It’s a sunny Thursday morning in Berlin’s central business district. In the shadow of shopping malls and corporate HQs, a large group of high schoolers has gathered. From a makeshift stage, two of their comrades start leading chants aimed at the German chancellor: “Friedrich Merz, suck my balls,” “Send Friedrich Merz to the front line,” and “Conscription — never again!”
The students are joined by a growing number of supporters, including representatives of the national teachers’ union, left-wing parties, and pacifist groups. Signs of solidarity with the Palestinian liberation struggle abound — to the dismay of the Berlin police, who blast announcements warning protesters that they risk arrest when covering their faces with keffiyehs. The crowd heads toward the historically left-wing neighborhood of Kreuzberg, swelling to about ten thousand protesters. It’s the second major school strike against Germany’s anticipated reintroduction of conscription, which has been suspended since 2011. In a coordinated nationwide action, over fifty thousand high schoolers and supporters in some 130 towns and cities took to the streets on Thursday. Their motto: “The rich want war — the youth, a future.”
The protests come just days after the US-Israeli attacks on Iran, which many here worry may develop into yet another war with global reverberations. Germany’s new government has not been shy in its own military ambitions, setting in motion the country’s largest militarization drive since World War II. Chancellor Merz has vowed to turn the armed forces into the “strongest conventional army in Europe.” To finance this ambition, Merz’s governing coalition has amended the federal republic’s strict constitutional spending rules (the “debt brake”) to allow for a massive increase in military spending. Berlin is committed to hiking military spending to 3.5 percent of its GDP by 2029 — an estimated €152 billion a year, exceeding the…
Auteur: Elias Koenig
