Fini’s small delivery service »And tomorrow the whole world? Just not.

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The Franco-German feature film “And tomorrow the whole world” by Julia von Heinz premiered in September 2020 at the Venice International Film Festival. The Süddeutsche wrote with full national pride: “The German competition entry“ And tomorrow the whole world ”is an urgent anti-fascist milieu study”. The majority of the press and also the voices around the film festival agreed that the film is an authentic and moving representation of the anti-fascist movement in Germany. The film entered the running for Germany at the Oscars and can currently be seen worldwide on Netflix. (There will be some spoilers below.)

What’s the matter?

Luisa, a law student from a good family, does not understand the right of resistance in the German constitution: Does that refer to the fight against right-wing extremists or not? At the beginning of the film she is apparently already part of a “left” scene, goes into containers and moves into an occupied house. Then at a demo against an AfD-lookalike right-wing extremist party, she gets her hands on a cell phone from a right-wing extremist and through this comes into contact with the “more radical” people in the scene – the rest of the film can be imagined: A dispute about whether Violence may or may not be done to Nazis, in the potato-like crime scene style and with a sometimes really pointless plot (Sure, someone has been trained militantly and joins Nazis, but does not wear gloves …).

Once upon a time

Heinz had already written the script in 2000 – she claims to have once been part of Antifa Bonn. Accordingly, that would have been sometime in the 1990s, 20 years before the film takes place. Perhaps that also explains why completely antiquated gender norms are being carried out here: The “more radical” people are mostly men and the leader in Luisa’s own group is then also called “Alfa”. And no, there is no ironic reckoning with this name, it is called that as a matter of course. Alfa is exaggeratedly choppy, trains the boxing group, lives promiscuously and looks good heteronormatively. And just because Alfa wants it that way, a delicate campaign with 15 people is extended and becomes a significant risk for everyone involved – Luisa is rammed a bottle into the thigh. But that doesn’t change their naive enthusiasm for men. The bourgeois narrative that female radicalization happens either through a man or a child is brilliantly satisfied here.
Luisa’s own motivation to act is reduced to the fact that, as a law student, she cannot grasp the paradoxes of the right to resist. Here it would have been more obvious to attend some courses in legal philosophy instead of joining the Antifa. Because the right of resistance does not aim at individual legal violations, but is aimed at the constitution as a whole and is in itself a complex, thoroughly paradoxical structure. So why she endures the regular humiliation by Alfa, the Siff in an occupied house, massive injuries like a bottle in her leg and visits to slightly over-assaulted former RAF activists is not really clear. The only other motivation that is discussed is her fascination with Alfa (and yes, of course she likes men, otherwise the “love” component could simply have been left out in the film). As the protagonist, she remains insanely one-dimensional and, with the focus on “love” and “democracy”, corresponds exactly to what the public viewer would like to see in the evening after wage work.

Satisfying one’s own inactivity

Unfortunately, to save an independent femininity, it doesn’t help that Alfa pulls in its tail after the criminal complaint has been made and Luisa lies in wait alone with a rifle to shoot Nazis. She doesn’t do it after all, the viewers are not confronted with her consistency. Instead, she goes back to the strange old man who lives lonely in a house and who patched up Luisa’s leg after the bottle attack. This man is apparently left over from the time of the RAF, was in prison and has “had to” work as a nurse ever since. His life is portrayed as forfeited, sad and abandoned. It is presented as a symbol of what to expect when someone becomes too radical. Also in a dispute between Alfa and Beta “Lenor” (a less attractive research activist) it is expressed that there are those who remain radical and those who eventually make a career and give up their political commitment. Here, too, the director of Heinz hits right in the heart of the potato audience: Yes, political commitment is praiseworthy, but the costs for your own life are really unacceptable – sad that sort of thing. The fact that the Nazi hiding place blows up at the very end of the film unfortunately no longer makes up for this conclusion, because it happens completely without any connection or comprehensibility.

Of yesterday

From these things you can clearly see that the author was active in the Antifa in the 90s and then obviously no longer moved in left-wing spaces: Today, one of the reasons why it is worth being active in a left-wing scene is particularly for young women to be that they are at least partially perceived as human beings – which is still not the case in any form of established society. In these rooms there are discourses about dominant behavior as well as the limits of what is tolerated in such a room in terms of Mackertism. An appearance like that of Alfa would hardly be permanently possible in this form in any left room. Even a politically active woman would probably have rated Alfa’s behavior somehow in the rarest of cases, but rather as unpleasant and patriarchal.
The discrepancy between “bourgeois life” and “radical life” is also a relic of the 90s and shaped by the RAF era. But we are far away from that in between 50 years, including stricter police and assembly laws with video evaluations, individualized access or data retention. Anyone who wants to be politically active today has learned to deal with the fact that it is not noticeable and can therefore lead a civil life. Apart from a few loose boys, nobody today has to defend themselves against bourgeois family norms with neglect and romance. Accordingly, it is no longer a taboo for left-wing scenes to get by and somehow make a living or even “make a career”. For politically active women in particular, it is still necessary and sensible to keep the dependencies on father, state or husband as low as possible. In particular, the feminist discourse has led to the abolition of the narrative of the rotten “radicals” – because that was obviously politically ineffective and in most cases devastating for women’s lives.

Career at whose expense

Another rather marginal aspect of the film is remarkable in this area of ​​tension: There is a self-administered youth and cultural center in Nuremberg called “Project 31” for short “P 31”. Almost two years before the film was released, von Heinz and parts of her crew presented the film concept to the plenum of the center so that it could be shot on the premises. The plenary decided against a collaboration: “Because of these stereotypical role descriptions and the unforeseeable consequences for our existing project as a film set for a made-up film, we decided to refuse the filmmakers.” The trailer for the film was then released on YouTube in July , although it was not shot in P 31, the left center was still called “P 31” in the film at this point in time. In the meantime this has been changed in the film to “P 91”. Nevertheless, there remains a stale aftertaste, as the project has been looking for new premises since 2020. A new space must be found in 2021, otherwise the project will disappear. The public perception of the city and authorities was not exactly influenced by the film, it is also to be feared that everyone who enters the P 31, whether as an activist or just as a visitor * in the now-mentioned antiquarian stamp of the Radicality that von Heinz has staged with her film.

What for tomorrow

Why it was now necessary to endanger a real, existing free space with a fictional film, instead of simply thinking up a name, is not understandable to me. Just as little, why the film is not simply set in the 90s, when it is obviously at least inspired by the 90s. So to speak here as a journalist of an accurate and current Milieu study is also moderately well researched and only further cemented the pink middle myths: Of “the radicals”, their exciting and charming, but dangerous world before us fortunately the protective screen of the television has been preserved. However, the fact that the world has changed significantly since the 90s is difficult to integrate into the middle myth. There may be this dim, cozy yesterday, but we don’t have a tomorrow. The title takes up part of the National Socialist propaganda song “The rotten bones are trembling”, but even for Nazis, “And tomorrow the whole world” no longer applies, but “We already have a good part of the world back today” – and AfD, NSU, Nazi chat groups in the police, Trump and Co are only the tip of the structural iceberg. The motivations and realities for political engagement are clearly different from what they were yesterday. It also no longer makes sense to hunt down individual Nazis, who have significantly more influence in parliaments, authorities and the economy and gather solid majorities behind them. There is no hope that everything will somehow be good and in accordance with a constitution – it will not be anyway. It is more the question of what has been done until then with the time that was still halfway good. Because if you stay on the couch today, you will go down with her tomorrow just as much as if she * he had occasionally moved away from her. Or as I said elsewhere: “We are flowers on the edge, we roll Sisyphus stones.”

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