Stop the genocide in Gaza! Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei holds rally in Berlin for European elections

On Tuesday, the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party, SGP) held a rally against the genocide in Gaza as part of its campaign for the European elections in the Neukölln district of Berlin. Around a hundred workers and young people participated in the event.

SGP European election candidates Christoph Vandreier, Ulrich Rippert, Angela Niklaus and Tamino Wilck presented an international socialist perspective against the barrage of war propaganda and the genocidal pro-war policy of the federal coalition government and all parties of the establishment.

To commemorate the Nakba 76 years ago and demand an end to the genocide, “around ten thousand people took to the streets in Germany. In London alone, a quarter of a million people demonstrated. » Angela Niklaus declared as he opened his speech. “In the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei, we salute the courageous demonstrators in Europe and around the world. »

The ruling class was trying to suppress the protests with police state methods “because they are afraid!” They fear that the anti-genocide protests will be accompanied by social anger from the working class against the government and union leaders,” she said. “Large sections of the population are becoming poorer” and, instead of investing in welfare systems, “hundreds of billions of euros are being spent arming the Bundeswehr (armed forces), providing welfare systems, weapons and militarize society.

Anyone who rejects genocide and war should join the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei because “we reject any national perspective.” The fight against the bourgeoisie and its genocidal and warlike tendency “cannot be won with Varoufakis and his MERA25 (European Front of Realistic Disobedience), nor with RIO or any other pseudo-left group or with more militant trade unionists. Their view implies subordination to the institutions of the bourgeoisie,” Niklaus said. “They all defend the preservation of the capitalist system, responsible for the Nakba and the two world wars.”

“In our international socialist perspective, we rely on the international working class,” which is the only social force capable of “ending genocide and war.”

Tamino Wilckmember of the SGP and member of the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE), focused his remarks on police violence against students and other opponents of the war.

The state responded with brutal repression to the wave of protests that spread across universities in many countries, “strongly reminiscent of the protests of 1968.” “Just as the foreign policy of the ruling class once again supports genocide, it also returns to the methods of the Nazis in domestic policy. »

Wilck described police violence against students and the hate campaign unleashed by politics and the media, in particular Federal Education Minister Bettina Stark-Watzinger (Liberal Democrats, FDP) and the tabloid Pictureagainst teachers at Berlin universities because they declared in an open letter that it was their duty “to protect their students and under no circumstances hand them over to police violence”.

Wilck appealed to pupils and students: “We must go to the workplace and mobilize workers against the genocide. Workers must prepare demonstrations and strikes to end the war industry.

He linked the German government’s unrestricted support for Netanyahu’s fascist government and domestic repression to NATO’s war against Russia. He described how “the German government is working with open anti-Semites and right-wing extremists in Ukraine to carry out its war against Russia.”

“At the end of April, our comrade Bogdan Syrotiuk, one of the leaders of the Young Guard of the Bolshevik-Leninists, was arrested by the Ukrainian secret services” because, as a “principled Marxist and internationalist, he fights to put an end to the war in Ukraine and the unification of the Russian and Ukrainian working class.

Christophe Vandreier

president of the SGP Christophe Vandreier said: “As the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei, we are running in the European elections to build an international movement against war, against genocide and against its root cause, capitalism. » This meant that “here in Germany, a movement against German militarism” had to be built. “Eighty years after World War II, German tanks are once again rolling against Russia and the ruling class is returning to the methods of genocide. »

Vandreier referred to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), who had “requested arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant.” But not only Netanyahu and Gallant should be in the dock, but also “Genocide Joe” Biden, Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock.

“But,” Vandreier warned, “we should have no illusions that the International Criminal Court, the United Nations or any other capitalist regime on this planet will put an end to genocide. You might as well ask a wolf to become a vegetarian.

Vandreier emphasized:

The Gaza genocide is part of a global conflict over the redivision of the world. In Ukraine, NATO is waging a proxy war against Russia, which has already cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of young people. To assert their geostrategic interests, they even risked nuclear war. And the war against Russia is only the precursor to a war against China, which would take on completely different dimensions.

Over the past 30 years, NATO powers have “waged wars that have cost well over a million lives.” The images from Gaza show the atrocities they are willing to commit in the fight for their geostrategic and economic interests. “The fact that the NATO powers are returning to the methods of genocide” has not only shown the bankruptcy of the Netanyahu regime, the governments of Scholz and Biden. This showed “the bankruptcy of the entire capitalist system”.

Vandreier emphatically declared: “If capitalism is not overthrown, conditions like those in Gaza threaten the entire world. » It is not the many workers and young people who express solidarity with oppressed Palestinians who are anti-Semitic. “It is the ruling class in Germany that is perpetuating its fascist roots by sending German tanks against Russia, declaring genocide a ‘reason of state’ and arming itself to a degree not seen since Hitler.”

Calls to parties and governments “that support genocide” were “illusory and reactionary.” This also applied to proponents of a “multipolar world order,” who “placed their hopes in one capitalist regime or another.” None of them will stop the genocide! None of them will prevent World War III.”

Ulrich Rippert

Honorary President of the SGP Ulrich Rippert concluded the gathering with an impassioned appeal:

We are the only party that places the fight against war and genocide at the center of the European electoral campaign. And we are not only appealing, we are not only demanding that the international working class intervene, but we are organizing this international intervention.

We are a revolutionary international socialist party. We oppose national warmongering and the deafening cries of war propaganda by the international unity and international cooperation of the working class.

“All the catastrophes that afflicted humanity in the 20th century – world war, genocide, atomic bombings, fascism, economic crises, pandemics” had their cause in capitalism,” Rippert said, a social system “based on private property goods”, the means of production and the division of the world into nation-states.

“It is no exaggeration to say that the danger of a third world war has never been greater than today. But the counter-movement is also on the rise,” Rippert explained, referring to the radicalization of the class struggle, which was also evident in the protest actions carried out by thousands of people in Europe and around the world against poor conditions. work and wages. However, it was necessary to “break the shackles of the unions and develop a broad mobilization of the working class”. To do this, the working class needed “its own party, the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei”.

Gathering participants

Many participants in the gathering listened to the speeches with great interest and later discussed the issues raised with the SGP members. There was broad consensus that the international working class must be mobilized and united to fight against war and genocide.

The candidates’ clear statements on the responsibility of the federal coalition government of the Social Democrats, Liberal Democrats and Greens in the genocide and police violence met with great approval among the public. “Finally, a party that truly defends the oppressed Palestinians,” applauded three high school students from Berlin and Brandenburg, impressed by the party’s socialist perspective as a response to war and capitalism.

Nadine, who fled to Germany to escape the war in Syria and uses a pseudonym for fear of deportation, said: “Everything you say is true.” She particularly appreciated the fact that “the SGP is in favor of the unity of the international working class”. “Only together can we end wars.” The governments of the imperialist powers “only have their interests in mind, they are not interested in us”.

Another participant, from the former Yugoslavia, also rejected the division “of people according to nationalities”. She accused the “German government, with Green Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer”, of having “bombed her country” and forced her family to flee. “Here we are only second-class people. I have no right to stay because there is no longer a war in my country. »

She angrily alluded to the abject poverty in which large sections of the working class of the former Yugoslavia found themselves plunged: “But what’s the matter! Germany had “already returned to war” to assert its interests.

The table of books at the SGP electoral rally

A student at a Berlin university said he found it normal that the SGP was fighting against genocide. He read the World Socialist Website and had also read a lot about the SGP’s point of view, but he said he did not understand why the SGP always talked about “class struggle”, “the bourgeoisie and the greed for profit”. Wouldn’t a “simpler vocabulary be better,” he asked, instead of words like “socialist class consciousness?” »

In response, Angela Niklaus stressed the need to clearly name the two irreconcilable classes, “the bourgeoisie and the proletariat”, and to explain the reasons for class warfare and war. “There is no shortcut to the necessary political struggle. » Any other solution would only be a “scam”, which would prevent a serious struggle and lead to failure.

Several participants expressed fears for their family members remaining in the Gaza Strip. Some had not received any sign of life for weeks. Hussein, originally from Egypt, stressed how important it was to understand the “whole historical development” of Zionism and oppression in Palestine since 1947/1948. The book “The Logic of Zionism – From the Nationalist Myth to the Gaza Genocide” by David North is dedicated to explaining this historical context and has aroused great interest.