Samstag, 04 März 2006
Texte & Aufrufe
News from the Red Planet
Countdown to the G8 Summit in Mecklenberg-Vorpommern
The new always enters into the world through struggle. For several years now, G8 summits have become points around which protest and resistance have crystallised. On demonstrations, in discussions in the camps, and at many of the counter-summits, hundreds of thousands of activists have expressed their collective “No!” in face of the economic and military warfare waged by global capital.
The size, multiplicity, internationality and radicalism of the movements is already manifest proof of a new alternative cycle of globalisation from below. Through street protests, blockades and direct action, the “Red Zones” of imperial power have been attacked and the G8 meetings pushed from major cities to the periphery. The images have changed. The populist adulation by the masses is now a thing of the last millennium. Since the events in Genoa, the G8 have met in inaccessible luxury hotels far away from the metropoles, behind barbed wire, protected by anti-aircraft missiles and massive police forces. And since the last summit at Gleneagles in Scotland, we can now finally be sure that the polite invitation to “sit down together and talk about it” – in this case it being the gigantic propaganda stunt of voluntary debt-forgiveness – is really just a bad joke.
Is there anything that one could really talk to Tony Blair and George W. Bush about, other than their global wars – and the consequences thereof? Is there anything that one could really talk to the EU chiefs about, other than their racist border regimes – and their consequences? The Mediterranean is today Europe’s largest mass grave. Over the last few years, 15,000 people have drowned in their attempt to reach the shores of Schengen. No, the World Bank representatives will talk to the finance ministers, the G8 leaders will confer with their security ministers, they all may discuss with the IMF President and the board members of multinational corporations. They all agree on the fundamental problem. Global command has to be deepened, the power structure strengthened. No, there can be no real input from “outside” the sphere of power. Against this the movement of movements can only find its own concepts, publics and practices within which an emancipatory counter-power and rationality can be articulated in the face of capitalist madness.
Bringing Initiatives Together, Mobilising Together
In June this year, the G8 summit will take place in what used to be the palace of the Russian Tzars in St. Petersburg, and in the early summer of 2007 their travelling circus will come to Germany when the “leaders of the world” will come to the Kempinski Grand Hotel in Heiligendamm on the coast of the Baltic Sea in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
The task ahead of us, therefore, is to begin creating the preconditions for collectively organising powerful days of resistance in Heiligendamm. Demonstrations, events, blockades, actions, discussions, music and cultural festivals ought to make clear that we will never acquiesce to the capitalist world system – anywhere.
In order for this to be possible, everybody needs to make sure that everybody is visible and can make their voice heard: from those who protested against welfare reforms, to the environmental and peace movements, trade unionists and human rights activists, from self-organised migrants to the globalisation-critical movement, and the traditional, alternative and militant currents of the left. If it can be done to make these groups and milieus – which do not together form a tight “unity”, but which also do not completely isolate themselves in separate “camps” – communicate with each other, then the days of Heiligendamm can become a forum for the extra-parliamentary, emancipatory movement in which social alternatives can be tested.
For a Left Intervention
One of the new aspects of the movement of movements is that it exists solely in and through its constituent parts. Groups and individuals constitute this movement; but not all in the same way, not through common forms of actions, protest or organisation, let alone through a common program. Of course, the essence of this movement lies not in a kind of competition – where every “Party” does its own thing and seeks to transform all the others into their foot-soldiers, or into mere spectators – but neither does it lie merely in indifferently existing side-by-side. Its essence, rather, lies in setting in motion a real social alternative: another world. An anti-capitalist, anti-imperial(ist), anti-racist, anti-patriarchal alternative. It is neither a matter of patiently negotiated common position papers, nor of a politically correct fundamental statement of the ultimate, non-vulgarised critique of capitalism. It is a matter of counter-power in movement: in the “preparation”, in the mobilisation, in the moment of direct delegitimation of the imperial bloc during the G8 meeting, and of course – and especially – in the time which follows, in the maximum number of places, day-by-day.
Whether or not the intervention will be “left”, or even “radical-left”, will depend on whether or not it will have seized the opportunity to put this counter-power into motion.
The new always enters into the world through struggle. For several years now, G8 summits have become points around which protest and resistance have crystallised. On demonstrations, in discussions in the camps, and at many of the counter-summits, hundreds of thousands of activists have expressed their collective “No!” in face of the economic and military warfare waged by global capital.
The size, multiplicity, internationality and radicalism of the movements is already manifest proof of a new alternative cycle of globalisation from below. Through street protests, blockades and direct action, the “Red Zones” of imperial power have been attacked and the G8 meetings pushed from major cities to the periphery. The images have changed. The populist adulation by the masses is now a thing of the last millennium. Since the events in Genoa, the G8 have met in inaccessible luxury hotels far away from the metropoles, behind barbed wire, protected by anti-aircraft missiles and massive police forces. And since the last summit at Gleneagles in Scotland, we can now finally be sure that the polite invitation to “sit down together and talk about it” – in this case it being the gigantic propaganda stunt of voluntary debt-forgiveness – is really just a bad joke.
Is there anything that one could really talk to Tony Blair and George W. Bush about, other than their global wars – and the consequences thereof? Is there anything that one could really talk to the EU chiefs about, other than their racist border regimes – and their consequences? The Mediterranean is today Europe’s largest mass grave. Over the last few years, 15,000 people have drowned in their attempt to reach the shores of Schengen. No, the World Bank representatives will talk to the finance ministers, the G8 leaders will confer with their security ministers, they all may discuss with the IMF President and the board members of multinational corporations. They all agree on the fundamental problem. Global command has to be deepened, the power structure strengthened. No, there can be no real input from “outside” the sphere of power. Against this the movement of movements can only find its own concepts, publics and practices within which an emancipatory counter-power and rationality can be articulated in the face of capitalist madness.
Bringing Initiatives Together, Mobilising Together
In June this year, the G8 summit will take place in what used to be the palace of the Russian Tzars in St. Petersburg, and in the early summer of 2007 their travelling circus will come to Germany when the “leaders of the world” will come to the Kempinski Grand Hotel in Heiligendamm on the coast of the Baltic Sea in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
The task ahead of us, therefore, is to begin creating the preconditions for collectively organising powerful days of resistance in Heiligendamm. Demonstrations, events, blockades, actions, discussions, music and cultural festivals ought to make clear that we will never acquiesce to the capitalist world system – anywhere.
In order for this to be possible, everybody needs to make sure that everybody is visible and can make their voice heard: from those who protested against welfare reforms, to the environmental and peace movements, trade unionists and human rights activists, from self-organised migrants to the globalisation-critical movement, and the traditional, alternative and militant currents of the left. If it can be done to make these groups and milieus – which do not together form a tight “unity”, but which also do not completely isolate themselves in separate “camps” – communicate with each other, then the days of Heiligendamm can become a forum for the extra-parliamentary, emancipatory movement in which social alternatives can be tested.
For a Left Intervention
One of the new aspects of the movement of movements is that it exists solely in and through its constituent parts. Groups and individuals constitute this movement; but not all in the same way, not through common forms of actions, protest or organisation, let alone through a common program. Of course, the essence of this movement lies not in a kind of competition – where every “Party” does its own thing and seeks to transform all the others into their foot-soldiers, or into mere spectators – but neither does it lie merely in indifferently existing side-by-side. Its essence, rather, lies in setting in motion a real social alternative: another world. An anti-capitalist, anti-imperial(ist), anti-racist, anti-patriarchal alternative. It is neither a matter of patiently negotiated common position papers, nor of a politically correct fundamental statement of the ultimate, non-vulgarised critique of capitalism. It is a matter of counter-power in movement: in the “preparation”, in the mobilisation, in the moment of direct delegitimation of the imperial bloc during the G8 meeting, and of course – and especially – in the time which follows, in the maximum number of places, day-by-day.
Whether or not the intervention will be “left”, or even “radical-left”, will depend on whether or not it will have seized the opportunity to put this counter-power into motion.
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