Students have come together in Cottbus / Brandenburg to network against neofascist tendencies in their schools. Feeling left alone with their engagement, their frustration is big. But neverless their engagement is impressing – even though more and more engaged people are leaving the region. They have independently started the Antifascist Schoolnetwork Cottbus.

The antifascist schoolnetwork (ASN)is a small students initiative in Cottbus. The idea of a schoolnetwork has been adapted here inspired by other antifascist schoolnetworks like in Halle and Leipzig.

The basic idea is, to connect students from different schools in order to research and find out about the situation concerning right winged extremism in schools. Besides that it is connecting students that are eager to fight against racism and right winged extremism and through that, strengthening them. Benjamin is one of the former students that has founded such a network. Today he is looking back with melancholy to the start of the whole project.

In summer 1998 about ten students from different schools in Cottbus decided, that being angry about this immense and daily presence of right winged ideas and neonazis in their schools won’t change the situation. They were frustrated when they realized, that it’s totally up to them to start a struggle against this situation. But what’s to be done ?

They figured that information is needed, since it seems obvious that the neonazis could only have such a presence in schools because other students might not have noticed it. Also, they wanted to become more, they wanted to get in touch with other students that think and feel the same way. So they started to produce leaflets. Starting out with one-sided ones that described the situation and the danger of neonazi presence, the ended up with newspaper-like publications that informed on all different interesting topics concerning the political life of a student.

Up to 20 students have been active in the ASN from seven different schools all over Cottbus. Within the past four years they produced thousands of leaflets and distributed them to various schools. That’s hard work, because distributing leaflets means getting up before school starts and handing them out one-by-one to all students that come to school in the morning. The reactions of the students they approached have been very different: some were friendly, some were encouraging, others threw the material away, others even brought it back saying they don’t like what’s written in their. Others started to join them and tried to get involved. But that didn’t happen often. One school masters even sent them away, because he didn’t want that anyone draws attention to the situation in his school.

Besides producing and distributing leaflets, the ASN was also organising parties. This way students, who are opposing racism and right winged extremism can meet, can have a good time and get to know each other. But most of all, the parties were supposed to show, that being against nazis is way more cool and way more fun than trying to follow the right winged mainstream. According to the ZDK (center of democratic culture) huge parts of the east german neonazis scene are still recruting big numbers of members through their cultural dominance. In many small towns in the east of Germany nazis were able to establish a fashion, in which it was cool and trendy to look like a nazi and to behave like one. Prooving them wrong was and is an important task a lot of initiatives like the ASN were trying to accomplish.

The focus the ASN has always been trying to keep was the networking aspect. Networks are for them a way to strengthen each other, to encourage each other, but also to share ressources and ideas. But also to have the possibility to meet other people that one can become active with.

That’s excactly what their impressing website is offering, even though it is only a one-person project by now. The site has three different aspects: news distribution, distribution of all kinds of media tools, and distribution of subdomains. It seems very engaged and professional, but Benjamin is not very happy about it: „Two many people are just not interested, hardly anyone cares!“ Neverless, the site is definetly worth a click, since its offering very good insights and a very pleasant design.