Crisis Mirror speech for the Anti-Fascist 1st of May, Copenhagen

Comrades!

We come here today representing the group, Crisis Mirror. We come from everywhere between Athens, Lisbon, Madrid, Paris and Copenhagen. We experience and observe all the shit that is going on right now and has been going on for way too long. We are fucking angry and we’ve had enough!

Today is a day of struggle. Every day is a day of struggle. A struggle, not only to fight for simple rights, but a struggle to simply survive. The neoliberal regime is raging a war against people everywhere. We have seen it taking place in Chile, in Argentina and in several African countries since the 1970’s. The crisis is not a new phenomenon. The crisis is an integral part of the capitalistic system. And now the time has come for a full-scale attack on the workforces in Europe.

With raging unemployment rates, the European south has been located at the heart of the continuing global capitalist crisis. As we have seen in many other places, the Capitalist International and their local allies are now forcing a laboratory of financial terrorism and police repression. What has happened in Greece for the last 3 years is perhaps the clearest example of this. Through a state of emergency and a dismantling of the so-called democracy, the state together with the banks is implementing a wave of shock-policies. Labour is being systematically devalued. Wages are drastically cut. Working conditions are worsening. Public spending is reduced and common services are privatized. The bosses’ authority is tightened. Flexibility is imposed and rights are eliminated.

Attacked at work and outside of it, it’s obvious that the proletarians will be the major losers of this crisis. Through intensive media propaganda, we are told that the crisis is the fault of the workers. That the populations in the south are lazy, that they don’t pay their taxes, when in fact the workers will be the only ones to pay for the crisis. At the same time governments are intensifying the state-racism and allowing the spread of xenophobia. Only to find someone else to blame, to distract the public from the actual problems, not to mention the real perpetrators of the crimes committed. Through this depressingly insecure present, the governments’ only hope is that we are unable to imagine any possible way of abolishing this old sinking wreck.

A crisis like this is never experienced by those who exploited the state and the public interest for decades, but by the most vulnerable social constituencies. We are confronted with an upward redistribution of wealth and power that subverts the European social model, while simultaneously empowering the return of nationalism and the intensification of racism and xenophobia. The recent elections in France were marked by the popular rise of the fascists who now play a central role in determining the next French presidency. The crisis is a good opportunity to dismantle any sense of democratic rights that may threat capitalist expansion. Fascism shows its ugly face again everywhere in Europe. Migrants are the scapegoats of the capitalist crisis and become targets of violence by frustrated citizens manipulated by mass-media propaganda, and by state forces. For the frustrated crowds joining the fascist reaction, their resistance to the capitalist system is painted in national colors; they struggle as Greeks, French, Danes, Germans and not as workers-enemies of the exploitation and the social repression they face.

Today, it’s the countries in the European South. Social security, public health care system, public education, public transport, the natural and urban environment, the right to live a safe existence, are all being utterly dismantled. But this crisis is only part of a broader crisis, it cannot be nationalized. And it is clear that the time will come for Denmark too. This country is not isolated from the rest of the world, although some Danes would like to think that. Everywhere money is subjecting human and non-human life to its logic, the logic of profit. This is not new, but the intensity and breadth of the attack is new. Today we are all turned into proletarians and are forced to work as slaves. This crisis is the perfect excuse for the state and the bosses to implement new laws and measures, to re-impose the unification of the proletariat around the nation-state form and it’s discipline. All this in the hope of increasing productivity and higher profits.

This is capitalism: A hierarchical system based on exploitation causing fear, panic, despair, poverty and deprivation. A system that creates racism, prison cells and asylum camps. A system that criminalizes every resisting voice and encourages surveillance and snitching. And finally, a system that turns us into atoms, isolated units, selfish egos and competitive racers.

But we refuse this system! We refuse the daily humiliation and oppression! We refuse the institutions that keep this sick system alive! We refuse the politicians that defend and work for this system! We refuse the police aggression that gives space to this system!

So today we are here on the streets to refuse. Together we can refuse their crisis, we can refuse their economy and we can refuse their states. It is not for us to explain the bosses how to restore their profits. It is not for us to save their economy and their states. On the contrary we must fight for our dignity and freedom inch by inch. No more negotiations with the capital, no more useless work, no more bullshit commodities, prolong the strikes, take over the factories, abolish wage-labour!

Traditional trade unions have failed to represent and fight for the workers’ rights and became a part of the capitalist system. We have to create new forms of organization, new forms of struggle, new identities to overthrow capitalism. We must join forces and strength, learn from each other and trust each other. We must fight back the logic of isolation and the retreat into private life. Only through solidarity, direct action and collective effort can we continue this struggle.

Following the Arab spring and other movements around the world, people in Greece and other European countries have bravely started to rise up against the social terror policies, by organizing hundreds of demonstrations, strikes and occupations. By protesting and at the same time taking actions that oppose the current system, we can start to explore different possible alternatives. Movements from Greece to Argentina and from Brazil to Spain have provided hopeful examples of alternative ways of organizing work collectively and for the benefit of the workers. We need to reach out to comrades around the world, to call for actions and stand together in solidarity; by organizing demonstrations, marches, strikes, protests, events, by writing texts, by doing actions; any expression of revolutionary solidarity and collective initiatives can contribute step-by-step into defending our rights and create another world.

We are here on the streets because today is a day of struggle and the struggle continues. The challenges and the values of the 1st. of May movement are more present today than ever. Our task is to fight for them and enrich them with the experiences of the movement and the needs of today’s societies.

We are at the point of no return and the crisis is here to stay. It’s time to rise up and react to the brutality, to the oppression, to the exploitation, to racism, individualization and injustice.

Let’s become their crisis!

CRISIS MIRROR