It may be that the East German Left Party has more in-the-closet Honecker admirers, especially with the big contingent of ex-SPD WASG in the West. But as the linked SPIEGEL article at the end says, the East Left Party is more mainstream-ed, e.g. closer to the center than the West German sectarian leftists among the West German Left Party members.

In France the revolution was good for something.

In hindsight :-) In the early 19th century, one could argue that the revolutionary terror of the Jacobins and the rise, emperorship and expansionist warmongering of Napoleon prove that liberalism can only deliver bloodshed and dictatorship. Conservaties of the time have actually argued so.

In Germany even the 68er, who have achieved something, did this not so much by violent protests, but by the "march through the institutions".

I argued the claim that Germany had no political violence of the level seen in Budapest recently, not its effectivity.

But on effectivity, picking nits, I note (1) the Marsch durch die Institutionen came after the street violence, with the so-called "street credibility" playing a part; (2) there is individual and collective achievement, and some of the protests decades ago did achieve a backing down of the state or changed public discourse.

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