133-571: Ulrike Marie Meinhof (7 October 1934 – 9 May 1976) was a German left-wing journalist and founding member of the Red Army Faction (RAF) in West Germany , commonly referred to in the press as the "Baader-Meinhof gang". She is the reputed author of The Urban Guerilla Concept (1971). The manifesto acknowledges the RAF's "roots in the history of the student movement "; condemns " reformism " as "a brake on
266-451: A mixed economy with an empowered public sector and a thriving private sector . Centre-left policies tend to favour limited state intervention in matters pertaining to the public interest . In several countries, the terms far-left and radical left have been associated with many varieties of anarchism , autonomism and communism . They have been used to describe groups that advocate anti-capitalism and eco-terrorism . In France,
399-619: A capitalist bourgeois ideology. Marxists were responsible for organizing the first International Working Women's Day events. The women's liberation movement is closely connected to the New Left and other new social movements which openly challenged the orthodoxies of the Old Left. Socialist feminism as exemplified by the Freedom Socialist Party and Radical Women and Marxist feminism , spearheaded by Selma James , saw themselves as
532-587: A central feature of political debates on the Left. During the French Revolution, nationalism was a key policy of the Republican Left. The Republican Left advocated for civic nationalism and argued that the nation is a "daily plebiscite" formed by the subjective "will to live together". Related to revanchism , the belligerent will to take revenge against Germany and retake control of Alsace-Lorraine , nationalism
665-472: A completely commercial magazine in the early part of 1969, and many other authors followed her. She stated that neither she nor her collaborators wanted to give a left-wing alibi to the magazine that sooner or later "would become part of the counter-revolution, a thing that I cannot gloss over with my co-operation, especially now that it is impossible to change its course". Later, they organised an occupation at konkret ' s office (along with several members of
798-524: A contract from Wagenbach, Meinhof petitioned authorities to allow Baader to travel from Moabit Prison to an institute for social research in the Dahlem district of Berlin. The plan was for armed guerrillas to enter the institute and secure the release of Baader; it was intended that no shooting was to take place. Meinhof was to stay behind and, denying any complicity in the escape, maintain her innocence. Baader arrived with two guards and set to work with Meinhof in
931-492: A criminal association. Before the trial was concluded, Meinhof was found hanged by a rope, fashioned from a towel, in her cell in the Stammheim Prison , Stuttgart, on 9 May 1976. It is highly probable that, if not for her death, she would have been sentenced to life imprisonment plus 15 years. (The remaining three defendants received such a sentence, designed to minimize the possibility of early parole.) On 9 May 1976, Meinhof
1064-437: A delegation of lawyers planned to denounce the measure of detention in solitary confinement. Finally, Meinhof was planning to reveal main witness Gerhard Müller's role in the trial. Federal prosecutors had indicted the four defendants for the murder of a policeman Norbert Schmid , who was shot by Müller himself. During the press conference called by defense attorneys, one of Meinhof's lawyers, Michael Oberwinder, stated that it
1197-553: A demonstration of about 7,000 people. Demonstrations took place across the country, and social and political prisoners in Berlin and Hessen held a three-day hunger strike. Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir in an open letter compared her death to the worst crimes of the Nazi era. In late 2002, following investigations by her daughter Bettina, it was discovered that Meinhof's brain had been retained (apparently without permission) following
1330-570: A desire for greater economic equality and workers rights with demands for environmental protection. Democratic socialist Bolivian president Evo Morales has traced environmental degradation to capitalist consumerism , stating that "[t]he Earth does not have enough for the North to live better and better, but it does have enough for all of us to live well". James Hansen , Noam Chomsky , Raj Patel , Naomi Klein , The Yes Men and Dennis Kucinich hold similar views. In climate change mitigation ,
1463-720: A distinction is made between the centre-left and the left represented by the Socialist Party and the French Communist Party and the far-left as represented by anarcho-communists , Maoists and Trotskyists . The United States Department of Homeland Security defines "left-wing extremism" as groups that "seek to bring about change through violent revolution, rather than through established political processes". Similar to far-right politics , extremist far-left politics have motivated political violence , radicalization , genocide , terrorism , sabotage and damage to property,
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#17330928110961596-523: A firing squad, and children were deprived of any religious education outside of the home. Today in the Western world , those on the Left generally support secularization and the separation of church and state. However, religious beliefs have also been associated with many left-wing movements such as the progressive movement , the Social Gospel movement, the civil rights movement , the anti-war movement ,
1729-423: A force within left-wing politics. The influential Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels , published amidst the wave of revolutions of 1848 across Europe, asserted that all of human history is defined by class struggle . They predicted that a proletarian revolution would eventually overthrow bourgeois capitalism and create a stateless , moneyless and classless communist society . It
1862-596: A funeral caravan accompanied his coffin as it was transported from West Berlin through checkpoints in East Germany to his hometown of Hanover in West Germany , where he was buried. More than forty years later, in 2009, it was revealed that at the time of the events Kurras had been an informal collaborator of the East German secret police Stasi and a long-time member of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany ,
1995-549: A left-wing response to The Limits to Growth model that predicted catastrophic resource depletion and spurred environmentalism, postulating that capitalist technologies were the key cause responsible for environmental degradation, as opposed to human population pressures. Environmental degradation can be seen as a class or equity issue, as environmental destruction disproportionately affects poorer communities and countries. Several left-wing or socialist groupings have an overt environmental concern and several green parties contain
2128-479: A mainly faithful account of Meinhof's life story for adolescents. Meinhof's life has been the subject, to varying degrees of fictionalisation, of several films and stage productions. Treatment in films include Reinhard Hauff 's 1986 Stammheim , an account of the Stammheim trial , Margarethe von Trotta 's 1981 Marianne and Juliane and Uli Edel 's 2008 film The Baader Meinhof Complex . Stage treatments include
2261-465: A more moderate approach, famously to characterize Dutschke's ideology as amounting to "left fascism", a formulation that he later retracted. The student movement that swelled and, in part, became radicalised in the late 1960s, after Ohnesorg's death, influenced many future German politicians who were in their teens and twenties at the time. A monument next to the Deutsche Oper Berlin, which
2394-507: A new investigation, in order to clarify definitively whether there was any evidence that the killing of Ohnesorg could have been ordered by authorities in East Berlin; in November 2011, that investigation was officially closed with the determination that there was not enough evidence to justify reopening the case. The prosecutor's office noted that, due to the passage of time, many participants in
2527-721: A part of the Left by their contemporaries. Feminist pioneer Mary Wollstonecraft was influenced by Thomas Paine . Many notable leftists have been strong supporters of gender equality such as Marxist philosophers and activists Rosa Luxemburg , Clara Zetkin and Alexandra Kollontai , anarchist philosophers and activists such as Virginia Bolten , Emma Goldman and Lucía Sánchez Saornil and democratic socialist philosophers and activists such as Helen Keller and Annie Besant . However, Marxists such as Rosa Luxemburg, Clara Zetkin, and Alexandra Kollontai, who are supporters of radical social equality for women and have rejected and opposed liberal feminism because they considered it to be
2660-482: A part of the Left that challenges male-dominated and sexist structures within the Left. The connection between left-wing ideologies and the struggle for LGBTQ rights also has an important history. Prominent socialists who were involved in early struggles for LGBTQ rights include Edward Carpenter , Oscar Wilde , Harry Hay , Bayard Rustin and Daniel Guérin , among others. The New Left is also strongly supportive of LGBTQ rights and liberation, having been instrumental in
2793-563: A position within the political mainstream that accepts capitalism and a market economy. The terms far-left and ultra-left are used for positions that are more radical , more strongly rejecting capitalism and mainstream representative democracy , instead advocating for a socialist society based on economic democracy and direct democracy , representing economic, political and social democracy. The centre-left includes social democrats , social liberals , progressives and greens . Centre-left supporters accept market allocation of resources in
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#17330928110962926-456: A ruling elite of individuals) while it prepares a population for capitalist exploitation. Within anarchism, this subject has been extensively discussed by Rudolf Rocker in his book titled Nationalism and Culture and by the works of Fredy Perlman such as Against His-Story, Against Leviathan and The Continuing Appeal of Nationalism . The failure of revolutions in Germany and Hungary in
3059-674: A strong socialist presence. The Green Party of England and Wales features an eco-socialist group, the Green Left , which was founded in June 2005. Its members held several influential positions within the party, including both the former Principal Speakers Siân Berry and Derek Wall , himself an eco-socialist and Marxist academic. In Europe, several green left political parties such as the European United Left–Nordic Green Left combine traditional social-democratic values such as
3192-663: A teacher and died from cancer in 1949. Riemeck took on the role of guardian of Meinhof and her elder sister, Wienke. In 1952, Meinhof took her Abitur at a school in Weilburg . She then studied philosophy , sociology , education and German at Marburg , where she became involved with reform movements. In 1957, she transferred to the University of Münster , where she met the Spanish Marxist intellectual Manuel Sacristán (who later translated and edited some of her writings), joined
3325-404: A temporary state between the capitalist state of affairs and a communist society . Marx defined the proletariat as salaried workers, in contrast to the lumpenproletariat , who he defined as the outcasts of society such as beggars, tricksters, entertainers, buskers, criminals and prostitutes. The political relevance of farmers has divided the left. In Das Kapital , Marx scarcely mentioned
3458-412: A year later. In 1962, Meinhof had a benign brain tumor surgically removed; the 1976 autopsy showed that remnants of the tumor and surgical scar tissue impinged on her amygdala . The attempted assassination of SDS leader Rudi Dutschke on 11 April 1968 provoked Meinhof to write an article in konkret demonstrating her increasingly militant attitude and containing perhaps her best-known quote: Protest
3591-614: Is bourgeois nationalism . Some Marxists, together with others on the left, view nationalism , racism (including antisemitism) and religion as divide and conquer tactics used by the ruling classes to prevent the working class from uniting against them in solidarity with one another. Left-wing movements have often taken up anti-imperialist positions. Anarchism has developed a critique of nationalism that focuses on nationalism's role in justifying and consolidating state power and domination. Through its unifying goal, nationalism strives for centralisation (both in specific territories and in
3724-705: Is in reality hatred of capitalism. In this regard Ulrike Meinhof ably constructed a remarkable statement about the failure of the Baader-Meinhof Group. With it, it is also possible to praise the Black September attack in Munich. She claimed to feel an “historical identity” with the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto, who attempted an unarmed uprising leading to their defeat. “We have broken through the entire blah blah. We have provided
3857-464: Is probably The Concept of the Urban Guerrilla , a response to an essay by Horst Mahler , that attempts to set out more correctly their prevailing ideology . It also included the first use of the name Rote Armee Fraktion and, in the publications of it, the first use of the RAF insignia. Her practical importance in the group, however, was often overstated by the media, the most obvious example being
3990-421: Is sometimes used to justify hostility towards supranational organizations. Left-wing nationalism can also refer to any form of nationalism which emphasizes a leftist working-class populist agenda that seeks to overcome exploitation or oppression by other nations. Many Third World anti-colonialist movements have adopted leftist and socialist ideas. Third-Worldism is a tendency within leftist thought that regards
4123-478: Is that all of us, communists as well as others, were united in this.” However, she now recognizes that antisemitism can in its own way be anticapitalist. It separates the hatred of people about their dependency on money as a means of exchange from their desire for communism. “Auschwitz meant that six million Jews were murdered and carted off to Europe’s garbage heap, dispensed with for what they were presented as: money Jews.” Finance capital and banks, “the hard core of
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4256-509: Is unfounded, given the fact that the investigation results reasonably converge to the conclusion that she could not hang herself. Most probably Ulrike Meinhof was already dead before she was hanged and there are warning signs indicating the involvement of a third party regarding her death." The circumstances around Meinhof's death have been disputed by people close to her, including many of Meinhof's relatives, friends, lawyers, and comrades, presenting various arguments. There are inquiries regarding
4389-627: Is used for social and cultural politics. In the United Kingdom during the 1980s, the term hard left was applied to supporters of Tony Benn such as the Campaign Group and those involved in the London Labour Briefing newspaper as well as Trotskyist groups such as Militant and the Alliance for Workers' Liberty . In the same period, the term soft left was applied to supporters of
4522-511: Is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more. Later that year, her writings on arson attacks in Frankfurt as protests against the Vietnam War resulted in her developing an acquaintance with the perpetrators, most significantly Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin . She stopped writing for konkret which had in her opinion evolved into
4655-545: The Außerparlamentarische Opposition ), to distribute proclamations to the employees, something that failed since Röhl learned about it, and moved the employees to their homes to continue their work from there. Finally, Röhl's house was vandalized by some of the protesters. Meinhof arrived in Röhl's villa at 11:30, after police and journalists had already arrived. She was accused by Röhl (and subsequently described by
4788-656: The Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund (SDS), the German Socialist Student Union. She participated in protests against the Bundeswehr and the proposal of Konrad Adenauer 's government to deploy nuclear weapons. Despite her involvement, Meinhof was critical of the SDS leaders' subconcious misogyny and the organization's omission of female members. Meinhof eventually became the spokeswoman of
4921-568: The Bible . In the late 19th century, the Protestant Social Gospel movement arose in the United States which integrated progressive and socialist thought with Christianity through faith-based social activism. Other left-wing religious movements include Buddhist socialism, Jewish socialism and Islamic socialism. There have been alliances between the left and anti-war Muslims , such as
5054-969: The Democratic and Republican parties, or as synonyms for liberalism and conservatism , respectively. Since the Right was populist, both in the Western and the Eastern Bloc , anything viewed as avant-garde art was called leftist across Europe, thus the identification of Picasso's Guernica as "leftist" in Europe and the condemnation of the Russian composer Shostakovich 's opera ( The Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District ) in Pravda as follows: "Here we have 'leftist' confusion instead of natural, human music". The spectrum of left-wing politics ranges from centre-left to far-left or ultra-left . The term centre-left describes
5187-508: The East German government. Konkret was widely read by student activists and progressive intellectuals, and as its chief editor from 1962 to 1964, Meinhof was able to elicit contributions from established journalists and authors. On 2 June 1967, Meinhof's exposure in konkret of German complicity in supporting the Pahlavi dynasty helped rally students to a demonstration in West Berlin against
5320-684: The French Revolution , referring to the seating arrangement in the French National Assembly . Those who sat on the left generally opposed the ancien régime and the Bourbon monarchy and supported the Revolution, the creation of a democratic republic and the secularisation of society while those on the right were supportive of the traditional institutions of the Ancien Régime. Usage of
5453-581: The Republicans and Eugène Etienne , the president of the Parliamentary Colonial Group. After the antisemitic Dreyfus Affair in which officer Alfred Dreyfus was falsely convicted of sedition and exiled to a penal colony in 1894 before being exonerated in 1906, nationalism in the form of Boulangism increasingly became associated with the far-right. The Marxist social class theory of proletarian internationalism asserts that members of
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5586-651: The Respect Party and the Stop the War Coalition in Britain. In France, the left has been divided over moves to ban the hijab from schools, with some leftists supporting a ban based on the separation of church and state in accordance with the principle of laïcité and other leftists opposing the prohibition based on personal and religious freedom. Social progressivism is another common feature of modern leftism, particularly in
5719-747: The Roman Catholic Church and supporting atheism and the separation of church and state , ushering in a policy known as laïcité . Karl Marx asserted that "religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people ". In Soviet Russia, the Bolsheviks under Vladimir Lenin originally embraced an ideological principle which professed that all religion would eventually atrophy and resolved to eradicate organized Christianity and other religious institutions. In 1918, 10 Russian Orthodox hierarchs were summarily executed by
5852-543: The Saint-Imier International and later the International Workers' Association (IWA–AIT) . The Second International (1888–1916) became divided over the issue of World War I . Those who opposed the war, among them Vladimir Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg , saw themselves as further to the left. In the United States, leftists such as social liberals , progressives and trade unionists were influenced by
5985-618: The Second Republic was an attempt by the Left to re-assert itself after the 1848 Revolution , but only a small portion of the population supported this. In the mid-19th century, nationalism , socialism , democracy and anti-clericalism became key features of the French Left. After Napoleon III 's 1851 coup and the subsequent establishment of the Second Empire , Marxism began to rival radical republicanism and utopian socialism as
6118-455: The Spiegel report indicated that the new information was still unlikely to be sufficient for the case to be reopened. Ohnesorg's death served as a rallying point for the left , and spurred the growth of the left-wing German student movement . The Movement 2 June group, founded around 1971, was named for the day of his death. Student activist Rudi Dutschke led student protest actions in
6251-520: The Third Estate ) generally sat to the left of the presiding member's chair in parliament while the ones in favour of the royal veto privilege sat on its right. That habit began in the original French National Assembly . Throughout the 19th century, the main line dividing Left and Right was between supporters of the French republic and those of the monarchy 's privileges. The June Days uprising during
6384-417: The U.S. Armed Forces , was approached by a stranger asking for an overnighting house the next day for herself and a friend. He agreed but later became suspicious that the woman might be involved with the RAF and eventually decided to call the police. The next day the pair arrived at Rodewald's dwelling while the police watched. The man was followed to a nearby telephone box and was found to be Gerhard Müller who
6517-490: The Western world include strong opposition to the death penalty , torture , mass surveillance , and the war on drugs , and support for abortion rights, cognitive liberty , LGBTQ rights including legal recognition of same-sex marriage , same-sex adoption of children, the right to change one's legal gender , distribution of contraceptives , and public funding of embryonic stem-cell research . The desire for an expansion of social and civil liberties often overlaps that of
6650-409: The autopsy performed as part of the investigation into her death. The original autopsy had found brain injury near the amygdala , resulting from successful surgery in 1962 to remove a (benign) cyst. The unpublished autopsy results at the time stated that the brain injuries "justified questions as to the culpability" of Meinhof. Bernhard Bogerts, a psychiatrist at Magdeburg University, later re-examined
6783-516: The centre-left , especially social democrats who adopted the Third Way . Left-wing politics are typically associated with popular or state control of major political and economic institutions. Other leftists believe in Marxian economics , named after the economic theories of Karl Marx . Some distinguish Marx's economic theories from his political philosophy, arguing that Marx's approach to understanding
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#17330928110966916-618: The displacement of Keynesianism and post-war social democracy . One of the first actions of Ed Miliband , the Labour Party leader who succeeded Blair and Brown, was the rejection of the New Labour label and a promise to abandon the Third Way and turn back to the left. However, Labour's voting record in the House of Commons from 2010 to 2015 indicated that the Labour Party under Miliband had maintained
7049-413: The libertarian movement. Public education was a subject of great interest to groundbreaking social progressives such as Lester Frank Ward and John Dewey , who believed that a democratic society and system of government was practically impossible without a universal and comprehensive nationwide system of education. Various counterculture and anti-war movements in the 1960s and 1970s were associated with
7182-466: The welfare state through industrial democracy and the social market to the nationalization of the economy and central planning , to the anarcho-syndicalist advocacy of a council-based and self-managed anarchist communism . During the Industrial Revolution , leftists supported trade unions . At the beginning of the 20th century, many leftists advocated strong government intervention in
7315-476: The working class should act in solidarity with working people in other countries in pursuit of a common class interest , rather than only focusing on their own countries. Proletarian internationalism is summed up in the slogan: " Workers of the world, unite! ", the last line of The Communist Manifesto . Union members had learned that more members meant more bargaining power. Taken to an international level, leftists argued that workers should act in solidarity with
7448-670: The " proletariat can and must build the socialist society in one country". In April 1925, Nikolai Bukharin elaborated on the issue in his brochure titled Can We Build Socialism in One Country in the Absence of the Victory of the West-European Proletariat? , whose position was adopted as state policy after Stalin's January 1926 article titled On the Issues of Leninism (К вопросам ленинизма)
7581-399: The 1918–1920 years ended Bolshevik hopes for an imminent world revolution and led to the promotion of the doctrine of socialism in one country by Joseph Stalin . In the first edition of his book titled Osnovy Leninizma ( Foundations of Leninism , 1924), Stalin argued that revolution in one country is insufficient. By the end of that year in the second edition of the book, he argued that
7714-537: The 1970s onwards, environmentalism became an increasing concern of the left, with social movements and several unions campaigning on environmental issues and causes. In Australia, the left-wing Builders Labourers Federation , led by the communist Jack Mundy, united with environmentalists to place green bans on environmentally destructive development projects. Several segments of the socialist and Marxist left consciously merged environmentalism and anti-capitalism into an eco-socialist ideology. Barry Commoner articulated
7847-421: The 1990 opera Ulrike Meinhof by Johann Kresnik, the 1993 play Leviathan by Dea Loher , the 2005 play La extraordinaria muerte de Ulrike M. by Spanish playwright Carlos Be and the 2006 play Ulrike Maria Stuart [ de ] by Austrian playwright Elfriede Jelinek . The 1981 French movie Birgitt Haas Must Be Killed is inspired by Meinhof's death. In 1978, Dario Fo and Franca Rame wrote
7980-526: The 19th and 20th centuries. In addition, the term left-wing has also been applied to a broad range of culturally liberal social movements, including the civil rights movement , feminist movement , LGBT rights movement , abortion-rights movements , multiculturalism , anti-war movement and environmental movement as well as a wide range of political parties . The following positions are typically associated with left-wing politics. Left-leaning economic beliefs range from Keynesian economics and
8113-469: The British Labour Party who were perceived to be more moderate and closer to the centre, accepting Keynesianism . Under the leadership of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown , the Labour Party adopted the Third Way and rebranded itself as New Labour in order to promote the notion that it was less left-wing than it had been in the past to accommodate the neoliberal trend arising since the 1970s with
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#17330928110968246-504: The Deutsche Oper that night. It was the first political demonstration in which Ohnesorg had ever taken part. The protest turned violent after pro-Shah demonstrators, including agents of the Shah's intelligence service , began battling with students and the police overreacted, employing brutal tactics in their attempts to control the crowd. In the ensuing tumult, demonstrators dispersed into
8379-482: The Earth. This principle is reflected in much of the historical left-wing thought and literature that came afterwards, although there were disagreements about what this entailed. Both Karl Marx and the early socialist philosopher and scholar William Morris arguably had a concern for environmental matters. According to Marx, "[e]ven an entire society, a nation, or all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not
8512-548: The International Committee for Political Prisoners, an international investigation commission was created in order to examine the conditions surrounding Meinhof's death. Once more the German authorities refused to give the complete (first) autopsy report to the commission, hindering their investigation. In 1978 the committee published its report, concluding that: "The formal claim that Ulrike Meinhof committed suicide by hanging
8645-448: The Left is also divided over how to effectively and equitably reduce carbon emissions as the center-left often advocates a reliance on market measures such as emissions trading and a carbon tax while those further to the left support direct government regulation and intervention in the form of a Green New Deal , either alongside or instead of market mechanisms. The question of nationality , imperialism and nationalism has been
8778-402: The Ministry of Justice of Baden-Württemberg announced that Meinhof had committed suicide, although the initial post-mortem body examination by Professor Joachim Rauschke did not begin until at least 9:25 a.m. At 9:34 a.m. the German news agency (dpa) announced "Suicide by hanging".. Two hours later Professor Rauschke together with Hans Joachim Mallach performed the official autopsy in
8911-485: The New Left. Unlike the earlier leftist focus on labour union activism and a proletarian revolution, the New Left instead adopted a broader definition of political activism commonly called social activism . The New Left in the United States is associated with the hippie movement , mass protest movements on school campuses and a broadening of focus from protesting class -based oppression to include issues such as gender , race and sexual orientation . The British New Left
9044-478: The RAF assassinated the Federal Attorney-General Siegfried Buback as revenge. Meinhof was born in 1934 in Oldenburg . Her father Werner Meinhof, a curator of Jena Museum, died of cancer in 1940, causing her mother to take in a boarder , Renate Riemeck , to make money. In 1946, the family moved back to Oldenburg after Jena fell under Soviet occupation as a result of the Yalta agreement . Meinhof's mother, Ingeborg Meinhof, an art historian, began to work as
9177-416: The RAF's successful jailbreak operation of Andreas Baader . From 1975, she stood trial on multiple charges of murder and attempted murder, with the three other RAF leaders: Baader, Gudrun Ensslin , and Jan-Carl Raspe . Before the end of the trial, she was found hanged in her cell in the Stammheim Prison . The official finding of suicide sparked controversy. One year later, on 7 April 1977 , two members of
9310-474: The United States, where social progressives played an important role in the abolition of slavery , the enshrinement of women's suffrage in the United States Constitution , and the protection of civil rights , LGBTQ rights , women's rights and multiculturalism . Progressives have both advocated for alcohol prohibition legislation and worked towards its repeal in the mid to late 1920s and early 1930s. Current positions associated with social progressivism in
9443-419: The [anti-] Student pogrom of 2 June 1967 fascism in West Berlin had thrown off its mask". In February 1968, Meinhof was a participant in the International Vietnam Conference in West Berlin, which the authorities had permitted only in the face of large-scale protests. She was co-signatory, along with intellectuals including Ernst Bloch , Noam Chomsky , Eric Hobsbawn , Ernest Mandel , and Jean Paul Sartre , of
9576-453: The anti- capital punishment movement and Liberation Theology . Early utopian socialist thinkers such as Robert Owen , Charles Fourier and the Comte de Saint-Simon based their theories of socialism upon Christian principles. Other common leftist concerns such as pacifism , social justice , racial equality , human rights and the rejection of capitalism and excessive wealth can be found in
9709-415: The anti- capitalist struggle"; and invokes Mao Zedong to define "armed struggle" as "the highest form of Marxism-Leninism ". Meinhof, who took part in the RAF's May Offensive in 1972, was arrested in June of that year and spent the rest of her life in custody, largely isolated from outside contact. In November 1974, she was sentenced to 8 years in prison for an attempted murder that had taken place during
9842-484: The body. Also, her nails had been cut, so the doctors could not determine clearly if there were traces of struggle. Some examinations could not take place since a critical time had passed. Janssen concluded that the most probable cause of death was "suicide by hanging", however in order to come to a definite conclusion he insisted to be given access to the report of the first autopsy, something that never happened. Finally, on demand of Meinhof's attorney Klaus Croissant and
9975-519: The brain and also doubted that Meinhof was fully criminally responsible. On Bettina's request, the brain was interred in Meinhof's burial place on 19 December 2002. Meinhof's last appearance in court was on 4 May 1976, in a hearing the defendants had requested in order to provide evidence about the participation of West Germany in the Vietnam War. This, they claimed, was the cause of their radicalisation, and
10108-425: The brain is shriveling up like a baked fruit The feeling that… one is being controlled remotely The feeling that all one's associations are being cut away The feeling of pissing the soul out of one's body, like someone who can no longer hold water. …The raging aggressiveness for which there is no outlet. That's the worst. The clear understanding that one has no chance of survival… In December 1972, Meinhof, who
10241-558: The common name Baader-Meinhof gang for the RAF. ( Gudrun Ensslin is often considered to have been the effective female co-leader of the group rather than Meinhof.) Meinhof wrote an essay defending the Munich massacre as part of a Palestinian strategy of resistance against Israeli land theft and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. On 14 June 1972, in Langenhagen , Fritz Rodewald, a teacher who had been providing accommodation to deserters from
10374-468: The concentration camps—they can’t be mobilized for our struggle,” she said. After the war, the left, in dealing with fascism, were “negligent, stupid, and insolent.” They dealt with the people in the foreground, but didn’t look any deeper. “How was Auschwitz possible; what was antisemitism?” That is something that someone should have clarified at the time. Instead of collectively understanding Auschwitz as an expression of evil, Meinhof stated. “The worst thing
10507-497: The conditions of detention in Italy where prisoners were not held in isolation (except Renato Curcio ) and were politically active. They also discussed the establishment of an international committee of lawyers to defend the RAF. Capelli later said that Meinhof gave him the impression of "a vivid, lifelike woman", "open to all questions". They arranged to meet again soon. "She behaved like a woman who wanted to live". At 9.20 a.m. on 9 May,
10640-415: The confusion. Following the unanticipated shooting, Meinhof joined the others in jumping out of the institute's window. She then called a friend to pick up her children from school. Within days wanted posters appeared throughout Berlin offered a 10,000 DM reward for her capture for attempted murder . In the next two years, Meinhof participated in the various bank robberies and bombings perpetrated by
10773-877: The developing world such as the Zapatista Army of National Liberation in Mexico, the Abahlali baseMjondolo in South Africa and the Naxalites in India have argued that the First World and the Second World Left takes a racist and paternalistic attitude towards liberation movements in the Third World. The original French Left was firmly anti-clerical , strongly opposing the influence of
10906-484: The division between First World and Second World developed countries and Third World developing countries as being of high political importance. This tendency supports decolonization and national liberation movements against imperialism by capitalists. Third-Worldism is closely connected with African socialism , Latin American socialism , Maoism , pan-Africanism and pan-Arabism . Several left-wing groups in
11039-422: The economy is independent of his advocacy of revolutionary socialism or his belief in the inevitability of a proletarian revolution . Marxian economics do not exclusively rely on Marx and draw from a range of Marxist and non-Marxist sources. The dictatorship of the proletariat and workers' state are terms used by some Marxists, particularly Leninists and Marxist–Leninists , to describe what they see as
11172-554: The economy, preferring social ownership and local control in which a nation of decentralized regions is united in a confederation . The global justice movement , also known as the anti-globalisation movement and the alter-globalisation movement, protests against corporate economic globalisation due to its negative consequences for the poor, workers, the environment, and small businesses. Leftists generally believe in innovation in various technological and philosophical fields and disciplines to help causes they support. One of
11305-404: The economy. Leftists continue to criticize the perceived exploitative nature of globalization , the " race to the bottom " and unjust lay-offs and exploitation of workers. In the last quarter of the 20th century, the belief that the government (ruling in accordance with the interests of the people) ought to be directly involved in the day-to-day workings of an economy declined in popularity amongst
11438-569: The final declaration. This defined the U.S. intervention in Vietnam as "the Spain of our generation" and called for mobilisation against the "extermination" ( Vernichtung ) of the Vietnamese people. In 1961, Meinhof married the co-founder and publisher of konkret , Klaus Rainer Röhl . Their marriage produced twins, Regine and Bettina , born on 21 September 1962. Meinhof and Röhl separated in 1967 and divorced
11571-409: The first decade of Soviet rule, before Joseph Stalin attacked ecologists and the science of ecology, purged environmentalists and promoted the pseudoscience of Trofim Lysenko during his rule up until his death in 1953. Similarly, Mao Zedong rejected environmentalism and believed that based on the laws of historical materialism, all of nature must be put into the service of revolution. From
11704-485: The foremost left-wing advocates was Thomas Paine, one of the first individuals since left and right became political terms to describe the collective human ownership of the world which he speaks of in Agrarian Justice. As such, most of left-wing thought and literature regarding environmentalism stems from this duty of ownership and the aforementioned form of cooperative ownership means that humanity must take care of
11837-408: The formation of militant organizations, political repression , conspiracism , xenophobia , and nationalism . In China, the term Chinese New Left denotes those who oppose the economic reforms enacted by Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s and 1990s, favour instead the restoration of Maoist policies and the immediate transition to a socialist economy. In the Western world , the term New Left
11970-542: The founding of the LGBTQ rights movement in the aftermath of the Stonewall Riots of 1969. Contemporary leftist activists and socialist countries such as Cuba are actively supportive of LGBTQ+ people and are involved in the struggle for LGBTQ+ rights and equality. In politics, the term Left derives from the French Revolution as the political groups opposed to the royal veto privilege ( Montagnard and Jacobin deputies from
12103-512: The futility," and that she "resigned to death". There was a concern among Meinhof supporters about the forensic surgeons chosen by the state to perform the autopsy. Mallach (NSDAP Member No. 9154986) had been a member of the SS. He served in World War II as corporal in a Panzer division . In 1977, he made (without approval) and kept for a long time the death masks of Baader, Ensslin, and Raspe. Rauschke
12236-475: The general hospital of Stuttgart from 11:45 a.m. until 12:45 p.m., whose outcome was "death by hanging beyond doubt". According to Ditfurth the hasty press releases that followed Meinhof's death, were similar to those of April 1972, when it was incorrectly broadcast that Meinhof had committed suicide.. In the following days, the newspapers reported in detail what were supposed to be Meinhof's thoughts, like: "she realised her mistake," "she had become aware of
12369-482: The group. She and other RAF members attempted to kidnap her children so that they could be sent to a camp for Palestinian orphans and educated there according to her desires; however, the twins were intercepted in Sicily and returned to their father, in part due to the intervention of Stefan Aust . During this period, Meinhof wrote or recorded many of the manifestos and tracts for the RAF. The most significant of these
12502-410: The institute's library. Two women compatriots of Ensslin's, along with a man with a criminal record (hired because of his supposed experience with armed encounters) broke into the institute. The man shot the elderly librarian Georg Linke, severely wounding him in his liver. It was later claimed that the man was holding two weapons, a pistol and a gas canister gun, and accidentally fired the wrong weapon in
12635-422: The international proletariat in order to further increase the power of the working class. Proletarian internationalism saw itself as a deterrent against war and international conflicts, because people with a common interest are less likely to take up arms against one another, instead focusing on fighting the bourgeoisie as the ruling class . According to Marxist theory, the antonym of proletarian internationalism
12768-422: The left with obvious encouragement, which they have voluntarily allowed to dissipate, because we’ve all been arrested.” After two years of preliminary hearings, Meinhof was sentenced to eight years imprisonment on 29 November 1974. Eventually, Meinhof, Baader, Ensslin, and Jan-Carl Raspe were jointly charged on 19 August 1975, with four counts of murder, fifty-four of attempted murder, and a single count of forming
12901-491: The local Anti-Atomtod-Ausschuss (Anti Atomic-Death Committee). In 1958, she spent a short time on the AStA (German: Allgemeiner Studierendenausschuss , or General Committee of Students) of the university and wrote articles for various student newspapers. In 1959, Meinhof joined the banned Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and later began working at the magazine konkret , a monthly which, until 1964, had clandestine financing from
13034-429: The magazine, found that the shooting was not in self-defense as always claimed by Kurras and that it was certainly premeditated. Newly examined film and photographic evidence also implicated fellow officers and superiors, demonstrating that the police covered up the truth in subsequent investigations and trials. Additionally, medical staff who carried out the autopsy on Ohnesorg were ordered to falsify their report. However,
13167-435: The media) as the organizer of the vandalism. It was difficult to prove, as she was not there when it happened. Perhaps her last work as an individual was the writing and production of the film Bambule [ de ] in 1970, where she put focus on a group of West Berlin girls in juvenile detention ; by the time it was scheduled to be aired, she had become wanted for the breakout of Andreas Baader, and its broadcast
13300-488: The monologue Moi, Ulrike, je crie... The 2010 feature documentary Children of the Revolution tells Meinhof's story from the perspective of her daughter, journalist and historian Bettina Röhl . Subtopia , a novel published in 2005 by Australian author and academic A.L. McCann , is partially set in Berlin and contains a character who is obsessed with Meinhof and another who claims to have attended her funeral. Left-wing politics Left-wing politics describes
13433-434: The nature of the society they are implemented in. According to emeritus professor of economics Barry Clark, supporters of left-wing politics "claim that human development flourishes when individuals engage in cooperative, mutually respectful relations that can thrive only when excessive differences in status, power, and wealth are eliminated." Within the left–right political spectrum , Left and Right were coined during
13566-519: The owners of the earth. They are simply its possessors, its beneficiaries, and have to bequeath it in an improved state to succeeding generations". Following the Russian Revolution, environmental scientists such as revolutionary Alexander Bogdanov and the Proletkult organisation made efforts to incorporate environmentalism into Bolshevism and "integrate production with natural laws and limits" in
13699-517: The period following Ohnesorg's death. Just after Ohnesorg's burial in Hanover, Dutschke, speaking at "The University and Democracy: Conditions and Organization of Resistance" conference held at the university, clashed with philosophy professor Jürgen Habermas over the future of the movement: Dutschke advocated radical, possibly illegal and violent action, although his first proposal was a peaceful sit-down strike. The conflict prompted Habermas, who had urged
13832-476: The placement along the political spectrum in a given time and place. At the end of the 18th century, upon the founding of the first liberal democracies , the term Left was used to describe liberalism in the United States and republicanism in France, supporting a lesser degree of hierarchical decision-making than the right-wing politics of the traditional conservatives and monarchists . In modern politics,
13965-538: The prison, Meinhof had told her: "You can stand up and fight only while you are alive. If they say I committed suicide, be sure that it was a murder." In early May, attorney Axel Azzola contacted his client (Meinhof). They were hopeful about the possibilities that the new strategy seemed to offer. They also discussed whether Meinhof could testify as a witness at the International Law Conference in Geneva where
14098-406: The procedure followed by the authorities, including the autopsy reports and the findings of the international commission. Some of them are: Some other questions still remain, including: Finally, there is a dispute over the arguments regarding Meinhof's motive. Some of the points usually mentioned are: The book Lieber wütend als traurig (Better angry than sad) by Alois Prinz was intended as
14231-461: The range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism , often in opposition to social hierarchy as a whole or certain social hierarchies. Left-wing politics typically involve a concern for those in society whom its adherents perceive as disadvantaged relative to others as well as a belief that there are unjustified inequalities that need to be reduced or abolished through radical means that change
14364-457: The ruling East German Communist party; however, the motive behind Kurras' act remains unclear. The new information was based on documents discovered in the Stasi archives . Initial reports indicated that the archives contained no evidence that Kurras was acting under Stasi orders when he shot Ohnesorg. On the basis of the 2009 revelations about Kurras, the German prosecutor's office initiated
14497-506: The same distance from the left as it did under Blair. In contrast, the election of Jeremy Corbyn as the Labour Party leader was viewed by scholars and political commentators as Labour turning back toward its more classical socialist roots, rejecting neoliberalism and the Third Way whilst supporting a democratic socialist society and an end to austerity measures. Benno Ohnesorg Benno Ohnesorg ( German pronunciation: [ˈbɛno ˈʔoːnəzɔɐ̯k] ; 15 October 1940 – 2 June 1967)
14630-437: The side streets. In the courtyard of Krumme Straße 66, Ohnesorg was then shot in the back of the head by police officer Karl-Heinz Kurras . Ohnesorg died before he could be treated at a hospital. Kurras stood trial the same year and was acquitted, on 27 November 1967. Ohnesorg was a student of Romance and German studies . He was married and his wife was pregnant with their first child. A week after Ohnesorg's death,
14763-431: The source for a better kind of social revolution . This view has been criticized by several Marxists , especially Trotskyists , who characterized this approach as "substitutionism" which they described as a misguided and non-Marxist belief that other groups in society could "substitute" for and "replace" the revolutionary agency of the working class. Many early feminists and advocates of women's rights were considered
14896-462: The subject. Mikhail Bakunin thought the lumpenproletariat was a revolutionary class, while Mao Zedong believed that it would be rural peasants, not urban workers, who would bring about the proletarian revolution . Left-libertarians , anarchists and libertarian socialists believe in a decentralized economy run by trade unions , workers' councils , cooperatives , municipalities and communes, opposing both state and private control of
15029-430: The system” of imperialism and capitalism deflected the hate of the people for money and oppression from itself and transferred it to the Jews. Not having made this connection clear was the failure of the left and the communists. Germans were antisemitic, therefore they are today RAF supporters. Only they don’t know it, because they’ve forgotten that they must be absolved of fascism and murdering Jews, and that antisemitism
15162-465: The term Left became more prominent after the restoration of the French monarchy in 1815, when it was applied to the Independents . The word wing was first appended to Left and Right in the late 19th century, usually with disparaging intent, and left-wing was applied to those who were unorthodox in their religious or political views. Ideologies considered to be left-wing vary greatly depending on
15295-489: The term Left typically applies to ideologies and movements to the left of classical liberalism , supporting some degree of democracy in the economic sphere . Today, ideologies such as social liberalism and social democracy are considered to be centre-left , while the Left is typically reserved for movements more critical of capitalism , including the labour movement , socialism , anarchism , communism , Marxism and syndicalism , each of which rose to prominence in
15428-496: The theory of socialism in one country. European social democrats strongly support Europeanism and supranational integration within the European Union , although there is a minority of nationalists and Eurosceptics on the left. Several scholars have linked this form of left-wing nationalism to the pressure generated by economic integration with other countries, often encouraged by neoliberal free trade agreements. This view
15561-547: The trial were either no longer alive or otherwise unable to provide reliable testimony, and that documents relevant to the case were evidently among those destroyed by the East German foreign intelligence service in the interval between the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and German reunification in 1990. Following up in January 2012, Der Spiegel magazine reported that research carried out by federal prosecutors, as well as by
15694-409: The visit of the Shah of Iran . When Iranian counter-demonstrators, including agents of the Shah's intelligence service , attacked the students, the police joined the affray beating the demonstrators into a side street where an officer shot and killed the student protester Benno Ohnesorg The leading Stern columnist, Sebastian Haffner whom Meinhof had befriended, took to konkret to suggest "with
15827-582: The works of Thomas Paine , who introduced the concept of asset-based egalitarianism which theorises that social equality is possible by a redistribution of resources. After the Reconstruction era in the aftermath of the American Civil War , the phrase "the Left" was used to describe those who supported trade unions, the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement . More recently, left-wing and right-wing have often been used as synonyms for
15960-472: Was a West German university student killed by a policeman during a demonstration in West Berlin . His death spurred the growth of the left-wing German student movement . On 2 June 1967, Ohnesorg participated in a student protest held near the Deutsche Oper in opposition to the state visit of the Shah of Iran , Mohammad Reza Pahlavi , who was attending a performance of Mozart 's The Magic Flute at
16093-480: Was an intellectually driven movement which attempted to correct the perceived errors of the Old Left . The New Left opposed prevailing authoritarian structures in society which it designated as " The Establishment " and became known as the "Anti-Establishment". The New Left did not seek to recruit industrial workers en masse, but instead concentrated on a social activist approach to organization, convinced that they could be
16226-478: Was armed. After arresting Müller, the police then proceeded to arrest the woman – Meinhof. During her solitary confinement at Köln-Ossendorf Prison from June 1972 to February 1973, Meinhof wrote what was later published as "A Letter from a Prisoner in Isolation" ( Brief einer Gefangenen aus dem Toten Trakt ). It conveys a sense of disorientation and despair: The feeling that one's head is exploding… The feeling that
16359-407: Was awaiting trial, was called to testify at Horst Mahler 's trial where Mahler questioned her about the statement of support the two had issued for the massacre at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich . The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung published the following hostile account of her response: “Unless we absolve the German people of fascism—that the people really didn’t know what was going on in
16492-406: Was delayed until 1994. Meinhof was approached by Ensslin, girlfriend of jailed arsonist Baader, for her help in securing the release of Baader from police custody. Thus the plot was developed, and Meinhof approached leftist publisher Klaus Wagenbach, seeking cooperation in the release of the imprisoned Baader, and Wagenbach agreed as he believed in the release of political prisoners. After securing
16625-522: Was designed by Austrian sculptor Alfred Hrdlicka , serves as a memorial for the killing. In December 2008, municipal authorities inaugurated an official memorial panel on the sidewalk in front of the house where Ohnesorg was shot, and in Ohnesorg's hometown of Hanover , a bridge over the Ihme river is named after him. The opening scene of the 2008 film Der Baader Meinhof Komplex shows Ohnesorg's death, with
16758-522: Was found dead in her prison cell in Stuttgart-Stammheim. The official verdict was Meinhof had committed suicide. It was later claimed that she had become increasingly isolated from other RAF prisoners. Notes exchanged between them in prison included one by Ensslin, describing her as "too weak". The official findings were not accepted by many in the RAF and other militant organisations, and there are still some who doubt their accuracy and believe that she
16891-465: Was in this period that the word wing was appended to both Left and Right. The International Workingmen's Association (1864–1876), sometimes called the First International, brought together delegates from many different countries, with many different views about how to reach a classless and stateless society. Following a split between supporters of Marx and Mikhail Bakunin , anarchists formed
17024-544: Was less than a week before Meinhof's death that they had a very involved conversation. He claimed that there was not the least sign of depression or lack of interest on her part and that it was an animated discussion in the context of which Meinhof explained the group's point of view. Meinhof's last visitor was Giovanni Capelli, lawyer of the Red Brigades . He conveyed the desire of the Red Brigades to contact her and described
17157-571: Was murdered by the authorities. A second investigation was carried out by an international group. The findings of the inquiry were published under the title Der Tod Ulrike Meinhofs. Bericht der Internationalen Untersuchungskommission ( The Death of Ulrike Meinhof. Report of the International Investigation Committee ) in 1979. Meinhof was buried in Berlin- Mariendorf , six days after her death. Her funeral turned out to be
17290-410: Was published. This idea was opposed by Leon Trotsky and his supporters, who declared the need for an international " permanent revolution " and condemned Stalin for betraying the goals and ideals of the socialist revolution. Various Fourth Internationalist groups around the world who describe themselves as Trotskyist see themselves as standing in this tradition while Maoist China formally supported
17423-667: Was sometimes opposed to imperialism . In the 1880s, there was a debate between leftists such as the Radical Georges Clemenceau , the Socialist Jean Jaurès and the nationalist Maurice Barrès , who argued that colonialism diverted France from liberating the "blue line of the Vosges ", in reference to Alsace-Lorraine; and the " colonial lobby " such as Jules Ferry of the Moderate Republicans , Léon Gambetta of
17556-437: Was the one who also performed the autopsy of Siegfried Hausner one year earlier and was accused by fellows and supporters of the RAF for ignoring the injuries to Hausner's head, so as to cover up the true cause of his death. On 11 May a second autopsy was performed on demand of Wienke Zitzlaff by Werner Janssen and Jürgen Schröder, even though the brain, a lot of critical organs, and tissue parts had been previously removed from
17689-423: Was their basis for demanding the status of prisoners of war (see above). According to Jutta Ditfurth , the last days before Meinhof's death went smoothly. The prisoners (including Meinhof) spent their meeting time (30 minutes, twice per day) discussing various philosophers and political issues. One of the guards noted that they were laughing. According to Meinhof's sister, Wienke Zitzlaff, during her last visit to
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