Just four months after the 60-hour power outage in Berlin's Treptow-Köpenick district, caused by unknown saboteurs who set fire to two high-voltage pylons in the Johannisthal neighborhood on September 9 (250903), another arson attack occurred on January 3, with even more devastating consequences: This time, the perpetrators set fire to a cable bridge that transports electricity generated by the Lichterfelde power plant across the Teltow Canal to the southwestern districts of Nikolassee, Wannsee, Zehlendorf, and Lichterfelde. This cable bridge is only accessible for maintenance purposes. However, the perpetrators broke open the steel door that blocks access on the other side of the canal. They then started a fire in the passageway under the high- and medium-voltage cables, the heat of which damaged the insulation of the cables and destroyed them through short circuits, as they had previously wrapped the cable strands with conductive materials.

A group calling itself “Vulkangruppe: Den Herrschenden den Saft abdrehen” (Volcano Group: Cut off the power to those in power) claimed responsibility for the attack on the same day. It took more than four days before the power supply to the approximately 100,000 people affected could be restored, at least provisionally. However, the distribution network operator “Stromnetz Berlin” warned that “isolated, short-term power outages of up to 30 minutes may occur again in the coming days in the affected areas for various technical reasons” – a forecast that was probably intended to prevent people from believing that everything was already back to normal, given that the repair work was far from complete.

The hope of being able to repair the damage quickly proved to be illusory

The incident occurred in the early morning of January 3: According to Stromnetz Berlin, around 45,000 households and 2,200 commercial customers in the affected districts were without power from around 6 a.m. Roughly estimated, this corresponded to around 100,000 people. The Berlin distribution network operator initially hoped to be able to repair the damage relatively quickly. This probably explains his hesitation to inform the wider public. When he finally published the first press release on the “fire on a cable bridge in Lichterfelde” at 1 p.m. on January 4 — 31 hours later — he was only able to report that 10,000 households and 300 commercial customers in Lichterfelde now had power again. In contrast, this had not yet been achieved for 35,000 households and 1,900 commercial customers in Nikolassee, Zehlendorf, and Wannsee. The restoration of power to all customers was not expected to be completed until the afternoon of January 8.

Regarding the cause of the power outage, the power grid operator merely stated that a fire discovered and extinguished on the morning of January 3 on a cable bridge over the Teltow Canal near the Lichterfelde power plant had damaged several cables. It had long been clear that this was an attack. The Tagesspiegel newspaper had also reported on this, even though the capital's leading quality newspaper was not among the small circle of five selected media outlets to which the unknown saboteurs had sent a six-page letter of confession on January 3. Even later, the Berlin electricity network operator, which has been directly subordinate to the Senate since its remunicipalization in 2021 (210403), only spoke in very general and vague terms about a “suspected arson attack on a cable bridge,” even though the investigating authorities had by then classified the letter of confession as genuine and the evidence found at the scene also confirmed that it was arson.

The saboteurs had hoped that sending their letter of confession exclusively to a select few would have a much greater propaganda effect

The saboteurs had meanwhile published their lengthy pamphlet, entitled “New Year's Greetings 2026,” on de.indymedia.org at around 2 p.m. on January 4. This website normally serves as the first port of call for the dissemination of texts from the extreme left-wing spectrum. Apparently, however, the perpetrators had hoped for a greater propaganda effect if they first sent their pamphlet exclusively to certain media outlets. In a “statement and supplement” that they now prefixed to their letter of confession republished on “Indymedia,” they expressed their disappointment that the five selected media outlets Spiegel, taz, RBB24, RBB Fernsehen, and Radio Eins had only reported fragmentarily on the text they had sent. “Our statement has not been made public to date for political reasons, or only at 5:30 a.m. on Radio Eins,” they complained. “After that, all quotes disappeared following intervention.” They claimed this was done under pressure from “political leaders” in order to prevent a “substantive debate” about their text.

They see themselves as saviors who, unfortunately, must resort to brutal measures to open the eyes of the manipulated masses

However, such a substantive debate is also very difficult with people who have set their minds on curing all the undeniable evils of this world with attacks on power lines or other vital infrastructure. The attacks are declared to serve only the noble purpose of finally opening the eyes of the manipulated and enslaved people. The saboteurs, of course, already have the necessary insight. They see themselves in the thankless role of saviors who, unfortunately, have to resort to such brutal measures, even though they otherwise pursue the most noble goals and are gentleness personified.

That is why the “Vulkangruppe Tesla abschalten” (Volcano Group Shut Down Tesla) was somewhat embarrassed when its attack on the 110-kV power line in southeast Berlin on March 25, 2024, crippled the Tesla plant in Grünheide (240302), and also cut off the power supply to the residents of eight communities.

In their letter claiming responsibility, they asserted: “We were unable to verify before the action whether only Tesla was connected to the high-voltage pylon that had been specially converted for it, or whether private households were also connected.” However, they apologized to all those affected. Furthermore, no human lives were endangered. And not only that: the saboteurs, who are equally friendly to humans and animals, made a point of stating that they first removed and rescued the snails from the high-voltage pylon before setting it on fire...

For the saboteurs, the power grid represents “an almost irreparable destruction of the earth, the extent of which is unprecedented in the history of the planet”

After the attack on September 9 last year, which was intended to target the Adlershof Technology and Media Park in the Treptow-Köpenick district as an alleged armaments center, those affected were informed about the true function of power grids in a text signed by “Some Anarchists” as follows:

"The power grid as such represents the history of progress and is the basic prerequisite for the relentless development toward a high-tech society as we know it today. This society, which is under the pillory of technology and capital, seems for the time being to be the earthly end product of civilizational achievement and is causing almost irreparable destruction of the earth on a scale that is unique in the history of the planet. Not to mention the bloody wars for power and resources that the rulers impose on their servants. The insatiable urge for growth is causing them, in the truest sense of the word, to reach for the stars more and more often. Electricity is the main source of energy that powers every machine and every ‘advancement’ necessary to reproduce the current system. It is possible to switch it off, and it is also possible to replace it with a life of freedom without domination and exploitation."

Undoubtedly, the authors of such sentences have succeeded in their first great achievement: switching off their own thinking. On the other hand, they do possess a certain talent for writing feature articles, which must be acknowledged without envy. In any case, they have mastered “the art of curling a bald head,” as Karl Kraus once called it.

When it comes to gender, "Anarchist:innen” are absolute conformists

Incidentally, the meticulous use of gender in all the confessional texts is striking. For example, in words such as "Neo-Faschist:innen", "Anarchist:innen", "Anwohner:innen", "Feind:innen der Freiheit", "Kompliz:innen der Waffenindustrie", "Diener:innen", "Besetzer:innen, "Bürger:inneninis" or "keine:r redet".These are masculine gender terms that can easily refer to both men and women in the singular and plural, because grammatical gender is different from biological gender. However, some particularly clever minds have discovered that the German language as it has been used to date contains hidden discrimination against the female half of humanity: Women are only “implied” when, for example, the term ‘citizens’ is used instead of “male and female citizens” or, more gallantly, “female and male citizens.” However, such constant gender doubling has the disadvantage that it eventually gets on everyone's nerves. That is why the genderists have also invented hardcore versions, which in this case could be “Bürger*innen” or “Bürger:innen.” In doing so, they have literally raped and dismembered the German language, which is at least grammatically feminine.

Why this linguistic digression? – Because it is curious that "Anarchist:innen" of all people should pay homage to a conformism that did not arise spontaneously, but is largely based on the exercise of administrative power, as exemplified for the first time by the “Federal Equality Act” (BGleiG) enacted in 2001 (081203). Since then, in all areas under federal jurisdiction, the generic masculine has been replaced by equally stupid and cumbersome double constructions or other versions of gendering. In addition to the mangling of words with asterisks or punctuation marks, this has led to nonsensical and linguistically awkward solutions such as “Studierende” instead of “Studenten” or ‘Forschende’ instead of “Forschern.” One of the few exceptions was Article 1 of the Basic Law, in which the generic masculine form remained untouched, because otherwise the article would have had to read something like this: “The dignity of the Mensch (human being) and the Menschin (human woman) is inviolable.”

There are, of course, good reasons for the conformism of the “anarchists”: they want to signal that they are not simply criminals, but belong to the bourgeois milieu they want to address with their pamphlets. “We ask the residents of Bremer Strasse for their discretion,” for example, is the ingratiating tone of the latest letter of self-accusation – as if the perpetrators could expect something like sympathy or even support from the allotment gardeners on the canal bank, who may have noticed them preparing their attack.

With their paranormal view of technology, culture, and society, the perpetrators not only recognize the fatal role of the power grid in “sheer irreparable destruction of the earth,” but also the discrimination against women in the German language. When it comes to gender, there is therefore not the slightest disagreement between the saboteurs and their attack victims, because the distribution network operator “Stromnetz Berlin” also considers it necessary to constantly reiterate that it not only supplies customers ("Kunden"), but "Kundinnen und Kunden" or "Kund*innen".” However, it does not do so entirely voluntarily, as the Senate has issued language regulations in this regard for 2023 that are also binding for municipal utilities. The state government was also unimpressed by the fact that in a reader survey conducted by the advertising newspaper Berliner Woche, over 90 percent rejected official language regulations. This gave the right-wing populists of the AfD, who have so far played only a marginal role in Berlin, the opportunity to present themselves as guardians of the German language and the only true executors of the will of the people.

The new attack is described as an “action in the public interest” and “socially meaningful”

Sentences such as the following in the latest letter of confession seem particularly harebrained:

– “We reject the offers to participate in a burned-out world with our militant action. That is why we carried out the action on the gas-fired power plant in Lichterfelde.”

– “They call us eco-terrorists, but we respect life. They call us irresponsible, but we are taking responsibility to end this imperial, destructive way of life. Our action for the common good is socially meaningful. We are trying to stop the exploitation of the earth, prevent CO2 deaths, and stop the diseases associated with the climate catastrophe.”

– "We would like to once again express our sincere apologies for the inconvenience caused to the less affluent, vulnerable members of the population. They were not the target of our action. We ask the population to show solidarity and help one another. In particular, we ask for support for people in need of care and their relatives, the destitute people in these neighborhoods, and those who are withdrawn and overwhelmed by the situation. As already mentioned, our sympathy for the owners of the many villas, the real estate companies, the embassies, and other elite rich people in the area is limited. The rich and their egocentric, antisocial lifestyle are destroying the planet."

The attacks on the Adlershof Technology Park and the Tesla factory are also mentioned as “reference points”

It is noteworthy that the authors of this letter explicitly refer to previous similar acts of sabotage as “reference points for our action.” They specifically mention the Adlershof Technology Park, the Tesla factory in Grünheide, the infrastructure of the Reuter coal-fired power plant, and a “Vodafone hub in Adlershof.” This sounds as if the individual “volcano groups” are not only ideologically linked, but also overlap in terms of personnel.

However, the authorities, who have been investigating for 15 years, know very little about this cult-like scene, which appears to have emerged in 2011 when a series of attacks on cable ducts and signaling systems brought almost all of Berlin's S-Bahn traffic to a standstill. It was not until February 2023 that the federal police finally seemed to have caught a man and a woman in the act of tampering with railroad tracks as if they wanted to start a fire. The case proceeded to indictment. In the court hearing, however, the two were acquitted due to lack of evidence because the police had made mistakes in gathering evidence.

According to the latest report by the Berlin Office for the Protection of the Constitution (PDF), the perpetrators' self-designation as the “Volcano Group” is likely to be attributable to the eruption of the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull in 2010, which caused weeks of disruption to air traffic in Europe at the time. Initially, the changing names in the “Volcano Group's” letters of self-accusation mostly referred to Icelandic volcanoes (e.g., “Grimsvötn,” “Katla,” “Ok”).

“The Volcano Group of 2011” distances itself from later attacks

However, anarchists also grow older and perhaps a little more reasonable. This could explain why, two and a half days after the publication of the letter of confession, a text appeared on the same internet platform in which “the volcano group of 2011” sharply distanced itself from its successors:"This statement is necessary because our name is being used in a context that we do not support. Publications, letters of confession, and media short circuits claim a continuity that does not exist. Our past actions are being used to legitimize, explain, or politically charge current attacks. We reject this.“

”Not out of convenience, not out of conformity, but out of responsibility," they distanced themselves from their former stance, it continues. The reason, they say, is rather that they “did not want to be part of a dynamic in which criticism of militarism coincides with the actual weakening of societies.” This could be understood specifically as criticism of the attack in September 2025, in which the wayward offspring attempted to demonize the Adlershof technology and media hub as a military-industrial complex. This, in turn, led to speculation as to whether the saboteurs might even have been enlisted by the Russian secret service as useful idiots in the context of the Putin regime's hybrid warfare.

Spelling mistakes, bombastic pathos, and an apocalyptic view of the future speak for the authenticity of the letter

Of course, it remains uncertain for the time being whether it was really “the Volcano Group of 2011” that spoke up. It could also be an attempt by prosecutors, who have been unsuccessful for 15 years, to divide the saboteurs, who stick together like glue. But would such authorities also cunningly insert spelling mistakes such as “Kurzschlüße,” “legitimiren,” “gesäht,” or “stellvertretent”? Did they believe that this would increase the appearance of authenticity?

The bombastic pathos and apocalyptic view of the future also speak in favor of the letter's authenticity:"Our withdrawal is not a retraction of our criticism of war, armament, and arms exports. This criticism remains. Let's not kid ourselves—the seeds of death have been sown and are already sprouting. In the coming years, the world will burn, slowly at first, then faster. Old and new power blocs have staked their claims, with figures like Putin and Trump serving only as proxies, interchangeable. Europe will not fall because of morality, but because of its own technology, because of what it exports, sells, and perfects. We are not saying this to be understood. We are saying it because silence in this case would be consent.“

The ”volcano group of 2011" sees the turning point at which their strategy became obsolete as early as 2014: With Russia's attack on Ukraine at that time, “the context shifted fundamentally” and “what could previously be formulated as criticism of Western military policy became a situation in which any form of infrastructure attack objectively becomes part of a general destabilization.”

BACKGROUND

Are the power grid saboteurs really “left-wing” extremists?

In fact, they are confused individuals whose attacks are promoting the rise of the right wing

"Manche meinen, lechts und rinks kann man nicht velwechsern – welch ein Illtum!" – This is a well-known saying in which the poet Ernst Jandl swapped the letters “r” and “l” to create a profound piece of nonsense. The poet was hardly thinking of left and right in the sense of a political position. Nevertheless, the saying is usually quoted when someone is not very precise about their political positions or even deliberately misrepresents them. The latter happened recently in Berlin, where at the beginning of January, the governing mayor Kai Wegener (CDU) tried to more or less associate the Left Party with the “left-wing terrorists” who had just carried out the most serious attack on the capital's power supply to date.

Elif Eralp, the Berlin lead candidate for the Left Party, was born in Munich in 1981. Her parents had previously fled to Germany to escape political persecution following the military coup in Turkey.

Photo: Wikipedia

It began when Elif Eralp, the Left Party's leading candidate for the upcoming House of Representatives election on September 20, visited the affected districts after the power outage to assess the damage and talk to those affected. In view of the pseudo-leftist ramblings of the saboteurs and their usual labeling as “left-wing extremists” in the media, she felt she had to clarify once again: “There is nothing left-wing about what was done here.” This was actually an unnecessary statement. Until then, no one had insinuated that the Left Party – just because of the word “left” in its name – had anything to do with so-called left-wing extremists or even “left-wing terrorists.”

Of course, the “governing mayor” Kai Wegener (CDU), who has served as minister-president of the state of Berlin since 2023 under this title – which dates back to 1948 and has survived both the occupation and reunification – saw things differently. On January 6, Berlin's highest representative emphasized that this was a “left-wing extremist” or “left-wing terrorist” attack. And he didn't leave it at that. He even tried desperately to establish a political connection with the Left Party by stating: "The letter claiming responsibility is clear. And the fact that the Left Party is ducking out of this, perhaps even protecting the perpetrator with these statements, is absolutely unacceptable to me.“He also announced: ”We will increase the pressure so much, because we have a common goal of catching these militant criminals, these left-wing terrorists."

The 53-year-old CDU politician Kai Wegener has been the “Governing Mayor” of Berlin since April 2023. However, he fears losing this position in the upcoming election. This probably explains his attack on the Left Party, which is expected to become the second strongest faction in the state parliament after the CDU.

Photo: Wikipedia

One would not have expected such an attack even from a politician on the right wing of the CDU. However, to understand it from a purely human perspective, one can give Wegener the benefit of the doubt that he was in an exceptional psychological situation: he suddenly found himself in serious trouble and under fire from the media after he failed to attend the Senate's crisis meeting on January 6 in person and did not show up in the districts affected by the power outage. He tried to explain this by saying that he had locked himself in his home office in Berlin-Kladow for the entire day. From there, he said he had been on the phone with all kinds of people to get an overview of the situation and coordinate the necessary measures. However, it soon became clear that he had been playing tennis for at least an hour. Wegener had to admit this, whether he liked it or not. His subsequent explanation that he “just wanted to clear his head” because of the exhausting work in his home office and needed the tennis match for that purpose was met with widespread disbelief, scorn, and ridicule. Even a savvy politician can lose his nerve sometimes.

It should also be noted that the Left Party is Wegener's most important opponent in the upcoming elections to the House of Representatives on September 20. According to the latest poll results, it would even achieve the second-best result after the CDU (22.6 percent) with 18.4 percent. A coalition of the Left Party, the Greens (18.4 percent), and the SPD (13.0 percent) would thus win 62 of a total of 130 seats in the House of Representatives, while the CDU (34) and AfD (24) would only win 58 seats combined.

Wegener therefore has every reason to fear the Left Party—not because it allegedly tends toward left-wing extremism or secretly sympathizes with left-wing terrorists, but because it is the most important factor standing in the way of an extension of his term in office. At the same time, his partner Katharina Günther-Wünsch would also lose her lucrative position, whom he personally appointed as Senator for Education (something that is probably only possible in Berlin) and who was also the tennis partner with whose help he wanted to “clear his head” on January 6, after he had allegedly exhausted himself so restlessly in his home office with the investigation and coordination of the attack...

The Left Party is benefiting both from the departure of the “Wagenknechts” and from the protest against the AfD

Even in the early federal elections, which took place on September 23, 2025, after the breakup of the traffic light coalition, the biggest surprise of the election results was that the Left Party, of all parties, experienced an unexpected upswing. After the erratic Sarah Wagenknecht had left the party and founded the “Sarah Wagenknecht Alliance” as a new party with her followers, it had been generally expected that the Left Party would fall below the five percent threshold and no longer be represented in parliament. But the opposite was the case: the departure of the sectarians did the party so much good that it received 8.8 percent of the vote and became the fifth-strongest faction in the Bundestag after the Greens (250202).

Certainly, a major factor in this miraculous resurrection of the Left Party was that younger voters in particular believed that this party was best placed to halt the further advance of the AfD and push the right-wing extremists back into insignificance, as the “Extra-Parliamentary Opposition” (APO) (APO) had done with the NPD at the end of the 1960s. The brownish “National Democrats” were already sitting in seven state parliaments at the time before they narrowly failed in the 1969 federal elections and achieved only 0.6 percent in the following election – mainly due to the uprising of a young generation whose parents or relatives had voted for the Nazis at the time, or whose mothers still had pictures of their fathers who had fallen in the war, dressed in full SS uniform with the skull and crossbones or the swastika of the Wehrmacht uniform, on their bedside tables. These students, pupils, and apprentices were determined not to let a “new 1933” happen. In the dictatorially ruled GDR, which flaunted its supposed anti-fascism like a monstrance and even approved the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 as an “anti-fascist protective wall,” there was no comparable cultural revolution. With a brief interruption in the 1920s, authoritarian conditions prevailed here until reunification. This has left lasting traces and explains to a large extent why, in the upcoming state elections in Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, there is now even a danger that the AfD will overtake the CDU and become the strongest party there.

Incidentally, Wegener and the CDU only narrowly came to power in the new state parliament elections on February 12, 2023, after the original state parliament elections, which had taken place on September 26, 2021, together with the federal elections, had to be annulled due to official sloppiness in their conduct. This and other abuses in the Berlin administration have a decades-long history, in which neither the CDU nor the SPD have played a glorious role. However, it was the current ruling coalition of the SPD, the Greens, and the Left Party that was punished for this in the repeat election. As a result, it would only have been able to continue governing with a narrow majority. However, this did not happen because the SPD decided to enter into another black-red coalition with the CDU and to content itself with the role of junior partner. However, this decision is now even less appreciated by voters, as the latest poll shows the party's support falling from 18.4 percent in 2023 to the aforementioned 13 percent. As a result, it would now only be able to enter government as the junior partner of the Left Party.

Must we necessarily accept criminals' self-portrayal as “left-wing” ideologues?

But are “left-wing extremists,” “left-wing terrorists,” or whatever you want to call these saboteurs, really people who can be classified as belonging to the left side of the political spectrum? It may well be that they once obtained more or less large fragments of their confused ideological potpourri from this side. But does that still count if, objectively, they only promote right-wing extremism or even subjectively profess to it? Just think of Horst Mahler, who was once considered the star lawyer of the Berlin APO scene, belonged to the radical democratic “Republican Club” alongside illustrious personalities such as Hans Magnus Enzensberger, and defended the student leader Rudi Dutschke, – but then not only took on the defense of department store arsonists Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin, but also founded the terrorist organization RAF together with them and was therefore sentenced to 14 years in prison. In the meantime, he showed himself to be reformed and was released after only ten years. Shortly after being reinstated as a lawyer, however, he joined the NPD and represented it in proceedings before the Federal Constitutional Court to have it banned. This was followed by new convictions for writing an anti-Semitic pamphlet and denying the Holocaust. When he fled to Hungary in 2017 to escape imminent imprisonment and applied for asylum there as a politically persecuted person, even Orban did not want him and extradited him. And there are many other examples where the left-wing veneer quickly wore off and brownish rust came to light. Nevertheless, Mahler and the RAF were still considered left-wing in certain “progressive” circles for a long time, and anyone who correctly referred to the RAF as a “gang” in accordance with the criminal code, instead of downplaying it as the “Baader-Meinhof Group,” risked at least as many sidelong glances as today if they fail to recognize the slightest emancipation value for the female part of humanity in gender gaga, but only a hideous disfigurement of the German language. So once again, the question: Do we really have to accept the self-assessment of criminals who present themselves as leftists and justify their crimes in this way?

“You forgot the feminist-queer stamp of authenticity”

“I've read the filth,” said journalist Detlef zum Winkel, who writes regularly for the undogmatic left-wing weekly newspaper Jungle World and has read the entire text of the confession letter. “Unlike Mayor Kai Wegner, however, I consider the political background of the perpetrators to be right-wing extremist, not left-wing extremist.” He justified his assessment that the perpetrators were not actually left-wingers with the following argument, among others:

"The high-flyer mentality with which world events are viewed in the letter of confession and broken down into everyday social life may be reminiscent of texts by autonomists. However, such texts would literally always refer to patriarchy, especially when attempting a global analysis. This has been a must in anarchist-autonomist texts for quite some time and is therefore also a clear sign of their authenticity. The authors of the lengthy text have gone to great lengths to mix all possible left-wing ingredients into their stew, but have forgotten the feminist-queer stamp of authenticity.

Another obvious omission is the lack of mention of nuclear energy — precisely in the context of lengthy discussions on energy policy. Who could possibly do such a thing? That in a detailed critique of the energy transition, one could forget to mention the most significant critics of it, namely the pro-nuclear industry, even with a single word?!"

January 2025

260101

ENERGY CHRONICLE

Another arson attack on Berlin's power supply paralyzed southwestern districts for four days