“Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.” Karl Marx, 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonapatre

In the course of hundred years from great October revolution initiated by female textile workers it is appropriate to ask our self: “Can we do it one more time?” or we lost ourselves in the jaws of postmodern relativity and variety. This year issue of queerograd seeks to collaboratively explore contemporary positions of feminism. In contrast to the corporate or lean-in feminism – embodied in Hillary Clinton’s campaign for president or in the new established W20, a so-called G20 dialogue process – we want to sustain our attachment to Left analysis, but to throw off the melancholic and conservative habits of the Left. In opposition to a legalistic, technocratic approach to women’s rights we want to use the feelings and sentiments — including those of sorrow, rage, and anxiety about broken promises and lost compasses – to wake the critical and visionary feminist spirit again and through various artistic, theoretical and activist practices express our objects of love – In what we do believe and what we do stand for!

On International Women’s Day in 1917 (February 23 by the Julian calendar), women in textile industry left their factories and took to the streets in Petrograd to demand bread and peace. In large numbers they entered the public sphere as workers and as sisters, mothers, wives or friends of soldiers at the front. The protests of working women posed such a threat that even the Tsarist security forces did not dare to take the usual measures against the rebels but looked on in confusion at the stormy sea of the people’s anger. Old prejudices helped women that day; while Russia’s capitalists had assumed that women are the most oppressed and socially backward group in Russian society and therefore the most obedient and trouble-free members of the workforce, the mostly male Petrograd socialist leaders also didn’t expect the celebration of International Women’s Day to be the catalyst for revolution. This was a miscalculation. The actions of the undisciplined, disobedient women that existed side by side with the image of the backward female worker triggered food riots and a mass strike, ultimately leading to the fall of Tsar Nicholas. Since its beginning in 1910 the International Working Women’s Day turned out to be an excellent method of agitation among less politically engaged women as well as a tool for strengthening the international solidarity of women. The history of February Russian Revolution and its aftermath can’t be understood without the knowledge about woman’s participation in demonstrations, political marches, various forms of female activism that was not about some imaginary ideal of womanhood, but about many real women demanding their rights and being active in the process of changing history.

A century after, in the beginning of 2017, on January 21, people of all backgrounds came together to stand collectively for dignity, justice and freedom in the face of attacks on public services, political identities and human lives. The historic Women’s March took place on the first full day of the Trump administration. Millions of women and men clogged the streets around the US to show the deep revulsion and opposition to Trump. Newly elected US president accused of sexual assault by many women got the power to pursue a political agenda that will make ordinary women’s lives harder. Since January 21 showed the potential for the re-emergence of a feminist movement, it inspired the call on March 8 for the International Women’s Strike (IWS), that was not just against Trump and his misogynist policies, but also against the conditions that produced Trump, namely the decades-long economic inequality, racial and sexual violence, and imperial wars abroad. For years, International Women’s Day has gone unnoticed or was depoliticized. However, this year women in more than 50 countries went on strike from paid and unpaid labor and millions took part in direct action. Feminist, grassroot, and socialist organizations around the world have called for participation in defense of reproductive rights and against violence, understood as economic, institutional, and interpersonal violence. From Thailand to Poland, the United States to Australia actions on both, the industrial and the domestic fronts were unfolded, but they didn’t change the course of history. The International Women’s Strike made a qualitative and quantitative leap in the long post-2008 process of reconstructing an international social mobilization against neoliberalism and imperialism, but it remained a day of action, that demonstrates the massive (in)capability of contemporary mass movements.

In the light of farcical repetition we can observe also the financial crisis of 2008 that is considered by many economists as the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. If the negative effects of the stock market crash from 1929 ended with the rise of fascism in Europe and the beginning of WWII, the aftermath of the last global economic downturn called the Great Recession was accompanied by massive bail-outs of financial institutions and the rise of so-called Post-fascism. While public authorities in fear of the crash of the world financial system introduced austerity measures to meet the needs of people, they massively started to put public money into the broken (private) banking system. This triggered huge rage among the population world wide. Massive resistance against neoliberal policies organized in various movements from Occupy, Gezi Park and Black Lives Matter to massive student protests, workers strikes and Standing Rock, brought people together to fight against social inequalities. Local governments answered with the introduction of draconian restrictive and repressive measures that reached their peak in the anti-migration legislation. In this situation, the ultra conservative rhetoric again found its way to appear on the floor of the history. However, the repetition of its occurrence came as a farce. Post-fascism is a concept that attempts to grasp a mutation process that is still underway. Today “Post-fascists” are linked to the historical “fascist matrix”, yet, at the same time they diverge from historical fascism. Still far-Right, chauvinistic and xenophobic they found their political niche without upsetting the dominant political forms of electoral democracy and representative government. Despite of presenting themselves as defenders of democracy, they are hostile to universal citizenship and by that against the right on equal political participation. Although it seemed that citizenship can’t be a privilege, limited to a particular class, race, creed, gender, political participation, morals, profession, patronage, and administrative fiat, present reality is showing us an other picture.

This radical conservative turn, disguised as a defense of democracy and western values was only possible under the conditions of postmodernity. Although it seemed just as a new “ism” the introduction of postmodernism profoundly changed the standards of social critique and political practice. If the neoliberal social restructuring is the inner truth of postmodernism, then its most significant feature or practice today is pastiche. Pastiche is the imitation of a peculiar or unique style, the wearing of a stylistic mask, speech in a dead language. It is a neutral practice of mimicry, without ulterior motive, without satirical impulse, without laughter, without that still latent feeling that there exists something normal compared to which what is being imitated is rather comic. It is a parody that has lost its sense of humor. As a blank parody without any political bite it was a suitable cultural practice to normalize the far-Right discourse. Imitating the defenders of democracy, today‘s post-fascists are demanding the closing of borders for refugees and migrants, the abolition of abortion, the revision of the history of WW2 and the return of traditional (western) values embedded into the white, christian, patriarchal family. Using the practice of mimicry like pink-washing or zipper system for political marketing they are rebranding their public appearance. And there is no place for humor.

If the historical answer on fascism was the rise of anti-fascistic movements, than we need to up-date the meaning of anti-fascism, suitable for the present political situation. Anti-fascism was a main essence of the Left. However, since the late twentieth century we are experiencing the “crisis of the Left”. The dismantlement of socialism as a social project and the rise of neoliberal global capitalism deepened the inner dispersal and diversification on the Left (which after all, is not necessarily an obstacle for greater democratization). The famous Left melancholia represents not only a refusal to recover from this loss, but also a refusal to rethink proper strategies in the light of political identity for mobilization, alliance-building, or transformation. The contemporary Left often clings to the conceptions of another epoch, one in which the notions of unified movements, social totalities, and class-based politics were viable categories of political and theoretical analysis. Structural analysis and traditional class theory can help us to understand the contemporary socio-political processes, but it is the ideological and cultural frame that forms people’s subjective understanding of their place in the world.

Therefore, if we want to build a new, powerful, anti-capitalist, and tranglobal feminist movement, it is important for us to understand our position in contemporary capitalist societies and to articulate our political visions. Today the claim for women’s civil rights is political mainstream, yet rights alone are not enough and we have to learn to make use of them. The election of Donald Trump, a man that has breathed new life into the old insult of “sexist pig”, is clearly showing how the right to vote is a two-side coin. Since achieving active membership in the political community was a long historical fight of the left, we have to respond on today’s citizenship restraints. Our Gilded Age of global capitalism that has spread to every nook and cranny of the world and integrated into each human relation, demands new forms of organization and resistance. In this sense the repetition of achievements of the February Revolution is impossible. Yet, the shackles of the family, of housework, of prostitution, and other forms of cheap labor force still weigh heavily on the woman. To invent new forms and modes of fighting against the world of suffering, humiliations and inequality that makes the life of the woman so hard is our task and our responsibility.