After a two-year break due to the pandemic, the Fusion Festival in Lärz, Mecklenburg started on Thursday. Over 70,000 people will party at the music and culture festival until Monday morning. Yesterday there was a concert on the Palappa stage by musician and activist Mal Élevé, who has been touring as a solo artist since the dissolution of Irie Révoltés. On the occasion of the upcoming anniversary of the Rojava revolution, which celebrates its tenth anniversary on 19 July, 20,000 flags of the YPG and YPJ were waved to their unique sound of a mixture of reggae, dancehall, ska, rap and punk. The Interventionist Left (iL) Berlin is behind the action "20,000 flags for Rojava".

Regarding the background, the organisation had previously stated: "19 July 2012 is considered the beginning of the revolution in Rojava. Over ten years, a historically special project was able to develop in the north-east of Syria. In a region marked by war and destruction, it succeeded in planting a seed for a different society. Thanks to the energy and passion of countless people, the idea of a democratic confederation beyond ethnic and nationalist fragmentation was able to develop. The revolution has asserted itself, at many sacrifices, in the struggle against the jihadist reactionaries of Daesh (ISIS) and the Turkish power apparatus. A new threatening war is imminent. In the struggle for its existence, it has always tried to exploit the inner-imperialist contradictions in order to make a social alternative conceivable. We want to say thank you: thank you for crushing ISIS and saving the Yazidis from certain genocide. Thank you for your strength and resistance against imperialism and nationalism. Thank you for your feminist theory and practice, from which we learn. And especially: Thank you for preserving our hope for a better world. Long live the resistance in Rojava! Bijî Berxwedana Rojava!"

The Fusion

The Fusion has been held annually in summer since 1997 on a former military airfield near Lake Müritz in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. The spectacle extends over four days and is accompanied by cultural events such as theatre performances, art installations and performance art. The fusion is organised by the Kulturkosmos association, which sees itself as a collective and invites people to "holiday communism" with the festival. Far away from everyday life, a parallel society of a very special kind is to be created: "In a collective state of emergency, a carnival of the senses unfolds in a place without time, in which the longing for a better world is reflected for all of us," say the organisers.