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   ramonita :trantifa: (ramonita@todon.eu)'s status on Saturday, 13-Jan-2024 04:59:21 JST ramonita :trantifa:

   • Scrappy Capy Distro

   > Yet in the activist scene in Berlin, I faced a wall of total indifference as I suggested over and over again to organize an event and to talk about that [friend arrested in Russia] case. No one knew me, no one wanted to listen.

   > ...it became clear to me that you’re not seen unless you have recommendations, people who would take you by the hand, take you to places, and introduce you to the right people. But where can migrants find a resource like this?

   > Everyone seems to have accepted it as a truth that you’re not supposed to ask people where they come from. So, for good measure, no one asked me ANYTHING!

   > it really hurts, because I have spent 10 years learning german, but just because I make mistakes and have an accent, people think this is not good enough?

   > I constantly had the feeling in leftie circles that I had to justify why I was working, why I wasn’t devoting myself fully to activism...

   > How many times did I come to an existing collective for the first time and wasn’t asked what I was called.

   > The problem is that radical leftists in Berlin demand integration from radical leftist migrants.

   I could quote this whole zine and only need to change the word "Berlin" tbh.
   https://en.scrappycapydistro.info/article/2022/10/16/berlin-youve-hurt-me-another-berlin-is-possible

   @scrappy_capy_distro

   • AnthonyJK-Admin repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     ramonita :trantifa: (ramonita@todon.eu)'s status on Saturday, 13-Jan-2024 04:59:16 JST ramonita :trantifa:

     in reply to

     • Aenea
     • Scrappy Capy Distro

     @aenea @scrappy_capy_distro

     My pet theory is that the moral purity issues mentioned in the zine--ostracism as the only strategy for dealing with harm, absence of transformative justice, oppression olympics, no accommodations for workers and marginals etc.--are a form of overcompensation.

     It overcompensates for lack of actual commitment to politics, i.e. the willingness to risk repression, personal harm to one's body, or even the scariest of all: Taking responsibility for communal things. It comes from a place of fearing that material safety, and let's be honest material abundance, is sacrosanct. "I'm so privileged and I'm still this depressed, if I was poor I'd probably just die"--not realising that the comfy individualist alienation is the cause of said depression.

     A Kurd half my age once offered to take care of my children for an action that would take months, within *an hour* of first meeting me (a non-Kurd openly non-Apoist total stranger). Could I be a cop and get someone arrested? Sure, whatever. Berxwedan jiyan e.
     I had to stop and think which of my queer anarchist comrades would offer taking up childcare responsibility to their most trusted friend, let alone to a new person, for the sake of advancing the society they believe in. I still have no answer for this question.

     AnthonyJK-Admin repeated this.
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     ramonita :trantifa: (ramonita@todon.eu)'s status on Saturday, 13-Jan-2024 04:59:18 JST ramonita :trantifa:

     in reply to

     • Aenea
     • Scrappy Capy Distro

     @aenea @scrappy_capy_distro There are cops everywhere and there's always has been. The problem is that Germans are so terrified of going to jail that they let the existence of cops prevent them from any building of community, any proposal of action. Which is of course the reason for the cops in the first place, counter-insurgency 101: The snitches are not there to catch people who punch nazis, they're there to make people too paranoid to propose punching nazis. It's working.

     It's "security culture" converted into an excuse to prioritise individual interests. Go to a Kurdish meeting some day--don't worry, unlike Germans they're open to outsiders and to different opinions--and see how expansively they organise, how welcoming of new people. And then realise that they are under *way* stronger surveillance and face *way* stronger repression than white German antifa ever will.

     AnthonyJK-Admin repeated this.
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     Aenea (aenea@paquita.masto.host)'s status on Saturday, 13-Jan-2024 04:59:20 JST Aenea

     in reply to

     • Scrappy Capy Distro

     @ramonita @scrappy_capy_distro My gut feeling is that Berlin collectives have been so often infected with undercover cops that yes, they won't trust some unknown person. It still sucks!

     AnthonyJK-Admin repeated this.
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     autonomonopia (tech_prole@hispagatos.space)'s status on Saturday, 13-Jan-2024 04:59:28 JST autonomonopia

     in reply to

     • Aenea
     • Scrappy Capy Distro

     @ramonita @aenea @scrappy_capy_distro

     Real shit,

     I agree with you totally, i think there's just a kind of stripping away of communal ethos that is so complete within idk first world consumer society, where asking for literally anything including just company/conversion ("emotional labour") is treated like a huge burden or imposition, it is a really complete alienation the privileged first worlder has as there is so little possibility of community

     AnthonyJK-Admin repeated this.
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     ramonita :trantifa: (ramonita@todon.eu)'s status on Saturday, 13-Jan-2024 04:59:37 JST ramonita :trantifa:

     in reply to

     • autonomonopia
     • Aenea
     • Scrappy Capy Distro

     @tech_prole @aenea @scrappy_capy_distro this is widespread enough to count as a systemic issue. it cannot be the fault of individual activists. if everyone is too scared to do anything, if everyone sees themself as irreparably too depressed/scared/weak to fight the enemy, there must be a structural reason.

     we have come to understand the predicament of the German scene as something akin to an abusive relationship, with EU citizen / first-world privilege as the abuser. the privilege causes both privilege guilt and a (imagined) dependency to privilege, in a reinforcing, paralysing loop, making people terrified of losing a lifestyle they hate.

     in other words, the system coopts the people it abuses by making them feel invested then guilty, like a good scammer. and in the process the first-worlders tear themselves apart from us third-worlders.

     so how do we go about solving that.

     it is to answer that question (and by comparing and contrasting the German scene with Kurd, Polish/Belarusian, and Latinoamerican approaches to politics) that we wrote "How to do politics like a marginal in 11 easy steps"
     https://anarcholatina.blackblogs.org/11-easy-steps-to-politics-like-a-marginal/

     AnthonyJK-Admin repeated this.
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     Scrappy Capy Distro (scrappy_capy_distro@kolektiva.social)'s status on Saturday, 13-Jan-2024 04:59:49 JST Scrappy Capy Distro

     in reply to

     • autonomonopia
     • Aenea

     @ramonita @tech_prole @aenea Sure but system failures sun up to systemic failures. If the system we have (radical support networks, a scene, whatever) don’t work, we as individuals have to rise above our conditions. Change starts with a single person y’know.

     It seems less “abusive relationship” and more like “local maximum” of benefits and that there’s a lot of potential for less before reaching a anything better.

     AnthonyJK-Admin repeated this.
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     Scrappy Capy Distro (scrappy_capy_distro@kolektiva.social)'s status on Saturday, 13-Jan-2024 04:59:59 JST Scrappy Capy Distro

     in reply to

     • autonomonopia
     • Aenea

     @ramonita @tech_prole @aenea This isn’t an accelerationist argument, but relative comfort and safety especially in Berlin (and other places) absolutely holds people back from taking certain types of action. Again the critique of “individualism” often come from those who risk absolutely nothing so 🤷🤷🤷

     AnthonyJK-Admin repeated this.
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     ramonita :trantifa: (ramonita@todon.eu)'s status on Saturday, 13-Jan-2024 05:00:25 JST ramonita :trantifa:

     in reply to

     • autonomonopia
     • Aenea
     • Scrappy Capy Distro

     @scrappy_capy_distro @tech_prole @aenea My point is that if you point at an individual German and say "hey you! yes you, this sucks! do more to include immigrants, be nicer! no one has the courage to actually do something other than demos here? come on people, los!", they just feel *more* privilege guilt than they already do, mutter awkwardly about being overwhelmed and "maybe you could try talking to xyz", then melt into a puddle of "mental health", never to be seen again.

     (I tried.)

     so our question became, how could we do politics in a way that makes first-world people feel like commitment, openness, insurrection is a way *out* of their private impasse. if they won't bother including us, how would *we* prefigure what we want. how do we show Germans by example that courage, humour, sentiment, adventurousness, mischief isn't just allowed in political contexts but *is* a politics, an energising politics, that French-style demos are way more fun. how to show that nothing is gained if everyone looks like this >:| all the time in plenums, that you can take a leap of faith and welcome a new person as if they already are the commune comrade you dream of, that why are you so afraid of losing this middle-class life if y'all hate it so much anyway.

     the text above is our attempt at a how-to.