T wrinkle her skin. Then each of the men orders the robbers to leave, which they do made in I960 and as vital as ever, he used uses one of her stockings as a burglar's not. They stuff her in a wardrobe, where some of the stylistics of the past, par- m mask. In broad daylight, they carry a lad- she smothers, but her death does not seem ticularly of Renoir—for his own ends, of der around the outside ofthe house and any more real than all the rest. It is as if course. Still, he used them. From then on, try to enter an upper window. Later they she were merely playing dead as part of he attacked or ignored them, often quite tramp noisily through tbe house. When this spoof lightheartedly. Band of Outsiders is a rev- 70 the owner appears, a woman, she merely olutionary souffle. • m In Godard's first feature. Breathless, C 03 r" o From the radicalism ofthe '60s to the interventionism ofthe '90s. The Passion of Joschka Fischer' By PAUL BERMAN

I. many's federal govemment, let alone the the generation of 1968)—an unforesee- foreign ministry. A powerful man, there- ably rich and vivid scandal, fecund with AST JANUARY, Stem maga- fore a man with enemies. The photo- implications for Europe and modem life zine in Germany published a graphs gazed blearily at the world from and thirt\' or forty years of history. set of five grainy photographs the semi-glossy pages of Stern, and flames of Joschka Fischer, tbe Ger- of Christian Democratic wrath erupted at HE PHOTOGRAPHS WERE deliv- man foreign minister and vice once fi'om those many partisan enemies. ered to Stem by a tbirty-eight-year- Lchancellor, as a young bully in a street bat- Germany's foreign minister had disgraced Toid woman named Bettina Rohl, tle in Frankfurt. It was April 1973. The himself in those photographs; had embar- who described herself as an "independent photos showed: a figure in a black motor- rassed his nation; had lost the ability to journalist" but whose notoriety was owed cycle helmet, labeled as Fischer, facing ofl' represent Germany to the world; ought to mostly to her family background, which against another figure in a white police- be investigated, to be indicted, to resign. could hardly have been more sensational. man's helmet, witb a dented Volkswagen The street battles of 1973 took place Bettina Rohl was the daughter of Ulrike squatting in the background; the black- long ago, and it could have been supposed Meinhof. In the heyday of the left-wing helmeted Fischer drawing near, and a that Fischer's enemies, having given vent movement of the late 1960s and 1970s, skinny giri or maybe a long-haired boy to a thousand pent-up furies and Christ- Ulrike Meinhof was more than well- (this was an androgvTious era) running ian Democratic resentments, would eveu- known in West Germany. She was a to join him; Fischer and other people on tually calm down, and the scandal ofthose militant and a political theorist on the the attack, the white-helmeted cop going ancient photographs would fade. The edi- left's leftmost wing—one of the crazies, into a crouch; Fischer's black-gloved fist tors of Stem seem to have anticipated that you would have to say, except that crazi- raised as if to punch the crouching cop on sort of development. The magazine adver- ness and sanity were very much under the back, Fischer's comrades crowding tised its photographs on the cover with a interrogation. around; the cop huddled on the ground, quotation from Fischer CJa. ich war mili- In 1970, Ulrike Meinhof staged an Fischer and his comrades appearing to tanf), but the big story in that week's armed jailbreak to free an imprisoned kick him, with two additional people issue was Europe's meat crisis, illustrated comrade named Andreas Baader, who was watching. And no more dented Volks- by a giant sausage skewered on the tines of serving three years for his own violent wagen. Tbe photographer has evidently an oversized barbecue fork. Mad cow dis- antics. (He had set fire to a Frankfurt been circling around the skirmish, snap- ease, now that was a lasting story. department store.) Baader and Meinhof, ping his camera in what must have been The weeks went by, though, and the together v\ith Horst Mahler and a few a frenzy of adrenaline, each picture taken Fischer afFair, instead of fading, grew in other desperadoes of the revolutionary from a different angle. intensity and scale. Like the broken tape left, organized what became casually Those were brutal photographs. One on the door at the Watergate, or the girl- known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang, but glance at them and you were back in the ish confessions on Linda Tripp's treacher- was more formally and correctly called the days of left-wing street fighting from the ous recording, the photographs in Stem Red Army Fraction. In American English, late 1960s and 1970s, when young mili- seemed to pull slowly at a curtain that, as the Gennan word Fraktion is usually ren- tants in West Germany were always pour- it opened, revealed ever more distant dered as "faction," which falls easily on the ing into the streets, and Volkswagens were peaks of unsuspected scandals (or non- ear; but anyone who remembers the old getting dented right and left. And the scandals, depending on your interpreta- Communist phrase book will recognize photographs, having conjured the past, tion). The controversy spread to France. that "fraction," in English, used to be a provoked an outcrj'. The Joschka Fischer In London, The Observer, playing the part perfectlylegitimate and precise term, con- of 2001 was amember ofthe partv called, of the yellow press, gave the polemic a noting a disciplined party unit akin to a in expressively anti-bureaucratic fashion, slightly demented sexual twist. The cell—the opposite of a faction, which is a "tbe Greens"—a man ofthe left on its hip- Italians weighed in. The Fischer affair party unit that has escaped the party's dis- per, friskier side. He happened to be the achieved at last a large enough dimension cipline. A Marxist-Leninist party does not very first Green to hold a ministry in Gter- and a sufficiently accusatory tone to be have factions, unless tbe party is in dis- described rather grandly but not inaccu- array. But a Marxist-Leninist party does have fractions, or party units that go out PAUL BERMAN is the author of yl rately as "the trial of the generation of into the world and militate as best they Two Utopias: The Political Joumey of the 1968" by the editors of the Paris daily can, according to plan. Generation of 1968 (Norton). Liberation (who know something about

36 : AUGUST 27 & SEPTEMBER 3, 2001 Bettina Rohl's photographs of Joschka Fischer (in black helmet) attacking a policeman, Frankfurt, April 1973

Baader and Meinhof's Red Army Frac- organize her guerrilla army, which meant support that made each of tbose groups tion was tiny. But it went out into the that, in matters of age, she towered over nearly indestructible during the next world and proved to be extremely violent. the New Left's rank and file, the student decades. Kidnappings, bank holdups, murders; the naifs. She knew how to drape the grand The Red Army Fraction was not exactly group refrained from nothing. A bombing ideals of German philosophy across her invulnerable. Iu 1972, the West German in 1972 killed four American soldiers. A organization and its doings. To be sure, police did manage to arrest a number of few years later someone machine-gunned her guerrilla army was reviled by an key warriors. They arrested Meinhof her- to death the prosecutor who wanted to try overwhelming majority of West Germans, self. But arrests only rendered the group the group for killing the soldiers. Reprisals the put-upon bystanders and potential fashionable. Jean-Paul Sartre expressed were a specialty. The Red Army Fraction victims and frightened citizens. an admiring appreciation—a cagey admi- was hardy, too. The West German author- But in the universities and the counter- ration, designed to leave him unstained ities did their repressive best, but the cultural districts in Frankfurt and Berlin by any crimes that the guerrillas might guerrilla organization managed to keep and a few other places, her tiny organiza- commit. Meinhof wrote the famous itself alive, recruiting new members from tion drew on the active and even enthu- philosopher a letter, inviting him to visit ever younger generations to replace the siastic support of a not-so-small number Baader in jail, "to give us the protection fallen, and persisting in its killings and of people, plus the passive support of far of your name and your gifts as a Marx- kidnappings from decade to decade into larger numbers, the leftists who vvould ist, philosopher, journalist and moral- the mid-1990s—a long run in a well- never have endorsed a program of vio- ist." Sartre came. But the martyrdom only ordered place such as Germany. lence and who wanted nothing to do vvith deepened. One of the imprisoned war- Even today, a political legacy from the murders, but vvho would have said that, riors had already committed suicide by old Baader-Meinhof tendency has man- even so, the Red Army Fraction did have the time of Sartre's visit, and in 1976 aged to linger on, though without a clan- reason to despise German bourgeois soci- Meinhof likewise committed suicide in destine wing, or so it is said. Tbe Red ety, and Marxist revolution was an excel- her maximum-security cell—though some Army Fraction remained strong during lent idea, and state repression posed a people suspected an official murder. those many years because its leaders were greater threat to society than any guerrilla Her death was followed the next year clever and its militants fanatical, but also resistance from the left. And shouldn't we by the suicides of Baader and two others because it enjoyed the secret backing of progressives and reasonable leftists worry in the same jail, which even more people the government of East Germany, mean- chiefly about civil liberties? And so forth: suspected was official murder. And the ing the Soviet bloc, for as long as there was the many arguments and apologetics that deaths, as they piled up, radiated a mor- a Soviet bloc, which gave the group a real people offer in circumstances when, out of bid glamour. It was a highbrow glamour— institutional power. (The Red Army Frac- confusion and moral timidity, they are too the kind of glamour that, as Peter Woilen tion was tiny, but the Red Army was not.) fiightened to applaud the murders and pointed out in The London Review of Yet the organization clung to life mainly the kidnappings, and too frightened to Books, would by 1995 lead New York's for another reason, which lay at the heart condemn them. Museum of Modern Art to devote an ex- of the several scandals that flooded out- The Red Army Fraction claimed a fra- hibition to paintings of those suicides ward from the grainy photographs in ternity vvith the new breed of revolution- (assumingtheywere suicides), a sacraliza- Stern this year. ary groups around the world. "We must tion in high art. But it was also a street The radical student movement during learn," Meinhof said in her original mani- glamour. The death of Meinhof alone, the years around 1968—I will call it the festo back in 1970, "from the revolutionary back in 1976, was enough to send crowds New Loft, using the American and Eng- movements of the world—the Vietcong, of young people swarming into the West lish term—was never especially powerful the Palestine Liberation Organization, the German streets, enraged at the jails and at in the Federal Republic of Germany as a Tupamaros [of Umgiiay], the Black Pan- the revolutionary defeats and at the thou- whole, not compared to the big political thers." But mostly her organization resem- sand injustices of modern life. parties and the industrial groups and the bled several other guerrilla currents that trade unions. But in the world of the uni- got their start in the New Left upsurges OSCHKA FISCHER WAS among versity students and the young people's of Europe in those same years: the Red those angry crowds. He was a neighborhoods and the younger intellec- Brigades in Italy; the Irish Republican J young firebrand in Frankfurt. At one tuals, the New Left was a gigantic pres- Army in its modem, Marxist version of the Meinhof demonstrations, some- ence. And the Red Army Fraction grew (which revived a defunct military organi- body tossed a Molotov cocktail at a police- naturally from that soil. Ulrike Meinhof zation from many years before); the Corsi- man and burned him nearly to death. herself was by al! accounts an intelligent can nationalist guerrillas; and the Basque Fischer and a dozen other radicals were and articulate leader, a woman already ETA—small groups each and every one, arrested and jailed for two days, though thirty-seven years old when she helped to but tough, and with a degree of popular no charges were ever lodged against them.

THE NEW REPUBLIC : AUGUST 27 & SEPTEMBER 3, 2001 : 37 I Fischer was not especially famous at the like admitting to using marijuana but not wing difficulty. The Greens had made time, outside of the radical left, and in to inhaling it. And, of course, the part their way in German politics by sticking to m later years, as he rose in national politics, about spending only an hour tumed out to their twin principles of ecology- and anti- not many people remembered that he be untme. and the spokesman, backtrack- militarism. They were the enemies of the m had spent those days in jail or had been ing, had tn acknowledge that, yes, Fischer militar>- policies of the United States, under any suspicion at all. Still, some had participated throughout. (Which no beginning in the days of President Reagan ;D pn people, the lefl-wing insiders, not to men- one should have doubted. The man is a and advancing through the Gulf war of tion the policeman and his friends, did bom politician. He loves meetings.) And 1991 and onward to the present. Yet their c retain the memorv'. And In those first days still more accusations from New Left days year of political triumph, 1998, was not a CO of 2001, when S^^TTI published the pho- of yore came raining down on Joschka happy one for the anti-militarist cause. I- tographs from 1973, Meinhof's daughter, Fischer's respectable middle-aged bead. The wars of Serbian nationalism had been o Rohl, revived the accusation against him. getting grimmer and grimmer, and in She Insisted that Fischer did, in fact, bear T WAS NOT instantly obvious what 1998 the massacres took still another bad a responsibility for the Molotov cocktail drove Bettina Rohl to deliver the pho- turn in Kosovo. NATO's involvement grew and the policeman's injuries. I tographs to Stern and to dredge up deeper and, from an anti-militarist per- A couple of participants in the radical her several hair-raising accusations. I spective, more ominous. Many a Green movement from those days backed her up, looked at difibrent European papers dur- looked to Fischer, as foreign minister, to too, and said that, in planning the particu- ing the course ofthe affair, and I found a oppose the NATO campaign, or at least lar demonstration in which the policeman certain amount of political speculation, as to keep Germany, vvith its peaceful tradi- was attacked, Fischer had never ruled out could have been e.xpected. Fischer's ene- tions in modern times, from taking part. the use of Molotovs and may even have mies in the Bundestag and at Stem tended But on matters of anti-militarism and favored it. A retired colleague of the in- NATO, Fischer was out of step with his jured policeman was adamant about Fis- own party. In his reasoning, the Serbian cher's responsibility. No one came up with atrocities gnawed awaj- at the pacifist any sort of indisputable confirmation. logic. He looked at the ethnic persecu- But Fischer was obliged to rise from his tions, and came away thinking that mili- seat once again and, in his dignity as for- tary action was not such a bad idea, after eign minister, deny all connection to a all. verj' ugly event from long ago {"Definitiv nfm.'"he told Sffm)—which vvould have ISCHER WAS FILLED with convic- been unpleasant under any circumstances tion on this theme. And when he but must have been doubly so in the light Fgot into office he took the funda- of the photographs, the five atrocious mental Green commitment to anti-war photographs that made him seem all too [Principles, deftly heaved it overboard, and capable in his younger years of having gave his official endorsement to Ger- organized a Molotov cocktail attack. many's participation in the NATO eflFort. There was another accusation. Fischer A large number of Greens could only look was said to have tossed stones and Molo- at those ministerial actions and feel horri- tov cocktails during yet a diflerent rau- bly betrayed. To have spent nearly twenty cous demonstration, this one in 1975 at years building a new party devoted to anti- the Spanish Embassy—an angr\' protest militarism, only to see its first foreign min- against Generalissimo Franco and Span- ister endorse militar\" action by NATO, ish fascism. Fischer denied that accusa- the imjierialist alliance! That was galling. tion, too, though he did acknowledge Joschka Fischer at a teach-in, 1973 At the Green convention in 1999, through his spokesman at the Foreign someone threw a bag of red ink at Fischer Ministrv" that he had participated in the to be, as I say, worthies ofthe conservative and broke his eardnmi. Four hundred event, which had never been a secret any- cause, who must have taken a fine parti- police officers had to guard him when way. The spokesman reminded the Ger- san pleasure in making life mi.serable for a he got up to address the convention. His man public that demonstrating against Green foreign minister. Yet the complica- own partv; the eco-pacifist assemblage, Franco and fascism was nothing to be tions of contemporary politics are such was a howling mob. The man did not lack ashamed of A good point: something to that, on the lef^, too, Fischer had his ene- for political skill, and he managed to hang be proud of, at last! mies, vvho may have regarded him with an onto the convention's support. But there Then another accusation: Fischer was even deeper loathing. was no placating a go(xl percentage of his accused of having attended a meeting of Fischer had entered the government opponents. What was to be done about the Palestine Liberation Organization in in 1998 as part of what is called the Red- that? Nothing, nothing. And so, when the Algiers back in 1969, at which the PLO Green coalition, meaning the alliance of accusations against Fischer came rolling adopted a resolution to achieve final vic- the very big Social Democratic Party, down upon him in the early months of tory, which is to say, the destruction of the ancient Reds (whose organization w'iis 2001, it was easy to imagine that motives Israel. That was not so good, and seemed founded in 1875), and the much smaller from the lef^, anti-militarist and anti- triply bad for a future foreign minister of Greens (whose organization was founded NATO, and not just the traditional hostil- Gemiany, even if no one threw rocks or in 1979). To have forced the powerful and ity of his enemies on the right, might have bombs. The ministn spokesman conceded venerable Social Democrats into a coali- been at work. that Fischer did attend the conference; tion was, from the Green point of view, Then again, the fiirv' against Fischer but, doing his best to cope with one more a great victorv; and Fischer's arrival at might have wended its way into the press embarrassing revelation, the spokesman the foreign ministry was bound to arouse from the remote margins of German polit- made the mistake of adding that Fischer jubilant expectations from the hardwork- ical life, from the very far left well beyond had spent only an hour there, which was ing part)' activists. But here was the left- the respectable democratic radicalism of

38 : AUGUST 27 & SEPTEMBER 3, 2001 the Greens—the fur\' of ultra-militants who had remained in some way faithfiil to the legacy of Meinhof and her mar- tyred guerrillas. Or perhaps the fury had its origin on the extreme right, from well SERIOUS t\) BASEBALL beyond the respectable zones of Christian Democratic conservatism. "One of the best baseball books n. to come out this spring." UT WHAT DID it mean in 2001, —San Diego Union Tribune extreme right and extreme left? BThe ordinary political labels have "A prism through which to look at gotten bollixed up in modern times, and both the history of haseball and ot not just in Germany. In poking around New York City. A rich, lavishly the Internet, I found my way to the elec- tronic discussion center of the fans of researched book that one need not the Baader-Meinhof Gang—they have be a tan to enjoy. But tor those of us their own website, naturally—and was lucky to be tans, what a treat! I interested to read about tbe curious case could not put it down." of Horst Mahler, one of the founders of —Roberta Gonzeilez Echevarria, author of the group back in 1970. Over the years, The Pride of Havana- A History ot Cuban Baseball Mahler had slid dowTi the corridor of extremist politics from left-wing terrorism Th( Diamond in th« Bronx into the circles of German neo-Nazism, Yank» Stadium and the Fortunn of New York where he set about promoting mad theo- Neil Sullivan ries on Jewish themes. Such things did happen. And Mahler, as I discovered, en- tertained his ov\'n opinions about the Fis- cher affair. He made the argument that new in paperback Ulrike Meinhof, had she lived, would have likewise slid over to the extreme right. But in his view, as reported on the The Pride of Havana website, right-wing and left-wing counted A History of Cuban Baseball for nothing as far as the behavior of Mein- Roberto Gonzakz £(h»arria hof's daughter. The real animus against Fischer bubbled up instead from a daugh- "A chronicle and celebration of the ter's anger at her inadequate mother, the national pastime of Cuba...lovingly prison martyr. Or else, as was more widely said, Rohl's anger at Fischer derived from told." a still vaguer resentment against the entire —New York Times Book Review era of 1968—from the resentment that, on an earlier occasion, she had already "An absorbing history....It sparkles iike Ei described in the pages of Der Spiegel. For Duque in October." what was 1968 to Bettina Rohl? —Bob Costas It was the era that had deprived her of a childhood. Her mother, in the grip ofthe revolutionary manias of the time, had once tried to ship little Bettina and her Past Time sister to a Palestinian camp, only to have Baseball As Mistorv the girls' father, a publisher of left-wing Jules Tyqiei (and somewhat pornographic) magazines, arrange to have them kidnapped en route "Tygiei...sbares tbat deep sense of and brought back to Germany—a horrible engagement the best baseball writing has childhood event. Then the mother had gotten herself jailed, and had ended up aiways had." dead—she sufl'ered every tragedy of the —David L, U\\n,Newsday era. As had the children, in their fashion. "Erudite, briskly written....Tygiel iliumi- And who was Joschka Fischer? Some- nates the sport's integral reiationsbip with one who had participated in the radical movements in the society at iarge." cause and gotten away scot-free; someone who managed to profit from every horri- —Katherine A. Powers, The Boston Sunday Globe ble thing that had taken place. This was the cause of Rohl's holy rancor, or so it was Available at better bookstores.To order direct, visit our website or said. A victim's fury at a survivor. In any OXPORD call I -800-451 -7556. Oxford University Press www.oup-usa.org ease, everyone could agree that, whatever UNIVERSITY PRESS her deepest motives might have been.

THE NEW REPUBLIC : AUGUST 27 & SEPTEMBER 3, 2001 : 39 I Rohl had put a lot of vim and energy into rally afterward, one of the slogans was Left. The goal was nothing less than to her campaign. And no one could doubt "Cohn-Bendit—to Dachau!") But there perform radical surgery on the German that she had displayed a canny skill at was no bringing him back to Franee, not national character. The traditional edu- m inflicting the maximum personal dam- for manyyeais. He moved to Frankfiirt. cational system in West Germany had age, too—as it to prove that, vdth or viith- He also roamed around a bit, stirring up followed the standard old-fashioned out her famous mother, she was in her trouble here and there. I ran into him in authoritarian model. And, in the New Left fTl own right a real journalist. Britain in 1970. He sat on a hilltop and analysis, the standard model had sue- •D direeted a small regiment of young French ceeded all too well in times past at produc- C 03 NE OK HER accusations pointed leftists, plus myself as translator, who in- ing standard personalities—people who vaded an Isle of Wight rock festivali n the responded well to authority and knew r- not at Fischer himself but slightly to his side, at an old roommate of name of anti-eapitalism, free roek music, how to give orders and how to take them, o O his from the 1970s—another radical sur- and anti-clericalism. (The anti-cleriealism the kind of people who might grow up to vivor, someone who had participated in stniek me as odd, but those were our rea- be Nazis or to accept a govemment of nearly eveiy phase of the movement, and sons.) Cohn-Bendit, our leader, was a mis- Nazis without protesting. Good Germans, had only managed to rise higher and chievous guy. Mostly he stayed in Frank- in a phrase. Authoritarian personalities. higher in European life, and had suffered furt, though. He set up house with Fischer. So the New Left set out to construct not one whit. This person was Daniel a new kind of education—an anti- Cohn-Bendit, a well-known figure in Ger- authoritarian education, beginning at the many and all over Europe and beyond, beginning, with the goal of creating anti- even if, as a politieian, he never achieved authoritarian personalities, people who as lofty a post as Fischer. Cohn-Bendit would think for themselves and instine- was a man with an interesting ehildhood tively shmg off any attempt to impose of his own. He was the son of German a totalitarian domination. Sex education Jews, and he had spent his youth shut- figured in the idea. The anti-authoritarian tling between West Germany and Franee. educators wanted to break down the sex- He attended university at Nanterre, out- ual repression of earlier times—the sexual side Paris. And there, in the spring of armor that, in their psyehologieal figur- 1968, he helped spark a series of student ings (with the help of Wilhelm Reich), demonstrations, which sparked other had always surrounded the authoritarian demonstrations in Paris, whieh resulted, personality. That was the idea behind in May of that year, in a gigantic student the kindergarten campaign: the "anti- uprising in Paris and all over Franee, authoritarian kindergartens." The teach- whieh led in turn to a general strike by ers wanted to encourage the healthy sex- labor, whieh pretty mueh shut the coun- uality* of little children. try' dov™ for a while. The idea was more than Gennan, to His hair was flaming red in those days, be sure. The notion of brealcing down and he was witty and impish, and he be- old-fashioned personality t>'pes, the idea eame known as Danny the Red. He was that early education offers a fulerum for the single best-known leader of the 1968 moving mankind, the campaign to build uprising, famous not just in France but new kindergartens and schools on radical ever^'where in some degree, if only be- new principles—this was a big impulse eause the May uprising in Paris was the in the English left, too, on its anarchist largest ofthe student uprisings anywhere side. It was a venerable notion: Rousseau, in the world in that year, and because Paris Godwin, Dewey. It was big in the United was the capital of world revolution. Cohn- Daniel CohivBendit singing the States. One of the national leaders of Bendit consequently had the experience "Internationale" to a policeman, Ameriea's Students for a Democratic Soci- of seeing himself elevated in a matter of May 1968 ety, Bill Ayers. began his radical career by weeks into the only person in any eountr>' organizing a proper elementary sehool— who could claim to represent the genera- And, ever militant, Cohn-Bendit and Fis- after which he hurled himself into the tion of 1968 internationally, the human eher organized a group called Revolu- guerrilla campaign ofthe Weather Under- symbol of a worldwide seismie youth tioner Kampf, or Revolutionary' Struggle, ground, after which, correcting himself, event—an odd personal fate for anyone to which was left-wing and eounter-cultural he hurled himself back into early child- endure, an instant deifieation. both, a fixtureo f 1970s life in the happen- hood education. His legal citizenship, as it happened, ing districts of Frankfiirt. In Frankftirt, Cohn-Bendit not only ran was not Freneh, but West German. And his kindergarten, he also wrote about it as soon as he made the mistake of step- ISCHER WAS THE main leader in a book directed at the French public ping aeross the German border in 1^68, of Revolution ar>' Struggle's mili- that had so amiably chanted about being the Freneh authorities banished him from Ftant political aetivities, and Cohn- German Jews. The book was ealled Le France. The leader of the Freneh Com- Bendit of its counter-cultural side. Fischer Grand Bazar and it appeared in 1975. It munist Partj', always a big enemy of the led the revolutionary mob in the streets, was a loosely structured memoir of his New Left, denounced Cohn-Bendit as a and Cohn-Bendit direeted the revolution life in the revolutionary movement, with "German Jew," whieh inftiriated his ad- in daily life. His main acti\it\" was to mn a ehapters on the Freneh student uprising, mirers, who were many. Indignant crowds kindergarten. He spent two years at it. his own Jeviish identity, his kindergarten, marched through the streets of Paris Running a kindergarten might sound the objeetionable nature of communism, chanting, "We are all German Jews!"—a like an oddly modest thing for a famous and several other topics. It was ftill ofthe touching slogan, and a fine display of revolutionary to do. But kindergartens infiammator>' phrases of the day. Then loyalty to Danny the Red. (At a right-wing were a big project for the German New Le Grand Bazar faded from memory.

40 : AUGUST 27 & SEPTEMBER 3, 2001 N THE EARLY months of 2001, parents of the kindergartners in Frank- though, with the photographs of Fis- ftirt plus some ofthe children themselves, Ieher cireulating in Stern and the many now grown up, made publie statements accusations of violent leftism surround- in praise and in defense of the teacher ing him and a scent of scandal rising on Cohn-Bendit. Not one person stood up to every side, Bettina Rohl eraftily plueked denounce him or to lodge any personal one ofthose inflammatory passages from complaint. Cohn-Bendit himself, the Cohn-Bendit's book, deelared the passage Cohn-Bendit of 2001, was apopleetie to be an undiscovered new outrage, and about the accusation. He aeknowiedged oft'ered it for a fee (a tacky move) to the in his riposte that the passage in his book press. She approached Liberation in Paris had been written earelessly, in the provo- with her seoop. Liberation deelined to eational mode ofthe day. It was, he said, take her up on it, partly because the news- a "literary exaggeration," stupid, foolish, papers poliey was not to pay for news and shoeking. Everything about the New seoops, and partly because the book in Left, even its descriptions of kindergarten question had been published long ago and life, had been meant to provoke the wrath eould be freely quoted by anyone, but of the bourgeoisie. But he stressed that, mostly because the papers eorrespondent during the friskier days of New Left wild- read the passage and, by interpreting it the ness, whenever someone did try to make a THE ADAMS-JEFFERSON way Cohn-Bendit had plainly intended, case for pedophilia, as oeeurred from time LETTERS failed to see any seoop at all. The Obseiver to time (in the form of "man-boy love"), he The Complete Correspondence in England did go for Rohl's item, and ran was one of the people who spoke up right Between Thomas Jefferson and the excerpt. Then the item was picked up away in disapproval—he and the feminists Abigail and John Adams by LExpress in Franee, the Bild Zeitung and just about nobody else. EDITED BY LESTER |. CAPPON in Germany, Lci Repvbhlica in Italy, and Pedophilia, Cohn-Bendit pointed out, other papers. No correspondence in American has always been a shamefijl reality of tra- history is more quotable or more readily The excerpt deseribed Cohn-Bendit's ditional family life—the traditional life recognized for its historical significance. kindergarten and was intended to illus- that conceals abysmal behavior under a 690 pp. $55.00 cloth / $21.95 paper trate the atmosphere of non-repression— blanket of silence, ignorance, and patriar- Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early the lengths to whieh the kindergarten chal authority. Pedophilia is the kind of American History & Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia teacher would go in order to prevent his scandalous reality that the sexual libera- little wards from looking on sex with tion movements of the 1960s and 1970s The University of North Carolina Press fear. Cohn-Bendit had viritten: "It hap- tried to eliminate by making sexuality al bookstores or [800] 8^8-6224 | www.uncpress.jrc,edn pened to me several times that certain into something to be diseussed honestly, kids opened my flyan d began to tickle me. without shame—by creating an anti- I reaeted differently according to circum- authoritarian atmosphere in which crimes stances, but their desire posed a problem and abuses would no longer be covered Princeton University to me. I a-sked them: 'Why don't you play up in the name of filial obedienee. Those James Madison Program in together? Why have you chosen me, and were not foolish arguments on his part. American Ideals and Institutions not the other kids?' But if they insisted, Surely he was right in pointing out that Invitation for Fellowship I caressed them even so." sexual liberation in the 1970s has turned Applications In the context of the sexual liberation out to be—notwithstanding the excesses We invite college and university ideas of the 1970s, his larger point in and even the crimes that were sometimes professors and other professors with writing those words was clear enough, committed in its name—one ofthe grand established records of scholarship to and not without sense. He did explain soeial advances of modern times, for apply for appointments as Fellows in the book that, even in the most anti- women espeeially. Nowadays people ean authoritarian of kindergartens, children talk openly about pedophilia and other for the academic year 2002-2003. need instruction and cannot be allowed sexual abuses and depredations, as was Successful applicants will ordinarily to do just as they please. He considered rarely, if ever, possible during the two mil- have a doctorate or professional post that adults ought to ponder the sexual lion years before the sexual revolution. graduate degree. The program does questions long and hard, with regard to Knowledge advances, ignorance recedes. not support work towards the com- ehildren. But that one sentence did make There might even have been something pletion of a degree. Fellowships are it seem that he himself was not exactly heroic about Cohn-Bendit's devotion to open to all regardless of citizenship. pondering anything. If you lifted that the kindergarten. What other leader of a The deadline for application maierials one passage from its context, Cohn- mass European uprising has ever turned is January 11, 2002 for appointments Bendit eould easily be made to look like from leading a revolutionarv- erowd in the beginning in September 2002. For a pedophile—like an adult having sex streets to njnning a kindergarten? The further info. Please call or write: with children. And this horrendous in- new kind of masculinity needed a living sinuation, the suggestion that Joschka example of how to behave, and Cohn- James Madison Pro}iram in Fischer's roommate, Danny the Red, the Bendit offered himself—someone un- American Ideals and Institutions spirit of 1968 itself, had been, in fact, afraid to take up a role that had always Department of Politics a pedophilic ereep of the first order, a been assigned to women. Any proposed Corwin Hall, Princeton University child molester—this dreadftd insinuation revolution of daily life was going to de- Princeton, NJ 08544-1012 ascended into the scandal of the hour in pend on the willingness of men like him. the Freneh newspapers and on television. (609)258-0590 As it tumed out, this particular accu- jmadison(

THE NEW REPUBLIC : AUGUST 27 & SEPTEMBER 3, 2001 : 41 I Bendit, got nowhere at all back in Ger- moments. And it had become fashion- every note of 1960s mayhem. The Fischer many. The kindergarten in Frankfurt and able to take the social and cultural prob- affair merely seemed to recapitulate in m the parents who had sent their children lems of our own time and to blame those real life what Houellebecq had already there and the children themselves were problems on the radicalism of the earlier imagined in his novel, down to the figure m too well-knovni, and their refutations period, as exemplified in its extremes. of Bettina Rohl, the distressed ehild of a proved deeisive. Besides, the experiment This partieular fashion may sound New Left terrorist, who seemed to have 70 m in anti-authoritarian education was con- familiar to American ears, but in Eur- stepped from his own pages. (If she had •0 ducted on a big scale in Germany in the ope in the later lS90s it acquired a tonal- only read a bit ftirther in Cohn-Bendit's c 1970s and afterward, and large numbers it)' all its own, without any American eeho Le Grand Bazar, she might have dug up 03 of Germans had spent their infant years or equivalent. The new tonality consisted a few sentences about group sex, too, and waddling through the hallways of that of—this was the strange part-youthful- The Elementary Particles would have experiment and had come away under- ness, instead of age. There was a stj'lish replayed itself in full.) standing its goals and its methods as well young people's pining for a long-ago era In the early months of 2001, then, it as the sillier dogmas and the fads— of order and hierarehy, when ever>' per- hardly mattered if any particular aeeu- the essays of Adorno ornamenting ever\' son occupied his allotted place, and rules sation against Fischer or Cohn-Bendit anti-authoritarian classroom, that sort of were rules, and culture and language and tumed out to be unfounded. Either way, thing. Familiarity bred respect (and per- relations between the sexes were properly true or false, the accusations afforded a haps a tolerant smile). To hang Cohn- fixed, and not, as they are today, so satisfying pleasure to anyone who felt a Bendit on the basis of a single bad- damnably fluid. The young people who nostalgia for the exeellent soeial order of sounding sentenee in a book that no one indulged in that partieular nostalgia long ago, and a resentment at the radieals remembered anjmore did seem more yearned, in short, for the 1950s. (They who had so rudely overthrown the order than a trifle opportunistie. Fven some of could hardly yearn for the 1940s.) And in question. That was true in Germany the conservative politicians in Germany sinee nostalgie yearning alwa>'S turns out just as in France. Feelings were expressed, spoke up for Cohn-Bendit's probit\'. to be, on its obverse, an indignant pro- even if truths were not told. The aeeusa- In Franee, a number of people likeviise test, the people who pined for the 1950s tions eonstituted, as July put it, a "set- rebutted the insinuation, and right away, ended up raging against the 1960s, amus- tling of accounts with the generation of too. The host of a book-chat show on ing themselves with indignant recita- 1968." And so the accusations and even Freneh television reealled that Cohn- tions of every scandalous outrage that was the smears spread from Germany to Bendit had appeared on a panel in 1977 to committed—and even a few that were not France and outward to Britain and Italy diseuss his book, and none of the other eommitted—by their own parents and and, in some degree, around the world, guests, not even the Catholic conservative, older siblings. on the basis of a eultural anxiety that had had thought to raise such an issue. It was You could describe their complaints as a nothing to do with the petty ideological pointed out that L'E3q)ress, which made right-wing reaction. That may overstate and local concerns of Greens and Christ- such a eonvenient fuss over the accusa- the case, though. Mostly the young reae- ian Democrats and other politieians in tion in 2001, had reviewed Cohn-Bendit's tionaries wanted to stamp their feet. As Germany who fretted over the career of book when it originally came out and July pointed out, hardly anyone actually the statesman Joschka Fischer. had found nothing objectionable at the wanted to roll back the social and cultural time. And yet in Franee—and in other achievements ofthe New Left era. To send ND THEN, HAVING floated Up- eountries, too—the aeeusation about ped- women back to the kitchen, to resume the ward into the airj' zones of cultural ophilia, onee it crept into the press, turned persecution of homosexuals, to return to A anxiety, the Fiseher afFair sud- out to be a big event. Nasty journalists the days of secrecy about ehild molesting, denly sank into the eonerete terrain of law. in the newspapers and at the television to resurrect the old superstitions about The legal issue eame up at the trial of a studios felt they could attach any sort of race, or to reeonstruet the European im- New Left terrorist named Hans-Joachim horrendous story or fantasy to the famous perialisms (to name a few of the aneient Klein, who happened to be an old friend face from 1968, and have a swell time customs and social structures that had of Fischer's and Cohn-Bendit s in Frank- doing it, and feel no shame at all. Among been overthrown in the course ofthe New furt, from their days in Revolutionary journalists, sueh are the joys. Besides, Left era)—no one seriously wanted to do Struggle in the early and middle 1970s. newspapers must be sold and viewers any of that. To undo the reforms of an The Fischer affair was a tale of people attracted. earlier age is always possible, if enough who had undergone life changes so vast as people feel suitably motivated; but the to be incomprehensible to outsiders. And III. nostalgics ofthe 1990s merely wanted to among those many left-wing changelings, reel vvith horror, and in that way to fend Klein was the king of kings. As a young UT THE MAIN reason the smear off the anxieties ofthe present age. man he had worked as an auto mechanic. about Cohn-Bendit spread in The writer Michel Houellebecq had He used to repair Cohn-Bendit's car. He B France and in a few other countries a big success in 1998 in France, then in followed Fiseher to street demonstrations. had to do with something more than yel- Germany and elsewhere, with a novel He was one of the militants running to low journalism. Serge July, the editor of about the horrors of the 1960s called join Fischer in the grainy photographs Liberation (and a Maoist from the good The Elementary Particles (whieh came out from 1973—a tough eharaeter, not at all old days), put his finger on that reason in the United States two years later). And loath to mix it up with what we Americans right away. The insinuation lingered be- his blood-curdling portraits ofthe radical used to call "the pigs." The terrorist wave cause, in Franee and in some other coun- weirdness of yore, eombined with a sen- rose in Germany, and Klein was carried tries, it had lately become fashionable to timental yearning for 1950s-style fam- aloft on the foam. When Sartre responded hold up for inspection the radicalism of ily life, eombined with his ever-popular to Meinhof's letter by agreeing to visit the period around 1968, and to seareh out scenes of modern sex orgies, aeeounted Baader in the Stammheim prison, Klein the wildest episodes, some of which were for Houellebecq's success. Disgusting sex- served as his driver. vn\d enough, and to identify- the radieal- ual eruelty in the name of liberation, eult But he was no mere chauffeur. By then ism as a whole with its most extreme manias, radical murders: his book bit Klein was a secret soldier in a guerrilla

42 ; AUGUST 27 &- SEPTEMBER 3, 2001 organization ealled the Revolutionar>- But before the trial reached its end, Fis- which she plainly stated that she had spent Cells, whieh was allied loosely with the eher was ealled to testify, not in his capac- a "few days" in the early 1970s living in Red Army Fraction and more tightly with ity as foreign minister but as a private the Revolutionary Struggle house. She vis- the Popular Front for the Liberation of citizen. He was asked about his relation- ited the house out of curiosity. She wanted Palestine. One ofthe master achievements ship to Klein back in New Left times. Fis- to see who these Revolutionary Struggle of the Revolutionary Cells was to help cher explained that in those days he tried people were. She did see them, including coordinate the Palestinian attaek on the to talk Klein out of joining the terrorists. Fischer himself. This awkward bit of in- Israeli athletes at the Munieh 01>'mpies And when Fischer had finished making formation emerged in the aftermath of in 1972. A New Leftist from Frankfurt his statement, he walked over to Klein in Fischer's testimony, and Fischer had to made the arrangements. And in 1975 his defendant's ehair and shook the man's aeknowledge that Margrit Schiller's asser- Klein and the Revolutionary Cells joined hand. The handshake seemed innocent tion must have been correct. with Carlos the Jackal, the Argentine enough, given that, as Fischer had just tes- The discrepancy did not seem espeeially terrorist, to attaek, in the name of "the tified, Klein was an old friend, and the old damning. All kinds of visitors were always Aj-ab revolution," a meeting of OPEC oil friend had long ago denounced his own traipsing through the house in Frankfurt. ministers in Vienna. Three people were crimes and was now about to expiate Abbie Hoffman was there; Jerry Rubin killed. Klein was shot in the stomach and them. Even so, ne?ct day in the Bundestag, eame to visit. Who eould remember every the shoulder, but he and Carlos and last person who had ever stopped some of the others made their by? But the news about a Red Army eseape in a plane to Algeria. Fraetion woman only managed to As time went on, though, Klein underline yet again how elose Fis- refleeted on what he had done. cher, in his younger days, had been And having refleeted, he made the to the terrorists. And the revelation grave decision of deserting his ter- gave an opening to the prosecutor rorist comrades. He renounced his at the Klein trial. The prosecutor own activities and denounced the had already shown a nasty hostility terrorist doctrine. He fled under- to Fischer during his testimony; he ground from the underground, had even been rebuked for it by the hiding equally from the police and judge. Now the prosecutor charged the Revolutionary Cells and all the Fischer with perjury. The Bun- other terrorists, who would surely destag was put in the position of have killed him, given the chance. having to decide whether to lift (There was a case in West Ger- Fiseher's ministerial immunitj' and many of left-wing terrorists mur- allow him to be tried on the per- dering one of their deserters.) Klein jury charge. sought out his old ftiends who, So Fiseher faced a legal prob- unlike himself, had never taken the lem, and not just a publie relations plunge into armed activity, and he problem or a politieal problem, in pleaded his case, and they helped the wake of those many aeeusa- him. Cohn-Bendit was one ofthose tions and scandals and insinua- people, together viith the French tions. And with one scandal piling "New Philosopher" Andre Glueks- on another, the photographs, the mann, who had been a well-known resurrected accusations, the new visitor at Fischer's and Cohn- aeeusations, the denials, the re- Bendit's Revolutionary' Struggle tractions, the outright smears, the house in Frankfurt. Cohn-Bendit undeniable acquaintance with and Glueksmann and the handful more than one authentie bomb- of other people who aided Klein thrower, and finally the perjury rather admired him for having Hans-Joacliini Klein at liis ti i.il, Jaiuidi y 2001 charge-with all of that, the gen- reconsidered his violence and for eral public was bound to gaze on speaking out against his own eomrades, Fischer was asked to explain himself Fischer with a nervous apprehension. the terrorists. There was worse. In the course of his What kind of man eould this Josehka Fis- His friends helped him to settle in testimony, Fischer was accused of having eher be? People did have to wonder. Franee. Sometimes they paid his rent. harbored people from the Red Army Frae- Fiseher's evolution was plainly a lot They tried to keep up his spirits. He lived tion in his house. The accusation inftiri- stranger and more extreme than might in a little Norman village. He even wrote a ated him. He told the court: "Next we will have seemed to be the case. He was not just book, and he granted a clandestine inter- hear that Daniel Cohn-Bendit and I orga- a peacenik politician who in the ftillnesso f view to Cohn-Bendit for a television docu- nized World War III in that house!" He time had metamoi-phosed into a NATO mentary. In 1998, though, just three days wanted to draw a thick line between his supporter—as had been widely believed, before he was going to turn himself in own leftism and the terrorists—to show given his origins in the Greens. His politi- under an arrangement that Cohn-Bendit that in those days you eould have been a cal origins reached back to the era befbre had helped to broker, Klein was traeked revolutionary militant and still not have there was any such thing as a Green. He down by the French police, who delivered had any truek with murderers and kidnap- was a street-fighting militant, someone on him to the German authorities. His trial pers. But Fischer's insistence on this point the fringe of terrorist New Leftism, a in Germany took place, by unhappy co- turned out to be untrue. A woman named rough-and-ready revolutionary, who then incidence, just as the Fischer affair got Margrit Schiller, who had served jail time became a Green, and then a NATO sup- under w'ay in January 2001. He was sen- fbr her eonneetions to the Red Arm\' Frac- porter, someone who had ehanged his col- tenced to nine years. tion, wrote an autobiography in 1999, in ors not onee but twice—or who knew how

THE NEW REPUBLIC : AUGUST 27 & SEPTEMBER 3, 2001 : 43 I many times?—someone whose histor\' T WAS A nagging worry about the ex-radicals from the 1960s, a right-wing was populated with tough and sinister radicalism of the years around 1968 newspaper columnist! The most amazing m characters from the left-wing underworld. I and its crazier episodes. Even some vote of support eame from Fischer's own of us who went through a few of those victim, the white-helmeted policeman in m IV. episodes ean hardly believe, looking back, the photographs from 1973, whose name that such things could have taken place. turned out to be Rainer Marx. Fiseher m IDN'T THE SEVERAL mysteHes Might not a few dark after-effeets from telephoned Marx to apologize for the •o of his past political life suggest those days have lingered into the present? gruesome beating in the Frankfurt park- c (as his politieal enemies insisted) You could find yourself worrying that ing lot, and Marx found admiring words 03 D I— that Fischer might, in fact, be a man with- question even without pining for the arca- to say about Fischer's conduct of foreign )-^ out character? Didn't his politieal zig- dia ofthe 1950s. Out ofthe dark violence policy. Nor did Fiseher seem to be collaps- n zags reveal a Machiavelli of the worst of the student left of three deeades ago, ing in the polls. sort? A man desperate for power, someone might not a faintly criminal stain, a shifti- who would adopt any position whatsoever, ness, maybe a touch of ruthlessness, have UT THERE WAS Something about if only it would bring him what he wanted? crept across certain personalities and left Fischer's abilit\'to survive the scan- That was how Fischer began to seem in an indelible mark? Bdal that aroused still other worries, other countries, including in our own far- The worry went well beyond poor old nameless and deep, touehing on matters away part of the world. Even before the Fiseher at the foreign ministr>'. In Ger- well beyond the mayhem ofthe New Left. seandal broke, Fischer was presented in many under the Red-Green eoalition, a For what might it say about Germany if, The New York Times Magazine by the greater number of veterans of the New faced with some hair-raising accusations German pundit Josef Joffe as "a bit of a Left had risen to power than in any other and the dreadfiil photographs, the Ger- Forrest Gump," someone whose "busi- eountry among the big Western powers- man people ended up supporting their ness" is "self-reinvention"—whieh sounded risen through the Greens or else through foreign minister with more enthusiasm friendly enough, until you stopped to the Soeiat Demoerats, where some of the instead of less? What would it mean if the think about it. New Left Marxists, having abandoned worse Fiseher seemed, the more he was Then the waves of seandal rolled in, their revolutionary leftism, eventually applauded? Americans have had some and Roger Cohen ofthe Tintes, one ofthe found a home. Gerhard Sehroder, the experienee with that kind of question. The paper's most astute correspondents, duly ehaneellor, used to be something of a Clinton sex scandal hit its stride in the reported in the news section that Fischer radical socialist himself, before making same year that Fiseher beeame foreign was, in faet, "a man of startling changes, his way into the safely popular regions of minister, and week by week Clinton's not least in his \iews on the use of force," Social Democracy's "Third Way." Sueh was personal behavior was revealed in ever which was certainly true. But the star- the long march through the institutions. more pornographic detail. Most Ameri- tling changes were bound to arouse a few So Fischer, in all his flashiness, proved eans seemed to recognize intuitively that worries about the man, especially if he to be a representative figure in these mat- their president's sex life had followed an was Forrest Gump. Some ofthose worries ters. That was why it was reasonable to ancient if undistinguished tradition of eropped up on the Times editorial page, think of the Fischer affair as the trial of husbandly wandering, and had no bear- whose editors felt suffieiently upset by the the generation of 1968—to see in it a ehal- ing on state poliey or the fate ofthe nation, incriminating photographs and by some lenge to an enormous eohort of people and was finallyno t the publie's business— of the aeeusations to devote a small com- who had fashioned their personal charac- which was why Clinton's popular ratings mentar>- to the afFair. The Times editors ters in the years of New Left rebellion. remained high, and rose even higher eoneluded that Fiseher, in their words, And it did seem, for a while, that the chal- when his persecutors had their say. "should be allowed to eontinue serving his lenge was going to prevail, and that Fis- Yet Clinton's conservative enemies, country"—which was not too surprising, eher would sooner or later have to accept some of them, saw in his behavior some- given that his foreign policy had been con- the priee of his young man's wildness, thing much more worrisome. They saw troversial in Germany precisely in the hang his head in shame, and submit his a shadow of the 1960s and its radieal degree to which it coincided with that of resignation, just as his enemies were subversion of (as they imagined it) basie the United States. Not quite satisfied, dearly hoping. morahty, a left-wing undermining of eter- however, the editors added the cautionary But not so fast. The letters pages of nal principles of behavior, a menaee to phrase "barring more damaging revela- German newspapers began to fill with dis- civilization. The right-wing accusation tions"—as if one more telling photograph, patches from middle-aged worthies from against the radiealism of the 1960s has or one persuasive proof that he did tell the business world and the learned profes- always been a bit more shrill and intense people to throw Molotov cocktails baek sions who confessed that they, too, had in the United States than in Europe, in 1976, might have tipped the balance waged the revolution back in the years and as the Clinton scandals unfolded, the against him. around 1968, and then had grown up and conservatives in America gi'ew ever more And who could blame the editors for had sanded down the sharp edge of their upset, not just at the sinning president having registered their earefiil reserva- views, just as Fiseher had done, and Ger- but at the all-tolerant American publie. tion? For if Fiseher were, in truth, a man many's foreign minister ought not to be What eould it mean, the eonservatives had without principles, a man whose history persecuted for what happened long ago. to ask, that Clinton's legal situation was consisted of shadows and hidden crimes The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a tottering and his public support was firm- and whose business was self-reinvention, conservative paper, published an essay bj' ing up? His popularitv' seemed to hint at there would have been reason enough to the poet Charles Simic shaking his head something monstrous: that Ameriea had fret over the power that he eould wield over the hypoerisies of eonservative indig- been corrupted in its ethics by the horrible from his desk at the foreign ministr\- in nation. If only Fiseher had become a radicals ofthe 1960s. The American pub- Berlin. But it was also obvious that, be- stockbroker or a college professor, Simie lic seemed to have sunk into a swamp of neath the day-to-day politics, a deeper observed, nobody at all would have com- moral indifferenee, even depravity. Right worry was all along trailing through this plained about his left-wing background. and wrong had disappeared into a marshy affair. If only he had become, like so many haze. And the conservatives grew wide-

44 : AUGUST 27 & SEPTEMBER 3, 2001 eyed in astonishment and horror. the Fischer affair went leaping from coun- language of democracy and freedom that The deeper worry that ran through the try to eountry, arousing different eontro- had no more human content than the Fischer affair had something in eommon versies in each new place. It was mad eow old-fashioned rhetoric of Lebensraum vvith that eonservative American fear, only disease in the form of an argument about and Aiyan superiority. And so the New in a German version that seemed infi- the past. It turned out to be a rather useful Left in its youthful anxiety found its way to nitely more sinister. Some ofthe eommen- argument, too. Questions were raised; an old and mostly expired panie from its taries on the Fiseher affair made the quiet perhaps a few lessons were learned. And parents' generation, and bent over it, and suggestion that, if Germany's foreign min- what were those lessons? I will give my fanned the dead embers, and breathed on ister were shown to be a man without faraway, trans-Atlantic interpretation. them, and watched aghast as the ancient character, and if the Germans ended up The New Left was a young people's flames leaped up anew. applauding him anyway, as did seem to be movement motivated by fear. Naturally, In eaeh country where the New Left happening, it was because, in Germany, not just by fear. New Leftists all over the happened to flourish, the revived panic any number of people were living in the world knew very well that, in the dee- over a newly discovered, cleverly dis- shadow of their own shaniefiil political ades after World War II, European impe- guised, .still-flourishing Nazism seemed pasts, and the country was long ago shorn rialism was steadily collapsing around the to be confirmed by strietly local circum- of its ability to make moral judgments, world and eertain kinds of social progress stances, each countiy in its own fashion. and nothing was to be done about it. Such were advancing nicely in the Western Franee in the early 1960s kept trembling was the implication, quietly hinted. Ger- countries, and might go on advancing, on the brink of a right-wing eoup d'etat, many: a eountry ineapable of looking too, given a proper left-wing push. Uto- and right-wing bombs exploded in cen- things square in the face. Germany: a pian cheerfulness wiis a sunbeam that fell tral Paris, and French soldiers and police country unwilling to confront its own his- here and there. Yet fear swallowed all. It committed massacres and atroeities in tory. And, to be sure, in Germany's ease, was a fear that, at least in the Western Algeria, and a black cloud ofthose events something in that suggestion did eateh the countries, soeial progress rested on a lie, hung over France well into the 1970s. In eye. a fear that prosperity was theft, and West- Italy, the New Leftists looked at their own Watching the Fischer affair unfold ern wealth was Third World exploitation; neighborhoods and sehools and even at through the early months of 2001 was like a fear that Western civilization comprised their own families and saw with perfeet studying a painting where your attention a system of manipulation designed to mis- aeeuraey that the social structures and first focuses on the main subject at the lead its own people and everyone else— eultural habits and ways of thought from eenter ofthe canvas, and then you begin an iron cage cleverly designed to resemble Mussolini times had merely been covered to notiee the baekground and how inter- the open air of freedom. over, as with a drop cloth. But no one esting it is, and then you notice, refleeted The social optimism of the New Left gazed at the everyday vistas before their in a piece of metal or seen through a win- drew on visible realities of world history, eyes with more pain and anger than the dow, a second background, wbich you can and so, too, did the fear. New Leftists all New Leftists of West Germany. barely see. The main subject in the Fischer over the world looked at the United States. affair was a simple political scandal ofthe They saw that America's ancient preju- HE NEW LEFTISTS there could see present day involving a well-regarded gov- dices against blacks had eome under chal- all too elearly that West Germany's ernment minister. But the scandal was set lenge. But the spectacle of Ameriea trying TeonseiTative parties were comfort- against a background consisting of events to reform itself succeeded only in reveal- ably maintaining quite a few continuities from twenty-five or thirty years ago, fi om ing how persistent were the ancient preju- with right-wing eustoms of the past, the time of the New Left. The Fiseher diees, and therefore how limited and false and that big-time industrial figures from affair invited us, even required us, to make must be America's claim on democratic Nazi times were big-time industrial fig- a few judgments about that background. virtue. New Leftists gazed also at Viet- ures still, and that society had not entirely But the New [.^ft background turned nam. The fighting there had the look of a changed hands. Even the gas chambers out, on closer inspection, to have a back- colonial war in an extremely ugly ver- retained a patriotic luster in the eyes of ground of its owii, barely visible, which sion—a war no less racist under the Amer- many a knuckleheaded West German eur- was the Germany of long before. Not the icans than under the French imperialists, mudgeon, sueh that when the New Left- generation of 1968, but the generation of exeept with a Madison Avenue smarmi- ists niarehed in the streets, here and there 1938. Not the New Left, but the Nazis. The ness ("defense of the free world") and an orneiy old burgher could be counted whole difliculty in making sense of the a terrifying industrial faee. American on to mutter, "You should go to the gas affair was to figure out what possible tale bomber planes overhead and cone-hatted chambers!'—more or less the way that or narrative could account for all three of rice fanners down below made an unbear- in the United States some Neanderthal those elements: today's foreign minister in able spectacle. And the smarmy slogans throwback to the McCarthy era would the foreground, the New Left behind him, together with the old-fashioned race always be heekling, "Go baek to Russia!" and, half-hidden, the background of the hatreds and the technological ghiistli- (And we Amerieans thought we had it background, yesterday's yesterday, bathed ness—all of this aroused a dread, finally, bad.) In most eountries, when the New in darkest shadow. that pointed to the terrors ofthe past. Leftists deseribed their enemies as Nazis, It was a fear, in sum, that in World War they knew that Nazism was a figure of V. II, fascism, and more specifically Nazism, speeeh. But West Germany was beyond had not been defeated after all—a fear metaphor. VERYONE KNOWS WHAT the Naz- that Nazism, by mutating, had continued The New Leftists there noticed that ism of the 1930s and 1940s was. to thrive into the 1950s and 1960s and even the socialists had made their peace E But what was the New Lefl of the onward, always in new disguises. It was a with German soeiety, and that no one in 1960s and 1970s, in its motives, instinets, fear that Nazism had grown into a modern the Social Democratic Party seemed to be and goals, in its spirit? The decades come system of industrial rationality geared to trying too hard to root out the holdovers and go, and on that question no eonsen- irrational goals—a Nazism of racial super- from Nazi times. Such were their obser- sus has been achieved, none at all, not in stitions committing the same mjLssacres vations. Maybe they were unjust. Some- Europe and not in America. That was why as in the past, a Nazism declaiming a times they were on the mark. Of the

THE NEW REPUBLIC : AUGUST 27 & SEPTEMBER 3, 2001 : 45 I many erimes commifted by the Red Army mattered about the crypto-Nazism of Leftists are estimated to have enlisted in Fraction, the most famous of all was the modem life and how to confront it, the the minuscule retro-Marxist sects, Trot- cold-blooded execution of Hans-Martin arguments that finally did lead to violence sk>ist or Stalinist (though the Stalinists Schleyer, the president of the West Ger- or that led away—those arguments broke called themselves Maoists), which is no man employers' federation, who turned down along lines that, in their origins, had small number, if you eonsider that enlist- out to have been a top SS oflieer in Prague very little to do with tactics. They were ing meant accepting the rigors of party 70 during the Nazi occupation. And with a arguments about worldviews, about what diseipline and not just sending in a dues m disguised Nazism apparently in command it meant to be a leftist and what sort of pavment or showing up at a meeting now c at home and across the Western world world the left wanted to create—philo- and then. U3 circa 1968, the need for an extremely radi- sophical argimients, you could say. Those I do not know exactly how many people cal resistance seemed to er>' out from every particular arguments tended to remain embarked on that sort of project in West stone. What was New Leftism, then? It somewhat muted in the early years ofthe Germany, but the figureswoul d have been was—it pictured itself as—Nazism's oppo- New Left, when tempers were relatively larger, much larger. The yearning for a site and nemesis: the enemy of the real cool and the student movement was eon- heroie Marxist past—for the heroic past Nazism, the Nazism that had survived tent to remain a student movement. that had failed in Germany to be suffi- Nazism, the Nazism that was built into But the heat rose season by season, ciently heroic, that had failed to beat the foundations of Western life. And how and by 1969 or thereabouts the New Left down the Nazi challenge—became irre- did the New Left intend to act on that had lost any sense of balance that it might sistible in the German student movement. idea, with what tools and what ideas? onee have had—lost its balanee beeause Rosa Luxemburg, the martyr, became a the Vietnam War had intensified and the goddess. And the students were drawn to HE COMMENTATORS ON Fischer anti-eolonial movement seemed about to old-fashioned Marxism for another rea- and his photographs and his terror- erupt in soeial and raeial eataclysms here son. The New Left in West Germany had Tist acquaintances, in looking back and there around the world, and because originally taken shape in response to the on those years, tended to shrink the New a good many New Leftists had by then Federal Republies banning in 1956 ofthe Left and its practical and philosophical undergone their own unhappy run-ins West German Communist Party, a politi- quandaries into a straightforward argu- with the police, which led to dizzy spells cal event that allowed the students to feel ment about violence and non-violenee— of rage and tantrum. And the movement that a heritage from the past had been about tactics, by and large. And, having lost its old tranquility beeause many a denied them: the heritage that was flower- divided the movement along taetieal lines, simple-souled aetivist wanted to make the ing (they liked to imagine) in the part of the eommentators wanted to know: was transition from student to grown-up and Germany that was struggling against the Fischer in his hotheaded youth a good stop fiddling around—wanted to put Nazi legacy, in the morally superior part, New Leftist, meaning non-violent, or together an adult movement capable of the egalitarian and civilized part—in the (as the photographs and the accusations wrestling the old society to the ground. other part, that is: in East Germany. made seem likely) a bad New Leftist? But those questions, asked head-on, were VI. HE PRINCIPAL WEST GERMAN never going to shed much light on the man Student movement happened to be himself or on the movement. This was be- N EACH COUNTRY around the world, Tcalled SDS (which, coincidentally, eause New Leftism in its fear and its panic some of the central figures from the were also the initials of the prineipal was always a super-emotional movement, I student ranks, having grown older American organization ofthe New Left). and the charged sentiments undid any and more frustrated, set out to do just In 1969, under the pressure ofthe revolu- ehanee for lucid diseussion, and the argu- that, mostly by trving to organize a fijll- tionaiy mood and the worldwide student ments for violence and non-violence kept seale revolutionarj' movement, something uprising, the German SDS dissolved. The slipping illieitly into one another's arms, that could no longer be described as a students from that organization, in their though you wouldn't think it possible. young person's merry carnival. Only what search for an adult polities, went about In our own country, to cite a humbling could that mean in the world of 1969 and forming any number of brand-new example, some of the most notoriously the early 1970s? A revolutionary move- Marxist-Leninist parties—a new party in violent street protests of the late 1960s ment? In what fashion? In the Western eveiy city, it sometimes seemed. That be- and early 1970s, during the mass mobi- countries the New Left, stroking its chin, eame a big tendeney in West Germany, lizations against the war in Vietnam, contemplated three main alternatives. bigger there than in France and the other w ere led by the die-hard opponents of all The crudest of those alternatives, the countries ofthe West. violence whatsoever—by militants of ab- least imaginative, was simply to revert to And yet retro-Marxism was never New solute paeifism who, in their Christian the old-fashioned seetarian Marxism of Leftism's main impulse. A much larger zeal, chose to stand shoulder to shoulder the 19.30s and to go about fightingNazis m number of people took up the seeond with the helmeted warriors of sidewalk in exactly the way that people had done in alternative, a Marxism that was distinetly mayhem. And the helmeted warriors ran the past, by organizing diseiplined, Leniu- ofthe 1960s and 1970s: the Marxism of into the street and did what even the paei- ist stnietures based on obedience, dedica- Castro, Che, Ho, and Mao, mixed with a fists expected them to do. Were the paci- tion, and self-sacrifice, the dream words of few doctrines of the Frankfurt School. fists good and the window-smashers bad? the Great Depression, and in this manner This was a modern Marxism, free of You may think so, but those people were to sink into a sepia-toned memor>' of retro touches. The people who took it up arm-in-arm, and their differences shriv- long ago. Leftism, too, can be a nostalgia sometimes went about organizing mili- eled at times to such tiny proportions as to cult. (Leftism may be the greatest nostal- tant parties of their ovvn, but mostly they seem mere variations in style, the pious gia cult of all.) Resurrecting the 1930s cultivated their radical aspirations in a and the polite over here, the blasphemous turned into quite an enormous campaign cheerfiilly provisional mood, awaiting the and the rude over there, each eomplicit around the world. Even in the United arrival of the true, well-organized revo- with the other: good cop, bad cop. States, where the Marxist and Leninist lutionary partv' of the future, and mean- The tnily fundamental debates within traditions were venerable but never espe- while biding their time in the agreeable the New Left, the arguments that really eially strong, some fifteen thousand New fashion of the young. "Please, God, make

46 : AUGUST 27 & SEPTEMBER 3, 2001 me ehaste, but not yet!" Modern Marx- furt after his expulsion from France, he ism was for this reason mostly a left-wing was surprised by how great the Stalinist milieu without formal struetures or cen- influence on the German left was, by how tral commands or any way of coordinat- little the German radicals knew about the ing itself—a big milieu, though. true nature of eommunism.) The phrase INEW As for New Leftism's third alternative, "visceral anti-communism" would have it was fiindamentally anarchist—a lib- sounded terrible, even fascistie, in the ears ertarian impulse that sometimes drew of many a person in the movement; but IREPUBLIC on the nineteenth-centur>' pamphlets of Cohn-Bendit was happy with the phrase Bakunin and Kropotkin, sometimes on and applied it to himself. He filled his the early-twentieth-century writings of writings with all kinds of angry denun- Anton Pannokoek and the councilists, eiations of the Soviet Union and Lenin WE sometimes on the contemporary but and the Marxist-Leninist political tradi- equally obseure pamphlets ofthe "auton- tion. Le Grand Bazar, the book that got WOULD omists" in Italy and the Socialism or Bar- him in so much trouble in the early barism group and the Situationists in months of 2001, was largely an anti- France. But most often it drew on nothing Communist tract. LIKE at all, on a breeze blowing through the Then again, in the spirit of ineonsis- university neighborhoods and on rumors teney, even Cohn-Bendit made himself at YOUR from the California counterculture. home with all kinds of people who could The libertarianism was typieally less never have postulated anti-communism than libertarian. It was anarehist-lean- as a New Left principle. Those were his HELP! ing—or, as the French say, anarchisant— limitations. Or perhaps those were the cultural more than political, oblivious to limitations of the movement: Cohn- economics, a libertarianism under eon- Bendit would have cut himself off from an If there is a newsstand stant siege by the doctrines of the retro- enormous number of people if he had or bookstore Marxists and especially of the modern insisted on anti-Communist principles at Marxists—a libertarianism that turned ever}' moment. He was a great fan of the in your neighborhood out to he, as a result, blithely inconsistent. freak seene in the United States, which The anarchisants of the New Left kept he instinctively knew to be anarchist at that does not sell falling for the Third Worldist fantasies of heart, allergic to bureaucracies, allergic to the modern Marxists, kept wanting to cel- anything like a Mamst-Leninist eentral- THE NEW REPUBLIC, ebrate Ho or some other tropical Commu- ized organization—a movement devoted nist as a hero ofthe libertarian eause—an to individual expression and to the expan- and you think it should, odd thing to do. The anarchisants spoke sion of personal freedom in every possible please let us know. about freedom and personal autonomy dimension, plus a few other dimensions. and, at the same time, nodded respectfully The freak scene in America was surely at the self-sacrifice of Che Guevara, whose the biggest of all the libertarian currents Either call us at unmentionable aehievenient was to have around the world in those years, and its established Soviet-style prison eamps in size and friskiness exeited his enthusiasm. 202331.7494 Cuba. An anarchist salt and a Marxist Ameriea's freaks and Hollywood's West- pepper, sprinkled together. erns were a sort of ideal fbr him. He rec- (ext. 3402) ommended their virtues in Le Grand Bazar. But then, Ameriea's freaks were or send an e-mail OHN-BENDIT SPOKE for this third just as ineonsistent as anyone else among iilternative. His own libertarian- message with the the New Left libertarians around the ism was more soph istieated, and C world, You could see the confusion in therefore more frankly anti-Communist, name and address of the someone such as Abbie Hoffman, whose than that of almost everyone else in the level of education in matters of left-wing newsstand or bookstore, New Left outside of the tiny, old-sehool lore was fairly low, and who therefore anarchist sects. He could draw on a solid tended to be rather gullible about Third along with acquaintance with the old-time anarchist World communism. Hopelessly gullible, groups and the revolutionary' tradition your name, to: in fact. Hoffman was an anarchist who that in France went baek to Proudhon, a knew zero about anarehism. venerable heritage. And the venerable [email protected] heritage did have its wisdom, which was No single phrase denoted the New Left's available to him even as a eollege student. libertarian current around the world. The Lenin's erimes were a revelation to eveiy- word that Fischer liked to use in West one in the left-wing world, it sometimes Germany (as I see from an interview that For customer service seemed, but they were no revelation to the he gave to Cohn-Bendit back in the heirs of Freneh anarchism. They already mid-1980s) was the humorously clunky problems or inquiries, knew the awftil truth. "anarcho-Mao-spontex"—an expressive please call Cohn-Bendit knew better than to sigh phrase covering all bases. "Anarcho" for the Popular Front. He was not a meant the old tradition of the anarchist our toll-free number: man for Mao buttons. He was a lot clearer movements of the past. "Mao" meant an than Fiseher on these questions, baek in imaginary Mao—a Mao who, unlike the 1.800.827.1289 the New Left days. (Cohn-Bendit has real Mao, was not a totalitarian. "Spon- explained that, when he arrived in Frank- tex" meant "spontaneist"—against formal

THE NEW REPUBLIC : AUGUST 27 & SEPTEMBER 3, 2001 : 47 I organizations and against the bureau- anarchist origin. Anarchism's share ofthe at all serious, did need a helping hand- cratic and militarj' diseipline ofthe Marx- violenee of the New Left was, even so, logistical support, militar>' training, a ist seets. Or, abbreviating, the doubly- strictly minimal. The bourgeois press had place to which hard-pressed guerrillas hyphenated phrase could be rendered as it wrong. The true inspiration for the could flee. And where to flnd that kind "sponti," which was Gennan for what we guerrilla or terrorist groups on the New of help if not from East Germany, or Americans meant by "freak," more or less. Left was overwhelmingly Marxist—not in Czechoslovakia, or Cuba, or some other 70 m The "sponti scene" in Frankfurt meant the retro-style of the traditional Marxist country ofthe Soviet bloe, or else from one •a the housing squatters whom Fiseher organizations (traditional Marxism, dat- of the Arab eountries that enjoyed Sov- c used to lead around the streets, together ing back to Marx, always regarded terror- iet backing? And what is logistical support CD with the "alternative" journals such as ism with absolute disdain), but in the if not moral support? Cohn-Bendit's Pflasterstrand, or "Under modern style. That was definitely how the guerrilla the Pavement, the Beach!" The sponti The modern Marxists looked on life argument ran in West Germany. Mein- scene meant the teachers at the "anti- in the Western eountries as hopelessly hof's defense of tenorism leaned on the authoritarian" sehools, the street-eorner tainted and on Western societ>' as inher- Frankfurt School Marxists, who were not layabouts, the politicized dope-smokers, ently dreadful. They subseribed to tbe especially friendly to the Soviets and and the avant-garde in the arts, except for eeonomie analyses of dependeiiey theoiy, sometimes were quite hostile; but on the the people who eould more comfortably fit aeeording to which the Western exploita- Soviet question Meinhof drew her own under a label of eonventional Mamst—a tion of everj-body else around the world conclusions, which were positive. The big scene, block after block in Frankfurt appears to be unavoidable, owing simply Soviet Union: a progressive force in worid and Berlin, the sponti eapitals. to the laws of economic survival under historv'. Really, how eould she think other- I do not mean to suggest that those capitalism, and not to some streak of wise? The East Gennan secret serviees three grand tendencies of the New eruelty or thoughtlessness that could be paid good money to keep the Red Army Left, post-1968—retro-Marxists, modern overcome. The modern Marxists, having Fraetion afloat in West Gemiany, and Marxists, ineonsistent libertarians—kept studied their Frankfiirt Sehool texts, saw there was every reason to feel grateftil. themselves in neatly separated columns. in Western culture an impermeable wall The gap between the New Left terror- Events and fads came in torrents, and of total oppression. Hopelessly exploita- ists in their modern Marxist version and atop the waves people bobbed about tive in economic matters, hopelessly men- the New Left libertarians was, in a small from one tendency to another. Still, the dacious and manipulative in euhural word, big. The libertarians detested the debates that went on within the New Left, matters—that was Western societv. What Soviet Union, even if they deceived them- the erueial argument over violence and could anyone do but heave a bomb and selves about the un-Soviet nature of Com- non-violence, had to take plaee within cat- hope for the best? A proper bomb might munist regimes in tropieal regions ofthe egories of thought that were shaped by blow a hole in the Westem web of total world, about which everyone felt free to those fluid tendeneies. The outside world oppression. fantasize. The libertarians never imag- sometimes had a little trouble in making Some people did manage not to draw ined that Western society was hopelessly sense ofthe New Left for that reason. those partieular eonclusions. Herbert oppressive. The libertarians went about Marcuse himself stood up against the Red building the freak neighborhoods and the N THE TOPIC ofviolenee—back to Army Fraction, and did it in The New York sponti seene on the palpable assumption that now—it was a convention of Times to boot, just in case anyone might that Western soeiety, in its accordion flexi- Othe bourgeois press in the late fail to notice what position he was taking. bility, eould be stretched and squeezed 1960s and 1970s to take the notorious Still, the terrorist logic, such as it was, to play a few melodic variations on "alter- old label of "anarehist" and paste it across drew on a Marcusean soeial criticism: native" themes. The libertarians never every sort of left-wing seuffle, especially the criticism that saw no hope at all in expected to storm the Winter Palace. The the aets of terror. A volume of clips from Western soeiety. There was another line hippie-dippies—they were much too eul- The New York Times lies before me of argument: guerrilla action seemed a turally minded for that. The several mod- as I wTite, and I see the headlines and useful way to support the Third World ern Marxist reasonings that led to a New the phrases: "Anarchist Leaders Seized liberation fighters, who were guerrillas Left terrorism therefore tended to escape in Frankfurt" (announcing the 1972 arrest themselves. "Be like Che," the Fidelista them. of Andreas Baader and three other com- slogan, meant that you too should die Then again, like the Marxists, the lib- rades of the Red Army Fraction). Or a warrior. Then, too, in the ease of the ertarians did find themselves in a fury this, from the same year: "Miss Meinhof, Irish and Basque terrorists and a few over local events and foreign wars and the thirty-seven years old, has been consid- other people fighting miniature wars of state of modern life. They ehueked roeks ered the leading ideologist of an anar- national liberation, violenee offered an at the police, and the police clubbed them chist group ealling itself the Red Ainiy encouraging sign that Ireland or the back, and then some. That was P'ischer's Fraction " Basque countrv' or some other benighted experience: beaten by the poliee at a But the Red Army Fraction was not an province ofthe West might be able to slip demonstration in 1968. And from behind anarchist group, nor was anarchism a away into the Third World, where the their overturned cars and makeshift bar- main inspiration for New Left violenee. A sunny rays of a beautiftil soeial revolu- ricades, the libertarians, nursing their minor inspiration, yes. The June 2nd tion were far more likely to dawn. bniises, had to wonder: why stop at rocks? Movement in West Germany (which Or at Molotov cocktails? They seratehed kidnapped a Christian Democratic politi- UCH WERE MODERN Marxism's their long-haired heads. They were not eian), the Angrj' Brigade in Britain, and guerrilla arguments. They had the entirely resistant to the terrorist argu- the Direet Action group in Franee were Seurious effect of leading the guer- ment. So they dithered. That was the armed action groups that could plausibly rillas and the people who supported them eharaeteristie response. Meanwhile they claim an anarchist backgi'ound. Some of to look sviTipathetically on the Soviet labored at building their communes, the people in the Black Liberation Army Union, even if without mueh enthusiasm. kindergartens, food co-ops, new gender in the United States (which came out of The armed Marxist organizations in the relations, and other elements of the the Black Panthers) likewise invoked an Western countries, if they intended to be New Left Utopia in its counter-cultural

48 : AUGUST 27 & SEPTEMBER 3, 2001 version. Or else they followed the retro- resources poured in. And under those military organization, fighting Nazism in Marxist example and eolonized the fac- circumstances the New Left eame up vvith its modern disguises. The Revolutionary tories in search of proletarian followers. one more interpretation of the Middle Cells sent him for militarv' training in an They mooned nostalgically over the Eastern conflict, in which the New Left's Arab eountry. In his interview on this anarcho-syndicalist vision of a revolu- vision of a lingering Nazism of modern theme with Cohn-Bendit in the niid- tionarj' general strike. And they never life was suddenly re-configured, with 1980s, Klein did not speeify whieh eoun- did take the terrorist plunge. Or they Israel in a leading role. Israel became the try. But wherever it was, he was not happy. dipped a toe in and out. This was the situ- crypto-Nazi site par exeellenee, the purest He found himself in a military training ation in the eariy and mid-1970s. And at of all examples of how Nazism had ground where, in one part of the eamp, that moment the great blaek elouds of never been defeated but had instead lin- European leftists singing left-wing songs New Left moodiness and rage that had gered into the present in ever more cagey reeeived their anti-Zionist military train- been gathering for a good ten years began forms. What better disguise could Nazism ing, and, in another part, European fas- to break up, all over the Westem world. assume than a Jewish state? cists singing faseist songs reeeived their Israel thus advanced in the New Left own anti-Zionist military' training. VII. imagination into the vanguard of imperi- The Palestinian movement tumed out alist aggressors, and the Palestinian resis- not to be an anti-fascist or anti-Nazi HE MOOD CHANGED beeause the tanee into the front rank of modem anti- cause at all. It turned out to be an anti- United States began pulling out of Nazism. "We are all German Jews" came to Jewish cause. Klein was horrified. His TVietnam, beginning in 1972, which mean: our sympathies lie with the Pales- mother had been imprisoned for a while tamped down the New Left hysteria; and tinians. In West Germany, the shift of in Ravensbruck, the Nazi eamp, and died beeause President Nixon, who managed attitude in regard to Israel was probably later on from her sufferings there, when to incite panic everj'where he went, soon more pronounced than in other countries. he was still a liftle child. In his adult- enough began his long, slow fall from Israel's military triumph aroused a some- hood, he began to imagine, or perhaps to power. Watergate did wonders for democ- what ereepy excitement among German fantasize, that she was Jewish—a com- racy's prestige, and the refurbished pres- conservatives. The Bild Zeitung cele- mon fantasy among modern Germans. tige tamped down the hysteria still more. brated the Israeli general Moshe Dayan as That was why he abandoned the Revolu- Maybe America was not imredeemably a new Rommel, the "Desert Fox." Israel's tionary Cells and then went even further horrible, after all; maybe Hollywood's tanks were greatly admired. An efficient and accused his old eomrades among the Westerns and California's marvelous hip- army, at last! A Jewish Wehrmachtl And German guerrillas not just of having pies were the true Ameriea, and Riehard the student left recoiled. That was why, for betrayed the revolutionary ideal but of NLxon was part of a false America that a period in the late 1960s and early 1970s, being out-and-out anti-Semites. That was was going down to defeat. And just as a militant and angry opposition to Zion- a shocking accusation. those encouraging American trends were ism swelled into a main prineiple of the A good many French New Leftists went getting under way, two very shoeking student movement in Germany, as well through an identical turnabout, except developments took place, which quickly as elsewhere—why a young adventurer without having killed anyone first. The sobered up large numbers of people in the such as Joschka Fischer would have trav- French student movement never did gen- New Left all over the world, and perhaps eled in 1969 to exotic Algiers to attend a erate a hard-line Marxist tendeney ofthe the libertarians most of all. convention of the PLO, and might not sort that in West Germany prodiieed have batted an eye when the convention The first of those developments in- the Red Army Fraction and in Italy the solemnly voted to crush its enemy. volved the Palestinians and their struggle Red Brigades. I suppose that in Franee the against Zionism, and it requires a little libertarian currents in New Leftism were explanation. The war of Arab nationalism HE WHOLE OUTLOOK of anti- mueh too vigorous to allow such any sueh against Zionism had been going on sinee Zionism suddenly seemed to fit the thing to take shape. The main organized the turn of the twentieth century or even Tleft-wing worldview. On the other tendency to come out ofthe 1968 upris- earlier, and, in ideologieal terms, had hand, a theoretieal sympathy for the Pal- ings in France was, instead, a group called already fiip-flopped several times in the estinian eause brought the European the Proletarian Left, whieh was usually eyes of the European left, sueh that left- New I-eft into contact with aetual Pales- described as Maoist (and its members as wing had turned into right-wing, and vice tinian guerrillas, which, you might think, "Maos"), and whieh Cohn-Bendit liked to versa, and back again. The early Zionist would have transformed the budding described as outright Stalinist; but it was, settlers, being solid European socialists or new sympathies into sentiments of love more accurately, a Mao-spontex hodge- anarehists, basked in the sympathy of at and brotherhood—an intemational fra- podge—an old-fashioned Marxist organi- least some portions ofthe European left. temity of revolutionaries. But fraternity zation streaked with libertarian impulses. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, how- was hard to achieve. The Palestinians, (The Proletarian Left kept having to expel ever, the world Communist movement once they had beeome known, eeased to people who, because of those impulses, eame out in favor of the Arab resisters. be exotic. And as the European leftists got insisted on smoking their unproletarian Then, in the 1940s, both the Communists a eloser look, the New Left's instinetive hashish and muttering about Stalinists. I and the democratic left in Europe re- anti-Zionism—the interpretation that pit- spent a couple of weeks living in a com- turned to, or re-aflirmed, tlieir original ted heroic Palestinian resistance fighters mune with those people in Paris, and felt sympathy for Zionism—only to have against cleverly disguised Nazi Zionists- their pain.) things switeh again in the 1950s, when began to erumble. So the Proletarian Left, in its spontex Israel lined up as an ally ofthe British and That was the story behind the amazing ambivalenee, dithered on the road to ter- French imperialists. evolution of Fischer's friend Hans- ror. It was only in 1972, a late date by New The 1967 war, in which the Israelis Joachim Klein, the penitent terrorist. Left standards, when the French Maos seized a lot of land, seemed to confirm Klein had joined the Revolutionary Cells finally did their revolution ar}' duty ^nd Israel's imperialist nature. The Soviets in Germany and had united with Carlos kidnapped an assistant personnel director became fierce enemies of Zionism. Pales- believing that he was going to put his at a Renault faetory. They did it under the tinian Marxists stepped forward. Soviet mechanic's skills to good use in a left-wing rubric of the New People's Resistance,

THE NEW REPUBLIC ; AUGUST 27 & SEPTEMBER 3, 2001 : 49 whose very name raised the honorable old PLO, with the young Fiseher in atten- The terrorist actions at Munich in 1972 banner of anti-Nazism. The kidnapping dance, had voted the Zionist entity into and at Entebbe in 1976 were not the only m was halfhearted, though, and after a while extinction? Now he knew what it meant. examples, either. Klein announeed his the New People's Resistance let their vie- Fischer seems never to have gotten over turn against terrorism in 1977 by making tim go, without having reeeived a single the shock of Entebbe. Even in the early the sensational gesture of sending to Der sou in ransom. weeks of 2001, at the height ofthe scandal Spiegel a letter containing his own pistol m Half a year went by, and then the PLO's provoked by the photographs in Stem, the from the Vienna attaek and announcing "0 Black September group, with the Revo- memory ofthe Air Franee hijaeking came that the terrorists were planning on mur- c back to haunt him. He spoke to a reporter dering the leaders ofthe Jewish eommu- 00 lutionary Cells' helping hand, launched its attack on the Israeli athletes at the from that same magazine and cited the nities of Berlin and Frankfiirt. That was Munich Olympic Games. And the leaders hijaeking and especially the "seleetion" of no idle threat, either. Carlos in person, gun of the Proletarian Left in France, having .Tews as part of his Desillusionienmg with in hand, rang the doorbell ofthe scion of flinched at their ovvn violence, flinched the violent left. A few months later, in his Marks & Spencer in London and mur- at the Palestinian violence, too. The obvi- eapaeit}' as foreign minister of Germany, dered the man on the spot for no other ous truth that terrorist aetion means the he happened to be in Israel at the very crime than being a Jew. There was an murder of random persons for political moment when a terrorist blew up a Tel insane idea of murdering famous .Jewish aims suddenly beeame, to them, obvious. Aviv disco; he was close enotigh to hear musicians such as Artur Rubinstein and And the Freneh Maos, exactly like Klein, the blast. It was Fiseher, more than any Yehudi Menuhin. The discovery that some turned away in horror—not just at the other foreign minister or religious leader people in the terrorist brigades had actu- killings in Munieh and at the general or world figure of any sort, who took it ally descended into such thinking came as strategy of Palestinian ten'or, but also at upon himself to confront Arafat in per- a pretty severe blow to the muddle-headed their own intentions of launching similar son, who (so it has been reported) berated non-terrorists ofthe German New Left. campaigns at home.

OSCHKA FISCHER WENT thrOUgh a version of that same shock. The J recognition fell on him in July 1976, seven months after his friend Klein played his part in the assault at Vienna and shortly after the suieide (unless it was a murder) of Ulrike Meinhof. The Revolutionary Cells, acting on behalf of jailed Palestinian terrorists, hijaeked an Air France plane, took it to Entebbe in Uganda, and went about arranging a "selection" of passengers, Jews on one side, non-Jews on the other, with the Jews slated fbr execution. In that instance, an Israeli army unit, under the command of the young Ehud Barak, staged a spec- tacular raid and managed to rescue all but one ofthe hostages, though one Israeli soldier was killed. The soldier happened to be Jcmathan Netanyahu, whose brother Benjamin was, like Barak, thereby pro- pelled into a political career. A good deal Joschka Fischer at the Velika Krusa mass grave, Kosovo, June 1999 of Israeli polities owes something to the Arafat feroeiously and even forced him HERE WAS A further shock, and it events in Entebbe. into declaring some sort of a cease-fire. resonated at still deeper levels, if Ajid the same turns out to be true of The erstwhile militant for the PLO, now Tonly beeause many more people German politics. The Gennan terrorists militant against Palestinian terror. were involved. It was the news from Indo- were killed by the Israeli eommandos, Entebbe had sueh an effeet on quite a china. New Left movements all over the and only after their deaths did Gemiany's few of West Germany's New Leftists. A world had yearned for a Communist Indo- New Left discover who those people were. new suspieion was dawning on those peo- china, had worked hard for it, had sacri- It was a revelation. The terrorist leader ple—a little tardily, you might complain, ficed, had stniggled, and had done a lot of tumed out to be a man named Wilfried but dawning nonetheless. It was a worried dreaming, too. The new Utopian society Boese, who was well-known and much- suspicion that New Left guerrilla activity, was supposed to emerge there at last, in a admired on the Frankfiirt left—a hammy espeeially in its German version, was not bamboo-and-thateh version. That was a thespian who used to play the evil capi- the struggle against Nazism that ever>-one popular idea—an irresistible idea, really. talist in street theater events, a founder on the New Left had always intended. It Those cone-hafted rice farmers were actu- of various left-wing institutions, and a was a suspicion that, out of some horrible ally defeating the B-52s, and if a Third prominent member of Frankfurt's Black dialectic of history, a substantial number World peasant insurgency could fend off Panther solidaritv' eommittee. Fiseher of German leftists had ended up imitating imperial Franee and then the might>' knew Boese. Now was his own moment instead of opposing the Nazis—had ended United States, what couldn't be done to be astonished. up intoxicatingthemselves with dreams of around the world, given suffieient dedi- Suddenly the implications of anti- a better world to eome, while doing noth- eation and the rightness of a eause? Mil- Zionism struck home to him. What did it ing more than setting out to murder Jews lions of hearts beat to that rh>'thm. mean that, baek in Algiers in 1969, the on a random basis: an old story. But W'hen the Communists did triumph

50 : AUGUST 27 & SEPTEMBER 3, 2001 in Cambodia, and the new society turned and the anarcho-Mao-spontaneists, could someone with an extremely radical New out to be what it was, a new and unpre- at least mmmage through their bookcases Left orientation could have ended up, in dicted truth became clear, and not just in and discover a useful trove of critical pam- the fullness of time, a friend of NATO. regard to the sony tum of events in far- phlets. They could gaze at the terrible new The occasion was a discussion between away Asia. For it was suddenly ohvious to events and feel with some justification Fischer and Glucksniann, which origi- anyone with eyes that huge portions of that anti-capitalism was a fine position to nally ran in the pages of Die Zeit in 1986, the New Left had ended up supporting a hold but had never been the main idea, and was soon translated into English and cause that, in the case ofthe Palestinian not for the libertarian left. Those people published in Telos, the philosophical jour- guerrillas and their allies in Germany and could feel that authoritarianism, and not nal ofthe American New Left. other countries, was on a tiny scale resur- capitalism, had always been the real Among the intellectuals of the Ameri- recting the old manias ofthe Nazis ofthe enemy. And having made that recogni- can New Left, the Telos item attracted a 193()s and 1940s; and, in the case ofthe tion, they had to imagine what might be a bit of attention partly because, to any of Cambodian Communists, was engaged in plausible libertarian response to the unex- us in the United States who wanted to slaughter hy the millions. Anti-Semitism pected new events. keep abreast ofour comrades and peers in and genocide, a familiar twosome. And it It was not that everyone with some sort Europe, Glucksmann's name had already became obvious that the New Left in its of anarchist or libertarian background become fairly familiar. He had been a more radical or revolutionary version was rushed to respond to the left-wing calami- '68er in Paris, and after\vard a Mao. not, as eveiyone had imagined, an anti- ties with a sudden passion for thought- Woolly essays under his byline ran in the Nazi movement. On the contrary. ful reflection. In the United States, the New Left Review in England. And he This was a vast, almost unimaginable most influential of the anarchist- was known for having made a sensational shock—a shock that most people in the infiuenced writers was Noam Chomsky, about-face in the mid-1970s to become movement found much too horrifying who responded to the news from Cambt)- one of the "New Philosophers," much to take in. For who had the emotional dia exactly as any Third World-oriented noted around the world and much strength to see anything as unexpected, Marxist would do: by wondering if the mocked. Glucksmann was never the as undesired, as that? To have set out to stories about genocide were not imperial- splashiest or most telegenic of the New fight Nazism in its sundry modern demo- ist propaganda. Somehow Chomsky tilted Philosophers. But that was good. He had cratic disguises, only to have ended up, in Marxist directions just when his anar- a reputation for being the most solidly in a modern left-wing disguise, Nazi-like! chist background might have come in educated (he was a student of Raymond That was absurd. To anyone gazing at handy. Still, no great psychological obsta- Aron). So we were curious. We liked to be the world through strictly Marxist glasses, cle prevented anyone who had done a hit astonished, too—a New Left trait. the entire sequence of events and their of reading in the old anarchist pamph- Fischer's name, hy contrast, was not at implications in the early and middle 1970s lets or in back issues of Socialis77i or Bar- all well-known, except to the specialists in lay outside the zone of recognizable real- barism from interpreting the new events the German left and any Americans who ity. Marxism pointed to the workings of in a libertarian light. You needed only to had done a bit of hanging out in the Frank- the capitalist economy and the manipula- be able to wriggle free ofthe Marxist influ- furt sponti scene. Still, Fischer had be- tions of the imperial powers and the ence, and to give the world a freshglance . come a leader ofthe West German Greens, crimes of the United States, and if you Here and there, a few people did re- and the Green connection counted for spoke about anti-Semitism and Commu- spond in that way. The veterans ofthe old a lot in American eyes. The mass New nist mass murder, weren't you merely re- anarcho-Mao-spontex currents in France Left in America had given way by the peating the much-analyzed propaganda were the first to do so, and in the long run mid-1980s to a panorama of single-issue ofthe imperialist West? they had the higgest influence around the movements—against nuclear energy and Among the Marxists ofthe New Left— world. But there were people like that in nuclear weapons, for identity politics, for the retro-Marxists and the modern Marx- every country. Joschka Fischer was one of solidarity with the Marxists of Central ists alike, the mass of non-terrorists to- them. America. To anyone who participated gether with the handful of terrorists—the It was just that, to shake free of Marx- in those movements. West Germany's response to those shocking discoveries ism's influence, to scoop up everything Greens seemed rather attractive. They had could only be dismissive, or, at any rate, that was valuable about the New Left and evidently discovered the secret of how quietly baftled. A good many people on abandon the rest, to come up with gen- to convert an impractical, marginal, too- the Marxist side of the movement simply uinely new responses—this was, intellec- radical left-viing movement into a prac- lumbered on as if nothing had happened. tually speaking, extremely difficult. Sev- tical, democratic movement that nonethe- Some of those people lumber on still. The eral years of hard thinking and political less knew how to cling to its left-wing soul: largest number of all drifted away, speech- experimentation were required. Some of a difficult thing to do, achieved by virtually less and agog, until the years had passed the steps proved to be controversial, too. no one else anywhere in the world. That and they could no longer remember hav- And the history ofthis new development, was their reputation. So Fischer, too, as a ing participated in the New Left and its the move away from New Leftism toward leader of the Greens, aroused a curiosity several manias and fanaticisms—amnesi- something newer, a post-leftism, came up in the United States. acs of a New Left radicalism that no for public inspection and even a lot of jeer- There was a chami in his debate with one could recall anymore, the kind of ing in the course of the widening Fischer Glucksmann. The New Left had always people who, in their respectable middle scandal. drawn on a warm internationalist spirit, age today, would indignantly deny having an easy young people's camaraderie of ever been anything hut ardent liberals. vin. Paris, Berlin, Frankfijrt, Rome, Mexico Who, us? City, New York, and Berkeley (not to On the New Left, serious responses to ISCHER'S RESPONSE TO the crack- mention Lawrence. Austin, Madison, the new events tended to come instead up ofthe New Left entered into our Ann Arbor, Cambridge, Portland, and from people with some sort of background FAmerican debates on one occasion so forth around the countiy and the on the libertarian side ofthe movement. to my knowledge; and a glance at that world). Something of that remembered Those people, the inconsistent anarchists occasion may shed a little light on how spirit warmed the discussion in 1986.

THE NEW REPUBLIC : AUGUST 27 & SEPTEMBER 3, 2001 : 51 I Glucksmann had spent a few weeks in tbey migbt occur, as in Africa—tbe enemy His new heroes were people sucb as X FrankHirt back in the early 1970s with of every extreme borror and catastrophe Bernard Koucbner, a man of bis own gen- m Revolutionary Struggle, and he had got- tbat leads to mass death and total oppres- eration. Koucbner bad come up in tbe m ten to know Fischer and regarded him sion. And to all of tbose extretne dictator- Communist youtb movement of tbe early fondly, maybe a little patronizingly. sbips and catastropbes be attached a 1960s and had gone ofFto Cuba witb Regis Fischer had never attended a university, single name: "Auscbwitz." Debray to offer bis services to Fidel Cas- m and at the time of Glucksmanns visit he He still thought of himself as a New tro. Castro was nothing but discouraging, •a was trying to give himself a proper edu- Leftist wben be adopted his new anti- thougb Debray actually did make his way c cation by reading the great philosophers totalitarian position, and witb good rea- into tbe Latin American jungle to stand 00 in alphabetical order, starting with Aristo- son. He drew wbole aspects of bis new at tbe side of Cbe Guevara—tbe action tle. Glucksmann could only laugh. He and anti-totalitarianism from tbe views of theorist of guerrilla war. But Koucbner Fiscber did seem to have enjoyed them- bis old colleague at Nanterre Micbel took bis rejection by Castro seriously and selves, thougb. Tbat was visible in tbe Foucault, bis fellow-rioter wbo was went off to medical scbool instead. He 1986 debate. But tbe debate seemed note- tbe pbilosopber of institutional super- ended up organizing Tbird World emer- wortby mostly because by tbe mid-1980s oppression. It may be tbat, like so many gency medical rescue missions to places it bad become obvious tbat, atnong tbe otber intellectuals in tbe French New Left, such as Biafra during tbe Nigerian civil man\' responses around tbe world to tbe Glucksmann picked up a few inspira- war and Beirut during tbe Lebanese civil crack-up of tbe New Left, French New tions from the old Socialism or Barbar- war—expeditions just as risk>' as any guer- Pbilosopby, on one hand, and tbe West ism group in France, too. Tbose were bis rilla figbter's, but medical instead of mili- Gemian Greens, on tbe otber band, influences. Tbey were impeccably left- tary. Kouchner founded Doctors Witbout seetned tbe most tborougb and original, wing. But be discovered tbat nothing was Borders, and tben a second organization tbe deepest, tbe liveliest—tbe two re- inberently or exclusively left-v^ing about called Doctors of tbe World. Tbis was not sponses most likely to blossom in tbe counting bimself an enemy of extreme like founding a guerrilla army—tbougb future, and not just in tbeir own countries. suffering. Tbe left-vting vocabulary was from tbe point of view of existential risk Tbey were opposite responses, of course. expressive, and be used it in tbe first of and daring, or from tbe point of view of So tbere was drama in tbat debate. tbe books tbat explained bis new position, throwing off bourgeois comfotts, perbaps La Cuisiniere et le mangeur d'hommes, or it was a bit like founding a guerrilla army. LUCKSMANN'S New Pbilosopby The Cook and the Cannibal. Glucksmann, in any case, was tbrilled. is easily enough defined, looldng But tbe left-wing vocabulary was not He saw in Koucbner's medical activism a G back on it. He went through the necessary; it could even be misleading. new ideal: tbe daring doc"tor, instead of entire process of disillusionment of tbe After a wbile be set it aside. Most of tbe Resistance pattisan. Tbe saver of lives, New Left during tbe early and middle Glucksmanns comrades on tbe left de- instead of tbe maker of a revolutionary 1970s, in a fairly radical Freneb version— spised bis new analysis anyway, no matter new society. As early as 1979, Glucksmann tbe sbock at Palestinian terror doubled wbat rbetoric be used. (Tbey eould not was promoting missions to rescue tbe by tbe sbock at Cambodia, tbe sbock at forgive bis sympathy for Solzbenitsyn. boat people fleeing Vietnamese commu- tbe New Left's plans for its own terror They tbougbt tbat be bad gone over- nism. By tbe mid-1980s be was already campaign, tbe remorse, tbe self-reproacb, board in bis opposition to tbe Soviet bolding up Koucbner's organizations for tbe moral confusion. And tben, baving Union.) Besides, be discovered tbat by comparison with tlie organizations of tbe stopped at ever>' station, be set about dropping tbe left-wing vocabulary, he left, and remarking tbat Koucbner was trying to construct a new set of political could free bimself from an inbibiting doing a world of good and tbat tbe left- ideas. Tbat was bis project. He did it in political tradition. So be became an anti- wing organizations were doing notbing tbree big steps between 1975 and tbe early totalitarian witb a vocabulary' tbat was at all. 1980s. neither left-wing nor right-wing—bis own Glucksmann's tbird big step followed His first step, in tbe mid-1970s. vocabulary', by^ier-emotional (that was bis more or less logically from his first two: was to give up on bis old-fasbioned anti- beritage from tbe New Left), baroque, bis anti-totalitarianism and bis ardor capitalism atid anti-imperialism, tbe fun- flowery, pbilosopbical, but no longer ideo- for bumanitarian action. He wanted to damentals of tbe left, in favor of wbat logical in any of tbe conventional versions. oppose extreme oppression witb some- be began to call "anti-totalitarianism"— His second big step was to answer tbing more tban medical rescue mis- tbougb by anti-totalitarianism be meant Lenin's "Wbat is to be done?" witb a few sions—be wanted to put up a military sometbing broad, an opposition to ex- tbougbts tbat would bave curled tbe lip resistance, too. He came out for tbe mili- treme oppression of every kind, whatever of any self-respecting Bolsbevik. Glucks- tary deterrence of tbe Soviet Union, its sbape or cause. Glucksmann was tbe mann's original notion of revolutionary' wbicb meant coming out for NATO. Tbe son of Jewisb Resistance fighters during action, back in New Left days, bad been Soviets installed new missiles aimed at tbe Nazi period. Even bis older sister bad pretty much tbe same as everyone's— Western Europe, and President Reagan participated in the underground, passing among tbe more political people. He announced a plan for new American mis- out leaflets in Nazi Germany. He grew wanted to take tbe wartime Freiicb Resis- siles aimed at tbe Soviet Union. And up tbinking of pretty mucb everytbing be tanee of his parents and bis sister and Glucksmann came out for Reagan's mis- did as a struggle against Nazism. But now update it witb tbe inspirations tbat be siles. He even defended tbe logic of be took bis old anti-Nazism and extended drew from Mao and tbe Communist guer- nuclear deterrence. Tbis was a genuine it in all sorts of novel directions. He read rilla fighters of tbe Tbird World. He sbocker to bis old comrades on tbe left, Solzbenitsyn. He became an enemy—and wanted to rally tbe workers and to spark needless to say. Solzhenitsyn wius bad not just a critic-of the Soviet Union and tbe revolution; and wben tbe atmosphere enough, but NATO? of communism in Cambodia and every- bardened and violence was in tbe air, be where else. He became an enemy of ever>' wanted to figbt the revolutionary war. N THEIR DEBATE in 1986, Fischer extreme dictatorsbip around tbe world, Now be gave up on tbat kind of talk. He could not get over bow far Glucks- right-wing or left-wing. He declared bim- began to speak, instead, about bumanitar- mann bad strayed from tbeir com- self tbe enemy of famines, too, wberever I ian action. mon origins. Fiscber was irate. But to

52 : AUGUST 27 & SEPTEMBER 3, 2001 understand bis indignation (and wby bomb-throwing, tben, there was an enor- out of politics. Tbere was notbing else to bis anger would slowly fade, until be bim- mous gap, and in 1976 everyone could see do, anyway. Tbe New Left was disinte- self bad ended up following sometbing it plainly—everj'one on tbe left, tbat is. grating. He drove a taxi. And when he like each of Glucksmann's tbree steps)—to Tbinking back on Fischers speech, returned to tbe political world, be signed understand all of tbis, it is necessary to Glucksmann bas pointed out to me tbat up witb tbe Greens, wbose movement was glance at bis own reaction to tbe crack-up Fiscber sbowed a lot of bravery to say strictly post-New Left. He joined in 1981. of tbe New Left. His first important move, an>tbing at all about tbe guerrillas. In in tbe wake of tbe events at Entebbe, was Italy in tbose years, tbe Red Brigades IX. fairly tentative. He gave a speech begging adopted a grisly babit of "kneecapping" tbe Gemian terrorists to put down tbeir people wbo criticized them in public. HE WEST GERMAN Greens re- weapons. Tbat was a useful tbing to do, There was eveiy reason to worry tbat, in sembled tbe French New Pbiloso- thougb it was not exactly a turn away from West Germany, tbe Red Army Fraction Tpbers in a couple of respects. Tbe radical leftistn. or tbe Revoltitionary Cells or someone Greens, too, wanted to escape tbe manias In 1976, Fiscber was against bomb- else migbt do tbe same, overcome by a and the delusions of the traditional left, tbrowing, but not against stone-tbrowing. feeling of betrayal and rage or even some- wanted to make a sharp break witb tbe Against guerrilla war, but not against tbing as pale as contempt at wbat Fis- left-wing past. Tbe nineteentb-century street figbting. Against murderous vio- cber bad said. And tbe terrorists did feel proletariat, tbe war-to-tbe-deatb of eco- lence, but not against unmurderous vio- a contempt. Klein made tbat clear in an nomic classes, the cult of tbe factory, of lence. Someone wbo looks back on tbose interview that ran in tbe American jour- Marx, and of tbe pioneers of socialism, the barricades: tbe Greens wanted to be rid of every one of tbose ancient things. It was just that, wbere Glucksmann and tbe New Pbllosopbers in France wanted to give up the habit of tbinking in large philosopbical systems and especially wanted to give up tbe exbilarating old babit of imagining future revolutions and perfect societies, tbe Greens in West Ger- many wanted to take tbe left-wing con- cepts fi'om tbe past and, item by item, recycle tbem into notions suitable for tbe present. Instead of the old proletarian metapbysic witb its catastropbic vision of capitalism and its dream of a fiature proletarian societ\', tbe Greetis proposed a new ecological tiietapbysic witb its own catastropbic vision of capitalism and a dream ofa new ecological Utopia. Instead of tbe cult of tbe factory, tbe cult of tbe for- est. Instead of tbe class war, tbe ecological struggle. Instead of tbe socialist millen- nium, tbe ecological millennium. Instead of tbe color red, tbe color green. Fischer with Gemian otticers deployed with NATO forces in Macedonia, March 1999 Tbe German Maraists of a bundred years ago split between tbe revolutionarv' distinctions today migbt laugb. Punching nal SemiotextCe) back in 1982. (Klein's "ortbodox" and tbe moderate "revision- a policeman in tbe back or kicking bini mention of Fiscber and bis opposition to ists," and in precisely tbis manner tbe wben be is down can be pretty brutal, after West German terrorism must be one of Greens split between tbe revolutionary all, even if not murderous; and besides, tbe earliest mentions of Fiscber in tbe "fiindis" (or fundamentalists) wbo wanted it can end up murderous. Still, tbose were American press.) to resist political compromises, and tbe distinctions with a difference. Tbe wbole So Fischer's speech in 1976 was a first reformist "realos" (or realists), wbo were problem of civic life in West Germany step. Tbere were others. Glucksmann bappy to pusb tbeir program forward one was to findway s to sbake people out of tbe came to Frankfurt, promoting bis book modest incb at a time. Fiscber, tbe new old autboritarian babits of tbe German about Solzbenitsyn and tbe Soviet prison Fiscber of tbe 1980s, was a realo. By tbe past, to get rid ofthe spirit of obedience, to camps and tbe necessity of being anti- tnid-1980s be was already needling bis encourage people to go ottt and protest, totalitarian. Tbe militants of tbe left came Green comrades for tbeir bostility to maybe witb a bit of noise, too. That was out to jeer. Fiscber stood by Glucksmann, NATO. Tbe Greens voted a resolution call- tbe idea bebind tbe left-wing street bat- tbougb. Fiscber and Cobn-Bendit pre- ing on Germany to withdraw from NATO. tles. Tbe street figbters wanted to go too sented Glucksmann at a public forum, Fischer, by then a canny politician, de- far, but not too, too far: to make protests quite as if Glucksmann's ideas were suit- clined to sign it. He remained a man of tbe tbat broke tbe code of obedience, but able for a left-wing discussion, wbicb was left, even so. He bad no intention of lin- would not impose by violence a differ- sotnetbing rare in those years of extreme ing up witb tbe United States in its strug- ent code of obedience. Tbe guerrillas, by dogmatism. Fiscber was tr\ing to get peo- gle against tbe Soviet Union. He wanted contrast, wanted to establisb tbeir own ple to accept a principle of open debate- to stay independent of botb superpowers. system by force of arms: tbat was tbe no smail thing. Tbe imperialist nature of tbe United wbole point of founding even tbe tiniest Mostly, tbougb, in tbe effort to tbink States seemed to bim a danger of tbe first of annies. Between rock-tbrowing and bis owu new tbougbts, Fiscber dropped order.

THE NEW REPUBLIC : AUGUST 27 & SEPTEMBER 3, 2001 : 53 I He said to Glucksmann, in tbeir discus- seemed to expect some enormous turn- 1979, tbe year of bis deatb, stood witb H sion in 1986: "I do not want to identify about in political life, some immense Foucauit and even witb Aron to endorse m myself with eitber Communist or Ameri- cbange. And no sucb tbing was going to Glucksmann's argument not just about can itnperialism." He wanted to move bappen. "You are taking a perspective bumanitarian action but, implicitly, about beyond power blocs and imperial con- twenty years from now," Fischer said. burying tbe batcbet witb tbe right. Tbe frontations, to arrive at a different sort "Gkjrbacbev will not cbange. America will new attitude was sj-Tiiboiized by a famous of politics, still imbued witb tbe radical also not flindameutally cbange. Witbout a photograph of Sartre side by side witb tbe m values of tbe past and tbe insigbts of doubt, tbere is a buge monopoly of opin- conservative Aron, and a Beatle-baired c left-viing theory. Glucksmann's argu- ion in tbe Soviet Union. Tbis is probably Glucksmann alongside them, represent- ments could only seem, to Fiscber's way tbe case in two-tbirds of tbe world, or even ing tbe younger generation: tbe tbree men I-H of tbinking, dismal in tbe extreme, like more. But Hoiiywood is essentiaiiy more togetber, left-wing, rigbt-wing, and youtb, o notbing more tban a fancy Freneb repeti- effective as far as the monopoly of opinion at a meeting to call for emergency buman- tion of every bellicose cold war platitude is concemed." itarian aid for tbe refugees of Vietnamese of tbe American superpower, lacking a From Glucksmann's perspective, Fis- communism. By tbe eariy 1980s it bad vision ofthe future, lacking ideals, lacking cber had lost tbe argument rigbt tbere. It already become obvious that, at least in tbe red blood ofa left-wing beart. was preposterous to suppose that Sov- France, a large group of tbe more interest- "Wbat separates us," Fiscber told iet censorship and Americas Hoiiywood ing younger intellectuals was tbink- Glucksmann, "is your return to a rigid were in some way comparable, and cra- ing along iines close to Giucksmann's—tbe anti-communism as an ideological foun- zier still to imagine tbat Hoiiywood was '68ers, grown up now, "the fomier left," as dation." Tbat was an icy phrase. Most "essentially" worse. And Glucksmann re- tbey came to be caiied: Alain Finkieikraut, people on tbe left in tbe 1980s, I tbink, sponded witb a terribie swift word: "No." Pascai Bmckner, Bemard-Henri Levy, and would bave seen tbat statement as tbe several otber writers, the veterans of tbe clincber in tbe argument—a devastating ACK IN 1986, it wouid bavp been student insurrection. hit. Glucksmann had become a dogma- easy to suppose tbat Fiscber bad Asimilar evolution was going on among tist of tbe right, a rigid instead of flexible B mereiy biundered at that moment, tbe dissidents of tbe Eastern bioc. Even tbinker, an ideologue, every terrible tbing. and in tbe beat of argument bad iet as late as tbe early 1980s a good number An apologist for tbe American super- ioose a tbolisb volley of bj-perbole, as of tbe dissidents tbere, the radical intel- power. A sad case! anyone migbt do. But today we may lectuals, '68ers by and large, migbt still iook on tbat debate witb a bit of accu- bave identified witb Fiscber more tban UT GLUCKSMANN HAD more tO muiated knowiedge and recognize tbat witb Glucksmann. Vaclav Havel bas de- say. From bis own point of view, it biunders sucb as Fiscber's bubbied up scribed bow, in tbe intervais wben be was Bwas Fiscber wbo bad surrendered naturally from tbe fundamentals of bis out of jaii, be wouid turn on bis television to tbe will of an imperialist superpower. anti-imperialist outlook. Tbe blunders and watcb tbe mass demonstrations of Tbe West German Greens pictured tbem- came out of tbe instinct tbat led bim and the West German anti-nuclear protesters selves as putting up a lively resistance to everyone eise witb oid-fangled or even and would root for tbe peopie witb iong tyrannical impositions from tbe United new-fangled leftist points of view to bair and pacifist principles. By tbe niid- States. Yet Glucksmann considered tbat, iook at the world frotn the standpoint of 1980s, bowever, be and tbe otber dissi- on tbe contrary, tbe Greens were merely tbe crimes of capitalism-from a stand- dent intellectuals of tbe Eastern bloc were lowering tbeir submissive Gemian beads point tbat, by definition, attributed tbe beginning to lose patience witb tbe West- in tbe face of totalitarian pressure—as world's woes principaiiy to capitalist em peace movements, at least on politi- Germans bad done in times past. It was economics (and tberefore to tbe United cal grounds. (The cuituraJ affinity just that, in tbe 1980s, tbe totalitarian States, tbe capital of capital), and by after- remained—acompiicating point.) Giucits- pressure was coming from tbe Soviet tbougbt to an>'tbing eise. mann was aware of tbis evoiution in tbe Union. Tiien again, maybe tbe fooiisbness in East, too. Tbat was wby in bis debate Tbe Greens prided tbemselves on being Fiscber's remark was obvious even at the witb Fiscber be invoked tbe dissidents, a new type of German: rebels against time, and not just to Giuciismann. For while Fiscber did not. authority. But Glucksmann saw in tbem wbat does seem piain, looking back today, Germans of tbe old type, tbe respecters of is tbat Fiscber's side of tbe argument—tbe Y THE MID-1980S you couid even power and tbe entbusiasts of obedience. popular side, many people would bave detect a few shifts in opinion in He knew very wel! tbat, in tbeir own said, judging from tbe mass demonstra- B Fiscber's own circle of friends and imaginings, tbe Greens were strictly in- tions in West Germany and Britain and comrades. Cobn-Bendit was tbe bell- dependent of tbe Soviet Union, even con- tbe United States and elsewbere—was not wetber. In 1986 Cobn-Bendit was still temptuous of it But be pointed out as strong as it may bave seemed. And living in a New Leil-styie commune, sometbing to Fiscber. Tbe anti-missile Glucksmann's side—tbe unpopuiar one, putting out Pflcuiterstrand. He, too, was a demonstrators in West Germany had judging from tbe maiicious scorn tbat so Green by tben: Danny tbe Green. But be directed nearly all their indignation at tbe many commentators beaped and stiii was keen on preserving a sense of continu- United States, and almost none at tbe beap on tbe new iiiteiiectuai generation in ity witb tbe New Left past, and be went Soviet Union. Wbicb superpower was France, tbe non-geniuses, tbe iess-tban- around tbe worid that year witb a teie- occupying half of Europe, tbougb? "We Sartres-was gathering strength year by vision crew filming interviews witb some are left witb tbe scandal," Glucksmann year. of tbe beroes of tbe 1968-era uprisings in said, "tbat 500,000 people demonstrated Tbis was certainly true in France. Tbe different countries, wbicb be iater turned against Reagan, but oniy 10,000 against sbift in opinion from New Leftism or even into abook called A^ow^ Vavons tantaimee, Brezbnev. This fact bas a scandalous Old Leftism to sometbing iike New Pbi- la revolution, or We Loved the Revolution effect not only in Paris, but also in Prague iosopby was already visible in Paris by tbe So Much. His idea was to produce a series and Warsaw, and on ali tbose wbo struggie mid-1970s. Foucauit in bis later years, as of interviews sbowing tbe international for freedom in Eastem Europe." is sometimes forgotten, was rather a sup- dimension of tbe New Left and tbe seri- Fiscber replied that Glucksmann porter of Giucksmann. Sartre bimself, in ousness of tbe people wbo bad been

54 : AUGUST 27 & SEPTEMBER 3, 2001 involved and the evolution in out of hand just because the their thinking—to assemble a eonservatives or the State sort of '68ers' International by Rest Stop, Alabama Department might approve of means of television and the them. Cohn-Bendit gave the book. He went to the United Even bere the rows of urinals impression of being a little States and intennewed Abbie Are "automatic-sensor operated," astonished by Michnik's re- Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Bobby There's a laser eye that watches me marks, but he published the Seale, Jane Alpert, and Susan Unzip my pants so when I zip them up interview anyway and even Brownmiller—the American It does tbe flushing for me seven times. advertised it on the jacket of delegation to his 'fiSers' Inter- the new edition. All of this national. Above my head the ceiling has a speaker was quite significant, seen in He conducted an interview Dishing out the sticky sentiments retrospect. Cohn-Bendit was witb Hans-Joachim Klein for Of countr\' music, giving me advice, the only person anywhere in this same purpose, though Cliches and platitudes, that tell how not the world who could claim to Klein was still on the lam. Klein To live tny life. speak for the 1968 generation and Fischer, together with the Out in the lobby again as an international phenome- feminist Barbara Koster, were A road map on the wall says, "You Are Here!" non, and this small alteration Cohn-Bendit's West German And I can press a button near the map in his book, tbe addition of delegation. (The accompanying To catch the weather service bulletin: Adam Michnik, spoke volumes. photo of Fischer showed him "It's partly cloudy in Mobile tonight." as a young politician in blue X. Jeans and sport Jacket, a great I wonder why it matters if the clouds advance in visual imagery over Are out at night, but I remember how IHOSE WERE THE shifts the black-motorcycle-helmet Sometimes I've seen tbe stars go blank in places in argument and mood look.) Glucksmann, by con- And been told that it was flocks of birds T through the 1970s and trast, was definitely not on Migrating in the dark too bigb to see. 1980s. But the moment when Cohn-Bendit's list, nor anyone large numbers of veterans of else who had made the tran- There's melatonin in their pineal glands the New Left tinally had to put sition to something like New Behind their beaks to let them find their way aside matters of mere phil- Philosophy. Those people, the By sensing minute changes in the light. osophy or attitude and adopt New Philosophers, had wan- Unlike my kind whose senses have become actual positions and accept dered too far from tbe old So insignificant that only words the political consequences, left-wing idea to be acceptable. And widgets thought in words can get us home. and sometimes the more-than- In his introduction to the book, political consequences—that Cohn-Bendit went so far as It's beeti reported on the radio moment, the moment of truth, to complain about "defi-ocked That certaiti cars are being tnade today arrived only after the Soviet Stalinists" who had made With GPS devices in the dash collapse had gotten under way. themselves virgins by turning A first sign of it could be seen into Reaganites. He meant the So drivers needn't worry with directions, Reading road signs, having to stop and ask. in tbe montbs after Saddam ex-Maos. Hussein invaded Kuwait and Cobn-Bendit's '68ers' Inter- And if you watch the sky at night you'll see declared it annexed. George national was notable for one The orbits ofthe satellites that catch Bush the Elder was president other large omission, at least And send the signals ofthe world, what song of the United States, and he in the television documentary To sing for wbotii, which urinal to fiush. defined the war to drive Sad- and in the first edition of the dam out of Kuwait mostly as book, which appeared in 1986. Back in my truck I hang my head out, looking a war over material interests, He had tried to arrange an More at constellations than the road which came down to oil; and interview with someone from As if to follow my nose and navigate Bush's definition, given the the 1968 generation in the From star to star, as the crow flies, hke geese power of the American presi- Soviet bloe, namely Adam And all the bordes of fowl that need no sign dent, guaranteed a pretty Michnik, a leader ofthe Polish To beat the shortest course from A to Z. strong backlash against the student movement from those war on the part of a lot of peo- ple on the left, all over tbe days. Only the Communist Wilmer Mills government in Poland had world. Still, the inadequacy crushed the Solidarity labor in Busb's way of tbinking did movement and Michnik was not inhibit a number of otber languishing in jail, where there was no people from noticing a few additional Cobn-Bendit argued about the Vietnam aspects ofthe war: the slaughter of hun- interviewing him. Then he got ont, and War. Michnik was not about to condemn Cohn-Bendit was able to speak with dreds of thousands of Kurds in northern the United States for having put up a Iraq, the threats of fijrther atrocities to him at last, if only for the mass-market fight against communism. In this one paperbaek edition of tbe book. Michnik come, Saddams threat to incinerate the passage ofthe book, tbe principles of anti- Israelis. There were, in short, questions of seemed eager to be inteniewed. He very totalitarianism, non-ideological solidar- much thought of himself in generational genocide to eonsider: a twentieth-century ity', and respect for NATO—Glucksmann's predicament. terms—a '68er through and through. He principles, in a word—suddenly emerged kept insisting on this to Cohn-Bendit. as fairly reasonable, and deserving of their Among the old militants with New Left But Miehniks intemew turned out to proper place in a survey of the heroes of backgrounds, some people did notice that be unlike anyone else's in the book. He and '68: principles that could not be rejected sort of thing. This was eertainly the case in

THE NEW REPUBLIC : AUGUST 27 & SEPTEMBER 3, 2001 : 55 I France, due to tbe circle of tbe "former responded. Tbey unfurled tbe bioodiess policy thinking—from tbe foreign policy left." You could see sometbing similar in blue flag of tbe United Nations. Tbey came "idealists." Meaning "wbo?" or "whom?" m Germany, too, wbere a bandfitl of old-time up witb a principle of non-action tbrougb Tbe Catholic Cburcb? The Church turned beroes of tbe New Left—WoM Biermann, action: a resistance tbat was no resistance out to bave its interests in tbe Balkans, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, and a few at all. A non-action that cannot be faulted and tbey were tbose of tbe Croatian others—surprised tbeir public by declar- because it calls itself action: tbat was tbe Catbolics. (Between the Yugoslav civil war 70 ing tbemselves in favor of tbe war. Peter new mutation. And so, wben tbe Serb m and tbe massacres in Central Africa, tbe •V Scbneider, wbo bad come out of tbe anar- nationalists made tbeir insane "selection" 1990s proved to be another less tban c: cbist half of the New Left, gave bis en- of Bosnian Muslims to be killed en masse splendid decade for Catholicism in tbe 00 dorsement. Cobn-Bendit did tbe same— at Srebrenica, tbe Dutcb troops and a matter of genocide.) And tbe Protestant an especially brave tbing to do, given tbat Freneb general and tbe otber Western mil- political instinct leaned toward pacifism. t f Cobn-Bendit was, in bis fasbion, a politi- itary forces in Bosnia—tbe foreign inter- Would tbe call come from tbe political cal leader and not just an intellectual, and veners—did wbat tbey bad been sent to left—from tbe parties and the movements bad to worry about bis popularity. In tbe do, wbicb was to not intervene. that pictured themselves as the voice of Soviet bloc, tbe '68ers bad no trouble at all tbe oppressed? But tbere were muitipie supporting the war. Havel was already tbe ow COULD THE Western democ- iefts. There was an old-fasbioned and president of wbat was still Czechoslo- racies have managed t(t come up even reactionar>'ieft (to cail it that), wbich vakia, and be went so far as to send a small H witb sucb an absurdity? It was stiii feit an ancient tug of loyalty to the detacbment of Czecboslovak soldiers, ex- because, by tbe 1990s, the vast public in Soviet Union and therefore to Soviet com- perts in gas warfare, into tbe Saudi desert tbe democratic world was definitively munisms child and heir, tbe Russian to take tbeir place in tbe grand alliance. opposed to genocide in a general way; but republic. Sviiipathy for Russia counted for Even in tbe United States you could bave somebody bad to step forward to oppose quite a lot in the Western European left, seen a few small indications of a split on genocide in a concrete and specific way. and leftistn, from tbat perspective, meant the left on tbis issue. And wbo was tbat going to be? In Eur- a tender concem for Russia's national ope, wbo was going to argue for a genuine interests. This kind of tbinking counted ET THE BIG MOMENT of change forcefulness and not just a moraliy pleas- for sometbing even in tbe United States, came tbe nexi year, wben the eth- ing dispiay of high dudgeon? The cbanipi- wbere The Nation publisbed an amazing Y nic massacres got under way in tbe ons of foreign poiicy "realism," by any series of anguisbed editorials about tbe Balkans. Tben at iast the old, profound cbance? Tbat was out of tbe question. need not to upset tbe Russians and espe- question of Nazism and wbat to do about Realism is never genocide's enemy. Gen- cially tbe nationalists among tbem. it—tbe oid founding question of tbe New ocide in modem times always takes place Tben again, there was aiso a realpolitik Left—nimbled up in a European setting in tbe margins of wbat appear to be great ieft, wbicb was not in tbe slightest inclined and not just in connection to a barbarous events, never at tbe center; but "realism" to idealism in foreign policy. Francois dictator in tbe Middle East. And once is a calculation of power at tbe center—a Mitterrand, the president of France, reai- again tbe veterans of tbe New Left bad to calculation of "Great History," in Finkiel- poiitik's master of masters, made an art of ask tbemseives tbe old questions about kraut's phrase, not of Littie History. Gen- signaling his solidarity whiie craftiiy Europe and its past. Tbe\' bad to ask: wby ocide attacks the weak, but realism defending a weirdly nineteenth-century was it, bow could it bave been, tbat Ger- appraises tbe strong. vision of French national interests in the many, tiie center of ci\iiization, bad once If genocide in World War II bas come Balkans and in Centrai Africa alike. (It did upon a time gone Nazi? And bow, wby, to seem central to tbe war against Naz- mean sometbing tbat Mitterrand, tbe did tbe rest of Europe, most of it, end ism, tbat is only because, in later years, tbe Socialist, turned out to bave been an oid up being conquered by tbe Nazis back in kinsmen and tbe friends of tbe slaugb- Vicby officiai in an earlier life.) The tbe 1930s and 1940s? Ever>'one knew tbe tered insisted on viewing it tbat way, and reaipoiitik left in Europe, just iike tbe answer to tbose questions in a general tbe bistorians reconsidered the entire evo- reaipoiitik liberals in tbe first years of tbe way. Germany bad gone Nazi and Eur- lution of events and succeeded in cbang- Clinton administration, were bardly going ope bad succumbed because tbe Nazis ing public attitudes. Tbe realists of the to press fbr forceful interventions in the were strong and well-organized and pow- 1930s and 1940s bad never looked on tbe name of sometbing as vaporous as human erfully motivated; but mostly because w ar in tbat ligbt at tbe time, and tbeir beirs rights. everyone else, tbe non-Nazis, bad failed in tbe 1990s were not going to respond to resist. to genocide in their own time any differ- N EUROPE, IF any large group of And why the lack of resistance, in tbose ently. Tbe realists were going to observe peopie was going to press for a force- days? A thousand reasons, of course. And witb periect accuracy tbat massacres in I fill intervention, it was going to bave bere were mass graves once again. And tbe Balkans or anv'wbere eise threatened to include a good many veterans of tbe again a thousand reasons not to resist, and tbe fundamental interests of not one of tbe student uprisings circa 1968—tbe peopie even a new reason—a tbousandtb and great powers. Massacres were not going to who, in tbeir young days, bad imagined first. Tbe new reason was sometbing never knock over tbe giant cbessboard of worid tbat tbey were buiiding a new ci\iiiza- before imagined, a new mutation of an old power. What did worr>' tbe rcaiist tbink- tion in Europe. Tbose people, in looking argument, a novelty, Eilmost a contribution ers was tbat a NATO miiitary intervention at tbe Balkans, were at least guaranteed to modem political tbougbt. The Atlantic in the Balkans migbt upset Western rela- to give a few tbougbts to matters of geno- Alliance, baving come out of World War tions witb Russia. Intervention, not mas- cide, to questions of resistance and non- II, did bave to look on genocide as a fun- sacre, posed tbe danger, from tbe point of resistance—tbe issues tbat, many years damental enemy, at least in regard to view of great power relations. Realism was before, bad brought tbem to tbe left-wing Europe. Wben tbe massacres got going in non-interventionism in the 1990s. barricades. Anti-genocide was tbose peo- tbe fomier Yugoslavia, tbe big Western Tbe argitnient for intervention, there- ple's oldest and deepest idea, togetber democracies bad to respond, if only to fore, was going to bave to come from zones witb the worried conviction tbat Nazism affirm wbat it meant in the 1990s to be a of opinion tbat cbose to put matters of was capable of reappearing under new powerful democracy. So tbe big powers conscience at the beart of tbeir foreign disguises.

56 : AUGUST 27 & SEPTEMBER 3, 2001 But even if the old '68ers and tbeir heirs In tbeir pacifist bearts, tbe Greens bad group of its victims. So Fischer made his did give some thought to massacres in tbe to £isk: wbat about tbe moral dangers of cboice, and Giucksmann's tbree princi- Balkans, bow were tbey possibly going to using any force at all? Tbey had to wonder ples—anti-totaiitarianism, bumanitarian make a case for an intervention tbat would about tbe iegacies of Hitler. In tbe 1940s action, NATO—finally became his princi- actualiy intervene? Tbe '68ers and their Hitler bad sent German armies into the ples, too. heirs were, after aii, of two minds on mili- Balkans and bad fougbt tbe Serbs. Now tary' questions, divided into tbe wamng the advocates of war wanted to send Ger- UT HOW WAS Fischer going to attitudes that you could bave seen in the man armies into the Balkans and figbt tbe bring along bis fcilow Greens? DieZeit and Telo.v debate back in 1986. In Serbs. Wby wouid figbting tiie Serbs be, B Tbe governments of tbe United France the question of intervention was tbis time, anti-Hitlerian? Tbus did ten States, Britain, and France were not decided fairly quickly and easily among tbousand Lilliputian arguments swarm going to ciarifj' the issue on behalf of tbe inteilectuais, as could bave been ex- across tbe terrain, explaining wby NATO Europes pacifists. Tbe Western powers pected. Tlie "former left" had long ago was a monstrosity' and notbing could be seemed to bave sunk comfortably enough ascended into powerful positions in the done abottt tbe Baikans, and that it was into tbeir swamp of make-believe action French press and on radio, and tbrough- too bad but iife is tragic, and wbat about and tbeir meaningless threats—their out tbe later Mitterrand years tbose peo- tbe dangers of nuclear energy? clever compromise between "idealist" ple pushed for tbe three principles tbat Tbe Greens needed to tear ofl" tbeir anti-totalitarianism and "realist" non- bad first been laid out by tbe New Pbiioso- veil of ideolog>'. And tbis was precisely intervention. Tbe Serb nationalists alone pbers years before: anti-totaiitarianism, what Joscbka Fischer managed to do. could force tbe issue. And on tbat one humanitarian action, forceful means. Even as late as 1994 be could not imagine point, tbe government of Slobodan Milo- Tbe "former left" had a success, too, in a sending German soldiers to places where sevic proved to be splendidly reliable. painfiiily delayed version. Tbe traditions Hitler bad sent German soldiers. But In late 1998 and early 1999, Milosevic's of tbe Freneb Communists and of Mit- tben, witb tbe news from Srebrenica, be military and paramilitary forces began terands Socialists; tbe traditions of "real- finaliy understood tbat anti-Nazism in to clear tbe Albanians from tbe wbole of ism" at the Quai d'Orsay and its ancient its traditional Green version was going to Kosovo. Tbe new govemment in Germany bugbears about tbe balance of power and end as no anti-Nazism at aii: "I learned was just then settling into power—tbe tbe Serbo-Frencb alliance of ages past not only 'No more war' but also 'No more Red-Green coalition witb its regiments and tbe Francophone struggle against its Auschwitz.'" For there, at Srebrenica (and of ex-New Leftists, now converted into bistoric foe tbe Anglopbones; tbe many at Omarska and otber places), was Auscb- Social Democratic and Green politicians. pbantoms tbat baunted Frances political witz, not just in tbe figurative sense tbat The emblem of those new people was, of imagination—all of tbis conspired against Gtucksmann liked to bandy about but course, Fiscber bimself, tbe new foreign any sort of powerful Freneb intervention. with greater and grisly exactitude, down minister, far more tban Schroder—Fischer Yet once Mitterrand was gone and Jacques to the "selection" by tbe master etiinic the notorious Frankfurt street-fighter, tbe Chirac, tbe conservative, was president, the French government, for all its stam- merings and duplicities, did manage to Probably this year's most important self-improvement book... become tbe first of tbe Western powers to play any kind of forceful role in tbe "How You Too Can Develop a Balkans. 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THE NEW REPUBLIC : AUGUST 27 & SEPTEMBER 3, 2001 : 57 I rioter outraged by Ulrike Meinhof s death, first to point out that it could just as easily reaction. Late in April, the prosecutor in X the Green anti-militarist in his anti- be described as "The '68ers' War." That was the Klein trial, having left the foreign min- m bourgeois blue jeans. And so on top of true ofthe European participants, anyway. ister to twist slowly, slowly in the wind, at the ten thousand Lilliputian arguments The French participation was owed to the last dropped the perjury charge, which m against taking any kind of forceful action circle of "former leftists." The NATO offi- brought the Fischer aftkir to an end in a in the Balkans came ten thousand more, cial in charge ofthe pacification of Kosovo legal sense. But by then the affair had m directed against anyone who had partici- after the Serb military withdrawal was already dribbled to a close in the popular pated in the New Left of long ago—low, Glucksmann's hero from long ago. Dr. imagination. The true finale, in the judg- c personal arguments, the arguments that Kouchner. The man who in 1998 signed ment ofthe FrankfuTter Allgemeine, came DO invariably descend on anyone who has dis- the treaty that brought the Czech Republic in late March, some ten weeks after the played the mental alertness to change his into NATO and therefore into the NATO affair had begun, when the results of one mind now and then. intervention was Jan Kavan, a Czech other poll came in, quite a fascinating poll Fischer and his advisers and co- '68er. The NATO diplomat in Kosovo for a precisely because its subject went beyond thinkers among the Greens must have while was Jiri Dienstbier, another Czech Fischer himself The suhject in this in- gritted their teeth when they contem- '68er. The secretary-general of NATO dur- stance was the generation of 1968. The plated those arguments. They had to have ing the war was Javier Solana, a '68er radicals of that period—were they mainly told themselves: if we do what seems to be from Spain's Socialist Workers Party. And "interested in power," or were they "ideal- necessary in order to prevent a giant cata- the German participation could not have ists"? Such was the question to the Ger- strophe; if we endorse a NATO air cam- occurred without Fischer and his allies. man public. The respondents stroked their paign against the Serb nationalists; if The '68ers' International that Cohn- chins. And a majority (whose exact size we, the Greens and the '68ers and the old- Bendit had tried to assemble in an imagi- was left unreported) answered: "Idealists." time New Leftists, come out for real inter- nary version back in the 1980s had finally assembled in real life, under the auspices vention instead of fake intervention; if we T IS TRUE that "interested in power" of NATO. An irony, you might think. But approve a German participation in the versus "idealism," taken as an it was not an irony. NATO action—won't we he accused of in- I either/or proposition, makes for a consistency? Fischer surely had to know; At the height ofthe Fischer affair. Serge pretty crude way of judging the motivat- ifl come out forcibly against Nazism in its July, the editor of the Paris Liberation, ing sentiment of vast crowds of people. current guise, which happens to he Serb wrote an editorial called "On Your Knees!" You could shrug off such a poll easily racism, won't I be accused of lack of char- accusing Fischer's and Cohn-Bendit's ene- enough. What does it mean, anyway, this acter? If I stick to what have always been mies of engaging in a reactionary cam- word "idealism," outside of some specific my principles, which have heen to oppose paign not just against two individuals but setting such as foreign policy, where the Nazism in all its forms, won't I be accused also against the social changes and the word has a kind of technical meaning, of betraying my principles? social conscience that had come out ofthe connoting a particular set of values? And so it was. The foreign minister gave uprisings of the years around 1968—a Surely everyone understands by now that the endorsement. Germany, which had prosecution by smear of entire portions idealism has always been Satan's slogan, failed to resist Nazism, resisted Nazism. ofthe population. That was why Libera- the father of fanaticism, the mother of Feebly, you may say. Even so, German sol- tion settled on the inspired phrase "the self-righteousness, a license for crime. diers departed German soil for the pur- trial ofthe Generation of 1968." But if the And is it always so bad to be interested pose of saving someone else's life. Some- aftair was, in some sense, a generational in power? No one could believe that Fis- thing new under the sun! And Germany's trial, you would have to conclude that, cher himself had ever heen indift'erent to foreign minister, of course, was accused of from a point of \iew such as July's, every- power. There had to be more to his politi- having been a brute and a man without thing turned out well enough after a few cian's career than a love of meetings. The principles, and the accusations spread weeks, certainly in France. The charges man was obviously a major conniver. And around the world, until even TheNexv York against Cohn-Bendit were made, and were yet that naive little poll in the Frankfiirter Times was fretting over the man's moral rebutted, and evaporated. The animus Allgemeine surely offered an expressive character. Fischer's friend and old-time against Fischer in France never congealed commentary' on modern life and its fore- roommate was accused of pedophilia, and into anything worrisome or even politi- ground from a few decades ago, perhaps those accusations, too, made their way cally awkward. not just in Germany. around the yellow press of France and And in Germany? I followed an We can he pretty confident that, thanks England and Italy. The world of Joschka English-language Web edition of the to the Fischer affair, no one among the Fischer was presented as a running scan- Fmnkfui-ter Allgemeine Zeitung during respondents to that poll needed to be re- dal, and his enemies in the Bundestag the controversy, and I noticed that in minded of the realities of New leftism congratulated themselves on their matu- Frankfiirt, too, the aftair was looked at and its history from a quarter of a century rity and statesmanship in standing up to precisely as July defined it in Paris—as an before. The movement's ugliest traits had say of Germany's foreign minister, "This accusation against a generation. Naturally been on public display for months. Nor did man can no longer represent us to the the scandal counted for more in Germany anyone need to be reminded ofthe politi- world." Fischer: a maneuverer without than in France, given Fischer's place in the cian's machinations that had brought Fis- scruples. A thug, a. cynic, a man with a government and the role ofthe Bundestag, cher to his present station, nor of the dark past. and given those terrible photographs. Yet policies that he had adopted once in the polls never did tip against him. At power. Shady associates and violent acts XL one point Fischer was declared to have years ago, NATO bombings in 1999: the support of seventy-two percent of the everyone knew everything. Those were the HE KOSOVO WAR has sometimes polling respondents, a nice statistic for a givens in that poll. And given the givens, been called "The Liberals' War," be- man under daily assault in the press and the real meaning lurking beneath that Tcause it was the liberal idealists, in the Bundestag. naive-looking question was, I think, a little more than the conservative realists, who Even Fischer's keenest enemies eventu- less naive than might have seemed to be were keen on fighting it. But I am not the ally had to bow before that kind of puhlic the case.

58 : AUGUST 27 & SEPTEMBER 3, 2001 The real meaning, I propose, was this: Three) to have suffered a hlow? Did a per- precisely what he should do: he should knowing what everyone knows about the sonal background in the New Left seem point out that what was alleged to have New Ixft of long ago, knowing the con- (Question Four) to indicate an attractive taken place never did take place hecause sequences of the New Left's many rebel- feature in someone's character today, lo it never could have taken place. One will lions, knowing the characteristics and these many years later? not find that kind of response in Wacker's consequences of those alternative kinder- Those were the real issues, the four history of American Pentecostals, and gartens and everything else, knowing the questions, hiding beneath the dopey- their influence on American culture, career that Fischer had tbllowed, knowing looking queiy ahout idealism and power. between 1900 and 1925. Instead of trying the role that Fischer had played in 1998 The answers, among a majority of the to "debunk" such claims, Wacker, a histo- and 1999 in the European crisis over the respondents, were plainly yes, yes, yes, rian of religion, wants "to understand Balkans—knovting all that, did it make and yes. In spite of everything, four yeses, why the practice became so firmly rooted sense (Question One) to speak of a basi- and in a conservative newspaper, too: a in Pentecostal culture despite the absence cally admirable quality in the New Left, sign of pohtical wisdom in the heart of of corroborating evidence." a quality that could be branded with Europe, I think—though I grant that Glossolalia itself, Wacker concedes, is the approving honorific "idealism"? Did some people, the not-majority among not a language, for it lacks tenses, gram- modern society seem (Question Two) those respondents, perhaps quite a hefty mar, and syntax. But neither is glossolalia better off in the wake of those many New not-majorit\, answered those questions nonsense. We are best off understanding Left rebellions? Did Nazism and its con- difierently. And so la lotta continua, as the phenomenon of speaking in tongues stituent traits and habits seem (Question we used to say. • partly as an involuntary physiological pro- cess that takes controi of believers, but also partly as a process that believers con- sciously know how to enter and to leave. And speaking in foreign tongues—well, that, he suggests, may have happened because "ideology dictated behavior." If Holy Realists you were convinced that the Lord was about to make his appearance in the world, you could speed up the process of WOLFE saving souls in foreign lands by convincing Heaven Below: yourself that you spoke the languages that they used. Early Pentecostals and American Culture by Grant Wacker ACKER'S REFUSAL TO paSS judgment on whether early (Harvard University Press, 364 pp., $35) W Pentecostals were just fibbing— he considers the possibility, only to reject N 1914, A pastor in a Kansas min- of the Apostles—are usually derided as it as "improbable"—clearly has something ing town, reporting on his conver- "holy rollers" by their critics. Pentecostals to do with the fact that he is himself the sion efforts, wrote that forty-six combined a faith in the Lord's imminent product of a Pentecostal family and a individuals had been saved and return with an emphasis on personal self-described sympathizer with the tradi- thirty-three individuals had re- salvation and a need for lifelong moral tion, with one fbot inside the tent and Iceived baptism. "One brother," he then cleansing. Carried away hy religious fer- one foot outside. His history ofthe move- added, "... was understood in four lan- vor, they included glossolalia—that is the ment, for this reason, is not just a descrip- guages." Can an individual who has never technical tenn for speaking in tongues— tion of how Pentecostals thought and studied, or never even heard, a foreign among their religions practices. acted, though it is very much that. It is also language speak in that language during It takes a history of Pentecostalism as an attempt to render a very unfatnihar a moment of religious ecstasy? Can detailed as Grant Wacker's book to realize religion intelligible. Given the book's other people who are unfamiliar with a that glossolalia was among the more con- apologetic tone, one might conclude that particular language identify it when peo- ventional of Pentecostal practices. There Wacker is unable to write a credible his- ple are speaking to them? There is a was ritual healing, in which, blessed with torical narrative. This would be incorrect. short, clear, and tnie answer to these ques- the spirit ofthe Lord, the lame would pro- Heaven BCIOK' is an informative and fasci- tions: no. In the light ofeverything that we claim themselves healed, and some peo- nating account of a religion that has not understand about the human capacity for ple, going even ftirther, found a way to so much been misunderstood—Pente- language, it is incontrovertible that it report on their death and their rebirth. costals did much of the holy rolling asso- takes years of hard work for an adult to There was grapholalia, the writing of illeg- ciated with them—as underestimated. If leani a new one, and nobody, literally ible letters under the influence ofthe Holy you want to understand how John Ash- nobody, is capable of achieving a trance- Spirit, as well as the phenomenon of right- croft, a product ofthis sometimes other- like state that would enable him or her to handed individuals suddenly writing with worldly tradition, became attorney gen- master a foreign tongue. the left hand. And then there was xeno- eral in this world, then this is the hook that Pentecostals believed otherwise. lalia or xenoglossy, the capacity to speak you should read. Emerging toward the end of the nine- in a foreign language that one has never Wacker goes to great lengths to human- teenth centur>' out of revivalist religions learned. ize the Pentecostals about whom he in the American heartland, Pentecostals— What is a historian to do when he comes writes, but they do not come across as so named because Jesus's followers spoke across letters and documents testifying to nice folk. One of the founding "saints," in tongues and experienced Holy Ghost a practice that is humanly impossible to Charles Fox Parham, reacted to the emo- baptism on the day of Pentecost, accord- carry out? A school of thought that could tionalism of black Pentecostals by becom- ing to the scriptural account in the Acts be described as hard-nosed realism knows ing an out-and-out racist. Aimee Semple

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