Left-wing politics

In mid-May 1995, the left-wing political TV show Panorama (again from the German public station ARD) reported on several me-... 

In this Frankfurt period, which ended in late 1990, I read nearly 200 books, mostly during my loafer-service in the Bundeswehr I read right-wing and left-wing books, books from the middle-of-the-road, and books without any political viewpoint. It was one of the best times I have ever experienced. It was like preparing for an intellectual break-out. 

In this atmosphere of repression, many whose politics were liberal, who favored international cooperation and domestic political freedom, fell silent. Membership in the Federation of American Scientists and other liberal political action groups dwindled. The Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists disbanded. The left wing in American politics crumbled. It was simply too dangerous to criticize American policy. 

This sequence of rather harsh reforms that were perceived as a break with the traditional social policy approach to labour market problems provoked broad public unrest, which eventually resulted in a significant decline in political support for the Red-Green coalition, in particular the Social Democrats, the emergence of a new left-wing party and the electoral defeat of Red-Green in autumn 2005 (Eichhorst and Sesselmeier 2006)2. 

Hitler recognized that the direct takeover of private property provokes powerful emotional and political resistance. One of the secrets of his rise to power was that he managed to portray the National Socialist movement as opposed to such a measure, indeed to Communism itself As Robert Proctor notes. Hitler understood that there was no need to nationalize industry when you can nationalize the people. 1 want to emphasize here that 1 regard right-wing Nazism and left-wing Communism not as two antagonistic political systems, but as two similar types of socialism (statism)—one brown, or national, the other red, or international. Both kinds of statists were very successful in their efforts to undermine autonomy and destroy morality. 

The novel follows the efforts of the left to resist the fascist dictators of Europe in direct action in Spain, in underground activities in Germany. Two themes accompany this movement. The first of these is the imperative of left-wing unity with the concomitant question of the extent to which the individual must submit to the will of the collective. The second is the relationship between the political and the artistic avant-garde it is linked to the first via the role of subjectivity. In both these domains Stalin, although like Hitler he is never named, and the distortions of socialism carried out under his leadership are declared responsible for the failures which led to the catastrophe of fascism. 

---