Saving Red Flora: The PoliticalMobilisation of Sankt Pauli Fans

Abstract

In “Saving Red Flora: The Political Mobilisation of Sankt Pauli Fans is Passing”, Roy Siny discusses the link between the political practices of Sankt Pauli FC fans in the stadium (Hamburg, Germany) and their hands-on radical politics against capitalism and neo-liberalism. It illustrates how doing fandom and doing politics converge by discussing fans’ grassroots political activism inside and outside the stadium in a club that proudly embraces a leftist, anti-fascist, anti-capitalist and anti-institutional ideology that mobilizes fans. The club indeed enlists, promotes and energizes fans’ activism and transforms fans into political agents. The fans claim the right to a sociocultural space in the St. Pauli district, especially to its old theater, “Red Flora”, that was squatted and has subsequently served as a cultural centre and a symbol of an anti-capitalist space. The fans, who developed the space over many years to suit their communal needs and who regard it as free space for realizing an autonomous life, have been deeply involved in defending it against eviction. In December 2013, their demonstrations led to direct, sometimes violent, confrontation with the police, the city and the German state. The analysis thus explicates the power of fans’ political practices that emerge from the stadium to drive local, municipal and national political criticism that resonates far beyond the stadium, the district, the city, Germany and even beyond.