In recent elections in two East German states on September 1, the vote for the far right was the highest yet, writes Sibylle Kaczorek.
Germany
Dr Richard Sorge, a German communist who penetrated the innermost political and military circles of the Japanese and German governments for a decade from the mid-1930s, only ever had one good thing to say about the Nazis.
Germany’s lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, recently passed a resolution equating BDS, which calls for economic and cultural sanctions against Israel over its apartheid-like policies towards Palestinians, with anti-Semitism.
Sibylle Kaczorek, a member of Germany’s main left party Die Linke and an activist with Aufstehengegen Rassismus! (Stand Up Against Racism!) was interviewed in May by Dick Nichols, Green Left Weekly’s European correspondent.
Styx
Director Wolfgang Fischer, starring Susanne Wolff and Gedion Oduor Wekesa
English & German with English subtitles
Screening as part of the German Film Festival
The Styx was the name given by the ancient Greeks to the river dividing the land of the living from that of the dead, Hades. This film is a modern allegory for that journey.
This year’s German Film Festival, taking place in May and June, promises some stellar events.
Sibylle Kaczorek, a member of Socialist Alliance and the Left Party, addressed the International Women's day rally in Berlin on behalf of Stand Up Against Racism (Aufstehen gegen Rassismus).
Thousands marched through Berlin on January 13 to pay their respects 100 years after the brutal murders of revolutionary socialists Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, Morning Star Online said.
Marchers came from across Germany and many countries. They laid red flowers at the tombs of Luxemburg, Liebknecht and other revolutionaries in the Friedrichsfelde Socialist Cemetery in east Berlin.
November 11 marks the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, but not before tens of millions died in the four-year-long unprecedented industrial carnage. Amid all the media coverage, almost entirely missing is the actual story of how such bloodshed and misery was ended: by a mass popular rebellion in Germany that brought down the monarchy and established a republic.
After the recent successful defence of the Hambacher Forest against the threat of destruction by coal giant RWE, more than 5000 people joined a mass civil disobedience action on October 27 and 28 in the coalfields of the German state of North-Rhein Westphalia (NRW).
The action was called by Ende Gelaende, an anti-capitalist environmental group committed to non-violent direct action tactics. It aims to win an immediate end to coal production at Europe’s biggest open-cast mine, the Hambach lignite (brown coal) mine.
The rise of the far right around the world, with fascist candidate Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil close to joining the growing ranks of authoritarian far right leaders, many on the left are wondering how to respond.
The parallels with the rise of fascism in Europe in the early 20th century are clear.
In July, Canadian Marxist academic and activist John Riddell gave a speech, abridged below, at a York University seminar entitled “Historical perspectives on united fronts against fascism and the far right”.
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel vowed to restore confidence in the government after crashing to a humiliating defeat in the October 14 Bavarian state elections, Morning Star Online reported.
The Christian Social Union (CSU) — sister party to Merkel’s Christian Democrats — polled 37%, its worst vote for more than six decades. It lost its majority in Germany’s southern state in a major defeat for the governing parties.
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