Overcoming one's own past: a critique of the west German protest movement of 1968 in the journalism of its veterans

The paper considers the debates between the "renegades" of the West German protest movement of 1968 about their own role in it. Based on the publications of former activists of Socialist German Student Union (SDS), Red Army Fraction (RAF), maoist and spontanist organizations Klaus Rainer Rühl, Günter Maschke, Bernd Rabehl, Horst Mahler, Rolf Stolz, Matthias Horx, Cora Stephan, Gerd Koenen, Götz Aly and others, two opposed tendencies are shown: national-conservative and liberal. They confront in the attitude to overcoming the German past, to the role of the cultural influence of the USA in West Germany and to the Middle East conflict. On the base of the publicism of the veterans of West-German 1968 protest movement, the genesis of national-conservative and liberal fractions of the "68-renegads" during the 1970s and 1980s is demonstrated, as well as the attempts of the veterans to reflect their own role in the processes of cultural transformations of the society of the Federal Republic of Germany. The paper evaluates the viewpoints and proposals of the different “renegades” fractions regarding the question of German identity and national liberation movements.