Read The Red Army Faction, a Documentary History, Volume 1 Online
Authors: J. Smith
The Red Army Faction, a Documentary History, Volume 1 (27 page)
A political concept that bases itself on parliamentary democracy, the political concept of competitive capitalism, a concept that understands class antagonism to be nothing more than a power struggle, that perceives the institutions of the class state to be institutions of a constitutional state, thereby definitely turning its back on progress and humanity… such a political concept cannot condone bank robbery. In the imperialist metropole, where the organization of the anti-imperialist struggle must have both legal and illegal components, the political struggle and the armed struggle, bank robbery cannot be dispensed with. It is, in practice, expropriation. And it points to the necessary method for establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat against the enemy: armed struggle.
On Logistics and Continuity
Many comrades are impressed by the Tupamaros’
1
actions. They don’t understand why, instead of carrying out popular actions, we’re preoccupied with logistics. They can’t be bothered with going to the trouble
to consider what the urban guerilla is and how it functions.
It is most likely maliciously intended when comrades recite the position of the Düsseldorf judge in Ruhland’s trial: Ruhland was a handyman and the gang’s mascot. The concept of the capitalist division of labor has proven to be an abstraction for them. In practice, they still conceive of proletarian comrades as jack-of-all-trades prefiguring some Silesian idyll. That the technical means can only be developed by working and learning collectively, that the urban guerilla must abolish the division of labor so that the arrest of one individual is not a disaster for us all—these comrades’ imagination can’t get that far. Not having the logistical problems at least partially resolved, not having oneself learned how to resolve logistical problems, not engaging in a collective learning and working process, would mean leaving the outcome of actions to chance technically, psychologically, and politically.
Resolving logistical problems assures the ongoing security of a revolutionary organization. We place great importance in the tactical requirements necessary to secure the continuity of the Red Army Faction. It is in the interest of capital to divide, to destroy, to break down solidarity, to isolate people, and to deny the historical context—in the area of production as well as that of housing, of commerce, of opinion making, of education—so as to guarantee ongoing profits. It is in the interest of capital to guarantee that conditions remain the opposite of those necessary for proletarian revolution: unity, continuity, historical consciousness, class consciousness. Without organizational continuity, without guaranteeing the organizational permanence of the revolutionary process, the revolutionary process is left to the anarchy of the system, to chance, to historical spontaneity.
We consider disregard for the question of organizational continuity to be a manifestation of opportunism.
On Solidarity
The revolutionary process is revolutionary because it makes objects out of the laws of capitalist commodity production and exchange, rather than being their object. It cannot be measured by market criteria. It can only be measured by criteria that simultaneously destroy the power of market criteria for success.
Solidarity, insofar as it is not based on market criteria, destroys the power of those criteria. Solidarity is political, not so much because solidarity is based on politics, but because it is a refusal to be subservient to the law of value and a refusal to be treated like a mere aspect of
exchange value. Solidarity is the essence of free action ungoverned by the ruling class; as such it always means resistance against the influence of the ruling class over relationships between people, and as resistance against the ruling class, it is always correct.
In the view of the system, people whose behavior is not guided by the system’s criteria for success are lunatics, halfwits, or losers. In the view of the revolution, all those who conduct themselves with solidarity, whoever they may be, are comrades.
Solidarity becomes a weapon if it is organized and is acted upon in a consistent way against the courts, the police, the authorities, the bosses, the infiltrators, and the traitors. They must be denied any cooperation, afforded no attention, denied access to evidence, offered no information, and afforded absolutely no time and energy. Solidarity includes struggling against liberalism within the left and addressing contradictions within the left as one addresses contradictions amongst the people, and not as if they were a class contradiction.
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All political work is based on solidarity. Without solidarity, it will crumble in the face of repression.
“We must prevent the possibility of unnecessary victims. Everybody in the ranks of the revolution must take care of each other, must relate to each other lovingly, must help each other.”
SERVE THE PEOPLE!
MAKE THE QUESTION OF OWNERSHIP A KEY QUESTION EVERYWHERE!
SUPPORT THE ARMED STRUGGLE!
BUILD THE REVOLUTIONARY GUERILLA!
VICTORY IN THE PEOPLE’S WAR!
RAF
April 1972
a note from the editors: On the Treatment of Traitors There have been insinuations, always vague on details or proof, that the RAF was an intensely authoritarian organization, particularly in regards to people not being allowed to leave. Claims have been made that Baader murdered Ingeborg Barz, a young woman who had joined the RAF from the anarchist Black Aid, simply because she wanted to quit the underground. These claims have been contradicted by other witnesses. Some have pointed to Traitors must be excluded from the ranks of the revolution. Tolerance in the face of traitors produces more treason. Traitors in the ranks of the revolution cause more harm than the police can without traitors. We believe that is a general rule. It is impossible to know how much they will betray if they are threatened. Given that they are little pigs, one cannot permit them to be in a situation where they can be blackmailed. Capital will continue to turn people into little pigs until we overthrow its rule. We are not responsible for capital’s crimes. |
This position should be evaluated in light of the RAF’s documented practice, and the realities of armed struggle. No clandestine organization can tolerate informants, nor should any revolutionary movement do so, regardless of its legal or illegal status. Yet many observers are wary, and rightly so, of such calls to “exclude” traitors; the reason for this unease is the strong tendency for factions or entire organizations to end up using such a line as cover to attack any and all dissidents, drop-outs, critics or even rivals, accusing them all of “treason.” Examples abound Despite allegations to the contrary, there is no substantive evidence of the RAF ever going down that road. The RAF was criticized throughout its existence, yet none of the critics were ever targeted. What is striking about the cases of Sturm, Homann, and Ruhland is not that they were insulted or berated, but that no harm befell them even after they all took public stands against the guerilla. Another guerilla member, Hans-Jürgen Bäcker, suspected of being an informant, was not targeted by any attack even after testifying in court against the RAF. Stefan Aust and Jillian Becker have both claimed that members of the guerilla made what can only be described as half-hearted attempts to exact vengeance, but their stories are difficult to gauge. Both authors claim that Baader and Mahler were trying to find Homann and Aust to kill them, but if so, they evidently gave up the search quickly. There is one, and only one, documented case of the RAF doing violence to an informant. In 1971, a friend of Katharina Hammerschmidt’s, Edelgard Graefer, was arrested on bogus charges and threatened with having her five-year-old son permanently taken away from her. Under pressure, Graefer gave information to the police. In early 1972, she was abducted by the RAF and had a bucket of tar poured over her. Following this attack on her person, she stopped working with the police. |
While unpleasant, such a violent warning is not on the order of a death sentence. Indeed, as Brigitte Mohnhaupt later argued in Stammheim, the fact that a known informant was assaulted and Certainly, given the guerilla’s ability to carry out attacks against even heavily guarded targets, the fact that all of those who testified against them remained unscathed should tell us something. As for the many others who left over the years, if they did not cooperate with the police or run with tall tales to the media, there is no indication that the guerilla bore them any ill will.
THIS COLLABORATOR IS IN BED WITH THE KILLER-PIGS LONG LIVE THE RAF! March 27, 1972 |
The May Offensive: Bringing the War Home
This decision, this project, was arrived at through collective discussions involving everyone in the RAF; in other words, there was a consensus of all the groups, of the units in each of the cities, and everyone clearly understood what this meant, what the purpose of these attacks was
.
Brigitte Mohnhaupt
Stammheim Trial
July 22, 1976
I
N MAY
1972,
SHORTLY AFTER
the release of
Serve the People
, the RAF left the stage of logistics and preparation, launching a series of attacks that were to go down in history as the “May Offensive.”
On the evening of May 11, the day the United States mined the harbors of North Vietnam, the RAF’s “Petra Schelm Commando” bombed the U.S. Army V Corps headquarters and the site of the National Security Agency in Frankfurt. At least three blasts went off, killing Lieutenant Colonel Paul A. Bloomquist and injuring thirteen others. As one military police officer noted, the toll would have been much worse had the bombs gone off during duty hours. Damage to property was estimated at $300,000.
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“We expected things like this in Saigon,” a captain just back from Vietnam was quoted as saying. “Not here in Germany.”
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One can imagine that words like that put smiles on many a face, and within twenty-four hours, U.S. military officials reported receiving a number of threats promising all kinds of follow-up attacks. These quickly snowballed, and by early June, the
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
was reporting that thousands of such calls had been made by “high school students, drunks, psychopaths, and criminals.”
2
“These calls,” complained the American Lieutenant General Williard Pearson in a similar vein, “were made by mentally unbalanced or irresponsible individuals seeking to create tension or panic within our community.”
3
Given that the RAF always issued proper communiqués, these threats were most likely the work of people who were simply glad to see the Americans finally being hit. The state was far from amused, and it was noted that the financial consequences of false bomb threats were substantial for warehouses, newspapers, factories, and banks. More importantly, the wave of political prank calls helped create a signal-to-noise situation that can only have helped the guerilla. Nor was the activity without some risk: prison sentences for these false bomb threats ran from a couple of months to as high as three years.
4
The day after the first bombing, on May 12, attacks were carried out in two Bavarian cities in response to the March 2 shooting of Weissbecker. In Augsburg, bombs were planted inside the police headquarters, and one cop suffered mild injuries. In the state capital Munich, a car bomb was parked just outside the six-storey police building; when it went off, it blew out the windows up to the top floor. A nearby pay station had received a telephone warning, but by the time the police got wind of it, there was not enough time to evacuate—twelve people were injured, and damages were estimated at $150,000.
5
These bombings were claimed by the RAF’s “Thomas Weissbecker Commando.”
On May 16, in Karlsruhe, the RAF’s “Manfred Grashof Commando” placed a bomb in the car of Federal Supreme Court Judge Buddenberg, who had been put in charge of all RAF cases. However, it was not the judge who was behind the wheel, but his wife on her way to pick him up from work. Gerta Buddenberg sustained serious injuries, but survived.
