A planned event at the temporary publicly funded “Volksbad” pool in front of Berlin’s Volksbühne theater has been canceled following an alleged surge of online hostility and threats. The initiative, organized in collaboration with the association Each One Teach One (Eoto), was set to reserve the public bath exclusively for Black children and young people for a six-hour window on Friday before opening to the general public.
The organizers are claiming that they could no longer protect participants. According to a statement from the Volksbühne, the event was canceled because the initiative “has become the target of right-wing and racist incitement.”
If we may allow for some editorializing here, this claim is pure propaganda. As much as the fever dreams of the left would like to believe it, KKK members and rabid neo-Nazi extremists are not going to show up to an art project in Berlin and target Black kids.
In short, the organizers got called out for their racist and exclusionary plan, some people complained about it online, and now they need a dramatic pretext to cancel a project that made them look racist.
While the event has been canceled, the theater stands behind the initiative. Lilienthal defended the policy, arguing that the approach aligns with local policy by “implementing Berlin’s anti-discrimination law,” which allows for protected spaces for individuals affected by discrimination.
The question is who gets to defin
