Fridays for Future Germany Excludes Climate Justice Activist Elisa Baş after Springer Media Hate Campaign

In December 2023, the German branch of global youth climate movement Fridays for Future excluded climate justice activist Elisa Baş after she was subjected to a hate campaign by Springer media in October due to her solidarity with Palestine. The 22-year-old student from Hamburg has been active in the climate justice movement for three years and was a spokesperson for FFF Germany.

The hate campaign began after Baş reacted to a guest commentary published in BILD on October 14 by Josef Schuster, president of the Zentralrat der Juden. Under the headline The Barbarians Are Among Us, Schuster wrote that those who celebrated “the bloodthirsty barbarism of Hamas terror on German streets” were “barbarians” and “something must be done” about them. Baş shared the article on Instagram alongside a comment made by another person: “There is a pogrom mood against Palestinians in Germany and Schuster is fueling it.” In response, BILD and other Springer media outlets publicized multiple agitations against Baş claiming that she “placed the Jewish people in the vicinity of the Nazis” and labeling her an antisemite. Two Green Party politicians also criticized Baş publicly and demanded FFF Germany distance themselves from Baş’s allegedly antisemitic statements.

In an interview with MERATV in December 2023, Baş shared that she had been excluded from FFF Germany after the hate campaign. She also stated that repressing pro-Palestinian voices is not a new phenomenon in FFF Germany: “They get silenced, are thrown out of the movement. If they can’t be thrown out, they are mistreated to the extent that they leave on their own.” This more indirect form of exclusion includes taking people off of assignments, not forwarding public and press tasks to elected spokespeople. She pointed out that “for many climate justice activists, the fight for Palestinian liberation is inseparable from the fight for climate justice” and emphasized how essential and long established an anti-imperialist, anti-colonial and internationalist approach has been in the international context — FFF International being just one of many examples.