This week I have been receiving notifications that there is a letter from a Russian tax authority. They require the full history of my bank transactions from my EU-based bank account.

While this perhaps is not something extraordinary, just a regular bureaucratic procedure, I found myself absolutely paralyzed by it, and it made me way more anxious than I would like to admit. I felt ashamed that I got so affected by this tiny little thing. I am not afraid to do my work, to think, to research, and to write about activism, and all the decisions made along the way were always seamless for me. It was not a struggle, not a sacrifice, for me it was the most natural process that just happened. And yet it is so strange how one small bureaucratic procedure can set off a whole chain of anxious thoughts, doubts, and questions that suddenly make me feel so helpless.

In Germany I have been through quite complicated bureaucratic procedures that, in some cases, took several months of ups and downs, a bunch of 7 am appointments, tremors, and long chains of machine-translated emails. One can argue that I at this point in time should be mature enough to keep my cool, to be soothed by the irrationality of fear. Yet because there are no clear rules, you cannot be sure that this is “just” a routine? Why do they need it, and why now? Have I been too conspicuously naughty and now it is finally my time to get some coal from Santa?

I figured that this anxiety is really not due to a lack of my ability to handle such requests and formal inquiries, but rather comes from realizing that the state remembers me, remembers about me, even though for me our “relationship” has long ceased to be a lived reality and has instead become an “out there” abstraction that cannot affect me.

Turns out it can and it will, in the most embarrassing ways that make you want to hide under the blanket and doom scroll social media hoping that “they” will leave you alone. But the empirical data shows I can cut the ties, but the bureaucratic apparatus, like an obsessive self-righteous red pill stalker, cannot be blacklisted. You can enforce a restraining order, but distance, something I see with my immigrant friends all the time, has no effect on how the mere thought of its existence can make you feel. Because the thing is, the bureaucratic apparatus never really forgets. And especially a rigged bureaucratic apparatus makes sure to remind you that you better comply and be nice about it.

But what is there to fear? I have quite a good understanding of the extent of potential “consequences” of “misbehaving” in all sorts of fun ways that proportionally exceed even the most disproportional effects of this one tiny bureaucratic request. Yet this rational approach of risk assessment does not really work, and I think that is precisely the point of the affective power of a concoction of bureaucratic rationality that follows procedure meticulously to construct its “acting in good will” legitimacy and its actual Wild West style of execution (intentional double meaning) that exposes the profound corruption and ugliness of authoritarianism that seeks to uphold its legitimacy through the most perverse (not in a fun way) relationship with the law.

In the end I had to ask myself, do I choose to frame cooperation with a corrupted sheriff flexing a big gun on his hip (real or/and imagined) as the question of a choice between resistance and compliance? Should I let the fines pile up because I do not recognize the authority of this apparatus and hence it can (not respectfully) fuck itself? Or do I maintain formal compliance because it would be selfish to flip it off, no matter how much I want to roleplay someone braver than me, due to some residual obligations I have left?

I do not know, but I think that it is important for me to put it out there that there is no single right thing to do in situations like these. The stalker will not disappear even if I mobilize all the powers of my imagination and sip on my Durstlöscher for a quick sugar kick. But I still have the privilege of distance that allows me to breathe freely, to occasionally see the sun, to kiss my cats on their furry heads, to post this under my own name without having to use VPN and double check the content for extremist vibes. The stalker can stalk as much as he wants. I might be aware of his gaze, of his power, of the fact that he is thinking of me, but nothing will really let this thing draw me away from what I like to do the most. In my favorite time close to the end of the semester, to read and write, to quietly sit and engage in my work with clarity and peace of mind, to enjoy the greatest privilege that I have worked so long for, to be able to do my thing and what I think is right for me at this very moment, to preserve my integrity in acknowledging my fears and maintain an albeit weak dash of hope that the stalker will eventually lose their power over me and my friends, and that we could for good forget how it feels to be under his spell.

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preview image credit — Léo Forest (@leo___forest)