“Anna Baba and the 40 Thieves” issa folk tale added to the “One Thousand and

One Nights” in the summer of 2021 as a result of the exploding new/old fascisms in Germany. 

After a legacy of centuries of constructing racial difference and inventing racial groups, the last decade of German politics playing “good cop, bad cop” further normalised and mainstreamed

racial categories anew. 

To this day responsibility

for the far right networks in police

are bluntly ignored, mainstream politics and

media disregard the constantly recurring hate attacks on migrants. 

This racial discrimination found one of it's peaks, when the Lebanese Restaurant “Al Andalus” in Anna Babas neighbourhood got burnt down and a 

Berlin newspaper titled this horrific incident

“Flambeed Kebab”.

We assume that our social and political

destinies are shaped by the 

will of the people

without realising that “the people” 

are always

produced by the media: we are all embedded

in mediated publics, structured by the apparatuses of communication that govern our interactions. “The forty thieves” 

are wearing suits

with tag words German MAINSTREAM media

uses to describe the people white supremacy currently loves to

use to weaponize fear;

SÜDLÄNDER.