Anarchist Black Cross Dresden
Anarchist Black Cross Dresden is now a Left Extremist Organization in Saxony
In 2023 we accidentally found a classification of our collective as left-wing extremist in one of the reports of the Saxonian secret police (Verfassungsschutz). Later, a questionnaire from one of the local parliamentarians shed some light on why the group is seen as such. In this text we will take a closer look at the “argumentation” of the political police and what they can do now after this classification.
For those of you who are interested in what is written in the 3-page response of the Ministry of the Interior, we attach it to this text. The text itself looks like a piece of propaganda written to create a scary enemy out of the solidarity group. The main interest of the secret police came because of ABC-Dresden’s solidarity work with anarchists and anti-authoritarians in Ukraine. According to the report, we are primarily interested in supporting anarchists fighting with weapons against Russian invaders in Ukraine. Apparently, it is not very well known to the Saxon secret police that these anarchists and anti-authoritarians are most likely fighting not only with the famous 5000 German helmets from 2022, but with real weapons, which since then have been provided to the Ukrainian state and distributed among the regular army, volunteers of territorial self-defense and fighters in the International Legion (in all these formations there are people with different political views, including anarchists). To make an argument in such a report that supporting someone in Ukraine who is fighting against Russian army shows political preferences of those who work within the secret police office in Saxony rather than any point about extremism.
The text continues in the same fear-mongering with such bold statements as:
“Anarchist groups, such as ABC Dresden, oppose the human rights laid down in the Basic Law (German Consitution)” – which human rights anarchists oppose the authors of the text prefer not to specify, most likely aware that anarchists are among the loudest advocates of those rights for the people that are systematically violated by various state institutions and are protected in the first place by the political power of the whole society against any attempts by the state to take away those human rights.
“They generally deny that the legislature is bound by the constitutional order and that the executive and the judiciary are bound by law and justice” – you don’t have to be an anarchist to know that the modern justice system has a lot of blind spots to actually be bound by law and justice. To address these blind spots, it is very common in liberal societies to protest and show support or anger against political decisions of the state.
And especially in Saxony it is well known that the secret police and other parts of the executive law enforcement agencies themselves have ties to undemocratic, right-wing movements, which could be seen for example in the NSU case (National Socialist Underground), making their own role very questionable.
The general argument can go on for a very long time. To make the group extremist, you just need to add some key words to your argumentation and you are legally good. This is another example of how law and justice are abused by people with political agendas, and the independence of these mechanisms cannot exist within the highly centralized institutions of power such as the state.
The danger of such a situation is that very vague and abstract legal terms create grounds to classify any anti-authoritarian group as left-wing extremist. This leads to a wide range of possible “surveillance” of people who might be associated with the group and its environment. This includes, but is not limited to
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Physical observation of people
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Listening/reading telephone communications
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Monitoring Internet traffic
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Use of video/audio surveillance in certain places
All these things become possible through this classification and can be used again not only against alleged members of the group, but also against their contacts and contacts of the contacts and so on. And this is happening right now in one of the regions with the highest AFD polls for the next elections in September 2024. If the Saxon extreme right comes to power, this amazing game of protecting the constitution will very quickly turn into the destruction of any opponent of fascism by means of collected information.
We didn’t have any illusions about the role of the liberal state in paving the way for extreme-right dictatorships (history can give many examples of such things), but with the modern surveillance technologies implemented by the so-called democrats we are looking into a very dark future…
Criminalization of solidarity with antifascists and anarchists – is a continuous strategy of the state apparatus in its attempts to destroy not only the anarchist movement, but civil society in general. Attacks on those who do not leave people alone in prison continue in different parts of the world, both in authoritarian states and in liberal democracies. It is enough to ask a relative of a prisoner about the humiliations they regularly suffer at the hands of the so-called Department of Justice. Targeting solidarity initiatives is also a continuation of the German government’s repression of anti-fascists protesting against the G20 – when many European politicians shook hands with Putin, while German police used the famous “state right to violence” to suppress the protests, including those of activists coming from Russia.
The war in Ukraine and the Russian problem in Saxony
For us, the fact that after several years of our activity we have appeared on the radar of the Saxony state because of our solidarity with Ukraine, shows once again how bad the situation in Saxony is regarding the “Russian world” issues. Let’s take as an example the Minister President of Saxony Michael Kretschmer, who already in 2021 was called by rnd.de[1] “Russia-understander from Dresden”. In recent years, Kretschmer has gained more and more attention for his very questionable statements on the war in Ukraine, constantly trying to put pressure on “peace talks” and bring Russia back into world politics. As recently as December, Kretschmer stated:
“In the case of a ceasefire, Ukraine must first accept that certain areas are temporarily inaccessible to Ukraine” (sic!).
How “temporarily inaccessible” territories end up as part of Russia, you can ask the political prisoners in Crimea who have been fighting the Russian occupation since 2014. Kretschmer’s attempts to sabotage the struggle against Russia in Germany were well received by such “partners” as the Russian embassy, Sarah Wagenknecht and, among others, AFD[2] (which currently polls higher in Saxony than Kretschmer’s CDU).
The motivation of the Saxonian head of state is unclear (at least there is no clear indication that came up in the media), but apparently Michael Kretschmer sees himself as a good friend of Putin and maybe even looks at some positions around money pots (like many other friends of Putin including the infamous German chancellor).
In this whole atmosphere, attempts to activate the repression apparatus against anti-authoritarian activists showing solidarity with the peoples of Ukraine fits into the profile of the local CDU government. After all, Kretschmer is just learning how to repress anarchists and antifascists, while Putin has already perfected this to the extent of torturing or even murdering some opponents of the Russian Empire.
Having said all this, we would like to remind you not to relax, even if you do not live in East Germany. The general authoritarian tendencies are gaining momentum all over Europe, and in the coming years anarchists and antifascists will face even harder times from the state repression machine in the struggle to consolidate power and destroy any radical opposition to the growing fascist mood. Keep this in mind today and stick to the security culture.
If you contact us, be aware that your communication can be monitored and use encryption systematically.
But above all, don’t be afraid of repression. They are part of the political struggle and solidarity. The state may threaten to use a lot of power and resources against activists, but the reality is: we’re in 2024 and the struggle for freedom of ordinary people continues despite all the mechanisms available to the dictators and their would-be friends from the West.
We will continue the struggle and we won’t be intimidated into conformity by secret police or any other state institution that tries to take away basic human rights in favor of their new authoritarian regimes.