Concerning the Recent Raids across Europe and Ongoing Repression from the Hamburg G20

[The ongoing repression linked to last year’s G20 summit in Hamburg has not been much discussed outside of Europe. Mobilizations against global bodies like the G20 are international traditions (whether or not we consider them to be wise), beyond the sense of international that exists in Europe where borders are less stark. These summits exist as heightened moments of repression that shift around globally, providing local police forces and their masters with enormously enhanced resources to crush anarchists, non-electoral leftists, and others who persistently oppose them locally. The G20 as a policing operation is carried out by different police forces around the world, but the phenomenon is international in scope and recognizing it is a necessary first step in linking our struggle through solidarity.

[In North America, a similar insistence on crushing protests that the state considers to have gone too far is visible in the ongoing J20 repression in the United States and on a smaller scale in the use of G7 policing resources to go after anarchists in Hamilton, Ontario and other Canadian cities. The scale of the hunt initiated by the Hamburg police is beyond either of these and in fact the only recent reference point I’m aware of in North America are other summit protests where the state was humiliated in the streets, notably in Toronto in 2010, where international warrants were still being carried out over a year after the demonstrations took place.

[I don’t always agree with the analysis of repression the comrade from Hamburg is putting forward in this piece, but I still think what they have to say is extremely valuable. I won’t pick out every point, but the narrative of “the German state managed the summit badly” is strange to me, since the good management of a summit’s security isn’t something I think we should care about. I changed the title for this reason, but the original title is translated literally below and it might just refer to the state needing to save face.

[However, the person interviewed remains strongly in solidarity with the courageous acts that took place in the streets during the summit and continues to centre them in their analysis, which to me is a sufficient basis for translating and republishing their words. They also offer specific reference points for solidarity that we can make use of on the other side of the Atlantic. As well, the urgency of the issue of censorship raised in the final paragraphs is largely missing from our conversation in North America.

[All translator notes are in [square brackets], all italics outside brackets are the author’s, and all footnotes are from the original text. More updates in English on G20 repression are available here: https://unitedwestand.blackblogs.org/en/]
Read the rest of this entry »