It isn’t often that an off-the-cuff remark in a literary periodical sets off a decades-long sabotage campaign, but it was a 2007 article by John Lanchester in the LRB that posed the question:
“SUVs are loathed by everyone except the people who drive them… a few dozen people could in a short space of time make the ownership of these cars effectively impossible. Say fifty people vandalising four cars each every night for a month: six thousand trashed SUVs in a month and the [vehicles] would soon be disappearing from our streets. So why don’t these things happen?”
In today’s Berlin, it seems, they do.
The group does not hide its crimes. On every vehicle it “disables”, it leaves a flyer tucked under the windscreen wiper (and a lentil screwed into the tyre valve)
HEIST is a worker-owned online magazine, founded by writers and editors who after years working across Berlin's media landscape believed something essential was missing.
Anyone living here has felt a growing gap between the city as it actually is and the version being served up by mainstream outlets. We experienced that disconnect firsthand. We saw political censorship shape coverage decisions and felt the weight of billionaire ownership land directly on our work. It reached a point where we could either keep going along with it, or try to build something better.
That's why we created HEIST.
And look at you: scrolling, clicking, squinting at blurred text just to get a little further. If you'll go to that much effort to read HEIST, you can surely give us one email. That's the whole price, and the rest of the story is right behind it.
Real journalism costs money. We commission the hard-hitting, well-reported, long-form work everyone wants to read but nobody seems to publish anymore.
The future of this city is still in the balance. We intend to be part of that struggle. We hope that you'll join us.
