KASSEL – The Rheinmentall Entwaffnen group made a spontaneous demonstration in Kassel as people participated on their camp that views to discuss the role of the company on the war of opression across the world viewing their profit.
Their twitter said: “We got up early, blocked the armaments industry in Kassel and carried our protest into the city with a powerful spontaneous gesture. Over 80 people were injured with pepper spray – the @demosanitaeter had to ask passers-by to fill up the canisters with tap water to be able to wash their eyes. Tomorrow it will continue at 1 p.m. – with a powerful demo from the main station into the city. War starts here, let’s stop it here!”
A previous statement was made on their website about the role of militarism and the profit of companies like Rheinmentall:
The fight against militarism and war needs a feminist perspective on liberation: war and patriarchal violence are closely intertwined. The feminist answer to this is incitement and betrayal! Incitement against and betrayal of military logic as a central element of patriarchal and capitalist structures. Anti-militarist positions are only consistent when they challenge patriarchy. This must be reflected in our arguments against war. In addition, patriarchal structures in our own movements must be questioned and changed.
Violence does not only exist in military attacks and campaigns, but is the norm in patriarchal social structures. Misogynous violence, feminicide, rape and “private” violence are, by their scale, an undeclared war on women*. War and occupation always mean the extreme intensification of patriarchal violence and role models. The mass rape of women as a war strategy runs throughout history. At the same time, rape as a weapon of war can only exist because rape is part of patriarchal everyday life. There can be no analysis of war without looking at this everyday life and its state violence. The Chilean collective Las Tesis summed it up succinctly in their 2019 performance: “It’s the cops, the judges, the state, the president – the oppressive state is a raping macho”. The feminist outcry, the danced rage, spread like wildfire. Not only in the uprising against decades of neoliberal violence and state terror in Chile.
In addition, with every military armament, capitalist societies continue to develop in the direction of internalized militaristic thinking and acting. This is expressed in increasing violence against women and queers, but the exploitation of nature also seems more necessary and is thus legitimized: there is only an either-or, a for or against. As feminists, we stand firmly against any split between “we” and “them”. This division is the prerequisite not only for patriarchal attributions, but also for every form of racism, for nationalism and isolation, for militarization and war. A feminist perspective of anti-militarist politics combines social and ecological issues, gender relations and attributions, violence against women and queers, hierarchization of people, and makes everyday life the subject of our politics. It is fundamental for us as feminists in Western Europe to also take an anti-colonial perspective. Everyday life in Western Europe with its prosperity is based on the exploitation of colonized countries and people. We will make these couplings visible – also in our campaigns.
One perspective for us is building a liberated society in Rojava/Northeast Syria. The attempt is concretely tangible there. The self-defense forces YPG and YPJ defeated the Islamist forces there and are now fighting against the neo-Ottoman great power interests of the Turkish government under Recep Tayyep Erdoğan. Since April 17, 2022, the president of a NATO country has again been waging a brutal war of aggression against the Kurdish areas in Syria and northern Iraq – with drones and rocket attacks, with poison gas. Here, however, there is no social outcry and almost no media attention. When Erdoğan claims to fight “terrorists” preventively, Annalena Baerbock, who since taking office has demagogically represented her foreign policy as a feminist one, supports it.
Despite the constant struggle of the Kurdish movement against the terror of the Turkish state, grassroots democratic processes are underway: for an ecological, feminist and anti-capitalist future with the participation of the broader population. The people of Rojava, who are building a gender-free society with the equal participation of women, urgently need our determined, feminist solidarity!
The connection between war and the militarization of social conditions, which culminates in an extreme increase in rape and femicide, must be shown. One is unthinkable without the other and, above all, unassailable. Colonialism, racism and nationalism are expressions of a violent patriarchal system of rule: Our international solidarity and the coming together of struggles stand in contrast to this – even if the respective conditions are different. Let’s take to the streets together against militarism and war and choose our targets: for a gender-free society, for grassroots democracy, for ecology and climate justice. Against all borders. Against all empires. Against all wars!
Come to the Rheinmetall Disarm camp in Kassel from August 30 to September 4, 2022! Bring your experiences, ideas and your longing for liberation. Share with us collectivity, education, discussion, networking and: resistant feminist actions against arms production in the middle of the city!
Autonomous Feminist Organizing in the Rheinmetall Alliance Disarm
