ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: FROM RED TO GREEN IN ... - Isioma

Germany’s Long Way West also entailed a phenomenon I call here
deradicalization. I have borrowed this term from Jerry Muller, who applied the
concept to explain why German intellectuals initially embraced, then
subsequently rejected, the totalitarian forms of government and society they
helped bring about in reaction to the changes of modernity. 24
In many ways, the
West German Left followed a similar path. The small communist cells that were
the immediate predecessors of the AL embraced a proletarian revolution, but
were disillusioned with what they viewed as the imperialistic, revisionist policies
of the Soviet Union. The death of Mao Tse Tung in 1976 and the reign of the
Gang of Four in China sparked the Left to distance itself from its remaining ideal:
it is no accident that parts of the West Berlin Left founded the AL shortly
thereafter. In addition, many on the political left realized that the K-groups also
provided no solution, instead producing only burnout and division. Some of
these disillusioned members responded by forming the AL. Moreover, the
methods and goals of the terrorist groups of the 1970s and 1980s such as the RAF
and the June 2 Movement lost their appeal as their human costs became clear:
significantly, the AL was formed in the immediate wake of the ‘German
Autumn’ of 1977. Finally, during the course of the 1980s, the environmental and
human rights abuses rampant in the GDR sparked the faction within the AL that
still viewed that country positively to become increasingly disillusioned.
24
Jerry Muller, The Other God That Failed: Hans Freyer and the
Deradicalization of German Conservatism (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1987), 9.
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