Confronting Escalating
Repression in Germany

In the Aftermath of the G20, a Call for Resistance from
the Rigaer 94

Crimethinc.

January 8, 2018
Contents

Background: The Rigaer 94 . . ... ... ......... 3
Rigaer 94: Call for Resistance / Release of Manhunt Pho-

tos of Berlin Police . . .
Response to the Rigaer 94's Call for a Police Manhunt

/ Threatening Letter Received from the Police State . 10

Following the popular rebellion in Hamburg during the 2017
(G20 summit, the German state has sought to crack down violently
on dissent. In August, the police shut down the most widely used
German-language platiorm for radical politics. In September, the
neo-fascist party Alterative fir Deutschiand secured seats in the
German parliament. On December 5, police carried out 24 raids on
leftist and autonomous infrastructure across Germany, seizing lap-
tops, cell phones, and other means of communication. On Decenm-
ber 18, the police published photos of people they accuse of partic-
ipating in the G20 protests. Four days later, an anonymous threat-
ening letter arrived at various autonomous centers around Berlin.
Together, these events indicate a rapid descent towards tyranny.
Yet German anarchists are resisting every step of the way. The
Rigaer 94, a social center in Berlin, is emblematic of their coura-
geous defiance. Here, we present some background on the Rigaer
94 and share translations of two statements on the conflict unfold-
ing in Germany.

Background: The Rigaer 94

The Rigaer 94 is an autonomous housing project and social
centerin the Berlin neighborhood of Friedrichshain. The house has
been atthe center of many conflicts with the police, especially over
the past two years. In 2016, the police declared the area immedi-
ately surrounding the Rigaer Strasse to be a “danger zone.” This
designates a zone in which the police do not have to obey the law,
where they may act according to the supposed imperatives of “se-
curity.” Berlin police regularly carry out ilegal searches and set up
control checkpoints in the neighborhood to harass inhabitants of
the Rigaer Strasse.

In summer 2016, a 500-officer SWAT team raided the Rigaer
Strasse and occupied the building’s social center, The Kadter-
schmiede. Police held the social center for three weeks. In
response 1o this siege, hundreds and hundreds of luxury cars
were burnt in night actions all over Germany. A 5000-person
demonstration mobilized people from all over Europe to de-
fend the autonomous center. The demonstration clashed with
the police, receiving support from the neighborhood and from
autonomous centers across Europe.

The fate of the Rigaer was to be decided in a court battle. Yet
on the night before the verdict was to be announced, a car belong-
ing to the state’s prosecutor caught fire. As a result, the prosecutor
failed to appear in court the next day. The prosecution thus for-
feited the case and the Rigaer Strasse won by defaul. Since then,
the police have tried numerous times to provoke the autonomous
center into conflicts.

Rigaer 94: Call for Resistance / Release of
Manhunt Photos of Berlin Police

This text appeared in German on December 17, 2017.

The police state has set its forces loose: on Monday, Decem-
ber 18, the police published photographs of the faces of one hun-
dred people who took part in the resistance to the G20 summit in
Hamburg. The state has discarded the pretext of criminal prose-
cution entirely. Instead, it has made a major provocation against
our movement by launching a new campaign of repression. This
campaign is intended to strike fear into the hearts of those who par-
ticipated in the G20 summit in order to crush all resistance. We will
not be silent about this attack. The task of dragging this society of
police collaborators, murderers, and fascists onto the funeral pyre
remains before us.

Itis clear to every reasonable person thatthe resistance in Ham-
burg was necessary. The forces of repression and the right-wing
media have failed to reframe the narrative of the outpouring of de-
fiance against the G20 summit. In a country that proclaims itself to
be among the most democratic in the world, a country that presents
itself as invincible, a country equipped with a sophisticated appa-
ratus of violence, and in the face of enormous risks and serious
consequences, tens of thousands of people dared to rise up. A
mix of protests and offensive actions turned the summit of the rul-
ing class into a disaster. A disaster for the city of Hamburg and a
disaster for the powerful 20 leaders themselves, whose most im-
portant meeting now faces an uncertain future.

The summit was also a disaster for the police. In the Kaiser's
Germany, in fascist Germany, and today in democratic Germany,
the police have never limited themselves to a merely executive
function. They have always served as the front line for this na-
tion of murderers. We all know how deeply anchored the ideology
of the police is in our society. A society that threw Rosa Luxem-
burg's corpse into the canal; that hunted Anne Frank behind her
bookcase, to throw her into the extermination camps alongside mil-
lions of other “subhumans; a society that ends up crowning the
German-national military as the resistance’—this is a fascist so-
clety. The security apparatus of Germany, which was established
during those slaughters and is now used to relentlessly hunt rebels
and anti-fascists in the name of the German people, is also fascist.
Just afew years after its “liberation,” this society and its executives.
were able to unite in the hunt against communists.

The German security apparatus was refined to perfection when
it was used against guerrlla groups like the Red Army Faction,

T The German miltary is so unpopular that it has to portray joning the il
tary as an actof resistance.” as nobody wants 1o join. The miltary released a
new youlube series which s an example of this.

# The end of World War Il and subsequent occupation of Germany by West-
erm powers and the Soviet Uion s usuall referred to as Germany's “Tberation.
implying that Germany was successfuly cleansed of fascism.

5
which carried out the long-overdue execution of Hanns Schieyer.
a member of the Nazi Party. The faces of rebels were posted on
every corner on manhunt posters; at every intersection, heavily-
amed police maintained checkpoints. The death penalty was re-
introduced and the nature of police work shifted. A new social
discourse devised by a coalition of media, politicians, and police
paved the way for state assassinations, psychological torture, and
new special laws to be used against a large part of the population.
The police state, il in ts infancy when it murdered Benno Ohne-
sorg*, had to reckon with the permanent threat of insurrection.

Over the years, the German police have developed into a state
within the state. Following the end of the urban guerilla groups and
the new social movements of the 1980s and 90s, we are confronted
with a society that can no longer generate any relevant opposition
o the system. Not even when people are tortured and murdered
in the bunkers of police stations, lie Oury Jalloh from Dessau,
who was burned alive by the fascist pigs. At the moment, the only
factor inhibiting the completion of this totalitarian police state is its
hesitance to scandalize civil rights activists too much. These civil
rights activists, who like us are continually deprived of resources
and support from civil society, have made their decision—whatever
the state does cannot be wrong, whatever the press says is true:
resistance is futile.

The time of comfortable protests is long gone. Today, German
soclety has arrived at an extreme it hasn't reached in over 80 years.
Those who resist face the following challenges:

Hanns Martin Schleyer served inthe SS during World War 1. Afer the war,
he became an important indusiialleader in Wes! Germany. The fact that promi-
nent Nazi figures could st hold power after WWII confirms that de-Nazfcation
never took place in Germary. This helps to explain why the RAF kidnapped and
murdered Schieyer in 1977.

“The university student Benno Ohnesorg was murdered by German police
during a demonstration in 1967. His death was an important moment in the Ger-
man student movement; the June 2 movement was named after the date of his
death
* Mere presence at a demonstration can mean receiving a
prison sentence of many years.

« The police can designate zones in which their own laws are
valid.

« The police can designate anyone as dangerous in order to
lock them up and surveil them completely without approval
from a judge.

Already in the lead-up to the G20 summit, sanctions were made
against rebels. People who were designated by the police as “dan-
gerous” received notice that they were forbidden to travel to Ham-
burg. These people were required to sign in every day at the po-
lice station while the summit was taking place, and were threat-
ened with fines and jail time if they failed to obey. In a bid to intim-
idate rebels, police made their surveillance of certain people ex-
tremely obvious, not to mention the extensive secret surveillance
that surely took place.

During the G20 summit, people undermined police control
throughout the entire city of Hamburg, leading to the “adjustment”
of citizens' rights and massive amounts of violence by heavily
amed troops of police.

The police activities before and during the summit were not
qualitatively new. For many years now, the security apparatus has
utilized every major event as an opportunity to mount new attacks
on social conventions. What was exceptional this time was the
number of attacks and how shamelessly they carried out these
attacks against protesters.

What began after the summit was a qualitative leap. Some peo-
ple invented conspiracy theories, claiming that the riots were car-
ried out by the state in order to draw radical infrastructure into a
final repression campaign in which it could be defeated once and
for all. This kind of thinking is idiotic. We know precisely that the po-
Iitical disaster we created in Hamburg was desirable for us. In order

7
to end this conspiracy theory, we claim full responsibiliy for every-
thing that happened in Hamburg: from the first citizens’ protests to
the very last stone that flew at the police.

As a part of that radical infrastructure, shortly after the summit
we organized a demonstration in solidarity with all of those who
were targeted by repression. In the future, we will not shirk our
responsibility to take revolt further. Those who can only see state
conspiracy behind every act of struggle deprive resistance of all
its characteristics; they have no legitimacy to speak in the name of
revolt.

It s clear that the state is fighting to ensure that its narrative
of the events is the definitive one. It must conquer the narrative
as it conquers everything else: our lives and our social structures,
the environment and technology. In this battle for capitalist and
nationalist ends, the state will always end up demanding fascism.
With the same tactics, they try time and time again to delegitimize
resistance by branding it criminal, antisocial, and apolitical. For this
purpose, the German state can rely on its police, its media, and the
German people, as well as its representatives.

It's difficult to say who is the sleaziest of all participants in this
process is. The boss of Soko schwarzer block, who would hunt
everything he could get his hands on with the same fervor; or the
nauseating Scholz, who represents the rotten bourgeoisie of Ham-
burg and their fancy cars; or the representatives of the press who
serve to carry out PR work for the police; or the craven police col-
Iaborators, who deliver people up to brutal repression with the pic-
tures they took with their cell phones, who would rather march be-
hind every Hitler figure than take thei lives in their own hands.

¥ Soko Black Block s the oficial name the German police gave to their cam
paign of repression against G0 pariicipants.

© Scholz i the Mayor of Hamburg, famous for suggesting that the police
give people poison to make them vomil i order to prove that they took drugs:

8
‘Some laughed at the latest wave of raids, which we saw coming
far in advance. Others laughed because they knew that Fabio,”
a nice young man from Italy, would be a problem for the state's
strategy of repression. However, we should not underestimate the
police strategy. An essential part of this strategy is to use PR to
achieve long-term sovereignty of interpretation over the events in
Hamburg.

All the same, who would have thought that so many months
later, thanks to their regular appointments with the press, the G20
would still be a top theme on the daily news? And who would have
thought that despite having almost unlimited resources at their dis-
posal, their professional press work would fail without our doing
anything?

For these reasons, and on the occasion of the manhunt for par-
ticipants in the Hamburg riots against the G20, we want to em-
phasize anew the importance of our struggle against the state—
against fascist organizations like the police, the secret services,
and the right-wing structures—and also against the collaborators
and informants within the population and the press. Fabio and ev-
eryone else who remains defiant in front of the judge are role mod-
els demonstrating a dignified approach to dealing with repression.
The same goes for everyone who sends messages of solidarity to
those targeted by repression, despite the intimidation of the state.

On the occasion of the police manhunt and the state's call for a
new wave of denunciations against 100 people, we have decided
o release photographs of 54 police officers who took part in the
eviction of the Rigaer Strasse last year. We would be glad to re-
ceive any tips, including where these police officers live and where
we can meet them in private. Aside from taking part in the eviction,
they should also be held responsible for all the violence they un-
scrupulously perpetrated during the three-week-long siege of our
neighborhood in Freidrichshain.

7 An 18-year-old Itallan arrested at the G20 and held i prison for 4 months.

9
Itis important that we stop hesitating and put our strength into
mobilizing solidarity and structures that are capable of action. The
demonstrations? after the raids were a beginning. After the next
raids, we must become even more numerous. It is important that
when all else fails, we take the streets o show our solidarity with
all the comrades who are hunted by the henchmen of the ruling
class.

So—out into the streets! Determined and angry, despite the re-
pression, we willfight against the ruling order!

Response to the Rigaer 94’s Call for a Police
Manhunt / Threatening Letter Received from
the Police State

This text appeared in German on December 30, 2017.

On December 22, an anonymous letter was delivered to vari-
ous locations that the authorities have designated as “left-extremist
meeting points.” The nine-page letter, double-sided with three pho-
tos on each side, contains threats against 42 people whose full
names are listed. For 18 of those people, their photos were taken
from the Berlin police department’s records o from people’s ID
cards and are accompanied by partly relevant, mostly slanderous
commentaries. This information can be directly traced to the data
records from the state security departments. In addition, 24 people
were named without their photos.

The letter, reproduced below for the sake of documentation, is
signed by a fake organization called “The Center for Political Cor-
rectness.” The leter claims to be a reaction to the behavior of the
radical autonomous house project Rigaer 94: “Your presence an-

On December 5, police raided several homes belonging to people accused
of participating in a black bloc that the police brutaly atiacked during the G20
‘summit. Demonsations took place all over Germany in response (0 the raids.

10
noys an entire neighborhood.” The letter proves that the people
who sent it were directly affected by the publication of the Rigaer
94's call for a manhunt against the police. In the call, photographs
of 54 police officers who took part in the summer 2016 eviction of
Rigaer 94 were publicly released.

“The letier threatens to publish more information about the in-
dividuals it targelts. It s highly likely that the information and data
records listed in this letter were passed on to Nazis. Many Nazi
organizations are named in the letter, including “Autonomous Na-
tionalists” and the “Identitarian Movement.” For the time being, we
do ot know to what extent this personal data has already been
sent to Nazis. The letter makes nebulous threats—for example,
against people’s cars or families, or that lawyers or investigation
committees will become involved. The letter also threatens to send
the data records to the police. This particular threat is an albi that
proves the letter's authorship. An inital evaluation by a number of
those targeted by the letter has confirmed that the information can
only have been made available to the “scene-aware” state security
officers (LKA 5) that work within the Beriin police department. The
data records are pulled from approximately the last ten years. We
are certain that the letter was created and sent by the Berlin po-
lice, since no one else would have access to these photos or the
biometric information and investigation files.

“The fake moniker reveals more about the authors. “Center for
political correctness” is a play on “Center for Political Beauty.” The
Center for Political Beauty is aleftist organization that uses public-
ity campaigns to fight against racism and fascism. Their last action
was directed at the Alternative For Germany (AID, the far-right Ger-
man party) politician Bjorn Hocke. Hocke made a name for himself
with his pro-fascist remarks about the Holocaust memorial in down-
town Berlin: “We Germans, our people [Volk], are the only people
in the world that has planted a monument to shame in the heart
of our capital” In addition, he complained about the “stupid” cop-

1
ing policy (Bewltigungspolitik)® and demanded that the “memorial
policy shift 180 degrees.” In order to stigmatize him and the AfD,
the Center for Political Beauty secretly rented the empty lot adja-
cent to Hacke's home and set up concrete slabs or “stelae” that
looked exactly like those of the Holocaust memorial in Berlin. They
also publicly threatened to publish the results of their 10-month-
long observation of Hocke from near his house. From this much,
we can conclude that the letter that was sent to us was sympathet-
ically received by the ranks of the Berlin police with their fascist
activities and sympathies—to say the very least.

The threat to forward the data to extra-parliamentary Nazi or-
ganizations such as the Autonomous Nationalists shows that the
authors of this letter are actively involved in far-right organizing.
Furthermore, sending such a letter demonstrates that the authors
have a great deal of confidence in and support from the police de-
partment. This is shown not only by the downright fascist ideology
that the letter expresses, but also by the means itself. Slander and
the sending of anonymous threats are known in all parts the world
where political tension is high and regimes entrust their stability to
security organizations. These techniques were developed in the
1960s in the US, where the FBI used similar methods to target the
Black Panther Party. Named COINTELPRO, this program was ex-
ported to all dictatorships. The East German secret service, utliz-
ing their strategy of “decomposition,” employed similar measures.

Cooperation between organized Nazi groups and the police is
nothing new. During the siege and eviction of the Rigaer 94 in the
summer of 2016, the personal information of people recognized
by the police at the demonstrations was leaked to a Nazi blog
in the "Halle-Leaks.” In addition, fliers illustrated with SS symbols
were distributed in the area expressing support for the police. We

“This concept is specifc o Germany and means “the poltics of coming to
torms with the past”

12
also recall the right-wing activist Marcel Gébel, ' whose false testi-
mony about the Rigaer 94 and the Kadterschmiede'' was enough
for the secret service to classify these places as “Autonomous
strongholds.”

Lastly, the threatening letter confirms the claim made by the
Rigaer 94 in their call for a manhunt against the police: fascist ide-
ology lives inside the police departments, especially the secret ser-
vices and state security. This is cause enough for us to renew our
struggles.

We are ot shocked that the police are carrying out this kind
of repression. We are talking about the same police that murdered
Oury Jalloh. The same police that made headiines throughout Ger-
many because of its contacts with neo-Nazi groups and its es-
capades with individual Nazis.'2 The same police force that let one
of their officers be killed in order to prevent the full investigation of
NSU activities.'

To everyone involved in our movements: we must prepare for
further acts of disinformation, slander, false reporting, psycholog-
ical and physical attacks, and “inexplicable” fires like the one that
oceurred in October 2015 at the entrance of the Liebig 34. The
ones responsible for these acts are members of the Berlin Police

* Marcel Gobel was a right-wing activist who inflrated lefist movements.
During the summer of 2016, when the Rigaer Strasse was being evicted by the
police, luxury cars caught i every night for months on end to protest the eviction
“The police only caught one person commiing arson—and that person happened
10 be right-wing activist Marcel Gobel. Gabel tried to light a poor person's car on
fire to make it appear that leftist actvists were indiscriminately burning cars. In
fact, left activists only bur luxury cars. After Golbel was artested, it was revealed
that he had worked extensively with the police.

' Asocialcenter and event space associated with the housing project Rigaer
9

2 In October 2017, police officers in Rostock came under fire fo their i
volvementin a Nazi plot to murder left-ving activsts.

* The National Socialist Underground [NSU] carried out a series of murders
between 2000 and 2006, mostly against people of Turkish background.

* Another lefist housing project in Berlin

13
department. The police figured out a long time ago that anarchy
cannot be fought with legal means; they have decided on a strat-
egy of direct escalation in the conflict with the Rigaer 94.

One final detail: the letier was sent from the post office in
Tempelhof-Schoenenberg, the same district as the police precinct.
We could never imagine that the police would make such an
amateur mistake, even though they tried to conceal traces that
would reveal who sent the letter. As can be seen in the photos
posted with this statement, we were able to make the fingerprints
on the letters visible. To do so, we made a solution composed of
ninhydrin, ethanol, and acetic acid. We used a spray bottle to mist
the letter and hung it up on a shelf to dry at 80 degrees Celsius.
After about 10 minutes, the results were developed, as seen in
the photos.

—~Some of those targeted by the letter.

14
find each other.

Crimethinc.
Confronting Escalating Repression in Germany
In the Aftermath of the G20, a Call for Resistance from the Rigaer
94
January 8, 2018

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