To be or not to be

This week, a text about something that has been on my mind since the announcement of the mass action by Ende Gelaende. First things first: I am very happy that Ende Gelaende is once again doing what made it big and important – being loud and hopefully, as disobedient as possible. But I still can't silence the BUT in my head. I wanted to make it easy for myself, suppress the voice in my head and devote myself to another topic from the future training camp, but making it easy for myself doesn't help, especially when the world looks the way it does right now. And personally, I've always been bad at making things easy for myself, with all the consequences that entails. We all know how things currently stand when it comes to action on the major left-wing issues: climate activism is often a shadow of its former self, appealing and ineffective or disobedient, but then often only symbolically. Antifas are ‘under fire’ and the fight against capitalism and militarisation is meeting with a similar fate as climate activists, although there are certainly positive exceptions in this area who do not shy away from militancy. And that is precisely what makes the difference between symbolic and, at least to a certain extent, effective.

Will it be the End of the Road?

When we honestly consider the situation, I can only come to one conclusion regarding the mass action of Ende Gelaende: it is now all or nothing for Ende Gelaende as well. Not in terms of the prospect of turning everything around for the better with a mass action, but in terms of its own future and relevance. This fills me with sadness, fear and concern, because Ende Gelaende is player that changed everything for me and that is always very close to my heart. I know I can be annoying at times, critical and demanding. But, dear comrades, I do it with and out of a great deal of love for Ende Gelaende. Enough sweet talk, back to the seriousness of the situation – and that applies to Ende Gelaende and the planned mass action as well.

The glory of the past

Ende Gelaende has gained standing through its actions in the Rhineland and Lusatia, through spectacular images and through the force with which it has succeeded in building up a certain counterforce for a while. Ende Gelaende became an actor that was taken seriously, that stood for something and that seemed capable of really getting serious and achieving something. Ende Gelaende made civil disobedience and climate activism extremely sexy, and Ende Gelaende ensured that activists were fairly safe from repression, partly because large parts of ‘society’ understood us, our goals and our actions, and somehow also supported us. Ende Gelaende has built a reputation that we still benefit from today, because the reactions within the activist scene that the announcement of a mass action has provoked speak volumes: people are excited, they are blocking the date in their calendars, local groups are experiencing an influx of new members, new local groups are being formed, a noticeable dynamic is emerging... But all this also means a lot of work for the people in the background. Working groups need to be restarted, planning and coordination need to be done, too few people are working on too many projects, and the expectations of all those who have been eagerly awaiting the announcement of ‘Ende Gelaende once again’ are high. The excitement is palpable, and it feels great.

So what is my problem?

All the work behind a mass campaign that people are now taking on once again because they have hope in this campaign, because they are mobilising themselves to come and help, etc., will certainly not bear the fruits of the really big campaigns in the Rhineland, when open-cast mines were virtually flooded by thousands, police lines were broken through and excavators were occupied. This will not be possible because fossil fuel infrastructure in the form of gas infrastructure no longer offers the options that open-cast mines did. Gas-fired power stations are often still in the planning/approval phase; they are not huge, unprotected, open holes in the middle of the landscape. Gas infrastructure often consists of green fields that are destined to become construction sites, pipes that are still lying undeveloped somewhere, and even those who use gas to produce other crap are legitimate targets of protest, but they are also more difficult to target than coal excavators. For various reasons, our potential for mass mobilisation is also no longer what it was in the days of the great forest occupations and actions in the Rhineland mining area. We know this, and yet we are organising a mass action because we know and feel that it is necessary and right, and because we need it for ourselves.

The feeling of being able to achieve something together with many others, of being virtually invincible in the moment when a finger breaks through barriers and police cordons, of stopping something that is actually overwhelmingly powerful – that is, as everyone who was there will confirm - one of the best and most wonderful feelings ever. We long for it.

So if this mass action becomes a blockade in front of closed factory gates at the weekend, or if it remains limited to symbolic visits to (potential) construction sites, many people will have worked very hard without really achieving anything, without allowing us all to feel this euphoria, even if only for a moment, and the myth of Ende Gelaende will no longer be sustainable. Even a myth must be nurtured; it must repeatedly flash and become visible, showing where it comes from and why it still lives on. The task for Ende Gelaende with this mass action is therefore precisely that – to breathe life back into the myth and make it clear, both internally for us and externally for everyone else, that we are still here, that we are fighting for relevance and that we are capable of achieving something that goes beyond symbolic politics. The mass action must relight the fire if we want to continue to attack and fight in the coming years.

We don't have to win everything with this action, but we can lose everything. The time for purely symbolic actions is over, otherwise it's game over for Ende Gelaende.

In conversations with others who have been involved for a long time (and are tired), I notice that many have similar thoughts, that I am not the only one who is aware of the significance of this action. We also know that, given the measures now being taken by the state and the police against activists, these are completely disproportionate to the forms of protest and what the actions actually achieve. With every action, we expose ourselves to a variety of dangers to our physical and mental integrity, to our freedom. Of course, we must not turn a blind eye to this, because we want to take action with many others and we bear responsibility for those who respond to the call for mass action. We must also be prepared for the fact that the mere announcement of a mass action will set in motion processes on the opposing side that respond to the myth of Ende Gelaende and not to reality!

Ende Gelaende is not only facing a mass action and all the preparation and tasks that this entails. We are facing much more than that, and I wish us the courage to face up to it and, despite everything and now more than ever, to live up to this call once again, to rekindle the fire with a powerful, surprising mass action that gives the middle finger to business as usual, because it makes a difference and because we show that we will not be controlled, intimidated or discouraged. We have always been at our best when it was about more than symbolic politics, when we took ourselves and our form of action seriously and made ourselves serious. Ende Gelaende has always been very emotional, and I am not prepared to give that up.

Let's go, let’s shut shit down. In 50 years' time, Ende Gelaende should still give us goosebumps and cause a certain amount of fear on the other side, because it's clear to everyone that something big, relevant and important is coming. Let's fight back, by all means.