unfiltered impression.

At the Branderburger Tor protest, it became clear that we are not used to this way of protesting which is challenging to make an attempt to join social movements that are so diverse and full of contradictions. For some individuals from this coordination it felt that it is definitely not ‘’our space’’ due to the whole protest setup. There was a presence of government politicians that were clearly visible. However, the perception of the far-right presence varied among us. Although we witnessed flyers or symbols of obvious nazis, we don't see a right hegemony. Rather than being a crowd full of nazis, as the media tried to portray it, the protesters didn't show a clear influence by the political programms. The relatively few visible sign were communicating a deep frustration about how the ones who produce and have to produce the food for everybody are treated by politics and also society. For us this frustration looks very real and has to be taken into serious consideration.

During our stay, we observed many civil cops (PMS included) and several arrests, which participants loudly protested against. At the same time, large numbers of demonstrators booed the repugnant speech by Christian Lindner.

In our evaluation round concerning the manifestation, we did not come to a clear conclusion on how we could have been part of an openly anarchist presence while also overcoming the so-called bubble hurdles in order to connect with the rebellious farmers and their supporters. Therefore, we found the first action in Frankfurter Allee as a confident way to make the beginning of our participation in this struggle.

Some more thoughts on the farmers' struggles.

The mobilisations of the agricultural workers began as a reaction against cutting tax breaks and cutting subsidies for agricultural vehicles and diesel. It is the most recent escalation by the government years after the beginning of the farmers struggles. However, the messages of many in the protests went well beyond simply criticising these policies. Between the exploited and struggling farmers, there are various actors from neo-liberals to far right are continuously instrumentalising struggles. Through anti government politics they try to push their authoritarian exploitative agenda. To counter the presence of the far rights and all political parties, we found it necessary to coordinate and show our presence in the streets during the demo with our ideas and content. We also want to emphasize that there are many fights against the system of control and exploitation, from which farmers as well as the rest of the earth suffer.

By making demands from the state we will not reach the goals of our struggles. Instead those demands will just serve the agricultural industry and capital as usual. We decided to stand in solidarity with the rebellious agricultural workers who have been disrupting the functioning of the capitalist machine. We see the necessity of sabotaging the capitalistic metropolis and its structures. The actions and positions of some of the farmers are part of a broader collective fight, not only against the subsidy cuts, but also for another step towards an end to exploitation.

We have seen time and time again that if the state and whichever government decide to pretend that it will fulfill the farmers demands and cancels the subsidy cuts, as a temporary measure it will toss a few crumbs which not everyone will get, but sooner or later it will bring back stricter cuts and measures as part of an attempt to open up new fields for more exploitation. Any apparent backtracking by the state is just a strategy to pacify the movement and to assimilate it into a restructuring of the agro-industrial complex. The working hours won‘t be reduced – the precarious conditions will not get better – the percentages of suicides won‘t reach zero. However, if we manage to overthrow the state and capitalist machine, only then we can speak about possibilities for an actual change of our lives through non-hierarchical self-organisation.

In these mobilisations it is important to put into practice our opposition to green capitalism and exploitation and privatisation of land by the agricultural industry. This is yet another industry that seeks to extract and exploit every last piece of the earth for the sake of the rich. Green capitalism and so-called ecological sustainability are not only illusions used to green wash capitalist exploitation, but they are also only affordable for the rich.

We find it important to stand against the capitalist mechanisms that grab land and to find ways to grow food that are self-organised and not exploitative.

Land belongs to those who need it

Some anarchists in solidarity with land workers

*we use the term farmers equivalent to land workers

There is 1 Comment

Meanwhile Polish farmers are staging mass protests in the capital and blocking border crossings to protest against being used to subsidize the war in Ukraine.

Add new comment