Baader-Meinhof Film
- Thread starter IdleRich
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craner
Beast of Burden
Ok, maybe it's not the worst thing that the Observer has ever published. How would I know that? It did irritate me a lot, though. Some sentences might illustrate why:
That Cologne audience, utterly opposed to terrorist violence, nonetheless felt a pang of sympathy with the protagonists. Thirty years ago, would they have turned away those terrorist boys and girls if they had come begging for shelter? Would they have called the police?
Well, obviously, yes, unless they were confused, pre-disposed idiots. Would you let a criminal thug like Andrees Baader or a zombiefied political groupie like Gudrun Ensslin into your house? Or, like, how would you feel listening to Ulrike Mienhof explain that she was sending her two kids to grow up in a Palestinian refugee camp so that they could be reared in the heart of the international revolutionary struggle? Oh, yes, that's a good idea Ulrike, I wish I'd have thought of that. Thanks, Mum!
One of these radicals was Andreas Baader, an unstable tearaway with devastating charisma and a taste for violence.
Or, you could say, a mentally disturbed, psychopathic little chancer.
the extraordinary Gudrun Ensslin.
Ludicrous. I think we've all met a pseudo-Gudrun Ensslin, and I don't think we'd consider the real deal to be extraordinary at all.
The culmination of that friendship was the 1970 springing of Andreas Baader. Afterwards the gang, now growing in numbers, went to Lebanon for military training with Palestinian guerrillas. Back in Germany, the shooting war began with a series of spectacular bank raids and clashes with the police
All of which was petty and pathetic, in reality. The RAF trip to Lebanon was farcical; the Palestinians couldn't wait to get rid of these jokers. The assassinations and bank robberies and "clashes" were horrible, and sordid and pointless, rather like the RAF/Red Brigade style of politics. This was a rudimentary, shifting, almost incidental thing; an extreme lifestyle choice rather than a serious political programme. To indulge and confirm their seriousness in this regard, as Acherson clearly does, is absurd and trivial. This is the last thing about them you can take seriously.
I'm stupidly fascinated by the late-60s-70s-80s international ultraleft terrorist underground and try to read everything that is written about it, and the best book on the RAF I've ever read is this near-contemporary, impeccably researched and sourced account. It ably demonstrates that the principal points of interest in regard to these groups and individuals is not politcial, but psychological, biographical, social. Essentially, despite their ridiculous reputation, RAF are in no way elevated over, say, the Patty Hearst-kidnapping, suburban bank robbing, farcical communique-issueing Symbionese Liberation Army (all 10 of them!!).
Around the group, there was soon a wide 'sympathiser' network of people who shared the RAF aims, even though they rejected their terrorist methods.
Because, of course, they could be seperated. By the time the RAF became the RAF, terrorism was exactly part of their aim. That's why they were the RAF! You either believe in revolutionary violence, or you don't 'sympathise' with the RAF.
Meinhof would have agreed with that. So might Ensslin. A wonderful scene in the film shows her strutting naked in the Lebanese sun, jeering at shocked Palestinian recruits. 'What's the matter? Fucking and shooting; it's the same thing!'
Wonderful?? It sounds fucking terrible. Really, Acherson's sheepish qualifications barely disguise the fact that this article is one long fucking eulogy!
That Cologne audience, utterly opposed to terrorist violence, nonetheless felt a pang of sympathy with the protagonists. Thirty years ago, would they have turned away those terrorist boys and girls if they had come begging for shelter? Would they have called the police?
Well, obviously, yes, unless they were confused, pre-disposed idiots. Would you let a criminal thug like Andrees Baader or a zombiefied political groupie like Gudrun Ensslin into your house? Or, like, how would you feel listening to Ulrike Mienhof explain that she was sending her two kids to grow up in a Palestinian refugee camp so that they could be reared in the heart of the international revolutionary struggle? Oh, yes, that's a good idea Ulrike, I wish I'd have thought of that. Thanks, Mum!
One of these radicals was Andreas Baader, an unstable tearaway with devastating charisma and a taste for violence.
Or, you could say, a mentally disturbed, psychopathic little chancer.
the extraordinary Gudrun Ensslin.
Ludicrous. I think we've all met a pseudo-Gudrun Ensslin, and I don't think we'd consider the real deal to be extraordinary at all.
The culmination of that friendship was the 1970 springing of Andreas Baader. Afterwards the gang, now growing in numbers, went to Lebanon for military training with Palestinian guerrillas. Back in Germany, the shooting war began with a series of spectacular bank raids and clashes with the police
All of which was petty and pathetic, in reality. The RAF trip to Lebanon was farcical; the Palestinians couldn't wait to get rid of these jokers. The assassinations and bank robberies and "clashes" were horrible, and sordid and pointless, rather like the RAF/Red Brigade style of politics. This was a rudimentary, shifting, almost incidental thing; an extreme lifestyle choice rather than a serious political programme. To indulge and confirm their seriousness in this regard, as Acherson clearly does, is absurd and trivial. This is the last thing about them you can take seriously.
I'm stupidly fascinated by the late-60s-70s-80s international ultraleft terrorist underground and try to read everything that is written about it, and the best book on the RAF I've ever read is this near-contemporary, impeccably researched and sourced account. It ably demonstrates that the principal points of interest in regard to these groups and individuals is not politcial, but psychological, biographical, social. Essentially, despite their ridiculous reputation, RAF are in no way elevated over, say, the Patty Hearst-kidnapping, suburban bank robbing, farcical communique-issueing Symbionese Liberation Army (all 10 of them!!).
Around the group, there was soon a wide 'sympathiser' network of people who shared the RAF aims, even though they rejected their terrorist methods.
Because, of course, they could be seperated. By the time the RAF became the RAF, terrorism was exactly part of their aim. That's why they were the RAF! You either believe in revolutionary violence, or you don't 'sympathise' with the RAF.
Meinhof would have agreed with that. So might Ensslin. A wonderful scene in the film shows her strutting naked in the Lebanese sun, jeering at shocked Palestinian recruits. 'What's the matter? Fucking and shooting; it's the same thing!'
Wonderful?? It sounds fucking terrible. Really, Acherson's sheepish qualifications barely disguise the fact that this article is one long fucking eulogy!
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crackerjack
Well-known member
Like bollocks, it is. And I'm sure you know it.
mistersloane
heavy heavy monster sound
Mebbe, but Oliver's destruction of it was waaaay better than the actual article, I'll check that book out.
easy to proclaim "petty and pathetic" in hindsight. actions of a group of individuals against a global status quo of imperialism and state sanctioned violence -- how effective or how "great" can they be? of COURSE it looks pathetic compared to systematic government backed terrorism.
wrong or right, whatever the personal motives, at least they were not afraid to stand up and take action against obvious injustice the rest of the world willfully ignores.
it is more than you or i can say, and enough to garner some kind of respect and admiration from me.
wrong or right, whatever the personal motives, at least they were not afraid to stand up and take action against obvious injustice the rest of the world willfully ignores.
it is more than you or i can say, and enough to garner some kind of respect and admiration from me.
john eden
male pale and stale
Well I can only speak for myself but I have managed to do my bit to stand up against injustice - without resorting to terrorism.
I have a similar attraction to a lot of this stuff (when will there be a film about SPK or the Angry Brigade, eh?) but really it is more to do with how spectacularly wrong certain (usually middle class) sections of the revolutionary left can be.
One of the best things I have read on all this is John Barker (of the Stoke Newington 8/ Angry Brigade) reflecting on the errors of his ways in a book review:
http://www.geocities.com/pract_history/barker.html
vimothy
yurp
Yeah, but didn't the RAF add to the total of obvious injustices world wide?
crackerjack
Well-known member
This line of argument is so depressing. 'Right or wrong, at least they did something' doesn't work if the something that they did is so patently wrong.
i hear you. and i'm not condoning (or necessarily condemning) armed resistance, but the level of personal sacrifice on the part of the RAF is still impressive to me.
i don't think so and debatable at best. especially considering the awareness they have spread.
what do you all think about FARC? or any of the other groups who do not exclude violence in their methods to counter imperialism and other ills?
call me middle-class or juvenile in my romantic idealism, but i have always liked X better than King.
vimothy
yurp
I think it's self-evident that murdering people because of their profession is not going to decrease the total set of injustices in the world.
What, the FARC who tied a dynamite necklace around a woman's neck because she wouldn't pay their shitty tax? Real heroes, those guys...
Come on, what the RAF did was pretty far from "armed resistance".
What, the FARC who tied a dynamite necklace around a woman's neck because she wouldn't pay their shitty tax? Real heroes, those guys...
Come on, what the RAF did was pretty far from "armed resistance".
different people under different circumstances use different methods.
whether baader or meinhof were or not is beside the point, but if one is pushed enough, if injury to one's loved ones or people is great enough, you, me, anyone is capable of taking up arms against oppressors. the plight of the Irish, Columbia, Chechnya... I will not sit here and judge these freedom fighters by their methods from a safe distance, just because I was lucky enough not to have been put in those kinds of desperate situations, or endured that kind of suffering.
i disagree.
not saying it's "right" either, or that they should be exempt from criticism, but i do not wholesale condemn the RAF for being who they were and doing what they did.
john eden
male pale and stale
The sacrifice is part of the problem - those extreme sacrifices separate revolutionaries from the very people they are supposedly acting for.
There is a world of differences between the violence used by the Black Panthers and that of the RAF.
The BPP was part of a community and was multi-dimensional. Their violence was out in the open, a direct response to police violence. They operated openly, welcoming people who agreed with their aims and principles.
Having said that they can still be criticised (and have been, for example by James Carr in his autobiography "Bad") for their militaristic structure leading to some tendencies perhaps moving away from this openness.
john eden
male pale and stale
So you wouldn't criticise Animal Liberation Front bombers in the UK? Or David Copeland the nazi nailbomber? Or the Unabomber or Timothy McVeigh? Or the Aum sarin gas attacks?
In fact many people's backgrounds on Dissensus may be quite similar to the RAF. Ulrike's father was an art historian. If I remember rightly Andreas Baader came from a banking family.
How have they been "pushed" more than me, that justifies them bombing people but means that I am not in a position to criticise them?
How about John Barker, whose piece I linked to upthread?
crackerjack
Well-known member
What exactly were these desperate situations these (for the most part) well-educated and privileged people has to endure?
What kind of freedom were they fighting for? The kind on offer in the GDR, where many of them took refuge?
of course i would.
notice i never did condone what they did, and said that B+M and RAF should not be exempt from criticism.
notice i said "whether B+M were or not is beside the point" -- meaning my point was a larger one concerning violence as a valid (and even justifiable in some cases) means in anti-imperialist struggle.
maybe RAF were in part rich kids that were simply acting out, and maybe in stupid ways. but what i have read of Meinhof's texts are still amazing and very inspirational. and my larger point still stands.
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D
droid
Guest
On thing the RAF lacked, that is crucial for any revolutionary organisation, was popular support. Small groups who act in isolation from the population they supposedly represent have no mandate for action, be they on the left or the right.
That said, the main thing wrong with the RAF was timing. 25 years earlier, murdering Nazis was all the rage...
That said, the main thing wrong with the RAF was timing. 25 years earlier, murdering Nazis was all the rage...
crackerjack
Well-known member
No, you just refused to criticise them yourself, which amounts to much the same thing.
from the flip side, that these people did not suffer great personal injury perhaps means that it was their CONSCIENCE and EMPATHY FOR THE PLIGHT OF OTHERS which drove them to these extreme actions. can be interpreted as testament of the fact that humans are capable of acting not only with the self, but indeed others, in mind.
from what i understand the RAF did not have a single cause, but were rather confusingly fighting for a summation of global injustice - many different issues combined.
maybe it was stupid. maybe it was ineffective and caused more damage than good. but what they stood for, and their death defying conviction, is still inspirational and beautiful.
and on the other (yours maybe) flip side:
in Berlin every May there is a standoff between anarchists and police. it has become a tradition (some say started by Einsturzend Neubauten back in 1977) and even somewhat of a tourist attraction. it's a planned date that both sides prepare for, and act out almost in scripted fashion: bottles are thrown, police barracades advance, etc, etc.
as a person of Chinese origin, who personally knew peaceful protesting students slaughtered by machine gun fire and run over by tanks at the hands of the government in TianAnMen Square in 1989, this, needless to say, seems pretty silly. these mohawked Berliner punks have NO IDEA the meaning of state oppression...
in fact i kind of want to organize tours and bring these angry youths to China so they can have something real to fight against...
maybe less compared to other groups, but popular support was not exactly non-existent:
...As they continued to evade police, the RAF began to take on the aura of folk heroes for many students and leftists who were glad to see someone taking things to the next level. Thousands of people secretly carried photographs of RAF members in their wallets, and time and time again, as the police stepped up their search, members of the young guerilla group would find doors open to them, as they were welcomed into people’s homes, including not a few middle class sympathisers – academics, doctors, even a clergyman. Newspapers at the time carried stories under headlines like “Celebrities Protect Baader Gang” and “Sympathizers Hamper Hunt for Baader Group.” An opinion poll revealed that “40 percent of respondents described the RAF’s violence as political, not criminal, in motive; 20 percent indicated that they could understand efforts to protect fugitives from capture; and 6 percent confessed that they were themselves willing to conceal a fugitive.”
- Varon, Jeremy, Bringing the War Home: The Weather Underground, the Red Army Faction and Revolutionary Violence in the Sixties and Seventies, University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California: 2004. p. 199.