G20: The Sick Logic of Left-Wing Violence

The G20 debacle in Hamburg is over, but people are still trying to come to terms with what happened.  What motivated a group of violent protesters to trash an entire city district while attempting to inflict serious harm on the police?  How much of this violence is rooted in Left-Wing ideology?  The protestors ostensibly want to "end capitalism" ("Abschaffung des Kapitalismus").  But what do they hope to replace it with?  And is setting Grandma's Kleinwagen on fire helping to achieve the supposed objective? 

A reader's comment in the left-wing magazine Der Freitag illuminates the thought process behind this senseless violence: 

Wachen Sie bitte endlich auf, meine Damen und Herren! Bei Kapitalisten haben wir es mit PSYCHOPATHEN zu tun. Und Psychopathen sprechen und verstehen ausschliesslich die Sprache von Gewalt und Zwang. Das liegt in der Natur dieser gefaehrlichen Geisteskrankheit.
Freilich haetten es diese mehr als fragwuerdigen Zeitgenossen gerne, wenn deren eigene Gewalt, unter der die Mehrheitsbevoelkerung ja immer mehr zu leiden hat, unbeantwortet bleibt. Das hat einen simplen Grund: auf diese Art und Weise kommt man ungestraft davon und kann sein gestohlenes und selbstgedrucktes Geld in der Karibik geniessen. Natuerlich nur, wenn man nicht gerade damit beschaeftigt ist, zwischen Fruehstueck und Mittagessen noch schnell einen kleinen Massenmord zu veranstalten, um sich mit Waffendeals die Taschen zu fuellen – vorzugsweise an Muslimen, die sind so schoen wehrlos!

(Wake up, Ladies and Gentlemen! With these capitalists we are dealing with PSYCHOPATHS. And psychopaths speak and comprehend only the language of force and violence. That is simply the nature of this dangerous mental illness. To be sure, these dubious fellow-citizens are more than happy when the violence that they inflict on the majority of the population happens without any retaliation. And there is a simple reason for this: they can go without punishment and enjoy their stolen and counterfeit money in the Caribbean. Of course, only when they are not busy between breakfast and lunch committing a little mass murder, to fill their pockets with arms deals – preferable against Muslims – who are luckily unarmed. )

So these capitalist psychopaths and their "private militia" – the police – don't deserve to live and their property must be destroyed.  Do these folks really believe what they're saying?  Have they given any thought to who created the software and the laptops they use to post their messages of hate?  Who built the high-speed trains and airplanes that brought them to Hamburg. Was it some proletarian collective – a socialist VEB?  How did Germany become one of the most prosperous nations on the planet?

An effective protest must point to an alternative reality – a better future.  What kind of utopian future do these people envision – once evil capitalism has been totally eliminated? A reporter asked this question to a young student during a brief pause in the violent protests:

„{Mein Ideal ist} China vor 1976“. Wirklich, das China Mao Tse-tungs, das China der mörderischen Kulturrevolution? „Die Zahlen, die uns über die Kulturrevolution vermittelt werden, sind falsch“, argumentiert der Mann weiter in frappierender Ähnlichkeit zu seinen Gegnern auf der Rechten.Die Zahlen der Opfer von Maos Politik etwa seien maßlos übertrieben. „Es gab allenfalls 20 Millionen Tote – und was ist das schon angesichts von damals 600 Millionen Chinesen.“ Zudem gebe es gerade auf dem Land in China noch große Sympathien mit Maos Politik. Das wichtigste sei, dass die Gesellschaftsform gestimmt habe. „Der Kapitalismus zerfrisst die Welt, er korrumpiert uns alle.“ Wer so redet, ist mit Argumenten für die gegenwärtige Verfasstheit der westlichen Welt nicht mehr zu erreichen.

("My ideal is China before 1976."  Really? The China of Mao, the China of the murderous Cultural Revolution? "The numbers that have been reported about the Cultural Revolution are false," he argued, with nearly identical logic as his right-wing opponents. The number of victims of Mao's politics has been greatly exaggerated. "At most, there were 20 million deaths – and what is that in comparison with 600 million Chinese."  Furthermore, Mao's policies were wildly popular in China. What's important is that it was the correct social form. "Capitalism devours the world and corrupts all of us." Anyone who speaks like this cannot be convinced of the current structure of the West. )

Of course, what's absurd is that it wasn't Mao's Cultural Revolution – which set China back 20 years – but rather the introduction of market forces in China's economy – i.e. Capitalism – and the rise of hated Globalism that has lifted hundreds of millions of  Chinese people out of poverty.  But smashing the windows of the corner Starbucks feels much better than thinking about inconvenient truths.