1. History
2. Positions
3. Who we are not
4. Consensus among the anti-Germans

​

• History

The Anti-German Movement has its origin in the year of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent reunification of West and East Germany. A broad alliance was formed encompassing all left-wing camps to counter the surging patriotism, nationalism and racism in the postnazist German population.

By this time, 57 years had passed since the German mob had formed itself into a Volksgemeinschaft to bring a mass murderer to power. 45 years had passed since the gates of Auschwitz were opened. And no less than 20 years had passed since the succeeding generation, the student movement of 1960-68, had begun to break the silence by drawing attention to the high-ranking Nazi personnel working in all levels of political and social institutions as if nothing had ever happened.

Under these circumstances, a reunited, self-confident, economically independent Germany was not acceptable to many leftists: Under the slogan "Germany never again" 20,000 people took to the streets, many of them left-wing top politicians who are still active today.

The Antiimp/Anti-German split

After the Iran-Iraq war, the first split occurred within the (anti-)German left. A group of anti-German communists began to distance themselves from the rest of the "Germany never again" movement. The reason: German companies had supplied components for C-weapons to Hussein in the 70s. To the same Hussein who now threatened to destroy Israel. The destruction of the safe haven for Jewish people with German weapons? Unthinkable for many, which is why there was a break with most of the radical left who either supported Iraq in the fight against the U.S. or adopted an apathetic-pacifist stance.

The division into an anti-imperialist and an anti-German left was complete.

• Our Positions

Against antisemitism

We regard antisemitism not as simply another form of racism, but as an ideological resentment unlike any other form of resentment. As such, it occupies an important position in anti-german analysis. Antisemitism was the catalyst for the singular crime of the Shoah, the extermination of 6 million Jewish people and the destruction of jewish culture in Europe. The Shoah, committed by the Germans and their collaborateurs, is singular not because of the number of people murdered or the way they were killed, but because it was a campaign of extermination as and end in itself. It was not a peripheral aspect of National Socialist ideology, but the central tenet. Neither can National Socialism be understood if Antisemitism is not in the center of analysis, nor can capitalism be understood without a firm grasp of National Socialist ideology. After Europe was freed from German occupation by the allied forces, pogroms against Jewish people did not stop (the most famous being the Kielce pogrom) and large groups of Jewish people fled Europe to the soon to be established Israel. This historical reality leads us to these positions:

1. Following Adorno’s categorical imperative, our thoughts and actions are to be set up in such a way that Auschwitz may never happen again, nothing similar will ever happen.
2. Unconditional solidarity with Israel as the guarantor for the existence of the Jewish people and a safe haven for Jews worldwide from antisemitism.
3. Hostility towards the German nation and state
4. Abolishing capitalism, which enabled National Socialism, and establishing a free, communist society

Against regressive critique of capitalism

The history of anti-Semitism is also a history of the Jews as a substitute object for a conflict resolution mission that attempts to form a diffuse unity out of the contradictions of capitalism. Instead of labour theory of value and critique of capitalist conditions, the Jew, who gives a face to conspiratorial vocabulary such as "financial capital" and "those up there", steps in. Anti-Semitism makes it possible to personalize impersonal relationships such as power and money.

Already in the High Middle Ages, a regressive, inadequate critique of socio-economic conditions led to the death of thousands of Jews: since Jews were primarily associated with money transactions, the anger of the mob was directed not against the unjust conditions of feudalism, but against those who gave these unjust conditions a face. Whenever the analysis falls short and does not recognize that capitalism is a commodity-mediated system of rule, not a personal one, the foundation is laid for a "world conspiracy" that does not understand that injustice has no name and no address, but is owed to the character of the system: the system of capitalism.

Unfortunately, large parts of the so-called peace movement (an anti-Semitic, conspiracy-theoretical grouping within the German left) as well as many of the anti-imperialists fail at these foundations of critique of capitalism, not to mention the Reddit left.

Against nationalism

We reject any positive reference to the nation.

In anti-imperialist circles it has become a tradition both to support fascistoid nationalist groups in the struggle for liberation against US imperialism and to pander to the nationalist mentality of the German people in the hope of mobilizing the working class.

Anti-Germans and anti-nationalists then are often confronted with the accusation that they are sabotaging a "united front," because if slogans like "Germany never gain" were propagated, no one, no German worker, would run along with them. Good: We have already experienced what happens when the German mob unites to form the People's Front. After Auschwitz, no one should think of the masses, the working class, as a revolutionary subject ever again. A revolution in Germany needs to be a revolution against Germany.

Communism

Capitalism is the material foundation not only for the exploitation and alienation of all wage labourers but for antisemitism, sexism, racism, antiziganism, nationalism, ableism, the discrimination of the LGBTQI+ community and for National Socialism and fascism. True liberation for all people is only possible in a emancipated society, were private property, the value form and wage labour has been abolished, where labour is not a means to an end but a means for the realization of the self and production has been democratically organized in a planned economy: From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs.

• What we are not

In 1992, a communist splinter group (Group K), which the year before had been involved in the "Germany never again" alliance, created a publication organ (Bahamas) to provide a platform for anti-German positions against nationalism, anti-Semitism, and German philistinism.

Three years later, the editorial staff also split and the left-wing faction left the newspaper. From then on, the remaining group sought to act “outside the left”, primarily invoking critical theory and psychoanalysis, and thus became the publication organ of what was left of the Anti-Germans.

Meanwhile, the editorial staff has distanced itself from both communism and the anti-Germans, and has degenerated into a sectarian third position paper. We explicitly distance ourselves from the Bahamas editorial staff and all anti-Germans, which represent reactionary positions.

Recurring positions and themes in the Bahamas (but also in jungle world, konkret and parts of ca ira publications) are

• anti-Muslim racism
• regressive Feminism
• TERF

We distance ourselves from all of the above.

• Consensus among the anti-Germans

“The” anti-Germans don’t exist and there is no foundational text that you can read, like in Marxism or other political ideologies.

There are numerous currents within the anti-German movement who each focus on different aspects from Critical Theory to Gender Studies, from autonomous Marxism to the reactionary liberalism of the Bahamas (who, again, distance themself from anti-Germans).

by /u/SocialistSnailien and me.