In the following you find the input  held by a member of Antifa AK Cologne (for UG) at the international discussion „No country for old men” – Transnational Organisation of Anticapitalist Resistance!“ at the third …umsGanze! Congress.

Alpha Kappa (from Athens and Thessaloniki), Drasi (both Greece), Plan C (UK) and …umsGanze! took part in the discussion.

The Audio recording can be found at Soundcloud.

Who we are and what we do

Hello everyone, my name is Johnny and I’m a member of Antifa AK Cologne, which is part of the …ums Ganze! alliance. We are an antinational and anticapitalist project that tries to bring the criticism of state, nation and capital to the streets. …ums Ganze! means that we are against the whole thing, the whole system of capitalist domination, both in times of crisis or when it is functioning ‘normally’.

Our first public appearance was during the mobilization against the G8 summit in 2007 in Heiligendamm. Our starting point was the rejection of capitalism as a system of domination. We analyzed the Group of Eight, not as “the spider in the web” nor the “distributing center” of “predatory capitalism”, rather, we proposed, the G8 summit should be conceived as a form through which capitalist society reflects itself politically. Based on this understanding, we called for an irreconcilable act of negation. This political practice did not aim to mobilize the “One Family” of the defrauded and the disappointed, but rather at bringing capitalism in its totality into the focus of critique: to criticize it’s structures in institutions, and in our heads, and to develop a perspective beyond domination, violence, repression and exploitation.

Since then, the alliance has grown slowly but steadily and we have organized various campaigns and demonstrations. For example we participated in the mobilization against the so called “Anti-Islam congress” by the right wing populist party Pro Koeln in Cologne in 2008 and started a campaign called “State.Nation.Capital.Shit” during protests against the celebrations for the 60th anniversary of German reunification. More recently we have mainly participated in anticapitalist protests around the crisis and linked this situation to existing,in fact, growing, forms of racism in society. For the moment we are active in 10 cities in Germany and also in Vienna in Austria. Continue reading →