Sibylle Berg
Talking with Fascists:
Infinitely Bleak!
While leftwing individuals think about conducting successful conversations with thugs, screamers, and people-haters, a fascist movement is calmly forming. The time to talk is past.
Oh, what is this? A petition? How wonderful!
For the right of fascist individuals to propagate hate unhindered. For an amicable peace, which fascist individuals do not want but need in order to foment hate against people who are not male and biologically German. For the protected space that fascist individuals need to boo people who think differently, to attack them physically, to silence them with whistles and always the same defamation.
Zones of calm are necessary so that fascist individuals are able to flourish, to set small fires in front of homes, and to attack Jews. We must absolutely and urgently stand up for that; we must seek dialogue, turn the other cheek, ensure fundamental democratic rights for those who despise democracy, create fortified bastions for fomenting hate, which can and must unfold like flowers. We have to form chains of light for publishers with a clearly intellectual rightwing-extremist orientation, pray for their authors, who are avowed fascists.
And, finally, there is clarity once again; what was previously watered down and lacking in meaning holds true again. There is right and left.
And one has to position oneself, forgetting that the inaction of politics and the idiocy of unregulated capitalism means taking sides, at a time when the apathy of spirit cries out for simple solutions and a struggle over how people want to live has begun. In a dictatorship of the loudest, those who are distinguished by nothing but contempt, degradation, and asociality, or in a world in which people try, contrary to their nature, to get along with each other and to protect weaker members of the community.
The time to talk is past.
It is all so endlessly bleak. This retrograde left-right battle; it keeps at bay what would truly be important—the struggle against the self-devouring neoliberal hollowing-out of humanity. But then: When state authorities make clear who is in control and crack down on young people protesting against neoliberal politics and—crassly—throwing beer bottles with the greatest possible severity so that such attacks are never repeated, it becomes clear that leftwing protest, in case of doubt, is always punished more severely than vulgar fascist behavior, crimes, brawls, and attacks.
It is necessary to take a position. The unbelievable flabbiness of leftwing positions, the tea drinking and cuddling, the fight for soy burgers and wildflowers, ignores what is forming outside: fascist movements with which it is impossible to talk, because one cannot talk when confronted with screams.
Perhaps the Black Block, the young people of Antifascists, who confront fascists with the sole argument that fascists individuals understand, the only movement besides a digitally organized resistance that has an impact. Nothing will be good on its own. The government will not save us. Only a redefinition of the concept of leftwing activism can stop the idiocy of hate and the contempt for people.
While good leftwing individuals continue to sit and think about conducting successful conversations with thugs, screamers, and people-haters, outside the good old song plays on, the first display windows are besmeared, and flags are hoisted.
The time for talking is past.
What’s concerned is saving humanity.