Protests in the name of Lebensfreude | A gangster rapper talking to the police
Dear reader,
This Wednesday you’ll get to read what happened beyond the headlines at Saturday’s Corona demo in Berlin. You’ll also get a fascinating insight into the complicated relationship between German hip-hop and criminal gangs.
Regards,
Jörg & Axel
The rise of the Streeckists
During troubled times humans turn to teachers to help make sense of our predicament. Two types of saviour tend to emerge: those who tell us to avoid all sin, and those who embrace worldly experience.
In 19th century Europe, the Jewish diaspora were warned by Rabbi Hillel Lichtenstein that their exile would only end if they strictly observed the laws of the Talmud. A radically different message came from Rabbi Nachmann of Breslov who preached that Israel was already attainable: they only had to dance and sing and they would find it.
In the dark year of 2020, two similar scholars have risen to prominence in Germany.
The furrow-browed Dr. Christian Drosten, warns from his seat at the Berliner Charite that the path to redemption lies in rejecting temptation until the foretold arrival of the Vaccine (he’s read the runes: it should arrive next spring).
But in the west, where a certain Lebensfreude has always opposed Berlin’s asceticism, a young upstart has a different message.
The ever-smiling Dr. Hendrik Streeck of Bonn’s credo is: "If we only listened to virologists, nobody would party or have sex - life would be pretty boring."
He admonishes newspapers and politicians for spreading fear: The vaccine may never come, he predicts, so let’s keep things in perspective and enjoy life.
On Saturday, the streets of Berlin were packed for a demo against the corona restrictions. While the Bonn virologist had nothing to do with the protest, his critique infused every conversation. Armed with data on testing and mortality rates, the crowd was convinced the country had whipped itself up into a panic over nothing.
"The only reason they're finding more cases is because they're testing more," Michael, a consultant who'd travelled in from Bonn, said. "In week 34 they only found 4 new cases with 95,000 new tests!" [ed. I checked these numbers - an exaggeration].
A few metres away, Jens unfolded a piece of A4 paper from his pocket. He’d plotted overall testing, positive tests, and hospitalizationss on a graph he’d called “the corona paradox.”
Jens had travelled from the Rhine region with his wife Helen. “We are here for our children,” said Helen. “We have three children in primary school and we’re worried about their education. In our region they have to wear masks in school.”
The couple said they’d followed all the rules at the start of the pandemic but started to doubt its seriousness when they saw that deaths weren’t higher than in other years. But aren’t deaths low because of the government’s measures? “Like these masks?” they smile. “This thin material doesn’t stop you passing on an infection.”
A little further down the street, Frank (who’s been 24 for three decades), said he wasn’t bothered much about the detail. "I want to be free!" he told me, his face getting a bit too close to mine. "I'm here to say that we, as humans, need to learn to live in harmony with every cell in our body, only then can we have peace."
There was not a mask in sight. Was he not scared of infection? “Why should I be scared? Viruses have been around as long as humans have existed.”
The message: the vaccine isn’t out there man, it’s in every one of us!
Many of the opinions at the protest, it should be noted, go much further than anything Streeck advocates. The young virologist favours a return to normality as long as the healthcare system can cope, but he agrees with Drosten on the importance of masks.
Not quite everyone at the demo was unmasked. In front of the Brandenburg Gate, two Drostenites had risked life and limb to see things for themselves. “I'm so grateful for how the Germany government has steered us through the last few months," said Felix, a pristine medical mask pulled tightly around his jaw.
“But we do have to listen to these people’s concerns,” he added. What exactly had he learned here? He wasn’t sure. “What they are saying doesn't make any sense."
PS. A very noisy sideshow to the main event (which inevitably grabbed all the headlines) was a disturbing rally within the rally. The far-right had called their people onto the street in large numbers.
Bizarrely, their protest had almost nothing to do with corona. Instead, they gathered in front of the US embassy and chanted: "peace treaty, peace treaty!" A man at the back of the protest explained that they were demanding a peace treaty with the US, something that never happened after WWII. What does that have to do with corona? "Corona opened my eyes," was his cryptic answer.
J.L.
Bushido, the clans and talking to the police
“It’s so shitty and sad what happened between Bushido and Arafat” reads a comment from one of Arafat Abou-Chaker’s 150,000 Instagram followers on a recent post.
It refers to the friendship-gone-sour between the hip-hop artist Bushido and mafia boss Arafat Abou-Chaker. So sour that it has ended in court. Abou-Chaker and his brothers are accused of “extortion, deprivation of freedom, bodily injury, coercion, insult and embezzlement”. Bushido is the victim and plaintiff.
Hip-hop is Germany’s most popular music genre - thanks in large part to Bushido (real name Anis Mohamed Youssef Ferchich), who’s scored several chart-topping hits over the last decade.
Bushido’s testimony this Monday was a “tell all” about how in 2004 Abou-Chaker helped him get out of an unfavourable deal with the record label Aggro Berlin. The artist recalled how he entered the label’s offices with the mafia boss, who proceeded to slap the executives around until they signed a release clause.
His next meeting with Abou-Chaker was in the clan leader’s silver Audi. Bushido offered €20,000 as payment. Abou-Chaker “went completely crazy.” Only a cut of future earnings would do, he insisted. By the time the rapper was allowed to leave the vehicle, he had agreed to share thirty percent of his revenues for the rest of his life.
It was when Bushido attempted to end the agreement 14 years later that the crimes which the brothers stand accused of occurred. But that is a story for a future court day and newsletter...
Kidnapping musicians isn’t the main occupation of “the clans” - the name generally used for Middle Eastern mafia families - whom the police define as ethnically closed structures of Arab origin, primarily Mhallami-Kurds, Lebanese and stateless Palestinians who came as refugees from Lebanon. As a report from last year lays bare, half of the charges made against them are related to the drug trade.
Criminal charges against clan members in Berlin 2019:
(Source: Berlin Police)
Yet the charges seldomly lead to sentencing. Arafat Abou-Chaker has never served time. When he was sentenced to ten months on parole last year for beating up a janitor it was unusual enough for SPD politician and expert on organized crime Tom Schreiber to comment on it publicly.
The sentence was overturned and the €15,000 fine which Abou-Chaker had to pay can’t be counted as a success for Berlin’s new “five point plan” to tackle clan criminality (which not only plagues Berlin, but also North Rhine Westphalia and Bremen).
The names Abou-Chaker, Miri, Remmo and Al-Zein are well known to most Germans since the tabloids treat the criminals as if they were bad-boy celebrities.
The main image of Arab life which exists in German popular culture is that of the criminal clan member. A cliché that makes life difficult for the many Germans who not only share their ethnicity but even sometimes a their surnames.
Bushido, like many of his hip-hop peers, feeds the cliché with statements like: “things go down on the streets [of Neukölln] which no one talks to the police about.”
But talking to the police was just what Bushido did, and that might end up leading to a milestone in the fight against the clans, putting the Abou-Chakers behind bars.
Time will tell though, if the gangsta rapper has made his last Faustian pact with an actual gangster. Things are “entirely different“ with his new patron, Ashaf Remmo, Bushido assured Stern magazine last year. Remmo happens to be part of an even more notorious family than the Abou Chakers.
A.B.B
Who we are:
Jörg Luyken: Journalist based in Berlin since 2014. His work has been published by German and English outlets including der Spiegel, die Welt, the Daily Telegraph and the Times. Formerly in the Middle East.
Axel Bard Bringéus: Started his career as a journalist for the leading Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet and has spent the last decade in senior roles at Spotify and as a venture capital investor. In Berlin since 2011.