It's an interesting word, "burnout". It normally refers to an overload of work coming from unreasonable outside pressures, usually in a corporate context, and it therefore holds connotations of exploitation. It implies an abuse of a hard working persons's trust, usually by the boss (or some power greater than them) that accidentally-on-purpose wears the worker out.
Put that way, 'burnout' could be the exact right term to describe why Mensch Meier is prematurely shutting its doors.
Mensch Meier has been open around 7 years. For around half of its life time, I worked weekly organising some events, researching and writing their newsletter, womanning the bar, garderobe and backstage, all in addition to my own editorial and creative projects.
I have heard from time to time that there were concerns about tacit surveillance, especially in our online life, disrupted communications, infiltration and other tangential tangles that anyone who is openly a leftwing activist may experience more frequently than their peers - such as having the Jobcenter deny and delay benefits to people with small children. And the general anxiety that some there had about being targeted for extra nuisance by the system has had its real life parallels: an unjustified police raid, right wingers passing by just to yell at or vandalise the club, the club's doors regularly being glued shut by vandals...
Not that any of this strain has ever shown in the warm, easygoing, open hearted and still radically - carnivaleaque atmosphere that generally greets you when you participate in a party at Mensch Meier. It has bravely maintained an atmosphere of no holds barred participation. That is what has set it apart, transforming it from club to clubhouse: it is a place where you can make yourself a part of the art, music, actions, discussions, debates, sets and general spectacle. Participation is not just allowed, it is expected and accommodated for ahead of time.
And that's where the authorities, I feel, have abused our trust. They've exploited the fact that being an open channel in a "schnauze" city like Berlin means being busy at every second, whether one is chatting to an admirer of the party or handing out advice or making waves at a demo that your collective created to drum up support for Seebruecke. The cynical and the right-leaning members of the administration seem to have taken full advantage of the happy weariness that comes from Mensch Meier's being a genuinely popular and affordable centre for of the city's cultural and activist scene, to launch petty and, I think, jealous attacks that the club just lacks the extra energy to fend off.
They do it to gum up the works, and they do it to a malicious degree, at times. There have been more aggressive attacks on Mensch Meier, though, that could be characterized as extreme harassment: such as an armed police raid on the club when it was virtually empty, apart from some artists and a manager. Everyone else was at a demo co-created by MM in support of the rescue boat crew Seebruecke. After dozens of armed police burst into the club and overwhelmed the bouncers, the artists and club staff were made to lie down at gunpoint while they were searched to see if any were carrying asylum seeker ID. No real reason for the disproportionate brutality of this "search" was ever given.
This jealous harassment extends to participants in the rest of Berlin's activist and countercultural scenes, as well: an artist I knew, who was part of the larger Antifascist community, related to me a few years ago a trend for what could only be termed "gangstalk-y" incidents where she and other activists would be followed when out in their own, outside of an activist context, by inconspicuously dressed, male Nazis who would elbow them, shout at them, use their name and let it be known that they knew who this woman* was, and where, alluding to the fact that they were basically tracking her movements. One wonders how much more widespread this sort of casual - but still petty and jealous - harassment may have gotten with so many people carrying devices that track everything about us, and have built in backdoor vulnerabilities that nearly any hacker can exploit.
What is this if not gender violence, plus threats of further violence implied by the fact that gangs of men are taking after lone females in the Antifa scene, even when they are just taking a stroll to meet a friend? The artist in this example is far from being a rarity in the FLINTA activist demographic, either. We've all seen this many times and in most cases, we tend to laugh it off that these saddos are so obsessed with us, the people that they claim are the weaker "sex". (This dismissive reaction may be down to sheer desensitization because, as FLINTAs, we tend to have a high, even unsafe tolerance level for abusive males and their neverending intrusions on both physical and nonphysical boundaries. It doesn't make the threat any less serious, though).
All of this subtle hassle - which is laid onto the very people who do, for free, the work of supporting the communities and environments that a tax-paying democratic system was put in place to sustain (allegedly) - amounts to a vast amount of unpaid labour that is being done by the Berlin left and underground arts and music scenes. The actual work, and the fending off of petty harassment, are both hard jobs to have. Of course, this extra work is disproportionately doled out to visible minorities such as FLINTA, queers and Berliners of colour, because we are more obvious when we turn up on the front lines. Yet it has left many people burnt out, just as it has done at Mensch Meier.
Burnout is a key tactic that is used by the powers-that-be in our society - newspapers and television media, government, big business, the tech sector, etc. - to ensure that we're all too overwhelmed and weighed down by petty acts of antagonism and bad faith, to get any major changes done. And it's a damn effective one, too. The only question that's left is, what can be done about it? It's one we need to answer urgently, before the rest of Berlin goes the same way as Mensch Meier.
