Five unresolved structural grievances, not ideology, sustained Germany’s student radicalization.
Evidence
The radicalization of the student protest movement and its development into the driving force of the extra-parliamentary opposition continued, since the reasons it had arisen also continued to exist: the absence of democratic reform in the universities; the continuing erosion of the parliamentary system under the Grand Coalition, which among other things had decided to introduce legislation for a state of emergency and was toying with the idea of a simple majority electoral system, or a requirement that a party should win at least 10 per cent of the total vote before being allotted any seats; the Federal Republic’s moral and financial support for the war in Vietnam; the manipulation of public opinion blatantly being carried out by the Springer corporation and in the press situation in Berlin; the general orientation towards the model of a `fully formed society’. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 659
Categorization
- DEEPTHINKING: The enumerated causes—electoral erosion, emergency legislation, Vietnam, Springer’s press monopoly, the fully-formed society—form a compressed diagnostic of late-1960s West German legitimation crisis.
- XREF: connects to: Six persistent structural grievances sustained the student movement’s radicalization; Student radicalism stemmed from colleges failing to keep their career promises — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America:…, 1758; Homogeneous closed communities preceded and intensified political radicalization into terrorism in West Germany. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 4108 (+1 more)
- yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Six persistent structural grievances sustained the student movement’s radicalization; Student radicalism stemmed from colleges failing to keep their career promises — Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, Schooling in Capitalist America:…, 1758; Homogeneous closed communities preceded and intensified political radicalization into terrorism in West Germany. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 4108 (+1 more)