Festival of Imperialism: Berlin Freedom Week 2025

The Berlin Freedom Week, hosted by Mayor Kai Wegner (Christian Democratic Union), brings together an international cast of regime change actors. Credit: Mo Wüstenhagen/visitBerlin

By Susann Witt-Stahl. Junge Welt, 8 November 2025. Translated by Helmut-Harry Loewen.

The German capital has been bathing in a sea of freedom. While Berliners were able to withstand the scurrilous attacks by high priests like Ronald Reagan against the "Evil Empire" in 1987 ("Tear down this wall!"), they never experienced anything like this before: an entire “Freedom Week,” one which the Secretary General of the World Liberty Congress (WLC), Leopoldo López, expressly wants to be understood as a ‘call’ to “tear down the new walls of censorship, fear, and oppression,” as the Berlin Freedom Week website states.

The fact that 2025 will see much more than the usual nostalgia for tunnels, graves, and wall jumpers on the agenda for the anniversary of the opening of the GDR border in 1989 is made clear by the motto of the so-called Freedom Week, “It can happen again.” This is also evident in the fact that the Berlin House of Representatives will host the general assembly of the World Liberty Congress (WLC), founded in 2022 during the escalation of the Ukraine conflict – supposedly the largest “action movement” against “autocracies” worldwide. The rogue lineup that can be admired on the WLC homepage is led by Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, followed by Iranian religious leader Ali Khamenei, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, etc. Exactly one year ago, the WLC issued an urgent warning on the platform X against communism as a “totalitarian relic that continues to threaten the free world.” And so “libertad en Cuba” (“freedom in Cuba”) is also on its agenda.

The highlight of the expected world festival of regime change, under the patronage of Berlin's Governing Mayor Kai Wegner (CDU) and with the participation of Evelyn Zupke, the Commissioner of the SED’s Victims at the German Bundestag, is likely to be the “Berlin Freedom Conference” on Monday, a new addition to the annual “Fall of the Wall” commemorations. In addition to Leopoldo López, who had already supported the ultimately defeated coup against then-Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez in 2002, Edmundo González Urrutia, appointed “president” of Venezuela by the West in 2024, and the latest Nobel Peace Prize winner, María Corina Machado, will provide the necessary “mood for change” on the “stage of freedom.” This is because US military intervention and an attempt to overthrow Maduro may be imminent.

Mandatory participants include Russian “dissident” and world chess champion Garry Kasparov and Ukrainian “freedom heroine” Olexandra Matviychuk, head of the Kyiv-based Centre for Civil Liberties (CCL), Euromaidan promoter and initiator of the “Tribunal for Putin.” The WLC and CCL are linked by the fact that they are co-financed by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which is regarded even in the US as a champion of aggressive intervention in the internal affairs of other countries, as they state on their websites. NED will be prominently represented at the Berlin “Freedom Conference” by its president, Damon Wilson. And when it comes to tough talk, Ben Hodges is always a must. The retired US general drums up support for a tougher stance in the war against Russia on almost every German talk show. In an interview with the ZDF network published on April 17, he claimed that Ukraine will not be allowed to exist as a sovereign state “as long as Vladimir Putin is still alive.”

Berlin Freedom Week is reminiscent of Captive Nations Week (CNW) in the US. To this day, it is organized annually by the respective government in solidarity with the peoples it has identified as being under the yoke of the “axis of authoritarians.” CNW was introduced in 1959 during one of the hottest phases of the Cold War by President Dwight D. Eisenhower at the instigation of the lobby of the Bandera wing of the fascist Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), which is at the forefront of today’s warmongers.

The program of more than 130 conferences, exhibitions, theatre and film performances, readings, and other events of the “Berlin Freedom Week” is also being organized by the “Atlantik Brücke” (“Atlantic Bridge”), the CDU-affiliated Konrad Adenauer Foundation, embassies of NATO countries, and the Taipei Representative Office in Germany. As expected, a core concern is to promote revisionist histories of actually existing socialist societies. Poland, for example, is hosting a symposium entitled “Echoes of the Empire: Soviet Monuments and the Machinery of Disinformation.” A colourful potpourri of “truth versus totalitarianism” in the “illegitimate state” (“Unrechtstaat”) that the German Democratic Republic was claimed to be is served up by “GDR experts” such as Ilko-Sascha Kowalczuk.

Incorrigible conscientious objectors among Berlin residents cannot expect to be spared from exposure to the festivities. If they won’t attend, the event will come to them. A “Berlin Freedom Week” mobile with a freedom bell and audio stations will be on the move throughout the city for five hours daily until November 15.

Examples of two of the over 130 events during “Berling Freedom Week”:

Berlin Insights: Tour of Berlin’s government district

Tour of the Federal Intelligence Service (BND:  Bundesnachrichtendienst), the largest intelligence agency in Germany. It is directly subordinate to the Chancellor’s Office. A year after West Germany joined NATO in 1955, the BND was founded as the country’s official foreign intelligence agency. It was the successor to the Gehlen Organization, a West German intelligence organization affiliated with the CIA. The central figure in the BND's history was the Nazi General Reinhard Gehlen, who was known as “Hitler’s Super Spy” during World War Two. The new BND headquarters were completed in Berlin in 2017. It is the largest intelligence agency building in the world, even larger than the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

Original article: Susann Witt-Stahl, “Berlin Freedom Week 2025. Festwoche des Imperialismus - Beginn der »Berlin Freedom Week« unter Schirmherrschaft von CDU-Bürgermeister Wegner. Veranstaltungen versammeln Regime-Change-Akteure,” junge Welt, 08.11.2025, Seite 4.