#antifascism — Public Fediverse posts

Germany: this peculiar Frankenstein’s monster of a nation, stitched together from kingdoms, duchies, free cities, dialects, cultures, grudges and several centuries of mutually assured irritation.

Sometimes I wonder whether history might have been kinder if someone had simply left the pieces alone.

A handful of smaller countries. More local identities. Fewer grand national fantasies. Entities the size of the Netherlands, Belgium, or perhaps at times Luxembourg.

Perhaps Europe, and quite possibly the world, might have been better for it.

But no.

Somebody decided that all these differences needed to be hammered into one people, one nation, one destiny.

And once you teach people to worship the container, sooner or later they start asking which humans belong inside it.

Germany did not invent nationalism.

But it demonstrated, with horrifying thoroughness, what happens when a collection of places is turned into a political myth, and that myth is given an army.

#Nationalism #Antinationalism #Germany #Fascism #Antifascism #NeverAgain

Germany: this peculiar Frankenstein’s monster of a nation, stitched together from kingdoms, duchies, free cities, dialects, cultures, grudges and several centuries of mutually assured irritation.

Sometimes I wonder whether history might have been kinder if someone had simply left the pieces alone.

A handful of smaller countries. More local identities. Fewer grand national fantasies. Entities the size of the Netherlands, Belgium, or perhaps at times Luxembourg.

Perhaps Europe, and quite possibly the world, might have been better for it.

But no.

Somebody decided that all these differences needed to be hammered into one people, one nation, one destiny.

And once you teach people to worship the container, sooner or later they start asking which humans belong inside it.

Germany did not invent nationalism.

But it demonstrated, with horrifying thoroughness, what happens when a collection of places is turned into a political myth, and that myth is given an army.

#Nationalism #Antinationalism #Germany #Fascism #Antifascism #NeverAgain

Germany: this peculiar Frankenstein’s monster of a nation, stitched together from kingdoms, duchies, free cities, dialects, cultures, grudges and several centuries of mutually assured irritation.

Sometimes I wonder whether history might have been kinder if someone had simply left the pieces alone.

A handful of smaller countries. More local identities. Fewer grand national fantasies. Entities the size of the Netherlands, Belgium, or perhaps at times Luxembourg.

Perhaps Europe, and quite possibly the world, might have been better for it.

But no.

Somebody decided that all these differences needed to be hammered into one people, one nation, one destiny.

And once you teach people to worship the container, sooner or later they start asking which humans belong inside it.

Germany did not invent nationalism.

But it demonstrated, with horrifying thoroughness, what happens when a collection of places is turned into a political myth, and that myth is given an army.

#Nationalism #Antinationalism #Germany #Fascism #Antifascism #NeverAgain

Germany: this peculiar Frankenstein’s monster of a nation, stitched together from kingdoms, duchies, free cities, dialects, cultures, grudges and several centuries of mutually assured irritation.

Sometimes I wonder whether history might have been kinder if someone had simply left the pieces alone.

A handful of smaller countries. More local identities. Fewer grand national fantasies. Entities the size of the Netherlands, Belgium, or perhaps at times Luxembourg.

Perhaps Europe, and quite possibly the world, might have been better for it.

But no.

Somebody decided that all these differences needed to be hammered into one people, one nation, one destiny.

And once you teach people to worship the container, sooner or later they start asking which humans belong inside it.

Germany did not invent nationalism.

But it demonstrated, with horrifying thoroughness, what happens when a collection of places is turned into a political myth, and that myth is given an army.

#Nationalism #Antinationalism #Germany #Fascism #Antifascism #NeverAgain

I have news for you:

The Brandmauer never existed.

It was always a political convenience, not a democratic principle.

The CDU does not care about the Brandmauer. It cares about power.

And once again, radicalised conservatives are doing what conservatives have done throughout history: convincing themselves that they can use fascists without empowering fascism.

They cannot.

They will.

And when democracy finally lies in ruins, they will insist they never meant for this to happen.

But history will be less forgiving.

It will remember who opened the door.

And who stood beside it, holding the keys.

#Fascism #Antifascism #Germany #Brandmauer #DefendDemocracy #DemocraticBacksliding

I have news for you:

The Brandmauer never existed.

It was always a political convenience, not a democratic principle.

The CDU does not care about the Brandmauer. It cares about power.

And once again, radicalised conservatives are doing what conservatives have done throughout history: convincing themselves that they can use fascists without empowering fascism.

They cannot.

They will.

And when democracy finally lies in ruins, they will insist they never meant for this to happen.

But history will be less forgiving.

It will remember who opened the door.

And who stood beside it, holding the keys.

#Fascism #Antifascism #Germany #Brandmauer #DefendDemocracy #DemocraticBacksliding

I have news for you:

The Brandmauer never existed.

It was always a political convenience, not a democratic principle.

The CDU does not care about the Brandmauer. It cares about power.

And once again, radicalised conservatives are doing what conservatives have done throughout history: convincing themselves that they can use fascists without empowering fascism.

They cannot.

They will.

And when democracy finally lies in ruins, they will insist they never meant for this to happen.

But history will be less forgiving.

It will remember who opened the door.

And who stood beside it, holding the keys.

#Fascism #Antifascism #Germany #Brandmauer #DefendDemocracy #DemocraticBacksliding

I have news for you:

The Brandmauer never existed.

It was always a political convenience, not a democratic principle.

The CDU does not care about the Brandmauer. It cares about power.

And once again, radicalised conservatives are doing what conservatives have done throughout history: convincing themselves that they can use fascists without empowering fascism.

They cannot.

They will.

And when democracy finally lies in ruins, they will insist they never meant for this to happen.

But history will be less forgiving.

It will remember who opened the door.

And who stood beside it, holding the keys.

#Fascism #Antifascism #Germany #Brandmauer #DefendDemocracy #DemocraticBacksliding

There is a political project underway to make transgender existence pathological again.

That distinction matters.

This is not merely about terminology. It is about institutional power: who gets to define a person's identity, whose account of their own existence is considered credible, and what happens when an individual refuses the definition imposed upon them.

The historical pattern is not particularly obscure.
First, difference is classified as disorder.
Then disorder becomes evidence of incapacity.
Incapacity becomes justification for paternalism.
Paternalism becomes coercion.

At that point, the institution no longer has to demonstrate that the person is dangerous. It merely has to establish that the person is not sufficiently competent to define themselves.

This is how medical authority can become a technology of social conformity.

And no, putting this process inside a psychiatric framework does not make it benevolent. Calling coercion treatment does not alter its coercive character. Calling confinement care does not make the locked door disappear.

There is a particularly grotesque irony here: people who insist that transgender identities are merely ideological constructions are perfectly willing to construct an elaborate ideological apparatus around the proposition that trans people are mentally defective.

The objective is not scientific neutrality.
It is disciplinary legitimacy.

So let us dispense with the euphemisms.

If your political programme requires declaring an entire class of people mentally ill because they refuse to live according to your preferred conception of gender, you are not practising medicine. You are practising social control.

And if your proposed remedy is to remove those people from society until they become sufficiently compliant, then the problem is not their supposed pathology.

It is your willingness to manufacture pathology in order to justify their removal.

History has a name for that kind of medicine.

It is not care.
It is not neutrality.
And it is certainly not progress.

We have already seen what happens when institutions are given the authority to decide which identities constitute legitimate human existence. We do not owe anyone the opportunity to repeat the experiment on us.

#TransRights #TransLiberation #TransIsNotAnIllness #QueerLiberation #MedicalEthics #HumanRights #Antifascism #EndTransphobia #NoGoingBack

There is a political project underway to make transgender existence pathological again.

That distinction matters.

This is not merely about terminology. It is about institutional power: who gets to define a person's identity, whose account of their own existence is considered credible, and what happens when an individual refuses the definition imposed upon them.

The historical pattern is not particularly obscure.
First, difference is classified as disorder.
Then disorder becomes evidence of incapacity.
Incapacity becomes justification for paternalism.
Paternalism becomes coercion.

At that point, the institution no longer has to demonstrate that the person is dangerous. It merely has to establish that the person is not sufficiently competent to define themselves.

This is how medical authority can become a technology of social conformity.

And no, putting this process inside a psychiatric framework does not make it benevolent. Calling coercion treatment does not alter its coercive character. Calling confinement care does not make the locked door disappear.

There is a particularly grotesque irony here: people who insist that transgender identities are merely ideological constructions are perfectly willing to construct an elaborate ideological apparatus around the proposition that trans people are mentally defective.

The objective is not scientific neutrality.
It is disciplinary legitimacy.

So let us dispense with the euphemisms.

If your political programme requires declaring an entire class of people mentally ill because they refuse to live according to your preferred conception of gender, you are not practising medicine. You are practising social control.

And if your proposed remedy is to remove those people from society until they become sufficiently compliant, then the problem is not their supposed pathology.

It is your willingness to manufacture pathology in order to justify their removal.

History has a name for that kind of medicine.

It is not care.
It is not neutrality.
And it is certainly not progress.

We have already seen what happens when institutions are given the authority to decide which identities constitute legitimate human existence. We do not owe anyone the opportunity to repeat the experiment on us.

#TransRights #TransLiberation #TransIsNotAnIllness #QueerLiberation #MedicalEthics #HumanRights #Antifascism #EndTransphobia #NoGoingBack

There is a political project underway to make transgender existence pathological again.

That distinction matters.

This is not merely about terminology. It is about institutional power: who gets to define a person's identity, whose account of their own existence is considered credible, and what happens when an individual refuses the definition imposed upon them.

The historical pattern is not particularly obscure.
First, difference is classified as disorder.
Then disorder becomes evidence of incapacity.
Incapacity becomes justification for paternalism.
Paternalism becomes coercion.

At that point, the institution no longer has to demonstrate that the person is dangerous. It merely has to establish that the person is not sufficiently competent to define themselves.

This is how medical authority can become a technology of social conformity.

And no, putting this process inside a psychiatric framework does not make it benevolent. Calling coercion treatment does not alter its coercive character. Calling confinement care does not make the locked door disappear.

There is a particularly grotesque irony here: people who insist that transgender identities are merely ideological constructions are perfectly willing to construct an elaborate ideological apparatus around the proposition that trans people are mentally defective.

The objective is not scientific neutrality.
It is disciplinary legitimacy.

So let us dispense with the euphemisms.

If your political programme requires declaring an entire class of people mentally ill because they refuse to live according to your preferred conception of gender, you are not practising medicine. You are practising social control.

And if your proposed remedy is to remove those people from society until they become sufficiently compliant, then the problem is not their supposed pathology.

It is your willingness to manufacture pathology in order to justify their removal.

History has a name for that kind of medicine.

It is not care.
It is not neutrality.
And it is certainly not progress.

We have already seen what happens when institutions are given the authority to decide which identities constitute legitimate human existence. We do not owe anyone the opportunity to repeat the experiment on us.

#TransRights #TransLiberation #TransIsNotAnIllness #QueerLiberation #MedicalEthics #HumanRights #Antifascism #EndTransphobia #NoGoingBack

There is a political project underway to make transgender existence pathological again.

That distinction matters.

This is not merely about terminology. It is about institutional power: who gets to define a person's identity, whose account of their own existence is considered credible, and what happens when an individual refuses the definition imposed upon them.

The historical pattern is not particularly obscure.
First, difference is classified as disorder.
Then disorder becomes evidence of incapacity.
Incapacity becomes justification for paternalism.
Paternalism becomes coercion.

At that point, the institution no longer has to demonstrate that the person is dangerous. It merely has to establish that the person is not sufficiently competent to define themselves.

This is how medical authority can become a technology of social conformity.

And no, putting this process inside a psychiatric framework does not make it benevolent. Calling coercion treatment does not alter its coercive character. Calling confinement care does not make the locked door disappear.

There is a particularly grotesque irony here: people who insist that transgender identities are merely ideological constructions are perfectly willing to construct an elaborate ideological apparatus around the proposition that trans people are mentally defective.

The objective is not scientific neutrality.
It is disciplinary legitimacy.

So let us dispense with the euphemisms.

If your political programme requires declaring an entire class of people mentally ill because they refuse to live according to your preferred conception of gender, you are not practising medicine. You are practising social control.

And if your proposed remedy is to remove those people from society until they become sufficiently compliant, then the problem is not their supposed pathology.

It is your willingness to manufacture pathology in order to justify their removal.

History has a name for that kind of medicine.

It is not care.
It is not neutrality.
And it is certainly not progress.

We have already seen what happens when institutions are given the authority to decide which identities constitute legitimate human existence. We do not owe anyone the opportunity to repeat the experiment on us.

#TransRights #TransLiberation #TransIsNotAnIllness #QueerLiberation #MedicalEthics #HumanRights #Antifascism #EndTransphobia #NoGoingBack

There is a political project underway to make transgender existence pathological again.

That distinction matters.

This is not merely about terminology. It is about institutional power: who gets to define a person's identity, whose account of their own existence is considered credible, and what happens when an individual refuses the definition imposed upon them.

The historical pattern is not particularly obscure.
First, difference is classified as disorder.
Then disorder becomes evidence of incapacity.
Incapacity becomes justification for paternalism.
Paternalism becomes coercion.

At that point, the institution no longer has to demonstrate that the person is dangerous. It merely has to establish that the person is not sufficiently competent to define themselves.

This is how medical authority can become a technology of social conformity.

And no, putting this process inside a psychiatric framework does not make it benevolent. Calling coercion treatment does not alter its coercive character. Calling confinement care does not make the locked door disappear.

There is a particularly grotesque irony here: people who insist that transgender identities are merely ideological constructions are perfectly willing to construct an elaborate ideological apparatus around the proposition that trans people are mentally defective.

The objective is not scientific neutrality.
It is disciplinary legitimacy.

So let us dispense with the euphemisms.

If your political programme requires declaring an entire class of people mentally ill because they refuse to live according to your preferred conception of gender, you are not practising medicine. You are practising social control.

And if your proposed remedy is to remove those people from society until they become sufficiently compliant, then the problem is not their supposed pathology.

It is your willingness to manufacture pathology in order to justify their removal.

History has a name for that kind of medicine.

It is not care.
It is not neutrality.
And it is certainly not progress.

We have already seen what happens when institutions are given the authority to decide which identities constitute legitimate human existence. We do not owe anyone the opportunity to repeat the experiment on us.

#TransRights #TransLiberation #TransIsNotAnIllness #QueerLiberation #MedicalEthics #HumanRights #Antifascism #EndTransphobia #NoGoingBack

Ah yes. The great fascist emergency:

RAINBOWS.

Apparently a bit of colour on a wall is now a sinister ideological occupation force.

Paint over it with a German flag, though, and suddenly it’s “just as it should be.” 🤡

And then comes my favourite little sentence:

“Tolerance and diversity are being forced on me.”

Oh sweetheart.

If your freedom requires everyone else to disappear, you don't want freedom. You want the freedom to spew your hateful nationalism without any resistance.

You don't want “unpolitical.”
You want your politics to be the wallpaper.

You don't want to be left alone.
You want us to be invisible.

And no, I don't think you're confused.

I think you know exactly what you're doing.

That's the ugly little secret underneath all that whining about “perversion” and “having things shoved in your face”:

You want us gone.

Well.

How terribly inconvenient.

We're still here.
We're loud.
We're queer.
We're colourful.
And we're not asking your permission.

Deutschland verrecke! 🏳️‍🌈

#Antifascism #FuckFascism #QueerLiberation #LGBTQIA #NoPasaran #Germany #Diversity #Pride

Ah yes. The great fascist emergency:

RAINBOWS.

Apparently a bit of colour on a wall is now a sinister ideological occupation force.

Paint over it with a German flag, though, and suddenly it’s “just as it should be.” 🤡

And then comes my favourite little sentence:

“Tolerance and diversity are being forced on me.”

Oh sweetheart.

If your freedom requires everyone else to disappear, you don't want freedom. You want the freedom to spew your hateful nationalism without any resistance.

You don't want “unpolitical.”
You want your politics to be the wallpaper.

You don't want to be left alone.
You want us to be invisible.

And no, I don't think you're confused.

I think you know exactly what you're doing.

That's the ugly little secret underneath all that whining about “perversion” and “having things shoved in your face”:

You want us gone.

Well.

How terribly inconvenient.

We're still here.
We're loud.
We're queer.
We're colourful.
And we're not asking your permission.

Deutschland verrecke! 🏳️‍🌈

#Antifascism #FuckFascism #QueerLiberation #LGBTQIA #NoPasaran #Germany #Diversity #Pride

Ah yes. The great fascist emergency:

RAINBOWS.

Apparently a bit of colour on a wall is now a sinister ideological occupation force.

Paint over it with a German flag, though, and suddenly it’s “just as it should be.” 🤡

And then comes my favourite little sentence:

“Tolerance and diversity are being forced on me.”

Oh sweetheart.

If your freedom requires everyone else to disappear, you don't want freedom. You want the freedom to spew your hateful nationalism without any resistance.

You don't want “unpolitical.”
You want your politics to be the wallpaper.

You don't want to be left alone.
You want us to be invisible.

And no, I don't think you're confused.

I think you know exactly what you're doing.

That's the ugly little secret underneath all that whining about “perversion” and “having things shoved in your face”:

You want us gone.

Well.

How terribly inconvenient.

We're still here.
We're loud.
We're queer.
We're colourful.
And we're not asking your permission.

Deutschland verrecke! 🏳️‍🌈

#Antifascism #FuckFascism #QueerLiberation #LGBTQIA #NoPasaran #Germany #Diversity #Pride

Ah yes. The great fascist emergency:

RAINBOWS.

Apparently a bit of colour on a wall is now a sinister ideological occupation force.

Paint over it with a German flag, though, and suddenly it’s “just as it should be.” 🤡

And then comes my favourite little sentence:

“Tolerance and diversity are being forced on me.”

Oh sweetheart.

If your freedom requires everyone else to disappear, you don't want freedom. You want the freedom to spew your hateful nationalism without any resistance.

You don't want “unpolitical.”
You want your politics to be the wallpaper.

You don't want to be left alone.
You want us to be invisible.

And no, I don't think you're confused.

I think you know exactly what you're doing.

That's the ugly little secret underneath all that whining about “perversion” and “having things shoved in your face”:

You want us gone.

Well.

How terribly inconvenient.

We're still here.
We're loud.
We're queer.
We're colourful.
And we're not asking your permission.

Deutschland verrecke! 🏳️‍🌈

#Antifascism #FuckFascism #QueerLiberation #LGBTQIA #NoPasaran #Germany #Diversity #Pride

Good morning. 🌸

Within a single week, both the memorial bench and the memorial tree commemorating the Berlin CSD attack were vandalised and destroyed.

A bench.
A tree.
Both rainbow-coloured.
Both symbols of remembrance, solidarity and love.

It should be difficult to imagine anyone being angry enough about that to destroy them.

And yet here we are.

There is something profoundly rotten about a person so consumed by hatred that a rainbow-painted bench becomes an enemy, and a tree planted in memory of victims becomes something that must be ripped from the ground.

But perhaps we should stop pretending that this is merely some unfortunate disagreement between people with different opinions.

It isn't.

Fascism has never been satisfied with words. First it tells you that certain people are disgusting. Then it tells you they are dangerous. Then it tells you they don't belong.

And eventually, someone will start killing the people they feel don't belong.

So no.

There can be no compromise with that.

We will not make ourselves smaller so fascists can feel comfortable. We will not hide our colours. We will not politely negotiate over whether our friends, our families, our children or ourselves deserve to exist.

They tear down the tree?

Plant another.

They destroy the bench?

Build two.

They try to erase us?

Stand together. Stand visible. Stand unafraid.

Don't let hatred decide what our streets look like.
Don't let fear decide how loudly we love.
Don't let fascists teach us to disappear.

Show up. Speak out. Protect one another. Defend our spaces. Rebuild what they destroy. And never, ever surrender the ground they want us to leave.

They can tear down a tree.

They cannot uproot a movement. 🌈🏳️‍⚧️

#CSD #Berlin #Pride #QueerResistance #NoPasaran #Antifascism #QueerSolidarity

And yes, Slime's „Deutschland muss sterben, damit wir leben können.“

A little dramatic? Certainly. But I have never been particularly good at pretending the furniture isn't on fire.

As Brecht put it: „Wer A sagt, der muss nicht B sagen. Er kann auch erkennen, dass A falsch war.“

Perhaps that is the Deutschland I want to see die: the one that keeps insisting its old myths, hierarchies and cruelties are somehow sacred.

Not the people. Not the land.

The bloody idea that this is simply how things have to be.

#Slime #BertBrecht #Deutschland #Antifascism #NeverAgain #QueerResistance

Apparently, Everything Is Fine

Germany has apparently solved racism.

Nobody told the racists, obviously.

You point at racist abuse: isolated incident.

Anti-queer violence: isolated incident.

Fascists getting louder and more comfortable: you're being hysterical.

And when you say, "Actually, I'm starting to think about leaving," suddenly you are the one causing the problem.

The "funniest" part? It's not just conservatives doing this.

Liberals do it.

Some leftists do it.

People who can explain structural oppression over three coffees will suddenly become deeply philosophical about whether the racism happening right in front of you really counts.

"Germany learned from its history."

Yes, apparently the certificate is laminated.

"Don't give the far right ammunition."

Darling, the far right doesn't need my ammunition. They have their own fucking factory.

I am tired of pretending that denial is nuance.

I am tired of queer people being told to calm down while hatred gets louder.

I am tired of being told that what I can see, hear and experience isn't happening because acknowledging it would make somebody uncomfortable.

I still resist. Obviously.

I write. I speak. I organise. I show up. I remain gloriously fucking inconvenient.

But here's the thing:

Resistance does not require me to stay.

I can fight for Germany while quietly wondering whether Germany is somewhere I still want to build a life.

#Germany #Berlin #Racism #QueerRights #Antifascism #LGBTQIA #QueerResistance #SozialeVerrohung #NoHate

There is a German phrase I keep coming back to: soziale Verrohung.

Social brutality. The coarsening of society. The point where cruelty stops being shocking and starts becoming conversational.

And honestly? We are watching it happen in real time.

People aren't merely saying, “I disagree with you” anymore.
They are saying:
You are degenerate.
You are vermin.
You are unworthy of living.
You should be killed.
You should be sent to the camps.

And increasingly, they aren't even bothering to hide behind anonymous accounts.

Full names. Real photographs. Proudly attached to it.

That should frighten us.

Because dehumanisation is not just “strong language”. It is how cruelty becomes socially acceptable. First someone is annoying. Then disgusting. Then dangerous. Then somehow no longer quite human.

History has a rather ugly filing cabinet full of examples.

So no, I am not going to politely debate whether my friends, my community, or anyone else is sufficiently “worthy” of dignity.

Human rights are not a popularity contest.

And if your politics requires treating other human beings as disposable, perhaps the problem isn't that the rest of us need to become more tolerant.

Perhaps your politics is simply fucking monstrous.

#SozialeVerrohung #Dehumanisation #Antifascism #HumanRights #NeverAgain #QueerResistance #NoHate #ResistFascism