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‘Free speech is a facade’: how Gaza war has deepened divisions in German arts world
(www.theguardian.com)
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As someone living in Germany, the level of state repression I've seen towards artists and activists who speak against Israel's war on Gaza is terrifying. I never thought I'd see such a level of repression in Germany. Artists' funds are getting slashed left and right. The government is pushing venues to cancel appointments with artists that criticize Israel (including jewish artists/activists). Cultural venues have been closed down by the government for hosting some of these activists (Oyoun Berlin was closed down after renting a space for an evening to the local charter of Jewish Voice for Peace). Activists have been arrested/fined for chants like "From the river to the sea we demand equality" or "Jews against genocide". There have been countless non-violent activists raided by armed police in the early hours of the morning for their pro Palestine activism. Berlin police has enacted checkpoints in immigrant neighbourhoods. Journalists getting fired for asking the wrong questions. The state of Berlin is now trying to pass a law to allow universities to exmatriculate students on "behavioural" grounds (aka political stances). Politicians actively singling out activists on social media and redirecting insane amounts of hate their way. This place is getting very, very scary.
You really should recheck your sources. F.e. this case here
is not "behavioural grounds", but because some students beat up a jewish student for political reasons and the university wasn't allowed to expell them due to legal reasons.
The victim in that assault case has been shoving and grabbing students at the university before. That is of course much less severe than how he was beaten up, but in that discussion about throwing out students for violent behaviour that was conveniently ignored.
The whole discussion only started when he was attacked and it was about denying education to pro Palestinian and in particular Arab and other migrant sudents. It was headed among others by the racist major of Berlin (major in this case is also the head of the state government) who just a year ago won an election on the grounds of demanding police to release the names of suspect teenagers. This demand was made so the public could decide based on the names, if those suspects were "real Germans" instead of maybe "foreigners with a German passport". This is far-right nationalist ideology and primitive racism.
So it is clear what goals are aimed at with the demand to throw students out of universities if they are suspect of a crime. If it would be put in place it would be used to remove "foreigners" from universities, not to remove "good kids who have made a mistake".
What I want to say: Those cases are complex, have a lot of nuance and it is totally not ok that @febra@lemmy.world is going around and doing propaganda totally distorting the complexity of those cases.
But in that complexity it is also not yet clear, if the attack was an actual hate crime, with the goal to harm the victim because he is jewish.