Anti-Colonial Sommerkino
Smash colonialism!
Doors open 18:00 | Movie + Discussion 19:00 @ Rigaer 94
08.06 | THE ACT OF KILLING. Documentary about the unrepentant former members of Indonesian death squads in 1960s
22.06 | THE CIVILIZERS. Germans in Guatemala.
06.07 | INSUMISAS. Women in struggle in Western Sahara.
22.07 |THE LISTENING POST. How Israel automated occupation in Hebron.
The current situation in Palestine has brought an impulse to value the resistance for self-determination, while raising questions of how to do it. In solidarity with the palestinian struggle, a global movement against colonialism has once again emerged. Thus, armed resistance and internationalist solidarity have become central to our discussions. The palestinian offensive has clearly revealed a difference in knowledge and experience about history between societies in the global–north and the global–south.
This difference is created by colonial powers, but also accepted by those in the heart of the beast, who got used to not know and build their comfort zone upon ignorance.
With this in mind, we want to invite for a series of films that address different aspects of the same political system and create a space for self-education about colonialism. Along the four dates, we propose to untangle aspects such as externalization and extractivism, by analyzing the social dynamics these create. Impunity, as necessary condition for our welfare in the global north, and how this last one contributes to the pacification of the anti-colonial struggles in the global-south. The construction of a global patriarchy, based on white supremacist ideas, as a means of domination that applies specific types of violence.
From an anarchist position, we see the importance of contributing to the discussion from an anti-state position, that rejects the institutionalization of violence and the capitalist framing of beliefs. Our Anarchism is anti-colonial, and our anti-colonialism is anarchic. It is in the tension between different ideas of liberation and forms of emancipation that our practice emerges. We want to understand the current situation, but do not seek to find universal solutions.
Lets reject together the idea of colonialism as an outside reality, and rather find concrete examples of how colonialism plays a role in our daily life in this city. We are convinced, that the exercise of anti-colonial practices in our daily life are necessary conditions for our liberation from the modernist misery we live in.
1. THE ACT OF KILLING
When the U.S. took over the role of global empire after World War II, it continued the history of colonization and war, expanding its reach from the Americas, Hawaii, and the Philippines to the rest of the world. Under the pretext of „anticommunism,“ it went on to continue colonial rule by attacking any territory that pursued independence. Each of these places has its own history of coups d’état, massacres, dictatorships, torture, and forced disappearance, as well as their own history of resistance, liberation, and fight for remembrance and justice. In Indonesia, gangsters employed by the government killed between 300,000 and one million suspected communists after a CIA-supported government overthrow. The paramilitary units of those times still play a huge role in Indonesian politics today, showing how crucial the collaboration of para-militarism and states is in breaking resistance against the establishment of capitalist societies. From the docks of Marseilles in 1947, Nazi networks of the Federal German Republic, the mob in the U.S., to contras in Latin America: the fine gentlemen of the stock exchange can always rely on fascist squads to secure their interests.
If we gaze upon this from a global north, this is only possible thanks to extensive impunity, which results not just in pretending that history didn’t pass, but also underestimates entire populations, leaving exposed and obscene indications of the implication of colonial powers in the exploitation of others and pillage of their territories. Treating us as stupid and dormant, who don’t need to be feared.
In this landscape, the dualism between violence and pacifism is installed, but not necessarily on the affected society, rather on Western ones: those who profit from it. Thus, impunity as a key aspect of modernity/coloniality feeds on crucial aspects of white supremacy. In the global South, perhaps the most
visible aspect is the representation of the colonized being barbaric, violent by nature. Under that philosophical categorization of being, characteristic of colonial political interests, it is blurred what is the concrete objective that induces violence in societies like Indonesia’s. It is seen as a human conflict, between small groups, and at a local scale, when it is clear that it is external political and economic interests that introduce dynamics of violence as a way to appropriate specific natural resources. Thus, the implication of the global North is forgotten and silently forgiven.
Colonial violence gains terrain through methods of militarization and war, while counter-violence seeks to be discredited, and repression against liberation movements finds allies in our cities that add voices to the dispossession of subjectivity and direct action by others.
The documentary sheds light on the role of a culture of impunity in today’s Indonesia. Providing the fertile soil for a society infested with militarism, expropriated resources, and with the survivors of political killings just recently starting to fight for recognition and justice.
The movie „The Act of Killing“ follows Anwar and his old friends as they shoot a movie about the massacres they committed in the 1970s. By reenacting their killings, they confront us with the ongoing reality of colonial violence.
Proposal for discussion
- What consequences do war and militarism have on societies?
- How does the global-north support impunity around the globe?
- Impunity as a constituting factor of the German state. To mind come the NSU killings, deportations to Guantanamo, Torture and murders of political prisoners in the 70s-80s, Police murders etc.
- How to think about the right to self-defense, without falling into eurocentric logics?
2. THE CIVILIZER
When one thinks about the colonial history of Abya Yala, there is a tendency to reduce it to the actions carried out by the Spanish crown/state alone. Far from being a history of a single power, it has been a history of joint work, agreements, and collaboration between different European colonial powers, including Germany.
This film helps to break the idea that Germany was not and is not a colonial power.
It shows the connection between land occupation as a finite natural resource, directly related to German wealth. This occupation goes beyond the crops that are grown there; instead, it signifies the construction of colonies, where the social and cultural norms that govern are those of the occupier. Their language, clothing, idols, religion, political ideas, and economic interests. Thus, extractivism is installed with the objective of plundering natural resources, but in every aspect of life, its dual component externalization does not occupy relevant places in the discussion of our life of wealth. Colonial morality is imposed, generating false ideas of hierarchies between people, in which the white man becomes the model to follow. The measure of what is right and what is good…while racist violence, in the form of economic exploitation, sexual abuse, birth control, religious imposition, child labor, modification of ecosystems, and destruction of the lives of thousands of species, is used as a means for individualistic self-benefit.
There are many different ways how the self-determination of peoples is restricted. It is easy to make the difference between colonized states and colonizers, as only the latter enjoys the capacity to dictate laws and norms in a territory not its own. To bring up the concrete example of German intervention in Guatemala, the best example is the vagrancy laws imposed in 1943.
„Civilizers“ opens the way for us to rethink what the nation-state really means. Looking at the history of so-called independence in Abya Yala, we can discuss in depth whether the emergence of independent states is really possible within the panorama of modernity/coloniality of the global capitalist economy. Or, on the contrary, if it is time to understand that the nation-state as a political structure is one of the
primary tools to perpetuate coloniality.
Proposal for discussion
- What is the significance of extractivism in society, which social structures are produced by extractivism?
- Nation states as a means for colonialism
- The relationship between work for a salary and the existence of the notion of private property and the state.
- Modern slavery, the dispossession of freedom and the control of free time.
