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DCB, having been expelled from France by De Gaulle in 1968, has spent almost all of his adult life, and political career, in Germany, with die Grünen.

Minor historical note: DCB spent only a decade of his political career as a Green in Germany. For the previous 16 years, he was part of the extra-parliamentarian opposition (the '68 movement if you want). Although he first ran for election in a precursor of the Greens in 1978, he joined the party only in 1984 (four years after it was established). A decade later, in 1994, he was elected MEP (then from Germany; he moved to France for his 1999 re-election).

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.

by DoDo on Thu May 19th, 2011 at 12:56:44 PM EST
A more on-point comment: overcoming factionalism, especially in an anti-hierarchic organisation, is difficult, but it was one major achievement of the German Greens, offering some lessons to comrades elsewhere. The present intra-party culture of armistice was in large part it was a result of past squabbles, with everyone recognising that 'divided we fall'. When it started to emerge (IIRC around 1998, after an intra-party tussle between Fundies and Realos over calling for 5-D-Mark per litre petrol prices that saw poll numbers plummet by 50%), it was poised to result in a de-facto total takeover by the power-conscious Realos via organisational change: the Realos wanted to create more centralised party structures. This parallels what happened to British Labour under Bliar: that party was hit by internal squabbles through and after the Thatcher years, so it was easy for Bliar to justify the construction of his authoritarian, top-down party structure. The German Greens, however, rejected the party structure reform, and that was when everyone truly accepted the need to get along.

(Then again, today not much is left of the original Realo-Fundie polarisation: all the Greens got more bourgeois.)

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.

by DoDo on Thu May 19th, 2011 at 04:55:29 PM EST
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