Signs on the wall

The portents of multiple crises are now unmistakable - the collective tension could soon be unleashed.

By Liane Kilinc

[This article published on Dec 7, 2021 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.rubikon.news/artikel/zeichen-an-der-wand]

In many ways, we are at war. It is a rich versus poor war that is now being waged around the world with unprecedented ferocity. The Corona measures resemble a castle siege designed to wear down those trapped inside. Meanwhile, other crises are already looming on the horizon. Wars, energy crises and a shortage of raw materials could very soon lead to a considerable intensification of the already smoldering conflicts. The nerves of the population are already frayed. Further upheavals in the outside world could lead to a social unloading of unprecedented proportions.

When you think about the past year, you instinctively look for a wall with lines scratched into it.

365 strokes, four vertical, one diagonal; the way prisoners mark time.

For the whole year was a captivity. With changing rules, sometimes a little more output, sometimes a little less, but just above all a time that we did not control, but in which we were controlled, and could never predict what our guards would think of next.

Normal political life stood still. Expressions of discontent were suppressed by all available means. In handing out bans on demonstrations, people in this republic have never been as "generous" as they were last year.

Civic democracy has become as threadbare as a worn-out shirt.

What we want to keep an eye on, the development of the international situation, the economic crisis, you now have to gather from all kinds of sources; apart from the propaganda against Russia and China that flares up again and again, the corporate media only know one topic:

Corona, Corona, Corona.

It is no wonder that many are afraid of it. The mask-wearing, the mandatory testing, these are all rituals that anchor in the mind that there is a terrible threat lurking there.

And it requires enormous mental discipline not to give in to it.

To avert your gaze and say: There are more important events than Corona.

There's the Donbass, for example. The West has resupplied the Ukrainian army with weapons; there are many indications that the attack that was averted in the spring is now imminent in the winter.

Germany's still-Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, along with his French counterpart, has written to Sergei Viktorovich Lavrov stressing that direct talks between the Donbass republics and Kiev are not necessary. Thus, two of the three guarantor powers have abandoned the Minsk agreements, the core of which were precisely these direct negotiations. And at the same time, the local newspapers are filled with completely far-fetched reports about an "imminent Russian invasion."

The places near the front in the Donbass always experience very directly how much the West wants war right now. In Yasinovataya, Gorlovka, Telmanov, they are firing at schools again, bullets from mortars and howitzers are flying there at night. Yes, they are back to war, even if they would like to have a smaller one and not a big one.

In the coalition agreement recently published by the parties that will govern in the future, they clearly take sides. That of Ukraine.

A Foreign Minister, Annalena Baerbock, is the icing on the cake.

But even to perceive how threatened peace is once again, one must first clear the entire load of Corona from one's mind.

And then you realize with horror that even all the small possibilities for action that we always had as a matter of course - vigils, demonstrations, distributing leaflets - have become almost impossible.

We already have a hard time talking about this perception.

We once learned: Why is it necessary to defend democratic rights? Because they provide more favorable conditions for struggle.

For a long time, the conditions of struggle have not been as difficult as they are today. Because the first, fundamental right that makes the path from class per se to class for itself possible in the first place has been largely abolished, the right to assemble. Worse.

Like prisoners

While the Corona measures condemn us all to an existence as individuals, each in his cell, alienating us from each other with masks, making any experience of collectivity impossible, at the same time, systematically, countless new trenches are being dug across all the protesters.

In the beginning, there was the accusation of "cross-front" that divided the peace movement in 2014. Then that of racism. Then the term "climate deniers" emerged. Then "lateral thinkers." And in the last few weeks, the tallyho is being sounded on the unvaccinated.

Yes, many of us still manage to keep a clear head. But it becomes more laborious, and at every step, a few of the few are lost again.

Thinking itself is in a state of siege.

I see this in my patients: One day they're angry that vaccination doesn't deliver what they were promised, and the next they're panicked that someone unvaccinated might get too close.

They no longer have the strength to check the truthfulness of every thought and every feeling. Many easily open themselves to the inhumanity that is preached daily.

Actually, we know which questions are important.

At the top of the list is the question of war and peace. The struggle for democracy. The daily struggle of the different groups, in which one must ask oneself with every development: Who does it benefit? We know this, and yet we need each other not to forget it.

Everyday life serves us Corona, Corona, Corona.

Last year it was the children who were the bad guys, killing their grandparents. Now it's the unvaccinated with whom "you lose your patience."

We must stay sane. We must not see a monster in the other, in our fellow man, because otherwise we will treat him like a monster.

And thus we are where the class enemy wants us to be. Because this training for internal enemies is always also a training for external enemies. It is part of the deadening that makes it possible to wage wars. Imperialist wars that need obedient but not thinking soldiers. That need people who willingly abdicate their responsibility for their own actions and do as they are told.

One means of getting people to do this is fear and insecurity.

A second means is constant overtaxing. This drives people back into a childlike state in which they experience obedience as salvation.

We experience it day after day.

And no, it is not a conspiracy theory to see these measures as preparation for war.

Let's take a simple example:

The Federal Ministry of Health itself commissioned a survey of the unvaccinated that found that more than half would get vaccinated if other vaccines were available. These other vaccines filed for approval with the EMA months ago, and if the federal government wanted them, they would be approved very quickly. Instead, measures are being introduced that are dangerous, like 3G in mass transit. Dangerous because there will be failures. Because people who work in jobs that are desperately needed, like nursing, among others, will fight back. And be it by simply stopping working. That can hit signal boxes, power plants, vital parts of utilities. Anyway, we don't want other vaccines, we're going to do 3G.

That's not logical, at least not as health care.

Preparing for war

But if you want to put as many people in this country as possible in a state of mental emergency after the outer one is already permanently established, then such an approach makes sense.

And these are preparations for war.

The Corona measures are not the only thing by which minor and major collapses are risked.

Gas prices are exploding because people in Western Europe are speculating on them; Nord Stream 2 is being delayed; the coming German government wants to shut down coal-fired power plants, but will only allow new gas-fired power plants if they can also run on hydrogen; such gas-fired power plants have not even been developed yet.

At the moment, all signs point to a collapse of the power supply.

Or, very topical: There are too few truck drivers; for years now, drivers from all over Eastern Europe have been employed in Germany. But they have to pay for their training here themselves; the pay remains modest. And now many drivers from the Balkans are not allowed to enter the country because their vaccinations are not recognized here, and the companies are overwhelmed with the daily tests that the drivers need, not to drive, but when they load and unload ... So there are few drivers left.

Or the vaunted electric mobility. The cars are basically only useful as a second vehicle for shopping; they lack the whole infrastructure of power outlets and charging facilities. They are supposed to be built, but there aren't even the construction crews to lay the necessary cables, and the price of copper is rising massively right now.

We're making more strokes on the wall.

We must continue to struggle for our sanity, and more than that, our humanity.

The further it is surrendered in society, the stronger we must hold on to it. This struggle was and is always an important part of our struggle, even if it does not produce any visible successes at first.

It was Antonio Gramsci, who wrote his most important texts in prison and who is gladly watered down by some to the point of liberal vagueness, who divided the class struggle into phases of war of movement and phases of war of position.

The war of position, that is the constant state of siege of the trench. Today and here we are deep in the war of position, and the task is simply: to hold.

What Gramsci called the war of movement is the revolutionary phase.

In which the position of the classes themselves is in flux and completely new positions can be won. War of movement, these are the days in which society evolves by decades. They are to be anticipated, because what we are experiencing is not stable rule.

Stable rule does not require such coercion.

And yet, now, until times change, until the fog of Corona clears or is blown away, we simply must hold the fort. Draw our lines on the wall, guard our humanity, and maintain patience, knowing that this guarding of humanity is the hardest part of the struggle.

Whatever else is being attempted to make people here put up with a society that mutilates its own productive forces so that the ruling class can remain in power - we know that these plans must fail.

Times are changing, the huge plans

of the powerful come to a halt in the end.

And do they also go along like bloody roosters,

the times are changing, and violence will not help.

Liane Kilinc, born in 1972, is an industrial and financial clerk, business economist and has been working in care for 16 years. She was a competitive athlete for 15 years during her childhood and youth and multiple GDR champion in the national squad of youth track cycling. Since 2015, she has been chairwoman of the association Friedensbrücke-Kriegsopferhilfe e.V..