Zeitgeist and Zeit-Ungeist

Yesterday I read a handful of Guardian articles on the internet, when I was surprised to see an article from the Berlin correspondent that mentioned that a neo-Nazi demonstration was taking place here, today, and that a counter-protest was planned. He wrote that generally counter-protestors had outnumbered the protestors at similar events, but — and this made me worried — that the right-wingers had managed to gather increasingly large crowds.

It struck me because I'd felt uncertain after reading about the Ku Klux Klan and other groups marching in Virginia recently. Was it better no longer to ignore extreme views under the impression they are representative of so few and so little likely to have concrete effects; were the concrete effects in Charlottesville but especially the ambivalence of Donald Trump a sign that ideas like ultranationalism, racism and anti-Semitism are in fact far more widespread than I imagine? Also, am I completely blind to racism that exists here — housing and employment discrimination, street harassment, etc. — because I'm never the target of it?

I thought as a teenager that every person who has 'white privilege' is racist; now I think it's silly. While it is unpleasant to feel that I am certainly not 'colour-blind' and that in the case of strangers my ideas do run along racially problematized lines, I doubt anyone would care about my mental preconceptions, etc., as long as it just makes me embarrassed. It has nothing to do with the actually important, enormous scale of de facto economic, social and political segregation that I've seen glimpses of in — for example — New York.

Either way, the idea of counter-protesting appealed to me. It was not to say that I hate neo-Nazis or to strut around feeling virtuous about clearing a shamingly low threshold of reason and good feeling. The point is rather that I (representing not myself but many others) care enough about the safety and happiness of present-day targets of Nazism — rather than inhumane and horrible ideas of race and nationality — to take the trouble to appear in person and express the alternative point of view.

As J. and I got to Spandau, the thought of a neo-Nazi protest and hatred of foreigners perturbed me as a risk for other Berliners. Seeing pedestrians and fellow subway travellers who were probably from Turkey, from French- and English-speaking African countries, from Vietnam or elsewhere in southeastern Asia, and other places, I wondered how safe they were. What do their children experience in schools or in public, and are their parents afraid for them? etc. Some of the neo-Nazis at this protest were travelling from other countries where their xenophobia might have fewer immediate targets, but what do neo-Nazis in Berlin do to racial minorities?

We reached the U-Bahn station Rathaus Spandau, where the huge city hall and tower were already rearing behind the entrance. To the left there was a long glass façade in the terminal, on the first floor above ground level, revealed the regional train platforms. On one or more of them, I gathered, the right-wing protestors were arriving. As for the subway, it was hard at first to leave the station because there was such a sea of people in our protest: several thousand, I imagine.

We saw red flags for the SPD party, red flags for the Linke; red flags for labour unions like IG Metall; green flags for the Green Party; and a sail-like triangle for the Pirate Party. Not that everyone need trumpet how Nazi they ain't, but I thought it was a pity and a loss of opportunity that no representatives of the CDU seemed to be present. Two posters for the MLPD, which I assumed to be the German Marxist Leninist Party. Enormous rainbow flags. A handmade white poster with black lettering prodding Neo-Nazis to 'Mach wie Rudolf Hässlich,' in other words to make like Rudolf Hess and in other words kill themselves; and another poster outright encouraging them to kill themselves. Another sign, 'Ob kuschlig oder militant, das Wichtige ist der Widerstand' ('Whether cuddly or militant, the important thing is the resistance').

After a delay, we began marching. Spandau is, I'd say, so far out at the northwestern periphery of Berlin as to be almost in the Brandenburg countryside. People stepped out onto their 20th-century or quaintly older balconies, propped themselves up in the windows, or stood on the sidewalks, watching screenlessly or capturing the scene with their smartphones. Their faces were often beaming, and I liked the weekend-strolling atmosphere of the protest, and the feeling that we were redeeming the reputation and honour of the neighbourhood on the residents' behalf. It was only the very elderly who were stranded at their bus stations who made me feel regret. But I felt a little tearful once, at the thought that so many years after my grandparents' awful experiences in the 1930s and 40s people were continuing to pretend that there was something to be nostalgic about.



Toward the end, the police temporarily blocked our access to the spot where politicians would later hold speeches. It was at an awkward place. There is brick housing where refugees are living along the street. It was a horrible feeling to have the apprehensive faces looking out on us, standing in the windows or peering through the tall fencing that presumably is meant to keep them safe, and to wonder whether their apprehensions were justified. Did they know what the protest was about, and were they worried about the neo-Nazis, or about our marching? It reminded me of the film adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird where Tom Robinson is standing in the jail with the mob gathering outside. A few protestors bellowed 'Say it loud, say it clear: Refugees are welcome here,' but I wished I'd waved to the refugees instead, in the hope that this wouldn't be patronizing or weird but welcoming instead, and I found the shouting intimidating.

The very end was an awkward place because the police building is right there. Barricades were set up around it, and a speared fence sits in front of the minimalist modern brick façade anyway. Three police officers posted themselves in large windows, one of them apparently scanning the crowd with a large camera held at waist level. Here the police officers looked stoic, illusionless and less open; a bulkhead of them clustered behind the plastic barricades, in riot helmets, and then there were sentries at intervals along the barricade. The organizers had been less than friendly about the police in general in their loudspeaker announcements; as a bienpensant bourgeois type I thought that the police's role was to make sure that people wouldn't injure themselves or each other, and that nothing they said deviated from that aim.

After waiting at this bottleneck, J. and I decided to leave. I was wondering what to do if we found ourselves near the neo-Nazi demonstration, and I flippantly considered that I'd shout 'Hoch die internationale Solidarität!' ('Up with international solidarity,' the communist rallying cry, which protestors sometimes intoned along the route). — But there was nothing there on our route — only a handful of Hertha BSC soccer fans in blue and white regalia, and long strings of police vans and officers, and other demonstrators straggling off.

Later on I heard that protestors from our crowd had successfully broken away and (peacefully, it appears) blocked the route of the neo-Nazis. Much as I approve of freedom of expression, it was a relief that their march didn't go very far. Having walked along the streets myself, I felt that nobody who resided there or was travelling there needed to see that.