Siraj Izhar via nettime-l on Thu, 21 Dec 2023 12:42:02 +0100 (CET) |
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Re: <nettime> the silence on the rising fascism |
The space of permitted dissent and opinion in a pluralist society has collapsed. It means regular raids on private homes mainly in Neukölln, Wedding etc - immigrant neighbourhoods. It has become a hunt. Expression of resistance becomes meaningless when everything is charged with genocidal intent on behalf of a memory culture with its own genocidal past. And in the past few days ramped up police raids on poorly resourced leftists anarchist homes like @zora_berlin, and solidarity cafes like Karanfil. We see the references in the media of archaic 60s/70s Palestinian groups like the PFLP, of Leila Khaled alongside tags of 'Israel haters', numbers of arrests and so on.
https://www.bz-berlin.de/polizei/170-polizisten-im-einsatz-razzia-gegen-israel-hasserAgain who is making political mileage out of this theatre? and the nature of the threat it poses.
But on all this, let's talk here not just about the silence in the current situation in Berlin but also the noise that lives off it and amplifies itself. And of the types of silence in the face of an ongoing genocide played out on screen and social media. Of who then is staying silent and who is making noise? The silence of the endowed, those with rights is never the same of silence of those with conditional rights - of residency and so forth, the silence of the precarious. One silence does not know the other. The Staatsraison is playing with this so different silences entwine with the silence of fear and a fear of silence. German society is becoming segregated by differentiations of silence. In workplaces, at schools, universities. Segregated by those who fit its memory culture and those who don't.
And yes there is always a residual silence in every society aka apathy, indifference but there is also a manufactured silence and there is a complicitous silence (scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds).
'Genocide, what genocide, not sure it's a genocide....' 'It's complicated.'Of course that it could be a genocide that comes with the displacement of a people left without rights, a displacement that still has no relation to, and therefore no memory in Germany's post-reunification memory culture is a silence?
(Which is why Nakba commemorations have to be banned?)Public space for Palestine, solidarity with Gaza is invariably equated with risk of antisemitism to be met with summary force of the Staatsraison. We see this most clearly with the Palestine solidarity meeting/ occupation against an unfolding genocide (or what genocide?, it's complicated...) organised at the Free University Berlin. The university called in the police to clear the space with total force and then put out this tweet: https://twitter.com/FU_Berlin/status/1735655031486001342
"The Free University of Berlin has no place for anti-Semitism, racism and discrimination."
"The Free University of Berlin is not a lawless space." "The Free University of Berlin is a place of debate"In other words: To those affected mentally by watching a genocide, you must stay silent. There will be no public expression of it as protest.
But let's get to the core. Unlike Ukraine, the silence is here useful. Because every raid on a solidarity space, every smear on Palestine solidarity in public space is converted into the noise that is becoming pervasive but inaudible (the silence of the endowed). There is so much to pick from but here's one: https://x.com/janfleischhauer/status/1720810560214712458?s=20 (In translation, "I may be mistaken, but most Germans think in these pictures: “We have nothing to do with these people and we don’t want to have anything to do. Why are they here?”) Is it permitted to ask if his grandparents were saying the very same words in the 30s? - as there is no policing here.
Then, take this: 'Free Palestine is the new Heil Hitler' https://www.welt.de/podcasts/welt-talks/article248996436/Mathias-Doepfner-im-Gespraech-mit-Rapper-Ben-Salomo-ueber-den-wachsenden-Antisemitismus.htmlThe vital point to note is WHO now is free to make comparisons with the Third Reich in Germany today? And make noise on the rising fascism.
How surprising then that the subjects (or the only possible subject) who can critique this state of affairs to break the silence and make noise happen to be Jews in Germany. Candice Breitz, Masha Gessen and so many more, against whom the entire apparatus of the state culture industry has to be mobilised for daring to compare the realities of Palestine today with Germany's Nazi past, i.e. its own fascism. But God forbid if an Arab, or a non-native Other should make such comparison - that would be met by instant summary unpersoning. It's becoming defacto. The unpersoning of the undefended, the 'imported antisemitism' of the immigrant Other as antisemite by which an uber German liberalism can differentiate itself through its memory culture. Which is where the real silence of the undefended is at work now?
So can we begin to dissect the realpolitics of silence and noise in the contemporary German liberal-sphere and its direction? as the silence on the rising fascism? (as Podinski phrased it). For that it's worth reading the essay by Samantha Hill posted on Gessen and Arendt with her assertion of a necessity to revoke:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/dec/18/hannah-arendt-prize-masha-gessen-israel-gaza-essay Siraj -- # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: https://www.nettime.org # contact: nettime-l-owner@lists.nettime.org