
Bavarian raids - rendx
https://riseup.net/en/about-us/press/zwiebelfreunde
======
xashor
Might be a good time to donate. Especially Zwiebelfreunde will need money to
cover their lawyers. Note that if you donate via IBAN, your account data will
likely be in the hands of the police. At least when the next raid happens.

RiseUp: [https://riseup.net/donate](https://riseup.net/donate)

Zwiebelfreunde:
[https://www.torservers.net/donate.html](https://www.torservers.net/donate.html)

~~~
sandov
I'm against the raiding of servers, but want to point out that that Riseup are
radical leftists, just so you know who you're donating to.

~~~
thecrash
They are radical anarchists. If you're going to try to split this along
ideological lines, at least get the ideologies right.

~~~
sandov
IMO, Anarchy definitions are not consistent enough to use the term univocally,
definitions sometimes contradict each other.

They are leftists, because they see capitalism (and hence private property) as
oppression and want to abolish it (instead of the moderate leftists who just
want to regulate it in 'favor' of poor people), that makes them radical
leftists.

~~~
dogma1138
Most people on the left want regulation to provide a universal safety net, if
you want to regulate capitalism to favor poor people you are essentially for
full on wealth redistribution which does put you on the radical side.

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imbokodo
To translate what happened into HN terms and analogy: the Open Source
Initiative is an umbrella organization which advocates for Mozilla, Linux,
Debian, Python, Apache and other open source projects.

Riseup.net is similar. It is not a group with a very specific ideology, it is
an umbrella organization which many organizations are associated with, inside
and outside of Germany. In the case of Riseup.net they are an umbrella for
left-leaning groups. As their web site says, they provide tech services like
email, web etc.

The raids on five locations were on Riseup.net, this umbrella tech
organization which provides tech resources for much of the left.

Look at Riseup.net's mailing lists. Thousands of left-leaning groups have
mailing lists there. Riseup is not an organization with a narrow focus. It is
like a GitHub or Gmail of the left.

What probably happened is the German police were focusing on one person or
group using the service, and raided not the members of that one mailing list,
but the overarching umbrella organization that has 999 mailing lists on
feminism and such.

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dang
Discussed at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17456289](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17456289)

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zellyn
There are several comments here to the effect that Riseup is “communist”
(although I cannot tell whether that's intended as a slur or compliment).
Reading their “About us” and even “Political Principles” page, there's nothing
terribly Communisty. Anyone have a pointer to backstory?

~~~
imbokodo
You are correct. Their about page says "We oppose all forms of prejudice,
authoritarianism and vanguardism".

Opposing authoritarianism is implicitly saying they are not communist, saying
they are against vanguardism (a word used by Lenin) means they are explicitly
saying they are not communist.

Also as their web page says, they are not really a group with an ideology.
They are a bunch of left-leaning techs who provide mailing lists, web site
service etc. for left-leaning groups who "believe it is vital that essential
communication infrastructure be controlled by movement organizations and not
corporations".

My guess for what happened - the police were looking for one person or group
that uses Riseup. As so many progressive organizations use Riseup, the
targeting of one user or group of the service became a targeting of five
locations, of people who provide the technological infrastructure of much of
the left in Germany.

~~~
mdekkers
"we oppose all forms of oppression blah blah". I find they stop being
interested in your oppression as soon as your views differ from theirs.

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alexhektor
while I have upvoted this story and deeply sympathize with the victims of what
appears to be a wide 'overreach of power' by the police, I also had a look at
the website that was the 'cause' of this raid.

!!! EDIT: I was under the impression, that this was their website. This is
absolutely NOT proven and changes my viewpoint drastically !!!

While I deeply sympathize with the political views and what they are
protesting (a far right-wing party in germany), they have published/written
tutorials on different forms/tools of protesting ranging from 'peaceful' tools
like grafitti and the use of colors up to how to use stones, nails in boards
(wood boards? similar to this:
[https://bit.ly/2tTF0kp](https://bit.ly/2tTF0kp)) in order to stop cars or
even how to burn cars.

Now I'm not a lawyer, but while tutorials/information like this in itself
probably isn't illegal, I assume there are laws that prohibit spurring people
to protest using 'force'/violence. The context of this website and having
those tutorials on it (including use gloves if you are using stones, because
there could be fingerprints on it) combined with locations of AFD (super
right-wing party) friendly locations can easily be seen/interpreted as a 'call
to "violence"'.

It's a super interesting debate, but it's not as black and white as those CCC
members make it appear. Again, I deeply sympathize with their cause - I am
probably not perfectly OK with their methods, though.

edit: the website (in german) for those who want to judge themselves:
[https://augsburgfuerkrawalltouristen.noblogs.org/](https://augsburgfuerkrawalltouristen.noblogs.org/)
Loosely translated: "Augsburg (city) for riot tourists"

~~~
madc
Is is worth mentioning that the german police has stated, that the only
connection between this website and the people raided is, that they process
donations for riseup. They have nothing to do with this website. And the
police never thought, that they have.

~~~
alexhektor
you're right. I reread the article on Spiegel, and got the impression they
were.

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jamiek88
Standard: communists calling for violence reaction in here without any of he
commenters supplying any sort of links that demonstrate that.

Thought and discussion termination isn’t cool.

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demian00
>What caused the police-state to raise up its ugly head? In this case, the
justification was a website created to organize against a rally of an extreme
right political party. It seems in Bavaria, you cannot make a website that
tries to get people to come protest neo-fascists without also offending the
police.

This is simply wrong. The website called for violence.

Also riseup is a communist organization.

~~~
ColanR
Who's downvoting this? I don't see any unfactual or inappropriate statements.

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pcstl
Possibly the person who created an account literally named "communist" to
comment on this.

~~~
communist_
New users can't downvote.

