Unlike Germany’s numerous amorphous groups from the autonomous tradition, however, Rote Hilfe operates as a legal organization in compliance with federal law. It is registered as an association, has an official HQ, and maintains an elected federal executive committee as well as local chapters and activities in the public sphere. Although it is regularly attacked by Germany’s ruling Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and features prominently in reports by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, it is not a banned organization. This makes the repression it is currently facing all the more astonishing.
The article frames the Rote Hilfe as a charity that is in the world only for the good of humanity. It doesn’t even mention that the organization also supports the RAF and its members, including those who have committed the worst crimes such as assassinations. This is not independent information.
There is a lot wrong in Germany, but it is among the better places to live in if we compare it globally. The countries where minorities and their governments’ political opponents are suppressed are elsewhere, and these are often states that claim to be ‘left-wing’ or ‘socialist’ (exactly the ideologies the Jacobin magazine hails so much). If an organization in Russia or China has a different opinion, then people are not ‘debanked’ but they fall out of a window or disappear in some prison (and if someone criticizes the government in an article, the writer shares the same fate).
The “charity” is providing legal support. Furthermore the RAF have not existed as an entity for almost 30 Years, and even if they still existed not sure that should equal being denied Legal support.
You’re explaining to two Ukrainians that Russia does human rights abuses. We know that. I don’t think it’s an excuse for other countries to make it difficult to support prisoners through legal means. Including those jailed for violent crimes. I’m more interested in ABC-Dresden than Rote Hilfe tbh, I’m not a fan of Jacobin of their branch of politics.
They don’t just support prisoners through legal means, they openly embrace their violence.
From what I’ve just found in archives, Rote Hilfe has also once advocated for Borotba, a left-conservative pro-Russian group. That was… stupid of them, or at least disingenuous. https://web.archive.org/web/20150227230349/https://www.nihilist.li/2014/12/16/nam-ne-potribna-vasha-pidtrimka-wir-brauchen-diese-unterstutzung-nicht/
Still, they stopped doing that, and they’re not alone being debanked (their leftist opponents are, too), and not for that reason. There seems to be crackdown on leftist organizations in progress. Which is a very upsetting trend. https://thefinalstrawradio.noblogs.org/post/2026/04/05/abc-dresden-on-debanking-and-us-anti-antifascist-pressure/