On November 5, 2020, Lina was kidnapped by the police and taken into custody on charges of „having formed and being part of a criminal organization“ („Bildung und Mitgliedschaft einer kriminellen Vereinigung“). Her criminalization falls under the legal appeal of §129 of criminal code. A legal section which is part of the anti-insurgent structures of the German state, and which is made known to the public as „Anti-Terrorist“ laws.
The current cases under §129 all have certain points in common: what is criminalized are not only actions, but political ties, shared ideas and solidarity. Thus, people who do not define themselves as a group are criminalized because of their shared political ideals, which are often the only excuse with which the state forcibly constructs such dangerous organizations. Organizations that enables its repressive attacks intimately consistent, seeking to destroy the possibility of a personal life -individual and collective- of those who are understood as a potential danger to the Status Quo.
Raids, wiretapping, preventive detention… What is the interest of the state in entering the personal life of an anti-facist? Where does this information go? Without going into legalistic explanations nor into the particular mechanisms of this trial, it is interesting to see that a case of „Criminal Organization“ is built with the accusation of having beaten with Nazis, and that this accusation has the character of „affecting the existence and security of the state“. The existence of which state is being affected? The security of which ideals is endangered by antifacism? In the court room there is not space for individual cases, the hearings are not about the accused persons and their alleged acts. They and their lawyers are fillers forced to take part on this play, in which the federal prosecution and the judges reproduce the sovereignty of the nation-state, and try to bury the idea that other worlds are possible under the banality and cruelty of the criminal process.
A persecution that claims to be objective and impartial, that claims to be defending itself against extremism. But we know that the, the states institutions, police and Nazis work together to maintain a racist ideal of the German nation. We do not ask „Where were they in Hanau?“, we know where they were…and we do not want them present, because we know that their presence is shaped like SOKO LINX. It is from the most intimate rejection towards this alliance that our solidarity as feminists and anti-colonialists manifests.
Solidarity
We have to distance ourselves once and for all from the idea of nation-state. And to understand that it only works for those who follow its racist and patriarchal principles and subordinate to its ways: that is to say, for its citizens. It is exactly in the non-citizen-being that we must find ourselves and show recistence, and this is not an identitarian category, nor a passport, but a political position.
While we do not support migrant visions that seek acceptance into state structures, that strive for a redesign of the state and its definitions, for the only idea of a supposedly shared identity, we are in solidarity with anti-facist struggles of those who refuse to be subordinated to state forms and practice self-determination. It is from our non-citizen-being that we stand in solidarity with Lina.
To fight for autonomy, to build and practice our self-defense, to create new ways of caring from and for ourselves, is to free ourselves from the idea that inside a courtroom justice can be done, that inside a parliament equality can be created. Our choice is solidarity and this requires political responsibility, identifying the common enemy and valuing other people’s struggles for emancipation by leaving aside our ideological arrogance or methodological puritanism.
We are facing a situation in which we must position ourselves as nothing more nor less than anti-fascists. Is this really a matter of doubt?
Giving the space of the antifascist struggle to the apparatus of justician-repression of the state is not an option. We do not ask the big businessmen to organize the class struggle, we do not ask the male rapist to organize the feminist struggle, we do not ask the extractivist interests to fight for the self-determination of peoples in the global south. We cannot ask this fatherland to fight back its firstborn. The seeds of this Germany are facist: its borders, its judges, its laws, its institutions, its education system, its reading of history, its international trade treaties….
Lina’s imprisonment is the result of years of expansion of this voracious monster of justician-repression that has succeeded in legitimizing its methods against the different forms of non-citizen-being: being migrants, being revolutionaries, being feminists, being anti-fascists. The punitivist system surrounds us in its development, it finds us indifferent when the application of its repressive methods occurs in distant realities, against those we do not know; it finds us celebrating when they are applied against our enemies, without understanding that this is not an achievement (and much less ours), but the easy door to the accreditation of the monopoly of violence. It is there when we get careless celebrating police operations against the extreme right, when repression fall inside our structures and what seemed far away becomes a daily thing, what we understood as an achievement upon others, takes the form of a tragedy upon ourselves.
To hell with §129
The campaigns against the existence of §129 are extensive. Of course we fight for worlds without this kind of legislation, but it is not in the request to the state for its removal that we will really put an end to the repression that this kind of laws apply: today it is called §129, tomorrow it can be called §333.
Therefore, to hell with §129, does not mean for us a demand to the state to eliminate it as a legal construct. For us it means an intimate demand to ourselves, to our structures, to each member of the movement. We have to get rid of §129 of our heads, our bodies, our social relations and therefore our political structures and practices. We can no longer distance ourselves from fearing repression, we can no longer be afraid to show solidarity with the accused, we can no longer allow the state to determine our friendships. The historical demand of the feminist movement is also crystallized in §129: the private is political. To criminalization, we can only respond with friendship and understanding. To demonization, we can only act with sincere questions and political discussions. To isolation, there is only comradeship.
It is no wonder that this §129 is based on the most corrosive patriarchy. Nor is it surprising that punitivism works according to the schooling system: „to show examples of correctives, so that the masses do not follow the wrong path“. They’ve chosen wrongly, they have tried to turn Lina into an exemplary case, in a particular moment, a moment where the different feminist and anti-partriarchal movements have gained strength again in society, here and in the world. What a deep fear has the state of a strong woman…they have lost a potential housewife in the jaws of the anti-facist movement. No, Lina is neither a bad example nor a good symbol, nor should she be. Lina is a comrade and as such we must defend her, as we defend ourselves. Without glorifying her, without demonizing her.
This trial affects us all!
It is in pain and struggle that we recognize ourselves collectively and that we stand in solidarity with Lina. Pain for continuing to live in a world ruled by facists, pain for the indifference to this. We respect Lina for her conviction as an anti-facist, because our anti-colonial and anti-capitalist struggle can only exist with a clear anti-facist position. We would have liked to hear from her and the other accused a clear message to which we could give our political solidarity, to hear from them a sharp rejection of this trial, a stance against the bourgeois justice system.
Nontheless, we self-criticize for not having acted independently before. If we are all §129, then we all have the obligation and the freedom to defend ourselves with our actions and our political positioning. Our most sincere (self)criticism to the radical left, who while identifying as revolutionaries denies support to this case under the idea that „they are only antifa kids“. To be radical in a world of dominance, in a system of hate is for us to show love for life, is for us the sincere and critical accompainment of those who abandon an individual life for a joint utopia. Not to show solidarity is neither radical, nor revolutionary. It’s simply arrogant: it is to try to dismantle the master’s house by using the master’s tools.
We call on that radical-left to be honest with itself and with the movement as a whole. Want to challenge the established order? Then show revolutionary solidarity: with sincere criticism but with unmistakable anti-statist conviction. Any criticism from any of our political positions that we may have towards any comrade must be discussed face to face. We cannot allow the state to decide when and how we are going to have our discussions about our political differences. We will have them when we can define the circumstances.
We call on migrant movements not to be indifferent upon identitarian separations. Let us not do what we criticize so much in others.
One year after her kidnapping, one year after this judicial pantomime started, our desire to discuss with Lina is strengthened. We want to understand her, and we want her to understand us, and that can only happen if we are all in the same spectrum of autonomy, looking each other in the eyes without bars or plexies that divide us. For a process of criticism, autonomous growth and collective liberation to happen, the only thing left is her freedom. And that freedom will only be the result of a joint political and solidarity struggle.
Let’s all meet in Dresden to demonstrate together this November 4th at 14.00 Hs.
What they are doing to Lina, they are doing to all of us. Free Lina! Free them all!
Call for demonstration (only in German):https://www.soli-antifa-ost.org/aufruf-fuer-die-soli-demonstration-am-04-11-2021-in-dresden/
