BY VICTOR GROSSMAN
BERLIN — Like those around the globe, the anti-war protest here on February 15 was colossal. The planning committee, facing unending problems, difficulties and occasional disagreements, hoped against hope to have 100,000 participants. But the committee, and just about everyone else, was overwhelmed when between 350,000 (a police estimate) and 500,000 (the organisers' figure) poured in from all parts of Germany.
The giant crowds gathered both in central East Berlin and central West Berlin and joined together at the big victory column in the middle of Berlin's big park, the Tiergarten. The program featured the head of Germany's biggest labour union, an outspoken Protestant pastor, plus leading musicians and actors.
The sheer magnitude of the march and by its variety was amazing, with religious groups and political parties from Social Democrats (SPD), Greens and the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) to far-left Maoist and revolutionary Turkish parties. But most participants seemed to be ordinary, largely unorganised citizens who just wanted to say "No" to war. The imagination displayed in the signs and banners was impressive — and represented all possible views and a highly imaginative sense of humour.
There was a near total absence of police — except those guarding the street where the US embassy is located. yet no-one tried to break though its fortress-like defences; the good-natured but resolute throng just kept moving along, with only an occasional whistle or cat-call aimed at the embassy a block away. The lack of police provocation may have been a result of the SPD-PDS coalition city government.
But it also reflected official German opposition to US government plans for war on Iraq. Yet it was here that some views expressed on banners and posters were divided. A minority praised SPD chancellor Schroeder and Greens foreign minister Joschka Fischer for standing up to Washington.
Many more, however, urged the government to stick to this position, but also to prove its intentions by withdrawing German tanks from Kuwait, barring fly-over rights for US warplanes and not provide guards at US bases in Germany, thus permitting US soldiers to be sent off to destroy Baghdad and Basra.
Right-wing critics of this giant new peace movement constantly complain that it is "anti-American" and ungrateful for what the US has done to "save Germany from both the Nazis and the Communists". Aside from the very false aspects of this argument — they seem to forget that the Soviet Union played a far greater role in beating the Nazis than the Western countries — the charge is just not true.
Banners and slogans I saw and the speeches I read (I could not get close enough to the central stage to hear them) were never anti-American, only anti-Bush and anti-Rumsfeld. And, to answer another false charge, I did not see a single slogan praising Saddam Hussein. Many expressed opposition to his regime — but said an invasion and war were not the way to get rid of him.
Schroeder has become exceedingly unpopular in recent months, with the German economy faltering dangerously and the jobless rate soaring (especially in the old German Democratic Republic).
The right-wing Christian Democrats have tried to use this unpopularity to disparage Schroeder's anti-war position, saying it "isolates" Germany. Their pro-Bush views have been repeated loudly in much of the printed media. But many TV channels reported the demonstration, its preparations and the general pro-peace movement here and in the world more fairly than I have ever seen before.
This was demonstrated by the German media's repeated showing of the moving statement by Dustin Hoffman in a major Berlin concert hall. His quiet, firm words, "I am not anti-American, but I am against the views of the present administration", were met by a second of silence, then thunderous applause.
Germans are split on many issues, but a very large majority want peace.
[From the Portside email list.]
From Green Left Weekly, February 26, 2003.
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