Re: <nettime> HORST MAHLER: THE ROLE OF A SAD SACK

[I-AFD_2@anarch.free.de (Nico Myowna)]

Florian Cramer wrote:


> > 	HORST MAHLER: THE ROLE OF A SAD SACK
> > 	John Barker <harrier@easynet.co.uk>
> > 'FORMER BAADER-MEINHOF GUERRILLA CONVERTS TO NEO-NAZI PROPAGANDIST.' This

[snip]

> - Reinhold Oberlercher was the leading SDS activist in Hamburg and a chief
> theoretician of the German SDS (next to Rudi Dutschke and Bernd Rabehl). In
> 1981, he became a member in the FAU where he published a "Manifest deutscher
> Anarchisten" ("Manifesto of German Anarchists") which claimed that "foreign
> competition destroys the job market" so that "German anarchist demand an
> immediate ban on hiring foreigners" ("deutsche anarchisten fordern daher
> sofortiges einstellungsverbot fuer auslaender...", quoted from
> <http://www.trend.partisan.net/trd1099/t321099.html>"). Today, he is
> considered to be one of the most important ideologists of the German
> neo-nazi movement. He advocates a "Fourth Reich"
> <http://www.deutsches-reich.de/oberlercher/schulungstexte/index.html>.
> (Oberlercher's homepage is located on the neo-nazi webserver
> <http://www.deutsches-reich.de/oberlercher>). He also is a close
> collaborator of Horst Mahler.
This is not quite correct. Oberlercher never was a member of FAU. He  
considered himself a 'sympathizer' for a short time, and contacted FAU  
mainly because he was of the opinion that the organisation badly needed  
his then latest piece of work: Karl Marx 'Das Kapital' converted into a  
mathematic formula. With this formula, Oberlercher intended to calculate  
the preparedness for revolution within the German society.

The 'Manifesto' you mention was written by some 50 persons, not all of  
whom were FAU members (the respective FAU local believed it was necessary  
to achieve at a cooperation of the left in the broadest sense and  
therefore accepted the cooperation of maoists etc. who took part in the  
meetings of this local more or less regularly). I was a member of this FAU  
local, and as far as I remember, Oberlercher submitted a draft for one  
paragraph of this manifesto. The paragraph published was reworded, and the  
overall message of the manifesto was quite different from the sentence  
quoted above.

The manifesto published did not go by the title 'Manifesto of German  
Anarchists', but 'Manifesto of anarchists and anarcho-syndicalists'. There  
was no mention of 'German' in the title of the manifesto published by said  
FAU local. It is of course possible that Oberlercher published such a  
manifesto on his own, but this will have nothing to do with FAU.

As a result to the draft submitted by Oberlercher, there was a very vivid  
discussion within this FAU local, and as a result of this discussion and  
the things that were said, Oberlercher never again took part in any FAU  
meeting. Anyway, he only took part in two meetings of the FAU local in  
question.

Oberlercher left with the words: "FAU ideology is hollow, and its members  
will be the first to join a new SS" (paraphrased). Given Oberlercher's  
conversion, this sentence is real-life satire...



> The German Green Party, for example,
> is the official successor of the party "Aktion Unabhaengiger Deutscher (AUD)"
> ("Initiative of Independent Germans") whose historical roots were in a block
> of extreme right parties ("Block der Heimatlosen und Entrechteten").
Without being too fond of political parties including the Greens as an  
anarchist, but this is simply not true. The Green Party is in *no* way the  
official successor of AUD! In fact the main part of the party members came  
from left authoritarian organisations like KB and KBW (Communist Alliance  
resp Communist Alliance West-Germany). It is true that the Green Party did  
have right-wing members, but many of them were kicked out in the early/mid- 
80ies already.

> One of
> the prominent founders of the Green Party, Herbert Gruhl, later signed the
> right-wing "Heidelberger Manifest", which stated that immigrants are a cause
> of environmental problems, and one of their once-most prominent politicians
> in the federal parliament, Alfred Mechtersheimer, has also turned to the
> extreme right.
Both persons have been members of the Green Party for a more or less short  
period. Gruhl, however, was a former member of the Christian Democratic  
Union, Mechtersheimer came from its Bavarian sister party Christian Social  
Union, and they did not have to perform a turn to the extreme right after  
they were made to leave the Greens, they were pretty much right wing all  
the time.

The fact that right-wing extremists from AUD, or people from the right  
wings of CDU/CSU joined the Greens is not so much due to a fault of the  
Greens, but to an attempt of the right to gain acceptance by taking up  
environmental issues. To reduce environmental and/or peace movements to  
these members is far off the track. The Green Party consisted of about 30  
different tendencies when founded, and the right-wing members were just  
one of them, and one which was exposed and excluded to boot.

Nico Myowna


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