>
> In Europe, the Green Party is the proper inheritor of the curious
> radicalism of the generation of 68 and its more morbid off-shoot, the
> Red Army Factions. Outwardly militant and extreme, the RAF located the
> problems of West German capitalism as the domination of Germany by
> American imperialism, reducing the problem of German militarism to a
> generational hangover from the Hitler years. With the defeat of the
> Baader-Meinhof paramilitary group, its supporters filtered into
> campaigns against American missiles on German soil and environmentalism.
> Re-stated in green language and humanitarian concerns, Germany's foreign
> policy once again became more assertive on the international stage. In
> the seventies, a cautious Germany experimented with international
> politics through such apparently anodyne issues as North Sea pollution.
> By 1999, Green Foreign Minister Joseph Fischer had broken the taboo on
> German militarism, sending troops to Kosovo. Along with Green defence
> spokesperson Angelika Beer and Cem Özdemir, Fischer today enjoys police
> protection, and the party even provided Münster police chief Hubert
> Wimber.
James,
I think it does not help understanding the current situation in Germany much by mixing up variuos kinds of leftist movements in Germany under the label anti-Americanism, though it is the approach of scholars like Markovits and Gorski who just add anti-semitism to it.
So let me try to sort out things a bit:
Fischer and the RAF: The issue has gained some attention recently with the (re)publication of some photographs showing Fischer beating policemen. Today Fischer is claiming he always opposed the RAF. Thats not wrong, but sort of deceiving the public, because mainly the RAF was a sort of competitor for Fischer's own constitutency. So Revolutionary Struggle advocated (and praciticised) open street fight, as oposed to the more clandestine methods of the RAF.
RAF and anti-Americanism: The starting point of the RAF was the opposition to the war in Vietnam. I dont think this was somethink particularly German. This was more or less the context of the RAF's attacks on US military installations in Germany. But they did not restrict not to that, but attacked representatives of the German judiciary system (Buback) and German capitalists (Schleyer, Rohwedder, Ponto). Their attack on MTU-manager Zimmermann was even a rejection of the narrow anti-Americanism of parts of the anti-missile movement.
RAF and the Greens: There is really little connection. A lots of Greens come from Maoist organisations, which tried to build parties in the seventies, but never had any links to the RAF. Those were quite seperate worlds. You might be right of tracing some of the new Green German nationalism back to the more dull versions of German Maoism, but not to the RAF. Afterall in the eighties the RAF was more concerned with their own prisoners than environtalism.
The Greens and police today: What do you expect from politicians of a party in government in one of the main imperialist countries? But still you are mixing up issues. Fischer and Beer are surely high-profile politicians. But the case with Cem Özdemir is different. Usually a politician like him will not enjoy police protection. Cem Özdemir is the son of Turkish immigrants and Green MP, within the Green party he is on the right, neo-liberal wing. Certainly he is no anti-racist activist, but he has liberal views when it comes to immigration. This and beeing of Turkish stock makes him a victim of Neonazi threads. At the same time he has criticised the Turkish government on human rights and the Kurdish issue, resulting in a personal campaign against him by the widely read Turkish nationalist press, making him a target for Turkish fascists as well. I am not sure but I suppose Özdemir's parents are Alevis, adding to the danger from the side of Turkish fascists.
Johannes