When there is no interest in dialogue – ABC-Belarus once again excluded from the book fair in Berlin

A year and a half ago, we published a bigger text titled “When ideology stands in the way of solidarity” about how certain anarchist groups in various Western European countries manipulate facts to exclude Eastern European anarchists from discussions about the war in Ukraine.

Since then, unfortunately, the situation has taken a turn for the worse, and the popularity of old anti-militarist and pacifist perspectives within the Western European anarchist movement has only grown. This month, we received another refusal from Berlin regarding our participation in the anarchist book fair, whose organizers emphasized that they had no connection to last year’s organizing group.

For transparency’s sake, we were well aware of the high probability of rejection before submitting our application for this book fair. On the one hand, we were pleasantly surprised that the rejection did not come in the form of a single rude sentence, as it did last time, but with detailed reasoning. However, the arguments presented in the letter confused us even more than the attempts to accuse us of supporting the war, as the organizers of last year’s anarchist book fair did.

“We are done here, here our powers are over…”

The organizers cited “distrust of the ABC collective due to numerous previous violations of agreements with other collectives” as the main reason for their refusal, although they also mentioned that they consider it “unacceptable to give space to positions calling for joining the state army during an anarchist fair.”

In particular, the organizers mentioned two previous cases of violations of agreements:

• At the presentation in Bremen, we allegedly violated the agreement with the organizers “not to praise participation in the war / be apologetic about military service”[1]. Moreover, we did so not only verbally, but also brought a distro that violated these agreements.
• The same materials were laid out on the table during the presentation in Berlin, although they were not “part of the presentation topic” [1]. We were also accused of starting the presentation three hours late and of one of our group members constantly talking on the phone with someone.

We took these comments very seriously and asked for more details, which the organizing group was unable to provide. In a private conversation with one of the organizers of the event, we were also unable to clarify the details of the accusations.

We also contacted the organizers of the event in Bremen, who confirmed that we had absolutely no agreements regarding the censorship of presentation content and that they had no complaints against us. Nor did they prohibit certain materials on the table. We contacted a person who was part of the organizing group in Berlin and were also told that the organizers had no complaints about our distro.

We passed all this information on to the organizers of the book fair in Berlin. A few weeks later, we received a response in which their position had changed. Now, the Berlin anarchists are no longer insisting on a breach of agreement, but simply write that the difference in our views on the war in Ukraine is so profound that they do not see the possibility of constructive dialogue with us at the fair. Moreover, in the new letter, they wrote that “we see no benefit for us or for you in a presentation or stand where joining the state army and serving in the army can be justified.”

One of the important features of the Belarusian regime is the extreme formalization of repression. Very rarely do detentions and arrests take place outside the framework of existing laws. Even though people are sentenced to 20 years for completely fabricated cases, there will still be a trial, presentation of evidence, and dozens of days of closed-door hearings. Political life in the country is also often limited by such formal procedures. You are not imprisoned for opposing the regime, but for “actions that violate public order”

Until 2020, any public protests were banned on trumped-up grounds, and no one pointed to the incorrect political views of the organizers of a demonstration or rally in the refus letter. Instead, the regime referred to the law on mass events, which prohibited gatherings near metro stations, for example. At the same time, the wall of bureaucracy was impenetrable, and all attempts to question the officials’ silly wording were met with closed doors.

In such an atmosphere, we have become accustomed to the state using formal, non-political reasons to exclude political opponents. What we did not expect was a repetition of this approach within the anarchist movement. But this is exactly what we encountered when submitting our application in Berlin.

Why did this moment remind us of Belarus? Most likely because of the feeling of absolute powerlessness in communication and the lack of any desire on the part of those whom we could have considered comrades yesterday to clarify the situation. It feels like we are working with bureaucrats who are not interested in the real facts.

The problem of manipulating facts to exclude groups/people

In our statement a year and a half ago, we already wrote that in the situation surrounding the war in Ukraine, objective reality is being sacrificed for the sake of an anti-militarist colossus with feet of clay. The presentation in Berlin once again convinced us that facts are often simply invented in order to discredit opponents.

Thus, we are not in a situation of equality where we can debate different political views on the situation in Belarus, Ukraine, or even Germany. Instead, we are forced to justify ourselves, saying that we have never violated any agreements. We are forced to write a text explaining that an ABC-Belarus activist was late for a presentation in Berlin because of Germany’s crumbling transport infrastructure (which the Germans themselves are well aware of). We are forced to justify that an activist from our team found out about the death of a comrade in Ukraine right before the presentation and had to urgently organize transportation for this comrade’s family from Germany back home.

The latest situation reminded us of an essay by Dina Naeri, who left Afghanistan as a child and was granted asylum in the United States. In her text, she describes how, in order to be accepted into Western society, refugees must be eternally grateful for the privilege of being where they are. Moreover, refugees are obliged to constantly express this gratitude to those around them and under no circumstances enter into conflict with the locals. There is nothing worse than an ungrateful refugee. Similarly, in the anarchist milieu, we must be extremely grateful for the opportunity to speak in Berlin and do everything possible to show our gratitude to each of the organizers of the presentation in one form or another. And under no circumstances should we express problematic views that would make Western anarchists feel uncomfortable…

The willingness to exclude anarchist organizations from public events based on such “facts” shows a part of the anarchist movement in Berlin in a less than favorable light. Why are fabricated incidents enough for them to exclude an anarchist organization from Eastern Europe that has been engaged in solidarity work for the last 16 years? It is ironic that Western anarchists and Western leftists often take Russian propaganda at face value without attempting to understand it in depth.

As a result, we are forced to spend time trying to prove our own innocence in response to fabricated accusations. Our task should not be to seek refutation of such statements based on unverified facts. The organizing group could have checked them themselves by writing a few letters, instead of shifting this work onto our collective, which has enough other tasks in anti-repressive solidarity work.

In reality, we are being excluded precisely because people consider us “militarists” who support Ukraine’s military machine and praise the state army.

Such is the price of solidarity with the Ukrainian people in their struggle against the Russian invasion. It does not matter how critical we are of the Ukrainian state and the Armed Forces of Ukraine. It does not matter how much effort we have spent in the past fighting Belarusian militarism. Once again, none of this matters, because someone told someone else that ABC-Belarus supports the Ukrainian government.

Often, we cannot even respond to these accusations because they are raised behind closed doors, and those who shout the loudest about boycotting ABC remain silent about it in public. And here we can note the cowardice of a certain part of the German anarchist movement, which uses lies and incitement to try to exclude people who do not share their political views.

Not our war?

Over the past few years of speaking in Western Europe, we have become convinced that a significant part of the anarchist movement there deeply believes that the war in Ukraine is not their war, based on outdated political analyses. We see how these people have chosen to sit comfortably in the back rows of history and simply wait to see how the situation in Eastern Europe will develop without their participation. In the event of the political rise of the far right in our countries, it will always be possible to say, “Well, we told you so,” and in the event of alternative scenarios, to pretend that this was the plan all along.

And perhaps somewhere one can sympathize with the position that “it’s not our war.” After all, for the average resident of the Western empires, this war concerns people they have never seen. Places they have never been to and most likely never will. Contrary to all public statements, in the minds of many anarchists and leftists in the so-called first world, the border of civilization still lies somewhere in Eastern Europe, and depending on how much you agree with Western analyses, it can begin in Poland, Belarus, or Ukraine. Not our war means that Ukrainians are still not seen as part of that mythical European “we.” Not our war means that we have to try every day to prove that we are worthy of being equal to anarchists from Germany or other “developed” countries. This is precisely why myths about the ABC being an organization that violates agreements, spreads war propaganda, and is incapable of dialogue so easily take root in the minds of many Western activists. In their minds, we are still the same barbarians who have not learned the civilized way of political interaction, we continue to break the rules in the anarchist community, and the only way out is to exclude those very barbarians and ensure the triumph of Western thought at events such as the anarchist book fair in Berlin.

But, fortunately, there are enough people in the world who have overcome xenophobia and the arrogance of empires. People who put in a tremendous amount of effort every day to support the anarchist movement in Belarus and in the diaspora. During this time, we have found a huge number of comrades in the West who are passionate and have been engaged in solidarity work for many years. And yes, we believe that these people often do not receive enough attention because of anarchists like the organizers of the book fair in Berlin described above. Instead of positive examples of organization, cooperation, and victories, we are forced to once again talk about the failures of that very solidarity. About the struggle for equality within the anarchist community. About the lies that become part of the movement and may even be written into history as fact.

Despite this, we still want to thank the hundreds of people who organized our events across Europe. Thousands who donated to support Belarusian anarchist prisoners. To the dozens who support the anarchist Black Cross Belarus on a monthly basis. You are one of the parts of our belief that solidarity works, and that somewhere ahead of us, a just society may await us if we push a little harder.

1: Quote from a letter sent to us by the organizer:

You can send a letter of protest or publicly condemn the approach of the anarchist book fair in Berlin on your own resources. At the time of writing, we know that the book fair has also refused to allow Solidarity Collectives from Ukraine to participate.