By Cosima Mangold
The attack on the synagogue of the Jewish community on Yom Kippur, on a kebab restaurant and the associated murder of two people in Halle have led to calls for political and social action in addition to expressions of solidarity. But what does an anti-Semitic, racist and misogynistic attack mean for our work and our activities as a local peace organization, the Friedenskreis Halle e.V.? In the months following October 9, we supported demonstrations and held workshops and discussions. We also began a reappraisal process in which the broad participation of many people was important to us. This process resulted in the impulse and conclusion paper presented here in excerpts.
This text is an excerpt of the conclusions drawn.
The attack on the synagogue of the Jewish community in Halle on Yom Kippur and the murder of two people left all of us in the Peace Circle stunned, angry and deeply affected. After we paused for a moment to support each other, it became increasingly clear to our team that we neither wanted to simply accept what we had experienced and its public interpretation, nor that we could only think of ourselves now. The attack clearly showed that there is a need for action and that there are people who deserve our full solidarity now more than ever.
It is important for us to clearly state that the perpetrator's motives were anti-Semitic, racist and anti-feminist, and that their structural, social breeding ground must be clearly emphasized. It is precisely in this context that we also place the authorities' failed crisis management in this specific situation. Furthermore, it is important to us that the events are dealt with in a sustainable manner and that we ourselves deal with the reappraisal in a consistent and at the same time sensitive way. It is just as important for us to show solidarity with the victims and potential victims of the attack. Here in Halle, we see it as our responsibility to be approachable for the communities of people with a history of migration and the communities of people affected by racism. Our diverse, transcultural educational work, our political commitment and our role as an organizer of international volunteer services require us to offer opportunities for exchange and information that are otherwise lacking. Although we were all deeply shocked, the motivation to stand up even more vehemently for our values and goals of a free, open and emancipatory society in which people want to and can live together on an equal footing quickly became apparent. For us, the grievances that we believe are partly responsible for the fact that such an attack could happen are neither new nor surprising. They have been the subject of our projects and our efforts to bring people together without violence for years.
As diverse as our team is, so diverse were the ways in which we dealt with the events that followed the attack. We supported demonstrations in Halle, offered workshops and showed solidarity within our team. At our association weekend in the fall of 2019, we also laid the foundations for this paper in a discussion round with the team and our members. We did not want to make any further short-term demands or draw any hasty conclusions. Instead, we have spent the last few months shaping a participatory process in which we developed discussion ideas and conclusions. We are now making these available and see this paper both as an offer for public discussion and as a guide for our future work and political commitment as the Friedenskreis Halle e.V. We welcome both critical and encouraging feedback. We are particularly pleased to receive additions and people who would like to contribute to its implementation.
1. sustainable reappraisal with a high level of transparency and concrete consequences instead of quick action plans and one-sided demands
[...] Most action plans and demands are based on the image of an individual perpetrator radicalized on the Internet. This narrow narrative of the lone perpetrator is reflected in most reactions to the attacks in Halle and Hanau. Longer-term social trends and moods as a result of political action are not taken into account. The image of the lone perpetrator is based on the inaccurate socio-political model of the "democratic center" and the "extremist fringes". This so-called "horseshoe model" does not follow a scientifically tenable analysis of social conditions, nor does it offer options for action to react sustainably and appropriately to the events on October 9, 2019 in Halle or on February 9, 2020 in Hanau.
2. listening to and taking seriously the perspective of those affected and the victims instead of passing on superficial words and symbols
[...] It was only thanks to a chain of fortunate circumstances and, above all, thanks to the foresighted self-protection of the Jewish community that we were saved from having to witness a far worse atrocity on October 9. These circumstances show that the state's crisis management has reached its limits. And it shows once again that the perspectives of people threatened by right-wing terror are still not being taken seriously.
When asked how to respond to such threats, those responsible in the state of Saxony-Anhalt and in federal politics often responded with unspecific lip service. In many places, they did not show any real awareness of the problem, did not carry out any critical error analysis and did not draw any serious conclusions. Since Hanau at the latest, the powerlessness and silence of the authorities has become increasingly clear and it has become increasingly clear that there is a lack of serious will to address the underlying causes.
3. strengthening civil society's commitment to democracy and a diverse and open society instead of defaming and restricting
[...] Civil society has great potential and shows an equally great willingness to strengthen our democracy with competent and creative approaches. This was impressively demonstrated by the more than 1,000 project ideas submitted to Demokratie leben! The bitter reality is that 900 of these approaches and concepts for new model projects remain unused. We are convinced that less funding weakens our democracy. After all, different civil society actors at all levels of the municipalities, the federal states and the federal government are needed to address current challenges.
4. develop new strategies for action instead of continuing to look away and persist
[...] As an organization and as individuals, we will also deal with our own imprints and entanglements in racism, discrimination, violence and the logic of deterrence. In doing so, we will seek and pursue suitable ways of dealing with and overcoming these imprints and entanglements. We will use social media even more intensively in future to disseminate constructive contributions to social discourse. We will also enrich social discourse with positive examples from our project and educational work and provide suggestions for individual, civic-minded action and positioning. To this end, we will develop new model projects as learning opportunities and fields of experimentation as well as new educational programs.
You can find the full text on our website www.friedenskreis-halle.de/schlussfolgerung
We look forward to receiving feedback at: info@friedenskreis-halle.de
The Friedenskreis Halle e.V. association was founded in 1991 by conscientious objectors. The experience of the peaceful revolution in 1989 brought people from various citizens' initiatives in Halle together in 1990 to form the Peace Circle and formed the basis for the association founded in 1991. Our commitment today, in peace policy, peace education and peace services, is determined by a dynamic understanding of peace: We do not understand peace as a state, not as a distant goal and not just as the absence of war. For us, peace is a path to a partnership-based, just and non-violent coexistence in diversity, which enables the development and freedom of the individual. The fundamental themes and guiding values of our work are: active non-violence, constructive and civil conflict resolution, living democracy, transcultural diversity and global justice. Our work is supported by full-time and voluntary staff and the support of private donors and public subsidies.