Abstract

The discussion of the European peace movements and the Polish crisis in the last issue of Telos put forward a wide range of analyses and raised many points of disagreement. Benhabib and Breines in particular chose to take issue with my attempt to describe the emergence of the West German peace movement within the specific context of its national culture. At stake in this controversy is not only the estimation of the movement itself but also the understanding of the manner in which politics proceeds in contemporary society. Benhabib writes: “A seemingly innocent strategic calculation on the modernization of the nuclear forces of NATO has created public awareness and opposition to the use and deployment of nuclear weapons altogether. The consequence is a mobilization of citizens and of the public in numbers unprecedented since the ‘Ban the Bomb’ movement of the 1950s”