Three Radicals Inside Europe's Leftist Elite

A few years back, after a prolonged immersion in American Protestant fundamentalism (I was writing a book), I moved from the U.S. to Western Europe, ready to bask in an open, secular, liberal culture. Instead I discovered that European social democracy, too, was a kind of fundamentalism, rigid and doctrinaire, yielding what Swedish writer Johan Norberg calls "one-idea states"—nations where an echo chamber of insular elites calls the shots, where monochrome media daily reiterate statist mantras and shut out contrarian views, and where teachers and professors systematically misrepresent the U.S. (millions of Europeans believe that free public schools, unemployment insurance, and pensions are unknown in America). The more I saw of the European elites' chronic distrust of the public, and the public's habitual deference to those elites, the fonder I grew of the nasty, ridiculous rough-and-tumble of American democracy, in which every voice is heard—even if, as a result, the U.S. gets capital punishment and Europe gets gay marriage.

How did Western Europe come to be ruled by monolithic ideologues? Short answer: the "'68ers," which is what Europeans call those who came of age in the radical movements of the 1960s, revering Mao and reviling the U.S. as Nazi Germany's successor. Remarkably, after the protests were over, an extraordinary number of '68ers—those who'd stood on the barricades denouncing the system—ascended into positions of political and cultural power, shaping a New Europe (and an EU) in which the anti-Americanism of the barricades became official dogma. Paul Berman's absorbing, elegantly written Power and the Idealists recounts the political journeys of three of the most influential of these '68ers. Joschka Fischer, once head of the militant group Revolutionärer Kampf (Revolutionary Struggle), became German foreign minister in 1998. Daniel Cohn-Bendit, a leader of the May '68 Paris demos, now sits in the European Parliament. And Dr. Bernard Kouchner, boy Communist, went on to found Doctors Without Borders in 1971 and to serve as an EU and UN official. The ultimate point of Berman's 100-page opening chapter is that ethnic cleansing in Kosovo compelled these three to move "from radical leftism to liberal antitotalitarianism"—that is, to reject their longtime view of the U.S. as the world's supreme menace and support NATO action against Milosevic. Many '68ers, Berman suggests, made the same move.

Berman's first chapter is based on "The Passion of Joschka Fisher," an August 2001 New Republic essay. Days later came 9/11, in whose aftermath the notion of the European left as a newfound bastion of "liberal antitotalitarianism" would be increasingly hard to buy. For even if a significant number of '68ers did switch sides over Kosovo, the wars in Afghanistan and (especially) Iraq switched most of them back. Of Berman's trio, only Kouchner supported the invasion of Iraq; Cohn-Bendit, Fischer, and nearly everybody else on the European left opposed it, in most cases fiercely. Berman claims that this posture was "tactical"—in principle, he insists, the left continued to stand for "liberal antitotalitarianism." My own observations strongly suggest that most '68ers never really embraced "liberal antitotalitarianism" in the first place; yes, European governments felt obliged to go along with the Kosovo and Afghan invasions, but the academic, journalistic, and bureaucratic elites protested both operations vociferously (only to drop their opposition down the memory hole when those efforts succeeded).

Berman's goal is clear: At a time when many leftists' animosity toward George W. Bush has blinded them to the iniquities of al Qaeda, the Taliban, Saddam, et al., not to mention the best interests of people who've suffered under tyranny, he wants to hold up Fischer, Cohn-Bendit, and Kouchner as models of reflective and principled interventionist leftism. Fine. One problem here, alas, is that all three of these men have, in their time, done things that raise serious questions about their principles and powers of reflection. Fischer, for example, brutally beat up a cop at a 1973 Frankfurt street protest; Cohn-Bendit hid a fugitive whose group had helped coordinate the 1972 Olympics murders. While reporting candidly enough on these and other episodes, Berman prefers to see them (with excessive generosity) as eminently forgivable missteps made in their youth by men who have since developed a mature wisdom deserving of emulation. Whatever. Bottom line: he's out to convince readers that if they stop cheering George Galloway and linking arms with Islamofascists at antiwar rallies and instead join his trio in (as he sees it) supporting "liberal antitotalitarianism"—i.e., siding with freedom against oppression—they'll still be able to call themselves leftists. It's ironic: Berman's New Republic article recounted the supposed awakening of the European left; to read the book that's grown out of it is to be intensely aware of just how many leftists are still sound asleep.

This morning I posted these observations about the sad condition of Germany's intellectual climate on another thread:

...the moral and intellectual rot that now passes for sophisticated discourse in Germany

It is almost impossible to overstate the degree of leftist "intellectual rot" which contaminates old Europe. This "rot" is the proximate result, not of uninformed or sloppy thinking but of generations of relentless leftist propaganda which now dominates public and private discourse in Europe. I can testify to this unhappy reality from my experience of living in Germany for more than 15 years.

Yes, an appalling percentage of the population trades in conspiracy theory. That is, many believe that either "the Jews" or the Americans themselves were complicit in the 9/11 strike on the homeland. Years ago, I recited on these threads an anecdote which occurred on a train in which German college aged kids from the recently liberated former East Germany hissed venomously, "ich hasse Amerika" (I hate America). The anecdotal evidence is endless, for example, a highly educated psychiatrist, a neighbor, insists that the world was safer when America's power was counterbalanced by the Soviet Union. The mindless faith in eliminating terrorism by getting at the root causes of poverty which allegedly spawns it. The blaming of President Bush for hurricanes. The adulation of Bill Clinton.

In September I was traveling through Moscow on a bus with 39 German businessmen and journalists when we passed a statue of Lenin. I remarked to my seat companion, an extremely left-wing pony-tailed journalist, that the specter of this statute to Lenin drew not the slightest response from the Germans aboard the bus but one could have no doubt of the petulant reaction which would arise if the statue were of George Bush.

The anti-Americanism which infects Germany is malignant and pervasive and, unfortunately, the institutions are not in place which would ordinarily offer hope that the situation can be redressed. Imagine that you are living in a red state with no access to blue state thinking and you have a rough approximation of the politically correct climate in Germany. Enter a bookstore in Germany and you will find countless works bashing America and especially bashing George Bush but it is a rare find to discover a book which supports the United States.

We all know that the institutions such as the press and the Academy are structured to force thinking in opposition to America and to keep it there. My children returning home from school recite how the teacher praised Che Guevera as a liberator. But other institutions subtly reinforce this tendency. For example, in Europe and especially in Germany, public figures can, and indeed are expected to sue for libel if they are falsely maligned. Thus, the typical German believes that everything Michael Moore says and shows him in Fahrenheit 9/11 is the truth, else Moore's victims would have brought an action against him for libel.

Normally, this situation could be at least addressed by a president who knows how to use the bully pulpit but, unfortunately, George Bush is one of the most inarticulate presidents and American history and can only speak to the world effectively what he does so from a prepared text(I am not unmindful of his ad Lib with the bullhorn-a brilliant exception). Bush's rope a dope strategy has brought adverse consequences in Europe as well as in America, in Europe for America as a whole, and in America, for the fortunes of the Republican Party. When the world accepted that there were no weapons of mass distraction in Iraq, the administration and, by extension, America was confronted by a wall of cynicism which could only have been scaled by the most articulate and persistent advocacy. Regrettably, this is been lacking, especially since the election.

Believe me, Chancellor Merckle has shown great courage in publicly effecting a rapprochement with America. She came within an eyelash of losing the election to an otherwise discredited anti-American demagogue who owed most of his popularity to his craven readiness to pander to the European left by bashing America.

Finally, it goes without saying that American Democrats have shown themselves to be as demagogic as Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder when they travel abroad.I for one believe that this shameless pandering to the European left (which probably represents 80% of Europe) by our Democrat politicians represents more than just cheap and easy whoring after approval. It is nothing less than a manifestation of the desire to wed the blue states (of course with the red states in train) and and the European Union into a super-national one world government. It is this ambition which animates the hatred of America in the intellectual left in both Europe and here: These people see the United States as the principal obstacle to the achievement of one world government.

When the world came to believe that no weapons of mass distraction were in Iraq, the left here and in Europe saw its opportunity and seized it with both fists.

"It is interesting that you mention George Soros as an exemplar of megalomania. I quite agree with you and he is all the more dangerous because his virtually infinite wealth (the interest on his billions alone and easily fund his political adventurism well beyond his actuarial life span) exponentially expands his capacity for mischief. Indeed, I have compared him to a millionaire communist who founded The Frankfurt School and set in train the intellectual forces which today we know as political correctness and which have caused us so much harm and which debilitate our defenses against Islamic terrorism.
Hillary and Soros together form a specter of a nightmare marriage even more threatening than her sordid, twisted relationship with Slick."

*Megalomania (e.g., powerlust with singular egocentric worldview) is the only explanation I have to understand the specious anti-capitalism of "millionaire communists" who founded The Frankfurt School and George Soros who..."Since establishing the Open Society Institute (OSI), Soros has given away billions of dollars, much of it to leftwing causes. He pledged to raise $75 million to defeat President Bush in the 2004 Presidential election, and personally donated nearly a third of that amount to anti-Bush groups (see The Shadow Party). Soros recently gave $5 million to MoveOn.org, the group that has produced political ads likening Bush to Adolf Hitler. He also contributed $10 million to a Democratic Party 2004 get-out-the-vote initiative called America Coming Together, whose directors include representatives from the AFL-CIO, the Sierra Club, the Service Employees International Union, and the feminist political-action committee Emily's List. He has further pledged $3 million to the Center for American Progress (CAP), a think-tank headed by former Clinton chief-of-staff John Podesta. CAP was formed in an effort to offset the influence of its conservative counterpart, the Heritage Foundation."

"PBS broadcaster and Schumann Center for Media and Democracy president Bill Moyers is a trustee of the Open Society Institute's board of directors. The network of Soros foundations - the most prominent of which is the Open Society Institute - supports a wide array of leftwing groups and causes." -http://www.discoverthenetwork.org

*My favorite Bete Noire George Soros, who in effect owns the Democrat party, is perversely dedicated to the deconstruction of America's socio-political foundation.

Very well put. Many of us have issues with some of what Bush advocates as his mandate (eg. guest worker program). But even on things that there is a common agreement, such as taking the war on terrorists into the muslim heartland, there's valid criticism of Bush in that he has not been able to articulate a good response to his critics.

It is not enough to say that Saddam Hussein was a madman. The treat was the potential for WMDs to be produced by a rogue regime, then passed on to terrorists.

To not take this and level with the American public has been costly, and actually undermines the war effort to come.

While Bush may be on the right side of many issues, and is not to be confused with the opposition, it is possible he is an example of the Peter Principle.

On another point, about the One World Order. It used to be that the Birchers were the kooks, but it looks like they had some of the important things right.

While I doubt that an American/European leftist coalition can rule the world, the impulse to create the institution is there.

A very shrewd move for a future conservative President would be to cleave this growing beast before it grows bigger. If the leftists see Europe and "blue state" America as part of the same thing, we need a President to revoke the Monroe Doctrine, at least the part that says that America will prevent a foreign entitiy from occupying Europe.

The nuclear umbrella needs to be retracted, and for the Euros to relearn the importance of self defence. A more grown up Europe will not be as beligerant.

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