Once-revolutionary 'Danny the Red' delivers talk of reform, not revolt

Franco-German Green Party leader and former student revolutionary Daniel Cohn-Bendit, known for his charismatic speeches during the May 1968 student uprising in Paris, spoke last Friday at Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium, on Cornell University's campus.

In the wake of serious riots and political unrest that have spread throughout France in recent weeks, Cohn-Bendit's talk was anticipated with excitement. But the youth who charged the police barricades in 1968 and earned the sobriquet "Danny the Red" because of his flaming hair made it clear that he is sitting safely on the fence today.

Cohn-Bendit's lecture, "The Franco-German Dialogue in the European Community," was an advance keynote presentation for a conference jointly sponsored by Cornell's German Cultural Studies Institute and the French Studies Program on Franco-German relations in New Europe.

The speaker, a man who once led Vietnam-era protests in Paris that shut down the Sorbonne for 34 days and sparked a general strike by 10 million French workers, opened his timely lecture by talking about the opportunities born from political chaos, and championed a message of reform, not revolt.

Much of the 60-minute lecture focused on Franco-German history following World War II and the postwar parallels that exist today as new political opportunities arise.

No one in the 1930s and 1940s, Cohn-Bendit said, would have believed that France and Germany could overcome the great wars, conflicts and animosity between them, to become allied. "The fear of communism that was the beginning of European unification eventually made wars between the separate nation-states impossible," he said.

Cohn-Bendit added that the world is similarly unable to predict the outcome of the current chaotic global situation. But a strong Europe, he said, is essential for the future. "Europe has a task in the world to see that the core of decisions be made by the United Nations," he said. Cohn-Bendit touched on the current unrest in France only briefly, toward the end of his talk, saying that the violence seen today is not new but is an increase in the violence that occurs everyday, and that Europe must develop a new model of immigration to answer what he called its "demographic problems."

The talk was informed by the same paradoxical sensibilities reminiscent of slogans from the May 1968 uprising. But instead of "be realistic -- demand the impossible" or "it is forbidden to forbid," Cohn-Bendit used the old Jewish saying, "If you have only two possibilities, always choose the third."

This idea seemed as much a part of his position as a Green Party politician as a call to create new political opportunities.

Cohn-Bendit, a publicist and politician, was born in France to German-Jewish parents who had fled Nazism in 1933. He grew up in Paris and moved to Germany in 1958. After being forced to leave France for his anti-government activities, he returned to Germany and became a leader of the German Green Party. In 1994, he was elected to the European Parliament and, in 1999, became the leader of the French Green Party. In 2002, Cohn-Bendit also became president of the Green parliamentary group.

Cara Hoffman is an Ithaca-based freelance writer.

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