Up to now the question of terrorism, of the "Red Army Faction" ("Rote-Armee-Fraktion", "RAF") or of the "Movement 2 June" time and again has dominated the topics of the media and the press, 25 years after. What does this agitation stem from? There never was a "revolutionary danger" for the state, anyway, starting from this type of terrorism. The assassination or the kidnapping of individual important industrial representatives or politicians could not even marginally scratch the state as such. At most it could serve as a threat or a means of exerting pressure in order to influence politics in a certain way. To avoid misunderstanding: this is not a paper generally directed against terror, neither against individual terror, which under certain extreme conditions may be justified by clear grounds. The subject is forms of terror in which the state itself has its fingers in the game, actually using them rather obviously for political manoeuvring. In the early springtime of 1992 Klaus Sender - this time signing by his civil name - wrote the following article which held out the many facts which in the meantime had become known in the public, towards the state.
The methods of the state in fact are by no means interesting only for the German public but, as we are thinking, also for the international public.
Already in 1971 the "Neue Einheit" attacked the supposable connections with forces of secret services which made use of these anarchists for their own purposes. Already in the middle of the Seventies it accused the so-called "Movement 2 June" of collaborating with the Soviet social imperialists, naturally with the German Democratic Republic, too. Through the years it became clear by more and more points that there are numerous combinations, that there are attempts to couple other forces with these so-called terrorists in order to create pretexts, and that the whole thing also was a means to beef up the whole police apparatus. Certain representatives of the administration quite frankly say that the so-called "RAF" was really helpful for the construction of an exorbitant police apparatus. Today the suspicions against the state machine are coming from many sides. Naturally, all this was disclaimed, and a big flood of literature with minimizing descriptions was issued, doing everything possible to put all the connections beyond the horizon.
Then, in 1990, it became officially known that quite a considerable number of cadres of the "RAF" and "2 June" had been "parked" in the GDR, that is to say they had been given the possibility to hide there and had been given a new identity by the "state security" ["Staatssicherheitsdienst", "Stasi"] of the GDR. The "Bundesnachrichtendienst" [foreign intelligence service of the Federal Republic of Germany] continued to assert that it had not known about that. But nobody can seriously assume that any more, and it has become clear that the whole topic of terrorism of the "RAF" and the "Movement 2 June" is also a topic of the rivalry and the collaboration between the West German secret service and the GDR’s secret service, between backing forces in the US and the Soviet Union, respectively. This "State Connection", however, is a subject which the media, understandably enough, are somewhat shy to touch upon in the public. If one sums up only what has become known up to now, this also equals to a devastating judgement on the media, because during 20 years they have been publicly blowing up the "RAF" and the "2 June" and have been working on the generation of a public hysteria.
In 1992 our organization published a leaflet which, alluding to the word of the "RAF-Stasi-connection" which now has become a standard quotation in Germany, expressly spoke of the "state connection". In reality simultaneously with the publication of this paper in German in the first part of April, 1992, the "RAF" declared the end of all attempts on the lives of politicians and industrialists. Here in eight columns a condensed description was given which characterized the essential relations around these forces during the past twenty years. Though being brief it nevertheless touches many characteristic details. Now this paper is published also in English.
Editorial staff of NEUE EINHEIT
It´s time that the things connected with so-called terrorism are uncovered in public and are analysed and explained in all their interrelations. These terrorist actions were and are still being covered by leading, influential representatives from the ruling classes, from the state, certainly also from the banking world and the leading companies - for without these nothing works in this state - and by forces from abroad.
The political thrust of the "RAF" and groups connected with it makes it clear how to classify these groups. Other forces are at work behind the terrorism of the "RAF" than those publicly maintained. This has long since ceased to be a particular secret in this country. Even newspapers that are deeply grounded in the state like the "FAZ" (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) are compelled to write that along with the history of terrorism in this country there also exists a history of ominous, inexplicable "search flaws" which from the start call into question the very seriousness of the measures taken by the authorities and makes one suspect that the perpetrators must have been aided and abetted at decisive points.
The so-called "RAF" has been existing for more than twenty years now. At least four generations up to the present one this alleged organization has already gone through, their political goals remaining largely in the dark, however. But in spite of a completely diffuse programme and the fact that entirely different people have been working in it in the course of time, there has been an astonishing continuity in the actions and provocations of these "organizations". Since 1970, the "RAF" has been following the student movement and the revolutionary organisations evolving from it like a shadow. As far as the very beginnings of this type of terrorism and its background is concerned, many remarkable details have become public, especially in recent years. This makes it easier to uncover the fundamental connections of the "RAF" and other groups. Through the uncovering of the "STASI-RAF-Connection" and last but not least the Berlin Schmuecker-Trial, many aspects concerning the structure of this sort of terrorism and the way in which it functions have become clear. Moreover, there have been disclosures in foreign countries, like Italy.
In the beginnings of this sort of terrorism the Berlin Verfassungsschutz (Agency for the Protection of the Constitution), certain police divisions, but also foreign secret services were playing a decisive part. The first bombs that were planted here in Berlin were planted with the very active assistance of a contact man for the Berlin-Verfassungsschutz. This is a story long since known, at least to experts in the subject-matter. His name was Peter Urbach. However, since the disclosure of this fact in the earlier 70s, the Verfassungsschutz has never stopped continuing these practices. Outwardly, these organs presented themselves with an air of innocence, claiming that they were committing only the minimum of illegality in order to guarantee that their contacts remained "able to work" within the organizations. But things are completely different. The organs stood out as active initiators, co-founders of organizations and participants in real murderous deeds. When, as in the case of the Schmuecker-Trial which after long efforts eventually also treated the connections between the Verfassungsschutz and the "Movement 2 June", far more was emerging than was in the interests of those responsible, and when in the investigating committee related to the trial questions were being directed against the persons concerned, the answer was all too often: We are not authorized to make a statement on that - and the judiciary leaves it at that. But in spite of all that, a lot became public in the course of this trial and in the investigating committee related to it, so that the entanglement was put on record.
In the first years, terrorism also emerged as a reaction to numerous acts of violence with which the state not too seldom surprised the initially pacifist movement. On countless demonstrations, innocent people were beaten up with truncheons, and afterwards these thrashed and abused demonstrators were sentenced.
The state itself turned out to be a violator, and this provoked the corresponding reactions. Among other things, anarchist movements came into being which spontaneously tried to use violence as a means of opposition. But the political immaturity and weakness of these forces prepared the ground for subversive actions of all kinds. The desperation of various young people was misused for the unscrupulous initiation of certain kinds of organizations which were meant to show the Left in a criminal light in public. These organisations themselves then became the object of extensive media campaigns which directly disparaged all revolutionary forces in the country.
Also the first presumable arson attack on a department store was already a sinister machination at which hundreds of people lost their lives. Until today the circumstances of the deed have remained in the dark. In the middle of May 1967, leaflets with agitative contents against the Vietnam War and against the USA were distributed in a Brussels department store. About a week later, on 22 May 1967, the department store in Brussels burnt down, the sad result being that 300 people died. The background to this matter has not been cleared up until today. At that time, some people immediately claimed to know who was the guilty one, and the name of a revolutionary organization was mentioned - this was taken back again later. Then they said the whole thing had been a tragic accident. At any rate, the incident was the starting point of repulsive actions hostile to the masses which triggered off a whole chain of atrocities. Part of the anarchists of the "Commune 1", which was also frequented by that Verfassungsschutz spy Peter Urbach, used this as an occasion to write macabre leaflets with which they allegedly intended to call upon people to resist the Vietnam War and in which they made ironic remarks about further arson attacks in department stores. Later this was translated into action in allegedly symbolic acts by these confused anarchists, even though they did not aim at the destruction of human life. This became the starting point of the illegal doings of the later "RAF".
From the very beginning, provocations, dirty deeds and arsonist actions directed against the population have played a part in this sort of terrorism. For us it is important to uncover the role of both the media and the legal authorities which portray these groups as operating independently. For those stories about independent anarchist groups which have to be fought for being the primary enemies of the state are fairy tales told by the state.
Now and then it happened in the past that the media blew these people up into a "real danger to the state" and exaggerated the whole matter in order to provoke the corresponding climate in the country. Some attacks were known to the press beforehand and it insinuated who was to be murdered and against which target the attack was to be directed; sometimes lists containing the names of future victims were published. When an attack had been committed it often took only a few hours, not more than a day, until pictures of the presumed perpetrators could be published. So these groups were well-known after all!
This type of terrorism also has a political thrust that is not so obvious but nevertheless easy to analyse if one takes a closer look at the acts committed. Reading the writings of the "terrorists" one reads some confused sentences and general vocabulary like "Schweine" ("pigs") which are there to be fought, and one cannot find any further political differentiation and analysis whatsoever. But if one recognizes how purposeful their deeds are one can very well detect a direction. We will briefly come back to this point again in the following.
It is a fact that apart from the contradictions that exist in Europe between the banks, the industrialists and the landowners on the one hand and the masses on the other hand there are also the contradictions to the forces which are dominating this continent from abroad and which are somehow co-governing these states by using numerous methods to exert their influence. If one takes a look at the actions during the 1980s, for example, the dominating thrust was to fight certain representatives such as acted against the influence of the hegemonistic powers - in the 1980s especially also that of the former Soviet Union - or at least interfered with it. Politically, the goals of this kind of terrorism are comparable to those of the "Greens" or diverse pseudo-leftist organizations, although these distance themselves from its methods.
The "RAF" came into being at a time when in the European countries forces had just arisen which mercilessly criticized both the bourgeoisie in their own country as well as the USA and the Soviet Union, and which also said that the development of the situation might lead to an escalation of violence, and which approved of violence as a fundamental means of defence for the oppressed and as a means of liberation. The "terrorist" groups, on the other hand, pursued tactics which in, as it were, blind acts of violence allegedly aimed at hitting single representatives. Moreover, they erased from their political thought the well-known criticism of the Soviet hegemony and Soviet revisionism which, as an accomplice of the USA, played a main part also in the oppression of the Third World.
The West German and West Berlin ML Movement, which strictly condemned
the SED and the CPSU for being revisionist or even fascist, endeavoured
to find a strategy taking into account the majority of the population and
with which the majority was able to identify. The clear, unambiguous delimitation
from the GDR and the Soviet Union, the clear verdict and fight against
every kind of exploitation proved to be very useful here. Political argumentation
had, in principle, regained access to the wide majority of the population,
under the political conditions of that time. There was a dissociation from
the elitism of a good many student leaders who considered the population
to be no more than a manipulated mass, and a return to the thought that
the majority itself was to be comprehended as the revolutionary subject.
Those aforementioned "terrorist" groups, however, pushed aside this knowledge
which at that time had already been existing for two years and was spreading
among tens of thousands of active leftists at the beginning of the 1970s.
As far as one of the best-known anarchist groups, namely the "Movement
2 June" is concerned, in connection with the long-lasting Schmuecker Trial
a good deal has been uncovered about its entanglements. After 16 years
of trial and following a joint initiative on the part of the defence lawyers,
the public prosecutors and the judges, the trial was brought to an end
more or less abruptly in order to prevent that even more about the role
of the Verfassungsschutz was revealed. The "Movement 2 June" is an organization
controlled by the darkest reaction. We already maintained this in public
in the mid-seventies and, at least from a certain part of what was brought
up in the Schmuecker Trial, it has also been confirmed as for the facts.
The Verfassungsschutz provided the murder weapon, removed it afterwards
and was probably directly involved in the deed itself. One of the chief
persons involved in the murder, the former pimp and contact man Volker
von Weingraber - his name is given in the official document of the Berlin
house of representatives - is given a splendid villa worth DM900.000 in
the Tuscany, together with a vineyard, as a reward for his dirty deeds
and since then has been living there unchecked for many years. Whenever
the "defenders of the constitution" had to give further evidence in front
of the investigating committee, their succinct remark, as we said, was:
I am not authorized to make a statement on that.
The model one is induced to make of these anarchist groups, in so far as it ensues from the present level of knowledge, appears roughly as follows:
These groups do by no means consist only of those persons who are often mentioned in public and appear on the search lists, but also of a much larger so-called "circle of sympathizers", a logistic substructure and similar things. But this substructure does not, by any means, provide the informers and helpers only but in a decisive way also the initiators. Against whom the murder will be directed, against whom the attack will be directed - these decisions are certainly also made in these circles. They therefore also have a decisive influence on the "public" terrorists. Judging by the knowledge gained up to now, it is exactly the aforementioned services or some from abroad (or the former STASI as well) which belong to these circles, too. Through this it becomes understandable why so much thorough knowledge exists about certain persons, knowledge which can sometimes be published in the papers years before the persons in question are arrested, and which sometimes also helps to explain why prominence can be given to individual personalities in some detail.
With the help of this fact it is also possible to explain the so-called search flaws. If, as in the case of the kidnapping of Hanns Martin Schleyer (Chairman of the German Employers‘ Federation - editor‘s note), let‘s say some local police actually succeeds in tracing the place of residence of the person searched for, this threatens to disturb the machinations and the steering of all these processes. Then the decisive information disappears somewhere within the "special commission". This happened, for instance, in the case of the Schleyer kidnapping during a longer stay of the kidnapped in Erftstadt-Liblar, one of the most striking instances of these so-called search flaws.
Once this system of steering has been understood things become comprehensible.
This campaign, which has constantly been repeated for twenty years, has served as a means to put pressure on the public and as a distraction from essential political questions. A special enemy, however, who was to be hit by this campaign has several times been our organization since we held an entirely different conception and attacked corruption in society, e.g. already in 1971 the spreading of drugs which was de facto tolerated and even supported by the state. We did not only publicly attack the rightists but also the accompliceship between leading influential West German politicians and the Soviet leadership. We attacked the foreign policy which called itself "detente" but in reality served to hold back and suppress all revolutionary forces in Eastern Europe, and which at certain points even gave the Soviet Union free rein with regard to China and other parts of the Third World.
There were further misleadings adding to the political ones. Again and again efforts were made to smuggle people from this particular milieu into the proximity of our organization in order to insinuate connections that did not exist, whether these people were smuggled into formerly inhabited flats, the vicinity of flats or houses, or other things. This has been repeating itself for years. It is therefore in the special interest of our organization to uncover the background to these things. They are part of an extensive work programme we already decided upon in 1990.
Already at the beginning of the seventies, this campaign was used to exert pressure on a large scale. Officially, these anarchists were said to be a serious "danger to the state", which on the other hand served the state as a justification for a variety of purposes: capturing data about the citizens, spying upon other organizations and defaming all revolutionary forces or whatever was considered to be such.
One must, in particular, also distinguish between what the media aimed at and what the individual actions themselves were directed towards. The media ran a campaign about alleged revolutionaries who "wanted the proletarian revolution", who were fighting for the classless society, who even supported "Marxism-Leninism" and further allusions which applied to totally different forces than those mentioned. Others were therefore the target of these campaigns They thus tried to hit others with these publications and to connect them with the things in question.
This campaign in the media was to hit those who were developing a revolutionary conception including an affirmation of modern industrial society, who appreciated the positive sides of society while at the same time taking an irreconcilable position towards the political system and its gradually progressing decay and degeneration.
The political thrust of these groups or of the actual directors behind the scenes was entirely different. It particularly aimed at hitting all those in the country who stood in the way of the hegemonistic powers, such as people from the spheres of industry and commerce as well as politics, and even representatives of the armaments industry and similar sectors who stood in the way of the monopolistic claims of the USA or - particularly between 1981-1986 - the former Soviet Union. This can be demonstrated by examining what happened in the eighties. In the seventies things were a bit more complicated yet essentially alike. Just have a look at the assassination targets of the eighties:
In order to prove the fact that the actions in question are political actions with the definite purpose to influence the policy of a particular country, you can also take a look at what is happenening abroad where due to a stronger intensification of the situation things have revealed their true colours even further, especially in Italy. The so-called "RAF" was in contact with the Italian "Red Brigades", a structurally similar group. Now in the case of the "Red Brigades" it has meanwhile emerged that they were in contact with the ultrarightist secret club "Lodge P 2" which was dealing with the Italian Right´s plans for a putsch and tried to influence public opinion, and which was the presumed originator of several cruel terrorist attacks. Some leading representives of the "P 2" have been punished for at least part of their deeds although, thanks to the generosity of the bourgeois justice, they got off scot-free as for their further deeds. Here ultrarightist circles in the country are joining up with American circles, and this connection again joins together with this form of terrorism. Is there any reason to believe that things are fundamentally different in Germany? The political constellation may be slightly different since the policy of detente plays a greater role here. In principal, however, things are the same. In all those twenty years, not a single charge has been brought against any representative of the authorities for aiding and abetting the attacks although numerous connections to the state apparatus must exist.
In reality, these force do whatever they like and stop at nothing, and after twenty years it´s time that the truth about these things is brought to light, and this can only be achieved through repeated treatment of these things. We are also going to do this in a detailed piece of work, especially since we have an urgent interest in these things ourselves. It must become public how these "terrorist" groups function, why it has functioned and why it has been going on for ever. This is also incidentally the only way to bring these things to an end. It is to be expected that considerable contradictions will arise in this country in future and that once again such deeds will be used to influence the political life in the country. No-one with a sense of reponsibility, let alone progressive forces, let alone revolutionary groups, can have any interest at all in the continuation of these machinations since it encourages nothing but arson and reactionary deeds against the population. Those in the authorities, in the leading classes, who conduct these things are stage-managing them in order to cover their own dirty deeds and to provide themselves with a pretext for nasty maltreatment and distortions of reality in the public.
Eventually you can´t help wondering for which purpose e.g. the most costly prisons were built if they are, on the one hand, meant to guarantee an extreme isolation of the prisoners from these groups, while on the other hand it must be admitted that many actions are being organized especially from within these prisons. Has this kind of isolation to do with the efforts that the affairs dealt with here shall not come to light?
We would finally like to add that this criticism does not apply to every
form of terrorism in the world. A state that violates the majority of its
own population or ethnic minorities, a system of exploitation that breaks
every law, leaving every form of morality behind, can and must under certain
circumstances be fought with individual terror. There have been enough
examples of that in history. But this must be impartable, it must be appropriate
and serve humane purposes - not reaction.
Hartmut Dicke
Written March/Beg. of April 1992
/ Printing April, 12th 1992
Lilienthalstr.22
1000 Berlin 61
Postscript: Half a day after the first printing of this leaflet
the sensational report was published on the "RAF´s" decision not
to carry out any further assassinations in future. Well, o.k.! Yet, that
does not by any means make superfluous the uncovering of the connections
of the "RAF" with the state, a connection which is all the more obvious
for all what has been happening in recent years.