I did not know about this. But a friend recently loaned me the book Failure of a Revolution by Sebastian Haffner. I knew nothing about Sebastian Haffner.
I didn’t know the author of the forward and Afterword was the pen name of Mike Ely.

I had been reading the book because I wanted to know about this history. Why this revolution failed.
And I think there is much to say about this history.

But in terms of Benno. Incidents like this do change history.

They actually happen all the time and sometimes people get used to it. This cop was cleared twice of all charges.

But at certain times these pictures travel around the world. Regular life stops and people pay attention in a way they weren’t paying attention before.

Great article. Get the book.

from Spiegel magazine in Germany

The Turkish government, for example, doesn’t deny that a lot of Armenians died during the First World War. What they say is that they died as a result of the unfolding of the war, through disease, hunger, the bad conditions in Turkey at the time. What they deny is that it was a conspiracy inside the Turkish government. It’s actually illegal in Turkey to have a conspiracy theory about the Aremnian genocide.

Similarly, Ward Churchill was targetted because of his remarks on 9/11 but he was actually fired because he wrote that a lot of the smallpox epidemics among natives were the result of a conspiracy by whites, not just by accident (and he may have overreached in trying to prove it and gave them the opportunity to fire him).

And he cheered on the Hard Hat Riot, even after Kent State.

FWIW, I think conspiracy theories have become almost a form of primitive rebellion. Saying “Bush Planned 9/11″ is a way of both flipping off respectable liberals and of saying “I believe my own government is capable of the worst thing imaginable”.

But after awhile, they lead you into the hall of mirrors. They’re really impossible to prove conclusively.

I’ve always compared Dan Ellsberg to James Jesus Angleton.

Ellsberg in his autobiography talks about “insider information”, about how it almost becomes an addiction after awhile. He also says “well everything in the Pentagon Papers was really just confirmation of what you could have figured out using public information”.

Angleton, on the other hand, was an insider. But he got obsessed with conspiracy theories to the point where he was driven mad. The Russians got wind of this and played him. They fed him a mixture of good information and bad information, sent him fake defectors along with real defectors. And he wound up being the best Russian mole of them all and destroyed the Soviet division of the CIA with his paranoia.

That’s why I think this is an important thing to say.

There is (however) proof that the West Berlin cop shot Benno. There is proof that the authorities unleashed a “police pogrom.” There is also proof that the West Berlin authorities and legal system cleared this killer cop twice of charges — essentially approving the murder.

Yep. The conspiracy is fascinating to unravel. But the truth is available out in public.

One point on “conspiracy theories”: not everything and not every event is the result of conscious decisions, but there are (in real life) conspiracies (in the sense of hidden networks acting on secret decisions).

I agree with you that there is no proof of whether there were orders to shoot-to-kill, and who gave them.

There is (however) proof that the West Berlin cop shot Benno. There is proof that the authorities unleashed a “police pogrom.” There is also proof that the West Berlin authorities and legal system cleared this killer cop twice of charges — essentially approving the murder.

Similarly, I have always been curious to know the degree to which Nixon actually ordered the Kent State shootinigs (which are officially portrayed as the nervous actions of untrained national guardsmen). He had leaned on the New Haven authorities to crack down on the big demonstration at Yale in May 1970 (clearly imho with an intention of drawing blood). And then turned to his close ally, the Republican governor of Ohio, to stand firm (as nixon went into Cambodia). Nixon did not want his policies confronted in a massive way, and as he made the gamble of entering Cambodia, he was determined to stop the spread of massive protest by cold repression. So I have always suspected that the action at Kent (the sending in of soldiers with live ammo and orders to stand tough) had higher level approval. (Not necessarily the case at Jackson state, which is a different story).

Now there emerges in Germany, this killer cop was a more complex figure than we knew — with divided loyalties. (He had volunteered to move to East Berlin to serve there as a cop, and was asked to stay in the West as a double agent.)

As for your question about Stasi penetration: The Stasi had extensive penetration in West Germany and West Berlin — the degree and details are still cloudy. Agents were uncovered at the highest levels (in Willy Brandt’s inner circles), and were certainly funded throughout the organized left (with awful consequences of various kinds).

But I got three impressions from the NY Times article.

1.) The same people who mock “conspiracy theories” when the accusations are made against the US government or the US ruling class have a much lower standard of proof when it comes to accusations of conspiracy by communists or Muslim radicals or any group the US government expects us to dislike.

2.) Even when we apparantly have the smoking gun for a “false flag operation” it’s still difficult to have any real closure on it. What are the odds that of all the cops in West Germany, this one should be a Stasi agent (How thorougly had the Stasi penetrated the West German police)? Not very high, it seems to me. But there’s still no conclusive “proof”.

3.) By these same standards of proof, the Kennedy assassination was an obvious communist hit (James Jesus Angleton went to his grave believing it was a Communist hit). What are the odds that of all the lone, violent nuts, the one who shot Kennedy would be a pro-Castro ex Soviet defector? And yet, what are the odds that during the height of the Cold War, someone who spent three years inside the Soviet Union would get back into the country so easily?

Mike, thanks for the personal background, but you didn’t really respond to my point. You say your position is not Third Campism, but Maoism. But, objectively, your position is indistinguishable from Third Campism.

In general, I don’t see a lot of value in discussing politics in this war of labels. You have (from your political background) a set of little bags, and one of them says “Third Camp” on it. And you read my analysis and demand “why shouldn’t I put you in that bag” (with all the verdicts and baggage attached by history to the “Third Camp” in your view).

Well, Trotskyism’s “Third Camp” is not a set of positions — but basically a whole package of analysis. It has assumptions about what capitalism is and socialism is. It was notorious for flirting with rather raw anticommunism from the late thirties on (calling them “reds” and “commies” during the McCarthy period). When the Chinese revolution happened in 1949, they denounced it as just more capitalism. When the U.S. tried to conquer North Korea and threatened to nuke liberated CHina, the Third Camp insisted that they had no dog in that fight.

And this is rooted in a specific view of “what is socialism” that I don’t share — and an assumption that there was little functional difference between the Soviet Union of the 30s and 40s, and Nazi Germany of the 30s and 40s.

So without spending a lot of time, and without digging myself into a fixed trench on all of this (and without demonizing the folks of Solidarity or ISO) — I just want to repeat that my views at this point are rather different (in both concept and detail) from the “Third Camp” Trotskyists on the history of the Soviet Union, on the nature of socialism, on the dynamics of the cold war, on the nature of Maoist china, and so on.

Paul writes:

“We can all agree on the limitations of the Soviet and Eastern European social formations.”

Perhaps. But I suspect that there are real disagreements on what those limitations are, and what they arise from. And in some ways this is (as I said) ancient history — but in another sense, it is rather important to have a revolutionary appraisal of the twentieth century and what we can learn from the experience of socialist revolution there.

Paul writes:

“Without the existence and support of the Soviet bloc, the Vietnamese, Cuban and South African victories (among others) would not have been possible.”

That is a rather metaphysical view of history. If there had been no “soviet bloc” the history of the whole world would have been different.

In our dimension, britain, France and Germany were all exhausted and weakened — first by World War 1 and then (even more) by World War 2 — and a huge wave of anti-colonial resistance emerged. They were simply not able to hold onto their colonial empires as before. This is the main reason that you had the liberation of China, Vietnam, Africa etc.

What would have happened if a “Soviet bloc” had not emerged from World War 2? Well, I’m not that great at convincing historical fantasy. Something else would have happened.

You don’t mention the Chinese revolution all, or the quite significant aid it provided countries like Vietnam. And you don’t mention that they were willing to support Cuba, but that there was struggle over what KIND of aid was needed. (Mao thought that Cuba’s plan to become super focused on sugar production was colonialist, and refused to aid them IN THAT by providing external food sources like rice.)

But I imagine that, even without the Soviet bloc, there still would have been a major wave of anti-colonial revolutions the moment some war had weakened the major imperialist powers.

And further, while you seem focused on the 1970s where the Soviets supported various anti-U.S. movements — we need to remember that they also spent decades (in the 50s and 60s) urging oppressed people not to rock the boat, not to rise up with arms, not to aim at fighting and defeating the western imperialists. They played a very destructive role with their “aid-with-strings” in that period too — though a distinct one from the later decades (where they promoted proxy wars with the U.S.)

Paul writes:

“That role was objectively progressive in that it advanced the world revolutionary process, regardless of the motives involved.”

Sometimes we have trouble finding a common language. I have no idea what you mean by “objectively progressive” in this case.

Imperialist often support movements that are in one sense or another “progressive”…. but that doesn’t make the imperialists progressive or “objectively progressive.”

Examples:

Britain supported the anti-slavery struggle in East Africa in the 1800s, and they used it as a mechanism for estalbishing a colonial empire there (driving out Arab influences). The AFricans resistance to Arab slavery was “objectively progressive” — but the British empire was not.

The U.S. supported Cuban and Puerto Rican rebels rising up against the Spanish empire in the 1890s. Those movements were certainly “objectively progressive” (in my view) but the U.S. intrigue was not.

And the Soviet Union (similarly) supported the Vietnamese struggle against the U.S. and the Angolan struggle against South Africa and so on. These struggles were certainly “objectively progressive” — but Soviet social-imperialism was not.

And “motives” do matter — because they are not just “subjective ideas in your head.” They shape the politics and the events. When soviet aid made the Vietnamese dependent on complex missiles system and heavy weaponry, it affected the kind of warfare the Vietnamese waged, and the kind of political forces that emerged from that conflict. When the Soviets gave “aid” to Cuba it had a profound effect on the kind of society that emerged in Cuba (especially when they literally demanded that Cuba adopt Soviet methods in exchange for the purchase contracts for sugar.)

Paul writes:

“To fail to recognize this dialectic, to not have a nuanced assessment of their very different roles in the world, is, again, to me, to abandon a “concrete analysis of a concrete situation, and the hallmark of Third Campism, either in its Trotskyist or “Maoist” forms.”

We can explore who has a nuanced assessment and who doesn’t. I have not yet had a chance to lay out my views of the conditions in Cuba or Vietnam and the role of Soviet “aid.”

But for now, let’s leave it here: It is important to have a concrete analysis of concrete situations — and in evaluating the social nature of a country (or a military bloc), you can’t just examine one “situation” but the whole world picture. And to understand the role and impact of Soviet influences, you also have to understant the objective social nature of that formation (i.e. whether it is capitalist or socialist).

We can all agree on the limitations of the Soviet and Eastern European social formations. What distinguishes Third Campism is the refusal to recognize the real differences between the role and impact of World Imperialism and that of the Soviet system in international developments. Without the existence and support of the Soviet bloc, the Vietnamese, Cuban and South African victories (among others) would not have been possible. That role was objectively progressive in that it advanced the world revolutionary process, regardless of the motives involved.

To me, there is no problem is both saying, “If that is socialism, i’m no socialist” and the role of the Soviet bloc was progressive to the extent it supported genuinely revolutionary movements in other countries. To fail to recognize this dialectic, to not have a nuanced assessment of their very different roles in the world, is, again, to me, to abandon a “concrete analysis of a concrete situation, and the hallmark of Third Campism, either in its Trotskyist or “Maoist” forms.