In mid November GLS bank got in touch with the association that was helping us to collect donations. Their bank account got canceled immediately. The bank didn’t give any reason given apart from mentioning a certain rule that allows them to cancel the bank account for “important reasons”.
Anarchist Black Cross Dresden* has been raising donations for (political) prisoners in Germany, as well as in Belarus and Russia, for many years. Since 2014, we have been also supporting our comrades in Ukraine, including financial aid. Just this past October, we organized a fundraising campaign that allowed us to provide humanitarian assistance to people in war-affected areas of Ukraine. In all of these efforts, we worked closely with the association mentioned above.
At first it was not clear if the debanking happened because of our activity or some other reasons. This happened without any advance notice. GLS simply disabled online banking and stated on the hotline that this was due to technical issues. Clearly this was not true. A few days later, we received a letter informing us that the account had been canceled with immediate effect. As more details came to light, it became clear that GLS Bank canceled the association’s account for political reasons linked to our work. This story goes beyond GLS Bank.
It was not only this single association that got problems like that with GLS. Also a private person connected with the association was kicked out from the bank without any reasons given. In the past month also Ethikbank and ING refused to open accounts for the association and that ealier mentioned private person. So it became clear for us that there has to be a bigger problem, a political agenda behind this. We are aware that other political groups and organizations also became debanked previously. As we see, it’s not the problem of a single bank.
At this point it is clear that what happened so far and continues to happen, is a political attack by different banks on leftist infrastructure in Germany. In a heavily “digitized” world, where most of donations are not collected anymore in cash all of us are heavily dependend on these banks. It is still speculative which part of our work was the reason for such actions. In pro-russian anti-antifascist Saxony this could have happened for our support of Russian/Belarusian activists in prison fighting against the regime. Or support of Ukrainian activists that both Minister President and the secret services of Saxony find problematic and already labeled ABC Dresden as left extremist for that. This can also happen for our involvement in solidarity with antifascists organizing against the wave of racist/fascist violence in the region and being repressed by the local right-wing government and the police forces. The classification of Antifa Ost as a terrorist organization by the USA in September could also have triggered a reaction from the banks.
What is happening here is part of a broader pattern of various state and non-state attack against left-wing and antifascist structures in Germany, Europe, and across the rest of the world. The persecution, criminalization, and obstruction of antifascist work take place on many different levels. Debanking is one tool used within the current developments and the increasingly far-reaching and visible shift towards fascism targeting structures that fight it.
GLS Bank, which describes itself as “Germany’s largest sustainable bank” and lists “mutual aid, support, and social action” among its principles, serves as an example of how liberal forces can repeatedly pave the way for fascism.
After all there are a lot of reasons for what is happening and let’s be clear: there are no anarchist or leftist banks in this world. Liberals with their proclaimed progressive values are clearly ready to throw away any importance of solidarity and freedom of organizing into a bin as soon as they get pressured too much from the right. Conservatives are already embracing the fascism in a desperate attempt to stay in power.
We see this situation as a big victory for AFD, Russian state, regime of Donald Trump and every other conservative/fascist state that tries to destroy progressive politics in a push for a total domination over society.
For now all our solidarity work on money collection to support collectives in different authoritarian regions is on pause. Please do not transfer any further money to the bank account and just put those money in cash to the side. If you have possibility to donate cash – get in touch with us and we will arrange it in one way or another. If you are a lawyer or association that feels like you want to help us in this situation or are affected by debanking – feel free to get in touch with us via an email.
Anarchist Black Cross (ABC) is an organisation reaching back to the beginning of the 20th century. An organisation that spreads all around the world supporting anarchist and antifascist prisoners and fights against the prison system.