[D66] Duitse SGP op een zwarte lijst

[Ⓐ]

(Duitse SGP op een 'zwarte lijst' van de BfV)

German government places Socialist Equality Party on subversive watch-list
By the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei
17 August 2018

Last month, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution
(BfV), Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, added the Socialist
Equality Party to its official list of “left-wing extremist”
organizations subject to state monitoring in its annual “constitutional
protection report.” It is a calculated political attack on the
Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party—SGP).

In previous years, the annual report did not mention the SGP. Now it
appears twice—as one of three “left-wing extremist parties” and as an
“object of observation,” to be monitored by the secret service.

Monitoring by the secret service means massive restriction on basic
democratic rights, and is a precursor to a possible ban. The SGP and its
members must assume that they are being watched, their communications
are being intercepted and they are being spied on by covert means. They
are branded as “enemies of the Constitution” and can expect to face
harassment in regard to elections, public appearances, renting rooms or
looking for a job.

For example, the RCDS, the student organisation of the governing
Christian Democratic parties (Christian Democratic Union and Christian
Social Union), demands that organizations and their members that are
subject to monitoring by the secret service be excluded from universities.

The secret service has made no accusation that the SGP is breaking any
law or is engaged in violent activity. It even explicitly confirms that
the SGP pursues its goals by legal means—that it “tries to gain public
attention for its political ideas by participating in elections and
through lectures.”

It justifies the monitoring of the SGP exclusively by the fact that it
advocates a socialist program, criticizes capitalism and rejects the
establishment parties and the trade unions. The BfV report states: “The
agitation of the SGP is directed in its program against the existing
state and social order, as a generalized disparagement of ‘capitalism,’
against the EU, against alleged nationalism, imperialism and militarism
and against social democracy, the unions and also against the party DIE
LINKE [Left Party].”

The general introduction to the chapter “Left-Wing Extremism” makes
clear that the secret service is intent on suppressing any socialist
critique of capitalism and its social consequences.

The “ideological basis” of “left-wing extremists,” it says, “is the
rejection of the ‘capitalist system as a whole,’ because ‘capitalism’ is
more than just an economic form for left-wing extremists: it is seen as
a basis as well as a guarantor of ‘bourgeois rule’ through ‘repression’
at home and ‘aggression’ abroad. ‘Capitalism’ is therefore responsible
for all societal and political ills, such as social injustice, the
‘destruction’ of housing, wars, right-wing extremism and racism, as well
as environmental disasters.”

According to the secret service, such a critique of capitalism, which
millions of people share, is an attack on “our state and social order
and thus liberal democracy.” Anyone who bases himself or herself on
“Marx, Engels and Lenin” as “leading theoretical figures,” or considers
the “revolutionary violence” of the “oppressed against the rulers” in
principle as “legitimate” is, in the eyes of the secret service, a
“left-wing extremist” and “enemy of the Constitution.”

This falls within a tradition of the suppression of socialist parties
that has a long and disastrous history in Germany. In 1878, German
Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck enacted the infamous Anti-Socialist Law
“against the homicidal aspirations of social democracy,” which forced
the Social Democratic Party (SPD) into illegality for twelve years. In
1933, Hitler first smashed the Communist Party and then the SPD to clear
the way for Nazi dictatorship, the Second World War and the
extermination of the Jews. Now, the grand coalition of the Christian
Democrats and Social Democrats and its intelligence agency are preparing
a third version of the Anti-Socialist Law. They are adopting the policy
of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) and threaten anyone who opposes
this far-right party with illegality.

Although leading representatives of the AfD regularly agitate against
migrants, incite racism, glorify Hitler’s Wehrmacht (Army) and downplay
the crimes of National Socialism (Nazism), there is not a single mention
of this party in the chapter on “right-wing extremism” in the BfV
report. This also applies to the representatives of its völkisch-racist
wing, the New Right Network and the xenophobic Pegida, which are closely
linked with the AfD.

The AfD spokesman in Thuringia, Björn Höcke, against whom the AfD itself
has initiated two disciplinary proceedings for making right-wing
extremist statements, also does not appear in the report. Neither does
the “Institute for State Policy” of neo-right ideologist Götz
Kubitschek, the Compact magazine of Jürgen Elsässers or the weekly Junge
Freiheit. The Identarian Movement is mentioned, but only as a
“suspicious case.”

In the chapter on “left-wing extremism,” the AfD is mentioned several
times—as the victim of supposed “left-wing extremists”! Those who
protest against the AfD and against right-wing extremism or collect
information about them are considered to be “left-wing extremists.”

“Protests against the two party congresses of the AfD, in April in
Cologne and in December in Hanover,” are cited in the BfV report as
evidence of “extreme left” sentiment. The same applies to the “ongoing
fight against right-wing extremists” and the gathering of “information
about alleged or actual right-wing extremists and their structures.”

Large parts of the BfV report read as if they were written in AfD party
headquarters. Many passages bear its imprimatur. It has since been
confirmed by the Interior Ministry that BfV head Hans-Georg Maassen met
several times with leading AfD representatives. According to the
official statement of the ministry, since taking office six years ago,
Maassen has conducted “about 196” discussions with politicians from the
CDU / CSU, the SPD, the Greens, the Left Party, the Free Democratic
Party (FDP) and also the AfD.

Maassen’s interlocutors include AfD chief Alexander Gauland and his
predecessor Frauke Petry. According to a former employee of Petry,
Maassen allegedly assured her that he himself “did not wish the AfD to
be monitored by the BfV” and advised them on how to avoid such
monitoring. Although Maassen denies this, the fact that the AfD is not
mentioned in the BfV report suggests that Petry’s colleague was right.
A right-wing conspiracy

The federal government is responsible for the secret service, which
answers directly to the interior minister, who wrote the foreword to the
BfV report. Without the approval of the grand coalition of the CDU, CSU
and SPD, the report could not have appeared in this form. The decision
to attack the SGP and support the AfD was taken at the highest levels of
the government.

The grand coalition is reacting to the increasing radicalization of the
working class and youth, who, by a large majority, reject its policy of
permanent welfare cuts, military rearmament and the building of a police
state. In the general election last September, the CDU, CSU and SPD had
their worst results in 70 years. If elections to the Bundestag (federal
parliament) were held today, the grand coalition would no longer have a
majority.

Under these conditions, official politics assume the character of a
permanent conspiracy that fortifies extreme right-wing forces.

As early as 2013, the formation of a government was preceded by months
of behind-the-scenes negotiations culminating in a commitment to
militarism. Leading government officials announced the “end of military
restraint” and supported the right-wing coup in Ukraine, which sparked a
sharp conflict with Russia. Germany has participated in the deployment
of NATO forces right up to the Russian border.

This time, the coalition negotiations lasted six months—a historic
record. The CDU, CSU and SPD agreed upon the most right-wing program
since 1945. They decided on a comprehensive rearmament policy and the
establishment of a police state. Military expenditure is expected to
increase to 2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), which means
nearly doubling the military budget. Meanwhile, the reintroduction of
compulsory military service and the nuclear armament of the Bundeswehr
(armed forces) are also under discussion.

The aspirations of the ruling class to realize its imperialist ambitions
by means of military might require the trivialization and revival of the
criminal politics of the past. Long before AfD leader Gauland declared
the crimes of the Nazis to be merely “bird shit in over a thousand years
of successful German history,” the then-foreign minister and today’s
federal president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD), proclaimed that
Germany was “too big to only comment on world politics from the
sidelines.” Political scientist Herfried Münkler added: “It’s not
possible to pursue a responsible policy in Europe if you have the idea
that we have been guilty of everything.”

In the population, however, the return of German militarism meets with
overwhelming opposition, which now coincides with an intensification of
the class struggle. After 20 years of social redistribution from those
at the bottom to those at the top by both SPD- and CDU-led governments,
social relations are torn to shreds. Several labour market reforms have
created the largest low-wage sector in Western Europe. Young people are
hardly able to find a regular job; only 44 percent of new employees
receive a permanent contract. Poverty is exploding. On the other hand,
45 super-rich individuals possess as much wealth as the poorer half of
the population.

Many workers and young people can sense that capitalist society is
bankrupt and are looking for an alternative. The lectures “200 Years of
Karl Marx—The Actuality of Marxism,” organized at seven universities by
the youth organization of the SGP, the International Youth and Students
for Social Equality (IYSSE), attracted an audience of a thousand.

The ruling class is responding to this radicalization by returning to
the authoritarian policies of the 1930s, cracking down on socialists and
adopting the policies of the far right. This crisis is stripping off the
“democratic” facade of German capitalism to reveal the original brown paint.

During the Weimar Republic that preceded Nazi rule, the secret service,
police and judiciary ruthlessly persecuted socialists and opponents of
war and strengthened the Nazis. In 1923, while Hitler was sent to prison
for nine months for a bloody coup attempt, where he wrote Mein Kampf,
the judiciary put the editor of Weltbühne, Carl von Ossietzky, in prison
for twice as long for anti-militarism. He was then tortured to death.

In the end, Hitler did not come to power through a popular movement, but
through a conspiracy within the state apparatus that gathered around
Reich President Paul von Hindenburg. The Nazis had suffered a serious
defeat in the parliamentary election two months earlier and faced
financial bankruptcy. Hardly had Hitler consolidated his power than the
judiciary, secret service, police and military seamlessly subordinated
themselves to him.

These are the traditions behind which the grand coalition and the secret
service are now falling into line. Today, however, they cannot rest upon
a fascist mass movement. The AfD is hated by the vast majority of the
population. It is a creation of the state, the establishment parties and
the media, which are eager to spread its right-wing propaganda. Its
leaders stem to a large extent from the CDU, the CSU and the SPD, from
the military, the intelligence services, the judiciary and the police.

With its decision to continue the grand coalition despite electoral
defeat, the SPD has deliberately strengthened the AfD. Although the AfD
received only 12.6 percent of the vote in the federal election, it now
leads the opposition in parliament. Its anti-refugee agitation has
become the official policy of the grand coalition, which uses it to
increase the powers of the state, divide the working class and fuel
chauvinism.

The BfV plays a key role in this right-wing conspiracy. It has deep
roots in the right-wing swamp. Already 15 years ago, Germany’s Supreme
Court rejected a ban on the far-right German National Party (NPD) on the
grounds that its leadership contained so many BfV undercover informants
that the NPD was a “state matter.” The close periphery of the National
Socialist underground (NSU), which killed nine immigrants and a
policewoman between 2000 and 2004, included several dozen active BfV
undercover informants. One informant was even present at the scene
during a murder, supposedly without noticing anything. The Thuringia
Homeland Security, from which the NSU recruited support, was built with
funds provided by the BfV.
Defend the SGP

The SGP has become the target of this conspiracy because it consistently
advocates a socialist program. It has not adapted to the anti-refugee
agitation of the establishment parties nor to the identity politics of
the middle class. It is fighting to mobilize the international working
class behind a socialist program to overthrow capitalism. As a section
of the International Committee of the Fourth International, it stands in
the tradition of Leon Trotsky’s Left Opposition to Stalinism.

The Trotskyist movement fought persistently against the rise of the
Nazis in the 1930s. Leon Trotsky’s analysis of National Socialism, his
warnings of its consequences, and his criticism of the fatal policy of
the Stalinist German Communist Party (KPD), which refused to draw a
distinction between the SPD and the Nazis and fight for a united front
against Hitler, are still of burning relevance and are among the best
works ever written on the subject.

The Trotskyists were brutally persecuted by the Nazi secret police, the
Gestapo. In 1937, a court in Gdansk sentenced ten Trotskyists to long
prison sentences in a show trial. The Trotskyist victims of the Nazis
include Abraham Léon, author of a Marxist study of the Jewish question,
who conducted illegal socialist work in occupied Belgium and France and
was murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. The fact that the
Trotskyist movement is being persecuted again, just after the first
right-wing extremist party has entered the Bundestag, underscores the
shift to the right of official politics.

In contrast to the lies spread by the so-called Federal Office for the
Protection of the Constitution, the SGP fully defends democratic rights.
The fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution—for the
inviolability of life and physical integrity, for equality before the
law, freedom of conscience, expression, assembly and the press, the free
choice of profession, etc.—remain, however, dead letters and turn into
their opposite so long as the economic foundations of society remain in
the stranglehold of the private owners of capital. A socialist program
is the prerequisite for the realization of real democracy.

If the working class does not overthrow capitalism in the foreseeable
future and build a socialist society, a relapse into barbarism and a
Third World War is inevitable. This is not only the lesson of the
catastrophes of the twentieth century, it is inherent in the tremendous
pace with which all the imperialist powers, led by the United States
under Donald Trump, are expanding their military forces, intensifying
existing wars and preparing new ones.

The BfV has targeted the SGP because its Marxist analysis is being
increasingly confirmed. Alarmed by growing opposition to exploitation,
inequality, repression, war and right-wing extremism, the BfV and its
masters in the grand coalition want to prevent the SGP’s socialist
program from gaining influence. The BfV report explicitly states that a
year ago, the party changed its name from the “Party for Social
Equality” to the “Socialist Equality Party” and thus expressed its
socialist aims in the party name.

The SGP has for years been the subject of media denunciations for
opposing the revision of German history and rehabilitation of the Nazis.
When the SGP and the IYSSE criticized right-wing extremist historian
Jörg Baberowski, the media unleashed a storm of indignation.

Baberowski defended the Nazi apologist Ernst Nolte and publicly declared
that Hitler was “not vicious.” The IYSSE linked this directly to the
return of German militarism. Germany could not return to a policy of
militarism, it explained, without developing “a new narrative of the
twentieth century,” “a falsification of history that diminishes and
justifies the crimes of German imperialism.”

The criticism of Baberowski found substantial support among students.
Numerous student representative bodies agreed with it. The ruling
circles were alarmed. The conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
accused the SGP of “mobbing” and complained about its “effectiveness.”
The presidium of Humboldt University backed up the right-wing extremist
professor and declared criticism of him to be “inadmissible.” For more
than a year, Google, in close consultation with German government
circles, has been censoring left-wing, anti-war, and progressive
websites, most notably the World Socialist Web Site.

>From the Left Party and the Greens have come only a cowardly silence, or
they have supported Baberowski and the actions of the grand coalition.
They do nothing to counter the growing influence of the right wing or
even—like the Green Party mayor of Tübingen, Boris Palmer, and the Left
Party politicians Sahra Wagenknecht and Oskar Lafontaine—join in its
chorus of refugee-baiting.

Even the academic “left,” including many followers of the Left Party,
have been silent, apart from a few laudable exceptions, and knelt before
the right-wing offensive. This did not change even when Baberowski
publicly agitated against refugees and founded a discussion group in
Berlin in which numerous figures from the right-wing extremist scene
participate.

The BfV’s classification of our party as a “left-wing extremist”
organization is another attempt to suppress the SGP and its socialist
politics. It is aimed at the SGP, but targets anyone who is fighting
against social inequality, militarism and oppression and who advocates a
socialist perspective.

The SGP will not be intimidated by this attack by the grand coalition
and its intelligence agency. It originates from an unpopular government
that is despised and rejected by large sections of the population. We
reserve the right to take legal action against it. We will continue our
work and strengthen our efforts to develop the influence of the SGP
among workers, youth and students by all legal means at our disposal.
Among other things, we plan to participate in the European elections
next spring.

We turn to all those who want to oppose the growth of the right,
including serious members of the Left Party, the SPD and the Greens, and
call on them to protest against the attack by the BfV and defend the
SGP. We demand that the intelligence service cease the monitoring of the
SGP and all other left-wing organizations, and that this right-wing
hotbed of anti-democratic conspiracies be dissolved.