Punking Berlin’s anarchist movement.
I parodied Antifa’s political rhetoric and snuck stickers onto the walls of self-consciously radical bars in Berlin.
Understanding the left
Berlin has a very active and vocal left-wing political movement. In many bohemian quarters flags, stickers, and graffiti espouse the ideological tropes of the progressively liberal and the radically left.
Given the chauvinist, fascist and then communist chapters in Berlin’s past, liberal activism and candid public discourse have been instrumental in Germany’s drive for democratic realisation. Left-wing movements are important, but today in the warm summer heat of peace and prosperity radical ideologies slowly stultify.
Antifa is a European antifascist anarchist collective whose leaderless and touchingly impassioned cohorts have been particularly strident. During demonstrations they cover landmarks in red canvas and fire red and black fireworks from the roofs of housing estates. This is the spectacle of popular dissent, and it is met by the cheers of a genuinely concerned but unquestioning middle class.
Support in Kreuzberg and Neukölln is wide. The walls, windows and toilets of many local bars are covered in homemade Antifa stickers, posters and graffiti that promulgate stirring but quixotic convictions such as: Smash Capitalism, Smash Nationalism, and Fuck the Police.
Grass-roots activism is sexy and effective, but it also evinces a worrying lack of focus or historical context. Systems are complex, and most of them support in some way those that wish to destroy them. I support the left, but they take themselves a little too seriously. So, I made my own Antifa stickers in order to poke fun at their solemnity and hopefully to engender a gentle questioning of their rhetoric.
I took the standard Antifa liberal aesthetic and paired it with nonsensical or politically conservative bombast. I wanted to see how long these contradictory statements would last on the walls of Berlin’s most radical bars, and incredibly after several months, many of my stickers remain.
Please remember this was all done in jest. There are serious issues in the world, that the left is earnestly trying to grapple with, but that doesn’t mean we should lose our sense of humour, pragmatism, or our ability to compromise.
♥ für alles.
