Defying police and neo-nazis
100,000 honor Luxemburg-Liebknecht in Berlin
By Greg
Butterfield
Some 100,000 people marched in Berlin Jan. 15 to mark 81
years since the murders of communist heroes Rosa Luxemburg and
Karl Liebknecht.
An army of police ringed the march. Snipers looked down from
rooftops. They were supposedly there to guard protesters
against neo-Nazis.
But most marchers believed the show of force was really
meant for them.
Workers, students and militants were undeterred. They
marched defiantly, denouncing Germany's aggression against
Yugoslavia in collusion with the United States and NATO.
Germany's Social Democrat/Greens coalition government led the
charge to war last year.
The anti-war thrust gave the yearly commemoration special
significance.
This year's mass demonstration was originally scheduled for
Jan. 9. After a neo-Nazi terrorist, Olaf Juergen Staps,
threatened to machine-gun march organizers and throw grenades
at the crowd, the Berlin police had the pretext they needed to
ban the march.
More than 3,000 leftists defied the police ban Jan. 9 and
staged protests throughout Berlin. They explained that the
German government and ruling class have long fostered neo-Nazi
movements while trying to repress the revolutionary left,
immigrants, labor unions and the women's movement.
That day police arrested 219 and injured dozens more in
street fighting.
The leadership of Party for Democratic Socialism, which is
the main organizer of the annual event, went along with the
police ban to the disappointment of militants. But the
rescheduled march turned out to be a big success. It showed the
cops and the Berlin Senate that progressives refuse to submit
to right-wing intimidation.
The PDS--the official successor to East Germany's Socialist
Unity Party--was the only party in the German parliament to
oppose the war against Yugoslavia.
Who were Luxemburg and Liebknecht
Luxemburg and Liebknecht were among the first socialist
leaders to stand up against their own government during World
War I. They denounced the war as imperialist and called on
workers and soldiers to resist.
They also fought the official leaders of the Social
Democratic Party who backed the war effort. Liebknecht was the
only member of the German Reichstag, or parliament, to vote
against war credits in 1914.
Along with Lenin's Bolsheviks in Russia, Luxemburg and
Liebknecht's Spartakus movement rallied revolutionary anti-war
forces throughout Europe. Later they founded the Communist
Party of Germany.
On Jan. 15, 1919, the two revolutionary fighters were
arrested and murdered by the military, which was acting in
collusion with the Social Democratic government. The military
had just repressed a failed workers' uprising in Berlin.
Economic unrest in today's
Germany
The reactionary crowing that followed the fall of the Berlin
Wall 10 years ago and the subsequent destruction of the
socialist German Democratic Republic has been washed away in a
tide of economic crisis and social disaster in the east.
Neo-Nazi violence has skyrocketed. So have racist attacks on
immigrant workers from the Middle East and Southeast Asia.
Unemployment is at record highs in the east, especially
among women. Women's rights--including reproductive
freedoms--have been set back. Workers' social gains are under
attack throughout Germany.
Now a massive political scandal has embroiled former German
Chancellor Helmut Kohl and his Christian Democratic Party. Kohl
has admitted to accepting more than $1 million in secret
donations from an arms dealer for his far-right "German Unity"
party faction.
Today Rosa Luxemburg's last message to her comrades rings
true:
"Even in the middle of the battle, amid the triumphant
screams of the counter-revolution, the revolutionary
proletariat must make its reckoning with recent events and
measure these and their results on the scale of history.
Revolution has no time to lose, it marches on--over the graves,
not yet filled in, over 'victories and defeats'--towards its
great tasks.
" 'Order rules in Berlin.' You stupid lackeys! Your 'order'
is built on sand. Tomorrow the revolution will rear ahead once
more and announce to your horror amid the brass of trumpets: 'I
was, I am, I always will be!'"
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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