On the day of liberation on May 8, the internationalist and antifascist campaign RiseUp4Rojava has called for commemoration of the resistance fighters against fascism. Because fascism is still a reality not only in Turkey and in many European countries, but worldwide. And from this follows the conclusion to strengthen the internationalist and antifascist struggle:

May 8, a day of celebration

May 8th stands for the day of liberation. The liberation from the fascism of National Socialism in Germany. It also stands for the moments when the gates of the concentration camps were ripped open, people were freed or liberated, swastika flags were thrown from roofs and Nazis were held accountable for their crimes. It is a day of celebration of the end of National Socialism as an open form of state rule.

May 8, a day of commemoration of the resistance

This liberation would never have been possible without the willingness of millions to give their lives. In Italy, Yugoslavia, Greece, Poland or Lithuania, in the Resistance in France or in the Spanish resistance against Franco, thousands of partisans* have openly or secretly led the resistance against fascism and Nazism. In Germany, until the last days before the surrender, small resistance cells in factories had sabotaged production, distributed leaflets, hid people and prepared themselves, even with weapons in hand, to confront the last remnants of the fascist regime. They all resisted, also by maintaining the values of humanity and not letting themselves be broken by fascist terror. Also this day would never have become reality, if millions of soldiers of the allied armies had not destroyed the fascist troops. If not many thousands from all over the world would have joined these armies, to fight against fascism. We commemorate them also on this day.

8 May, a day of international solidarity

This resistance would never have been possible without international solidarity and awareness of the necessity of the international struggle. The international brigades in Spain entered the fight against Franco's dictatorship with the international awareness that the fight for the Spanish Republic is at the same time the open fight against European fascism and especially against Nazism in Germany. They understood that their liberation is linked to the freedom of societies in Europe.

May 8, a day of promise

And it is a day of mutual promise of our antifascist struggle. Like 75 years ago the former prisoners of the concentration camp Buchenwald we also say: "We will stop the fight only when the last guilty one stands before the judges of the peoples! The destruction of Nazism with its roots is our slogan. The construction of a new world of peace and freedom is our goal. We owe it to our murdered comrades, their families."

It is also our promise to bring to justice those responsible for terror and fear, destruction, genocide and the Holocaust. It is our promise not to forget our fallen comrades and to let them live on in our hearts, in our resistance and struggle. It is also our promise to hold on radically to the building of a free society, which lives in peace, in order to defeat fascism once and for all.

May 8, a day of hope

And so May 8 is also a day of our hope. Just as the many who were in the resistance in Germany drew their strength and courage from the hope and conviction of liberation and the building of a socialist Germany, so we still draw our strength for the struggle today from the conviction that the building of a free society is possible. To hold on to this hope, to defend it against the lack of alternatives, we owe it to those who have been fighting for thousands of years for social liberation, genocides, defying the Holocaust and femicides. Our hope lies with society, not with the states. Because an honest antifascist attitude can only be taken by society, but not by the state. Because the state itself is the precondition of fascism, has in itself a permanent urge for suppression and homogenization, for centralization of power.

May 8, a day to insist on being human

Fascism has always had the goal of destroying all opposition, social culture, diversity, difference and thus the vitality of a society. It is the most brutal form of the state to destroy all the values that make up a society, to rob society of its sociality and make it become a homogenous and at the same time selfish mass. And so we do not exaggerate when we oppose fascism with our humanity, just as so many resisters insisted on their humanity in the resistance against National Socialism.

May 8, a day to break the fascist continuity

Even if we talk about May 8 being the day of liberation, it is first and foremost the day of liberation from National Socialism under Hitler and by no means from fascism per se. Also after May 8th until today the fascist ideologies existed and still exist. Parties like the AfD, movements like Pegida and armed cells of fascist organisations are only some examples. Moreover, only a few who were responsible for the murder of thousands of political activists* and millions of Jews* were held responsible and even in today's laws and institutions of the Federal Republic of Germany the continuity is clearly visible. So 8 May is also a day on which we must oppose this continuity.

May 8, a day to understand fascism in its depth

It is difficult, in view of the horror, the murders, the misery, the suffering and genocide, in view of this incomprehensibility, to classify and understand fascism - it wants to evade any explanation. But we have to demystify it, to classify it in concrete, tangible and nameable dynamics and development processes, in order to successfully confront it. Fascism can be explained by the contradictions between the state as the centralisation and monopolisation of power and the democratic, liberal forces. Fascism can be placed in the crisis development of the state, capitalist system, from which the power monopolies of capital and state try to bring the whole society under their control and to break the revolutionary forces in it. Fascism bears witness to the fear of the ruling classes of the political society, which demands its self-determination against the state, from the socialist soviet republics and municipalities in Europe to the construction of democratic autonomy in Kurdistan.

Out of this fear, the bourgeoisie enters into a union with fascism and gives up part of its political power in order to at least secure the old order of property relations.

But fascism also goes hand in hand with the mobilization of the masses. Thus the fascist rule was announced by pogroms and executions of paramilitary groups. These are the declassed, uprooted individuals alienated from their societies, who from one day to the next received power over the life and death of others. They have been broken by the system they served. It is the authoritarian personalities who hump up and step down.

But that these fascist forces can win in the struggle against the antifascist, socialist and anarchist forces is due to the state-bearing forces, which at the moment of social revolution are on the side of a dictatorial, totalitarian and fascist order.

May 8, a day to defend the revolution of Rojava

This strategy of the ruling class is not one that belongs to the past. Rather, it has become a permanent trend. One of the most open fascist regimes of our days is the AKP/MHP regime in Turkey. Like fascism itself, it is directed against the political society, which demands and tries to enforce its self-determination against the state. The Kurdish liberation movement has become an existential threat to the power that exploits and tries to destroy the societies every day. The resistance against Turkish fascism is at the same time an internationalist fight against fascism itself. Turkish fascism has always been an example and inspiration for the fascist regimes in Europe. Its success also strengthened the fascist developments in Germany and Italy. So also the antifascist struggles are connected with each other. The fight against the financial, political and especially military support of the Turkish regime by the German government and companies also means a weakening of Turkish fascism. Just as the resistance against the Turkish fascism of the guerrilla in the mountains of Kurdistan, the self-defence forces in Rojava and in the cities of Northern Kurdistan also intensifies our struggles in the metropolises.

And therefore, May 8 is not only a day of celebration, commemoration and promise, but also a day of political struggle for a free society everywhere.