The sociologist and intellectual Shkëlzen Gashi, author of “Massacres in Kosovo 1998–1999”, has long been aware of the price to be paid for challenging the dominant narrative of those in power. 

According to the Special Prosecutor’s Office of Kosovo, his offence is “distorting the truth about the Kosovo War of Liberation”. Gashi, however, believes that the reason for the persecution is that he has written “the first book on this subject that avoids hate speech and addresses all victims on all sides, regardless of their ethnicity, religion or political ideology”. 

Gashi’s book lists names, numbers and locations, totalling 10,333 bodies across 83 massacres, arranged in chronological order. “In total I counted 105, but there are 22 about which nothing is known,” he says as he turns the pages featuring photographs of piles of bodies, funerals and mass graves, “and the most significant thing is that, for the majority of these killings, no one has been convicted. 90% of the massacres I recount in the book end with this sentence: to date, no one has been tried or convicted for these crimes.” 

Regarding the identity of the victims, he explains that “90% are Albanians killed by Serbian police, military or paramilitaries. Crimes committed by Albanians account for only 10%; they took place after the war, as acts of unorganised revenge, and were not carried out by Albanian military or police.”

Gashi dared to break the taboo surrounding the war crimes committed by Kosovo Albanians against Serbian communities; at the same time, he honours the memory of other ethnic and religious groups—Roma, Ashkali or Catholics—who have been marginalised from the official narrative and are difficult for both Serbian and Albanian nationalism to come to terms with.

The Albanian writer and dissident Fatos Lubonja has written a scathing article in which he argues that “this lynching speaks volumes about the kind of state that is in danger of being built in Kosovo (…) History teaches us that tragedy, in the form of war or dictatorship, begins when the parties identify with the truth and seek to impose it on everyone by any means”. 

For their part, representatives of the veterans’ associations of the Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK), the guerrilla group that fought the Serbs, are calling for “a law to be enacted to protect the history of the UCK, and for anyone wishing to write on the subject to obtain evidence from the relevant authorities”. Or, in other words, from those who do not question their version of events. 

“Peacebuilding also involves establishing the truth and creating shared narratives about what happened, as well as reconciliation and letting go. In Kosovo, we haven’t had that, and it’s a serious problem. The Albanian and Serbian communities continue to live within their own constructions of reality, so there are competing narratives about the past,” laments Ramadan Ilazi, head of research at the Kosovar Centre for Security Studies.

Whilst this was happening in Pristina, thousands of kilometres away, in a cell at The Hague prison, Hasim Thaci, the former leader of the UCK and the West’s main ally in NATO’s bombing campaign against Serbia, awaits sentencing following the trial that concluded last February. 

The Prosecution at the Special Court for Kosovo is seeking 45 years’ imprisonment for Thaci and three other guerrilla commanders for war crimes, crimes against humanity, kidnapping, torture, cruel treatment of prisoners and murder in 102 cases. 

Whatever the jury’s verdict, which is expected by the end of July 2026 it will have a major impact on Kosovo’s politics: “If he is convicted, it will have consequences for the UCK and would give Serbia a weapon to use against Kosovo and oppose its independence. If they are found not guilty, I believe it would have a major impact on domestic politics, because they would return as heroes,” explains analyst Emir Abrashi. 

Disinformation and Hybrid Warfare

On 24 April, a court in Pristina found three Kosovo Serbs guilty of terrorism and “serious acts against the constitutional order and security of Kosovo” for their involvement in an attack carried out by a Serbian-backed group of armed men in the Kosovo village of Banjska in September 2023, which resulted in the death of a Kosovo police officer.

According to the judge’s verdict, this was a “well-trained” group that “in an organised manner, entered the Republic of Kosovo illegally from the Republic of Serbia with dozens of vehicles, some armoured”. “The aim was to destabilise and destroy the basic political, constitutional, economic, and social structures of the Republic of Kosovo, through a well-organised plan. They attempted to secede parts of the territory in northern Kosovo, which have a majority Serbian population, and join them with Serbia”, the judge argued. 

Furthermore, it claims that the attackers were trained at a military camp in Serbia, and that Serbia provided all the military and logistical infrastructure needed to carry out the attack, in which up to 44 people are implicated. According to a journalistic investigation by BIRN, the grenade launchers seized by the Kosovar police had passed through Serbian state maintenance centres; and the ammunition used by the attackers matches that manufactured in 2022 by a Serbian state arms producer. 

“Serbia continues to harbour hegemonic ambitions over Kosovo,” says Arben Fetoshi, a professor at the University of Pristina and director of the Octopus Institute for Hybrid Warfare Studies, “but it is waiting for a favourable geopolitical context to reclaim Kosovo. Right now they cannot invade Kosovo, which is why they are resorting to hybrid warfare: disinformation, propaganda and acts of aggression to destabilise Kosovo as an independent country.”

“In the months leading up to the attack in September 2023, we detected a large amount of disinformation originating from Serbia and focused on northern Kosovo,” confirms Fitim Gashi, executive director of SBunker, a media organisation dedicated to monitoring and combating disinformation in Kosovo, “and the main argument behind all that disinformation is that the Kosovo government wants to expel the Serbs. The message conveyed by these campaigns, many orchestrated by the Serbian government, is that Serbs are not safe in Kosovo and must take action to defend themselves.” 

According to Ilazi, this is a misguided view of the nature of Kosovo’s political system. “Kosovo wasn’t designed to be a state of a single ethnic group,” he argues, “but I think social media is amplifying these kinds of messages that seek to perpetuate this sense of permanent conflict because certain politicians stand to gain from it. You can win elections by selling dreams or selling nightmares, and I think politics has a lot to do with maintaining this atmosphere of fear and hatred.”

To Question the Narrative is to Question the Elites 

Jeton Neziraj has devoted much of his literary work and his role as a public intellectual to the very opposite: to breaking down taboos, bringing people of different backgrounds together, and telling stories that overcome fear and hatred. This playwright knows well the feeling of being the one who challenges the prejudices of the majority and the demands of the powerful. 

He was one of the promoters of POLIP, the first literary festival to bring together Serbian and Albanian authors. Furthermore, his plays explore the most uncomfortable aspects and blind spots of his country’s culture, politics and society: corruption, the LGBT community, the role of guerrilla veterans, relations with Europe and post-war reconciliation. 

For his plays, he has been branded ‘unpatriotic’, ‘Yugonostalgic’ and a ‘traitor to national interests’. His latest play is “Under the Shade of a Tree I Sat and Wept”, a co-production with a South African theatre company exploring forgiveness between communities.

“I don’t know if I’ve been very stupid or very brave,” says Neziraj as he looks back on all the times his words have proved controversial or divisive. “But I believe that is the role of an artist, to be critical. And I think it’s been useful. I believe there is now more freedom of expression in Kosovo than there was fifteen years ago. There are still problems, of course, but I think that now we wouldn’t have to call the police at a theatre premiere because there are people protesting outside, as happened to us on one occasion, or because veterans wanted to boycott the play which, allegedly, defamed the UCK.” 

It is precisely this problem with veterans that has placed Gashi at the centre of the storm in recent weeks. Gashi, like Neziraj, knew that questioning the heroic narrative of the war was ultimately tantamount to questioning the system of power that has governed the country ever since. 

The former guerrilla leaders and affiliated organisations, explains the sociologist, took control of all spheres of public life: “The university, the judiciary, television, the administration, the political parties and the media are under the control of this so-called elite that has ruled Kosovo for two decades.” In these circumstances, “the UCK has manipulated the war and its memory to stay in power. Since they supposedly liberated the country, they claim the right to rule it and justify their corruption through terror”.

In 2020, Gashi received threats and lost his job as an adviser to President Kurti for stating on television that “some senior officials in the UCK committed war crimes and should be punished for them”. The focus of his historiographical work centres on civilian victims and on the peaceful resistance against Serbian oppression, which, in his view, has been overlooked by official historians intent on highlighting the role of the guerrillas. 

“My aim with this book was to clarify what had happened in each of the massacres. A book like this should be written about every single violation of humanitarian law that took place during the war. First we must know exactly what happened, then there must be reparations, and it is very important that the history textbooks used in schools are revised.” 

The Views of Veterans

Gazmend Syla joined the UCK at the age of 16 and today, at 45, he is the vice-president of the National Veterans’ Association, an organisation with branches in virtually every municipality in the country. Syla speaks with pride of the sacrifices made by his comrades, which, in his view, have not been sufficiently recognised by his compatriots.

We are at the organisation’s headquarters in Peja, one of the main guerrilla strongholds during the conflict, and the walls are covered with flags, emblems and photographs of the martyrs. “Nobody likes war. But you have to go if someone wants to kill you,” he explains after recounting the exploits of some of the “3,000 martyrs” recognised by the organisation.

Syla explains that the organisation’s mission is, at its core, like that of an NGO: “We help veterans when they have a need and mediate with the government to convey their demands.” And what about its influence in politics? “We don’t have a party of our own, but we do have relations with many different parties,” he replies. 

Asked about the trial in The Hague against Thaci and other guerrilla leaders, Syla replies indignantly: it is a set-up against innocent men, the witnesses have been bribed to testify against the UCK and it all boils down, in essence, to “a political issue”. 

The veterans’ association has organised mass demonstrations in Pristina, Tirana and The Hague to demand the acquittal of the accused. He does not wish to conclude the matter without pointing the finger at Western nations: “We fought alongside the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany. They helped create the UCK, fought with us and supplied us with weapons. If we are guilty, then NATO is too.”

Syla is unwavering in his defence of the UCK’s political and military role in Kosovo’s independence, and regards the guerrilla movement as one of the pillars of national life. “We are free now and my children go to school,” he explains, “before, in Yugoslavia, we had nothing and the police and the military would beat us for speaking our own language. We had to fight to be free, and now we are doing well. Perhaps we’re not like Switzerland or Spain, but this is our country and we’re happy here.” 

However, his view on relations with Serbia and the Serbs of Kosovo is not what one might expect from a former guerrilla fighter. “The Serbs are citizens of Kosovo just like anyone else. They’re not to blame. They are my neighbours and I get on with them just fine. Their freedoms and political rights are recognised by the Constitution, and that is how it should be.” 

Syla is highly critical of Prime Minister Albin Kurti’s attempts to exclude Lista Sprska, the main Serbian political party in Kosovo, from the elections or to outlaw it: “They should be left in peace.” 

“The things I think and am telling you now, I can’t say them at meetings with the veterans,” Syla laments, sadly, “there, they only want strong, more aggressive rhetoric. And it’s a shame.”

The post To Question Memory is to Question Power: The Narrative of Violence is Shaking up Political Life in Kosovo appeared first on Untold.

Known for its motto, “a radio open to all the sounds, colours, and vibrations of the universe,” Açık Radyo has been on air since 1995 and has long been a pillar of freedom of thought and speech in Turkey, producing thousands of programs across journalism, culture, science, and the arts.

The story of Açık Radyo exemplifies how, over thirty years of activity, independent journalism has consistently challenged dominant nationalist and state-centric narratives, providing a space for emancipation from various forms of oppression. Throughout these uninterrupted decades of broadcasting, Açık Radyo has documented Turkey’s sociopolitical transformations, internal and geopolitical transitions, and the rise of government repression—which, on 11 October 2024, led to the revocation of its FM broadcast license by RTÜK (Turkey’s Radio and Television Supreme Council), the state media regulator, and the beginning of a still-ongoing legal process.

The reason one of Turkey’s most important independent radio stations was shut down was its use of the word genocide in a program about the Ottoman-era discussing the events affecting the Armenian population in 1915. This incident highlights how censorship against independent media outlets has intensified in recent years in Turkey; how history is often instrumentalized in contemporary politics; and how, even in the most repressive historical periods, censorship has never fully succeeded in silencing voices of dissent.

In fact, soon after the revocation, Açık Radyo transitioned to streaming, renaming itself Apaçık Radyo (“Wide Open Radio”).

Thirty Years of Programming

Conceived by Ömer Madra, a well-known intellectual in Turkey, Açık Radyo was founded in 1995 as a private company by 92 shareholders. The intellectual formation and professional careers of its founders often followed similar paths. Most had started their academic careers in the universities of Istanbul or Ankara during times when campuses were central to student politicization. After witnessing the violent suppression of revolutionary leftist ideology following the 1980s coup, many of these individuals began to embrace a new culture of denouncing threats to democratic principles and supporting emerging social movements.

The ban on all political activities following the harsh repression of the coup forced many intellectuals—some formerly affiliated with political organizations—to rethink their strategies for collective action. Publishing, civil activism, demonstrations and petitions allowed a different model of critical culture to emerge. Thanks to numerous initiatives that grew increasingly popular in subsequent years, a different experience of political engagement became possible—one that questioned Turkey’s state-centric apparatus in favour of promoting a pluralistic society.

The founding of Açık Radyo is a sign of this transition to a new phase of collective political engagement, structured within the logic of cultural and associative public outreach projects. Following the end of the state monopoly on broadcasting in the 1990s and the legalization of private stations, the idea was to create a space that went beyond information—serving as a channel for cultural dissemination and as a forum for expression and dialogue among various local and international associations and initiatives.

In the 1990s, Açık Radyo was the first station to support emerging LGBTQ+ movements. It monitored and denounced rapid urban transformation, real estate speculation, and the severe socio-environmental consequences of the mega-projects launched during the AKP (Justice and Development Party)’s 23-year rule. It also served as a coordination hub for aid and information from earthquake-affected regions, both during the Marmara earthquake in 1999 and during the more recent 2023 earthquakes in Maraş (which also impacted northern Syria).

With a constant focus on public protests—from environmental movements to Pride marches, from feminist struggles to the well-known 2013 Gezi Park protests— Açık Radyo has hosted vibrant debates that, while often limited to specific metropolitan circles, consistently condemned arrests, police brutality, and growing repression against dissent.

“Açık Radyo was not just a radio station. It was—and still is—a commons. A place where the world and Turkey could speak to each other through poetry, dissent, music, mourning, resistance, and care,” İlksen Mavituna, the current editor-in-chief of the radio, explains. 

Similarly, Sevilay Çelenk, Member of Parliament for Diyarbakır told the Grand National Assembly: “Açık Radyo continued to broadcast with a public service ethos in a radio landscape that had lost its power and importance in the face of new media. It did so with very rich content and set an example of radio broadcasting on a global scale, inspiring the world”.

Its 30 years of broadcasting have produced an alternative historical archive of Turkey—one that has consistently promoted dialogue, respect, and collective and individual dignity, both locally and internationally. This material reveals the vitality of grassroots initiatives and everyday acts of resistance that depict a far more dynamic society than the one often represented abroad through purely institutional lenses.

License Revocation

It is no coincidence that Açık Radyo was targeted over a historically charged topic. This is one of many examples of how history is increasingly weaponized to promote nationalist narratives and policies. Nor is it coincidental that the revocation occurred during a peak of repression against media, social networks, publishing, and independent journalism.

Those involved in these sectors in Turkey are acutely aware of the power of words—every phrase or rhetorical choice can be used by censors to justify prosecution. Even drawings or cartoons addressing sensitive issues—especially related to religion or nationalism—can trigger hate campaigns. Moreover, these repressive conditions foster self-censorship, further shrinking spaces for criticism.

There is no manual for learning how to defend against censorship; only experience teaches this. But when repression intensifies, even experience may not be enough. What becomes essential for independent journalism in such contexts is to be represented by highly competent lawyers, to have a strong structure and to have sustained public support.

Over 30 years, Açık Radyo has built such a foundation. Around 1,400 people—aged between 8 and 88, from various social backgrounds—have produced more than 1,200 radio programs. Broadcasting 24/7, the structure of Açık Radyo is entirely volunteer-based, with its programming renewed every four months around core columns on information and culture. Beyond its listeners, the figures achieved by this radio station reflect a community that actively makes radio—thus producing its content.

This large community also ensures the project’s financial independence—not only from the state but also from corporate holdings that dominate Turkey’s media sector and facilitate political interference. To remain independent, Açık Radyo developed a model based primarily on sponsorships, advertising, and especially listener support, which in recent years has covered 70% of annual expenses. This represents an unprecedented model of grassroots sustainability in Turkish broadcasting history.

Following the revocation announcement, this community rallied in support. In the six months after the FM interruption, Açık Radyo has received numerous awards and was featured in hundreds of print publications and TV programs, and thousands of online articles both domestically and internationally. Public statements outside the station drew large crowds, while thousands joined the #açıkradyoaçıkkalmalı (“Açık Radyo must remain open”) campaign.

And so it remained: after the FM ban, the station—renamed Apaçık Radyo (“Wide Open Radio”)—continues its programming via streaming. With the same motto, “open to all sounds, colours and vibrations of the universe,” Apaçık Radyo preserved its structure and spirit while transitioning to digital broadcasting. Thus, it continues to represent a network and a space for its community of listeners even though it can no longer be heard on the radio.

However, moving online required new technical and financial strategies, already challenged by the government’s ongoing legal actions. Securing long-term sponsors becomes difficult when facing state censorship, as few wish to fund projects in political dispute with authorities. Açık Radyo’s open support for Palestine has further deterred some private funding. In these situations, defending against direct censorship is not enough; one must also anticipate the broader economic consequences—both micro and macro—affecting sustainability and open support.

More than a year after the FM license ban, as media attention fades, the long-term challenges remain. Açık Radyo continues to face trial for allegedly violating laws against “inciting hatred and hostility” or “creating feelings of hate” based on race, language, religion, gender, class, region, or religious order. We know well the historical and political weight of words like genocide—not only in Turkey but globally. Yet we must also reflect on the words of accusation, the words of censorship, the words of repression. When these words lose connection with reality—when, as in this case, they are applied beyond their semantic boundaries—they become arbitrary, and dangerous.

The post The Story of Açık Radio and the Sound of Dissent in Turkey appeared first on Untold.

The mass mobilizations challenged autocratic structures, thereby disrupting or attempting to disrupt hegemonic state-society relations and catalyzing a shift towards participatory contestation and demands for democratic reform. 

The new context of heightened socio-political volatility was exploited by regime elites and non-state actors, particularly fascist and fundamentalist factions, to proliferate discourses based on othering, social conservatism and ultra-nationalism often reinforced through securitization regimes, the proliferation of digital surveillance, and restrictive legislation. 

What emerges is a form of digital fascism: the algorithmic extension of state power that invisibly shapes public discourse, weaponizes data and not only silences dissent but also “preemptively works to erase the very possibility of rebellion”.

Social media, Hate Speech and Anti-Black Violence in Tunisia 

Anti-rights ideologies in the SWANA region, including anti-immigrant and xenophobic rhetoric, are interconnected with far-right currents in the global north, as seen for example in the alignment between Tunisian President Kaïs Saïed and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. This ideological synergy is reinforced through formal political cooperation: Meloni’s visits to Tunis and EU-led negotiations on “enhanced cooperation on migration management” illustrate how European powers leverage Tunisia’s economic and political vulnerabilities to outsource border control. 

In practice, these anti-rights ideologies are not merely rhetorical: they translate into concrete state-sanctioned repression. While Meloni has mobilized fears of demographic change and the influx of ‘illegal’ immigration to consolidate power in Italy, President Kaïs Saied has adapted parallel narratives to target Black African migrants within Tunisia. 

Saied’s racist and xenophobic rhetoric, including his February 2023 speech describing “hordes of irregular migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa” as part of a criminal plan to alter Tunisia’s demographics, triggered widespread anti-Black violence, with mobs attacking migrants and asylum seekers and police complicit in arbitrary arrests and deportations. Social media amplified these narratives, providing platforms for hate speech and conspiratorial ideologies, particularly those propagated by groups like the Tunisian Nationalist Party. The combination of state-sanctioned incitement, online amplification, and impunity for perpetrators has created an environment where egregious anti-Black violence is normalized.

One of the most critical issues fueling technoviolence is the inadequacy of content moderation systems, especially those relying heavily on automation. In the region, the linguistic complexity of dialects such as the Maghrebi Arabic dialects confounds these systems. Internal Facebook surveys reveal that only 6% of hate speech in the SWANA region was detected by Instagram’s automated moderation. Such a failure could be explained, as per the findings of Mona Elswah’s 2024 report Moderating Maghrebi Arabic Content on Social Media, by the lack of diversity in natural language processing teams that develop automated content moderation systems at social media companies, combined with insufficient training datasets for Maghrebi Arabic dialects and the recruitment of non-native annotators.

Livestreaming Death in Sudan

In the meantime, Meta has become even less safe. In early 2025, CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled a series of policy changes including the “simplification” of content policies, removing restrictions on topics such as immigration and gender, ending its third-party fact-checking program, and relaxing its filtering algorithms. While these changes were framed as promoting free expression, Amnesty International echoed the warnings of various human rights experts who have raised concerns about Meta’s role in fuelling mass violence and genocide in fragile and conflict-affected societies. Researchers have highlighted that these rollbacks could be particularly dangerous in fragile democracies and conflict contexts, where the absence of fact-checking and robust moderation allows political actors, state-backed influencers, and coordinated campaigns to exploit social media for harassment, racialized violence, and disinformation.

A recent investigation by Sudanese independent platform Beam Reports revealed how the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Sudan are using TikTok to glorify atrocities during the genocide in Darfur. Following the takeover of Al-Fashir, RSF fighters committed widespread massacres and civilian-targeted violence have occurred, with fighters like the notorious commander “Abu Lulu” openly boasting on TikTok Live about killing thousands. These livestreams, often featuring RSF uniforms and direct claims of violence, attract thousands of viewers who send virtual gifts and comments praising the attacks. Clips are then reshared across TikTok, Facebook, X (Twitter), and Telegram. 

TikTok’s platform and algorithms have played a central role in amplifying these atrocities. Despite earlier warnings from Sudalytica in May 2025 about monetized hate speech and propaganda networks, the company has mostly failed to remove accounts or moderate content in Sudan. According to Beam Reports co-founder Raghd Orsud, while TikTok has banned RSF commander Abu Lulu’s account following the report, the broader harm persists, as months of atrocity-glorifying and hate content spread unchecked. Orsud clarifies how a single takedown is insufficient and calls for systemic action: “TikTok must deploy moderation teams fluent in Sudanese Arabic, establish a crisis-response channel for Sudan, preserve and securely archive violating content for accountability while preventing further spread, and proactively block re-uploads”.

The Complicity of Big Tech in Palestine 

In Palestine, researchers and digital rights advocates have documented a longstanding pattern of systemic censorship and bias on Meta platforms, which disproportionately removes Palestinian content while under-moderating hate speech and dehumanizing rhetoric targeting Palestinians, as 7amleh and Sada Social reported. This includes the deletion of posts documenting war crimes, photos of victims, and even content flagged simply for including Palestinian symbols, while similar content from Israeli sources often remains untouched. As documented by Palestinian organizations 7amleh and Sada Social, and highlighted in the 2021 Business for Responsibility (BSR) report and subsequent advocacy by the Stop Silencing Palestine coalition, these practices are embedded within the company’s algorithms and policies, reinforced by high compliance with Israeli government takedown requests. 

A more recent report by 7amleh criticizes Meta for failing to adequately protect Palestinians from incitement and hate speech in Hebrew. It highlights that Meta’s policies are biased and have contributed to enabling harmful discourse during Israel’s genocidal actions in Gaza. The report also points out Meta’s disregard for the provisional measures issued by the International Court of Justice on January 26, 2024, which explicitly called for preventing and punishing “direct and public incitement to commit genocide”.

Social media platforms’ role is embedded in the “Empire stack”, where Big Tech operates in tandem with state power, extending digital forms of domination. This alliance merges with the interests of the military-industrial complex, and in the SWANA region, technologies are not only tested on marginalized populations but also generate enormous profit, as these tools are then marketed and exported to governments and security agencies around the world. 

The region has been both a laboratory and a lucrative marketplace for powerful corporations, profiting from the global circulation of surveillance systems, predictive policing tools, and AI-enabled warfare technologies, a dynamic that has fueled the accelerating AI arms race, where innovations tested in the region are deployed worldwide in both military and civilian contexts.

Silicon Valley has been actively enabling Israel’s occupation and genocide of Palestinians by recruiting Unit 8200 veterans, investing in Israeli surveillance and AI-driven military technologies, and integrating these tools into global cloud and cybersecurity infrastructure. Grassroots worker-led advocacy initiatives such as No Tech for Apartheid and NoAzure for Apartheid have emerged to challenge the complicity of Big Tech in apartheid, settler-colonialism and genocide particularly in Palestine, calling on companies like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon to end all ties to the Israeli military.

In August 2025, an investigation by the Guardian, +972 Magazine, and Local Call revealed that Israel’s Unit 8200 was using Microsoft’s Azure cloud to collect and analyze vast amounts of Palestinian phone communications in Gaza and the West Bank. Following the report and protests by human rights organizations and the No Azure for Apartheid campaign, Microsoft announced on September 25 that it had suspended certain subscriptions and access to its cloud and AI services for the military unit while reviewing the allegations. 

While Microsoft’s decision to disable specific Israeli military subscriptions and services in response to the Guardian’s reporting was welcomed by human rights NGOs as a positive step, it remains insufficient. The organizations have called on Microsoft to conduct a comprehensive review of all its business relationships with Israeli government and military bodies, suspend or terminate any products or services contributing to human rights abuses, increase transparency about its due diligence and the scope of its review, and rigorously apply its AI and acceptable use policies to ensure it does not become complicit in mass surveillance, targeting of civilians, or other violations of international law. 

However, efforts to hold Big Tech accountable remain limited, as documents published in October 2025 revealed that when Google and Amazon negotiated a major $1.2 billion cloud contract with the Israeli government in 2021 (Project Nimbus), they agreed to extraordinary terms, including a secret “winking mechanism”, intended to circumvent legal obligations in other countries while ensuring uninterrupted access for Israeli government and security agencies. Another recent example comes from internal Meta documents shared by whistleblowers, which show that the company repeatedly downplayed and buried research demonstrating the harmful effects of its platforms further highlighting the depth of Big Tech complicity in human rights abuses and the limitations of accountability and tech justice efforts.

In the words of Nadine Moawad, in a region like SWANA, “tech policy problems are compounded with a litany of daily struggles, most devastating of these being occupation, war, conflict, and displacement which affects, we sometimes forget, two billion people, a quarter of the world’s population. People Like Us are often, sadly, irrelevant to or tokenized in global policy”.

The post Targeted by Design: Technoviolence, Xenophobia, and Algorithmic Injustice in SWANA appeared first on Untold.

On the technological side, search engines are being replaced by Artificial Intelligence, the World Wide Web by social media apps, while cryptocurrencies keep rising.

The title of the book was inspired by Cameroonian political theorist Achille Mbembe’s work investigating the extractivist, destructive and world-threatening character of contemporary global capitalism. In this context, Lovink maintains that digital platforms and their owners (X, Meta, Google, Airbnb, Uber, just to mention a few) have reached a (predictable) point at which their logic of treating the world as “an immense reservoir” is ultimately translated directly into political violence. 

We can see this in different forms: when data collection is used to control borders or target civilians, the trivialisation of violence to normalise it and disturb dissent, and deletion to destroy voices and entire communities.

Enrico De Angelis: The book starts with a consideration: we have already lost the battle to change the techno-social aspects that you described in such detail in your previous work. You say there are no imaginative follow-ups on the horizon, no paradigm shift in sight: “The Universe ignores us”. And yet, while Franco Berardi (who is also included in this dossier) calls for a radical withdrawal to enable the emergence of a new horizon, you propose another approach. Also radical, but you say it is the moment to fight back. What should we do? Wait for the moment to leave the platforms ‘en masse’? Or, as you propose at the end of the book, are there other, smaller steps that can be implemented immediately, even by non-tech-savvy people?

Geert Lovink:  The exodus of social media platforms will have to happen together, as Team Human, for a reason, in an urgent setting. Sadly, this will only be done during a period of shock. Addiction and attachment are real. So far there are no effective strategies for the literally billions of users to voluntarily abandon Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, or Google. Ever since 2011, when we started our Unlike Us campaign, where we emphasised the unity of social media critique and alternatives, we have known that the individual guilt trip is going nowhere. Nudging is nonsense. We came to the conclusion that platform/app dependency can be overcome with the ‘tools’ approach. Tools that we use and then put aside. There will be an end to the techno-misery: “We want to see the sunshine after the rain.”

Attempts to reduce excessive smartphone time through awareness campaigns, offline weekends, and blocker apps that help you focus did not make a noticeable difference. The consumer behaviour approach is simply the wrong one. The addiction aspect cannot be ignored, but the medical ‘detox’ angle simply doesn’t work in this context. The desire for social connection in a time of loneliness, the growing travel time within urban sprawls, and the coordination issues of meeting others should not be ignored. Do we need Meta and Google for that? We don’t. Getting your phone out in the elevator is a habit. Uncooling the phone will be a task of the generation after Gen Z.

All the above has been known for years—that’s the sad part of this topic. Regression and stagnation are real. As we are still stuck on the platform, we need to be brave to question the exit strategies on offer so far. 

I am confident that Gen Z will be able to revolt—not just to demand a return to access to social media, as was the case in Tibet and other places where authoritarian regimes, in a desperate attempt to remain in power, limited access to certain apps or even cut off the internet as a whole. But their demand was to get the apps back. They could not live without them. We need to leave our sorrow and open radical vibe labs and experiment. Just try stuff. Besides Signal, DuckDuckGo, cryptpad.fr, and more, get inspired by the Facebook Museum of the Utrecht media arts organisation SETUP, a temporary booth installed in the hall of Utrecht Central Station. Or think of Francesca Bria’s Eurostack initiative that showcases the complexity of interrelated levels of tech, from apps to datacentres, when we demand ‘tech sovereignty’. Let’s add more to this list.

EDA: You write that platform brutality is worse than any other media representation of violence because it is remote, invisible, and indirect.

GL: So far, average users do not notice data extraction. We need to learn from the violence debate over the past decades and apply it to the internet field. The start here is the realisation that the ‘free’ and innocent phase, in which we signed a social contract with Silicon Valley, exchanging free access to apps and online services in exchange for our data, is over. A violent turn has happened over the past five years. 

The question is to what extent we will ‘feel’ the abstract and structural violence that is unleashed. This goes beyond the complaints over annoying ads. Many users, primarily young people, are suffering from mental health issues related to 24/7 use of social media. At what point will this damage have a real and physical impact? 

We witness loneliness, depression, apathy and indifference and the rise of right-wing politics, especially among young people, but often this is still perceived as happening elsewhere, to others. Economic uncertainty, mental breakdown and cognitive poverty are such that it is perceived as cool to be conservative (as a virtual mask or psychic armour). 

Platform brutality is the case when all this is no longer happening to others, and real consequences are no longer information that you swipe away.

What happens when structural violence excludes you, but you cannot find out, or do not even notice? You’re out. No carrier. What’s wrong with this app store? Information is made invisible, just for you. You have no access, but have no idea why, or for how long. You do not get a home loan, visa, job, fellowship or discount. It can be discrimination or just an inconvenience. Or getting worse tomorrow, with an impact only much later. 

Randomness is often part of the tech exclusion logic. Search and you will not find; prompt and you will be offered the wrong information—all presented with the best of customer service intentions and impeccable UX design. I have pointed at the sliding scale of violence, from the creation of a profile, the categorisation of one’s identity, nationality, race, face, fingerprints and iris, genes, to the creation of confined groups, the selection and isolation of them, ultimately to the point of expulsion, removal, extradition or even extermination. 

The inflation of the term ‘genocide’ doesn’t help here, as it is solely focused on that very last part, not on the sliding scale we’re all already part of. Social media databases are the most incredible self-created data repositories of one’s preferences, opinions, and social network ever created—and are immediately at the disposal of authoritarian forces, assisted by the Californian Big Brother. 

Take this example that passed by recently: As 404 Media reports, Google has chosen a side in Trump’s mass deportation effort. “Google is hosting an app that uses facial recognition to identify immigrants, and tell local cops whether to contact ICE about the person, while simultaneously removing apps designed to warn local communities about the presence of ICE officials.”

EDA: From the perspective of social and political movements from the global south, the issue with the platforms can be even more problematic. Let’s take the example of Gaza. On the one hand, as you also remind us, platforms have become directly entangled with the exercise of violence, including their role in deleting content and spreading fake news and bias. At the same time, since mainstream media coverage was also extremely biased, dissent was mainly circulated on those platforms (“TikTok is the problem”). Or, to quote you: “Can event-driven social movements afford to leave behind Big Tech, knowing they own the heads and minds of millennials and Gen Z?” How to respond to this urgency, to the paradox we are all facing? 

GL: Let’s not be moralistic and judge others from a distance. I have and will advocate for decentralised alternatives, but shy away from any suggestion on how people in hardship should communicate. You mention ‘content moderation,’ the infamous US ‘freedom of speech,’ and the censorship by Meta and Google, but the underlying problem there is the tech’s linking of content to IDs. There cannot be dissident content without an encrypted, anonymous delivery mechanism. We need to communicate more and leave less online. A tech renaissance of store-forward? The sky is the limit.

Throughout history, people have given their lives to deliver messages. Please read Georges Didi-Huberman’s Images despite All about four photographs from Auschwitz. As a teenager, my mother smuggled resistance newspapers on her bike in Nazi-occupied Breda. That defined my upbringing. The lesson taught was to fight registration, ID cards and centralised databases (see the chapter on this in Sad by Design). 

The question I have to ask myself is how my generation of what some call ‘internet pioneers’ was allowed to move from pseudonyms and anonymous users to Web 2.0 profiles and rigid ‘real names’ policies (with Google as ‘identity provider’). This is a collective sin, or defeat, if you like. It compromised the word ‘privacy’ for good, which is a travesty on the internet. All this is bad, but it affects people in crisis and war zones the most. What’s evident is the power of the message, regardless of all the petabytes that are collected to be used against us. There’s never an indifference against the signs of life that matter.

EDA: You dedicate the longest chapter to dreams. You say we cannot dream anymore because of social media overstimulation, which crowds our brains and deprives us of the time to ‘digest’ dreams. But dreaming, as you remind us, is crucial when it comes to creating new imaginaries and, therefore, to planning for political change. You launched the “dreamful computing” project, which explicitly tackles this issue. Can you explain what you mean by this expression and how it can be translated into specific practices?

GL: ‘Access to dreams’ is going to be vital for any substantive change. This will be a new era for the interpretation of dreams, that is, no doubt, post-Freudian. However, there is a dark, technological side to this renaissance: the capture and manipulation possibilities that future digital neuroscience will provide. 

To me, the corporate move to enter dreams is summarised in this awful, boring image: their ability to advertise in our dreams. The more material my Sydney friend Ned Rossiter and I collect, the clearer it becomes to us that the dream space will be one of the next Big Tech battlefields. It will be interesting to push the current psychedelic research further – and democratise that field, as it has to be taken back from the pharmaceutical establishment, time and again. 

I follow Erik Davis here, in this context. It is also important to stress the potential of (collective) dreaming that goes beyond the necessary reproduction of the imaginary labour force, and all we have to process during our busy, noisy days. How do you see we can Reclaim the Dream? This is a sincere, open question, as we’re into this not that long. The psychedelic winter was a long one, with generations destroyed by destructive neo-liberal investments into the (online) Self. As Yasha Levine puts it on his Substack in media terms: “The parasocial technology took over from where television left off and pushed society even more radically into an atomised configuration”.

We need to move away from the narcissistic preoccupation, embodied by King Trump. The psycho-political situation even worsens as we enter the phase of techno-fascism, aka techno-feudalism, if you look at it from a political economy perspective. The mental health situation deteriorates so fast that many start to act together. Common tools with real-life gatherings are the answer to this planned isolation. Our dream computing project is part of that movement. “I am dreamin’ man, yes, that’s my problem. I’ll always be a dreaming man, and I don’t have to understand, I know it’s alright.” Neil Young sings while I write this. The helpless state of this dreamin’ man will soon be a thing of the past—that’s for sure.

EDA: At the Institute for Network Cultures you dedicate a lot of attention to tactical media, which for many can appear as almost an obsolete term. How can tactical media be relevant today, in the face of all the techno-social aspects and the invasiveness of the platforms that you describe?

GL: I am not emotionally attached to any term. I believe in the speculative potential of the concepts we design to make a difference, to become machines, to cause long-lasting techno-social effects. When we use the term tactical media today, we do so to strengthen collaborations among hackers, designers, artists, and researchers in social movements. The tactical media approach reminds us to be open to migrating ‘Killroy was here’ aesthetics that wander from one medium to the next, from one locality to the next. This is so powerful today because, most of all, we are stuck on platforms that narrow our visual language, close down dialogue and discussion, and are utterly impossible as mobilisation tools. 

I admit that the guerrilla mode of tactical media makes it hard for resistance to scale up. The tactical media approach believes in the power of sparks, memes, stickers on traffic light poles: subversive signs that give strength to make it through the day. They are known today as copium, which is the opening essay of Platform Brutality. The more depressed a situation, the more powerful humour and irony can become. The more we experiment with the reversal of signs and concepts, the better. Come together and set up spaces. The emphasis should be less on aesthetics and more on tactical forms of organisation outside of platforms. This could be irritating about fluid, non-committing tactics in a time when sustainable self-organisation is needed most.

The post Capitalism, War, and the Violence of Digital Platforms: A Conversation with Geert Lovink appeared first on Untold.

***

For decades, and particularly over the past two years, analyses of Western mainstream media coverage have highlighted a predominance of Israeli narratives. This pattern appears in the decontextualisation of events and in language choices that shape perceptions of Palestinians, like using passive language when describing their death, as Palestinians merely “die” as if by accident and unrelated to the violence that kills them.

In another example, Palestinian children are sometimes referred to as ‘people under 18’ rather than as children, which might not reflect their actual vulnerability in their childhood. This type of reporting can reflect a broader political framing, captured in the concept of ‘unchilding’, developed by Palestinian scholar from Haifa, Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian as she describes how Israel’s military regime strips Palestinian children of their childhood.

“Unchilding” is the eviction of children from childhood for political goals, removing them from the realm of childhood, positioning them as threats to be controlled, criminalised, or eliminated, thus enabling and justifying violence and oppression against them. 

For almost two years of intense Israeli attacks on Gaza, the mainstream media have focused on the general human toll of Palestinian lives without depth. Coverage diverts attention to political actors, while the daily suffering of millions of Palestinians receives limited attention. Palestinians are reduced to numbers, erased of names and faces, and historical context is systematically ignored, with the occupation, apartheid, and foundational trauma of the Nakba absent from the coverage.  

This article seeks to examine how Palestinians have used social media as a tool of activism to document realities on the ground and challenge dominant media narratives. It also explores the systematic digital censorship they face, the infrastructure behind that suppression, and the pressing questions for the future of Palestine’s digital memory.

Digital Censorship: “We Went Back a Million Steps”

Social media has the potential to be a powerful tool for empowerment and resistance. challenging biased narratives about Palestinians in Western mainstream news outlets; however, it still faces systematic censorship, especially when it comes to Palestinian voices and content.

In a conversation with Jalal Abu Khater, Advocacy Director at the Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media-7amleh, he explains how, during Israel’s 2021 invasion of the Palestinian city of Sheikh Jarrah in Jerusalem and the brutal war against Gaza, Palestinians witnessed a collective power that manifested in a wave of social media activism, which began on TikTok, where videos documenting scenes of resilience and solidarity went viral. This TikTok wave revealed the power of digital platforms to amplify the voice of Palestinians and reclaim the Palestinian narrative.

This momentum was quickly followed by increased censorship and suppression, particularly on Facebook and Instagram, owned by Meta, where Palestinian content was consistently hidden, deleted, or shadow banned. Palestinians living in the 1948 territories also faced arrests, intimidation, and surveillance by Israeli forces, with task forces targeting those who used social media to speak out. 

A report published by 7amleh examines the impact of biometric monitoring and digital surveillance in Jerusalem through interviews with Palestinian Jerusalemites. Those interviewed reported that Israeli CCTV and digital surveillance increased following the violence in April and May of 2021. This intensified monitoring has severely undermined Palestinians’ civil and political rights, restricting their movement, violating their privacy, and limiting their freedom of expression both online and offline.

Describing the current state of censorship, Abu Khater says, “We went back a million steps.” Since October 7, efforts to restrain censorship of pro-Palestinian content have seen a sharp decline, despite prior pressure on large digital companies and their pledges not to silence pro-Palestinian voices. Meta platforms, such as Instagram and Facebook, have reimposed restrictive practices, monitoring and suppressing pro-Palestinian content, with content being systematically removed, shadow banned, or hidden, even when it included common language such as the word “Palestine”. 

Palestinians living within the 1948 territories face a multilayered form of censorship that includes a lack of digital safety, intensified surveillance, and systematic intimidation. There are Israeli task forces dedicated to monitoring and targeting those who use social media to speak out, leading to arrests, threats, and ongoing harassment.

In contrast, as Abu Khater explains, hate speech in Hebrew, often targeted at Palestinians, continued to spread almost freely without any significant censorship. On March 12, 2025, 7amleh released its annual report, Racism and Incitement 2024, documenting an alarming increase in digital hate speech and incitement against Palestinians, particularly on X (previously Twitter) and Facebook. According to the findings, 12,482,041 pieces of content in Hebrew, identified as violent or hateful, were documented throughout 2024, demonstrating the increasing use of digital spaces as tools for hostility and incitement.

Recent reports by DropSite News have confirmed long-standing concerns raised by 7amleh indicating a high rate of content removal requests from Israeli authorities and a corresponding suppression of pro-Palestinian content on Meta platforms. Leaked internal data reveals that since October 7, 2023, Meta has complied with 94% of Israeli government takedown requests, leading to over 90,000 removals and the suppression of tens of millions more through automated systems. 

With social media having the potential to be a tool for empowerment and resistance, in reality it still faces coordinated attempts to silence Palestinian and pro-Palestinian voices, which is alarming. However, many Pro-Palestinian social media users have found creative ways to bypass censorship, which was intensified when speaking politics, often by tricking the algorithm with coded language by swapping letters for numbers and symbols, like “G@za” or “P@l3st1ne”, or by mixing English with Arabic letters, while many use other symbols and emojis like the watermelon emoji, which has become a global symbol of Palestinian solidarity. 

Seeing Gaza Through The Eyes of Palestinians

In Gaza, Palestinians have used platforms like Instagram and TikTok to document the destruction, hunger, and loss, exposing atrocities that might otherwise be buried beneath the headlines. At the same time, they shared moments of resilience, community, and fleeting joy, putting a human face to statistics and reminding the world that behind every number is a life. 

Fatima Hassouna, a photographer and storyteller, once wrote on her social media: “If I die, I want a loud death. I don’t want to be just breaking news or a number in a group; I want a death that the world will hear, an impact that will remain through time, and a timeless image that cannot be buried by time or place.”

Tragically, in April 2025, Fatima and ten family members were killed in an Israeli airstrike that hit their home in northern Gaza.

Since the beginning of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, many Palestinian voices on social media have gained hundreds of thousands of followers, building strong connections with audiences worldwide. One powerful example is Bisan Owda, whose videos provide firsthand accounts from Gaza and have become a key source of information for international audiences. As one of the key voices recording this genocide, Bisan won the News and Documentary Emmy Awards for her work, which became a symbol of activism and survival. In her own words, Bisan highlights how, despite attempts to silence Palestinians, those telling their own stories can now reach the world through multiple means of broadcasting.

Other content creators, such as ten-year-old Renad Atallah, offered a different glimpse into life under siege and war. Renad, who dreams of becoming a professional chef, shares videos of herself preparing “donated” food outside her family’s tent. Despite the brutal conditions around her, she smiles as she demonstrates how to cook her favorite dishes with the limited ingredients available.

On another front, journalists and citizen journalists are on-the-ground witnesses who have taken it upon themselves to document the horrors of genocide as it unfolds. Through their lenses, they are archiving, documenting truth, exposing injustice, and demanding that the world bear witness.

This is not an attempt to romanticize the tragedy or soften the brutality of war. Rather, it is a reflection on the complexity and depth of Palestinian life, shared by Palestinians themselves, on their own terms. While mainstream media often frames Palestinians through the lens of “conflict” and “complexity”, Palestinians on social media show themselves simply and powerfully: raw, unfiltered, and undeniably human. They are not statistics. They are not political talking points. They are simply humans! 

Over the past two years, despite the systemic censorship, these digital spaces have made Palestinians more visible, creating a sense of collective intimacy and shared burden that connects people worldwide in solidarity with Palestine. Social media has become a platform for real-time updates and human connection, driving global empathy and fueling activism that has translated into boycott campaigns, student encampments across the United States, and calls for justice, an end to violence, and long-term structural change. Much of this momentum has been driven by Gen Z.

In his study “Connecting the Dots: How Gen-Z Is Re-establishing the True Story of Palestine”, scholar Mohamed Buheji explains how Gen-Z, the primary social media audience, is reshaping the narrative. For many in this generation, the Palestinian cause is inseparable from wider global justice struggles—from anti-apartheid South Africa and Black Lives Matter to Indigenous rights movements. Those who stand with Palestine often see it as part of a larger fight for self-determination, liberation, and human rights.

With this framing, the Palestinian cause becomes what African-American activist Angela Davis once described as a “moral litmus test for the world.” This perspective helps global audiences recognize familiar patterns and situates Palestine within a broader moral and political struggle for justice. Solidarity with Palestinians is not symbolic or exceptional; it is solidarity against recurring systems, structures, and histories of oppression. What happened to Indigenous peoples in North America centuries ago, through war, forced displacement, disease, cultural erasure, and genocide, should never happen again. Today, it is the Palestinians who face these same attempts at erasure.

Palestine’s Digital Memory… What next?

As time passes, a persistent question remains: what comes next? Hundreds of pieces of digital content from Palestine are scattered across online platforms, vulnerable to deletion, distortion, or disappearance. How do we preserve this archive? How do we protect it, organize it, and ensure it grows rather than fades?

Preserving this digital history is a collective responsibility. It requires coordinated efforts to build an organized online archive supported by libraries, universities, research centers, and institutions committed to documenting war crimes and historical memory. Each piece of content must be catalogued with intention so that the documentation of war, survival, and daily life under occupation remains accessible and meaningful.

These digital records are a form of witness, echoing Fatima Hassouna’s call for a “loud death”. A story that should not be buried by time or place. By preserving and sharing these experiences, we honor those who lived through this moment and ensure their stories are not lost but remembered, seen, and acted upon.

The post “If I Die. I Want a Loud Death”: Reclaiming The Palestinian Narrative Through Social Media appeared first on Untold.

***

It is a cold, rainy day, and I am hurrying over to a bus station next to the university campus where I teach to reach Berlin’s Central Train Station on time. Luckily, the bus station is close by, and after two minutes of walking, I arrive. Suddenly, a vehicle stops abruptly in front of the station.

It appears as if the van is out of fuel; it is not the city bus, but a private cleaning company service van. A man steps out in a hurry. It is unusual for a vehicle to park at a bus stop. Its unusualness and unexpectedness caught those waiting for the bus off guard, including me. The driver sharply diagnoses the station’s glass panes, turns his head up towards the time screen, and then adjusts his neck and head posture to check the ceiling as if he is looking for someone or something specific dangling from it.

It turns out that he is looking for pro-Palestinian stickers and posters. The unexpected action made me wonder why someone would want to make sure to remove Palestinian posters and erase their traces.

Graffiti writing and stickering as a game of (in)visibility

Authorities’ removing graffiti, stickers and other related forms of self- and collective expression is no exception in street art politics. It is a game, as graffiti writers and muralists describe it, where what is written, pasted or stencilled on the wall is ephemeral. If not the authorities, then ‘ordinary people’ would tear their opponents’ stickers off or cover their graffiti writings by spraying or splashing paint or stickering over them, crossing them out, adding a word or a symbol to alter the meaning to their favour.

For instance, many Israel supporters add “from Hamas” to “Free Palestine” [Fig. 3], or draw a ‘triangle’ on top of an already painted ‘flipped triangle’ to form the Star of David instead of Hamas’ inverted red triangle (IRT) icon.

Palestine supporters might also put a stickered watermelon over the word “Fuck”, leaving only “Hamas,” or merging the Star of David into the Swastika to create a parallel between Zionism and Nazism – a design of the Lebanese typographer Pascal Zoghbi.

Zoghbi’s design is widely seen in Germany through the murals of Musa La Rage . This process of removal, covering, editing, and commenting on each other—especially on the Palestinian side, whose voice is contested in Germany—reflects broader issues of visibility and grievability. These scriptural and visual acts serve as crucial diaries for understanding resistance and solidarity at a time when pro-Palestinian voices are not only underrepresented in German and Western European media and art galleries, but also suppressed on social media by pro-Israel actors. This includes Instagram “civil watch” accounts dedicated to pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian graffiti in Berlin, whose users even tag Interpol in the comment sections of Palestinian posts.

These practices take particularity in Germany, especially in Berlin, where we see that street forms of solidarity with Palestine are not only removed by pro-Israel supporters but also by the German police, whose brutality goes beyond the dimensions of legality.

How can we understand this act of contracting a worker to “clean the station”? How does this “cleaning process” relate to Germany’s stance on Palestinian solidarity against the Israeli occupation?

Since 2008, Germany has declared unconditional support for Israel as part of its Staatsräson (the Reason of State). This political philosophy is based on the promise of “Nie Wieder” (Never Again) to address and honour the cultural memory of the six million European Jews who were killed during the Holocaust by the Nazis.

Accordingly, any debate about Jewish people, Israel and Zionism must go through this canon.

Resisting the guilt and extending griveability

Nevertheless, Palestinian street solidarity resists this reasoning. Aesthetically, the place chosen for stickers, graffiti writing, and painting is not solely a matter of visibility – a spot visible to people as they stand (bus station), enter (public toilet) or walk from one point to another, and preferably higher so that Israel supporters and the police do not remove it– but also of meaningfulness [Fig. 4].

For instance, many posters were hung on the East Side Gallery Wall from the river’s side (home to a few graffiti pieces and white canvases), while the names (and stickers) of Gaza and Palestine are displayed on the other side of the wall, facing the street (home to commissioned murals exhibited for tourists). Graffiti of “Free Gaza” can also be seen on the Berliner Mauer at Bernauer Straße, where parts of the separating wall are still standing with memorials, notices, looped short videos of patrolling soldiers, and pictures of the people who were killed by GDR guards while escaping from East to West Germany.

These official walls are for ‘learning’ about a dark part of German history as well as grieving the bodies and souls of those who passed away by seeing their pictures, reading their names and watching videos of East German Wall guards patrolling [Fig. 5].

Spraying Palestine or Gaza on the Berlin Wall challenges the scholarship that (Western) history has ended with the fall of the German wall, and it places Palestine alongside Germany’s own history of separation, remembrance and guilt.

History continues in Palestine. The graffiti of Palestine on the Wall memorial shows a parallel present-day Palestinian reality, which tourists would neither find informative signs on nor see in the various museums dedicated to human suffering and wall separation. Similar writing can also be found on parts of the Berlin Wall at Potsdamerplatz, where someone wrote “Palästina” twice below the metal sign of information, entitled “Dennkmal Mauer – The Wall as a Monument,” making the wall not solely a historical landmark of the past, but also a symbol of the actual wall of apartheid built by Israel in Palestine [Fig. 6].

These graffiti on the Wall of Berlin, and memorial sites extend “grievability” to Palestinians at a time when Israel has made trauma a weapon of war and while coverage of the Palestinian genocide in mainstream Western media coverage has been tightly policed and increasingly racialised.

The police as the new church

Pro-Palestinian expressions are often interpreted as antisemitic, pro-Hamas and terrorist, or at least aggressive. Germany’s practice of accusing Palestine supporters of antisemitism is a political move. Germany has long tried to de-Nazify its image to the world by organising the World Cup of 2006 and introducing the Erinnerungskultur (Culture of Remembrance) to address the Holocaust and the inhumane and unjustifiable killing of the Jewish population.

This culture of remembrance and political policy to acknowledge what the Nazis did to the Jews translates into the state’s reason as a guarantor of Jewish safety in Occupied Palestine (and elsewhere). This policy of guilt and remembrance has implicitly made the Palestinian statehood and right to return for refugees against the guilty German project of self-cleansing.

This double standard does not solely appear in the brutal police intervention, defamatory anti-Muslim and anti-Arab speech in newspapers (labelling pro-Palestinian students “Jewish haters” (Juden-Hasser), cancelling artists and the removal of solidarity aesthetics, but also shows in the reinterpretation of solidarity expressions in order to whitewash their Nazi legacy.

As an example, the debate on the use of the inverted red triangle by Palestinian supporters was triggered by local media and politicians, referring to the symbol as a “Nazi reference.” Also, a doctoral student who was holding a poster reading “NEVER AGAIN” was arrested by thirteen police officers and had their poster confiscated, accusing the student of another “Again,” a reference to Nazi-camps and the “extermination” of Jewish people [Fig. 7].

Another colleague had notified the student that the police might have a Nazi-focused interpretation based on reading the Palestinian Question through anti-Semitic German history. To avoid that, the student added “never again for everyone” in the margin of the poster. However, the police refused to accept any interpretation other than their own.

Policing aesthetics and criminalising symbols

What role do aesthetics play in a German context characterised by official support to Israel, its Staatsräson and Nie Wieder? How do the aesthetic forms of solidarity with Palestine interplay with Germany’s history and denounce its complicity with genocide? In other words, how does ‘wall washing’ relate to ‘self-cleansing’ and ‘whitewashing’?

Most police “interpretation” of pro-Palestinian signs do not happen on site, for it is already based on a textbook against anti-Semitic symbols and signs, titled “Leitfaden Zum Erkennen Antisemitischer Straftaten” (Guide to recognising antisemitic crimes) [1]. Among the many Palestinian signs, the textbook considers anti-Semitic, the BDS movement (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions), Handhala (signifier of Palestinian personhood, displacement and exiled childhood), the key (the right to return), and Palestinian visual symbols of solidarity and resistance are put in a booklet next to fascist and Nazi signs.

Each symbol has a small text ideologically changing its meaning to make it “anti-Jew.” For instance, for Handhala, the textbook reads that this icon is “a comic book character meant to symbolise the supposedly defenceless Palestinians. [Instead,] The comics advocate violent action against Israel.”

In reality, Handhala was originally designed by Palestinian caricaturist Naji al-Ali (1938-1987), whom Israel assassinated in London, which the textbook does not mention. As for “Intifada until victory,” it reads that “the first (1987) and second (2000) Intifada were violent Palestinian uprisings against Israel. The slogan heard at anti-Israel demonstrations implies the annihilation of the State of Israel.”

This booklet was published in December 2021, and its captions are the same as those of the police, showing how ideological interpretations are supported and enacted by law against others.

Colourful rage

The Guide to Recognizing Antisemitic Crimes was published in 2021 and does not include the watermelon or the inverted red triangle, which are also treated as antisemitic by German police. Its symbolism, however, was born out of colonial artistic censorship.

Palestinian artist Sliman Mansour (b. 1947) explains that the idea of watermelon came from Israeli soldiers, who, in 1981, interrogated Mansour and two of his colleagues about why they were doing political art instead of painting ‘nice women,’ ‘nude figures,’ and ‘nice flowers,’ which they would buy from them, the police added.

“The flag was forbidden, and so were the colours, which is why we, as artists, were not allowed to use these colours. One of our friends, Issam, started arguing with the authority person, asking him what he would do if he made a flower but with those colours. The soldier became angry, saying that ‘even if it is a watermelon, we will take it and confiscate it. Do not do anything in these [red, black and green] colours.’”

On the one hand, the watermelon sign offers a new language of solidarity—one charged with joy rather than with the sorrow of the Nakba and other classical symbols that embody affective sadness. This fruit symbol reflects the spirit of resilience that has accompanied solidarity protests, offering, at the same time, new possibilities to express support in places where the icon of Handhala is considered antisemitic [Fig. 8].

This builds on the existing presence of the watermelon as a summer decorative motif—seen on ice creams, umbrellas, earrings, and many other objects—thereby challenging German censorship of solidarity with Palestine and embodying resistance itself.

On the other hand, the adoption of the inverted red triangle in protests and graffiti around the world, including in Germany, can be interpreted in two different ways.

First, the red triangle serves as a symbol of empowerment and a reclaimed emblem for most Palestinian supporters, who use such symbols to express solidarity and to symbolically challenge Israeli genocide and Western complicity.

Second, when a red triangle is painted on the walls of campuses or newspaper buildings, the authorities experience it as if it were written on their own bodies—turning graffiti into a physical act. If the (German) state uses law and policing to inscribe its power onto pro-Palestinians, by prohibiting some protests, banning the use of Arabic language in demonstrations and using violence against protestors, for example, then marking a “place of meaning” (memorial wall) or “place of authority” (police station)—even by simply writing a word (Free Palestine) or symbol (inverted triangle) of defiance on its walls—becomes, in turn, a way of writing back onto the body of that authority [Fig. 9].

In his book The Whitewashing of the Yellow Badge, Frank Stern explains how “Germany — striving for sovereignty and integration into the West — was able to instrumentalise philosemitism in its domestic and foreign policy as well as a moral stance against local, deeply rooted antisemitic rightwing extremism.”

On the one hand, Palestinian solidarity bothers Germany because it always makes the state feel guilty twice; Palestinians are paying for what the Germans did to the Jewish people. On the other hand, the visibility of the Palestinian struggle and the existence of the Palestinian people with their claim to land make the post-Holocaust Jewish success incomplete. Therefore, being genocidal and complicit with the extermination of the Palestinians seems to be a ‘moral salvation’ for Israel and Germany.

The elimination of the Palestinian people would make the former’s guilt vanish (or evaporate) and make the Zionist project successful as a story of survival.

In this sense, Sami Khatib reminds us that the pseudo-question “Do you condemn Hamas?” becomes equivalent to “do you support the Western world order, its ruling ideology (Human Rights Discourse), and do you condemn the entire spectrum of Palestinian resistance, from peaceful boycotts to the Hamas attacks of October 7?” In other words, “Palestinians should accept their colonial subjugation, should not resist, and should, ideally, disappear and with them the annoyance of the Palestinian question.”

The aesthetics and writing of remembrance and solidarity of Palestine in Germany demonstrate the limits and double standards of German remembrance culture and solidarity. It shows how condemning genocide and the killing of civilians is manufactured in accordance with ideological motivations to justify one’s own history, where some humans and bodies are seen as not worthy of life because one decides to.

The post Palestine on Berlin’s Walls: Street Art, Censorship, and the Politics of Solidarity in Germany appeared first on Untold.

***

In moments of massacre, a journalist’s duty is tested against its most basic promises: to witness, to record, to tell the truth. For Palestinian reporters, that truth is more than a collection of facts—it is a fight for survival, a defense of identity, and a refusal to be erased.

Out of Gaza, they insist on reporting from inside the suffering, in the language, rhythm, and imagery of the community enduring it. Media here is not simply a channel of information; it is a weapon of presence, an existential act that resists both annihilation and erasure. 

Where dominant media theories speak of objectivity, balance, or representation, Gaza speaks of continuance. Every report, every image, every voice transmitted under siege becomes a refusal to disappear.

This insistence is ultimately about asserting the right to be part of history. Erasure works not only by destroying bodies but also by silencing their testimonies, removing them from the archive of humanity. Journalism interrupts this project: it names the dead, describes the destruction, and records the moment in its raw immediacy. 

Unlike academic writing, which reflects later, or poetry, which translates pain into metaphor, journalism insists on the now. It bears witness in real time, staking a claim that Palestinians are not just remembered retroactively but are present actors in history as it unfolds.

But this raises a harder question: Has Palestinian media truly confronted the racist images projected onto it by Israeli and Western narratives? To answer, we have to unpack four archetypes the “other” imposes on Palestinians—and how local media has fought to dismantle them.

The Palestinian Who Doesn’t Exist

In Zionist logic, the Palestinian is not just different—they are a threat to existence itself.

This is the “zone of nonbeing” described by Frantz Fanon: a place where you are denied recognition and subjectivity. You are there, but not seen.

In most Western newsrooms, this plays out in language. Israeli deaths are attributed, Hamas is named, October 7 is invoked. Palestinian deaths are passive: “were killed,” “were found under rubble.” No one is named as the killer.

Local news challenged this by naming the dead, one by one. Projects like Gaza Martyrs List, Eyes on Palestine, and countless grassroots Instagram accounts have made it a mission to name every person killed, attach their photograph, and tell their story.

Instead of “50 Palestinians killed,” you get Omar, 12, who loved drawing birds; Rasha, 33, was a nurse who refused to leave her patients. This is a direct counter to the grammar of erasure—turning “were killed” into “was killed by Israeli airstrikes.”

The “Savage” Palestinian

Israeli leaders didn’t just frame the 2023–2024 war as a military campaign. They called it a war between “civilization” and “barbarism.”

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant spoke of Palestinians as  human animals”. President Isaac Herzog declared, “It’s not just Hamas, it’s an entire nation.”

This is an old colonial language with a modern coat of paint. In the 19th century, Europe used it to justify empire. Today, Israel uses it to position itself as the West’s “front line” against the barbaric other.

Just as crucially, journalists insisted on telling the mundane stories of life in captivity: weddings that went ahead despite airstrikes, children playing football in alleyways, families baking bread on open fires when ovens had no power. Coverage of these everyday scenes was not sentimental filler—it was a political act, a declaration that people insist on living even under conditions designed to make life impossible.

Barbarism thrives on erasing intellectual and artistic output. In response, cultural reporters and independent platforms such as We Are Not Numbers, Gaza Poets Society, and Palestine Writes amplified poetry, music, and visual art created during the war.

Broadcasting a rap performance from a refugee camp or publishing a painting made from the dust of bombed homes directly confronts the idea that Palestinians exist outside “civilization.” It asserts: our art exists, even when you try to erase us.

Palestinian media went further. Through stories of weddings celebrated amid airstrikes, children improvising games in rubble, families sharing bread baked on open fires, journalists revealed the values holding Palestinian society together. 

These accounts describe not only survival but a cultural world built on solidarity, hospitality, love of land, and devotion to family. Palestinians shape their own narratives. constructing a vision of civilization anchored in care, dignity, and communal resilience.

The Palestinian Who Must Be Killed!

In the Israeli imagination, Gaza is not a home. It is a target zone.

Over and over, the strip, just 360 square kilometers with over two million people, has been painted as a weapons island, a place where life itself is suspect. Israeli officials describe it like a scene from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea: militants lurking like the Nautilus submarine, striking from hidden bases.

This is more than a metaphor. Scholars call it a “moral geography”: remapping a place so killing its people feels not like a crime, but a necessity. Gaza becomes what Achille Mbembe calls a “death-world”—a space where living conditions are so unbearable they mimic death itself.

Under this lens, there are no civilians. Not the journalists, not the children, not the elderly. Homes become launchpads, mosques become armories, kindergartens become cover for rockets.

In contrast, Palestinian media have worked to move beyond partisan and sectarian divides. This shift did not begin with the genocide but had already taken shape in earlier wars and uprisings, when reporters recognized that partisan coverage risked fragmenting the very people they sought to defend. During those moments, destruction and loss transcended faction: a bombed school was not Hamas’s or Fatah’s, but Palestinian. 

Journalists, whether tied to official outlets, party-affiliated platforms, or working independently, shared a common task: to document daily life under siege, to challenge a narrative that stripped Gazans of their humanity, and to portray Palestinians not as seekers of death but as people determined to live until their last breath.

The Palestinian Body as Target

Palestinians know that sexual violence is not an accident of war, it is a tool of domination. Israeli television has aired confessions defending rape as a form of “pressure” on the enemy.

The killing of Dr. Adnan al-Bursh, a renowned surgeon, is one of the most brutal examples. He was raped and beaten to death in Israeli custody. His attackers were released. Israel’s national security minister called them “heroes”. This statement comes from an incident covered by Middle East Eye, where Itamar Ben-Gvir publicly defended settlers suspected of killing a Palestinian.

Western media barely touched the story. When CNN reported his death, it left out the rape entirely—even though UN investigators had evidence. Yet Israeli claims of “mass rape” by Hamas, unsupported by UN findings, were repeated by U.S. and European leaders without question.

Israeli outlets have broadcast detainees stripped, beaten, branded with slogans—humiliation turned into a public spectacle. The dead are often displayed in ways that feed voyeurism or pity, stripping them of individuality and agency. Palestinian media countered with a different image: freed prisoners smiling, standing tall, reclaiming their dignity.

In this way, Palestinian witnessing is distinct: it refuses voyeurism, refuses pity, and insists on agency. The camera becomes a tool not just for documentation, but for affirming life and reimagining presence under conditions designed to erase it.

Rethinking Journalism in Palestine

The idea of “neutral journalism” itself can be a colonial myth. Framed as objective, it pretends to stand above power, yet it often serves to conceal it. In Eurocentric media traditions, neutrality is a claim about detachment, but it implicitly enforces the status quo: whose lives matter, whose deaths are acceptable, whose suffering is worthy of attention.

In Gaza, claiming neutrality often means accepting the logic of extermination, documenting destruction without naming responsibility, and treating systematic erasure as inevitable.

This approach transforms journalism from a passive record into an active claim: Palestinians are present, they endure, and they continue to act even under conditions designed to render them invisible. It is not about “balancing” perspectives, but about confronting power and asserting reality. Neutrality here is a luxury the world cannot afford; truth-telling becomes the instrument of survival, resistance, and historical inscription.

To report from Palestine is to confront not just the violence of bombs, but the violence of words, frames, and silences. Local media has made its choice: to reject the image imposed by the “other,” and to tell the truth of a people who refuse to disappear.

The journalism Palestinians aspire to thrives: a media that protects against erasure, cultivates civic and cultural memory, and affirms the right to presence, agency, and joy. It is a journalism that does not merely survive violence but insists on a future where life, creativity, and humanity flourish despite all attempts at annihilation.

The post How Palestinian Journalists Are Reclaiming Their Story and Resisting Erasure  appeared first on Untold.

On February 20, 1914, socialist revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg stood trial for anti-war speeches she had delivered the previous year at two gatherings in the Frankfurt area. She was accused of public incitement to disobedience against the law—a charge broad enough to give prosecutors significant leeway in pursuing critics of the state and thus commonly used against political dissenters in the German Empire. 

The prosecution’s witnesses alleged that Luxemburg called on soldiers to disobey orders, encouraging them not to shoot at the enemy in the event of war. In addition to the defense pleas presented by her attorneys, Paul Levi and Kurt Rosenfeld, Luxemburg—a seasoned orator—offered her own detailed rebuttal, dismissing the prosecution’s account of the events as “nothing but a dull, soulless caricature of my speeches and social-democratic agitation in general.” 

Recognizing the profoundly political nature of the trial, Luxemburg did not speak only in her own name: she spoke on behalf of the movement, referencing its decade-long anti-militarist tradition and citing anti-war resolutions of the International Socialist Congresses. Standing proudly by her belief that speaking up against the impending war was her obligation, she told the court: “We do not carry out our anti-militarist agitation in secret darkness, in hiding; no, we do it in the full blaze of the brightest light of the public eye.” 

Luxemburg spoke in this vein for several more minutes until the judge impatiently interrupted her, saying: “We don’t have time to listen to grand political speeches. We are handling the case legally, not politically.” 

Criminalizing Dissent Then and Now

That intervention is striking not just for its hypocrisy, as there can be little doubt that Luxemburg’s trial was indeed political, but also because it resurfaces almost verbatim in Berlin courts today, in cases concerning solidarity with Palestine, especially those related to protests at universities. 

Students who refuse to stay silent about Israel’s genocide in Gaza have staged interventions at universities to disrupt what they experience as an unbearable status quo: the systematic muzzling of Palestinian voices, the absence of any critical discourse around the ethnic cleansing unfolding live on their phones, and academic complicity in legitimizing the machinery of violence. 

Unlike the 2024 encampments in solidarity with Palestine that went on for weeks or even months in the United States, Britain, Spain, and some German cities, the university occupations in Berlin were short lived. Free University (FU) and Humboldt University (HU) promptly called the police and pressed charges of trespassing, resulting in hundreds of criminal cases. The two dozen student trials I have attended since then further expose how the state insists on depoliticizng students. 

In Germany, politically engaged scholarship and pedagogy are commonly dismissed as activism, not “legitimate” science. The fantasy of academic neutrality persists despite decade-long efforts by feminist, queer, and postcolonial scholars to debunk it as a construct that serves hegemonic interests. This myth is less a naïve belief than a strategically deployed ideological weapon used to keep dissenting voices out of academia and reinforce Germany’s Staatsräson (reason of state). The past two years have made this explicit, with countless cancelled lectures, disinvitations, dismissals, and other acts of academic censorship and repression. 

The Right Side of History

After being forcibly prevented from holding events on Palestine at their universities, students have taken the opportunity to speak out in court. They reiterate the reasons why they protest, making it very clear that it’s not just their right, but, in the face of the genocide, primarily their moral obligation. They speak about the genocide, occupation, apartheid, and settler colonialism, calling out Germany’s involvement in these crimes, including their universities’ ties with Israeli academic institutions and companies that have been proven complicit in human rights violations. 

They demonstrate how the violence over there is connected to the violence over here. They speak uncomfortable truths, making state representatives squirm in their seats. Judges frequently interrupt and dismiss the statements, claiming that such discussions belong in academic settings, not in the courtroom—the irony of how the students end up in court in the first place seems to be conveniently lost on them. 

Explaining why he took part in the occupation of a lecture hall at FU, one student spoke of a desire “to create a place for solidarity and critical exchange” because no such space was available at the university. The judge stopped him half-sentence with a retort: “This is not a political science seminar.” The student asked for permission to continue and went on to explain that students’ demands that FU cut ties with Israeli universities were in line with the International Court of Justice ruling ordering all states, including Germany, not to “render aid or assistance in maintaining” Israel’s illegal presence in the occupied Palestinian territories. 

The judge interrupted again, sarcastically remarking: “You have delivered a great seminar presentation for the audience.” The student was eventually found guilty of trespassing and ordered to pay EUR 450; his appeal was later denied. 

The judge’s closing statement was as damning as it was patronizing. “This is not a Hollywood film,” he sneered at the student. “The whole thing has nothing to do with freedom of science and teaching. You may think you’re standing on the right side of history, but that doesn’t mean you can break the law.”

In a different case pertaining to the same lecture hall occupation, another judge likewise emphasized “the rule of law” and dismissed all other concerns (that is, the defendant’s and her lawyer’s references to the genocide, international law, and the German constitution) as “mere background noise” (nur Hintergrundgeräusche).  

The Repression of the Rule of Law

The trials also attest to university leaderships’ strategic inability to respond constructively and with care to students’ legitimate interventions. Rather than creating space for potentially difficult but urgent conversations, universities choose to criminalize protestors. 

The repeated attempts to summon FU president Günter Ziegler as a witness appear to have been unsuccessful—at least one judge rejected them as having, “legally speaking, nothing to do with the content.” HU president Julia von Blumenthal did appear in court to offer her account of the events of May 23-24, 2024, when students occupied the Institute of Social Sciences and renamed it the Jabaliya Institute after the repeatedly bombed refugee camp in northern Gaza. 

Blumenthal’s testimony lacked clarity, leading the court to conclude there was no sufficient evidence to support the claim of trespassing. In fact, student trials frequently end in acquittal (Freispruch) or are dismissed (Einstellung) due to lacking evidence. Their key function thus seems to be less about punishing alleged offenses and more about repressing and physically intimidating the student movement. 

Student trials are part of the pervasive prosecution of Palestine solidarity in Berlin where, since October 2023, police have opened thousands of Palestine-related criminal investigations (between 7633 and 10,000 according to contradictory media reports), twice the number of cases initiated against climate activists in a comparable period. 

So far, only about 2,100 Palestine-related cases have been processed by courts and only five percent of those have resulted in convictions, mostly fines. Even though the majority of the cases are ultimately dismissed or end in acquittals, their sheer number makes it the most heavily criminalized political movement in Berlin at least since German reunification. 

Shocking as this may be, a recent report demonstrates that criminal prosecution is only one aspect of a vast landscape of repression against Palestinians and those who stand in solidarity with them. Published by Palestinian activists in Berlin, the report painstakingly enumerates the many ways in which “German authorities systematically curtail freedoms of assembly, expression, academia, and art when it comes to anti-genocide protests and advocacy for Palestinian rights.” 

The repression is “widespread, systematic, and deliberate,” and manifests in myriad ways including protest bans, visa cancellations, home raids, racial profiling, arbitrary detentions, surveillance, and censorship. Such crass manifestations of criminalization of Palestine solidarity have prompted comparisons to Nazi-era tactics against regime opponents. Yet, as Luxemburg’s case reveals, such far-reaching state-led repressions under the guise of upholding “the rule of law” have a longer history in Germany. 

Resisting the Reason of State

Luxemburg was found guilty of two offences of resistance against state authority, though resistance against state violence would be a more literal translation of Widerstand gegen die Staatsgewalt, and more on point. 

Article §110 under which Luxemburg was tried was removed from the Criminal Code during West Germany’s sweeping criminal law reform in the late 1960s. However, several other articles listed under that same section and title have, with some modifications, remained in force since 1871 and are now commonly applied in Palestine-related trials. These include: §113, resistance against law enforcement officers; §114, physical attack on law enforcement officers; and §120, freeing of prisoners. 

The latter, despite the spectacular liberatory imagery it evokes, mainly pertains to something much more mundane: at protests and sit-ins, police routinely drag someone from a crowd; those nearby who attempt to prevent the violent arrest (sometimes simply by holding on to that person), often get detained, too, and charged under that article. The former two articles are commonly evoked when it is police officers themselves who physically attack protesters. 

The police, however, are rarely put on trial. As Mohamed Amjahid documents in his evocatively titled book Alles nur Einzelfälle? (All Just A Few Bad Apples?), in Germany, less than one percent of charges against the police end in convictions. Police impunity continues despite well-documented instances of police violence and pro-police bias is prevalent in Berlin courts. 

According to a report published by a court-monitoring group of which I’m part, “the courts legitimize and enforce a political agenda dictated by the Staatsräson, criminalizing dissent through biased proceedings, selective application of the law, and the procedural intimidation of defendants and the public.” Perhaps then, a more honest and accurate way to refer to the Criminal Code section that is applied to Palestine-related trials in Berlin would be Widerstand gegen die Staatsräson (resistance against the reason of state). 

Legal Absurdities

Criminalized expressions of solidarity with Palestine and protest against Israel’s and Germany’s human rights violations are primarily handled by Department 231 of the Berlin Public Prosecutor’s Office, which oversees “offenses related to violence, state security, and public order disturbances, particularly incitement to hatred, the use of symbols of unconstitutional organizations, and breaches of the peace, when there is a political or religious background involved.” 

Some of the most widely publicized cases filed under this category involve “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” which prosecutors continue to criminalize as a Hamas slogan despite ample evidence to the contrary. Germany’s unique obsession with the chant has famously birthed myriad absurdities. 

In one instance, after a judge ruled that the slogan did not constitute a criminal offense, police arrested individuals who chanted it at a rally outside the courthouse immediately after the acquittal. 

The material presented as evidence in such cases can also be incongruous. In one trial, a young person was charged with using a symbol of unconstitutional organizations after briefly holding someone else’s home-made poster that had the words “from the river to the sea, peace is the only luxury” written in black sharpie around the perimeter of a peace sign. 

The poster also featured Palestinian and Lebanese flags, an image of a kneeling child with outstretched arms, and the phrases “children have a right to live in peace” and “everyone has a right to a life in dignity,” in bold colorful letters. Citing court-commissioned expert reports, the defense argued that the phrase “from the river to the sea” cannot plausibly be linked to Hamas as it predates the organization’s founding by decades. 

The trial ended in acquittal, but the judge advised the defendant not to use the slogan again, as no higher court in Germany has yet issued a definitive ruling on this matter. 

For the Record

Luxemburg’s Frankfurt trial was widely reported and the unusually harsh sentence—one year in prison (though she ultimately served longer and was released only after the war ended)—sparked protests across Germany. Her defense statement survives thanks to its publication in the socialist newspaper Vorwärts, based on a verbatim report. As the court did not provide an official transcript, it is likely that a journalist in attendance recorded the proceedings using shorthand. 

Widely taught in schools and specialized courses, shorthand was an indispensable tool for court reporters since, unlike the Reichstag, German courts did not typically employ stenographers to produce transcripts. In fact, German courts still fail to produce detailed records of their hearings in any form, making the country an outlier in the EU, where audio or video recordings, and even live streams, are common practice. 

Attempts to change Germany’s anachronistic stance have been unsuccessful since 1903 when a commission tasked with reforming the criminal process rejected the use of stenography, arguing that “contradictions between the minutes and the reasoning of the judgement might enable unjustified appeals.” More recent interventions, including the 2023 draft law on the digital documentation of criminal court hearings, have also failed and no legislative progress on this issue can be expected during the current term of the right-wing dominated Bundestag. 

In better news for German democracy, criminal court hearings are generally open to the public, based on Öffentlichkeitsgrundsatz (the principle of publicity), envisioned to ensure transparency, fairness, and accountability. In some cases, such as those pertaining to minors or state secrets, judges can restrict access or prohibit it entirely. 

For the most part, however, the principle of publicity means that the hearing’s time and location are timely announced (typically displayed inside the courthouse) and that members of the public can physically enter the courtroom. In practice, at the Berlin Criminal Court in Turmstrasse, the location of Palestine-related hearings is often changed at the last minute to so-called security courtrooms, causing confusion and delays. 

Those who wish to attend the sessions are required to undergo intimidating procedures, including invasive security searches and temporary confiscation of belongings. The measures seem as uncalled-for as they are arbitrary. 

On some days, visitors’ breasts are squeezed, waistbands and bra straps inspected, tissues confiscated; on other days, security staff let people through with just a basic pat down. No one explains who makes the rules and why they’re so inconsistent. Once they get through security, visitors are directed to the waiting area located up a winded staircase, a place with no chairs, no water, no toilet, no clock. There they wait for the hearing to start.

The right to take notes is not explicitly regulated by law, but generally permitted to strengthen the transparency of judicial proceedings. In the security courtrooms, however, visitors are prohibited from bringing their own pens, notebooks, or electronic devices. Court staff half-heartedly hand out blank sheets of paper and pencils to those who ask for them. 

The pencils are often blunt and, occasionally, colored (I have tens of pages of court notes written in baby blue). In an age of sophisticated recording devices and AI-powered transcription software, shorthand may seem like a superfluous skill, but it would be remarkably useful in Berlin courtrooms today. Note-taking is rendered arduous also because the acoustics, to quote a judge, are “scheisse” (shit).  

Bearing Witness

In addition to the prosecution of activists and systematic intimidation of those who attend their hearings, a new alarming development has emerged: the mistreatment of witnesses. But not all witnesses. Police officers called to testify are met with remarkable patience, indulgence, and respect by judges and prosecutors. By contrast, witnesses who are activists involved in the Palestine solidarity movement are not only distrusted, but, at times, treated as if they were on trial themselves. 

As we read in a statement published by grassroots organizations Arrest Press Unit and Palestinians and Allies, 

On the morning of September 22, 2025, at 6:40 a.m., the Berlin police rang the doorbell of a Palestinian family. Three police officers claimed to have an order from the Regional Court requiring them to bring the mother of the family to court as a witness at 11 a.m. The witness was not shown this order. … The witness is a Palestinian human rights defender whose home and workplace had already been raided by the Berlin State Criminal Police Office (LKA) in July. Those searches were also justified on the grounds that she was a witness to a criminal offense. 

The police did not allow the mother to get her three children ready for school. She was promptly taken away and held in a detention cell for two hours, without access to her personal belongings including her phone. When the hearing began, the judge dismissed her complaint about the mistreatment, evaded all responsibility, and refused to recognize the actions as unlawful.  

Neither the court nor the police offered a credible justification for the use of such repressive measures. The systematic harassment campaign against the Palestinian activist, however outrageous, is hardly an exception. Other documented cases of home raids, digital surveillance, and repeated arrests tell a similar story. The lasting emotional distress inflicted on entire families and communities has become part and parcel of the affective landscape of Palestinian life in Berlin. 

Recording the Archive

Even though public discourse on Israel’s genocide in Gaza seems to be shifting even in Germany, albeit appallingly late, the trials of those criminalized for speaking out will continue in the foreseeable future. 

In the meantime, the repression of Palestine solidarity in Berlin needs to be recognized for what it is: a political, not merely a legal matter, as judges still insist. With sparse and selective court reporting and no detailed record of criminal trials, attending hearings in person remains the only way to bear witness and to document the prosecution of the most repressed political movement of our time. 

Unless Germany follows the example of other EU states and finally permits court proceedings to be recorded, we may have to relearn shorthand to keep tabs on Berlin courts. 

In the face of advancing fascisization, judicial transparency and accountability remain a pressing matter and an intrinsically German problem. The student statements heard in court today belong in the archive alongside Luxemburg’s defense speech; future historians will have much to learn from them.

The post Legally Speaking:  Inside Germany’s Trials Against Palestine Solidarity appeared first on Untold.

Editor’s Note: On September 27, 2025, more than 100,000 people took to the streets of Berlin under the slogan ‘Together for Gaza’. This was possibly the largest Palestine solidarity demonstration in Germany’s history. It was organised by a broad coalition of actors: the Left party, Amnesty International, Medico, Palestinian community organisers and Communist groups. 

Despite the contradictions in their political programs, these groups converged on common demands of ending German military cooperation with Israel, restoring humanitarian aid to Gaza, ending the occupation of Palestinian territories, fulfilling Germany’s obligations under international law, supporting Palestinian self-determination and upholding civil freedoms of assembly and expression in Germany. 

An organiser reports that the mass turnout enabled by such a coalition marked a turning point, “pushing the Palestine solidarity movement out of isolation by activating wide sections of the working class for concrete, collective action”. 

In contrast to the unprecedented scale and relatively few arrests of ‘Together for Gaza’, an autonomous demonstration on the same day and other subsequent protests saw smaller turnouts and ever-escalating police repression. This occurred even in large protests that were not backed by a broad coalition. Most recently, at the “United4Gaza” demonstration on October 11, where organizers counted some 50,000 participants, police targeted youth, families, and even children: at least three minors were arrested for trivial reasons, and two separate incidents saw small children caught up in brutal arrests.

Germany has become notorious for its harsh repression of Palestine solidarity — rivaled perhaps only by the United States. The solidarity movements in both these contexts have also been weakened by tactical differences and the lack of a common theory of change. To explore these parallels, we are publishing an analysis piece written by Cameron Jones – a student organiser at Columbia University who has been active both in New York and during a semester abroad in Berlin this year. Cameron’s refrain ‘ugh, agita’ in response to incidents of repression and state violence is also the inspiration for our column’s name.

***

A brick thrown by a Zionist hits a protestor’s face, blood streams down. Animal feces rains from luxury high-rises. University security kneels on the neck of a Palestinian student. A rabbi rams his car into protesters on the streets of New York. These are just a handful of the incidents that have taken place at pro-Palestine demonstrations in New York City. Meanwhile, thousands of miles away in Berlin, faceless militarized police in riot gear knock young protesters unconscious, raid cafés in Neukölln, and ban Arabic chants and songs at demonstrations, on top of deporting Palestinians from Gaza who had escaped the ongoing genocide.

This is not a comprehensive list of the violent incidents that protestors have faced, but rather a glimpse into constant and worsening repression imposed by the state and institutions. The Palestine movement in both Berlin and New York reveals what many already know: that the so-called ‘rights’ guaranteeing protest and free speech under Western liberalism are hollow promises—rights that have always excluded marginalized communities, particularly People of Color, immigrants, and Queer people. 

Rather than signaling a universal moral awakening, recent responses to Israel’s genocide of Palestinians have exposed fractures within Western liberal discourse. For example, public resignations from mainstream news organizations, political shifts with the ascension of candidates like Zohran Mamdani, and unprecedented campus mobilizations suggest that segments of the West are beginning to question the narratives that have long justified Zionism. This shift is not uniform nor fully realized, but it marks a discernible break from decades in which Palestinian dispossession was either denied or framed as necessary. 

What Palestinians, Arabs, and their allies have long asserted—that liberal democracy in the West is predicated on the exclusion and dehumanization of certain populations—is now being forced into public consciousness through images of mass death, famine, and systemic repression from Gaza to the West Bank. 

Impunity and repression 

The last few years have laid bare the consequences faced by those who dare to resist the Zionist narrative: the high risk of arrest, the constant threat of assault by police or Zionists, and, for those with precarious immigration status, the life-shattering possibility of deportation. 

Worse than the attacks that we face is the impunity of those who commit them. Reuven Kahane, the rabbi and real estate developer, who drove his car into a crowd of protestors at a picket last May, injuring one person who was hospitalized with leg injuries, faced no legal consequences. He was charged with assault, but the district attorney’s office dismissed the case, citing speedy trial limitations. The victim and community members, however, argued that prosecutors deliberately stalled the proceedings. 

Just a month after the incident, last June, a judge also denied the victims request for a temporary order of protection against Kahane. This kind of violent, blatant disregard for the law—met with silence or dismissal by the very systems meant to safeguard against such violence—reveals exactly who the state deems worthy of protection. 

It is not those who speak out against genocide, and certainly not those who are living through it. In this way, the state does not merely fail to protect dissenting voices, it actively mobilizes legal and political power to structure whose lives are safeguarded and whose resistance is rendered criminal, revealing repression not as a breakdown of liberal democracy, but as its very mechanism of preservation.

 The Berlin police who brutalize demonstrators face no consequences for their actions, because their violence comes directly from the state. And the media, instead of exposing this violence, emboldens it by ignoring or vilifying those of us who speak out against what has become the first live-streamed genocide. 

This lack of accountability is not incidental, but a deliberate strategy enacted through police directives, media narratives, and state policies, each working in concert to demoralize dissent, criminalize solidarity, and ensure that attention is diverted away from the real violence: the ongoing genocide in Palestine.

Climate of fear

This climate of disillusionment is not accidental, it is by design. The repression of the movement in the West is meant to quell resistance, to instill fear, and to lower attendance at demonstrations, teach-ins, and solidarity events. The raid of the Palestine Congress in Berlin in 2024 showed that the state does not only target protests, but any form of Palestinian political expression. 

These raids, lawsuits, and endless court hearings function as tools of repression, meant to overwhelm and exhaust activists until their work feels impossible. To some extent, these tactics have worked. Protest numbers have steadily declined since October 2023. 

In New York, demonstrations I attended that once drew thousands—especially around events like the UN General Assembly—now rarely reach 500 participants. And in Berlin, the weekly protests I attended in summer 2024 often brought out over 400 people, but more recently they struggle to surpass the same 200 or so participants, with larger mobilizations happening only on a monthly basis. At the same time, student movements have faced immense challenges as universities clamp down on organizing through disciplinary sanctions, suspensions, and expulsions, alongside growing threats of deportation in both the U.S. and Germany.

At Columbia University, repression has been especially severe. Last spring, the one-day occupation of Hinds Hall led to multiple expulsions and even the revocation of degrees, despite the peaceful nature of the action. Since then, the university has deepened its cooperation with the Trump administration, going as far as aiding in the detainment of Palestinian student activists like Mahmoud Khalil. 

Following a $200 million deal with the administration, Columbia escalated its crackdown, suspending and expelling over seventy students simply for holding a teach-in at the main library. As one of the most high-profile universities in the world associated with the Palestine solidarity movement, Columbia quickly became a primary target of the Trump administration. And given its deep institutional ties to the Zionist state, including a dual-degree program with Tel Aviv University and a global center in Tel Aviv, the university ultimately chose to protect its financial and political interests over the well-being of its students.

This pattern of repression has produced a climate of fear across campus, where students know that even symbolic or educational forms of protest can result in the loss of their academic future. Organizing has become increasingly difficult as more and more student activists are banned from campus, cutting them off not only from their peers but also from the very institution they are trying to hold accountable. 

The result is a university that publicly claims to value free speech and debate while, in practice, punishing dissent with extraordinary severity. The protests on Columbia’s campus after October 7 drew nearly a thousand attendees, and student mobilization only grew during the encampments. Today, it would be a surprise if 200 students turned out for a Palestine action.

A history of protest 

Looking at the trajectory of the movement in both cities, a similar story emerges. Unlike places where Palestine solidarity was almost nonexistent before October 2023, both New York and Berlin had long-standing, robust movements with recognizable figures and protests that regularly drew hundreds. 

New York is home to one of the largest Arab and Muslim communities in the U.S., with more than 20% of the country’s Muslims living in the city. I attended many protests there before October 2023, demonstrations sparked by Israeli bombings of Gaza, visits by high-ranking Israeli officials, or escalations in East Jerusalem. Similar protests took place in Berlin as well, often sparked by the same cycles of violence in Palestine that brought people into the streets in New York. 

What makes Berlin particularly significant is that it is home to the largest Palestinian diaspora in Europe. Germany’s Palestinian population is estimated at up to 200,000, many of them from Gaza. Their personal ties to the ongoing violence give the movement a personal sense of urgency. This long-standing presence, combined with already active networks of solidarity organizations, meant that Berlin, like New York, had the infrastructure and community base to rapidly mobilize after October 2023. 

The rapid mobilization in both cities, and the subsequent repression it provoked, reveals how the state perceives its Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim populations not as constituents to be protected, but as internal threats whose political visibility must be contained.

Both cities saw dramatic increases in protest turnout and influence, with thousands flooding the streets. Unlike earlier demonstrations, which were primarily Arab and Muslim communities, the protests after October 2023 brought together students, workers, Black and brown coalitions, as well as anti-Zionist Jewish allies, reflecting the diversity of the cities themselves. 

This surge was fueled by a broader shift in public opinion: the genocide in Gaza shocked a generation of young people, who responded with outrage and solidarity, attending protests, organizing teach-ins, and engaging online. Social media amplified the violence and brought these stories into public view, making support for Palestine more visible and widespread than ever before. 

It was precisely this expansion of support and participation, cross-generational, cross-racial, and highly mobilized, that threatened those in power, provoking the harsh crackdowns we witnessed.

A threat to power

In Berlin, chanting “From the river to the sea” became grounds for violent arrest. Arabic chants and songs were banned outright at some demonstrations, and even symbols like the upside-down red triangle were criminalized—I myself was arrested for wearing one. In New York, authorities banned sound amplification at many demonstrations, wiped Palestine groups off social media, and targeted movement leaders with arrests and harassment.

These tactics were designed to break us down, and to an extent, they did: organizing became more difficult, more dangerous, and more draining. The protests shrank—not simply out of apathy—but because the risks kept multiplying. 

We know that as the conditions for organizing grow more difficult, leftist movements inevitably begin to fracture. As our efforts stalled both on the streets and across university campuses, I began to witness growing fractures within the movement. In both New York and Berlin, I participated in discussions among solidarity groups, where organizers clashed over whether to cooperate with police, how to navigate media narratives, and even what political direction the movement should take. 

These differences often spill into the streets: instead of unified mass actions, separate groups call for separate protests for the same cause. The result is smaller turnouts, a diluted presence, and, crucially, greater risk. Organizing is always safer and more powerful in numbers; fragmentation does not silence the movement, but it does make it easier to suppress and far more dangerous to sustain.

This is not to say that we should give up or that the movement is weak: rather the opposite. States do not repress people and movements at random. They target those who threaten their power, those they fear, and those with the capacity to shift public opinion. The repression we face is thus a testament to the strength and resilience of the Palestine movement. Even as protests dwindle in New York and Berlin, the spirit of resistance persists, captured in chants like “disclose, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest,” created at Columbia and reminding us that solidarity endures even under pressure. 

The dwindling numbers are not evidence of apathy, but of how effectively states have made solidarity dangerous. Yet silence is precisely what they want from us. As I continue to march in both cities, even in smaller crowds, I am reminded that each voice still matters and that the greatest victory of repression would be to convince us otherwise.

***

*Academic Opposition is an activist group of students and researchers active across German universities. We organize internationally to expose and end German academic complicity in the Israeli occupation and genocide of Palestinians. Our activism comprises militant research, political analysis and focused campaigns. Locating an urgent need to build long-term power and train student activists, we bridge gaps between cycles of activism and inter-generational handovers of political work. With Agita we are getting the word out on Germany’s turn towards militarism, domestic authoritarianism and a foreign policy that operates outside of international law. Linking these shifts to imperial violence elsewhere, Agita brings you reports and analyses about the global Palestine solidarity movement based on our learnings on the ground as organisers in Germany.

The post We Will Not Stop, We Will Not Rest: Repression and Resistance from Berlin to New York appeared first on Untold.

When state-organized violence targeted protesters near the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Belgrade, students, joined by their professors, responded by blocking the faculty and demanding accountability. The protests quickly escalated into a country-wide movement calling for the depoliticization of public institutions and respect for the law and the Constitution. Paradoxically, the Serbian President, oscillating between autocrat and “stabilocrat”, remains the Constitution’s most notorious violator, underscoring that grassroots solidarity across Serbia is the most powerful weapon against the Leviathan.

Generation Z

Often dismissed as detached digital natives immersed in virtual worlds, students revealed themselves instead as informed, socially engaged, and tech-savvy political actors, unsettling outdated politicians still rooted in the toxic legacy of the 1990s: division, hatred, and entrenched corruption networks.

Generation Z cultivates alternative networks that resist this toxicity, especially in a region shaped by entangled political imaginaries. Though distant from formal political parties, they remain deeply political. Their disruptive, embodied presence in public space is itself a political act, one that creates atmospheric communities and radical friendships in defiance of the banality of mainstream political discourse. Their rejection of party affiliation appears as a strategic response to the systematically fragmented and disoriented Serbian opposition.

Practicing a “politics of swarming”, a decentralized, fluid, and interconnected mode of collective action and decision-making, they move quickly and act decisively, guided by a sharp socio-political and ecological awareness. From the outset, they reminded the president that he lacks the constitutional authority to address their demands.

In a time of globally accelerating fascism, those who do not obey in advance are drawn to voices grounded in truth, with skin in the game, voices that refuse the collective disbelief in the possibility of a better future.

Who joined? 

Professors and rectors stood with students, except in Novi Pazar, where the rector cut off heating in blocked university buildings, prompting students to withdraw their recognition of her authority. Despite facing repercussions, including the loss of salaries for refusing to call the police on students, many professors formally joined the blockades.

Families and people across Serbia showed solidarity through deeply personal acts of care: offering food, accommodation, transportation, and emotional support.

Protesters carried placards with diverse demands and slogans. Theatres declared they were protesting “against the absurd,” while artists insisted: “It is not artistic to be silent.” The Independent Cultural Scene, the Belgrade Philharmonic, and bookstores joined the movement. Teachers from elementary and high schools participated, and kindergartens sent messages of support, including one placard held by a little girl: “I have no connections for kindergarten, so I came to protest.”

Farmers joined with slogans like “The farmer feeds, the student defends,” arriving on tractors bearing signs such as “For plowing and guarding students.” Miners, public transport workers, bikers, veterans, athletes, and medical professionals followed. One sign read: “Doctors heal the heart, students heal the system; chiropractors treat the spine,” while pharmacists proclaimed, “We have serum against cobra venom.”

The Bar Association offered free legal aid. The Coalition for Media Freedom voiced support. The IT sector joined with the message: “System error. To avoid shutdown, please reset.”

A turning point came when pensioners joined in powerful intergenerational solidarity. Grandparents marched with grandchildren holding placards like: “When I grow up, I will be a pensioner,” and “Don’t lie to my grandma!” These acts of unity revealed a will for change—yet Serbia could and should do better.

Theatre workers were among the first to respond, observing fifteen minutes of silence before performances, followed by raised red-gloved hands and placards, actions that scandalized the pro-regime director of the National Theatre. Later, theatres across the country canceled performances for a week and launched the Traveling Theatre in Belgrade, a protest procession connecting venues and joined by students, cultural workers, and others committed to solidarity.

Atelje 212 created a stirring performance to the Serbian version of “Let the Sunshine In,” a nod to their 1969 production of Hair (the fourth in the world), with placards echoing the lyrics, such as “Eyes to eyes with the world.”

While protests gained momentum, the government and president proposed “dialogues” that functioned more like manipulative monologues. As one female student, assaulted by regime-linked hooligans, put it, “real dialogue is impossible with a broken jaw.”

In response to car attacks on their members, the Belgrade Philharmonic went on strike. While the attackers remain free, peaceful protesters face swift persecution, despite the regime’s absurdly repeated claim: “Now, all the demands have been fulfilled.” Meanwhile, a member of Parliament from the ruling Serbian Progressive Party dismissed striking cultural workers, especially actors and actresses, as “socially irrelevant snobby producers of bullshit” funded by “our good state.” In contrast, a Radio Belgrade presenter mounted his own acoustic protest by reading a propaganda script live on air, then crumpling and tossing it aside.

Radio Beograd, jutarnji program 2. februara.

Slušati do kraja 🎙️

(Proverio na RTS Planeti, autentično je.) pic.twitter.com/ltZncZjuY1

— Nebojša  (@preslicavanje) February 2, 2025

The informal collective Culture in Blockade, operating through plenums, amplified the protests and issued its own demands. They symbolically locked the Ministry of Culture from the outside and reclaimed the Cultural Centre of Belgrade, mirroring students’ liberation of the Student Cultural Center, a building on the verge of privatization and the site where Marina Abramović began her career. From New York, Abramović honored the students as “heroes of today,” reenacting their silent street protest.

A petition for global artistic and academic support was promoted by Wiener Festwochen backing protesters and BITEF festival’s director, having already become persona non grata within the official cultural establishment after Milo Rau opened the Festival with a critique of Serbian and German policies on lithium mining.

Diasporic Pumping

Students have lit a spark in the diaspora, after all, leaving is also a form of protest. Their ongoing “performances” for global attention are deeply moving and creative, as seen in the Where is Justice? gathering at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate, or through fundraising gestures like the donation from a Yugoslavia-themed Kafana Quiz Night, aimed at supporting teachers facing financial state terror for being deemed too disobedient to receive their salaries.

Thankfully, support foundations for these workers already exist, one of which recently received a donation from Belgrade’s drag queens, who organized a charity show.

The phrase by German dramatist Heiner Müller “wie es bleibt, ist es nicht” (“what remains, is not as it is”) resonates on many levels in Serbia today, where demagoguery no longer finds easy ground.

Diasporic support also came from the group Academic Solidarity with Students from Serbia. Yet early efforts to mobilize institutional political or academic backing were met with resistance. For example, a solidarity letter from Serbian students was promptly removed by the Free University of Berlin’s student group, while the Berlin University of the Arts canceled a planned discussion, fearing repercussions. Such reactions are unsurprising, after all, the Free University had already canceled a talk by UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese on the occupied Palestinian territories, raising serious questions about just how “free” the institution truly is.

Unpacking the Class Question

Solidarity is the protests’ most vital force. In that spirit, ecological activists, mainly from rural areas, often cooked for students, temporarily setting aside their own causes. A student victory, they understood, would strengthen their battles against Rio Tinto, the demolition of public landmarks like the Old Railway Bridge (already nearly gone), the Ministry of Defence, Belgrade Fair, and others.

This affective wave of solidarity bridged Serbia’s long-standing urban-rural divide, momentarily turning the metropolis and the province into comrades. Students became a unifying force among teachers, farmers, workers, and academics, disrupting the melancholia of class divisions and sparking two general strikes. Though Serbia’s crushed and fragmented unions make it far from a Greek-style model, these intersectional strikes embodied a shared emancipatory potential. Their momentum even impacted supermarket boycotts across ex-Yugoslav countries, revitalizing civil disobedience as a tool of solidarity.

The SPP’s absurd response to the general strike, urging members to dine lavishly and fill their tanks, triggered disbelief among lower-class supporters, many of whom ironically celebrated this grotesque display of wealth. For 13 years, Serbia has been trapped in a Midsummer Night’s Nightmare, with pro-regime media acting as an evil fairy, persuading people to distrust their own common sense. Instead of questioning whether they can afford the proposed purchases, people are encouraged to cheer the president and denounce “foreign mercenaries” supposedly out to destroy the “economic tiger.”

After the March 15 protest, the same voices accused the movement of being driven by elites, as if students under blockade weren’t surviving on donations, and education workers didn’t earn below-average salaries. That same day, the government staged yet another class performance, parading “real” farmers with old tractors to contrast with EU-funded ones bearing modern equipment.

Migratory gaze of a theatre scholar

As someone who once left in search of something better, spending years abroad studying theatre as a space to test the utopian, Serbia now feels like home again. It has become a vast, community-based political theatre, where student plenums have seeded citizens’ assemblies and experiments in direct democracy.

Along the way, I came to realize that theatre is not immune to corruption, especially where power is exercised. It can become rigid, unresponsive, even cowardly, particularly during periods of “systemic irrelevance,” as was painfully evident during the COVID-19 pandemic in Berlin. Losing privilege is hard, but it is far more disheartening when former rebels become obedient, sheltered by the social mantra of solidarity at a safe distance.

In today’s Serbia, theatre and its people have proven their relevance to systemic change. Street theatre has become a central form through which the Jürgen Habermas concept of public sphere is not only reflected but actively reimagined. This performative ecology has achieved what a disillusioned German theatre director Thomas Ostermeier might never have expected from his Enemy of the People.

What many theatre scholars see as spatial or institutional limitation was upended the day after the state deployed sonic weapons against its citizens. The Terazije Theatre opened its doors to the movement, stating: Tonight, we invited our dear audience to complete the silence that was violently interrupted last night.

This Serbian solidarity has become contagious, prompting Yanis Varoufakis to name Serbian students as models of global resistance. Yet solidarity offers no individual safety, especially not in 2025 Serbia. And perhaps, it shouldn’t. Because as long as solidarity persists, there will always be a we.

*This text was written in March 2025 as part of an analysis of the performativity of the students-led protests in Serbia.

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