Maidan in Frankfurt

The images are similar: smoke, burning barricades and police cars, shop windows smashed, a rioting and rampaging mob in the streets. These scenes are not from the Kiev “Euromaidan,” but from the German city of Frankfurt. With 17,000 protesters (the organizers themselves spoke of 25,000), the so-called “Blockupy” movement held a demonstration on March 18th against the inauguration of the new European Central Bank (ECB) building which escalated into violence.

The international press widely reported on the "anti-globalization” protest. German Left Party politician Sarah Wagenknecht and Canadian journalist and author Naomi Klein spoke, among others, at the rally.

The aftermath of the “Blockupy” protest in Frankfurt is devastating, with more than 300 injured, including 150 police officers. Firefighters dealt with 55 attacks, 7 police cars completely burnt, and 55 patrol cars damaged. The cost of damage is estimated to be in the millions and there are more than 100 reports of property damage, according to the investigators.

The media was full of relish. Accusations against “Blockupy” and the police were loud. The security forces had “provoked it” by their bellicosity. Such an argument is not new. Since the 1980’s, during the so-called “Revolutionary 1st of May Demonstrations” in Berlin, serious riots and skirmishes have taken place between violent protesters and the police. And again, it is claimed by the left-wing demonstration organizers: “The police provoked it.”

The concerns of “Blockupy” initially seem quite popular. Confidence in the EU institutions is among Europeans, especially the Germans, tattered. The ECB enjoys everything but good a reputation. In a statement issued by the German Federal Statistical Office last year, a survey showed 53 percent of the respondents to not trust the ECB. Only 35 percent said they trusted the ECB, while 12 percent were not sure.This is hardly surprising after years of a financial/banking crisis and the Euro Rescue packages. The German mainstream media and the political establishment in Berlin have their hands full trying to give the ailing ECB a facelift.

This political establishment includes, for example, the Social Democrats and the Greens. Both parties support the financial policy of Brussels and the ECB. A day prior to the Frankfurt riots, the Hessian SPD chairman Thorsten Schäfer-Gumbel wrote in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: “Without the ECB the situation today would be even more difficult, politically and economically. The ECB is an anchor of stability.” The Green Deputy Prime Minister of Hessen, Tarek Al-Wazir, was at the new ECB premises offering congratulations on the inauguration during the violent protests. Even the German Confederation of Trade Unions (DGB) was in the past anything but a bitter enemy of the ECB.

At the same time, however, the Frankfurt group of the SPD youth organization (JUSOS), the DGB Frankfurt youth organization, and other trade union affiliated organizations support the “Blockupy” movement. The Greens position themselves on both sides with wishy-washy statements, but they do provide a “Blockupy” spokesperson: Jennifer Werthwein of the “Young Greens.”

In the end, who are the “Blockupy” activists anyways? An“anti-globalization alliance” as often claimed by the media? What do “Blockupy” activists actually say about themselves: “Together we want to create a European movement, united in its diversity, which overcomes the power of the crisis regime and austerity and begins to build democracy and solidarity from the bottom. As a cross-border movement, we judge ourselves to be against any racial or nationalistic cleavage, conspiracy theories and anti-Semitism.”

This has nothing to do with the criticism of globalization anymore – quite the contrary: “Blockupy” represents the entire liberal-left values catalogue: against national and cultural identity, for multiculturalism, mass immigration, open borders and anti-German “anti-fascism.” Even gender mainstreaming belongs to the program. During the “Blockupy” demonstration, “internationalist feminist block” leaflets with slogans such as “men, power and capital are fighting against women internationally” or “women and lesbians must form gangs – enough goals are available” were being distributed. And no, this is not satire, but actually serious.

In the end, “Blockupy” is nothing more than the assault force of the “Open Society” following the pattern of George Soros and Gene Sharp, and thus, not really an opponent of globalization. Globalization should be like "Blockupy" - only a bit more social, and of course with "gender justice." And that´s the whole of it.