Why We’re No Longer Left: New Essay Collection Examines a Generation’s Break with Radicalism
Collection ‘When Thinking Changes Direction’ explores why former ’68 radicals are no longer left, tracing stories from 1970s activism to today’s politics.
The new essay collection When Thinking Changes Direction: Why We Are No Longer Left, edited by Uli Kulke and Reinhard Mohr and published by Kohlhammer in Stuttgart (2026, 259 pages, €24), gathers voices from a generation that once identified with the left and the Green movement but now rejects those labels. The book asks directly why many of its contributors — former activists, journalists and intellectuals — say they are no longer left, mapping personal turning points from the 1970s through recent political crises. The essays mix memoir, political analysis and moral reckoning as contributors explain how protest, violence, and shifting public debate reshaped their political identities.
Authors recount direct-action roots and militant episodes
Several contributors recall an era in which radicalism was an active project rather than a lifestyle choice, describing street protests, occupations and militant actions that marked the late 1960s and 1970s. The collection includes reflections on well-known episodes of the period and on the emotional intensity that drew many young people into confrontational politics. Writers do not shy away from controversial moments; some frame those actions as formative mistakes, others as earnest attempts to confront what they saw as entrenched injustice.
These recollections are often blunt about the consequences of militant tactics and the moral costs associated with them. For some contributors, specific violent incidents or the sympathetic responses of parts of the left to armed groups prompted a re-evaluation of principles and methods. Those moments, they say, prompted a difficult but lasting break with the political culture of their youth.
Entebbe, Prague and other decisive shocks
A number of essays single out particular events that crystallized a change in viewpoint, using incidents as markers of where politics became untenable for the authors. The 1976 hijacking that ended in the Israeli rescue operation at Entebbe and imprisonment experiences in Eastern Europe are cited as turning points for several writers. Those episodes, contributors argue, exposed the limits of romanticizing violence and revealed a gap between intended ideals and real-world consequences.
Authors describe how encounters with foreign conflicts and the treatment of civilians forced them to weigh solidarity against complicity. For many, the cognitive dissonance produced by those episodes transformed the way they judged both tactics and allies, and led them to distance themselves from movements that tolerated or excused repression.
Antisemitism, Islamist terror and the left’s blind spots
The book foregrounds debates about antisemitism and the left’s responses to Islamist violence as pivotal in pushing some contributors away from leftist identifications. Several essays recount personal experiences in which perceived indifference or even support from segments of the left toward forces responsible for civilian deaths altered loyalties. Those accounts tie historical memory to present-day political disagreements, arguing that international conflicts and ideological alliances exposed ethical contradictions.
Editors and contributors also connect these shifts to broader debates about migration, security and social cohesion, suggesting that unresolved tensions around these issues have reshaped party loyalties and public trust. The essays underline how moral judgments about foreign policy and counterterrorism have domestic political consequences.
From cultural revolt to changing public opinion
Beyond discrete events, the collection examines how broader cultural and political shifts changed the parameters of acceptable opinion and affiliation. Several contributors insist they have not moved dramatically in personal values but that the public meaning of left and right has shifted around them. They argue that what was once a radical critique of authoritarian legacies became, over decades, a contested cultural stance subject to evolving social norms and media framings.
This section of the book traces how debates over identity, cancel culture, pandemic policy and migration have reconfigured political alliances. Contributors suggest that these changes made old labels less accurate and compelled many to adopt a more critical stance toward the movements they once helped build.
Editors frame the volume as a prompt for public debate
Kulke and Mohr assemble the essays not merely as confessions but as invitations to re-examine political thinking and to defend democratic norms against all forms of extremism. The editors emphasize the value of revising one’s views in light of new evidence and experience, and they present the collection as a contribution to a wider conversation about responsibility in public life. By bringing together diverse personal narratives, the book attempts to show that ideological change is often gradual, contested and rooted in concrete ethical judgments.
Reviewers and commentators will likely focus on the book’s mix of memory and moral argument, and on how firsthand accounts can illuminate the social forces that produce political realignment. The editors’ choice to foreground personal turning points underscores an argument about agency and accountability in political life.
The essays collectively advance a simple imperative: to think critically and be willing to change one’s mind when circumstances and moral clarity demand it. The volume closes on a call to resist extremism of every stripe and to preserve a public culture informed by historical awareness rather than ideological reflex.
