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Copenhagen TAZ bites the dust.

  
 
Nobody's girl
02:43 / 22.03.04


An old army base in Copenhagen which has functioned as an autonomous state for over 30 years is invaded by the police. Bastards.

BBC report on the raid.

Some lovely prejudicial language at the beginning of the report-

"Previous police expeditions into this hippie enclave"

"After decades of defiance, it seems Christiania is finally being brought to heel."
 
 
Baz Auckland
03:09 / 22.03.04
Awww.. that's really too bad. I read an article on that place in some marjuana magazine last year. It mentioned that the residents were cracking down on the hash dealers to try and take away the government's excuse to take over the place...

...are they losing the land though? Or was this just a hit-and-run police thingie?
 
 
woodenpidgeon
04:24 / 22.03.04
This is truly truly sad.

What a loss of a wonderful place.

Ask anyone who ever spent any time there. It was a good natured place that actually felt free. Different from Amsterdam. Nothing was ever legal there-- but they didn't need the law on their side-- because it was just known that the police were not allowed.

I spent a long weekend here after a much longer business trip. I liked Copenhagen a lot. But I doubt I'll ever go back again, now.

Right-wing fools like to flex in even the most tolerant countries.

We are the fools for allowing it.
 
 
LykeX
08:41 / 22.03.04
I am myself from Denmark, so here's my view on it. For the record; I'm not a resident of Christiania, and I do not go there on a regular basis. This is simply my opinion.

The police has been increasingly active under the current government, raiding often, culminating in the recent 'purge' of Pusher Street.
Opinion on this vary, also within the community of Christiania, where some resident feel that the hash-selling is a bad influence on the place.
However, there are also plans to 'normalize' the area, which includes tearing down several buildings. I doubt there are any Christianites who are happy with that.
The gorvernment claims that Christiania will remain a free area, but quite frankly I don't believe them for a moment. I think they are merely trying to take it in bits because they know the public would never accept a straight clearing.
 
 
Nobody's girl
10:32 / 22.03.04
Lyke- the BBC article quotes one of the residents who thinks the reasoning behind the purge was rising property prices. Does this sound right to you?

In the city where I live gentrification and rising property prices is a major problem and I deeply sympathise with anyone suffering from it.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
10:40 / 22.03.04
God, I just read an article in one of the Sunday magazines recently about this place... it sounded awesome.

Oh well. Another nail in the fucking coffin.
 
 
Phex: Dorset Doom
11:49 / 22.03.04
Oh this is beautiful: "Official policy, says Mr Moeller, is "to reinstate the logic of private property" and later "It represents a challenge to the state's monopoly over the use of force."
 
 
rizla mission
14:38 / 22.03.04
Fucking fuck fuck fuck...!?

I've read several articles about this place and it always sounded pretty much like heaven.

"That sounds like the place to go," I thunk to myself.

Fucking bastards. Just for that I'm going to put together an army and go 'purge' a country club somewhere..
 
 
LykeX
07:32 / 23.03.04
Nobody's girl -
Doesn't sound too far off. Much of the Christiania area lies on the waterfront. If you got the permission to build there you could make a fortune. Plus further out in the same area there has been a lot of housing projects in recent years, but all high-cost appartments.

On top of that, the general housing situation is brutal. The only reaon I have something decent is because of my family. If you don't know people, you're screwed.

Oh this is beautiful: "Official policy, says Mr Moeller, is "to reinstate the logic of private property" and later "It represents a challenge to the state's monopoly over the use of force."

That's the other reason. Christiania has always been a pain for the right-wing. Odd, since they ought to be all for personal freedom and such. Apparently that only applies to people in the right neighborhoods.
 
 
D Terminator XXXIII
08:41 / 23.03.04
This has been going on for some time now. I remember this last summer, when I tried to arrange a flat or room near Copenhagen and came in touch with this half-Dane, half-Maroccan. He used to spend some time in Marocco, return to Denmark, and down there again, etc. He'd bring something with him that would be ideally suited for Christiania, but that summer, he said that the policing effort had become insane. One couldn't really leave Christiania, without the police stopping you and searching through whatever you had - that is, if they suspected you of importing or exporting drugs and whatnot.

A year ago, it had already become hellish.

This manifestation of a desire to rid the inner city of the "Free State" certainly seems to be a long-running plan that will be ongoing.
 
 
Bed Head
09:59 / 23.03.04
Great insight from LykeX, thanks for that. I was hoping there’d be a Danish ‘lither available for comment. My comments are purely as someone who never got there but loved the idea.

I’m kinda bummed that I never got to see it in it’s legendary heyday, but then, y’know, I think that about Haight-Ashbury too, man. So, a couple of things about this. A T.A.Z. is exactly what it says on the tin: it’s temporary. Necessarily, ideologically so. If you start regarding what Christiania is as belonging to that specific location then you’re buying in to the model that places a market value on the land, and that’s what’s finished it.

Secondly, on the ‘autonomous’ bit. Never in a million years could you regard Christiania as an autonomous zone, seeing as how almost everything was imported. Including the drugs for re-sale. And it’s a wider economic fact combined with a legal one that have allowed it to survive this long. Only the drug trade could generate the kind of revenue which could afford the level of ‘protection’ Christiania bought from bikers; see how many people bother fighting to protect a commune that only sells paintings and pottery. And, drugs only command such a high price because of the prohibition in the rest of Denmark and across Europe. Do away with that wider prohibition and you’ve removed one of the props that actually protected Christiania, the huge profitability of it. At some recent point, the value of the property outweighed the cost of the police action to break it up. Is all.

It’s a bit of a pain, but if the residents have any stones, have the actual community they claim to, they’ll move somewhere else and carry on as before. Because it's networks of people that make a community, not waterfront property.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
10:20 / 23.03.04
It’s a bit of a pain, but if the residents have any stones, have the actual community they claim to, they’ll move somewhere else and carry on as before.

Yes. Or if not as before, will have found enough good in their experiences to translate that elsewhere. A mass squatter diaspora- instead of one big TAZ, a whole bunch more little ones, all having learnt the lessons of their parent. Brilliant in theory. Unless cynicism steps in, then it's like "well, you've had your play, now it's time to grow up and join the rest of the world".

Only time can tell. I wish them all the best, whatever they do.
 
 
BioDynamo
14:43 / 23.03.04

Bedhead, there are some points on which I disagree here. Firstly, I think that the topic of the thread is incorrect. Christiania was (ad to some degree still tries to be) an autonomous zone. Nothing temporary about it.

The Hakim Bey TAZ-jazz really isn't suited to describing the thing you get when a place has 30+ years of history, two generations born and raised totally inside the autonomous community.

TAZ is OK for describing street parties, short-term occupations and all the stuff that has been going on in the 90's. Remember that Bey wrote his book in -85, in the beginning of the end-phase of strong struggles for autonomy. The Berlin and Amsterdam and London squatting scenes, while still strong, were in decline, and continuously kept ending up with less and less to work with, to protect their autonomy with.

As a strategy for how to move on, how to get out of the deadlick, I'm sure TAZ was a good proposal. But Christiania is way older than that, squatted in 1970 and invested (infested?) with the dreams and lives of hippies for 33 years since.

Older than most people on this board, I'd guess.

Also, the "autonomous"-bit:

Autonomous means "self-managed", not "self-sufficient".

And Christiania certainly was (and is still trying to be) self-managed, challenging the state monopoly of violence continuously, as well as striving towards an internal, democratic process of decision-making.

At least in mainland Europe, the political tradition of autonomous marxism and autonomism has nothing to do with (for instance ecological) demands for self-sufficiency, but are rather based on theories of proletarian self-management.
 
 
Bed Head
15:52 / 23.03.04
Well, it’s not my thread title, for starters. I took it as I found it. Also, sorry for the idiotic mistake I made in defining ‘autonomous’. Given that the extended lifespan of the place has already stretched the definition of the ‘temporary’ bit, I cocked up by stretching the ‘autonomous’ bit, too: it’s not the self-sufficiency so much as the fact that the signature economy of the place, the thing that has allowed its survival and funded its protection, is only actually given any worth by political decisions taken in the rest of Europe, and so Christiania is and has always been very much at the mercy of decisions taken elsewhere. In terms of day to day policy as well as in terms of continued survival. Am I still mistaken here? How long would the no hard drugs ‘rule’ have lasted if pot was completely legal everywhere else in Denmark, and across Europe?

And I agree that, from everything I’ve read about the political structure of Christiania, the attempt to democratically manage the society at all levels were bold and admirable. And educational. But you can’t seize something, give it a value and yet pretend you haven’t given it a value. It’s a temporary zone in so far as that it’s own internal logic makes it so. 30 years is bloody good going.

But, y’know, I’ve never been there, and I’ve only read about the place thinking ‘this sounds great’. I’m not well researched enough either about Christiania or political models on mainland Europe to get into a big fight about it; I’m genuinely happy to defer to your greater knowledge about these things. It’s just that all this defeatist ‘dream is over’ stuff is bugging me. Groups of like-minded individuals have been migrating around Europe forever, already. Thousands of years. It’s what human beings do and it’s one of the things ‘Europe’ is for. Is what I think.



And I’m just going out the door so this is all a bit lame, so sorry. But, please, shoot me down in flames, Biodynamo, it’s the only way I’ll ever learn.
 
 
BioDynamo
08:10 / 24.03.04

One point about creating alternative economies, I guess, is that the "main economy" always has to decide on how to destroy them, in order to maintain themselves. Either by hitting down on them, hard, to crush the alternative, risking radicalising the people involved in the alternative economy, by showing them the violence inherent in the dominant economic system. Or by accepting it's basic assumptions, such as "pot should be legal", in the case of Christiania, and removing the conflict that the alternative economy has thrived upon.

Either way the alternative economy has a chance of winning.

Probably the smartest thing "the power" can do is what they've done to Christiania, wait it out, let it marginalize itself and lose some of the support in the rest of society, and only then hit hard.

I don't really want to fight, sorry if I came over that way.

I've been to Christiania, usually several times a year, since '96 or something. It's on the way to the rest of Europe when you come from Finland. Lots of good memories, including my first mushroom trip. I don't think it will go out with a bang, but that there have been many whimpers over the years.

But for me, the relevant question is not about the individual people there, whether they can "stay a collective, move on and begin over". I'm guessing they won't, but that's not really relevant. The central issue is the migration of the struggle that they stood for 33 years ago and have inspired others to, ever since. If THAT goes on, then everything has been won.

And yeah, I agree totally on your view of Europe. Let's fight to keep it open for people to migrate and settle.

Oh, yeah. I guess the "no hard drugs"-rule would have lasted, even if the rest of Europe had legalized pot in response to Christiania (and the Netherlands, and Spain, and... umm... I guess this has happened, in a way?), and Christiania would have been turned into a kind of museum of where the change came from. That alone would have generated enough profit to keep the place running.

In fact, that is what I think WILL happen. Or actually happened years ago. I just hope they are able to keep the museum open in the future, too. It's one of the best.
 
 
bjacques
10:17 / 24.03.04
I visited it once 10 years ago and was very impressed. Once inside I was beset by a few hash sellers who'd easily spotted me for a tourist, but I passed since I wasn't about to buy drugs from somebody I don't know (also I was worried about having to take a piss test when I went back to work. Not anymore!). I wandered from one end to the other and liked what I saw--a village of really cool people.

I haven't read any of the other reports on the raid, but the first story I read was that residents would have to either bring their houses up to city building/fire codes (or get a waiver) or tear them down. That seems to be a new tactic on the part of the Dutch government too.

Places like Christiania, Ruigoord (near Amsterdam), or communes like Zendik Farm (near Austin TX) or Amish farms hope to exist outside the general system, but they're really just bubbles within it. Either they depend on trade with the rest of the world, or they depend on the incomes of residents working in the outside world. There's always an excuse for the local or national government to violate the bubble--the latest are terrorism and the drugs trade--so the best a community can hope for is semi-autonomy, and they'll have to fight for that continually. They're better off making their stand and making a few compromises, because if they disperse, high property prices guarantee they'll sink without a trace.

In a global society, the only "outside" tolerated is the one that allows governments to do dirty work. That would be the CIA hiring goons to destabilize Venezuela or, during the Yugoslav Wars of Secession, countries A, B & C running guns to Bosnian Croatia because D, E & F violated the arms embargo to help Republika Srpska (while half the Middle East help Muslim Bosnia).

Going "outside" may not be that hot an idea anyway. In the 1970s, some prickly US libertarians set up a republic on an oil platform near Tonga but were so obnoxious the Tongans captured them with a war canoes until the US government ransomed them. Sealand, another libertarian paradise in the making (actually a "principality"), almost got occupied by a German gangster. This probably says more about libertarians than free communities, but the danger outside is from well-armed pirates (not the fun kind), mafias and narcos.

If Christiana wanted to beat the government at its own game they could become a private gated community, but that's dangerous. They'd fall under business laws as well as governmental ones.

For a clearer idea of the theory of self-sufficiency, versus only autonomy, read bolo'bolo, by the pseudonymous "P.M.", which posits self-sufficient settlements of about 400 people. Some older squatters took their inspiration from this book.
 
  
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