#socialist internationalism

[awesome-casuallyfamouscollector]

On September 3, 1917, we had another "liberation day" of Riga. Riga was "liberated" by the Reichswehr, but a year later, in honor of this event, we received the "Wooden Fritz" monument, Latvia. Source: Kaspars Zellis

P.S. You can try to count how many times Riga was liberated in the 20th century by different invaders? We Latvians actually don't like foreign invaders! "Foreigners" always come with some bad shit here.... war, invasion, repressions and bad religions...multiculturalism attacks on Latvian language, culture, prosperity (well the Russian communist occupiers called it "socialist internationalism", an anti-indigenous hate ideology aimed at forcing the natives out of their homelands...and replacing local population with Russian migrants...) ..

Basically modern pseudo-liberal "multiculturalism" is an anti-indigenous hate ideology aimed at forcing the natives out of their home land...

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“Six Trainloads of French Troops Are Held Up By Silesian Workmen,” Kingston Daily Standard. August 16, 1920. Page 1. ---- (Canadian Press Despatch) London, Aug. 16. - Workmen in upper Silesia regard France's recognition of General Wrangel as equivalent to a declaration war on Russia, and accordingly will refuse to recognize French representatives on the plebiscite commission, contending they are not neutral, says the Daily Mail’s Kattowitz correspondent.

Six trains of French troops from Teschen, the correspondent states, have been held up at Gliewitz, by workmen who feared they were going to help Poland. The French commander, he ads, then issued an ultimatum demanding a clear passage or he would use machine guns. The workmen are said to be armed.

The Belgian government has forbidden the shipment of ammunition which has arrived at Antwerp from France, destined for General Wrangel, according to an Antwerp despatch This action, it is believed, was due to the announcement by Belgian workmen that they would refuse to handle the shipment

[anarchotolkienist]

I must say that the main thing that has caused me to despair of the Left is that I have come to see the question of Fascism and of anti-Semitism increasingly seriously as time goes on, and to view them as some of the defining questions of history and of modernity. If you do that it becomes very clear how woefully inadequately these things are understood, and just how unimportant the broad Left views them as.

[workersolidarity]

💥Explosions Rock Stepanakert as Azerbaijan Launches an Offensive Against Armenia into the Disputed Nagorno-Karabakh Region 💥

Residents of Stepanakert in the heavily disputed Nagorno-Karabakh Region of what is internationally recognized as Azeri territory, awoke to sounds of explosions and gunfire ripping through the city Tuesday morning as Azeri Forces launched what it calls an Anti-Terrorist Operation into the region.

The Nagorno-Karabakh territory has been in dispute ever since the collapse of the Russian Empire after the October Revolution in 1917. The disputed territory was mostly de-escalated during the Soviet era, with Nagorno-Karabakh given the status of Autonomous Oblast within the Azerbaijan SSR, giving it a measure of self-governance.

However, since the collapse of the USSR, the ethnic dispute has flared back up with two major wars fought over the Nagorno-Karabakh territory since 1988.

The first Nagorno-Karabakh War lasted from February 1988 until May 1994. While the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War in 2020 lasted for 44 days.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has been positioning himself to join the Western Bloc, taking an interest in joining the EU and NATO with US encouragement.

However, it is understood that NATO will not allow Armenia to join the Military Bloc as long as the risk of war breaking out in Nagorno-Karabakh remains high.

With this in mind, some analysts believe Armenia has been quietly instigating an Azeri incursion into the area with the idea of letting Nagorno-Karabakh fall completely under Azerbaijani control, relinquishing the territory and easing the associated tensions that might give NATO pause before admitting Armenia into the alliance.

Interestingly, Pashinyan accepted Azerbaijani sovereignty over Nagorno-Karabakh back in May, undermining its own negotiating position and upsetting the balance of power in the region. However, the population of the Nagorno-Karabakh territory is majority Armenian, and local authorities do not recognize Azeri sovereignty over the area.

Azerbaijan has warned Armenia against involving itself with NATO, suggesting it will lead to conflict in the region, and few of Armenia's neighbors are happy with the moves. However, Armenia has ignored the warnings, going so far as to host US Forces in the country for Military exercises which began on September 11th, 2023.

Many Russian analysts, media personalities and politicians see this as a major provocation and an attempt to open a new front in the Ukraine War as Russian peacekeepers had been tasked with maintaining the Status-Quo as per agreement between the two warring sides at the end of the second Nagorno-Karabakh War. Western analysts dispute this claim.

We will keep you updated as information comes in.

UPDATE: sources say there have been 5 deaths and at least 80 casualties reported so far in the ongoing Azerbaijan Operation in Nagorno-Karabakh.

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

By Lev Koufax and John Parker

The Popular Socialist Alliance Party (SPAP) is one of many organizations working in conjunction with the Egyptian Journalists Syndicate to organize the Global Conscience Convoy to the Rafah crossing to Gaza. It was founded in the wake of the Egyptian Revolution of 2011, after the merger of several socialist organizations that faced repression under U.S.-backed dictator Hosni Mubarak.

[queen-mabs-revenge]

it really is the worst material-conditions ignorance on bald display.

here in ireland you heard this shit from liberals all the time re: the constitutional 8th amendment total abortion ban. "oh well people can travel to england if they need an abortion"

the people who can travel outside of the borders of a legal oppression are those who are able financially, physically, mentally, and social obligations-wise. in ireland that meant that pregnant people at the most dire intersections of capitalist oppression were denied abortion bodily autonomy. if you didn't have the money, couldn't take off work, couldn't leave behind people in your care or organizing and taking a trip was beyond your physical or mental remit, fuck you i guess?

liberals would often come back with a "we can fund charities that can help" rebuttal — thee most liberal of solutions because it does nothing to challenge the oppressive system, and also reinforces paternalistic ideas of agency conferred by their own philanthropic largesse. that thriving is something to be doled out by their organizations instead of something that should be owned and acted on by people themselves.

every time you leave systems of oppression unchallenged and tell people to make their own way to safety, you reify those systems as valid as you're leaving room for them to exist.

and people who benefit in some way from the structures of capitalism and class society that precipitate these violences will always be invested in doing just that. they might want to make sure that they aren't touched by those specific forms of structural violence (and preserving their wealth is a good way to do that), but truly challenging a capitalist system they benefit from will be always be a worse sin to them than its inherent violence.

that's where the liberal impulse to try these narratives of 'well just move — i'll even help!' comes from. they've got to get people to buy into a seemingly well-intentioned narrative in order to legitimize their methods of preserving class society.

people need to recognize this as a ruling class co-optation of genuine struggles for liberation, because as capitalism convulses in chaos around us, this is only going to get used more and more to try and fracture revolutionary solidarity and preserve the blood-soaked scaffolding that allows them to protect their own living standards.

and yes, history shows that they'll turn to fascism when the working class starts rattling that framework before they let it be dismantled from the goodness of their bleeding hearts.

The thing blue state leftists don’t seem to understand about red states is that telling minorities to “just leave” is really insidious. That is exactly what the republicans want. They want to make their state so miserable and dangerous and scary for everyone who isn’t a conservative cisgender heterosexual white Christian that those people leave. Leave behind their family, their homes, their friends, their jobs, their community, the places they’ve lived their entire life. With every person who leaves it is one less gay person teaching their children, one less person protesting outside the capitol, one less blue voter trying to stop the place they call home from sliding into fascism.

Many of us cannot afford to ‘just leave’ and many of us don’t want to because contrary to popular belief, North Carolina isn’t an irredeemable shithole with nothing to offer and no sense of community. People do leave red states for their safety but that does not fix the underlying problem, that doesn’t even make the problem better.

[tamamita]

how is isis different from hamas?

Gonna make it easy and comprehensible:

ISIS or DA'ISH is a transnational terror organization consisting of Iraqi Baathists, former Syrian rebels or moderates, recruited fighters from all over the world, former US captives in Iraq, and oppressed and disenfranchised Sunnis. Wahhabi in nature, ISIS subscribes to the literalist tradition of Islam, based on a strict adherence to Tawhid (Islamic monotheism), rejecting the concept of intercession and saint venerations, seeing them as an act of idolatry. Their religious verdicts are based on the literal interpretation of the Qur'an and Sunnah, rejecting metaphorical exegesis. They aim to establish a global caliphate, seeking to eliminate anyone who opposses it regardless of religious or ideological differences. They see their cause as a hastening of various Islamic end time prophecies in their interpretation of Islamic eschatology. Like many Salafis, they reject Taqlid, which is to conform to one of the four schools of thought in Sunni Islam. On top of that, they reject religious innovations (Bid'ah), which is the idea that anything introduced to the religion without any religious basis is heresy. Whether it be practical or theological, they deem any Muslim who engage in Bid'ah to be an apostate or heretic. They are notorious for their intolerance of non-Muslims and application of Takfirism (excommunication) on Muslims, whether Sunni or Shi'a. Christians had to pay the Jizya (poll tax) in their territories, while in other cases, they were murdered, expelled and had their churches destroyed or converted. They have no tolerance for Shi'a Muslims and will kill them on the spot (see: Speicher Massacre), and have often targeted them with IEDs or suicide bombers. Non-Muslims, like the Ezidis or Ahlul Haqq, were often subjected to execution whereas their women and children were either married away, converted or used as sex slaves. DAESH is not interested in national liberation, seeing it as a blasphemous innovation. DAESH does not consider Hamas to be Muslims due to struggle for national liberation which is supported by Iran and various Shi'i proxies.

Hamas is a political and military resistance group that consists of Palestinians. After the failures of the Oslo accord, Hamas broke away from PLO and formed their own political party. They either subscribe to the Shafi'i school of thought or some form of Ikhwani Salafism (Salafism as envisioned by the Muslim Brotherhood). They're a semi-governmental power in Gaza and are responsible for upholding the social and civil institutions, such as hospitals, schools and etc. Hamas' specific aim is localized and seeks to destroy the Zionist entity in order to form a one-state solution under an Islamic emirate or Islamic democracy. Their only enemy is Israel and any of its allies. As of the Hamas charter of 2017, they do not have an intolerance for non-Muslims or people of different religious and ideological comportments, as seen by them holding ties with both Shi'a and Socialist militias, such as Hezbollah and the PFLP/DFLP. Hamas is concerned with the national liberation of Palestine and the Palestinians. Being an entirely localized resistance group, they do not engage in global jihadism like ISIS nor do they carry out attacks internationally.

[mesetacadre]

What might decolonization in the US after a successful socialist revolution look like? Would there be one big government still? A sort of union of socialist republics? Something else entirely? Honestly I don't know how to ask.

Post-revolutionary decolonization (and realistically, the only kind of meaningful decolonization that is ever happening) in the US is a complicated matter given the relative success of the USAmerican genocidal project. The native population is 1.1% of the total population as of the 2020 census, this means that unlike in other, incomplete, settler projects such as the Sahrawi Republic or Palestine, it isn't feasible to restore the relation of the native population to the totality of the country. Regardless of population proportions though, the main focus of socialist decolonization is the struggle against any conflict between nationalities by removing the economic basis of that antagonism, which would then allow to also begin to remove the cultural elements that reinforced that dynamic of oppression. The focus is not to create more landlords but native, it's to remove the structure around private property in general, and make sure every worker, native or otherwise, receives as is needed. Taking into account the already relative dispossession of native people even before a pre-revolution context, there will have to be a great effort to bring the conditions of native people at the same level of non-native people.

Regarding the form of the new state, this will evidently depend on the form of the US state as the revolution happens. In other countries this would not be such a pressing question, but given the role and strength of the USAmerican bourgeoisie, it's not hard to believe that for any revolution to take place, the US state would need to be considerably weakened. Keeping this in mind, the strategy followed by all hitherto socialist revolutions is to not further fragment the new state. Given the complexity of navigating the construction of the first elements of a socialist economy, with the simultaneous effort needed for security, it would be both counterproductive and hypocritical to explicitly seek the independence of a portion of the population, as a part of the political program, it would be taking two steps forward and one step back. The communist revolution is national in form, because it happens within the structure of the capitalist state, but it is also international in content, because it explicitly repudiates the division of the proletariat along national lines.

We must understand that nationality, as much as it is relevant today and as much as it influences the course of history, is a byproduct of the development of capitalism, and that since it arose from the infrastructure to justify and protect it, it will also have to seize to exist and be replaced with proletarian internationalism for the duration of the transition to socialism-communism. Keeping this in mind, it would be hypocritical and regressive to, after taking control of the state and beginning the transition away from capitalism, to then turn around and divide the working class of the new country into even more national categories than they already are divided into.

The early USSR is a good comparison because of the sheer quantity of national diversity contained within the bounds of the corpse of the Tsarist Empire. The policy of the bolsheviks was neither of Russian supremacy or of immediate splintering into hundreds of nation states. Even during the very complicated and desperate context of the civil war, Finland was allowed its independence without much fuss from the CC, even if they were immediately incorporated into the German sphere via Von Mannerheim. When the 1936 constitution was being discussed, it was Stalin himself who went against the wishes of many bolsheviks to prevent the republics from gaining independence if they wished. No republics requested this however, because the oppressive mechanisms of capitalism and feudalism that had kept them under the Tsar's thumb for centuries had been replaced with an economic system that assured the equal development of all peoples within the USSR. The USSR itself was also not absolutely centralist, and the many constituent republics had varying degrees of autonomy, reflecting in some aspects the structure of democratic centralism.

I don't think the answer is to replicate the USSR, of course. The context and general state of things are very different, but there are lessons to be learnt from this successful, albeit flawed, tackling of the national question. Again though, we can't really speculate on the way that the US will look right before a revolution, and consequently the structures and problems a revolutionary government will have to start from.

[komsomolka]

The GDR’s record on internationalism was exemplary and it took the idea of solidarity with other, struggling nations seriously. Undoubtedly the internationalism demonstrated by German communists before the Second World War, in solidarity with the Soviet Union and particularly the role they played in Spain during the 1930s, also had some influence on its foreign policy. A number of ex-International Brigaders had leading positions in party and state.

Many of the struggles of colonial and former colonial countries for liberation and national independence received vital material and ideological support. The GDR sent doctors and other medical staff to the front line in Vietnam, Mozambique, Angola and other countries. It provided logistical support and training for SWAPO, the movement for independence in Namibia, as well as to the ANC in South Africa, printing Sechaba, its official newsletter for many years. Numerous foreign students from countries struggling to free themselves from the legacy of colonialism were given free training and education in the GDR itself. Refuge was also offered to those fleeing oppressive regimes; many Chileans in enforced exile from Pinochet’s fascist regime found asylum there, including its current president, Michelle Bachelet. [...]

Between 1964 and 1988, there were 60 friendship brigades made up of around 1,000 young people working in 26 countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America. In Algeria a brigade built houses for the homeless, in Mali they trained agricultural workers, in Nicaragua they built a training school for mechanics and, in 1980, a hospital financed in large part by donations made by GDR citizens. By September 1985, the Karl Marx Hospital, as it was named, had treated 10,000 patients, among them 3,000 children, and another 10,000 were supplied with medicines. The hospital is still working today, but now under the more innocuous name of ‘German-Nicaraguan Hospital’. In 2005 it celebrated its 25th anniversary. [...] A number of GDR schools were named after leading freedom fighters including a Nelson Mandela school in Ilmenau which was immediately renamed in 1989 because Mandela was then still deemed to be a terrorist by the West German government.

Stasi State or Socialist Paradise? The German Democratic Republic and What Became of It by Bruni de la Motte & John Green with Seumas Milne (Contributor), 2015.

[fiercynn]

black & palestinian solidarities

if you support black liberation but are unsure of your stance on palestinian resistance, here’s a reminder that they are deeply intertwined. after the 1917 balfour declaration by the british government announcing the first support for a zionist state in palestine,  zionism and israeli occupation of palestine have followed similar ideologies and practices to white supremacist settler colonial projects, so solidarity between black and palestinian communities has grown over time, seeing each other as fellow anti-imperialist and anti-racist struggles. (if you get a paywall for any of the sources below, try searching them in google scholar.)

palestinians have been inspired by and shown support for black liberationist struggles as early as the 1930s, when arabic-language newspapers in palestine wrote about the struggle by black folks in the united states and framed it as anti-colonial, as well as opposing the 1935 invasion by fascist italy of ethiopia, the only independent black african state at the time. palestinian support for black struggles grew in the 1960s with the emergence of newly-independent african states, the development of black and third world internationalisms, and the civil rights movement in the united states. palestinian writers have expressed this solidarity too: palestinian activist samih al-qasim showed his admiration for congolese independence leader patrice lumumba in a poem about him, while palestinian poet mahmoud darwish’s “letters to a negro” essays spoke directly to black folks in the united states about shared struggles.

afro-palestinians have a rich history of freedom fighting against israeli apartheid, where they face oppression at the intersections of their black and palestinian identities. some families trace their roots back hundreds of years, while others came to jerusalem in the nineteenth century from chad, sudan, nigeria, and senegal after performing the hajj (the islamic pilgrimage to mecca) and settled down. still others came to palestine in the 1940s specifically to join the arab liberation army, where they fought against israel’s ethnic cleansing of palestinians during the 1948 nakba (“catastrophe”). afro-palestinian freedom fighter fatima bernawi, who was of nigerian, palestinian, and jordanian descent, became, in 1967, the first palestinian woman to be organize an operation against israel, and subsequently the first palestinian woman to be imprisoned by israel. the history of afro-palestinian resistance continues today: even as the small afro-palestinian community in jerusalem is highly-surveilled, over-policed, disproportionately incarcerated, and subjected to racist violence, they continue to organize and fight for palestinian liberation.

black revolutionaries and leaders in the united states have supported the palestinian struggle for decades, with a ramp-up since the 1960s. malcolm x became a huge opponent of zionism after traveling to southwest asia and north africa (SWANA), publishing “zionist logic” in 1964, and becoming one of the first black leaders from the united states to meet with the newly formed palestine liberation organization. the black panther party and the third world women’s alliance, a revolutionary socialist organization for women of color, also supported palestinian resistance in the 1970s. writers like maya angelou, june jordan, and james baldwin have long spoken out for palestinians. dr. angela davis (who received support from palestinian political prisoners when she was incarcerated) has made black and palestinian solidarity a key piece of her work. and many, many more black leaders and revolutionaries in the united states have supported palestinian freedom.

while israel has long courted relationships with the african union and its members, there has been ongoing tension between them since at least the 1970s, when all but four african states (malawi, lesotho, swaziland, and mauritius) cut off diplomatic ties with israel after the 1973 october war. while many of those diplomatic relationships were reestablished in subsequent decades, they remain rocky, and earlier this year, the african union booted an israeli diplomat from their annual summit in addis ababa, ethiopia, and issued a draft declaration on the situation in palestine and the middle east that expressed “full support for the palestinian people in their legitimate struggle against the israeli occupation”, naming israeli settlements as illegal and calling for boycotts and sanctions with israel. grassroots organizations like africa 4 palestine have also been key in the BDS (boycott, divestment, sanctions) movement.

in south africa, comparisons between israel and south african apartheid have been prevalent since the 1990s and early 2000s. israel historically allied with apartheid-era south africa, while palestinians opposed south african apartheid, leading nelson mandela to support the palestinian liberation organization as "fighting for the right of self-determination"; over the years his statements have been joined by fellow black african freedom fighters like nozizwe madlala-routledge and desmond tutu. post-apartheid south africa has continued to be a strong ally to palestine, calling for israel to be declared “apartheid state”.

black and palestinian solidarities have continued into the 21st century. palestinian people raised money to send to survivors of hurricane katrina in the united states in 2005 (which disproportionately harmed black communities in new orleans and the gulf of mexico) and the devastating earthquake in haiti in 2010. in the past decade, the global black lives matter struggle has brought new emphasis to shared struggles. prison and police abolitionists have long noted the deadly exchange which brings together police, ICE, border patrol, and FBI agents from the united states to train with soldiers, police, and border agents from israel. palestinian freedom fighters supported the 2014 uprising in ferguson in the united states, and shared strategies for resisting state violence. over a thousand black leaders signed onto the 2015 black solidarity statement with palestine. the murder of george floyd by american cops in 2020 has sparked further allyship, including black lives matter protests in palestine, with organizations like the dream defenders making connections between palestinian and black activists.

this is just a short summary that i came up because i've been researching black and asian solidarities recently so i had some sources on hand; there's obviously so much more that i haven't covered, so please feel free to reblog with further additions to this history!

[mapsontheweb]

Hungary in 1867, 1941, and 2024.

From 1867 to today, Hungary's territory has undergone significant changes due to wars, treaties, and political shifts. In 1867, the Austro-Hungarian Compromise created the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary, granting Hungary considerable autonomy within the empire. 

After World War I, the Treaty of Trianon in 1920 drastically reduced Hungary's territory by about 72% and its population by 64%, ceding regions to Romania, Czechoslovakia, the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes (later Yugoslavia), and Austria. In the interwar period, Hungary regained some territories through agreements with Nazi Germany: the First Vienna Award (1938) returned southern Slovakia and southern Carpathian Ruthenia, and the Second Vienna Award (1940) returned northern Transylvania from Romania. 

During World War II, Hungary occupied parts of Yugoslavia in 1941. However, post-war treaties, particularly the Treaty of Paris in 1947, reinstated the Trianon boundaries, nullifying the wartime gains. 

Throughout the Cold War era (1949-1989), Hungary was a socialist republic under Soviet influence, with its borders remaining consistent with those established in 1947. Following the fall of communism in 1989, Hungary transitioned to a democratic republic. Since 1991, Hungary has been a stable democratic state and a member of the European Union since 2004, with its current borders unchanged since 1947. Today, Hungary's borders are stable and internationally recognized.

by theflagmapguy_2.0

[yuri-alexseygaybitch]

There's a difference between "exporting revolution/creating unsustainable puppet states" and "practicing basic proletarian internationalism and mutually beneficial socialist development strategies." The latter is also not mutually exclusive with national liberation and revolutionary nationalism. This should be pretty basic lol.

[latinotiktok]

Just want to speak as a latino seeing coverage of Venezuela here in the United States… of course the United States is going to tell us that the Socialist Bolivarian Revolution is villainous and that the elections are fraudulent. As if the United States doesn’t have one of the most pathetic voting systems of the whole world. As if the United States hasn’t intervened over and over in Latin American politics to install dictators that only serve US interests. As if they didn’t sieze billions of dollars of Citgo revenue when Chavez took power to create a depression and then blame it on socialism. The same people who are lying to us about Palestine are the same people who are lying to us about Venezuela. In 2018, Machado literally requested Benjamin Netanyahu’s support for a military intervention (i.e. coup attempt) in Venezuela. Machado is a staunch Zionist. She has promised that if the opposition is successful in overturning the Bolivarian Revolution, they will move the Venezuela’s embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. Only five countries (including the U.S.) have established their embassies to Israel in Jerusalem because to do so is a flagrant violation of international law.

Please stop believing the United States or it’s latino allies have the best interest of latinos (domestically or internationally) at heart.

And don’t say I have no right to comment on this. As a Latino living in the belly of the beast, it is my duty to speak out against imperialism and the bullshit propaganda biden-harris try to spread.

I think your 'duty' should be trying to uplift the voices of your siblings who are actually living there and fighting for their lives instead of preaching you know more about the subject than them

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

"Our strength is unity! Long live the unity and cohesion of the peoples of the socialist commonwealth! Higher the banner of socialist internationalism!"

Soviet poster, 1976

Via Socialism Pictures

[heavenlyyshecomes]

For an identity to be formed, it must be grounded in tradition and a shared notion of historical memory. Israel succeeded in fabricating both in order to create the Israeli citizen. In order for Israel to establish for itself a new and legitimate national identity, the other, the Palestinian, had to be excluded, and its history reformulated either to fit into the Israeli narrative or to be absorbed by surrounding Arab states. Palestinians have been robbed of the right to narrate their own past. This right to remember is made impossible by the Israeli state, through its censorship of textbooks, criminalization of Nakba commemoration, and refusal to acknowledge Palestinian self-determination and sovereignty. In fact, many critical documents from the period are under lock and key, accessible only to Israelis, if at all. Defenders of Israel’s version of history continuously seek to delegitimize Palestinian historians by claiming their work is too attached to the subject matter and too weak because of its reliance on oral narratives. What Israel does is to mobilize history in such a way that deviates from any intention to narrate what really happened, and instead to appropriate only those memories that serve its expansionist agenda. Erasing the Nakba is a key component of Israel’s adamant refusal to allow Palestinians their internationally recognized right of return.

—Sumaya Awad & Annie Levin, ‘Roots of the Nakba: Zionist Settler Colonialism’ in Palestine: A Socialist Introduction ed. Sumaya Awad and brian bean

[funnypages]

Lessons of Resistance from WWII: The Rosenstrasse Protest and Evacuation of the Danish Jews

So a long history rant I think people should know about and keep in mind for the future. I want to talk to people about a little talked about story in the history of WWII, the Rosenstrasse protest: the one time, during the height of the Holocaust, when the German public protested against the deportation of Jews; and they won.

1942-early 1943 was arguably the height of Nazi Germany; with most of the continent occupied, allied, or neutral to them. It was also 2 years into the Final Solution phase of the Holocaust, the planned mass killing of Jews. In February 1943, the government began the final round-up of the 20,000 remaining Jews in Berlin. This included a category of Jews that the government had previously avoided deporting: Jews married to gentile Germans. While the Nazis had cracked down on these relationships since they came to power, there were at this time 1,800 mixed couples remaining in Berlin; almost all Jewish men married to gentile women (After the consolidation of power under Hitler, more German men had divorced their Jewish partners than women).

When these Jewish men were arrested, hundreds of their non-Jewish spouses descended upon the building they were held in, bringing with them friends and families, screaming for their husbands to be released. The protests were so large, that the Nazis could not suppress news of it spreading through Germany and internationally; and they were also genuinely afraid that arresting or shooting these women could cause the situation to spiral even further into an outright uprising. As a result, the men were released, and most of them survived the war.

Now there are a lot of critiques and analyses that can be done of the protest, about privilege and gender, and noting that nothing was said about releasing the 18,000 other Berlin Jews set to be deported to camps. Still, the reaction that the public had to these deportations, combined with the shockingly hopeful story of Denmark in the Holocaust, gives some valuable lessons in how fascists can be thwarted.

Demark was invaded by Germany in 1939 and was given a degree of autonomy, being treated as the "model protectorate." While the Danish government did acquiesce to demands to ban Communist and Socialist political parties, they refused to enact racial laws targeting Danish Jews. While not to say anti-semitism didn't exist in Denmark, for reasons debated by historians and sociologists, Denmark did not have a strong history of "othering" its Jewish community, and it was largely seen as an accepted part of Danish society.

In September 1943, German plans to deport the Danish Jewish community to concentration camps leaked to the Danish government, which then alerted leaders of the Jewish community. Over 3 weeks churches, civil servants (notably mostly working independently of the government), political parties, the Danish resistance (mostly at this point made up of the before mentioned Communists and Socialists), and private individuals helped evacuate 7,220 Jews, plus 686 non-Jewish spouses, by sea to nearby neutral Sweden. For context, the Jewish population of Denmark before the invasion was around 7,800. Of the 580 Danish Jews who failed to escape to Sweden, 464 were arrested; however, work by Swedish and Danish groups saw 425 of them released. Further, when the war ended, it was discovered that 116 Danish Jews had been hidden by their neighbors. In all, a shocking 99% of Denmark's Jewish population survived the Holocaust; the most of any occupied nation in Europe.

I tell both of these stories because they show what fascists and authoritarians are aware of: the limits of their power. They are aware of the simple fact so much of their power comes from average people just accepting what they do with no pushback. These groups thrive on atomization, demonization, and otherization. Because when people refuse to let their neighbors be attacked, that's when issues pop up. There were other individuals and groups in Germany who spoke out against the Nazis (the White Rose and the Edelweiss Pirates to name a few), but they were small and disorganized, they could be arrested or exiled or killed without much effort. But large groups of resistance? How do you arrest or kill those without stopping their families and friends from protesting? And the foot soldiers enacting their agenda tend to get antsy if there is large-scale pushback to them. The big guys in charge might be safe, but them? They are vulnerable to being fired, sued, arrested, or ostracised if they are seen enacting unpopular policies. Such actions put authorities on the defensive, stall them, and make them reconsider their tactics; which in the long run, can save lives.

This is what people mean, whether they know it or not, over the last few days when they have been saying "Help those close to you, keep your friends close." They want you to think they are all-powerful. They want you to think they are unstoppable. They want you to think there is no hope in openly denying them. Because they know that if those few people openly defying them become large groups openly defying them, then things spiral out of control.