Stellungnahme von Algiers zu den Vorgängen um ihren Auftritt in Hamburg
Laut der Band Algiers kursierte in Hamburg eine Petition, in der gefordert wurde, die Band vom diesjährigen Plasterstrand Campus Festival, einer Veranstaltung gegen Rassismus, auszuschließen.
Nachfolgend ihre vollständige Antwort dazu.
Hinter diesen diffamierenden Angriffen steht das Junge Forum der DIG Hamburg. Das Festival wurde aufgrund universitätsinterner Schwierigkeiten kurzfristig abgesagt, die offensichtlich keinen bezug zu den Angriffen der JF DIG Hamburg haben. In einer Stellungnahme hat sich der AStA Uni Hamburg aber ebenfalls mit der gleichen diffamierenden Haltung positioniert und gleichzeitig die Band Algier trotzdem am Samstag, den 14. Juli in Hamburg auf dem Allende-Platz spielen lassen.
Die Ereignisse in Hamburg reihen sich ein in eine Vielzahl von Diffamierungs- und Ausgrenzungskampagnen in Deutschland, die von sogenannten deutschen “Linken” gegenüber antirassitischen, anti-kolonialen Menschen und Gruppen lanciert werden, die sich für die Rechte der Palästinenser*innen einsetzen. Ohne eine deutlich hör- und sichtbare Antwort der antirassitischen Linken in Deutschland, wird international der Eindruck vermittelt, der Rechtsruck in Deutschland hätte auch weite Teile der Linken erfasst.
A petition is circulating Hamburg calling for us to be banned from the Pflasterstrand Campus Festival, an anti-racism event today, due to our support for justice for Palestinians. Below is our full response.
“It is with considerable disappointment that our interaction in this matter has begun not with the measured and considered dialogue the Pflasterstrand Campus Festival proclaims it wishes to undertake, but instead with protests, petitions and grave and serious accusations against us of one of the most historically rampant and malignant forms of racism blighting the world: Anti-Semitism. That said, considering the gravity of the situation continuing to destroy the lives of the people in Israel/Palestine, we will proceed in good faith.
“To be clear, we fervently stand against Anti-Semitism in all its guises, just as we have devoted our lives to combatting other forms of white supremacist racism, including anti-Muslim racism, anti-Black racism, anti-immigrant racism, Nazism, fascism and all the other malevolent forces deployed by the powerful against us to maintain a hateful status quo. To suggest otherwise is to completely misread and pervert our actions and analyses as a band, which is, first and foremost, committed to anti-imperialism and solidarity with people struggling to live with dignity and meaning against power in all its forms: white supremacist, patriarchal and capitalist.
“Moreover, the elision of Anti-Semitism with a position that challenges one of the world’s most heavily armed state and military apparatuses, Israel, supported by our own countries, the US and the UK, acts to silence and cover the real death and dehumanisation inflicted on Palestinian people and other black, brown and working people within and extant to Israel’s borders. It furthermore undertakes its own racist leap of logic to pronounce that the State of Israel and all people of Jewish description are one and the same, since even in its own words, the polity declares itself to be a multi-ethnic cosmopolitan state and not an ethno-nationalist one.
“Our primary concern in this instance is clear: supporting Palestinian people to achieve justice and reprieve from occupation, enclosure, racism, discrimination and death within and outside of Israel’s borders. We unconditionally support any measure that points to an end to this war, including the right to conscientiously object to the policies of a government through a variety of peaceful means, including boycotts, protests and direct action. The struggle for racial justice in the United States, while still being waged, has achieved some semblance of success through these exact tactics, along with the steadfast determination of millions of activists within and outside the United States to hold the country accountable to its own lofty ideals of justice and equality. To wield the same logic and suggest that this mass movement in the United States, which has included boycotts of white-owned businesses, is tantamount to a racist war on white people is undeniably absurd.
“Our band is built upon a foundation of decolonisation and anti-racism. We draw our name and inspiration not only from the people in Algeria who resisted French occupation, but also the global movements that joined together people from different yet deeply connected struggles all over the world, from the Black Panthers to Tamil people in Sri Lanka. We have spent much of our existence drawing attention to and challenging American and European states built upon imperialism, genocide, slavery, Jim Crow, xenophobia and dispossession. We are children of families directly affected by slavery, genocide and imperialism. It is this global view in support of social and economic justice that drives our engagement on this issue discussed today.
“In sum, we all must remember one thing: the powerful move in so many deleterious ways. They have shifted from simply and violently occupying the bodies and spaces of the oppressed to colonising and weaponising their very language and political claims to justice. Trump and his acolytes in the US, many who uphold ideologies across the fascist spectrum, have mastered this perverse move, undermining the millennia of racism, oppression and violence suffered by black, brown, Jewish and indigenous people and distorting their claims for justice as reverse racism. Through this fantastical rhetorical leap, the powerful now claim they are the persecuted: a distortion that only acts to further entrench power, deflect responsibility and deligitimise rightful claims to justice.
“This is a fantasy that must be combatted at all cost and in every circumstance. We mustn’t enable the perpetrators of violence to undermine rightful claims of the oppressed. We mustn’t let them devalue our struggles for rights and dignity. We mustn’t allow them to further cultivate another tool for the demagogues, the dictators, the financial elite and the oppressors to divide us along false borders of class, race, gender, nation and heteronormativity, nor enable them to wage war against each of us separately to avoid facing the real threat of a humanity from all walks of life struggling in solidarity to dismantle the miserable condition that exists on this Earth.”
Franklin, Lee, Matt, Ryan
Algiers
