The rising censorship of Berlin’s art scene

Perhaps more than any other country in the West, Germany has responded to the resurgent Palestine solidarity movement with a campaign of censorship and repression. This has taken many forms, from a wave of police brutality directed – primarily – against its Arab communities, to the exercise of cultural power. The language of ‘cancellation’ has become tainted in recent years, bringing to mind right-wing celebrities complaining about people being mean to them on Twitter, but in the German context its meaning is entirely literal: hundreds of events – including talks, film screenings and exhibitions – have been cancelled in recent months, either because they concerned Palestine directly or because the artists involved had expressed pro-Palestinian views elsewhere (a new Instagram account – Archives of Silence – provides an exhaustive catalogue of these incidents).

These efforts have succeeded in creating a chilling effect, up to a point, but many of Germany’s artists are fighting back. We spoke with members of the new organisation Art and Culture Alliance Berlin (ACAB) and Louna Sbou – the director of the cultural centre Oyoun, which has recently had its funding cut – to discuss the importance of Palestine solidarity, why the authorities are taking such a hard line against it, and what this tells us about the deep divisions at the heart of German society.

“The silencing of pro-Palestinian voices has been going on for a long time, and unfortunately it’s been highly effective,” the ACAB organisers, who asked to be quoted collectively, tell Dazed. Since 2019, the German government has classified BDS – a boycott movement aimed at pressuring Israel into complying with international law – as antisemitic, and a number of regional parliaments have introduced measures which severely restrict its operation. But while the current wave of censorship isn’t anything new, it is more intense than ever before.

Last month, the Berlin senate rushed through a new “anti-discrimination clause”, which would require recipients of cultural funding to renounce “any form of antisemitism according to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s [IHRA] definition of antisemitism.” This may sound reasonable, but the IHRA definition is controversial and highly contested. According to its detractors, it is vague, unclear, and open to abuse as a tool to shut down criticism of Israel: both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, for example, have been accused of antisemitism using the IHRA definition after writing reports which described Israel as practising apartheid. Even one of the people who originally drafted it – American attorney Kevin Stern – has since argued that it is being misused to suppress political speech.

Many artists in Berlin understood the proposed clause as a defacto loyalty pledge, an attempt to strong-arm them into remaining silent on Palestine and to cement the idea that criticising Israel is antisemitic – all at a time when Gaza was facing (as it still faces) what many legal and human rights experts have described as a potential genocide – a charge which was recently judged plausible by the International Court of Justice. The proposal provoked a wave of protests – at one ACAB demo, artists gathered outside the senate and signed a giant mock contract with “discrimination clause” blazoned across it – and it was eventually repealed. But while this result is a testament to the movement’s efforts, no one involved considers it a final victory. The senate has since indicated that it is looking for ways to reintroduce the clause, and even if its efforts prove unsuccessful, the censorship of artists in Germany is likely to continue – just in a more underhand, informal and insidious way. “The conditions of silencing are still there, and they’re trying to take this to the federal level. There’s just so much still to be done,” the ACAB members say.

“There were so many people I know who said they supported our cause, but didn’t want to sign any letters because they were afraid to make their lives even more unstable” – a member of the Art and Culture Alliance Berlin

The dream of a cheap, bohemian life in Berlin is not what it used to be, which makes artists especially vulnerable to coercion by the state and the ideologically driven way in which it dispenses cultural funding. Rent is still OK if you’re lucky enough to secure an old contract, but it’s getting more expensive for most people, and the war in Ukraine has led to a soaring cost of living. After a brief splurge of arts funding during the pandemic, the state has been cutting back on costs, which makes public grants more elusive than ever. These conditions have made many cultural workers reluctant to speak out on Palestine, because they feel that their basic survival is at stake – financial precarity can have as powerful an impact on freedom of expression as direct forms of censorship. “There were so many people I know who said they supported our cause, but didn’t want to sign any letters because they were afraid to make their lives even more unstable,” the ACAB members say. “On the other hand, there are people who are staying silent because they don’t really care and are motivated by cynical careerism.”

This campaign of censorship is mostly being imposed from above, but that’s not the whole story. While there is a chilling effect around Palestine in almost every country in the Western world, Germany is different in one key respect: even young people on the left are – almost unanimously – committed to defending Israel (if they’re white, anyway). The UK and the US are both oppressive environments for Palestine solidarity, but it would be unusual to encounter a self-identified leftist who wasn’t at the very least calling for a ceasefire – in supposedly radical Berlin, it’s the other way around.

“I think what distinguishes Germany from other countries, with the possible exception of Austria, is the distortion of the legacy of the Holocaust,” one of the ACAB organisers tells me. “The German left has, for a long time, dedicated itself specifically to organising against antisemitism, with the understanding that mainstream German culture remains antisemitic, which in many ways it does.” The prevalence of this tendency, however well-intentioned, has created a stark divide between locals and migrants on the issue of Palestine, even in progressive circles. Only an “exceedingly small minority” of the artists involved with ACAB are German, and of those who are, they are mostly people of colour.

“The level of mobilisation against antisemitism that’s happening now within the German left is missing the mark,” they say. “I’ve had queer, left-wing German friends try to explain to me why ‘the German context’ is so complicated. I’m Jewish, and it’s really patronising to have Germans try to educate me on the history of the Holocaust as though I don’t understand it, as though I’m somehow an agent of antisemitism, as though they need to teach me how to be a better Jew.”

Over a third of the people who have been ‘cancelled’ in Germany for alleged antisemitism have themselves been Jewish, as reported in the Guardian this week, which reflects a larger pattern. According to ACAB, artists who are migrants or from ethnic minority backgrounds are more vulnerable to censorship, and the repression of Palestine solidarity – whether through police brutality or legislative efforts – has the enthusiastic backing of the country’s far-right, including the AFD, a political party that is experiencing a surge of popularity and which recently advocated the mass deportation of migrants from Germany. Last month, when around 350,000 Berliners gathered to march against the AFD, the pro-Palestine bloc was “spat on, told to go back where they came from, insulted, faced with violence and cordoned off by the police,” according to ACAB. This harassment was being carried out by people who were protesting against racism, which makes you wonder: what exactly is it that they object to about the AFD? They share so much in common.

One of the most casualties of the recent spate of censorship is Oyoun, an award-winning cultural venue which centres decolonial, queer feminist and migrant perspectives. “The body of work stems from whatever we as marginalised people, as migrants, as queers, as Muslims, as Jews, find necessary to discuss,” Sbou tells Dazed. For most of its existence, Berlin’s local government considered Oyoun to be a flagship project, and a shining example of their own (as it turns out, deeply shallow) commitment to diversity and inclusion.

“I’ve had queer, left-wing German friends try to explain to me why ‘the German context’ is so complicated. I’m Jewish, and it’s really patronising to have Germans try to educate me on the history of the Holocaust” – a member of the Art and Culture Alliance Berlin

Last November, Oyoun hosted an event with the Berlin chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace (an anti-Zionist Jewish organisation based in the US). This was originally intended to be a celebration of the group’s 20th anniversary, but after the events of October 7, they decided to host a vigil instead – there was music, speeches, and food in the tradition of the Shiva (a Jewish mourning ritual). “It was a much-needed event, where people could get together, sing, grieve and mourn,” Sbou says. Shortly after, and as a direct result, the senate announced that it was cutting Oyoun’s funding. The decision to host a Jewish event by a Jewish organisation was, according to culture senator Joe Chialo, a form of “hidden antisemitism.”

This was not the first time that Oyoun had gotten into trouble for hosting Jewish Voice for Peace,  which has been deemed controversial by the German authorities for its critical stance towards Israel and its refusal to denounce BDS. The senate first demanded that Oyoun cancel an event with Jewish Voice back in 2021. When Sbou suggested that this was censorship, the senate staff agreed but ordered her to cancel the event nonetheless. On this occasion, Oyoun decided to comply, due to concerns about losing their funding and the effect this would have on their staff, many of whom would risk deportation if they lost their jobs. So when it came to last November, they were well aware that they were taking a risk by hosting the vigil but decided that it was important to take a stand.

Oyoun has now been left almost entirely without income, and the senate has rebuffed all of their attempts at mediation; when Sbou personally approached Chialo at a public event, hoping to resolve the issue, he blanked her and hurried away. Oyoun has since taken the senate to court, in a complicated process which is still underway – there is a reasonable chance that a judge will rule that their existing contract is legally binding.

There has also been a groundswell of support in Berlin: an open letter and petition to save Oyoun garnered 14,000 signatures in two weeks, and a crowd-funder for its legal fees has raised close to €100,000. The artistic community is watching the case closely, in the belief that the outcome – whether good or bad – will act as a precedent. If this form of censorship is deemed acceptable, Sbou has no doubt that local governments across Germany will follow suit, and that migrant-led spaces will be especially vulnerable.

Thanks in part to the efforts of the ‘Strike Germany’ campaign, several international artists have recently boycotted the country’s cultural institutions, whether that’s authors cutting ties with their publishers, artists turning down grants or DJs pulling out of festivals. Germany is not quite a pariah, but its standing has taken a blow. “I’ve been seeing that it does make an impact, which might lead certain people in power to reflect on their actions,” says Sbou. Berlin has long traded on its reputation as a centre of political radicalism, liberal social attitudes and daring, anything-goes creative expression. The hollowness of this image – never the unvarnished truth to begin with – has been made clear. The authorities are clearly unmoved by the massacre of thousands and displacement of millions of Palestinian civilians, but the decline of Berlin’s cultural prestige might prove more difficult to swallow.