Habermas’s left-wing fascism charge alienated him from the SDS

Evidence

In a tense political situation, in which the first death had just occurred, Habermas now saw there was a serious danger that the person who was precisely the most influential and rhetorically gifted of the student leaders might lose his footing on the narrow tightrope of rational conflict resolution. Habermas had already gone to his car to leave the meeting, but he turned back to repeat in harsher terms the warning against a masochistic challenge to institutionalized power that he had already given twice in a more restrained manner. He described the voluntaristic ideology Dutschke had presented as `left-wing fascism’. He introduced this interpretation in the form of a question thrown out to those presentDutschke had already leftand it was not discussed further, since the conference was already breaking up. A harshly formulated accusation was therefore left to stand, and its very harshness condemned Habermas himself in the eyes of the most active students. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2618

Categorization

• XREF: Builds on the earlier claim that Dutschke replaced emancipatory tendency with activist will; this passage shows Habermas’s decisive break with Dutschke’s voluntarism. — connects to: The SPD expelled the SDS to destroy its internal critical public sphere. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2381; Habermas abandoned labeling direct action as a form of fascism — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2649

Broader Connections

• Habermas abandoned labeling direct action as a form of fascism #expands (0.90) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2649