Online newspaper “Trend”-“A mirror of left-wing radical politics”

When the online newspaper “Trend” was founded in 1996, digital media were hardly widespread. Why do you decide to publish on the Internet at the time?

“Trend” was originally founded in 1985 as a Kreuzberger GEW members newspaper. In November 1994, Kreuzberg students were racistically insulted and attacked by right -wing young people on a trip in Marzahn. They sat down and were arrested together with their teacher of civil police officers. We supported the young people and their teacher against impending repression through detailed reporting. When we created the »Trend« edition 2/1995 to mobilize the trial against three of these students, the GEW district management prohibited us to publish the number. For us, Günther, Detlef and MicH, which we had been politically socialized in the 68 revolt and the K groups, this was an absolute no-go, which led to us published the output under our own name. In order to continue to be able to publish uncensored, the World Wide Web came to mind after several months of thinking, where we started as an online newspaper in January 1996.

»Trend «was published for 25 years until 2021. Why have you published a book about this time now?

The end of the online newspaper as a collective contemporary witness meant for me that the enormous abundance of data, which was created by many and represents an authentic mirror on left-wing radical politics, had to be preserved as an archive. To do this, a new user interface and a “tidy” data structure were needed. During this puzzle work, I got the idea of writing an accompanying book to the archive where it is possible with QR codes to access sources directly from the book text in the archive. In this work I realized that the online newspaper was initially an alliance project of various currents, in which political ambivalences then developed into antagonisms. We have overcome these ambivalences through a class policy foundation of “trend”. This was a step that I understand in the sense of Brecht as a turning point.

In addition to the online newspaper, you also organized conferences and congresses. What role did the online newspaper play in this?

In the 25 years it was around 120 events in 1997. Due to the crash of »partisan.net« 2004, i.e. the failure of a collective website, and the establishment of the info artisan domain for »trend« Rolf-Dieter Missbach and I for the first time binding political principles for our internet journalism. They were determined by a “return to Marxism as a theoretical toolbox”. This changed the character of our events. Although they remained cross -trimmed, we prepared the discourses initiated with it with class political texts, which were summarized in constant categories such as “Operation and Union” or “Capitalist Urban Remodial and District Fights”.

Why was the move to the Neukölln district shop “Lunte” important for the further development of the online newspaper?

The “fuss” has its origins in the autonomous self -organization of the 80s. There, political theories and practical experience are related and shape cross -flow district work. Here we were able to get involved immediately. Unlike in the book stores, where “trend” was previously only available by post. We became part of the “Lunte” plenum, took part in their practices and carried out numerous events there. At the same time, a political advisory board emerged at “Trend”, in which comrades also worked from the “fierce”.

The book is also more about the failure of alliances. Do you look back on it with disappointment?

I think there could be talk of disappointment if an alliance fails. And because his protagonists don’t understand it-as Brecht in his »Me-Ti. Book of the phrases “formulated -” to ask the questions that enable action “in order to achieve the goals they had set out. This did not apply to us “trend” makers. But we come back to the crash of the »partisan.net«. We, who wanted to do the “trend” as a collective class policy project, were actually disappointed by ourselves because we had failed to ask the right questions before the crash to successfully prevent him or to receive the alliance.

In retrospect, would you say that the political left has not used enough the chance that the “trend” offered?

In order to answer this question in the brevity offered here, I have to roughly divide the “political left” into two camps: in milieu and classlinks. The latter are mainly represented by all sorts of party-organized “K groups”, while milieulinke are subjectively established anti-capitalist and life-world identity in fleeting alliances. Both camps maintain the political inheritance of the 70s and 80s in their own way: sectarianism. The chance we could offer to them was to open up to a collective “intervening thinking” in the sense of Benjamin and Brecht. The extent to which our offer was accepted would be difficult to verify empirically.

They announced at the end of 2020 under the title »25 Years of Trend-Time to Say Goodbye« that the last issue of the online newspaper would be released in January 2021. Wasn’t grief in it too?

It is very understandable for me that then readers in this announcement suspected melancholy and melancholic feelings on the side of the “trend” genre. But that does not apply to me personally, because working on the online newspaper as a collective contemporary witness was by no means ended for me. She had only shifted. The structure and maintenance of the archive have now become a different form of public relations for me. Furthermore, I am still active in the “Lunte”, where I continue to support or offer events on current topics with recourse to the archive.

In your book, you cancel a second part with the title “Legal considerations”. What will it be about?

Part 1 was written as a chronological story that is the subject of our political practices and the goals of the online newspaper. Political fields such as the district and housing policy, which formed my personal priorities in the 25 years of newspaper work, are not theoretically not sufficiently treated. They should therefore now appear as the second part of the “trend story”. The title “follow -up” shows this, and the content is intended to make it clear that a Marxist analysis of these fields is essential for the objection of capitalism and its abolition.

Karl-Heinz Schubert: Alliances & turning points. 25 years »Trend« online newspaper, part 1. Bod, 140 p., Br., 10 €.