Begleitschreiben

a few comments in this color and in italics on your comments lothar


Danke für den Kommentar.
1] Aly weist natürlich darauf hin, dass Habermas eine andere Generation war als die rebellierenden Studenten...[ ]

MY COMMENT.. all these professors, horkheimer most of all, become terrified wenn da leben in die bude kommt! die wollen ihre ruhe! braucht man auch! it's an irreconcilabe conflict, the french intellectuals with their revolutionary tradition lived it out most vividly.

it was more of a cultural and a life style revolution that broke down, violated, a lot of boundaries: "why don't you do it in the road" was a beatles signal of the oncoming reaction [based on the latent reaction formation in these psyches.] aly is quite right in pointing to the easy availability for birth control on massive basis! but that was brewing even prior to the introduction of the "anti-baby-pille" wie das so graesslich [aber genau] auf deutsch heisst; the equivocal relationship to pleasure that is fundamental to a protestant [including counter-reformational] culture... and which persists.

Was Aly umtreibt ist meines Erachtens zweierlei: Erstens - und das spreche ich ja an: Die Verklärung dieser Zeit, die bis heute anhält.
MY COMMENT:
in the u.s. of course this got all mixed up not only with the vietnam war but with the civil rights and free speech movement but the reactionary forces ultimately became dominant again, the reaction to free speech is called political correctness!

Und - hier eine Parallele, die ich vorsichtig anbringe, aber ich bringe sie an: Die Verdrängung dieser Irrtümer und Wirrungen, die in diese Verklärung einfliessen. Damit setze ich NICHT 68 und 33 gleich!

MY COMMENT:
no of course the genuinely revolutionary nationalist and socialist movements of the 20s can not be conflated with the utopian desires of the 60s. authoritarianism is not confined to germany, it is a characteristic of a patriarchal culture, which demands leaders, models…
just note how badly both johnson and nixon took real street opposition to their murderous foreign policy; but ultimately you get grandpa Reagan, the kindly murderer! the complete reactionary if you take a close look at his policies. but who needed to subvert congressionally enacted laws [iran-contra]. meanwhile, we have reached the world of "signing statements" where a president enacts his own reservations whenever he signs a law!!! bullies the entire world. i would say that authoritarianism more or less openly has come back to the fore or never disappeared ; nation states however breaking down somewhat in some respects due to trade and the dominane of u.s. or u.s. inspired popular culture.

Zweitens - und das ist fast wichtiger: Die Blindheit der damaligen Protagonisten auf dem berühmten "linken Auge". Natürlich konnte (und musste!) man gegen den Vietnamkrieg sein. Aber deswegen Pol Pot als "Befreier" sehen? War alles, was gegen die USA ist, automatisch "für uns"? Das entsprach exakt der Linie der US-Aussenpolitik dieser Zeit: Wer nicht gegen uns ist, ist für uns.

MY COMMENT:
of course such simplemindedness can be hideous, i happened to be in INdia during the US bombing of Hanoi in 1973 [not on pilgrimage not a hippie, except that i am some kind of hippie all right.
a decisive moment after ww ii was when the u.s. failed to support the national liberation movements and allowed their linkage to soviet state capitalism, and instead became a successor, implemented its manifest destiny imperialist ambition, from this you get the neo-cons who sing “amerika ueber alles in der welt”.... that these newly liberated nations were usually just as authoritarian, and that authoritarianism and its structures also marked the liberation movements no matter to what degree thee were influenced by communist party structures... or mad and murderous... they had not been colonized long enough!!!

[.....]
Ich glaube, dass Aly in zwei Sachen Recht hat: Die Achtundsechziger haben für Deutschland relativ wenig politisch erreicht - vielleicht ein bisschen Beschleuniger gespielt. Und zweitens haben sie nichts Wesentliches zur "Aufarbeitung" des Nationalsozialismus beigetragen, den sie auch noch - dümmlicherwise - als "Faschismus" bezeichneten (und sogar im Fahrkartenkontrolleur einen "Faschisten" ausmachten).
MY COMMENT:
i can't judge to what extent the 68ters influence exerted itself in the german 2 + 1 party system. the unions and the unternehmer verband were stronger i am sure! aufarbeiten of course requires thinking reading research, tough to do while you are out on the street!


Die Literatur, die Filme, die akribische Geschichtsschreibung wurde von anderen betrieben. Und das auch nachdem der "Marsch durch die Institutionen" am (vorläufigen) Ziel angekommen ist. Worauf sie sich jetzt - in der Regel - beschränken, ist eine wohlfeile Menschenrechts- und Demokratierhetorik (in letzterem den Neokonservativen der USA nicht unähnlich). (Mir gefällt Handkes Formulierung der "Menschenrechtshyänen".)

MY COMMENT:
yes i much like handke's formulation too. you get folks like susan sontag playing „endgame“ in sarajevo. dismissing the serbian victims of the balkan conflicts. some otherwise very intelligent and admirable persons became as one-eyed as handke has been accused of being.
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Wo Aly irrt - und das haben Sie gezeigt: Er sieht nicht den globalen Kontext, in dem dies stattfand. Und auch sein unmittelbares Vergleichen von Texten '68 und '33 ist Unsinn. Schade, dass er glaubte, mit solcher überzogenen Polemik Argumente beisteuern zu können.

MY COMMENT:
what is interesting is how these waves – 68 world wide student unrest; 80s neo liberal accumulist materialistic impulses – is it the world wide pop culture as it reaches and stands in a relationship - dialectical would not be the word but indicates the direction in which I am searching - to its consumers, a word I also don’t much like for those souls and sensibilities which are shaped b mass produced media, where one needs to be specific in seeing what the reciprocal relationship satisfies….
come up as though out of a world wide ocean, very generational and then determined by the poitical situation in each country.

68 was also the year of the repression of he Czech reformers; evidently there were powerful impulses in that direction in the soviet union and east germany…. it’s Chilean manifestation was crushed by the u.s. in the early 70s. one features that characterizes u.s. foreign policy since the early 50s is the overthrow of democratically elected governments that it does not like: Guatemala in 1953; Iran [Mossadegh] in 1954; and onward from there. letting the French waft in the wind in Dienbenphu after initially allowing them back into Vietnam [a u.s. ally during ww ii] so as to replace their influence [the Dulles policy]; Reagan’s support for Apartheid, of the counter-revolutionary Savimbi in Angola; the Congolese dictator, Tschombe?? who reigned with U.S. support. It is a hideous legacy that was sowed there. Entirely ideologically driven.