Ignorance always sucked — Be active against a racist agreement!

Elim­i­nate fas­cist structures!

Gov­ern­ment and oppo­si­tion only got fake diss­cu­sions going, the political
cen­ter has arrived on the right wing. Demands and slo­gans of right-wing
extrem­ists were referred to by etab­lished par­ties and this way made a big
con­tri­bu­tion to the increase of legit­i­ma­tion of right- wing ideas. After
debates over a pro­hib­tion of the right wing par­ty NPD, the exam­ples of
right wing pop­ulism in pol­i­cy and deval­u­at­ing use of speech against
migrants have not grown less. Just remem­ber the racist cam­paign of CDU/CSU
against dou­ble cit­i­zen­ship, the debate over the neces­si­ty of a “Ger­man
guid­ing cul­ture” ini­ti­at­ed by CDU par­ty whip Merz, the elec­tion cam­paign of
the favourite can­di­date, CDU‘s Rüttgers, who used the slo­gan “Kinder statt
Inder”(“Children instead of migrants from India”) to moti­vate against
high­ly qual­i­fied migrants and last but not least the unin­hib­it­ed con­tact of
the red- green gov­ern­ment with the nation­al social­is­tic past. 

Easy to imag­ine politi­cians of all direc­tions acti­vat­ing racist ideologies
among peo­ple and fea­tur­ing their elec­tion cam­paigns at expense of groups
which are out­lawed already to come through with their ideas of laws for
inner secu­ri­ty. The “Ein­wan­derungs­be­gren­zungs­ge­setz” (“Law of limitations
of migrants”) and Schily´s “Anti-ter­ror-laws” prob­a­bly won t be the last
steps tak­en to dis­crim­i­nate Non-Ger­man peo­ple, like migrants. By those
aspects of law it will be even hard­er for refugees to find asylum;
reunit­ing of fam­i­lies has become almost impos­si­ble. Who is allowed to get
in is deter­mined by eco­nom­ic cri­ter­ies: Only “use­ful” for­eign­ers are
wel­comed, for all the oth­ers Europe shall stay the untouch­able fort. The so-
called “Anti-ter­ror-laws”, which have been wait­ing in politi­cians desks for
years and came to use after the 11th of Sep­tem­ber, open the doors for
racism spon­sored by the state: With the screen search which was car­ried out
in the whole Fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment all Ara­bic men in-between 15 and 35 were
declared poten­tial terrorists. 

And what does all of that have to do with Rathenow ???

From the local polit­i­cal point of view it looks even worse. Among all
par­ties. In many cas­es racist ide­olo­gies, xeno­pho­bia and igno­rance of those
struc­tures are real­i­ty today. As an exam­ple we want to take a look at the
cap­i­tal city of the dis­trict Bran­den­burg: Rathenow. 

Not only the aver­age strug­gle of hav­ing almost no chance to stay in Germany
legal­ly and liv­ing in fear to be send home where pover­ty and tor­ture is
wait­ing, the refugees are put in a camp far from the cen­tre of the city
where the chance to par­tic­i­pate in social and cul­tur­al life is very
lim­it­ed. Poten­tial vis­i­tors are scared away by the secu­ri­ty ser­vice, which
includes also mem­bers of the local Com­er­ade­ship. Those self-made protectors
of pub­lic peace con­trol all iden­ti­ty cards of those who want to get in and
keep book over who is vis­it­ed by whom. Also in these cas­es discriminating
spe­cial laws come to action. As there is the “Res­i­den­zpflicht” (“res­i­dence
duty”, which doesn t allow refugees to leave the dis­trict their refugee
home is in), refugees don t receive work per­mis­sions and only around 40
Euros cash per month. Shop­ping food is only pos­si­ble by coupons worth 70%
of the aver­age social income and only in a very lim­it­ed num­ber of stores. 

The inhab­i­tants of Rathenow show reject­ing or even clear racist reactions
toward the for­eign­ers. Racist moti­vat­ed aggres­sions are ignored or even
tol­er­at­ed as such in pub­lic. As in Feb­ru­ary 2000 a refugee inotiotiation
pub­lished a mem­o­ran­dum to demand a reset­tle­ment of their shel­ter and
demon­strate from their point of view the inabil­i­ty of politi­cians to solve
this unbear­able sit­u­a­tion, the “ene­my” was point­ed out fast: The chairmen
of the refugee ino­ti­o­ti­a­tion, Christo­pher N´So, was strong­ly offend­ed and
claimed to be a crim­i­nal drug deal­er in public.

Since the Wall came down the Neo-Nazi scene in Rathenow as enveloped to a
very active one. Every year there have been sev­er­al infringe­ments on Non-
Ger­mans, left- wing- ori­en­tat­ed and such who doit in. Though most of
them let­ting the vic­tims find them­selves in the hos­pi­tal, very few were
report­ed to the police. One of the most vio­lent offend in the dis­trict of
Bran­den­burg hap­pened in Rhi­now close­by in 1998. A group of Neo-Nazis was
refused to enter a dance event called “Reit­er­ball”. The non-German
door­keep­er there­fore was beat­en into coma with a met­al bar. 

From 2000 on an increas­ing politi­ci­sa­tion of the Neo-Fas­cist scene of
Rathenow can be observed.The orig­i­nal­ly four com­rade­ship “White Warriors
Rathen­now”, “Kam­er­ad­schaft Rathenow”, “Arische Kämpfer” and “Kam­er­ad­schaft
Hauptvolk” unit­ed to become on com­rade­ship called “Hauptvolk”. Their main
meet­ing place is “Don Promil­los Pony Bar ” in Grosse Milow­er Strasse. There
they hold gath­er­ings to edu­cate mem­bers on ide­olo­gies, to pub­lish a
cir­cu­lar for all com­rades and to plan fas­cist moti­vat­ed actions like
cam­paign for the “Rudolf-Hess-Memo­r­i­al-Day” or the “Memo­r­i­al Day for
Heroes”. Thir­ty mem­bers of the “Kam­er­ad­schaft Rathenow” also participated
in the man­i­fes­ta­tion of the NPD in Berlin on Decem­ber, 1st 2001. More and
more the activists try to spread their pro­pa­gan­da among young people.
Address­ing the pub­lic they also try to awak­en sym­pa­thies among the citizens
of Rathenow. 

For over years the region­al press has not tak­en the prob­lem seri­ous as
such. Deeds moti­vat­ed by racist and fas­cist ideas have been looked at as
iso­lat­ed cas­es, car­ried out by bored young­sters. When ARD, a public
chan­nel, had a report on xeno­pho­bia and right-wing extrem­ism interviewing
the head­mas­ter of a school and a Neo-Fas­cist from Rathenow the clash was
brought to pub­lic. The head­mas­ter strong­ly reject­ed the exis­tence of right-
wing extrem­ism with­in his school, though most of the com­rades were or had
been study­ing at his school. On of the activists was train­er of a volley
ball team, also involved in school poli­cies and pop­u­lar among the teachers.
There the xeno­pho­bic atti­tude of young peo­ple as well as the mute
sym­pa­thies of adults turned out clear. The reac­tion of Rathenow´s
inhab­i­tants came right away: The jour­nal­ists from ARD were offend­ed grossly
and their reports claimed untrue. Rathenow against the rest of the world…
A ral­ly to demon­strate tol­er­ance and against right-wing vio­lence was
organ­ised as an reflex action, but soon turned into an Anti-contrast-
man­i­fes­ta­tion, where com­rades shook hands.

That com­mu­ni­ty, first of all the ex-may­or Lünser (Pro Rahenow) as well as
the present may­or See­gler (CDU, back then func­tion­ing as the deputy mayor)
react­ed very slow­ly after hav­ing ignored the con­flict for a long time seems
to be com­mon among the new dis­tricts. The final action tak­en by local
politi­cians and sev­er­al com­pa­nies. The cam­paign “With one anoth­er for one
anoth­er” let the ini­tia­tors sleep well, but did not bring any results after
all. No sur­prise — who is there to par­tic­i­pate ? With dis­cre­tion and
belit­tling silence the left-wind scene was encour­aged and even spon­sored by
local poli­cies. Vic­tims were exclud­ed and expelled (DRIVEN AWAY?) while the
very few left-wing activists were claimed to “fool the own nest”. 

There has been now improve­ment of the sit­u­a­tion till now on. In addi­tion to
the spe­cial police unit “Mega” (Mobile Ein­satzein­heit gegen Gewalt und
Aus­län­der­feindlichkeit), which also takes care of left-wing activists,
anoth­er spe­cial unit called “Tomeg” (Täteror­i­en­tierte Maß­nah­men gegen
extrem­istis­che Gewalt­tat­en) was found. With­in the elec­tions of the present
may­or in Feb­ru­ary this year declared a cen­tre of tol­er­ance. But if you look
at it you can find tol­er­ance for only a very lim­it­ed ra
nge of vari­ety of
peo­ple. So the past and recent sit­u­a­tion are the same: Rathenow is a centre
of fascism.

Organ­ise resis­tance against fascism!

By dif­fer­ent actions, as there is anti-racist shop­ping (trad­ing of coupons
for cash) and a spon­ta­neous gath­er­ing after two Sudanese were invi­o­late in
Novem­ber 2001, the left-wing ori­en­tat­ed youth tried to put atten­tion on the
major­i­ty of peo­ple accept­ing the racist con­sent with­in inhabitants,
politi­cians and Neo-Fascists.

With our man­i­fes­ta­tion we want to show: We are unwill­ing to accept this as
aver­age conditions. 

Take part ! 

Pro eman­ci­pat­ed and anti-fas­cist cul­ture of youth for Rathenow and
elsewhere ! 

Man­i­fes­ta­tion at Rathenow, June, 5th 2002 , 

2 p.m. at Dunck­er­platz (Haupt­bahn­hof ODER main train station) 

for depar­ture from Berlin meet at Alexan­der­platz at high noon (12 o‘
clock), train RE 38170, depar­ture 12:13

Rec­om­mend­ed read­ing for more infor­ma­tion about Rathenow: 

“Havel­län­der Jungs — Recht­sex­trem­is­mus im West­havel­land 2001 — Analy­sen, Berichte, Bilder”

youre called by: Antifa Havel­land / Falkensee, Antifaoffensive
West­havel­land, Antifaschis­tis­che Aktion Berlin (AAB), Flüchtlingsinitiative
Bran­den­burg, JungdemokratIn­nen / Junge Linke Berlin + Brandenburg,
JungdemokratIn­nen / Junge Linke Rathenow

sup­port­ed by: [antifanews] — antifaschis­tis­ches Infor­ma­tion­ssys­tem für
Berlin­Bran­den­burg, Antifaschis­tis­che Aktion Eber­swalde [AAEW],
Antifaschis­tis­che Aktion Neu­rup­pin, Antifaschis­tis­che Aktion Potsdam
(AAPO), Autonome Antifa Nor­dost (Berlin), Autonome Antifa Schwerin,
Jugen­dan­tifa Marzahn (Berlin), Jugen­dan­tifa Neu­rup­pin (JAN), Jusos Berlin-
Steglitz / Zehlen­dorf, PDS Rathenow, Rote Antifa Reinick­endorf (Berlin)