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Paper short abstract

How does the German state apparatus stifle dissent against the ongoing Gaza genocide? What role do sectors of knowledge production play in pacifying and coopting the call for a free Palestine? And how has it been confronted from within the movement?

Paper long abstract

As the horrors of the genocide in Gaza continue, globally a new generation of activists has been politicized regarding the over 78-year history of settler colonialism in Palestine. In Germany, which is the second largest weapons supplier to Israel, those who are part of the pro-Palestine movement face an oppressive and criminalizing status quo. Hereby, the bourgeois state apparatus uses different mechanisms to crush the movement for a free Palestine, both through force and cooptation. Hence next to brute police violence and political bans, sectors of knowledge production play a pivotal role in subverting the Palestine solidarity movement. This takes on the forms of smear campaigns and hegemonic scholarship that serves as a legitimizing framework for imperialist warfare, racist policies and militarization. But also, through the appropriation and defanging of decolonial language into the ivory tower. In this paper, I analyze what the German ruling class’s mechanisms of sabotaging the Palestine solidarity movement are, what their function is and what role intellectuals have in this context.

In a second step, I delve into how activists in the Palestinian solidarity movement have responded to this repressive status quo. Within the movement, there are ongoing debates on a wide array of issues regarding strategy and tactics. This includes debates that center questions of practical solidarity with national liberation movements, organizational models, identity and class, united fronts, and working-class power. Here I showcase what pacifying modes of knowledge production take on within the movement but also how they have been confronted.