What we see now is not what will remain – civil disobedience against Nazis and hunters of extremists

This year too, Nazis from Germany and all over Europe try to march in Dresden again. However the biggest march of the rightwing scene has clearly loosed ground in the last two years. Nazi opponents prevented the march with successful mass blockades twice in a row already. The free state of Saxony reacted with massive repression. So this year it’s all about principle for all parties involved. The Nazis want to rescue the possibility of a march – but have to admit an additional defeat with the cancellation of the big march in the run up; the free state wants to enforce the methods of Saxon Democracy as a successful way against civil obedience and thereby legitimize them. And this time it is about principle for us too, as it will stay right that the freedom forced by state for the Nazis means a massive limitation to free development for everybody – and that can and must not be accepted.

In the year 2010 the hunter of extremists Eckard Jesse expressed in a contribution for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: “With the term civil obedience is played fast and loosed with. Nearly all protesters wanting to prevent such manifestations refer to nonviolent resistance and civil obedience without considering the penalty for their illegal action as legally.” In this case it is most appropriate that Hanna Ahrendt, political theorist and name patron for Saxon research on extremism, has written an essay with the title Civil Obedience in the year 1970. That enables us to compare the statements of one of the most well-known representative of extremism ideology with the statements of that author in whose name the “research” of extremism is carried out in Dresden and Chemnitz. Right from the start the essay of Ahrendt is clearing up with the commonplace used by Jesse 40 years later: who will violate the law has to accept the penalty. Right from the start she writes about the tendency of the government to treat protesters as common criminals or to demand the highest price of self-sacrifice for their honesty to take the penalty willingly. She comments sarcastically the absurdity of the demand from the view of a lawyer as no legal advisor would come before a court and say “Your honor, this man wants to be punished.”[1] – To cut a long story short: The intention of a law is not that nobody abides the law. From a purely legal point of view the dealing with the political phenomena of civil obedience comes quickly to an end. Is that already all what could have been said? Of course not. A good bit further than the hunter of extremists Eckhard Jesse is the hunter of extremists Mathias Brodkorb pointing at the problem that the question about legitimacy of an action cannot result of an individual decision: “Attempts to legitimize such actions ethically by attitude fail thereby because they are nothing but subjective and therefore the snake pit of relativistic arbitrariness lurks within.” This means in short that all kind of people could consider all kind of things as justified and from that there is no common standard to decide the question universally. That’s why Ahrendt makes an important distinction between refusal due to individual reasons of conscience (based on the model of conscientious objection) and civil obedience in the beginning of her essay.[2]

Once your reputation’s gone…

Jesse argues that in Dresden the basic conditions for civil obedience are not met because the blockings are directed against a social fringe group and the Nazi opponents do not need to use blockings as last resort. What are we to make of that? At first it has to be noted that Saxon Democracy has made it as difficult as possible for protesters. The dominating parties CDU and FDP are “ruling through in Saxony” as said in jargon of politicians. And that is noticed by everyone getting hurt by police brutality on the streets. But Saxon Democracy, that means the whole mess of absurd surveillance and repression measures, refers to a very important point notified by Hanna Ahrendt as basic condition for civil obedience: decay of authority of rule.[3] That means for Dresden where a state protects rightwing killer gangs and people trying to oppose Nazis are bullied the state will lose its authority. It is not a complicate matter, not only understandable for political scientists: where a state acts obviously unjust the trust in the lawfulness of state actions is decreasing. “Civil obedience occurs where a significant number of citizens are coming to the conclusion that changes are not possible in a conventional manner anymore respectively complaints are not listened to and no interest is shown in or in opposite that the government is on their way to aspire to changes which legality and constitutionality is raising serious doubts and then stays on their course persistently.”[4] Who does not think thereby about the absurd attempts by the public prosecutors to justify the radio cell inquiry? To whom the behavior of the ruling parties in Dresden is not springing in mind? Is the accusing of a Thuringian theologian of being a member of an antifascist sport group not an approach which lawfulness has to be doubted? – Ahrendt writes further: “With other words, civil obedience can be orientated towards necessary und desirable change or towards the necessary and desirable preservation or restoration of the status quo or towards the preservation of constitutional laws or the restoration of the right balance of power inside of the ruling system […].”[5] And there she adds that in neither of those two cases civil obedience has to put on a level with criminal approaches. That means for our question the protesters have the right to make use of civil obedience due to the government of the party CDU ruling for over 20 years and having a police force at their disposal which has access to surveillance technique which the ministry of state security (GDR) could have only dreamt of in their boldest dreams. Because actually the people had no other way to oppose the Nazis (effectively).

Thawing in Dresden

Not least the success proves them right as something is happening despite the scandalous effort of repression around the marches in the last two years and the ice age of the ideology of extremism could (slowly) come to an end. The successful mass blockades have put the bourgeois parties under so much pressure that the big popular parties are moving and now are active too, or at least want oppose the Nazis march more actively. This means in plain language: Yes, the right of freedom of speech for the racist and anti-Semitic killer gangs which they use for propagating their criminal ideology was restricted (but not abolished). And yes, the chances for democratic engagement as widely as possible of the citizens has not suffered damages by the blockades but in the opposite opened a space of possibilities which was not intended in Saxon Democracy. This answers the question clearly if our society has to fall into uncertainty by civil obedience. If I don’t have the opportunity to say no, if there is no room for dissent, then the consensus on which the society is based on is no consensus. Then there is no real free choice. If there is no possibility to say no to Saxon Democracy which means to the police state policy of the ruling CDU-FDP-government then the freedom in Saxonia is the same freedom you would have to give your cash voluntarily or not in front of a gun pointing on you. Civil obedience in Dresden means no defeat for the constitutional state. A collective resistance of the people against the hindrance forced by police power of exercising their constitutional rights is no act of questioning the constitution (Grundgesetz) as a whole. In the opposite the insisting on clear protests in ear- and eyeshot against representatives of ideologies of inequality which opinions are violating article 1 paragraph 1 of the constitution (Grundgesetz) is no attack on the basic principles of the Federal Republic of Germany. In fact the people coming together in mass blockades in Dresden are the ones wanting to defend the spirit of article 1 paragraph 1 whereas – and that is what uprightly protectors of the constitution should actually grieve – the provincial government wants peace and order above all.

What do we say?

In the fight against the Nazis we don’t want to rely on the state which seems to be more occupied with prosecuting lefts instead of arresting rightwing killer gangs. We don’t want to let our own responsibility for our fellow men and the society in which we are living in out of our hands. It is not enough for us to vote every fourth year and then sit back and take things easy and rely on the police paying attention. Also for concrete reasons it is no option for the left to leave antifascism to the state. Because this state deports refugees into countries destroyed by German weapons. This state sells tanks to Saudi-Arabia so that also in the future no democratic protests can flare up in this despotism. This state rescues banks going bankrupt thanks to the neoliberal ideology with the money of its citizens. For more than ten years this state respectively his police and constitution protecting institutions covered and financed more or less directly a killer gang murdering people all over the Republic who did not match with their Nazi conception of the world. No, we cannot and we don’t want to leave it to this state to act against the rightwing pack!

We don’t block Nazi marches only in Dresden in February because we want a society in which our fellow men can live without fear of racists, anti-Semites, sexists and other assholes. All here made observations in what way the ideology of extremism is in accordance with their supposed theoretical godparents at all are of course aesthetic subtleties which were not needed in the last years by thousands of antifascists, citizens, Christians, greens, lefts and social democrats to know what is right and reasonable and what has to be done. It is only one of the many bitter ironies of the so called Saxon Democracy that the ideological stooges of the ruling government in Saxony in their actions have disfigured inexpressibly and thrown into reverse the theories of Hanna Ahrendt of whom they took the name for their institute. But all that does not make a change at a crucial point: Blocking is our right!

Sources

1. cf. 121, all page references in the following relate to the essay of Ahrendt
2. s. 123, s. 128 ff
3. s. 132
4. s. 136
5. s. 136
6. Ahrendt, Hannah: Zur Zeit – Politische Essay, Europäische Verlagsanstalt/Rotbuch Verlag, Hamburg, 1986
7. FAZ: Blockierte Demokratie
8. Endstation Rechts: Ein Gewinner, zwei Verlierer
9. Weiterdenken: Gibt es Extremismus