Okay Deutschland

Chapter 1: Prologue/Flashback

C’mon sweetheart, you know you want it! The neo-Nazi snarled from between clenched teeth, pinning Conni in a practiced grip. She struggled against him – she was strong for a girl, the type who liked to fight her own battles – but she didn’t stand the slightest chance. The skinhead had to be some kind of professional, probably martial arts; there was no way she could free herself. Mike and Ron were just as helpless. Held by two skinheads each, they could only look on with gritted teeth as the ringleader started to unbutton Conni’s blouse.

Let her go, pig! Ron managed to shout. Conni was his girlfriend, and even if things had been a little rocky between them lately he couldn’t stand to see her in a situation like this. Strangely enough, his own safety hadn’t even crossed his mind. He glanced at Mike and saw that he felt the same. The two of them were best friends and understood each other instinctively. Ron and Conni had invited Mike along with them to see a movie at the little art house cinema in Frankfurt’s Railway Street. They’d been there countless times before. Of course, coming back along Railway Street at night was always bound to be a bit of an adventure because of the red-light district near the train station. All sorts of seedy characters hung around the place. But neo-Nazis? The five men with shaved heads, military jackets and combat boots had appeared out of nowhere and shoved them into this tiny, dingy court¬yard. The men spoke little and stank of tobacco and booze. Apparently they had been on a pleasure trip to Frankfurt’s red-light district and had decided to indulge in this random attack as a nightcap.

Shut up, coon! the skinhead’s leader hissed, and yanked Conni’s arm behind her back until she screamed and doubled over in pain. Your slut’s asking for this, let me show you how it’s done. He grinned sleazily, and the skinheads holding Ron and Mike answered with coarse, throaty laughter. It seemed that Ron and Conni’s black hair – well, Mike’s dark curls didn’t exactly make him an Aryan poster boy either – had been enough to make them the skinheads’ target. It all added up to a nightmare, and Ron found himself wondering how the situation would ever be resolved.

At that moment three Turkish men came down the courtyard. Before they even spoke, Mike knew where they were from: The scent of garlic and mutton preceded them. They smelled just like a kebab – either they’d just scarfed one, or maybe they worked in a kebab shop near the train station. The Turks hadn’t seen the others; it was quite dark in the courtyard, especially when you’d just left Railway Street, which was brightly lit. It took a minute or two to get used to the thick darkness. The Turks lined up side by side near a wall and began to relieve themselves on a patch of grass, talking quietly among themselves in Turkish.

In any case, the situation couldn’t get worse, so maybe things would get better. The skinheads seemed to sense this, and the ringleader pressed his hand to Conni’s mouth to keep her quiet. But before the men holding him could react, Ron shouted to the Turks, Hey, give us a hand here, these skinheads just mugged us!

Luckily, the Turks weren’t slow on the uptake. It’s likely that when you grow up Turkish in Germany, you have a sixth sense for situations where race and ancestry are an issue. They spun from the wall and zipped their pants in a single move – not unlike synchronized swimmers, Ron thought in an odd moment of clarity. They’d immediately realized what was going on, and because the skinheads completely looked the part there was no doubt who was friend and who was foe from the Turks’ perspective. And to Ron’s relief, the Turks were neither cowards nor afraid of conflict when it was necessary – they got down to business with a decisiveness that made it clear they were not only eager to help out fellow humans in distress but also to settle a personal score with an old enemy. Although the ringleader’s hold on Conni had first looked professional it now proved a disadvantage. Before he could disengage himself and assume a combat position, one of the Turks had landed a punch squarely in the middle of his pale face. It seemed the Turks were professionals themselves. Ron observed with admiration how the Turk placed his punch and pulled his other arm back at the same time, using the counter-motion to gain even more momentum. Despite being fairly big and beefy, the skinhead literally flew backwards and smashed into the wall of the courtyard before sliding down it in seemingly slow motion and coming to rest in a sitting position. Spinning around, Conni wasted no time in placing a cracking kick right between his legs.

Sieg Heil, asshole! she spat. The Turk’s expert punch had already been enough to take the fight out of the skinhead. But the pain from Conni’s kick brought him momentarily back to consciousness. Then he groaned and slumped sideways, once again in slow motion, and lay motionless on the ground.

The other two Turks hadn’t been standing around in the meantime, either. They took advantage of the fact that their opponents were too busy pinning Ron and Mike to fight back. As soon as Ron and Mike had freed themselves, they too laid into the skinheads. The fact that their leader lay slumped in a corner didn’t help the neo-Nazis’ morale, besides the fact that they were outnumbered. After a short and fierce brawl the skinheads half-ran half-hobbled back out to Railway Street. By then, their leader had come to and limped after his gang, wincing in pain and clutching his crotch as if he was lining up for a soccer free kick.

Go home to the Reich! one of the Turks shouted after them and pumped his fist in the air. Conni started to cry with relief as she, Ron and Mike fell into each other’s arms.

Chapter 2: Autobahn

Change the station! Ron called from the middle seat. Radio Magdeburg had been coming in worse and worse over the last few miles. Since the arrival of digital, this manifested itself in dropped signal, sudden moments of silence. The grating crackle of analogue frequency was a thing of the past. At this moment, none of the young men in the car imagined that good old analogue technology would be part of their lives again. Ever. Not to mention essential for survival…

The old ‘89 Volkswagen LT1 camper van trundled along the Autobahn at barely 70 mph, crossing the springtime Brandenburg moorland with its fields, forests, patches of industrial buildings and recurring packs of wind turbines. Mike, Ron, Ralf and Joe were in the van. Hip kids in their mid-twenties. Their personal styles were a mixed bag of hippie-esque retro-freak and cool 21st century hipster, bridging the gap between the cliché of a 60’s student protest and the more current reality of post-industrial, economically battered 21st century disillusionment. They were students at universities and technical schools in the area around Frankfurt, each of them dabbling in several fields including cybernetics, history, computer science, politics, mathematics, economics etc. – an academic potpourri with tendency toward natural science and technology and the social sciences.

I bet we’re close enough to get one of the decent Berlin stations, Radio Fritz or Motor FM or something… Ron continued laconically. He yawned and stretched slightly, at least as much as he could on the cramped middle seat of the LT1. He was, like the others in the van, an interesting-looking if not downright attractive guy. Black shoulder-length hair, blue eyes, slender, a good body, 5’-9", three days of stubble, jeans, t-shirt, biker jacket.

Yo, Mike answered from the wheel of the LT1. The other two passengers, Ralf in the front seat and Joe in the back, had nodded off. Mike hit the radio’s scan button and Ron was right, the announcer’s voice came through loud and clear.

You’re listening to Motor FM, Berlin’s alternative music station and we’ve got time for one more song before the newsbreak – here’s a classic ‘Cut off the Top’ from the Beatsteaks. The song started off with a wildly incomprehensible line of shouting before settling down to a smooth reggae groove. However, Mike quickly cranked the volume to max so that the hysterical opening howl propelled Ralf, Joe and even Ron into a sudden and total state of alertness.

Dude, what the hell…! Ralf spluttered from the passenger seat, trying to retain his cool despite being so rudely awakened. Ralf’s look was complete surfer dude, his brown hair cut in a 60’s retro style with a slight side parting, thick bangs hanging into his eyes and casual, baggy clothes. He was about to finish his BA in communications technology and math. From the back seat, meanwhile, Joe was only able to muster a few garbled primeval squawks not dissimilar to the howls on the radio.

There’s a coincidence, Mike thought, smirking to himself. His grey-green eyes sparkled beneath his dark brown curls, tussled in the 70’s glam rock style of T.Rex frontman Mark Bolan. Mike was basically a hunk, as friends, acquaintances and sometimes total strangers of both sexes persistently informed him. Despite his good looks, he was, like the others in the van incidentally, hetero to the extreme – sometimes almost to a regrettable extent, he thought. His interests were diverse; he was currently working toward a double major in modern history and quantum physics.

Anyway, they were getting close to Berlin, their destination now and it wouldn’t hurt his friends to get shaken out of their sleep at this point. They’d been on the road for almost seven hours (there’d been a traffic jam near Kassel), so they’d spent nearly that long dozing. That song had come at just the right time as far as Mike was concerned. He felt slightly proud of nailing the exact moment to crank the volume, thereby achieving maximum effect. Actually, it was something he’d been told repeatedly, and although he didn’t analyze it all that much he had noticed it himself with a measure of disbelief: he had an uncanny knack for grasping a situation within a split second, taking immediate action and getting a result. Basically, he was able to use happenstance events to his advantage in no time at all. Sometimes this unusual characteristic of his almost frightened him a little. It was as if he was able to quickly and intuitively carry out a plan while other people would have needed long-term analysis, strategies and action plans to achieve the same result. The example of using the Beatsteaks song as a wake-up call was fairly mundane, but the sequence of events was clear. The window of opportunity was very narrow, about one second between hearing the song’s title and the beginning of the shouting, which for Mike meant: recognize the title – identify that now was the time to wake his passengers up, since they were getting close to Berlin and it made sense to discuss their plans for the following day at this point – crank the volume – signal and cut in front of a truck – turn the volume down again at the precise moment the shouting stopped – check the mirrors and enjoy the results.

Oh man, I think I’m having a heart attack! Joe had managed to regain his power of speech. Need me pills, he added in the Hessian accent he lapsed into under any extreme circumstance. Joe (Johannes actually) was a typical Frankfurt boy, an intellectual caught in a stereotypical German body, six-foot-two, thick short golden blond hair, very muscular - but in a more classy than meathead kind of way. Joe was studying nanotechnology, computer science and law, and although only in his third semester, he was already a successful contributor to several ground-breaking research projects.

Hey dudes, take it easy, Mike kidded in English. He liked throwing in bits of American slang, despite the fact that (or maybe because) he found it uncool and dated. To people who didn’t know him, though, it sounded as if he meant every word. Only his friends knew that his playful mocking wasn’t serious; especially Ron, who shared what they called a love-hate relationship with America. I just wanted you to all wake up so we can talk things over again, we’re almost to Berlin. By the way, do you know what the Beatsteaks lyric was there? It’s sort of in poor taste, but hey, it fits perfectly. It goes, ‘Come on down and watch the whole thing explode!’ Which is exactly what we’re doing. Right; that was what he had forgotten to include in his mental action sequence. In the split second before the song had started, he had also realized how aptly the content of the shouting described their current situation. It was April 29th, 2019 and they were on their way to Berlin to watch the May Day riots of the century.

The eyes of Germany are on Berlin. Meanwhile the news was starting, after the Beatsteaks song had ended fittingly with a final howl of Kreuzberg, Kreuzberg!

The police have brought in 30,000 armed police from all over Germany to the Kreuzberg neighborhood of Berlin in preparation for the anticipated unrest on May Day, which is expected to be even larger than last year. The government has again denied that Bundeswehr combat troops are also preparing for mobilization. However, such action would now be legal under the controversial amendment that was passed after last year’s May 1st riots.

Mike involuntarily thought back to May 1st last year when he had turned on the TV at home in Frankfurt and watched in shock, together with the rest of Germany and the world, as the news showed scenes similar to those of a civil war. It was true that incidences of social unrest had increased since the financial crisis in 2009/10. The anti-capitalist movement, too, had gained strength following the meltdown. And the decades-old tradition of May Day rioting had been revived along with it, despite the fact that until then it had seemed obsolete and traditionalist, to the point where it had become just a perfunctory exercise for anarchist youth. But all of that had changed drastically in the early hours of May 1st, 2018. And it had happened right on TV, with the whole world watching. Scenes like the fully manned police bus doing a complete backflip after a homemade bomb under the front axle was detonated by remote control... or the punk girl hit by a water cannon’s blast, who had been propelled through the air like Superwoman before landing dramatically on the roof of a car (contrary to viewers’ concerns, reports had since confirmed that the effects hadn’t been fatal)… scenes like these had taken their place in the collective German memory, right next to the images of the Wall coming down; JFK’s visit to Berlin; the devastating Hamburg flood of 1962, and so on.

So it was no wonder that now, one year later, May Day was an event the whole nation was looking forward to in a state of great excitement. It was probably similar to the buzz that had surrounded the 1954 World Cup soccer championship in Bern, Switzerland. That was a tasteless comparison, though – Mike had to smile a little. The main difference, other than the fact that violent social unrest is not a sport, was that in 1954 everyone was looking forward to the championship with a sense of national unity. There were common values, common experiences, even a collective awareness to a certain extent. However, the anticipation building up to May 1st, 2019 stemmed from a diametrically opposite state of mind – it was a perspective brought about by diversity. Germany was no longer a homogenous group of people tuned to the same wavelength, sharing core values. Instead, the country consisted of very disparate groups of people, and those groups were subdivided again on multiple dimensions. The hopes and expectations for the coming 1st May were similarly varied. There were those who wanted as much rioting as possible; others who hoped for a further collapse of the capitalist/free market system; some just wished the police operation would be over already. Then there were those who had plans to use the unrest as a PR platform for their personal agendas – and of course there were a few who viewed it purely from a sporting perspective, just like back in 1954.

Mike and his friends didn’t personally identify with any of those groups, although their sympathies lay with the non-conformists and lefties (as long as they kept it non-violent) rather than the forces of law and order. They belonged to the not insignificant number of curious onlookers, but they were taking observation to a different level. While the average curious observer settled for experiencing it from the front row of their living room theatre on HD plasma display, Mike and his friends wanted the thrill of experiencing it live. A crucial factor in their decision to go to Berlin was of course the run-in Ron, Mike and Conni had had with the skinheads over a year ago in Frankfurt’s red light district. Several neo-Nazi factions had announced they would be at the May 1st riots. While Mike and his friends had been opposed to the neo-Nazi ideology to start with, their experience in Frankfurt had transformed the skinheads into extremely real and tangible enemies. They were especially determined to document and share information about the skinheads’ actions during the riots to impress on the German public that fascist behavior was a very serious threat. They didn’t really trust the mass media to do the job adequately. But they weren’t so naïve as to ignore the fact that they were entering a dangerous situation, so they had decided to stay at Conni’s place from the following afternoon through the night. Although Conni and Ron had split up at some point after their incident with the skinheads in Frankfurt, the let’s stay friends thing had actually worked out for once. Plus, it just so happened that Conni had since moved into a very cool attic apartment with a huge sun patio overlooking Kottbusser Tor,