Mail to konkret magazine [12.2012]

Konkret magazine proposed us an interview.  The mail below is our response to them, justifying the reasons why we don’t want any political relation with the magazine.

“Dear Konkret journalists,

We have felt the joy of being a folklore spectacle for left germans before. Just a few months ago we entertained with our Balkan extremism your colleagues from the Jungle World newspaper. Unfortunately, our patience was exhausted at this point and we decided for reasons of delicate mental balance to not concern ourselves with “antigermans (meaning germans) ever again.

Some words on the journalistic ethos of the Jungle World employees

Even though they were doing a research on racism and they interviewed immigrants, they buried our viewpoint preferring to do pro-greek external policy as if they were the greek Ministry of Exterior (with participation of the Golden Dawn).

They managed to summarize our 3-hour interview in just 7 lines in the same article filled with paeans for the antifascist resistance in Greece. This constitutes an insult, both because it mis-represents the facts about the constant success of the fascists and the greek society which supports them, and because the reason they did so, aimed at maintaining their ideological fantasies and avoiding to annoy their greek friends.

They put a “we-are-all-greeks” banner on the … Acropolis hill (!), even though we told them – and the immigrants of our group put emphasis on that – that this action, as a political gesture, it would only be harmful for us and it would ascertain the functionality of the greek anti-imperialist nationalism.

They acted like typical mainstream reporters coming for 2 weeks in Greece, supposedly to research issues of racism and fascism, and they interviewed only 3-4 immigrants, whom they met 3 days before their return and after they had visited every “radical” techno party.They didn’t report things that directly conflicted with their ideology  e.g.  that Muslim immigrants tried to save the synagogue of Chania from the arson attack. Not even a liberal right newspaper would hold such an attitude.

Also, we have a negative experience with Konkret as well. A few years ago your magazine printed an article by Eberhard Ronholz with shameless propaganda about how the Greeks supposedly saved their Jewish fellow citizens. The critique by the autonomous group terminal 119 still awaits publication.

The main political reason we don’t wish to grant you an interview is that we don’t want to become the anti-antisemitic note in a uncritical mosaic of “the radical milieu in Greece” because this mosaic contains the most opposing extremes i.e. the most fanatical antisemites along with their enemies,all under the umbrella of antifascism just because it suits you.

It deserves to be pointed out that all those radical left tourists with their sensitivities on anti-Semitism remain suspiciously silent on greek anti-Semitism which remains a structural part of the entire left and anarchist milieu. All these make us believe that antisemitism of the greek left will not be covered in radical left magazines in Germany, unless the greek anarchists they convert to Islam!

 

With appreciation,

Antifa Negative/Antifa Casa del Campo

PS: Of course, we demand the publication of this letter in your magazine.”