Almost five months after our meeting in Berlin, we would like to share a few thoughts with you as a preparatory group. We are not concerned with the bigger political atmosphere, nor with the minutiae of organizational evaluation. Rather, we want to explain where we started from and where we are now.
“After many discussions, separations and new formations, we, a few scattered people from different contexts, now want to create a place where all those who share our criticism of the statist left of recent years, as well as our anger and our hope for something completely different, can meet. In this place, we will try to (re)find a political analysis that is in tune with the global crises and the uprisings that oppose them.“ (From the invitation to the Non Congress)
The feedback we received was very varied. People thanked us for organizing the meeting and were pleased with the many discussions, while others had little interest in the content or had expected something different. In addition, the many languages, both political and native languages, were a learning process for all of us and required a lot of listening.
When we recapitulated our original idea of the Non-Congress, we realized that we had come out at a completely different point than planned. We called out into the German forest and it resounded back to us from the rest of the world. We had hoped to bring together scattered ideas and rejection in Germany, or at least in the German-speaking world, to exchange views on where a new journey could go, or at least whether we feel the same dissatisfaction. In the end, the congress became an international meeting of the most diverse people, discussions and groups. In particular, we had not expected such a high level of participation from beyond the German-speaking provinces, but we were very pleased about it. So in the end, the Non Congress was more Non than we could have imagined, because perhaps some of us had still secretly hoped that something new would emerge, which would only have been caught up in the old. But we were far from that. Those present filled the congress with life, not the previous plan. Nothing was constituted, there was no final declaration and among some of us who were there, perhaps even more differences emerged than we had thought. This was also important to understand when, how and where we possibly can do something together. So nothing new in the traditional sense will emerge in the near future, maybe because we didn’t reach the people who are interested in the same issues, maybe we chose the wrong format or maybe the right time simply has not yet come. We are not sad about this, because what is perhaps currently most important is that the conversations continue in whatever constellations and not that structures are formed out of desperate, ill-considered and blind activism that once again reproduce old identities and fall victim to politics; call them Non-Congress, or somewhat more daringly the International, the fighting, historical or invisible party.
In this sense, we will continue to speak and if you do the same, we will surely run into each other again, because the contemporary answers are still a long time coming; especially in times when technocratic totalitarianism and (partisan) geronto-fascism are strong and some are committed to technocracy out of conviction, while others, out of fear of geronto-fascism, are also comitting to the way ahead and only a hollow appeal to bourgeois values escapes them. We need thoughts that do not allow us to forget and repress our fear, but give us the strength to face it. From there we can continue to consider what it might mean to fight back.
We say goodbye and disappear into (dis)order again. Until then.
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