ABSTRACT
In the summer of 2001, a new political actor called Attac entered the public stage in Germany. Mainstream media began to cover the group, and Attac’s membership soared to one thousand within one month. How did such a small and thus far unknown group manage to attract so much attention, and how did it come to be perceived, later on, as the central player in the global justice movements (GJMs) in Germany? Several facilitating factors came into play. First, Attac was connected to a major and spectacular event: the mass demonstrations and partly violent clashes between police and political activists on the occasion of the G8 summit in Genoa in July 2001. Though few German Attac members actually participated, the protesters from Germany became publicly associated with Attac.
