This article analyzes the non-elite human rights vision promoted by the Russell III Tribunal and the Committee for Fundamental Rights and Democracy (Komitee für Grundrechte und Demokratie, ...Grundrechtekomitee). The article centers on leftists who utilized human rights to challenge state power since the late 1970s. The III Russell Tribunal (1978–79) brought international scrutiny to the West German state's restrictions against civil employment for suspected subversives. Policymakers, politicians, and liberal public intellectuals rejected the use of human rights rhetoric to address domestic wrongs. In their view, the sobriquet ‘human rights abuse’ was befitting solely to the cruelties committed by the National Socialists and in countries in the Global South and Eastern Europe. Veterans of Russell III founded the Grundrechtekomitee in 1980 to challenge this limited understanding of human rights. The second part of the article focuses on the Committee's engagement against Helmut Kohl's asylum policy and domestic racism. While focused on West Germany, the Committee mobilized a cosmopolitan vision of human rights that mobilized Holocaust memory to advocate for the rights of migrants and asylum seekers. The article argues that Russell III and the Grundrechtekomitee saw domestic human rights advocacy as a bulwark against undemocratic and xenophobic tendencies in Germany.
This article analyses West German foreign policy towards state terrorism in Chile and Argentina and towards political refugees fleeing these regimes. Pressured by grassroots activists, Willy Brandt's ...government took a hard stance against the Chilean military junta and established an asylum programme for refugees from Chile. Under Helmut Schmidt, however, the official attitude towards state terrorism changed. West Germany welcomed the military coup in Buenos Aires, accepted the Argentinean junta's position that repressive measures were necessary to fight ‘subversion’, flatly refused to accept any Argentinean political prisoners and approved billions of Deutschmarks worth of weapons sales to the junta. This article argues that Bonn's ambivalence towards state terrorism and uneven interest in human rights was due to the different attitudes of both Social Democratic Chancellors towards economic strategising, grassroots activism and, most importantly, the threat of left-wing terrorism.
In the run-up to the 1978 World Cup, the West German section of Amnesty International launched a campaign called 'Yes to Football, No to Torture!' which sought to raise awareness of human rights ...violations in Argentina by taking advantage of the popularity of the XI World Cup. This article demonstrates that the Football Federation (Deutsches Fussball Bund) and its president Hermann Neuberger, in connivance with the West German Government, actively opposed one of the first large-scale human rights campaigns in 1970s West Germany, but were unable to prevent its success. 'Yes to Football, No to Torture!' sparked a significant discussion on the relationship of sports and politics, and rallied tens of thousands of people for the cause of human rights violations in Argentina.
This article analyses the role of popular culture and celebrity activism in the strategy of the Nicaragua solidarity campaign (NSC) in the 1980s. It argues that the NSC, which worked closely with the ...Nicaraguan state, gradually replaced their ineffectual political agitation with cultural activities—comprising an eclectic mix of comedy skits and poetry readings, theatre, punk rock, salsa music, and Nicaraguan folklore. A crucial contribution came from artists and celebrity actors, musicians, and writers such as The Clash, Charlotte Cornwell, Graham Greene, or Salman Rushdie. This article shows that artists and celebrities were drawn to Nicaragua solidarity because they saw the Sandinistas as the antithesis to the right-wing nationalist projects of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. It argues that their contribution was essential to popularising the Sandinista cause despite the hostile political climate of Thatcherism.
This dissertation shifts our understanding of 1970s human rights activism from a minimalist politics of salvation to a maximalist commitment to kindred spirits. Scholars see the 1970s as the time ...when the internationalist dreams of the 1960s disappeared to be supplanted by the salvation of a few over the transformation of the root causes of society's ills. By contrast, this dissertation examines West German activism on behalf of Latin Americans chaffing under military rule in the 1970s as a campaign of international political solidarity by different means. Faced with an environment hostile to transnational solidarity at home and abroad, West Germans of varying political doctrines and Christian confessions, as well as exiles from Latin America, embraced a common language of human rights as they pursued their political agendas. Its neutralist and humanitarian overtones made "human rights" discourses appealing to activists with diverging political goals. This dissertation reinterprets human rights activism as a continuation of internationalist commitments at a time when the foundations for transnational solidarity eroded. Grassroots embrace of human rights occurred during a tense state of securitization provoked by left-wing terrorism in West Germany. With the West German state increasingly unwilling to stand up for human rights on the international stage, especially for leftist victims, or accept them as refugees, grassroots solidarity activists were compelled to embrace a discourse that the state would accept. The Chilean and Argentinean cases--the most prominent instances of state-perpetrated abuses in 1970s Latin America--prompted leftists, left liberals, trade unionists, and Christians to advocate for the admission of political refugees and the imposition of economic embargoes and sanctions. Chilean and Argentinean exiles advocated for political change in their countries, but were forced to utilize human rights rhetoric to escape the stigma accorded to left-wing politics. Conservatives embraced human rights argumentation against the military regime in Chile when the wave of repression reached their political partners of the Christian Democratic Party in Chile. Lacking similar partners in Argentina, West German Christian Democracy did not demonstrate interest in conditions there. The West German government responded to grassroots advocacy with a minimalist vision for human rights protection that emphasized private negotiations on behalf of select individuals, which was abhorrent to many grassroots activists. The embrace of human rights by grassroots activists occurred in a highly contested process of political defeats and realignments. It was not a turn to a new utopia. Drawing on research in state and civil society repositories in Europe and the Americas, as well as oral interviews, this dissertation offers a window into transnational political activism between West Germany and Latin America in the 1970s. It shows how activists from the left and the right, as well as government officials, arrived at different definitions of human rights and diverging strategies for protecting them.
Thesis advisor: Devin O. Pendas
This dissertation shifts our understanding of 1970s human rights activism from a minimalist politics of salvation to a maximalist commitment to kindred spirits. ...Scholars see the 1970s as the time when the internationalist dreams of the 1960s disappeared to be supplanted by the salvation of a few over the transformation of the root causes of society's ills. By contrast, this dissertation examines West German activism on behalf of Latin Americans chaffing under military rule in the 1970s as a campaign of international political solidarity by different means. Faced with an environment hostile to transnational solidarity at home and abroad, West Germans of varying political doctrines and Christian confessions, as well as exiles from Latin America, embraced a common language of human rights as they pursued their political agendas. Its neutralist and humanitarian overtones made "human rights" discourses appealing to activists with diverging political goals. This dissertation reinterprets human rights activism as a continuation of internationalist commitments at a time when the foundations for transnational solidarity eroded. Grassroots embrace of human rights occurred during a tense state of securitization provoked by left-wing terrorism in West Germany. With the West German state increasingly unwilling to stand up for human rights on the international stage, especially for leftist victims, or accept them as refugees, grassroots solidarity activists were compelled to embrace a discourse that the state would accept. The Chilean and Argentinean cases--the most prominent instances of state-perpetrated abuses in 1970s Latin America--prompted leftists, left liberals, trade unionists, and Christians to advocate for the admission of political refugees and the imposition of economic embargoes and sanctions. Chilean and Argentinean exiles advocated for political change in their countries, but were forced to utilize human rights rhetoric to escape the stigma accorded to left-wing politics. Conservatives embraced human rights argumentation against the military regime in Chile when the wave of repression reached their political partners of the Christian Democratic Party in Chile. Lacking similar partners in Argentina, West German Christian Democracy did not demonstrate interest in conditions there. The West German government responded to grassroots advocacy with a minimalist vision for human rights protection that emphasized private negotiations on behalf of select individuals, which was abhorrent to many grassroots activists. The embrace of human rights by grassroots activists occurred in a highly contested process of political defeats and realignments. It was not a turn to a new utopia. Drawing on research in state and civil society repositories in Europe and the Americas, as well as oral interviews, this dissertation offers a window into transnational political activism between West Germany and Latin America in the 1970s. It shows how activists from the left and the right, as well as government officials, arrived at different definitions of human rights and diverging strategies for protecting them.
Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2018.
Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.
Discipline: History.
