Habermas condemned student protest tactics as ritualized blackmail and delusional

Evidence

Habermas once again made severe criticisms. These were based on his fears about the protest march to the police-occupied university that was planned for the following day, and also on his worries about the protest movement. It was a close partner for him in its critique of the exclusion of practical questions from a public sphere that had become depoliticized, yet at the same time it was so threatened and so dangerous as it walked the precarious tightrope of revolt in a non-revolutionary period. His criticism was severe in describing the new demonstration techniques as ritualized forms of blackmail and adolescent defiance against inattentive but relatively lenient parents. It was also severe in that Habermas exacerbated his accusation that some of the leading figures were confusing the occupation of a university with an actual takeover of power, by adding that this sort of thing would satisfy the medical criteria for mental delusion. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2653

Categorization

• XREF: Documents the Frankfurt School’s internal break with the student movement, echoing the Critical Theory tradition’s skepticism of revolutionary praxis. — connects to: Habermas linked student protest to recovering science’s emancipatory potential — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2613; Habermas came to accept limited rule-breaking as legitimate for politicizing the public sphere — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2649

Broader Connections

• Habermas came to accept limited rule-breaking as legitimate for politicizing the public sphere #complicates (0.85) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2649