Dresden, February 13th – this is Germans, pro-Germans and Anti-Germans all in one spot. While the ordinary citizens try to hide their historical revisionism under a disgusting ceremony of collective mourning for the slightly exaggerated number of victims of 1945’s bombing, the Nazis march for revenge of an even more exaggerated number of victims and propagate today’s struggle against ‘Anglo-American bombing terror’, a slogan they directly took from East German history books who had directly if not openly copied the original Nazi language.
With all this madness marching, guarded by 2,000 cops, the Antifa gathers to kick everyone’s ass at the same time. When in the morning politicians of Saxony’s government as well as of the Left Party and the Nazi party drop their chaplets at a Thing style forest cemetery which features Dresden among the names of Nazi concentration camps – 200 antifascists have a small but loud liberation party waving flags of the Allied forces of WWII and singing “Ihr habt den Krieg verloren!”
When in the evening 5,000 “good Dresden people” are in the streets because they don’t want the Nazis to “misappropriate and abuse the righteous mourning” while these Nazis meet in large numbers at the starting point of their march saying the same about ’45 and just looking different – 2,000 antifascists form a demonstration (“Deconstruct!”) designed to smash the police line around the Nazis and block the Nazi march.
Which actually happens, to the sound of “Ten German Bombers” from the speakers and “Deutsche Täter sind keine Opfer” from the shouting Antifa. The police line collapses in a violent clash, small groups of antifascists diffuse through the city and concentrate right on the Nazi marching route forming a sitting blockade.
Unlike other German cities like Berlin, Dresden has not yet managed to incorporate antifascism into official revisionist politics which is definitely one of the Antifa’s biggest successes of the last years. Insisting on Germans and not only the Nazi elite as the mass murdering collective and therefore not as innocent victims of Allied bomber squads, the Antifa cannot be integrated into the “culture of remembrance” celebrated by all political parties and the majority of politically active inhabitants of Dresden.
Thus, the antifascist activities attract more people each year while even radicalizing their message. Traditionalists and beer-punks do not dominate the appearance anymore, Anti-German slogans, music and appearance have taken over.
(For those who understand German: the mobilization video for this year’s protest, 80 MB, 15 min)
(first posted at the Trots’)