Why are artists calling for a cultural boycott of Germany?

When an anonymous group of cultural workers launched the Strike Germany campaign earlier this month, calling on artists worldwide to strike from German cultural institutions in response to the silencing of pro-Palestine voices, many in the country’s media seemed completely bewildered. Others refused to believe what they were seeing.

The call to strike “could be a parody”, wrote one journalist for SZ, speculating that the anonymous campaign might be run by covert pro-Israel activists trying to undermine the pro-Palestine movement, “right-wing pranksters”, or even “Putin’s trolls” – so ridiculous was the idea that anyone would seriously consider such extreme action.

“We all live in Germany, we all come face to face with the conditions that characterise German cultural life, and we all know the system from the inside,” organisers assure me.

“Everything that we've expressed in the campaign is sincere, and it’s because a lot of us, some of us from the Arab world, some of us from elsewhere, a lot of us non-white, have just had enough.”

"Calls for cultural boycotts in solidarity with Palestine against nations other than Israel are rare. Germany’s unprecedented willingness to defend Israel at the highest level goes some way to explaining why so many feel a strike is necessary"

Weeks later, the campaign has over 1,000 signatories, including Nobel laureate Annie Ernaux and philosopher Judith Butler.

Withdrawals from events are pouring in — almost 20 artists have dropped out of the CTM music festival, the strike is working its way through the Berlinale Film Festival programme, and it even inspired activists in NYC to disrupt an event at the Goethe Institut.

On January 22, the campaign celebrated its first victory. Berlin’s Senate decided to repeal the so-called IHRA clause, introduced earlier this month, which forced recipients of state funding to sign a commitment against antisemitism according to the controversial IHRA definition.

Critics say that IHRA’s definition equates criticism of Israel with antisemitism. Culture senator Joe Chialo said the U-turn was a response to “critical voices that saw the clause as a restriction of artistic freedom.”

Organisers insist “this is only the beginning”. Their demands are broad but lucid. By isolating Germany from international culture, they will pressure institutions to resist censorship and the instrumentalisation of antisemitism and to publicly commit to combating structural racism.

Calls for cultural boycotts in solidarity with Palestine against nations other than Israel are rare. Germany’s unprecedented willingness to defend Israel at the highest level goes some way to explaining why so many feel a strike is necessary.

But the strike’s logic also speaks to the unique way that Germany has made culture a battleground in its assault on Palestinian solidarity.

The ‘Palestine problem’ in German cultural policy

Major cases of de-platforming have brought international attention to an intensifying climate of censorship in German culture.

Palestinian novelist Adania Shibli was disinvited from her award ceremony at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October. In December, the German Green Party-affiliated Heinrich Böll Foundation withdrew support for the Hannah Arendt Prize due to an essay written about Gaza by its recipient, Jewish American writer Masha Gessen.

The Instagram page Archive of Silence has crowdsourced a list of similar incidents, which have taken place on an almost daily basis since October 7.

According to the founder of one music collective for Arab artists, “Since October almost everyone around me has encountered some form of silencing, especially if they are in contact with cultural institutions. But so many cases don't go public. People are afraid.”

Artists in Germany began announcing personal withdrawals from state institutions as early as October. American rapper Mykki Blanco raised the idea in December, after being removed from a festival lineup in Leipzig.

Berlin, home to one of the largest Palestinian diaspora communities in Europe, has stood at the centre of the debate. In November, Berlin’s Oyoun Cultural Centre was defunded after refusing, despite Senate pressure, to cancel an event with the pro-Palestinian organisation Jewish Voice.

Chialo said that this was part of the fight against “hidden antisemitism” – illustrating the bizarre situation in Germany, where not only Palestinian but also Jewish activists have been among those most frequently targetted.

Chialo announced the new IHRA clause in Berlin shortly after the Oyoun incident. But the IHRA definition was already adopted as Germany’s official definition for antisemitism in 2017, and while the Berlin-specific clause was a key flashpoint, strike organisers insist that their demands go much deeper.

The 2019 BDS Resolution is a key target. Condemned by many cultural institutions, the resolution declared the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) campaign against Israel officially antisemitic, providing legal backing for the exclusion of pro-Palestine artists from the public sphere.

Strike Germany says that striking is the only way forward because all other methods have been exhausted, “Attempts to address this issue within the German public sphere have been flouted, ignored, and in some cases even punished.

“We recognised that we needed something that wouldn't just conform to the rules set by an increasingly limited discourse. What we needed was to effectively break that discourse, or at least force it open. We see this as a necessary, almost inevitable eruption.”

"Major cases of de-platforming have brought international attention to an intensifying climate of censorship in German culture"

Germany’s cultural funding apparatus – what are the alternatives?

The power that Germany wields over its cultural sphere is due in some part to its generosity with cultural funding.

“Public funding often plays a part in virtually everything that happens in the cultural sector,” say strike organisers. “Germany in its largesse has also secured ideological control–a control that has never been especially explicit, except on the question of Palestine.”

Although the call to strike is aimed at international artists, for many artists in Germany the decision of whether to continue working with state institutions, despite censorship, is a difficult one.

As one Berlin-based Palestinian artist told me, “There are almost no alternatives [to state-funded institutions] whatsoever. Since I don’t have a residency I can’t travel, and many others are in the same situation–what are we supposed to do? I think the strike is amazing… but I can't cancel my only source of income.”

As for sympathetic institutions, like those who were part of the successful campaign to overturn the IHRA clause, the case of Oyoun remains a symbol of what could happen if they push the state too far.

Repealing IHRA was a positive step, but something more radical will be required to reverse the direction of travel.

Beyond the arts, the everyday repression of Palestinian solidarity, through racist police violence, criminalisation and the threat of deportation, continues apace.

In that context, platforms for critical perspectives are more vital than ever. As the campaign continues, so too will the conversations around what alternatives exist if it were to fail, and how pro-Palestine artists can navigate a cultural sphere dominated by white, German, pro-Israel institutions.

Organisers hope that the threat of further isolation will be enough to transform the system from the top down.

“If the campaign is going to be successful, and I think it has a really good chance, it will be successful as a provocation that triggers a whole set of unprecedented conversations and exchanges," the organisers explain.

"It means doing a bit of reputational damage to Germany, a country that places so much emphasis on its prestige. I do think it's already inspiring conversations that were impossible to imagine before.”

Max Graef Lakin is a journalist and cultural worker based in Berlin.

Follow him on Instagram: @magraluf