The twenty-first century brought the utopian promise of an ever more interconnected world. Champions of globalization aspired to ever more international connectivity, meant to discourage powerful actors from creating divisions that might threaten the well-being or existence of others. It was rarely mentioned, however, that global interconnectedness could also allow individual actors in key positions of power to influence decisions across the entire network.

Nowhere is this danger more evident than in the now-globalized banking sector. The serious consequences of interconnected global banking and finance have recently threatened the left-wing German solidarity organization Rote Hilfe (Red Aid). Citing the Trump administration’s declaration of an enigmatic German antifa group as a “terrorist” organization, a Göttingen-based bank attempted to shut down Rote Hilfe’s accounts. Similar cases have threatened other left-wing and anti-fascist groups in Germany and across the world. It lays bare the threat that “debanking” — the shutting down of accounts or refusal of services on political grounds — poses to the Left.

Rote Hilfe is a German solidarity organization that provides material and political support for individuals and groups on the Left affected by state repression. It is part of a tradition of self-help within the European labor movement dating back more than a hundred years. After multiple worker uprisings during the early years of the Weimar Republic, the state’s repressive measures intensified enormously. The bourgeois-democratic state directed its ire primarily against the far left: the communist wing of the labor movement.