A. Kadir Özdemir © private, drawing: MiG
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For 2021 I have planned more me-time. Then it got boring and I dealt – again – with right-wing police structures, with #ShamelessSeehofer, Jens Spahn and, for the first time, Instagram.
Of A. Kadir Ozdemir Monday, January 11th, 2021, 5:23 a.m.|Last updated: Sunday, January 10th, 2021, 11:02 am Reading time: 3 minutes | To press
A few days ago I said Bismillah 2021 and resolved to actually fulfill my resolution, which has been postponed for years, to insert more me-time.
I spent hours looking at beautiful country houses on Tumblr, tried out elaborate new recipes, took a virtual PoC dance meditation course and finally enjoyed dancing with others again, be it virtually.
But then … it got boring. Relaxing was hard work. In the meantime, I began to unhealthily deal with right-wing structures in the police, which, according to our nightmare minister #ShamelessSeehofer, are all isolated cases or his like-minded colleague, Jens Spahn.
The latter has grown in popularity with many during the pandemic. However, many of us remember his tweets well. “Is the Mohrenkopf still allowed?” He asked as publicly as it was hypocritical. Again and again he relativized the affiliation of Muslims to Germany, made it his claim to criticize German Muslims and their self-organizations with more eloquent words than the AfD. He expressed his incomprehension towards anti-racist feminists: inside, who are committed to the religious self-determination of women, he put the Antifa on the same level as the NPD. And when he was completely drunk, he pondered how to explain to a German mother why her children were sent to Afghanistan with the Bundeswehr, while refugees were not allowed to be deported there. Quite apart from the fact that the children of this imaginary mother voluntarily chose to become professional soldiers in the German military, it is interesting that for Jens Spahn the mothers seem to be responsible for their children and the fathers do not need to be spoken to. I’ll leave out details of his “macho Arab” fantasies, about which he is outraged because they do not want to strip completely naked in the shower of the fitness center, but rather shower with bathing trunks. Corona hides and suppresses a lot, but in the shadow the #racistmainstreamculture grows and thrives.
After numerous loops of the same bullshit, I asked myself: Was the CDU ministers’ preoccupation with racism really “me time”? I tried to hide messages for a while, returned to Tumblr, tried more recipes, and started an Instagram account. For a long time, Instagram was the symbol of hedonistic constipation for me. But after half of the posers migrated to TikTok, the medium became interesting for political-cultural work. I became a fanboy of in a short time @Ferda_ataman, @Melisa, @farazshariat and @m_amjahid, discovered for me new and inspiring @eliffkoroglu, @sueheyla_uenlue and fell in love with a poem by @unesjomajo.
After the first days of immersing myself intensely in the new matter, the question arose for me what the social media should do if it does not result in something useful for analogue life. Couldn’t digital networking also translate into real encounters? I used my young account to launch a call to found a PoC theater collective. And within a few days there was great feedback. The collective The migrant heirs is now in the starting blocks. We’ll rock Hanover, insallah.
Maybe for people like me, me-time is identical to community time, whether digital or analog. I don’t have to gong meditate or do the splits to relax. I don’t have to fill myself up with all that racist shit either. And above all, I don’t have to isolate myself to be with myself. In this seemingly endless time of lockdown, the connection with my community gives me a lot of energy and gives me confidence. Let’s make 2021 a good year for everyone together.
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