{"id":3673,"date":"2025-12-26T11:32:47","date_gmt":"2025-12-26T08:32:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nottoday.media\/en\/?p=3673"},"modified":"2025-12-26T11:33:31","modified_gmt":"2025-12-26T08:33:31","slug":"this-is-no-longer-a-political-masquerade-this-is-a-scream-from-within","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nottoday.media\/en\/activism\/this-is-no-longer-a-political-masquerade-this-is-a-scream-from-within","title":{"rendered":"\u201cThis is no longer a political masquerade \u2014 this is a scream from within.\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

If you still think May Day is about balloons, barbecues, and nostalgia for trade unions with a human face, you\u2019re probably stuck somewhere between 1975 and old TV commercials. Today, May 1st is when the city trembles from shouts that no one intends to coordinate. It\u2019s not about “workers’ rights”; it\u2019s about a direct strike against the system. Anarchists, delivery drivers, feminists, kids in keffiyehs, and tired cops in body armor\u2014everything mixed together in one warning march. Not a request, but an ultimatum. Not a holiday, but a test volley. Read this perspective on the May Day demonstration in Berlin from a member of the \u00c4ppelwoi Komitee\u2014straight from the streets, where slogans ring louder than laws.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014 Hi! May 1st is, well, you know\u2014one of those demonstrations where even the laziest drag their posters out of the closet. Based on your feelings, how many people gathered in 2025?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014 This is my third May Day demonstration. Usually, people don\u2019t come out to smile for the camera. The mood has typically been angry, focused, and stubborn. To many, it seems that May 1st has once again become the day the street speaks. Or maybe it\u2019s just an old ritual. About 4,000 people took part in the Berlin demonstration, with the anarchist block making up about 400 of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Photo – \u00c4ppelwoi Komitee<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u2014 Who actually goes there? What political movements show up\u2014who is traditionally the majority, and who isn’t invited anymore?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014 The ones who go are those the system spat out. Anarchists, Antifa, radical leftists, queers, feminists, students without a future, former workers and current ones, migrants with nothing left to lose, ecologists who no longer believe in the “Green Deal,” kids in keffiyehs, Stalinists, Kurds, punks, idealistic obscurantists, and old trade union dinosaurs. No one is “invited”\u2014everyone just shows up. Those who cling to the center and write protest notes in Excel style simply aren’t seen there. They say this isn’t about reforms\u2014it’s about a redistribution of power. Who knows?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014 What were the slogans and demands this year\u2014was it the same old “liberty, equality, fraternity,” or was there something new? What are the leftists, anarchists, and those who join the demo actually striving for?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014 This isn’t a political masquerade anymore\u2014it’s a scream from within, the demonstrators claim. They aren’t demanding; they are warning. Though there are doubts about whether the threats are real.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Photo – \u00c4ppelwoi Komitee<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014 It\u2019s known that on May 1st, the leftist spirit lingers with a particular venom. How do the poor “bones” (skinheads) and cops feel in this atmosphere\u2014do they relax or start remembering their self-defense and riot suppression courses?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014 The cops are in body armor, like in a video game. Muscles tensed, eyes scanning 360 degrees. They aren’t “poor”\u2014they know whose side the baton is on. But fear seeps through. Especially toward evening, when the air smells of burning trash cans and the column with red-and-black flags isn’t singing, but silent. That\u2019s when they really get nervous. Especially those who remember how it used to be in Kreuzberg.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014 May 1st used to be about workers’ rights\u2014but now, when factories are replaced by algorithms, is there any chance for workers’ movements? Or are they just pretending they still decide things? How alive is all this in Germany, or is it just nostalgia for Karl Marx?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014 The “working class” is now a migrant on a delivery bike, a nanny without papers, a courier in the rain, a freelance programmer\u2014everyone who won’t live to see a pension. And yes, there is a chance. As long as there is a body that can be taken out to the street, a chance remains. But the class is no longer the same, and its language is different. This isn’t about contracts\u2014it’s about sabotage, collective refusal, and life outside the algorithm. It\u2019s all alive, but not in offices or union headquarters. It\u2019s alive in squats, on the streets, in DIY kitchens, and on the barricades. Or maybe even in the demonstrations of those who follow “Alternative for Germany,” because they don’t understand where we are heading.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a>
Photo – \u00c4ppelwoi Komitee<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u2014 And your personal opinion\u2014how was this May Day demonstration for you? What would you keep, and what is it time to cross out of the script?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014 I\u2019d keep the anger. You can\u2019t do without it. It\u2019s honest. I\u2019d keep the nighttime graffiti that screams louder than any speaker. But I\u2019d cross out the illusion that power can be convinced. No. It can only be stripped of power. It’s time to speak plainly: revolution is not a metaphor. It\u2019s a route.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Members of the \u00c4ppelwoi Komitee also participated in demonstrations in Warsaw, Erfurt, Hamburg, Cologne, and Mannheim.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you are unfamiliar with the \u00c4ppelwoi Komitee and don’t know what they do, we recommend starting with an interview with them \u2014 “Isolation leads to atomization and the gradual fading of once-active people”<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is also worth paying attention to the conversation with the Czech Anarchist Federation (Afed) \u2014 “The more the world seems to suck, the more we need each other”<\/a>, timed to the May Day demonstration in Czechia in 2024.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you still think May Day is about balloons, barbecues, and nostalgia for trade unions with a human face, you\u2019re probably stuck somewhere between 1975 and old TV commercials. Today, May 1st is when the city trembles from shouts that no one intends to coordinate. It\u2019s not about “workers’ rights”; it\u2019s about a direct strike […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3674,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[35],"class_list":["post-3673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-activism","tag-1-may"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nottoday.media\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nottoday.media\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nottoday.media\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nottoday.media\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nottoday.media\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3673"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nottoday.media\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3673\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3677,"href":"https:\/\/nottoday.media\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3673\/revisions\/3677"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nottoday.media\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nottoday.media\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nottoday.media\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nottoday.media\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}