A(W) Baader's Blog

Full disclosure: I think that it’s a really good idea if working class people have the training to be able to punch their class enemies in the face really, really hard.

A pal of mine, the ugly one in the middle in the picture below, runs an MMA gym here in Bremen. It’s a really cool project that seeks to empower and train working class people that sits firmly in the tradition of the London anarchist Albert Meltzer. They even have a “solidarity tariff” which allows those who can’t afford it to be able to train there. Awesome sauce.

Most of those I mixed with in the boxing world were on the left, because the natural enemy was the upper middle class from which the fascists then came
-Albert Meltzer, I Couldn’t Paint Golden Angels

Naturally because of the Corona Pandemic, and capitalism’s complete inability to deal with such things, the gym has run into financial woes. I think that the gym is a really important project and so I would ask that, if you can afford it, please bung them a couple of quid/dollars/whatevers to help them keep afloat. They need to raise € 25,000 which sounds like a lot but if a lot of us chip in a  little then it will soon add up. They’re nearly half way there so please dig deep and help working class people kick arse.

Click Here
to throw a bit of solidarity towards Bremen
(Edited to add. It’s in German naturally. Your’re clever enough to figure it out though I’m sure)

in which Andy attempts to fit an entire year’s worth of blogging into a single post

“But it was impossible to beat anything into the heads of the poor. They went on with the usual impetuosity of their tempers, full of outcries and lamentations when taken, but madly careless of themselves, foolhardy and obstinate, while they were well. Where they could get employment they pushed into any kind of business, the most dangerous and the most liable to infection; and if they were spoken to, their answer would be, ‘I must trust to God for that; if I am taken, then I am provided for, and there is an end of me’, and the like. Or thus, ‘Why, what must I do? I can’t starve. I had as good have the plague as perish for want. I have no work; what could I do? I must do this or beg.”

― Daniel Defoe, A Journal of the Plague Year, written by a citizen who continued all the while in London

Well, that was a fucking year wasn’t it? Like something out of a straight to video post-apocalypse film that spunked its budget on an over the top dramatic catastrophe with fire and flames of biblical proportions but then stumbled from cliché to badly written cliché at a pace so glacial it made Waiting for Godot look like a chipper upbeat Tik Tok video. That’s how it seemed to me anyway. Your boring apocalypse miles may vary.

Being as I’m not a cute and fury antipodean my year actually started pretty pleasantly. Katia and I went for a quiet new year’s evening visiting friends in Chemnitz. We spent New Year’s Eve wandering around the set of soviet era documentary Zardoz with no one realising quite why I was giggling at the name of the state archaeological museum.

Once the hangovers from the “quiet evening with a few friends” had dissipated Katia and I headed to Berlin for a few days which was ace. I’d only visited Berlin once before and hadn’t really done much sight seeing when I was there. I finally got to see the Berlin Wall -a site famous for hosting one of the most important musical events of the 20th Century  as well as getting to nerd out on Museum Island at the various museums there. Including the Pergamon Museum, home to both the Ishtar Gate and the Pergamon Altar. The latter of which is renowned as the site where Angela Merkel sacrifices babies to our great lord Lucifer. Unfortunately we missed the blood letting and had to make do with picking up some over priced guff from the gift shop.

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We also visited the Brandenburg Gate and as we were walking towards it I spotted a building over the road and recognised it from a famous WWII photo.



Which lead me to ask Katia “Hey, isn’t that the old Reichstag? Isn’t the Bundestag around here somewhere?” only to be a given a look and to be asked in return “Are you fucking kidding?” I then turned around and found myself standing directly in front of a huge sign reading “BUNDESTAG”.

Wow, that protest in Berlin is pretty nutty eh? 22,000 or so bell-ends from all over have descended on Berlin to protest against the minor discomfort of wearing a mask when you have to pop into the Rewe to pick up some bratwurst. There’s nothing really special about the Berlin demo, aside perhaps from its size, as these things have been happening all over the shop. But I thought that I’d point something out to those of you unfamiliar with some of the flags being flown on the demo. That’s right, it’s time for FUN WITH FLAGS!

If you happen to have seen the flag below popping up on the news from Berlin then know this. This is the flag of the German Empire, and before that the Northern German Confederation, which was in use until 1919. It seems odd that an historic flag such as this should show up on a demonstration against the human indignity of a minor discomfort doesn’t it?

Well, you see, way back when there were a bunch of super bad people living in Germany and they had a favourite flag. You’ve probably seen it here and there. Well, these people were so super bad that the rest of the Germans, you know the normal ones that eat cheese and wear cardigans and so on, eventually made it illegal to fly this flag. So these very bad people had to find another flag to fly when they were trying to be super fun ruiners. They chose this flag.

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So, when you see the black, white, and, red being flown like this know that the person flying it is suuuper bad and you should probably punch them or something and tell them to go home. If that wasn’t clear. They’re Nazis. The only people that fly this flag are actual Nazis and deserve punched.

Another weird/not weird thing that I spotted on this demo were the specimens below.

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That’s right, Germany has Q-Anons.

Like what the literal fuck is going on in this picture? A Nazi flag, with Dog-Emperor Trump being held up by a fella who is most definitely of a hue that would not be too popular with the rest of the Nazi fucks flying this flag. Jesus Christ, go home 2020, you’re drunk.

 

It’s been absolutely ages since I posted on here and so, to prove that I ain’t died, here’s another look into some of the weirdness of the German left. First though I would like to point out that there are completely non-weird sections of the German left and that, from what I can tell Rote Hilfe is generally in the non-weird camp. Just look at stuff that groups like the FAU are up to, especially their support of migrant labour earlier this summer, and you’ll see that they aren’t all bonkers. Not by any means.

However! Not at all bonkers stuff is less fun to write about. So here are a couple of letters from the latest issue of the Rote Hilfe Zeitung. The Rote Hilfe is an organisation something akin to the Anarchist Black Cross in the UK. An organisation that exists to support people facing repression and imprisonment at the hands of the state. Especially people arrested for political activities. Good stuff.

OK, so bear with me on this.

We know that C-19 targets the old and the unwell. Especially the old and unwell. We also know that a great many of the voters for the Conservative Party in the UK, and right wing parties elsewhere, fit into the older demographic. So why is it that Boris Johnson seems prepared to lose so many of them to this virus? I mean, it’s going to tank their vote so why risk it?

I have the answer!

One of the major problems facing developed economies is that the population is ageing. We are living longer and we’re having fewer babies. This means that as workers age out of the workplace they aren’t replaced with new tax payers. It also means that there aren’t enough people to work in the care industry to look after the ageing populace. Now, this could be dealt with through immigration but far too many old people, especially Tory voting old people, only like to have their arses wiped by someone with the same silly accent as them. Probably something to do with pride, I dunno, I don’t really get it. So that’s a no-no.

SO, the simple solution is to create a virus that a- mostly targets the older generation and b-allows you to enforce a policy that requires most of the population to stay at home.

This allows you to wipe out most of the old people who are, for the most part, just a drain on public resources whilst at the same time guaranteeing that in 9 months time there’s a whole new generation of little tax payers popping up all over the economy.

FOLLOW THE MONEY MAAAAAN!!!!!

Of course, this is absolute nonsense. Not because the powers that be aren’t heartless Machiavellian monsters that would probably be eating children if they weren’t so attached to fucking them. They clearly are monsters. No, it’s absurd because they can’t think that far ahead. Capitalism seeks short term profit. The goal is always profit in the next quarter or financial year. To enact a plan that won’t see any results for another 15+ years is anathema to capitalism.

Which is why we need to destroy it and replace it with something nicer.

It’s also why, with regards climate change, we’re as fucked as a working class kid at a bourgeois birthday party.

A half thought out rant

Corona Capitalism

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Yeah, this is a right old shit show isn’t it? Cities on lock down, all “non-essential” activity restricted, borders closed, hell even the brothels and bars are closed. In Germany! Oh yeah, and thousands are sick and dead. But we have to remember that any attempt to stem the spread of this pesky and pernicious glob of RNA should be balanced against their impact on the economy. That’s why we see the UK government balancing out just how many of the sick and elderly it’s ok to allow to die and the iceberg like progress in the rest of Europe.

When we see dramatic measures being taken here in Germany it’s always coupled with the desire to keep people working. Producing profit for the economy.

We’re told on the news that this is an extremely serious event, that many people -possibly millions worldwide- are going to die. This is SERIOUS. You can tell by the use of phrases like “lock down” and “emergency restrictions”. You can’t tell when you’re getting on the Strassenbahn in the morning and seeing all the people going to work every day. I’m one of those people. Going to my “essential” work doing the Archaeology. Do I think Archaeology is non-essential? Of course not. Our history is an important part of understanding who we are as a species. Do I think that it can’t possibly wait a couple of months until the situation has hopefully calmed down? Of course bloody not!

However, despite the fact that the actual social value of my labour is non-time dependent and in no way helps towards stemming this pandemic, I still have to go to work as if I don’t then the construction work that follows will be delayed, which means we won’t get paid. So our team have to go to work, potentially picking up and passing on this virus -potentially to people who will really suffer from it.

We read the dramatic headlines about borders closing (aside from people travelling for work and the flow of goods) and about staying home (unless you’re working), about schools being closed (so that the kids can be looked after by grandparents who are in the at risk group) whilst parents still have to work. Then there are the measures taken by some governments to suspend mortgage payments (no mention of rents) and to make sure people who can’t work get at least some money. Then there are stories that come direct from a mid-90s contagion thriller about the US government trying to buy access to potential vaccines for exclusive use in the USA.

It seems to me that our current economic system has a really hard time balancing the value of people’s lives against the value of profit.

Just remember, keep calm, go to work, and don’t touch your face.

Covid Communism

So, how could we do things differently? Try to imagine, no, not John Lennon, a world where the production of profit wasn’t the driving force behind society. A world where, when the outbreak began to spread, the notion that not working would mean not being able to pay the rent didn’t exist. A world where if we need to close bars and clubs then there would be no economic knock on effect on the workers who keep those places running.

In such a world no one would have accidentally passed the virus on or fallen sick themselves because of the worry about paying their bills. We could easily change manufacturing to supply masks, medicines, and ventilators because the idea of ‘expense’ wouldn’t be an issue. We would just be concerned with how fast we could do it.

In such a world health care workers would have all the resources they needed (because cost would no longer be an issue) and would be free to organise the response without the interference of economists and politicians.

That world would be ‘communism’. Not ‘Communism’ with a capital ‘C’ and loads of twonks with angry t-shirts telling you you’re wrong, but a communism where we, the workers, control our lives and what we produce. Where your labour goes where you want it and the fluctuations of the stock market are irrelevant. Would you rather your labour helped someone gain a couple of percent on their stocks or gave someone a greater percentage chance of surviving? You’re not enough of a moron to opt for the former choice.

For more info, see here: http://libcom.org/notes/about

Community-19

ok, I’m stretching the ‘Corona’ headers here.

What can you do? It’s fucking scary all this shit. Invisible killers lurking everywhere! AAAAARGH! But the chances are that, if you’re reading this, you’re probably not in any of the at risk groups. You’re probably young, or youngish at least, and generally reasonably healthy. So, chill the fuck out and stop buying all the bloody bog roll!

Then, once you’ve relaxed a bit and realised that the cockroaches who succeed the human species will still be wiping their arses with all the Charmin Ultra you’ve just bought, try and figure out how you can help the people in your community who actually need it. Your help that is, but also probably a few of the loo rolls you’re hoarding you knob.

There will, in all likelihood, be people who can’t go out and get their shopping in or pick up their medicine because of the risk to their health. You should help those people.

Get together with friends and neighbours and make a bunch of leaflets with a contact number for those who need things picked up whilst they are housebound. Put them through all the letterboxes in your neighbourhood and then help those who ask.

Make sure that the flyer says that those wishing to help should get in touch. People will.

Of course you need to be careful, washing your hands a lot whilst singing Killing in the Name Of, but you just have to make sure you don’t pass it on. But your efforts will make it less likely that people will risk themselves getting infected and so putting greater stress on health care workers. It will help your community and that, at the end of the day, helps you.

I’ve been working on an excavation in an old graveyard recently (yes, my life is occasionally a horror story) and, surprisingly, we’ve found a fuck ton of dead bodies. Weird eh? We’re right in the centre of a small town (I can’t say exactly where as the local authorities get weird about that sort of thing) and so the excavation has become a focus of fascination for some of the locals. Nearly every day we get people walking on to the site to have a butcher’s at the long dead and absolutely every day we have bucket loads of kids coming past trying to gawk through the fences at the skeletons.

Harmless enough we thought and then imagine our surprise when we arrived at work yesterday morning to find this next to one of the (covered up I hasten to add!) skeletons.

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Our only explanation is that some of the local wains decided to take it upon themselves to make sure that the disturbed dead didn’t rise again to cause havoc in the village. For which I really have to commend them for their bravery! However it seems that, having armed themselves with the traditional tools of the vampire hunter, they snuck under cover of darkness into the graveyard and, upon drawing back the covering from the ancient dead they… squealed and ran away. XD

Bless their cottons. Hahahaha. This has to be the funnest example of an archaeological excavation being disturbed. Normally it’s just thieving bastards with metal detectors.

I’ve been living in Germany for a little over three years now and, language aside, I think I’ve adapted pretty well to the place. It’s a lot more chilled out than the UK that’s for sure. There are however some things that I think I’ll never stop finding amusing and/or frustrating. The sliproads from the Autobahn being labelled “Ausfahrt” for example. Yes I am a child.

Another really weird thing, and something that I probably only notice because I’m British and we are rather unreasonable about certain things at times. Queues in the supermarket. OK, a strange thing to pay much attention to but this really is a pestilence at the heart of German society. I’ve noticed a certain behaviour amongst Germans of all walks of life, all classes, genders, races, that is so abhorrent I am barely able to control my rage. Seriously, I even occasionally tut and roll my eyes.

This despicable practice only occurs when a certain kind of person reaches the front of the queue and, unbelievable as this will be to any civilised person, they will stand there calmly watching the cashier scan their shopping and then, once it has all been scanned and has formed a huge pile in front of them, they will pay and only then, ONLY THEN, will they begin to pack their groceries into bags! THE MONSTERS! Meaning that the cashier is scanning your groceries and adding them to the pile that this inhuman fiend has left of their own shopping.

Absolutely disgusting behaviour. Possibly the worst thing any German has ever done.

Another really weird thing that I’ve come across is a really strange phenomena that could only occur in Germany thanks to, you know, the Nazis. I think that there is probably a similar phenomenon at work in the US due to white guilt over slavery, segregation, and well, America in general.

The phenomena I’m speaking of here is the “Anti-Deutsch”, a current within the left that takes an, understandable given history, obsession with Anti-Semitism so far that it begins to become Anti-Semitic in itself. It’s fucking weird and really difficult for me to get my head around. Especially as my German is in no way good enough to read the dense political screeds these people write.

The theory, so far as I can understand, seems to be that there’s something inherent to the German people that is Anti-Semitic and predisposed to fascism (completely ignoring the history of fascism and authoritarian regimes all over the world) which means constant vigilance against all signs of Anti-Semitism and fighting against fascism every time it rears its ugly bonehead.

Fighting against fascism and Anti-Semitism is, obviously, something that all right thinking people should engage in but in the case of the Anti-Deutsch this has evolved into something pathological, possibly even psychopathic. Not only do they see Anti-Semitism absolutely everywhere and in everything but they end up espousing arguments that would be formerly heard by some died in the wool Black Shirt.

A couple of classy examples that I’ve heard since being here:

It’s wrong to take action against or criticise shitty landlords as landlord is one of the few ‘jobs’ that Jewish people were allowed to engage in.

Translation: Shitty capitalist practices are beyond criticism because a small minority of Jewish people also engaged in this shitty practice. If this isn’t reinforcing Anti-Semitic notions of the capitalist Jewry then I don’t know what is?


Criticising the state Israel is criticising all Jews.

Translation: Jews are an homogenous group forever associated with the actions of a bourgeois state and its ruling class. Sounds very much like the arguments of Anti-Semites who use the actions of the Israeli state as an excuse to attack Jewish people as a whole.


Jewish people that are critical of the Israeli state have been brainwashed into feeling guilt for being Jewish.

I mean, this is just such obvious bullshit but it would be one thing for one Jewish person to criticise another with this but when it’s a bunch of intellectual German lefties it’s just patronising and offensive beyond belief. Poor little Jews, don’t understand themselves. We’ve read a lot about you so we know better. Urgh



[image error]Will you just look at these head-cases?*

The reason that these fruit-loops have been on my mind recently is because of recent events in Halle, Hanau, and Berlin.

Following the shooting of a number of people in Shisha bars in Hanau there was an anti-fascist demonstration called in Bremen the next day. A few thousand people attended and amongst them were a couple of left wing kiddies flying Israel flags. Because… reasons. It seems that someone had words with them about flying national flags on a demonstration against fascism being in pretty poor taste, So they fucked off and have now written an, long winded and ridiculous, article about how Bremen is now the capital city of left-wing Anti-Semitism because they were told to take their nationalist symbolism away. These people are demented.

[Addendum] The website “Ach Gut” is apparently owned by some AfD twonk. Which says a lot about the politics of these supposed Anti-Fascists…

[Addendum zwei] The AfD are the German equivalent of UKIP but are a lot more up front about being racist cunts.

No, no it fucking doesn’t

They also claimed that, following the shooting at a Synagogue in Halle last year, people weren’t as outraged as they were about the shooting of Arabs. (Yes, there’s a horribly racist anti-Arabic current within the Anti-Deutsch) Despite there being as many, and as large, anti-fascist demonstrations in the days following the shooting in Halle. They completely ignore actual facts in order to justify their pathology.

Which brings us to Berlin.

One of my favourite punk bands of all time are the amazing Oi Polloi from Edinburgh. I’ve seen them god knows how many times and their lyrics were always really good at explaining political issues in a way that anyone can understand.

They’re an anarchist band and have been politically active over their whole career and have always been very vocally anti-fascist.

A number of years ago they played a show in Germany, I forget where right now, but back stage there was a poster calling for solidarity with the state of Israel (yup, lefties calling for solidarity with a bourgeois state, only in Germany) upon which someone had written: “Help Israel, kill an Arab”. Rightfully Deek, the singer of the band, took the poster on stage and said that calling for racist murders of Arabic people was utter shite. He then set fire to the poster. Unfortunately this poster had a picture of the Israeli flag on it so, in the Anti-Deutsch way of seeing things, this became “Oi Polloi burned and Israeli flag on stage” which then because “Oi Polloi are Anti-Semitic”. Something that’s clearly nonsense but don’t let rationality confuse your ideology boys and girls.

This has led to Anti-Deutsch wing nuts trying, and often succeeding, to get the band’s shows in Germany cancelled. This happened again just last week when the band were due to be playing in The Clash in Berlin. Anti-Deutsch types sent a, I kid ye not, 25 page document demanding Oi Polloi answer for their behaviour. This was 25 pages of either outright falsehoods or twisting things done and said so far out of context that they may as well be falsehoods.

I’m not going to go into the contents of the letter but if you read German it shouldn’t be too hard to find online.

This was enough to get the show cancelled because who wants a bunch of bellends calling your venue Anti-Semitic?

But, to add to the insanity of these people, they included in this document information about where the supposed Anti-Semitic monster who is the former bass player of the band now lives in Berlin.

That’s right, a bunch of Germans have basically doxxed an anarchist anti-fascist and his immigrant family in order to chase them out of their homes. Oh, I should also mention that the guy is Jewish too. But then, I’m sure a bunch of Germans hounding an immigrant Jewish family is something that has never ended badly…

So, yeah, Germans can be fucking mental at times.

Still, it’s not like the British left isn’t also chock-full of absolute cock wombles too. It’s just a shame that the spunk bubbles always seem to be the loudest. At least the beer here is good and cheap and my German is still, for the most part, too shit to read Anti-Deutsch “lefty” bollocks when I’m bored.

Laters.

They’re a bunch of fucking bellends aren’t they?

Just look at them.

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Slack jawed fuckwits.

I know the EU is a load of shite but you think that the actual reasons it’s a sack of shit are why any of these gawking morons are celebrating? God I’m glad I’m not on that stinking fucking island right now. (Sorry to all the non twatfaced Inselaffen right now. Sucks to be there eh?)

Still, even as the island descends into an even greater state of disrepair they can console themselves with some great British culture…

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Many moons ago I lived on a traveller site in South Yorkshire and made some fantastic friends there. Sadly some of those friends are no longer with us. One of those was the absolutely lovely Matty Dread. Matty introduced me to some fantastic music and had some fantastic stories. This is one of my favourite stories and I hope that I’m remembering it correctly.

Stanton Moor is in the Peak District of the English midlands and sits above the towns of Matlock and Bakewell. The moor is littered with gorse and megaliths including the famous Nine Ladies stone circle. The moor was also home to a long running environmental protest which, after ten years, succeeded in stopping the reopening of a sandstone quarry which threatened the stone circle.

Since the 1970s, and before, the megalithic monuments that push their way through the British soil have had an important relationship to the various counter cultures of the land. This is, obviously, best seen with the solstice festivities at Stonehenge and the violent reaction of the state to the threat they perceived in them.

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As well as the big annual gathering, and later protests, around Stonehenge many people would head to some of the smaller ancient sites to celebrate the various solstices. Whilst the larger events in Wiltshire would pop up on the news the smaller celebrations at places like Callanish on Lewis or the Nine Ladies on Stanton Moore would generally pass by peacefully.

It was 2002/3 when I was living with Matty and he had been living on the road since the late 80s/early90s. This story took place in the early 90s on Stanton Moore, also known as the Moor of the Dead.

It was summer solstice and a small group of travellers had parked up on the moor around the stone circle. Dawn was approaching and people were sitting around fires, drinking beer and generally partying in the dawn.

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As the sun of the longest day rose above the green of the moor people noticed on the horizon a red flag heading their way. As the flag came into view they saw that in its centre was a white circle containing that most nefarious of symbols. The Hakenkreuz. And, marching behind this out of place object on the English moors, was a small group of a dozen or so Nazis in full brownshirt regalia.

Seemingly oblivious to what lay before them the crooked cosplayers marched on towards the stones and the travellers.

At this point many people are looking confusedly at their beers wondering if Carlsberg had slipped something special into their Special Brew especially for the celebrations. As they realised that no, Carlsberg hadn’t been unusually generous for the festive season many people began to pick up logs, wood splitting axes, and other improvised weaponry and prepared for a frank exchange of views.

When the anachronistic battalion were no more than a few dozen meters away from a sound thrashing they stopped and, with that well known efficiency, turned as a unit and, somewhat hurriedly marched back off across the moor on their way to the dustbin of history. Leaving the solstice celebrants with a wonderfully weird story to tell.

This story was brought to mind during an exchange on Twitter with some numpty who seems to think that folklore and the the concept of ‘folk’ is somehow an domain exclusively of the right wing. A position that really befuddles me as the history of ‘folk’ of every land is pretty much the same. The wealthy and powerful stole the land, forced us to work for them, and so the stories we tell are often peppered with tales of subversion and resistance. From ballads of Robin Hood to the dreams of Cockaigne resistance to power threads its way through our folklore.

Our folklore is the tales of Wat Tyler, Ned Ludd, the Daughters of Rebecca. Of sabotage, evasion, and worlds turned upside down.

So the far right may lay claim to history, tradition, and ‘folk’ they are perverting it to the ends of the ruling class. Tugging forelocks and draping their thin veneer of red, white, and blue over something so much deeper, and so much older, than they can imagine.

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