Left-Extremist Endeavours

Left-wing extremists’
planning oriented to earlier
campaigns
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V. Fields of Operation
1. Campaign by Left-Wing Extremists against the
Council Meeting of the European Union (EU) and
against the World Economic Summit in Cologne
The "Double Summit" in Cologne - the meeting of the heads of
government and Foreign Ministers of the EU on 3 - 6 June, and
the meeting of the eight leading industrial nations (so-called G-8
summit or World Economic Summit) on 18 - 21 June - was at the
centre of left-extremist campaign efforts during the first half of
1999. In view of the high profile of the participating politicians and
on account of their "capitalist" background, both events in a way
provided a "natural" occasion for mobilization of left-extremist as
well as other opponents of the "dominating global economic
order" and of "neoliberalism" #) . The allegation was put forward -
with varying stress and aggressiveness- that both the EU and the
leading industrial nations were instruments in the service of
unbridled capitalism which exacerbated social injustices,
exploited the countries of the Third World and destroyed the
environment.
Attempts to organize a protest campaign go back to early 1998. It
was to be patterned on the campaigns against the World Economic
Summit in Munich in 1992 and against the EU Inter-Governmental
Conferences in Essen in 1994, Amsterdam in 1997
and Cardiff in 1998. An appeal against the "Double Summit"
stated:
"When the state’s executors of the capitalist world order meet
in Cologne in June, we will put up resistance - resistance to
the organizers of oppression and exploitation, resistance to
the stout display of gory power, resistance to the fulsome
praise lavished on the FRG."
Already in the run-up to the campaign it emerged that ideological,
political and personal quarrels would make joint planning difficult.
Finally, three different protest spectrums prepared actions
against the "Double Summit":
- the "Bundeskoordination der Europäischen Märsche gegen
Erwerbslosigkeit, ungeschützte Beschäftigung und Ausgrenzung"
("Federal Co-ordination of European Marches against
Unemployment, Unprotected Employ, and Exclusion"), organized
mainly by Troskyists from the "IV. Internationale/
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