Left-Extremist Endeavours

Protest potential shows
little homogeneity
Demonstrations with
significant numbers of
participants from other EU
countries
Secrétariat Unifié" (with headquarters in Paris) (cf. Chapter IV,
section 5, above), and patterned on similar "Euro Marches" of
the year 1997;
- a "Linksradikales Anti EU-WWG-Plenum" ("Radical-Left Alliance
against the EU/World Economic Summit"), which is supported
mainly by autonomists and functionaries of the extremist
"Ökologische Linke" ("Ecological Left") and using the
infrastructure of the "Allgemeiner Studierenden-Ausschuss"
(AStA - "General Students’ Committee") of Cologne University;
- a "Bündnis Köln 99" ("Alliance Cologne ’99") - at first also
called "Antoniterkirchenbündnis" after its venue, the Church of
St. Anthony’s Order - which consists mainly of non-extremist
church-affiliated and development-policy groups, but is also,
in terms of concepts, substantially influenced by left-wing
extremists and was instructed by a functionary of the former
"Kommunistischer Bund" (KB - "Communist Union").
The three spectrums were not able to agree on a joint approach
and notified a total of three demonstrations and three "countersummits".
In addition, other action groups and associations, such
as the international revolutionary network "Peoples’ Global Action"
(PGA) which was founded in 1997, planned their own actions,
mostly described as "decentralized", with the aim of disrupting
the summit meetings and of publicly discrediting the political
concerns of these conferences.
The demonstration held by the Trotskyite "Euromarsch-Bündnis"
("Euro-March Alliance") in Cologne on 29 May was directed
against the EU Council meeting and proved the continuous cooperation
among organized left-extremist structures from all
countries of the EU. More than half of the 11,000 participants
(figure given by the organizers: 25,000) came from neighbouring
EU countries, with the French and Italian participants - up to
2,000 persons each - having the largest level of representation.
In addition to the "IV. Internationale/Secrétariat Unifié" and its
"Euro-Marchers", three other international Trotskyite umbrella
organizations mobilized their European sections. From among
the traditionally oriented Communist parties, supporters of the
"German Communist Party" (DKP), of the "Partito della rifondazione
comunista" (Prc - "Communist Refoundation Party"), and of
the Spanish, Greek and Danish Communist Parties took part in
these events. Anarcho-syndicalists 154) from almost all EU countries
formed a large marching column, carrying black-red flags.
German autonomists participated with two "black blocks" comprising
a total of about 1,000 persons; subsequently, they contemptuously
dismissed the demonstration as a "parade of a
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