Re: <nettime> the silence on the rising fascism

[Siraj Izhar via nettime-l <nettime-l@lists.nettime.org>]

Thanks for extending the post on the silence on the rising fascism, 
@Podinski.
Can some-one (who?) address the realpolitics of this for those who break 
out of the silence on the rising fascism? Or try to in concrete ways.
In recent weeks in Berlin has seriously forsaken any claim to liberal 
dissent and protest seeing individual protestors being dragged out of 
Palestine solidarity demos (the neck hold dragging out seems the common 
method in my documentations). What were once acceptable protest placards 
are now charged with being signifiers of 'hidden antisemitism' e.g. the 
placard with 'From the river to the sea, we see equality', or 'From .... 
to ....' (left blank).
I see flyers, placards, banners being unpacked, unfurled, checked and 
photographed by police prior to entry to a solidarity demo for Gaza to 
prevent any violation of the Staatsraison. For any mention of the 
protected term Israel at a Palestine demo.
The numbers of arrested at each demo are then published in msm (which is 
the only coverage to be expected there, as x numbers of arrests).
What exactly is the real purpose of this theatre and who is making 
political mileage out of all this?

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-hasser
Again 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.html
The 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
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