About the raids at the anarchist library Kalabalik and the widespread wave of repression in Berlin
Early in the morning of March 24, 2026, the time had come once again. The doors of 17 buildings in Berlin, Hamburg, Düsseldorf, and Kyritz were kicked in by a squad of masked figures who descended upon the people sleeping there, or, as in our case, upon bookshelves and newspaper archives. Reason for the violent wake-up call by the Berlin LKA, this time, was an arson attack last September on the power supply to the Adlershof Technology Park, which resulted in a widespread blackout. They’re looking for evidence to finally prove all the mental acrobatics of the investigation team “Spannung” [tension] to back up their hallucinated theories. This is at least what can be inferred from the search warrant presented, which was approved by enforcement judge Jacob. The places targeted were Infoladen Scherer8, L5 Späti, and several private apartments, and, as has happened several times in the past, the Anarchist Library Kalabalik in Kreuzberg.
All good things come in threes?
You might remember back in 2018 government snoops were already after something big. It was reported that folks wearing reggae hats had put up posters asking for help tracking down the politicians responsible for the 2017 G20 summit in Hamburg, as well as some of their particularly eager goons. They were also on the hunt for posters featuring photos of plainclothes cops.
Although they managed to seize a few of these during the raid (after all, one was hanging in our door window), their efforts to track down the mysterious posterers and their reggae hats failed, despite sparing no effort in this superimportant matter. Thus, this investigation soon came to an end without fanfare, and people are wondering whether the sudden outbreak of reggae fever at the LKA could have been the result excessive consumption of weed from the evidence room. Be that as it may, this is where the stolen items such as computers, posters, and so on were taken, where they were examined and secured until they found their way back to the Kalabalik two years later. However, this good fortune was short-lived, as the next act of this drama was soon to unfold. Back in September 2020, those heavily armed guys showed up on our doorstep — or, more precisely, in the library — once again. This time, they were acting on behalf of the Bundesanwaltschaft [federal prosecution] claiming that a few folks, some of whom were known to hang out there, had allegedly formed a criminal organization back in 2016. The authorities hoped the searches would turn up some evidence. Besides Kalabalik, five apartments in Berlin and two more in Athens were affected. This time, the BKA [federal police] took the lead, and in addition to the newly acquired electronic devices, didn’t hesitate to take along the evidence from the last raid—which they found there still packed up by the LKA. As of today, we haven’t seen any of the stuff back – whatever.
This case, nonetheless, would go on to have far-reaching consequences and keep those involved occupied for many years. And yet, despite extensive surveillance measures, tapped phones, bugged vehicles, an extremely talkative rapist and traitor, and thousands of pages of files — it was all just hot air. Even though the efforts to give this drama a twist are clearly evident, this case was also shelved in the fall of 2025 without any charges or a trial.
The changing times
Though only a few years have passed, the world has become a completely different place since the last searches in 2020. The Covid state of emergency has massively accelerated social control and digitalization, and the following war in Ukraine has turned even the last remaining liberal pacifists into enthusiastic supporters of military buildup and the Bundeswehr [German armend forces]. Terms like “Zeitenwende” and “Kriegstüchtigkeit” are dominating public discourse and normalizing war as if we were planning a birthday party. The logical consequences of this are Sondervermögen [seperate fonds of the state for militarisatin], war economy, and military conscription.
Meanwhile, the ongoing genocide in Gaza is unfolding before the eyes of the global public, and Israel no longer even bothers to conceal its intent to annihilate the Palestinian people. And Trump’s USA, with its imperialist behavior, has once again taken on the role of 20th-century-style world cop, leaving no doubt that its real motives are natural resources and the pursuit of power. Artificial intelligence determines life and death, from the battlefields to the streets of Minneapolis, and the tech moguls of Tesla, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Palantir are all in on it. The fact that (former) ICE boss Bovino is posing in SS attire is, at most, a side note. In the shadow of the Kulturkampf [culture war] and other side shows, modern tech fascism is taking shape across the entire western hemisphere, and the AfD is recording election results of over 30% nationwide. Regardless of all this, ecological disasters continue relentlessly, while the system that causes them has no better answer than the same shit in green.
All these developments are so tightly packed and far-reaching that there is barely any time to react. Running around and trying to put out all the fires and control the damage alone are not really the answer and, in the face of the daily horror, feel like a toothless tiger. What’s needed is the overthhrow of all conditions. That’s why many are asking themselves, what our struggles for liberation can look like in this increasingly brutal world. Different initiatives are attempting to address these challenges in various ways: some recognize the need to organize together to become resilient, to prepare for the looming ecological and social collapse. Others are exploring possible responses that involve disabling the workings of the apparatus of domination and permanently disrupting and sabotaging the work of the powerful.
We see no contradiction in these and countless other approaches, and we expect that future uprisings will also give rise to a number of different creative responses and initiatives we have yet to encounter. Recognizing that there are no solutions to the problems and crises of our time within capitalism and the state political system does not, however, make us “primitivists,” as the press is always quick to claim. You don’t even have to be an anarchist to see this. All you need are open eyes and an open heart. But it comes as little surprise that the Sherlock Holmeses serving in the state are lacking in both.
Our views have never been a secret, and we will not hide them now in the face of the latest intimidation attempts by the authorities. The raids, which were justified as part of an investigation into an act of sabotage, serve as an opportunity for us to place these events in a context that allows us to assess them outside the framework of bourgeois justice. Our own values and principles center around the well-being of all living beings, not the legal code of those in power. That’s why we’re clear on this: no sympathy for the world’s arms manufacturers and tech corporations, no tears for their lost profits.
The Brown Swamp
They may call us criminals because we don’t play by their rules. Because we will never accept that some people have the right to dictate the lives of others, and because we do not condemn people who do what they feel is necessary to put an end to these injustices. In their eyes, this makes us suspicious. Just as it makes us suspicious when we distribute pamphlets naming those responsible for war and the destruction of the environment, or lend out books inspired by the spirit of freedom and anarchy that tell us heartfelt stories of solidarity and resistance. We are suspicious because we stand with the oppressed and the imprisoned, and because we dream of a world without states, borders, or prisons, and do everything in our power to make those dreams come true.
We see all of this as the reason why the cops break down our door at more or less regular intervals, and why their two- and four-legged creatures (some less willingly than others) feel the need to snoop around in our lives. What happened to us and the many others affected on March 24, we see as an expression of an increasingly authoritarian state, where political pressure (from the far right) has a growing influence on how our enemies interpret their own laws, and where the door is wide open to arbitrariness. Not that we ever trusted this state, but some things do differ significantly in quality and quantity from what we have known so far. For example, we are not aware of any recent cases involving the search of parents’ flats as well as the seizure of all their electronic devices. It is also new to the Berlin context that, in almost all cases, cell phones, laptops, etc., are seized not only from the accused but also from all flatmates, regardless of their relationship to the accused. In addition, several search warrants were issued against people who are not listed as suspects in the proceedings but are said to have a “close relationship” with the accused.
It seems as though the media, politicians, and the police were perfectly aligned in this long-planned operation. They made sure that the press conferences of a mayor begging for forgiveness for his conduct during the blackout in January, the presentation of the damage costs from the blackout in September, the legal restriction of the Freedom of Information Act (due to critical infrastructure), and this wave of house raids against alleged saboteurs all fell on the same three days — complete with live coverage. But in the heat of the moment, some journalists lost track of what was going on, and facts about proceedings and individuals were confused, and misrepresented. It is also clear that the media and politicians are trying to link the attack on the Adlershof Technology Park to acts of sabotage by the “Vulkangruppe“ in order to blow the whole thing out of proportion and create the impression that they are on the trail of this phantom they have been unsuccessfully chasing for 15 years. However, there is no mention of this in the search warrants, and in the cases of both Kalabalik and the Scherer8 info center, the raids are justified solely on the grounds that suspects are alleged to have printed or distributed anti-militarist propaganda at these locations. This alone makes it clear that the cops are simply out to attack and scrutinize anarchist projects.
There are also a few things that happened during the raids that we think are worth mentioning. In the case of Kalabalik, right at the beginning of the raid, while the doors were still being cut open and before the cops’ vehicles formed a barrier blocking the view, Julian Reichelt’s lobotomized amateur Reichspropagandists from the news-webside „NIUS“ were present. While it is widely known that other tabloid rags have close ties to the political police, none of them were present at the outset of these events. It is now official, then, that the fascists in uniform are leaking information primarily to the fascists in propaganda roles—who, for the past months, have been lying in wait for people in an anti-Antifa fashion, publicly defaming them, and harassing them at their homes. Given the choice of words by police „unionist“ Benjamin Jendros—who has been courted by the entire city press for years and rants in Goebbels-style rhetoric about the “cancerous tumor” of democracy—this comes as no great surprise. Add to this the fact that, of the hundreds of books available to them in the library, it was precisely Hanna Arendt’s account of the trial of SS-Obersturmbannführer Eichmann – „The Banality of Evil“ – that was confiscated, a highly questionable picture emerges. We will likely never know what prompted the State Security Service to make such a selection. Perhaps the answer is as simple as it is banal—they were merely doing their duty and carrying out orders from above—and it would be mischievous to suspect anything evil.
In addition, dozens of pamphlets—mostly dealing with repression, clandestinity and militancy—as well as individual issues of the „Autonomes Blättchen“ and a rather haphazard-looking selection of books were taken along, such as the biography of Assata Shakur, Detlef Hartmann’s critique of Negri, Gabriel Kuhn’s work on indigenous resistance in Sápmi, the Manifesto of Freedom and Peace, and various books bearing the telling note “Books in Greek” (sic!). Why they also broke into the building’s boiler room and used a battering ram on the way there instead of simply using the set of keys they found is likely another mystery that only the limited mind of a police officer can comprehend.
We will not be discouraged
Overall, we’re in good spirits, and the chaos left behind has been largely cleared up. We are moved by the tremendous solidarity and support we’ve received since the raid, both from the neighborhood and from many helping hands during the cleanup. This gives us the strength and courage to keep going. With a little distance, the whole „EG Spannung“ operation seems like nothing more than blind activism and a poor attempt to intimidate people, isolate communities, and divide them on the basis of types of action that are, in part, the subject of controversial debate. It seems they have not succeeded in any of this; on the contrary, most people hardly pay any attention to the cheap propaganda of the cops and their hate-mongering tabloids, but rely instead on their own judgment. After all, people know that we are not the ones developing technologies to spy on dissidents, sending weapons to war zones, letting refugees drown in the Mediterranean, or building chemical plants that poison the planet.
Sending love and strength to:
All other people and projects affected by the raids!
Our friends and comrades of Ampelokipi case, who are on trial since last week!
Nanuk and all Antifas who are on trial in Dresden and Düsseldorf or in coercive detention!
Daniela, who is now facing charges for being part of RAF!
The ULM5, who are awaiting trial for destroying the arms factory of Elbit!
… all other prisoners, persecuted and comrades on the run.
Courage and good luck to you!
Kalabalik