Nie Wieder! [Never again!]
In the public discourse about the remembrance of “the third reich”, there were always voices that wanted to bring this remembrance to an end. They said that the German peoples have repented and have done enough for the remembrance.
However, I am glad that a bigger part of society withstands this opinion. That many people still know the importance of remembrance and insist on the point of view that the crimes of the Nazis should be never forgotten, and the remembrance of the victims of fascism should never end.
It is important to use remembrance for increasing awareness for the mechanisms that led to the Nazis taking power and for the knowledge that something like this could happen again.
The voices against the remembrance increase because of the growing influence of right wing parties and movements in Germany. People from the right wing parties come into positions where they have a big influence and can share their revisionistic ideas to the people. There are Nazis of the german right wing party “AfD” that say that the third reich is “a bird shit in the big history of Germany”. With sentences like these, they try to play down the crimes of the Nazis by denying the singularity of the Schoah and the historic continuity of the guilt of Germany. And it’s logical that the right wing want to end the chapter third reich, because of the connection between their ideology and the ones of the Nazis.
Because of this, it’s more important than ever to keep the remembrance alive and to fight the voices that want it to end.
Boysclub (Part I)
It’s not the first time that I wrote a song about the DIY-Scene but this is a topic that concerns me a lot. It’s a fact that the DIY-Scene is still a big boysclub and that marginalized groups are often excluded because of subtle mechanism that are hard to point at if you never have tried to detect them. The scene wants to be a progressive and inclusive scene but there is still a lot of work to do to achieve this goal, because the scene is also still a mirror of society. We internalized racism, sexism, classism, ableism etc. and becoming aware of this internalization is a long process.
My perspective is mostly focused on gender identity and sexuality because it’s the topic that affects me the most. Which does not mean that the other topics aren’t equally important and there are to little bands and groups that try to spread awareness for these topics (a really good example is Deutsche Laichen with their EP “Team Scheiße”).
But for the gender ratio of the scene you can say that there is a domination of males. Most bands consist of men and behind the scenes it usually is even worse. Especially the most reputable positions or those that require great technical knowledge are usually occupied by men. There are only a few FLINTA technicians, event bookers or sound engineers, highlighting the structural inequality present in this scene. There are many great bands and groups that try to fight this but there still is a lot of work to be done.
This song is about cis-males and their behavior during shows. There are many ignorant cis-males inside the pit that don’t care about other people’s boundaries and for whom punk is a hedonistic and egocentric lifestyle with a “fuck off”-attitude. This does not align with my understanding of punk.
For me DIY-Punk and Hardcore is a political scene that tries to build an alternative to societies shit. That wants to be an inclusive space for all kind of people, who think and live in a similar way. And therefor it is important to deal with these structural mechanism, to try to understand them and their effects and to find a way to change them. And this can’t just be a task for the ones, who are the victims of these mechanisms, but has to be done by those who don’t notice these mechanisms at all, because they have the privilege to not be affected by them.
Kartoffelstampf [Mashed Potatoes]
The mandatory song about the situation in Germany right now. I have at least one of these songs on every record :D. The song was written in 2019, before the pandemic, and before the rise of ignorance towards and denial of scientific facts, disguised as a fight for personal freedom, when really it is plain ignorance and defiance against being told what to do or how to act.
This new movement is a mixture of alt-right, far-right, anti-vaxxers, conspiracy ideologists, esoteric idiots, hippies and stupid old-school leftist that still think it’s 1970. But the strategies they use also show us the limits of old-fashioned counter strategies. Because you can try to block every Queerdenken (the name of the movement in Germany) demonstration, but this uses a lot of political work that we should use for other issues as well. And even if we block them successfully, they still have a big public range with their bullshit ideas and have an impact on the public discourse, because in a time of complex events and developments, they offer simple solutions with their conspiracies.
So for a radical leftist it is important to find new strategies to fight against these people and to debunk their bullshit online. To find a way to burst the filter bubbles of many people and to show them explanations for the complex reality that isn’t a reduced critic. But this is a hard task, especially because most social networks are designed with algorithms trying to maximize the time users spent on their platforms and thereby create these filter bubbles in the first place. Which leads me to the conclusion that the politically active radical left has to change and improve their strategies to keep up with the development of society.
Nein to 5 (No to 5 – it’s a pun hinting at the 9 to 5 job)
The mandatory song against the neoliberal ideology, its logic of exploitation and idealization of work. I also have at least one of these songs on every record :D. By now I am in a situation where I have to work myself in a 9 to 5 job kinda way, but that doesn’t mean that I changed my view on this topic and that I won’t criticize this system of work and exploitation of workforce. I refuse to believe that you need a job to have a goal in life and that your only way to express yourself is through the right job. For me this thinking is complete bullshit. Sure, there are people who find their goal in life in a job or who find a job, where they can life their passion. But most people have to work in meaningless, monotone, stupid bullshit-jobs, where they get exploited and get hardly payed enough for a living. Some people have to work two or three jobs just to get by. They have to work so much that their work overshadows everything else, leaving no time or resources to take care of personal problems, hence having a negative effect on their mental and physical well-being.
The system’s sole focus is the maximizing of profits and efficient exploitation of the workforce. Because of that it is so important to get organized and form worker’s unions; to support strikes and other forms of disputes around work ethics, especially the ones from people who are forced to work in precarious jobs and/or the ones who have a background of migration. Because they are the ones who get exploited the most. We have to create new alternatives to show that there can be another way to organize human societies, which does not center around capitalism.
Definition von Glück [Definition of Happiness]
This is a cover of the great Punkband F*cking Angry. I was so happy that their singer Beckx agreed to do a feature in this song. And I also thought that I should use this space to let the songwriter tell you something about the lyrics and its meaning:
I used a reduced quote of Mephisto from Goethes Faust as the first line of this song. And the refrain is a quote of a German actor (No appointments and a little bit tipsy). At first, it seems to be a funny party track, but it has quite the opposite meaning. Because the actor was an alcoholic and suffered greatly. He lost most of his friends and family, lost his health and his memory and died a lonely death in a retirement home.
This song is very personal. It deals with my complicated relationship with my father. Usually a nice, sensitive guy. Someone who likes music and is part of the left-intellectuals spectrum. But under the influence of alcohol he became an unpredictable, aggressive asshole. And even after he lost both his marriage and his relationship to both of his sons, he couldn’t quit drinking. But he continued to blame others for his misery and his suffering and can’t take responsibility for his own behavior.
I often had to ask myself, how much of this self-hurting behavior I internalized myself. And the answer is, more than I would like to admit.
Von Bienchen und Peer Pressure (Of Bees and Peer Pressure – it’s a changed German version of the saying: of the bees and the birds)
This is the first song where I only made the beat. The song text is from a friend of mine, the singer of the Band Alles.Scheisze (awesome electro punk, check them out :D). So now he can tell you something about the meaning of this song:
Sex was always a troubled topic for me. Whether it was in school or in my first relationship. I never wanted physical closeness or love. The first time I was confronted with the topic of masturbation in school, I didn’t even know what it was about. And so it was clear for everyone (including myself) that I was strange and not normal. This hasn’t changed until now. The only difference is, that I now don’t feel the pressure to justify myself. Just love whoever the fuck you want or don’t love at all!