Left-Extremist Endeavours

Militant left-wing extremists
assess the campaign
as a failure
motley collection of groups from all over Europe".
Also on the occasion of the EU Council meeting on 3 June, some
2,500 left-wing extremists from the violence-inclined spectrum
took part, under the motto "Widerstand gegen das Europa der
Herrschenden! Stoppt den NATO-Angriffskrieg" ("Resistance to
the Europe of the Ruling Classes! Stop NATO’s War of Aggression"),
in a demonstration organized by the "Linksradikales Anti-
EU-WWG-Bündnis" ("Radical-Left Alliance against the EU/World
Economic Summit"). Like the event on 29 May, this march also
took place without any major incidents: autonomists had, already
in the preparatory stage, decided to forgo militancy in view of the
massive police presence.
The mobilization was disappointing in terms of numbers; this was
also the case with the "Summit assault demonstration" of the
"Bündnis Köln 99" ("Cologne ’99 Alliance"), held on 19 June
against the G-8 summit. In order to fill the ranks, the organizer
had also admitted associations whose main concern was not directed
primarily against the global economic order. The procession
of some 8,000 persons was made up, apart from Tamil extremists,
mainly by 4,500 supporters of the "Kurdistan Workers’
Party" (PKK) who wanted to draw attention to the fate of their
leader ÖCALAN imprisoned in Turkey.
The general public took no notice of the "counter-congresses" of
the three protest spectrums. Alongside the "Double Summit",
there were, mainly through the agency of supporters from the
spectrum of "Peoples’ Global Action" and "Reclaim the Streets",
isolated cases of damage to property, obstruction of traffic and
temporary demonstrative occupation, for instance of a Dutch
loan-employment agency and - as protest against the participation
of the Federal Armed Forces (Bw) in NATO actions against
Yugoslavia - of the Cologne executive secretariat of "Bündnis
90/Die Grünen" [political party "Alliance ’90/The Greens"].
The actions against the "Double Summit" were assessed very
differently by left-wing extremists. Trotskyists and anarcho-syndicalists,
for the major part, arrived at a positive assessment,
highlighting their structures’ ability for Europe-wide co-operation.
Militant left-wing extremists did not share these positive appraisals.
In particular, they criticized the "broad reformist spectrum" of
the protest alliances, which had distracted from the requirement
for decentralized direct action. Also, the focus on countercongresses
and mass rallies had been a mistake 155) . It was generally
deplored that the security authorities had succeeded in
controlling the course of the counter-activities and in effectively
preventing militancy.
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