THE
BLACK BLOC IN BERLIN, '77-'82 – A THUMBNAIL CHRONICLE:
(OR,
HOW A GOOD THING BECAME A FRANKENSTEIN)
In parts of the City, taking as example a neighborhood in the
working class district of Kreuzberg, during the year 1977, speculators
were coming in and using every chicanery to force longstanding residents
– retirees, elderly, families of modest means who needed what bit of
stability they had – out of their flats. By raising the rent, by
leaving the places in serious disrepair, by turning off the heating in
winter, letting roofs get or stay damaged so that rain came in – just to
mention a few pressure points. The houses were intended to be ripped
down by developers.
In those days there was a Left which meant
entirely something else than what we have today – a Left I would have
identified with, a Left with which my own dear partner Ramona,
my source behind this chronicle, had deeply and actively identified
with and participated in, where it specifically concerns the core issue
of my writing. A “conservative thinking Left“ (as opposed to a
radically authoritarian, ideological one) as my dear friend and Facebook
correspondent Christian would call it and wishes to remind me of – and, with all respect to him, needn't.
(Naunynstr., Berlin-Kreuzberg, ca. 1970)
First, as a citizens' initiative, to put it plainly – NOT Antifa
but, in the pure sense of the word, autonomous; NOT anarchists or
communists or revolutionary-wannabes or immature adventurers; NOT
sympathizers with the Regime just on the other side of the Wall it had
built 16 years prior; and NOT even a radical Left (which would have
meant they were RAF-sympathizers as well) – none of these. The latter,
the radical Left, would have nothing to do with the likes of the House
Occupiers, the idea of taking a hammer in the hand and drivng a nail was
foreign and odious to them – all they were good for was spouting
political bullshit from their respective college classrooms and
grass-sessions. That is not to say that some of the likes of those did
not try to “get in on the action“ but these were effectively vetted out
or smoked out – as Dresden's or Nürnberg's Pegida today have effectively
done conerning infiltration by the (real) Right.
These were
mature men and mature women in their 20s or 30s for the most part, who
knew what citizen meant, what initiative meant, what conscious civil
responsibility meant, what risk-taking entailed – and what being German
and Berliner meant in these years: it meant having confronted one's
parents' generation oneself over their part if any, or their issues at
all, with the Hitler Regime – and having either distanced oneself from,
or even broken off with them, or come to terms with them, AND NOT taking
out a projected self-righteous rage and terror against the general
population or even the then-current administration of Federal Republic
of a Germany under (lest we forget) total Allied Occupation. And these
men and women of quite another Occupation I wish to address, were
non-violent by conviction, in their endeavor – determined and grounded
through thick and thin, not militant but conscientious and violence
played no role, rather an act of civil disobedience by forcing the
Senate's hand. These were not pussies – they learned to defend
themselves when forced into the inevitable position.
Never – EVER
– would you have found them raising so much as a hand or a slogan
against fellow citizens, fellow Berliners, fellow Germans. Construction
and constuctive argument was their entire purpose and example, not
destruction and ideology. They did not hate Germany, or themselves for
being German. Because they were self-responsible and socially
responsible, they were democratic among themselves and in their vision.
The concept of Social-Democrat, for that matter, still meant something
then. They'd have nothing to do with extremism, much less imagine
sympathizing with the terrorist gangsters in the RAF of that day.
These were the House Occupiers, and the initiative gathered steam.
Houses which had been already emptied – or even just flats in houses
which had already been emptied – for tearing down and renewal by
speculators who would then “gentrify“ them and raise the rents, having
cast the original renters out into the streets, these blocks became
taken over before anything further could be started, taken over and
occupied by these courageous and very, very human young people. The
underhandedness and inconsiderate dealing by speculators goes on today
as well, but is not confronted and fought by anyone, as the integrity of
what was seen in '77 no longer exists, in fact it continues as ever
under all the Red/Green extreme Left now in power since years (and now
vastly dominating the Senate) – but I'll come to that later.
The
House Occupiers began with stabilizing good relations with the renters
still living there and with the neighborhood, as they went about the
business of single-handedy doing what the landlords or the City had
obstinately neglected or refused to do: they repaired and repaired and
repaired, renewed entire bathrooms and tile-work, rooves and floors,
pipes and electrical lines, so that the developers would have no basis
for tearing down; they renovated on what meager means they had
themselves or could collect as the initiative-turned-movement gathered
steam and won support and respect – from other citizens, not from the
Senate.
The arch-conservative Senate of that time, the profiteers
and the market-hungry developers, AND the mainstream media – chiefly
the boulevard tabloid rags sucked up by the population then as ever
(BILD, BZ, Kurier) publicly demonized these House Occupiers as
“terrorists“ and as “radical anti-social“ (or even “asocial“) elements,
to ensure a negative public regard toward them when the police were sent
in.
Now, to the police at that time. THOSE of that time fit the
description of heavy police presence and brute force, no discussion –
just riot-helmets where no riot was, shields where nothing had been
thrown at them, and batons for whacking where someone just didn't drop
to knees and surrender to the State pressure. The House Occupiers had
developed a good system. Those who could had moved into said flats for
the required time of their repair and renovation – either to later buy
or rent themselves or to give back to the previous renters, being just
one of the glaring and decisive differences between those then and the
so-called “occupiers“ now (the difference here being like that between
farmers and havesters as opposed to locusts – just to make that clear;
those today want the entire buldings for themselves to continue their
rotter-culture).
They used walkie-talkies or CB (including making
only coded phone calls and passing off messages inside cigarette
packages inside Underground stations, “Cold War-style“) which kept them
below the radar of police listening devices and enabled them to maneuver
out of the police raids by way of watchers alerting, grapevine
communications, giving themselves necessarily over to a cat-and-mouse
routine which the Senate and the police directorate wanted, not they.
They just wanted to get the job done and were hindered in this with
really draconian measures.
These weren't the police of today.
The brutality then had so escalated, the Black Bloc having to match it
1:1, that the Berlin Interior Minister saw himself compelled to act to
finally de-escalate the entire matter. By the end of the years long
confrontation, and the final reception to talks with the Senate which
itself had hertofore rejected all overtures by the Occupiers to come to
the table, the Interior Minister publicly apologized to the House
Occupiers for the massive brutality on the part of the police forces.
This also resulted in a significant overhaul of the police training and
methods in the direction of de-escalation rather than brute force.
(Through this was also achieved a change in the public attitude, which
led to actual companies and firms sending their engineers and material
to assist in the House Occupiers' project, neighbors brought refreshment
and light and warmth. Doctors and nursing personnel brought their
support, against the directives of their own respective facilities.
Certain of the alternative press outlets came to the fore and generated
good press, wherewih West-Germans were able to learn more of what was
happening and came to offer their shoulders to the wheel.)
The
„Anti“fa and Black Bloc which later developed independently of all
ethical standards of the original, took complete advantage of the police
de-escalation, and now we have the result – which first required that
The Greens achieve more seats and more power, and we may add to that
(already starting with the year of Reunification) the East-German
SED-remnant, namely The Left, so that we have the Socialist Wonder that
you see today in Merkel's Germany. The Fed and the City both have not
merely weened and weeded out the component of any police brutality long
since, they have gone in the other extreme to largely castrate them and
bind their hands to the extent that they are in many respects...a
disrespected joke. And the „Anti“fa today exploits that to the hilt.
In confrontations which were unavoidable, whether evading the chasing
troops down alleys or being caught in the stairwells, the House
Occupiers took their knocks and blows, their bleeding lacerations and
fractures to their own supporting troops whose spaces were available for
doctoring as well as they could, bandaging material etc. would be
organized through the grapevine. HOSPITALS AND CLINICS HAD BEEN ON
ALERT not to give them care, so they were literally left to fend for
themselves, to lick their own wounds.
Out of this developed the
concept in that year, 1977, of a Black Bloc. The Occupation scene was
combed for trustworthy volunteers who were fit, were clear about the
matter being about a solid and serious defense against a veritable army
of police – and not a meshugene attack on them – much less on anyone
else or the least destruction of property, any property. These had to
take into account blows to the head, to every limb, bleedings and
fractures to one's own person – and to put up a fearless and tactical
front in defense of person and of mission, this being to force the
City's hand on the matter of these apartment buildings and their
outcome. No further “doctrine“ or “utopia“ was behind any motivation
here – no revolution or communist takeover, they were not
anarchist-wannabes, they would have been shocked speechless at the idea
of NoBorders-NoNation àla Merkel, much less “Never Again Germany!“ They
were liberal Germans and felt German, they were West-Berliners and felt
so. They never covered or concealed their faces once. They had balls.
This Black Bloc indeed put up a good defense against the marching
police troops, who saw in this beginning Bloc of some 30 or so sturdy
men-with-a-clue, a small but – when push came to shove – formidable
opponent. It turned out to be a game-changer, even in the face of
intensified media libel and slander whenever a City or Senate figure
took to the mike, the propaganda against the Occupiers and this new
Black Bloc was severe and unrelenting – as was the ever present threat
of denunciation, arrest, police beatings and sometimes sexual
harrassment, or of inflitration by State or by other scenes which had no
business there.
The main game-changer however, was that the
House Occupiers took care of the business at hand, took care of
themselves, they produced what they had set out to do. And they
outlasted the State over a long decade of this decisive struggle. It is
not to say they were ever hailed as the heroes they indeed were, as
“heroism“ or recognition is always a booby prize. The intention broke
through the resistant web, the public became aware of what they had
actually been about, the Senate gave in, the police were withdrawn. The
plan worked.
There are so many details and twists and turns to
this as with any real-world story, but my purpose in sharing this –
closely according to my eye-witness osurce sitting next to me here, who
had lived most of it and certainly saw it to the end – is to give a
contrast to what passes (and pisses) for „Anti“fa-Black Bloc today.
Then came the parallel development you have now, in the progression of
the '80s and its escalation into the present. These were the locusts
whom The Greens vastly supported, as part of their tactic to undermine
every semblance of a democratic infrastructure. And by the time I
arrived in 1988, to report on these matters over the next three years in
my capacity as a military analyst, there remained only these locusts
which we since have and still do. The annual May 1st rioters and
whatever kids they later had, took up houses to “occupy“ and maintain as
the run-down fortresses of bandits and hyperactive “activists“ we see
now, largely to avoid paying rent on anything at all. (They are also
schooled in terror by actual former RAF-retirees and by actual former
Stasi-retirees). The Red/Green Berlin Senate we have today, has granted
them the Free Ticket they demanded via – believe this or not –
foundations which they've justified as in accordance with their
communist agenda. Should anyone happen to rent on a property which the
„Anti“fa had at some point so designated as “their own“ - this
unsuspecting soul will be terrorized and chased out of the deal. Much
like the way hijra and Islamization also work, come to think of it.
They also “occupy“ – the most infamous example in Berlin being the
Rigaerstrasse. They produce nothing, they renovate nothing, they repair
nothing, they let everything stay in a shambles as they decorate with
more graffitti and Che posters. These are the locusts, not the farmers,
not the builders of anything. They are the destroyers, the arsonists,
the vandals and plunderers, the anarchist-wannabes or neo-communists,
themselves severely authoritarian anti-authoritarians, the severely
intolerant “Toleristen“, democracy haters and shrill zombie-like
screamers of slogans void of substance. They are street pugilists,
coercers of hoteliers and café-owners and AfD politicians or supporters,
via attacks on person or property and death threats, and attempted
murderers. They are narcissistically self-loathing, despising their
national or ethnic identity rather than living it in a model way as they
could have chosen, over-pampered by their '68er-generation parents (to a
large extent), frankly disturbed – and: THEY ARE ENTIRELY SUBSIDIZED
by the Senate, by the State, permissively dismissed as
rabble-a-bit-out-o-hand which one “still has to live with“ year in and
year out. In the very houses they have been granted and subsidized,
they plan their tactics for the next day – against police, against the
population, against peaceful demonstrations or any person or party which
does not conform bow to their “concept“ of a “free and open society“.
Here they plan their denunciations, their house-visits to targeted
persons like roving death squads.
The police don't have a chance. This dark ideology-morphed “Black
Bloc“ is the antithesis of what had come into being in '77 and then
disappeared on its own when the Occupation had made its point and
settled the score, the war being over – in fact, won. The Senate of
that time had planned the actual, illegal and profitable, ripping down
of entire streets of housing blocks – in the working-class districts of
Kreuzberg, Neukölln and Wedding. Alone by occupying the houses which
they did strategically here and there, the House Occupation of which I
write accomplished the unbelievable: these streets and these houses
stand today, were buyable, rentable – and the public got the full
measure of what the House Occupiers had given the city – it had given
them back their neighborhoods. Let me underscore, that what made the
plans illegal, was that the houses were still according to standard and
could not legally be torn down – this, aside from the fact that senators
in office stood to profit personally from the plan, financially
speaking.
Take Rigaerstrasse: THESE are the scum you may see
today terrorizing anyone who is not Left or “not Left enough“,
shouting-and-shutting down any opinion or stance in opposition to their
primitive ideology of domination-at-all-cost, any debate culture at all,
any viewpoint contrary to theirs – whether in print, in a TV or radio
studio or a lecture room, on college campuses, or at an info stand, or
in legally registered peaceful (i.e., nonviolent) demonstrations on the
open street. With the maturity of a two or three year old child never
shown limits, they exercise their demands for attention through a
flatulently grotesque travesty of protest, practicing terror with the
most extraordinary impunity. Once taken down by the cops, if that, they
are released within an hour or even a few minutes.
These are the
alleged “opposition“ to the very Merkel State and the very EU-criminals
for whom they frankly and obviously work, and are there as
stormtroopers to function as chaos-makers and mayhem-slime. They do
this FOR Islamization, FOR gender-mainstreaming, FOR pedophilia, FOR
“international“ communization, FOR a borderless and defenseless EUrope
and Germany, FOR sheer tearing down of all culture, all order, all State
infrastructure – while existing off the latter entirely. THAT is
Socialism, the real face of it – and always was.
You have
politicians of The Left and of The Greens, the SPD itself, not merely
abetting and going to bat for them – but actually supporting and
sponsoring them openly – even in street riots, financially seeing to
their subsidies, covering their asses every time some heat does finally
come their way. The police forces have been cut down and will be cut
down further, their directives from above work against their own
personnel, every man and woman of it, as they are sent out day after
day, week after week, month after month, off to Rigaerstrasse when it
burns – or some other “Rigaerstrasse“, in Berlin or some other major
city.
To demonstrate at all contra to their agenda or to
Merkel's, as Pegida or as Identitarian – even as a Christian-oriented,
open-to-all, demonstration Walk like Right-to-Life – is to require the
heaviest possible police protective escort from starting point through
the entire route, on account of none other than „Anti“fa and in some
cases with Black Bloc. THAT is what it has come to, that is the
never-imagined Frankenstein which no one had imagined, that is what
began in the later '80s with a whole new and other generation of
„Anti“fa. May 1st remains unchanged, for them the high point of the
year, in destruction.
THAT pretty much covers my point,
contrasting the real origins of a Black Bloc as such, against what you
see operating today – the contrast is stark in every single respect.
Where the original in 1977 frankly commands my respect (in retrospect),
the mob of hyenas you see today, command my deepest contempt – and
recieves it in full.
