I started this chat yesterday.....talking over the possibility that Antifa is simply the 'step-child' of the German Red Army Faction. So today, a comparison.
1. How the RAF got started.
One has to go back to 1968, before the RAF was ever organized and discuss the 'student riots' in West Germany.
The protests? They circle around four key components: anti-traditionalism (basically suggesting everything done since 1949 and the reorganization of German politics was a failure), standing up against the West German political machine, suggesting an anti-Fascism trend by pointing at Nazis being part of the political apparatus, and finally....this execution-style hit on Benno Ohnesorg in West Berlin (1967) by a city policeman.
I probably should lay out the fact that around two decades after the Ohnesorg shooting....the cop involved was determined to be a East German agent, and it was likely part of some conspiracy. This rarely gets discussed today, but it's a curious part of the story.
Oddly enough, I should also point out in this time period (in the five years before the 1968 riots)....an odd separation occurred with the SPD Party, and the student group under them. This far-left student group (kinda like the Bernie folks) felt that extreme change was necessary, and the SPD Party was leaning more toward step-by-step change.
I also have to mention that anti-capitalism was another element of the student movement and the 1968 riots as well.....which is an identifer of the Antifa movements today.
A theme of anti-middle-class values? Yes, the student movement in 1968 in West Germany also injected this into the discussion as well. People were 'guilty' of living enriched lives (where have you heard this discussion).
The Germans, ever famous for inventing words....eventually came to this 1968 period of protests and movements....making a new word for the occasion:
Vergangenheitsbewältigung. The translation? You basically have to go and work through your past problems....admitting screw-ups....rectifying the 'wrongs', and making people happy.
The more you think about Vergangenheitsbewaltigung....this is precisely what the Antifa movement wants out of the crisis today. It's not just the Trump administration, it's whites who must admit some type of privilege (whether real or not), carriers of capitalism to admit guilt, the police to admit guilt, city governments to admit guilt, and so on. It's supposed to be a collective group of wrongs, and everyone then gets over their guilt by admitting it.
At this point, I would suggest we are in the riot portion of the script, with 1968 being similar to 2020, and the true RAF replacement being a year or two down the road.
2. Manpower.
The RAF in the beginning stage (roughly 1971, three years after the riots) basically amounted to the Baader-Meinhof 'gang'. Total numbers? A dozen....that's it.
Out of a population of 60-million? Yes....just a dozen members of the original RAF gang....what was the original RAF of the period.
3. Philosophy of the original gang.
The students-turned-revolutionaries had a fair amount of connection to the 'Frankfurt school' (thinkers such as Oskar negt, Herbert Marcuse, and Jurgen Habermas)
They were connected to various counter-cultural and anti-capitalism movements.
They were attached to various beliefs that far-left socialism (in other parts of the world) would improve German society.
They were connected to various Marxist writers of the past.
4. The need for 'repressive tolerance'.
A Frankfurt school 'thinker' offered up the basis for what you'd see in both the RAF and Antifa movements....with repressive tolerance.
The term basically means whatever you are doing today....in terms of governing, leading, or exercising in a society....is basically wrong. It basically says that as you send signals against the 'right'....you are on the side of corrective activity, and doing a good deed for society itself.
This is what the Antifa crowd (unknowingly) is aimed upon.
More tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment