Unlike Germany’s numerous amorphous groups from the autonomous tradition, however, Rote Hilfe operates as a legal organization in compliance with federal law. It is registered as an association, has an official HQ, and maintains an elected federal executive committee as well as local chapters and activities in the public sphere. Although it is regularly attacked by Germany’s ruling Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and features prominently in reports by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, it is not a banned organization. This makes the repression it is currently facing all the more astonishing.
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It’d be nice if there was a way to store and transfer money electronically without any sort of central organization to grant or withhold permission.
Isn’t that literally what crypto was designed for?
the organization supports activists financially, through paying fines and funding ongoing legal help
Pretty sure the state and the lawyers only accept bank transfers in official currency, plus lots of paperwork. Civil rights organizations can accept individual donations in cryptocurrency, but the very type of the work they do means they need to convert them to state money in aboveground, official bank accounts.
I believe it’s technically possible. It’s just said money would have no protections
Add a cryptographic layer so that only a computer with access to the private key could issue transactions from that keys wallet.
Still having the no protection issue. IE if someone steals the money to bad.
Perhaps if one wanted to, one could set up the cryptographic wallet with a “smart contract” built into it that lets you use more sophisticated controls - keys that only allow small amounts of money to be taken out, backup keys that can lock the wallet down if keys are compromised, and so forth. Since you’d be the one who assigns the smart contract to your wallet you’d still be the one ultimately in control of it. And, ultimately, you’d be the one to take responsibility since the money is under your own control this way.
In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m describing Ethereum. This is what cryptocurrency is for. It’s what it’s been for for a decade already, eighteen years if you go back to the start with Bitcoin, but most people just think “Monkey jpeg NFTs and ponzi schemes, scam!” And dismiss it.
Guess that leaves everyone at the mercy of the banks for managing money. Oh well, maybe someday someone will invent this thing that we’ve had all along.
Pretty sure Crypto has been stolen but could be wrong on that.
Regardless the issue with Crypto is how can one use it as a practical funding mechanism. It’s not like if I need to paid canvassers (as hypothetical example) they can take Crypto to buy basic goods
One time a roommate paid me their part of the rent in silver, which I then had to sell right away to have enough money to pay the landlord. I ended up selling it to a family friend who was a coin collector. This was a pain in the ass and I was pissed off about it, but it did work. Their reason for paying in silver wasn’t that they had been debanked, but if it had been, and the banking system prohibited them from transferring money to me, using silver still would have worked as a way around that.
Same principle applies with crypto; if a market for the thing being used as money exists, people can find a way to buy things with it, and they can be paid with it especially if there is a need to do so. How much friction exists in the process does matter a lot, as does the progress of the state in capturing and controlling cryptocurrency systems, but there are things that can and are being done about that.
Always has been, for centuries.
Every legal resident in an EU country is entitled to open a “basic payment account”. Banks cannot refuse your application for a basic payment account just because you don’t live in the country where the bank is established.
Rote Hilfe is registered in Germany. What the article does not say is that they openly support, among others, the Red Army Faction (RAF). The RAF was engaged in a series of bombings, assassinations, kidnappings, bank robberies particularly in the 1970s and 1980s. The Rote Hilfe has never distanced itself from the RAF and its criminal activities, and have reportedly even openly supported the few RAF members still wanted by authorities.
That should be added if such an article is published. I am personally not very happy with media outlets like this Jacobin. Not being far-right is not enough. If you read such media, you now exactly what narratives you get before you even click the link.
So? That isn’t illegal.
Recent moves to close its bank accounts are aimed at wrecking its activity, even though it hasn’t broken the law.
This is.
Moreover, the article mentions that it’s one of multiple organizations debanked in a row, preceeded by ABC-Dresden, which is one of the loudest grassroots voices for international solidarity with Ukrainian anti-authoritarians fighting against the invasion. While Rote Hilfe has a different position (amplifying refugees and deserters, which IMO is also important despite not being treated as politically correct), they don’t seem to be debanked because of their specific connections, but because of a blanket ban on anything leftist and radical.
Shit. Germany really isn’t in a good place right now. Going the same route as so many other countries (normal conservative parties pandering to far-right populism), with the added historical baggage…
