We were invited by the bookfair to participate with our zine stand, but we decided against it.
Our decision follows the disinvitation of ABC Belarus, the Solidarity Collectives, and ABC Dresden by the bookfair organizers. These collectives are directly involved in solidarity work with people in Ukraine resisting the full-scale Russian invasion. The organizers justified their exclusion by claiming these groups are “militaristic,” “pro-war,” and “encourage anarchists to join state armies.”
After learning about this exclusion, we chose to use our space to display statements from Solidarity Collectives and ABC Belarus to make this exclusion visible to visitors who might not have heard about it online. One person brought these statements to the bookfair independently. However, the texts were immediately torn down, removed from the table, and the person was surrounded and accused of “war propaganda” and “provocation” — simply for putting the papers on a table reserved for their collective.
This incident again demonstrates that the bookfair is not genuinely interested in open discussion, despite its claims. If even a printed statement cannot be tolerated, then there is clearly no space for the perspectives of those directly affected by the war in Ukraine. The organizers claim to want a conversation about war and militarization, yet deliberately exclude those with first-hand experience and discuss who’s a „true anarchist“ and what is the only legitimate way of dealing with wars. Instead of engaging with those directly affected by the Russian invasion, they retreat into abstract theorizing about war and militarism.
Also we, as anarchists, we see ourselves in opposition to state armies and the military-industrial complex. Neither we nor our comrades in Ukraine or Belarus want war or to enforce state interests by military means. And yet we see that when our own lives and those of our friends and comrades are under threat, sometimes nothing less than armed resistance, whether in a state army or not, is possible.
We would have welcomed a discussion about why some anarchists chose to join the Ukrainian army, to hear their reasoning, and to learn from their experiences. The disinvited groups hold critical analyses of both military and other state institutions, and their perspectives are essential to the broader anti-militarist discourse.
However, the Anarchist Book Fair Berlin has deliberately chosen to suppress this perspective, and is choosing to ignore dozens of other anarchist collectives from Eastern Europe who stand in solidarity with it.
This is not an isolated case. By silencing these voices, the Anarchist Bookfair Berlin aligns itself with a wider Western leftist tendency to treat Eastern European comrades with paternalism and suspicion.
Instead of going to Ukraine themselves and/or talking to their comrades who are affected by the war, they make themselves comfortable in the narrative of militarism and loyalty to the state. Instead of seriously considering what it means when the country you live in is invaded by an imperialist regime, your friends are murdered and tortured, and you live every minute in the certainty that you are the target of a killing machine, they take the easy way out and philosophy about war.
This shows many things, but not an awareness of solidarity and internationalism, and giving space to the affected. We call this toxic “anti-militarism.”
We want to support our comrades in Ukraine, who are making this difficult decision under dangerous circumstances, and listen to them instead of categorically condemning them for making certain choices. We stand alongside our comrades from Solidarity Collectives, ABC Dresden, and ABC Belarus. In solidarity with the people living in Ukraine and in open hostility toward the Russian empire and all its useful helpers in the West.
malobeo