By Sylvia Westall
BERLIN (Reuters) - Forty years after Dany Cohn-Bendit'sflaming red hair and infectious smile became a symbol ofidealized rebellion across Europe in 1968, today's studentsface a more fragmented fight.
Cohn-Bendit, now 62 and in the European parliament, saysthe difference between students then and now is simple.
"We had a much more positive feeling towards the future.This makes the social movement different from the ones you seetoday. Now there is more anxiety and fear."
The 1968 generation wanted to revolutionize society, battleagainst authoritarianism and demolish what they saw as the oldsocial order. In the United States, demonstrations against theVietnam War triggered massive peace marches worldwide.
Forty years on, those involved in the protests of 1968 saymodern activist campaigns lack the force and scope of themovement which helped give birth to them.
Campaigns today may back a cause, they say, but they do notaspire to change the world in the way the '68ers sought to.Then young people, seeing authority embodied by monolithicinstitutions, envisaged a radically different social orderbased -- according to taste -- on Marxism, anarchism, or freelove, with slogans such as "Be realistic, demand theimpossible".
Where protesters in Paris 1968 lifted paving stones tobuild barricades and hurl at police, today market economics inits many forms reigns virtually unchallenged in a globalisedworld, and some from the 1968 generation argue that consumerismhas dulled students' rebellious spirit.
Students face much tougher competition for jobs and muchgreater pressure to conform: for some, even the tame rebellionof self-expression through social networking sites on theInternet is a peril, risking rejection from future employers.
"Although the student movement may talk about culturalchange, it nevertheless has precise goals -- to protest againstjob contract reforms or fight against university selection,"said Juliette Griffond, spokeswoman for the French nationalstudents' union.
The jobless rate in Germany and France is above 8 percent.At the end of the 1960s, it was below 2 percent in France andWest Germany.
Students have to focus on competing for jobs, Griffondsaid, because the French university population has grown --seven-fold since the 1960s according to government data.
In Germany, many students have had to give up on changingsociety, said Anna Menge, an Oxford University researcher on1960s-70s Germany.
"In 1968, students knew they had quite a good future interms of job security. Now young people are much moreconformist because they have to be. They have to engage andassimilate in order to compete in the job market," she said.
WANT A REVOLUTION
For German Green Party politician Hans-Christian Stroebele,who was a defence lawyer for left-wing militants in the 1960sand 70s, even the largest modern campaigns are more aboutindividual issues than conviction.
"Back then there was the feeling that you had to completelyrevolutionize society," he said. "With today's movements youdon't see that. There are demonstrations, like against the Iraqwar, but they are not about revolutionizing society."
But the roots of this fragmentation lie partly in thesuccesses of the '68ers. Oxford University professor RobertGildea said the legacy of 1968 is visible in modern campaigns.
"There was the big bang of '68 and then the '68ers went offin different directions," said Gildea, who has been researchingthe paths of former activists.
"You can trace some of the feminist movement back to it,you can trace a lot of ecology and environmentalism back to itand interest in regionalism and anti-centralization."
For Stroebele, 68, one of the era's most important legaciesis that it allowed Germans to reassess the past.
"Many people in power had played a big role in the Nazitimes and we wanted a radical break, something which had nottaken place since the end of the war.
"Everything was being questioned: authority, the justicesystem, the university system, Germany's relationship with theUnited States, imperialism."
IDEALIST AMBITIONS
Cohn-Bendit, known in his wilder days as 'Dany the Red',said idealism lives on in old '68ers but today's students facea much more complex set of problems.
"There is this optimism that you can make a better world.The problem is that the world you have to make better today iscompletely different," said Cohn-Bendit, whose position asco-leader of the Green Party in the European parliament hasearned him a new nickname, 'Green Dany'.
The drama of 1968 played out against the backdrop of aEurope split between liberal democracies -- which many '68ersscorned as an oppressive sham -- and the communist bloc that,for all its tyranny, some saw as a testing ground for thefuture.
Some say anti-globalization protests, rather than studentactivism, show glimmers of the 1968 spirit, citing thethousands who protest at G8 meetings of world leaders.
Others note that some prominent '68ers, including FrenchForeign Minister Bernard Kouchner and former German ForeignMinister Joschka Fischer, have worked their way through thecorridors of power.
"We have this idea of it all being wonderful, free love,people throwing Molotov cocktails, but the people who becamereally involved paid a price," said Gildea.
"A lot of them had nervous breakdowns, some of them losttheir jobs, some went into exile."
While nostalgic memories of 1968 may remain, some criticsof the movement have blamed it for nurturing left-wingmilitants who went on to carry out kidnappings and politicalmurders in Germany and Italy in the 1970s and 80s.
"It wasn't just the summer of love, it was much more thanthat," Gildea said.
(Editing by Stephen Weeks and Sara Ledwith)
