During the last edition of the 4th Vienna Anthropology Days (VANDA), I have presented findings from my doctoral research project Permissible Truths under the title “Who can talk about racism in Germany and how?” as part of the panel “Digital narratives: Exploring digital dimensions of shared experiences and collective memory”.Using the methods of digital anthropology and digital ethnography, I have been following artists documenting and exposing cases of racism in the art world in Berlin on social media, highlighting the exceptionalizing and exclusionary politics and practices in Germany limiting who is permitted to talk about racism and how. The weaponization and politicization of history is particularly targeting migrant artists who resist this dislocation and instrumentalization of “German guilt”. In an era of aggressive silencing, digital and social media provide an alternative platform (albeit with limitations) to tell the stories of struggle, mourning, and racism. For the VANDA presentation, I chose to focus on “memes” and present my work on political humor and the use of mems as a form of digital storytelling.
Below is presented one of the examples, it is an AI generated image that was circulated online in the winter of 2024 following the attack of a racialized group of protesters that were taking part in a large demonstration against the far-right. The group was attacked by the other predominantly white protesters. The demonstration against racism was triggered by the reports that there have been mass gatherings of far-right groups across Germany. Simultaneously, there was a large public outcry caused by the outrageous “Ausländer Raus” [“Foreigners Out”] video scandal.
In response, also have a look at the powerful protest song by Bundaskanzlerin & Vitling here.
