Paper short abstract:

This paper presents ethnographic and archival material from two legal trials against German political institutions: one against the city of West Berlin in 1972 and one against the German parliament in 2021. The trials reveal how activism around ‘Palestine’ is negotiated and struggled over.

Paper long abstract:

In 1972, the General Union of Palestinian Workers and Students (GUPW and GUPS) were banned by West German minister of interior Genscher overnight, and known and speculated members were deported. The radical German left at the time, circulated pamphlets calling the ban “a ban against us all” and a sign for the erosion of West German liberal democracy. Resulting in a trial against the city of West Berlin, activist mobilisations sought make a case that the ban fit in with wider racist and discriminatory sentiments, particularly against “progressive” forces. The trial that unfolded provides and insight into how political institutions as well as activists made claims about belonging, racialisation, and democracy at the time.

In 2021, then, three years after the German parliament issued a resolution condemning the Palestinian Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement as antisemitic and extremist, three activists started a trial against the parliament, arguing the resolution is in breach of their fundamental right to freedom of speech. Again, albeit differently, the three activists (one anti fascist white German, one Jewish-German, one Palestinian-German) reckoned with the politics of power that shape inclusion into Germany’s liberal democracy today. In particular, they asked: whose histories can and should shape our notions of morality and justice today?

This presentation will present materials (documents, ethnographic observations from fieldwork) from both of these trials to ask about the state of German liberal democracy and particularly its legal institutions: how liberal is this liberal democracy, given an increasing erosion of activist spaces and criminalisation of pro Palestine activism in particular?