The Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon

 

“Baader-Meinhof: Terrorismens årtionde” is a Swedish book by Jens Nordqvist, offering a relatively popularized account of the Red Army Faction (RAF), the notorious German terrorist group. I admit I´ve never been *that* interested in them before, despite their status as ever-present boogey even today. And frankly, I probably won´t pursue the matter further.

The Rote Armee Fraktion was officially formed in 1970, but its roots go back to 1968-69. The radical student movement in West Germany (the Federal Republic of Germany, FRG or BRD), protesting against the Vietnam War and Nazi holdovers in West German society, was further radicalized by the brutal response of the police. One of the results was the formation of the RAF, known by its opponents as the Baader-Meinhof Group or Baader-Meinhof Gang after two of its principal leaders, Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof.

The high tide of this terrorist group was the period 1970-77. Shootouts with the police, kidnappings, bank robberies and murders of high profile individuals were part of its repertoire. In Germany, I assume the kidnapping and subsequent murder of prominent industrialist Hans-Martin Schleyer in 1977 is considered the most notorious action of the RAF. In Sweden, it’s the attack on the West German embassy two years previously. There was also the quixotic almost-attempt by one Norbert Kröcher to kidnap the Swedish government minister Anna-Greta Leijon (who had swiftly extradited the RAF terrorists involved in the embassy drama to West Germany).

RAF cooperated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and received weapons training from them at Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan. There must have been cooperation with the Communist regime of East Germany (the German “Democratic” Republic, GDR or DDR) at a relatively early stage, too, since the RAF members trained in Jordan seem to have left by way of East Berlin. (The rumor that the RAF met with one Vladimir Putin behind the Iron Curtain is not mentioned in the book, I think.) After the fall of Communism, some RAF supporters were found in the GDR, where they lived with assumed identities.

What struck me most when reading Nordqvist´s account were two things. First, the strict Christian upbringing of several RAF leaders. They seem to have been strong idealists – or virtual “moral monsters” if you are more critical – and continued being so even after leaving Christianity behind. This simply confirms my suspicions of this kind of idealism, in which the world is seen in absolute black and white categories. It seems to be a close neighbor to cynicism, the kind of cynicism where you simply pursue the erstwhile “idealist” course to its bloody conclusion, no matter what. There is another word for this phenomenon, of course: fanaticism. This kind of moralistic idealism can be dangerous even when it doesn´t lead to violence – witness the fanaticism of many of the Woke.

The second thing that struck me even more forcefully was the complete futility of it all. The Baader-Meinhof Gang started out as some kind of “armed resistance” against the Federal Republic (no less!), but very soon, the “urban guerilla” became a rearguard action, with most of the attacks having as their goal the release of previously arrested comrades. While the Red Army Faction did do considerable damage, they were objectively speaking losing almost from the start, their downfall being all but inevitable. It would have taken a geopolitical earthquake to make the Faction anything more than a mere gang – and geopolitical earthquakes aren´t caused by small terrorist “focos” anyway. (Al-Qaeda was and is hardly a foco!) Some of the RAF´s actions look almost tragicomic in retrospect, like the “Socialist Patient Collective” – as if mental patients could be trusted to be members of a clandestine guerilla…

More strict Marxist-Leninists considered the Baader-Meinhof Group to be volatile petit bourgeois, and there is absolutely some truth in that characterization. That being said, there was certainly a context to the RAF and its activities. The 1970´s were “the decade of terrorism”. Stronger and potentially more influential movements used tactics often considered terrorist to further their aims: the PLO (including the PFLP) in Palestine and globally, the IRA on Northern Ireland and in Britain, the ETA in Spain, and a few others. These movements could be seen – and certainly were seen by sections of “their” communities – as national liberation fighters, not “terrorists”. There were also smaller groups of various degrees of seriousness all around the world which took to arms: the Black Panther Party and the Weather Underground in the United States, the Red Brigades in Italy, the Japanese Red Army, various Latin American urban guerillas, and so on. Armed resistance may not have looked *that* unrealistic to Andreas Baader, Ulrike Meinhof and their comrades back in the days. And yet, a sober analysis of West Germany in 1970 should have made anyone with a political IQ above 85 realize that the Bundesrepublik wasn´t Northern Ireland…or even notoriously chaotic Italy!

Will it happen again? Of course it will. And it will probably fail again, unless that seismic shift happens…

With that remark, I close this little review.