March
2004
The
Limits of Violence
By Richard Huffman
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When I marched in the November 30, 1999 anti-WTO rally
here in my hometown of Seattle, the brutal tactics and sporadic yet
stunning violence by the Seattle Police felt eerily similar to a catastrophic
Berlin protest a generation ago. On June 2, 1967 tens of thousands of
young Germans, many of them students at Berlin’s Free University,
lined up on Kaiser Wilhelm Strasse early in the evening to protest a
visit by the Shah of Iran. By the end of the night, a young pacifist
lay dead in an alley, shot by an accidental discharge from a cop who
had trained his gun at the student’s head. Benno Ohnesorg’s
death would be the unfortunate catalyst for a distressing movement that
offers powerful relevance for young Americans today who are considering
violent means to effect social change.
After the rally, thousands of angry, frustrated students converged at
the Berlin offices of the Socialist German Student Union, which was
the leading student organization at the time. Gudrun Ensslin, a young
woman with an intense demeanor, screamed to the crowd, “This fascist
state means to kill us all! We must organize resistance. Violence is
the only way to answer violence. This is the Auschwitz Generation, and
there’s no arguing with them!” The leader of the Student
Union, firebrand organizer “Red” Rudi Dutschke, was sympathetic
to Ensslin’s goals but proposed decidedly different tactics to
achieve them. Instead of violence, he advocated for “a long march
through the institutions” of power, to create radical change from
within government and society by becoming an integral part of the machinery.
Students of modern German history know how these twin philosophies played
out over the coming decades. Ensslin helped to form the Red Army Faction,
popularly know as the “Baader-Meinhof Gang” (see preceding
article). During the next decade Ensslin, intent on bringing a form
of Socialist Revolution to Germany, and the 50 or so young Germans who
joined her and her boyfriend Andreas Baader, left a trail of destruction
through Germany unmatched since the Soviet Army paid a visit in 1945.
They blew up buildings and killed American soldiers. They killed the
leading justice on the West German Supreme Court. They kidnapped and
later murdered Germany’s most noted industrialist, a man who roughly
occupied the place Bill Gates holds in the U.S. today. They helped highjack
a Lufthansa jet. They blew up the German embassy in Stockholm.
A whole other generation of young Germans chose to take up Rudi Dutschke’s
call to action instead. They would be instrumental in the rise of Greenpeace
and environmental consciousness in Germany, and would go on to found
the progressive Green Party in 1979. Twenty years later the Green Party
would be sharing control of the German government.
It’s clear that the Baader-Meinhof Gang and their adherence to
violence made a considerable impact on German society; but for a socially-concerned
citizenry this impact was wholly negative. Prior to the Baader-Meinhof
era, West Germany didn’t even have a true national police force.
In response to their terror campaign, the BKA, which later became the
German equivalent of the FBI, was built up to massive proportions, with
the full power to investigate citizens in ways that John Ashcroft can
only dream about. The German government passed sweeping laws that restricted
the rights of average citizens, and instituted loyalty oaths for all
civil service jobs. Random general searches of citizens’ homes
on a block by block basis became common.
In many ways this was exactly what Gudrun Ensslin, Andreas Baader, and
their fellow Revolutionaries hoped would happen. They expected that
the German state would respond with disproportionate violence and repression;
they believed the proletariat population would be shocked from their
complacency and would spontaneously rise up, following their lead into
glorious Revolution. It didn’t quite work out that way. Rather
the German population, angered and frightened by the violence, applauded
their government’s repressive response. Seeing the ease in recent
years in which President Bush and John Ashcroft were able to pass the
Patriot Act and implement repressive programs such as CAPPS II in the
wake of the violent shock of the events of September 11 leads me to
the unavoidable conclusion that cause-based violence only begets widespread
government repression. And this repression invariably is supported by
the very population being repressed.
But if that violent subset of the German generation, which found its
voice after that tragic 1967 Berlin protest, offers an effective primer
on the limits of violence as an effective means of social change, other
members of this same generation have shown how a steady, committed “long
march through the institutions” can bear fruit.
Last February, when thousands of people were marching in streets across
the U.S. against President Bush’s headlong rush towards war, similar
protests were held across the globe. Perhaps the most remarkable march
was held in Berlin. Nearly one million Germans took to the streets,
not to condemn their government, but to praise it for choosing to not
participate in an unjust war.
So how did it come to be that one of America’s most powerful allies
and one of the world’s leading democracies chose to suffer the
wrath of America by staying out of the war? Because a generation of
people chose to heed Rudi Dutschke’s call three decades ago. They
became civil servants. They got elected to local offices. They became
involved in socially progressive causes. They founded and guided the
Green Party into becoming a true force in German politics, eventually
putting the party in the position to share power with the SPD (Germany’s
equivalent of the Democrats) in a coalition government. They took positions
of power in the upper echelons of German government, like Joshka Fischer,
who became Germany’s Foreign Minister (the equivalent of Colin
Powell). And when the opportunity came for a bold choice to stand up
to oppressive American pressure to support the coming war, Germany’s
government was well represented with members of Rudi Dutschke’s
generation, ready to fulfill his legacy, and take a strong stand on
behalf of social justice and against unjust aggression.
Richard Huffman is the former director of Advocacy
for the Seattle-based Progressive Animal Welfare Society (PAWS).
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