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The race has begun…
The modernization of the German weapon industry and its current process is not a contradiction, but the logical manifestation of states and capitalism. The supposed „culture of military restraint“ (Kultur der Zurückhaltung) that has defined German identity in the last decades was never more than a facade to hide the predatory nature of a state that, by definition, monopolizes violence and turns it into a commodity.

The German state is not hypocritical; it is coherent. Its function is to guarantee capital accumulation and expand its power. The „legal loopholes“ and exports to authoritarian regimes are not system failures, but their true purpose: to feed the global war machine that sustains its dominion. For example, it allows the sale of critical components to allies of western states, who then integrate them into their own systems and export them to war zones, allowing Germany to „wash its hands“. Furthermore, it maintains a constant flow of weaponry to nation-states like Israel, the US, UAE and Saudi-Arabia, among others, justifying it under arguments of „regional stability“. To speak of „ethics“ in arms sales is like speaking of ethics in slavery; it ignores that the business itself is institutionalized violence.

On the other hand, the „jobs“ argument is the shameless confession that capitalism needs death to survive. The economic stability of entire regions depends on manufacturing instruments of death for tyrants. This is not a dilemma, it is an obscenity. The exploited/oppressed class is turned into an accomplice of its own oppression, forced to choose between a wage or conscience, while the arms bourgeoisie amasses fortunes with blood. This activity is often defended with the economic argument: the sector is a pillar of employment. This sort of „labor blackmail“ silences the ethical/moral debate about whether the prosperity of regions like Bavaria or Lower Saxony should depend on selling weapons to authoritarian regimes.
The political shift following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, known as the „Zeitenwende“ or „turning point“, is not a change of era, but the mask falling and once again revealing the face of the capitalist beast. „Double morality“ is the only morality possible for the state, which will always arm its allies and disarm its enemies according to its commercial interests. While the shipment of heavy weapons to Ukraine and Israel is presented by the German state and the EU as a legitimate defense, it easily and unquestioningly falls into the contradiction of arming an „ally“ country while strongly criticizing conflicts like that in Yemen. There is no valid universal principle, only the law of the strongest disguised as international law. Peace between states is only a temporary truce between wars, all of them fought over the dead bodies of the oppressed.

The arms industry, like the German one, doesn’t just „prolong“ conflicts; it creates them. It is the executive arm of a system of nation-states that needs permanent conflict to justify its existence, divide peoples with borders, and discipline the population. Every tank, every missile, is an instrument of terror both for those who receive it and for those who produce it, as it reinforces the logic of domination that is imposed and that oppresses us all.

When we speak of a society on the path to militarization, we also think of the obligatory recruitment that the German state imposes. Although it is not a recruitment process per se, but a „preparedness questionnaire“, it is a mechanism for inventorying human resources for national-level conflict. By cataloging skills and availability, the State treats people as potential war material, normalizing the logic that young bodies are instruments in the service of its military machinery. This is not „defense“, but the institutionalization of war culture. This „undercover“ militarization operates through multiple dimensions in the service of domination. The obligatory recruitment establishes the fundamental principle that the State has the right to inventory and dispose of the population’s bodies, normalizing war logic through what is presented as a simple bureaucratic procedure. The supposedly „voluntary“ service reveals its true coercive nature through economic sanctions and the exploitation of job precariousness, using need as a recruiter.

The „culture of defense“ being promoted is nothing more than the domestication of dissent and subversion, presenting armies and war as inevitable rather than as tools of domination that must be abolished.

Any effort to try to regulate this industry is sterile and meaningless. We must fight against the entire weapon industry and abolish it along with the State and capitalism that feed it. This means total disobedience: sabotage in the factories, insubordination and rejection of voluntary or forced recruitment, internationalist and revolutionary solidarity among peoples who refuse to manufacture the shackles of others in the territories known by the Colonial Powers as „third world“. True defense is not in armies or borders, but in self-determination and the solidary horizontal organization of the people to make war impossible, building a world without masters or warlords.

AboutRheinmetall Waffe Munition GmbH

Nowadays, the refitting and preparation of an arms factory in Wedding, a district with a working-class tradition and diverse sociopolitical and cultural background, is not an urban planning coincidence. It is an act of internal colonialism where the State and capital displace the logic of war from the battlefields to the heart of working-class neighborhoods. While elite groups make geopolitical decisions in distant offices, it will be the neighbors of Wedding who face the consequences of its operation: noise and environmental pollution, the real estate speculation that accompanies these megaprojects, and the conversion of their living space into a node of the death industry. Not only as a potential military target in a potential war situation, but as direct neighbors of a factory that exports death and genocide mostly to the Global South.

Pierburg, owned now by Rheinmetall Waffe Munition GmbH, will not produce „innocent technical components“. It will manufacture essential parts for the production of tank ammunition, artillery systems, and armored vehicles that are killing today in Ukraine, Sudan, Yemen, or Palestine, among other places… Every component that leaves Wedding will carry with it a structural complicity with war crimes and state repression. The factory will be one more key cog in the lethal supply chain that converts public resources into private dividends and corpses in the Global South.

The official discourse presents the factory as a source of „employment“ and „development“, a classic mechanism of economic blackmail. Once again, the working class is offered the perverse dilemma: accept precariousness or become an accomplice of the arms industry. This is not progress, it is social parasitism: Rheinmetall enriches itself with million-euro contracts while externalizing the human and moral costs to its employees and neighbors.

The factory will not only be a production space; but also a device for the militarization of daily life. Normalizing the presence of the war industry in the urban landscape, naturalizing the idea that production for war is a legitimate economic activity and not an organized killing machine. It turns the city intocritical infrastructurefor military machinery, staining the entire community with the blood that its products help to spill.

In the face of the German state’s militarizing initiatives, we must aim to create and support initiatives for disseminating information, blockade, occupation, and permanent tensions against the opening and operation of the factory. Every individual or collective action that doesntcollaborate with power will carry weight in making a difference, from organizing boycott campaigns and public exposure of those responsible and their interests in the neighborhood, to actions that slow down the opening of the factory and its normal operation. The objective must be to make Wedding a hostile territory for the death industry.

About Anti-Militarist Assembly Wedding

Although there are already organized groups in Wedding, not only against Rheinmetall but against the Pierburg factory, the need arises to establish an anarchist assembly in the neighborhood. This need comes from the neccesity to bring anarchist ideas based on anti-authoritarian, anti-nationalist, antimilitarist and horizontal perspective, without leaders or movements managers, without politicians or parties, understanding that we do not need intermediaries or spokespeople for our actions and words. We seek to look each other in the face again, among comrades, but also among neighbors of Wedding and Berlin who want to rise up against the death industry that Rheinmetall brings with it to the neighborhood and the city. We believe that talking, discussing, and creating tension around issues like this again not only strengthens bonds but also prepares the ground for new struggles on the horizon in the current international landscape.

Our assembly does not seek to interrupt or obstruct the work of other groups, but rather we recognize political differences in terms of methods and organization and we commit to establishing an assembly based on our own values and ideas, one that coexists with those who rebel against power and its military monster. We believe in permanent confrontation and the constant tension of the conflicts that afflict us, with no compromises with the oppressors, but with an open hand to those who dare to fight against domination. Recognizing that there are those of us who have never experienced the social peace of the powerful, nor have we grown accustomed to their comfort, and we are certainly not willing to fight their wars of interest. No blood or life is worth the money that states profit from.

Neither with their wars, nor with their peace!

A.M.A.W.
December 2025

Date of next assembly: 04.12
Time: 20:00
Location: Infoladen Scherer 8 (Schererstraße 8,13347 Berlin)

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