Michael Barenboim, violinist, teacher, and central figure of the Barenboim-Said Academy, is one of the most recognized musicians of his generation and, in recent years, one of the firmest Jewish voices denouncing the genocide in Gaza and the repression of the Palestinian people. His public intervention has made him an uncomfortable reference point for the German establishment, precisely because he articulates his cultural and political experience from an explicit commitment to international law and human rights.
The interview that follows takes place in a context in which Germany is undergoing a profound deterioration of its democratic space, marked by censorship, police repression, and a systematic policy of silencing pro-Palestinian speech. Barenboim explains that the official German narrative —which seeks to atone for past crimes through unconditional support for Israel— turns the very existence of the Palestinian people into a political threat. That tension, he argues, enables everything from smear campaigns to the presence of special forces inside cultural and university events, with police monitoring even the interventions of the audience. For him, this dynamic is neither exceptional nor marginal: it is a deliberate mechanism to prevent dissent and consolidate a repressive framework that affects artists, academics, activists, and the general public.
Throughout the conversation, Barenboim details emblematic episodes —from the censorship of Adania Shibli at the Frankfurt Book Fair to the coordinated campaign to block Francesca Albanese’s lectures in 2025— which, he argues, show a systematic and documented pattern of cancellations, intimidation, and police violence. He sees in this process a sustained advance of a quasi-fascist climate and warns that Germany is in a “1932 moment,” where it would still be possible to intervene, even if there is no political will to do so. For Barenboim, the Palestinian question is central: without a 180-degree shift in German policy toward Palestine, the internal democratic deterioration will not only continue but deepen.
