Left-Wing Friends from the Right

More and more hard-core people from the FAZ [Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung] are defecting from worn-out conservatism, and that is supposed to mean nothing because there is unfortunately no alternative?

“Pure market is perverse economy. Pure market is pure insanity”: That was not said by a crazed leftist from the circle of usual suspects, but rather the CDU chairman in person — the other day, spoken at the Nürnberg party convention, broadcast nationwide on the television channels.

At the same time the number of protestors against the banking industry under the slogan “Occupy Wall Street” is rising. The American media has also taken notice of this movement after 700 demonstrators jammed traffic for hours with a march over the Brooklyn Bridge.

“Is that the beginning of a new revolutionary movement?” asked the moderator of a television program. Already instant interpreters want to invoke parallels to the revolutionary movements in Arab countries. And our venerable expert for mediation, revolution and stress tests of all kinds whispers grimly into the camera microphones that something will soon brewing in our youth as well.

That I would be able to refer to a FAZ associate editor in my rising tirade does, then, surprise me. “A decade of free finance market economy turns out to be the most successful resocialization program of left-wing social criticism. As ruined as it appears, it is not only there again, but it is also needed. And further: Globalization only means that banks seize the profits of international success and distribute the losses to every taxpayer of every nation.”

Hard-Core People in the FAZ

It sounded virtually revolutionary on August 14 when Frank Schirrmacher quoted the arch-conservative British Thatcher biographer Charles Moore’s analysis: “And when the banks that look after our money take it away, lose it and then, because of government guarantee, are not punished themselves, something much worse happens. It turns out — as the Left always claims — that a system purporting to advance the many has been perverted in order to enrich the few.” [

Assuming this reactivation of left-wing criticism of capitalism were a prospect to be taken seriously, a revolutionary united front against the global class enemy would be a question of time. Rolf Hochhuth, who has been demanding revolution for a long time, arm in arm with the FAZ people and on the barricades of euro pallets and Ikea furniture: an unbeatable team!

If, however, on August 28 Michael Naumann, with his government experience from the Schroder years, once more buried the exhumed Left right away in the features section of the FAZ, the confusion was perfect again: “On the left are no more than memories. When the finance markets were freed, the red-green government decided to promote German big capital.”

More and more hard-core people from the FAZ are defecting from worn-out conservatism, and that is supposed to mean nothing because there is unfortunately no alternative? Everything just a play, “Curtain closed and all questions open?” Time to organize the transfer of articles into politics. Even the base of the monumental Karl Marx headstone in Chemnitz is urgently in need of restoration, by the way.