Reveling in Terrorist Chic
Last week Germany announced that the Red Army Faction (RAF) terrorist, Brigitte Mohnhaupt, will be given a parole after completing her minimum required sentence of 24 years in prison. The families of the nine people that she was convicted of murdering are upset because she was sentenced to a maximum of five life terms, but she is being let go at the earliest possible time. Widespread criticism of this generous parole centers on the fact that Mohnhaupt is too proud to show remorse. Through her lawyer she justified her stance by saying, “I think it would be inappropriate to say now, ‘I regret my crimes’. It would come over as rather insulting to the families of the victims.” However, the widow of one of her victims, Hanns-Martin Schleyer, publicly criticized Mohnhaupt for remaining silent on this issue. She stated, “We have not heard a single word of apology from her. She remains unrepentant.”
Lying shouldn’t prevent a criminal from being paroled, but a lack of remorse is a key indicator that such a criminal could be prone to commit more crimes. The last time Mohnhaupt was released from prison she immediately went underground. Less than six months later a banker, Jurgen Ponto, came to his door to find a smiling couple that was there waiting for him with flowers. When he turned to get a vase Brigitte Mohnhaupt and fellow terrorist Christian Klar killed him in a hail of bullets.
It is unsurprising that leftwing activists have been clamoring for the early release of this cold blooded murderer. During the entire existence of the Red Army Faction, the members of the terrorist organization have received much more sympathy from the Left than what was given to their victims (I will address this point later). Antje Vollmer, a prominent member of the German Parliament, justified Mohnhaupt’s parole by stating, “Both (Mohnhaupt and Klar) have been in jail longer than any person who committed Nazi crimes”.
This questionable statement ignores the fact that a substantial number of Nazis were executed for their crimes. Its not as if Mohnhaupt was treated worse than hanged Nazi war criminals like Wilhelm Keitel or Joachim von Ribbentrop (Keitel suffered from a terribly botched hanging which took 27 minutes to strangle him).
Besides, I don’t know how Vollmer could overlook the extremely long incarceration of Rudolph Hess, who was imprisoned for 46 years until he committed suicide at the age of 93.
Such a silly argument should not be unexpected from a politician who is most well known for her accusation that the U.S. Catholic pedophilia scandal from a couple of years ago was really a plot to undermine former Pope John Paul II. This was alleged to be in retaliation for the Polish Pope’s opposition to the liberation of Iraq. She also claimed that the plot was further advanced by giving Poland a prominent role in occupation of Iraq. It’s amazing that rabid activists can directly associate everything from a pedophile scandal to the Katrina hurricane and pin them to the conduct of the Iraq war. While these leftists struggle to connect wildly unrelated circumstances to their pet conspiracies, they simultaneously make as many excuses as possible for unrepentant leftwing and Islamist criminals.
It is particularly disturbing that Vollmer is not just some isolated basket case, but a very prominent German politician who has served as the vice-president of the country’s parliament. This indicates how mainstream extremist ideologies have become over the last 30 years.
My disgust with the widespread sympathy shown for the RAF has led me to name this post in honor of Ingeborg Barz. She is a former member of the Red Army Faction that disappeared shortly after calling her mother to say she was quitting the terrorist group and wanted to come back home. While it will probably never be conclusively proven that Barz was killed by the gang, the murder is widely believed to have occurred. The unwillingness of most RAF members to come clean about their crimes has prevented the truth from being fully disclosed. Thanks to them her family may never recover her body and obtain any sense of closure. The lack of remorse by former RAF terrorists is echoed in their ominous silence about her fate.
When executing missions the RAF liked to name terrorist units after members of the group that were killed, incarcerated or committed suicide.
On April 24th, 1975 the RAF seized the West German embassy in Stockholm, mined it with TNT and held the staff hostage. When the RAF demands were not met, they announced that they would kill a hostage every hour until West Germany capitulated. Dr. Heinz Hillegard was forced to stand in front of a window and was shot. His lifeless body was callously left to hang from the window. All told, there were two innocents and two terrorists killed (one died about two weeks later from his injuries). Most of those in the embassy (including the terrorists) suffered bad burn wounds when the explosives were accidentally set off due to the incompetence of the bomb makers.
The Siegfried Hausner Commando was named to honor a gang member that was killed in the embassy attack. This “retaliatory” mission resulted in the kidnapping of businessman, Hanns-Martin Schleyer. In the process of committing this crime three police officers were killed along with Schleyer’s chauffeur. After a number of setbacks for the RAF, Schleyer’s body was discovered in the trunk of an Audi. He had been shot three times in the head. The terrorist group boasted, “His death is of no significance in our pain and rage at the slaughter of Mogadishu and Stammheim.” The reference to Mogadishu relates to a failed hijacking of a West German plane that Palestinian terrorists planned to exchange for imprisoned Red Army leaders. One hostage was executed before West German commandos stormed the plane killing three of the terrorists and wounding one other. All of the remaining passengers survived and the commandos came home to a hero’s welcome. Stammheim was the prison where the RAF leadership committed suicide because of their lost chance for freedom that resulted from the failure of the Moghdishu hijackers.
By naming their operations after terrorists that met their downfall, the RAF attempted to promote the same propaganda that most terrorist groups strive to disseminate even today. “Martyrs” are created to perpetuate a myth of invulnerability and to cultivate sympathy for their cause. The objective is to cower their victims into believing that such terrorist organizations cannot be stopped because when their members are killed or captured, their comrades will only be inspired to retaliate with even more acts of violence. Ideally this will create the impression of an unbreakable circle of violence that will render its victims too demoralized to fight back against such suicidal maniacs.
Now that the RAF has been defeated for over a decade, we can look back to see how leftwing sympathizers assisted these terrorists to spread their message.
On July 15th, 1971 Petra Schelm became the RAF’s first “martyr”. She was a very young and beautiful woman who was caught in a stolen BMW. As she and her accomplice fled from the car they opened fire on the police who were pursuing them. This led to a running shoot out in which Schelm was killed. The public was so horrified at the death of the young terrorist that a national poll taken shortly after the shooting determined that as much as 20% of the Germans interviewed felt some sympathy for the Red Army.
While pictures of the wholesome looking girl even elicited some of my own sympathy, the ugly truth is that she was caught in the act of committing a crime and tried to murder the police officers attempting to stop her. Schelm was a ticking time bomb who received several months of military training in a PLO terrorist camp. She was very eager to put that training to use.
Police officers often don’t get much respect for the risks that they place on their life because many people take it for granted that it is a part of their job. On the other hand, terrorism was Petra Schelm’s “job” and over the years the RAF went on to kill many police officers who were only performing their duty to protect the public. She doesn’t deserve much sympathy for anything other than the fact that she made too many bad choices in her short life. Her actions were decided by her own free will.
Schelm’s death forged a template for the justification of the Red Army’s violence. In May of 1972 the RAF claimed responsibility for a terrorist bombing on a US army base in Frankfurt. The statement was signed by the “Petra Schelm Commando”. One person was killed and thirteen were wounded. West Germany would be gripped by fear for two decades.
Despite a ruthless campaign of bombings, bank robberies, kidnappings and murders the RAF continued to command sympathy from Europe’s students and leftwing activists.
When the high profile terrorist, Ulrike Meinhof, committed suicide in her prison cell – fellow RAF member, Jan-Carl Raspe, used a courtroom as his soapbox to say, “We believe that Ulrike was executed”. This lie spread like wild fire and massive demonstrations were held throughout West Germany to protest Meinhof’s alleged “execution”. Bombs were set off in Nice, Paris and once again at the American air base in Frankfurt.
There never was any proof that Meinhof was murdered. Red Army propaganda was accepted without question by the thousands of mourners and activists who showed up at her funeral. This was despite the fact that two post-mortem examinations were held and both ruled that all the evidence was consistent with a suicide by strangulation. The second examination was requested by the Meinhof family and the RAF defense team. Medical examiner Dr. Werner Janssen concluded, “To judge by the usable findings of the second post-mortem, Frau Meinhof suffered death by hanging. The findings of the examination so far available give no grounds for suspecting any extraneous factors.” In addition to her imprisonment and alienation from her fellow terrorists, Meinhof was distraught because she had given up her two precious daughters to join the RAF. Facing the possibility of life in prison, she killed herself on Mother’s Day.
After the suicides of the remaining RAF leadership, the Left went berserk. Of course they claimed that the government killed the terrorists again. This pretext was used to justify even more “commando” missions. According to Time Magazine things got a little crazy in the aftermath of these suicides.
“The terrorists presumably hoped that in death they would become instant martyrs for their radical cause. Outside Germany, news of their suicides sparked scattered but ugly protests. In the Italian cities of Turin, Bologna and Leghorn, bombs were tossed into showrooms displaying German cars. Two unoccupied German tourist buses were set aflame in Paris. In Rome, police used tear gas to disburse some 800 youths, armed with Molotov cocktails, who were marching toward the German embassy and the Lufthansa ticket office. Leftists also demonstrated in Athens and Vienna; in London, protesters chanted Murder! Murder! outside the German embassy.”
Throughout the RAF terror campaign of over twenty years there were many public demonstrations held in support of the gang. Yet these leftwing activists showed little public support for the victims of the RAF. All of the Journalists, chauffeurs, librarians, bank tellers, diplomats, businessmen, policemen, attorneys, judges and their families who suffered from Red Army terrorism didn’t warrant as much sympathy as their tormentors did. Meanwhile government buildings were surrounded by barbwire and sandbagged gun emplacements. West Germany was living in a state of fear that was not created by the government, it was the offspring of the RAF.
The Birth of Terrorist Chic
That fear is now just a faded memory and Germans are starting to look back at the Red Army Faction with nostalgia. Two years ago an art exhibit at the KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin featured the RAF as its theme. The families of RAF victims created such an uproar that it delayed the opening of the show for over a year. An application for substantial federal funds was abandoned due to these protests so the organizers held an eBay auction to raise capital.
When the exhibit finally opened there was a panel discussion that caught my eye. It was called, “Political Modernity in Germany – Susceptible to the Lure of Totalitarianism?”
“Has the lure of totalitarianism been present throughout the era of political modernity in Germany? Social scientists have repeatedly pointed out the existence of a connection between the society and culture of modernity on the one hand and the formation of a specific type of ‘bourgeois coldness’ (Adorno) on the other.”
The guiding doctrine of the Red Army Faction was based on such a scenario. Theodor Adorno was a Marxist philosopher whose theories helped to give birth to the radical student movement that the RAF sprang from. However, Adorno condemned his Frankenstein creation and became ridiculed by his students. In reality many of the exhibitors and staff at the KW Institute strove to revive the Marxist ideals that motivated the RAF and used the notoriety of the terrorist group to generate publicity at the expense of the victims’ families.
The exhibition scored a rather questionable victory by securing the services of Felix Ensslin as a curator. He was the abandoned son of Red Army terrorist leader, Gudrun Ensslin, who jumped on the opportunity to cash in on his mother’s name. SF Gate related that Ensslin believes that the media’s coverage of the RAF was somehow wrong. He said, “The art on view allows viewers to think about the painful events of the past with something of a sense of distance from the mass-media ‘reality’ that has shaped the public’s understanding of the RAF years.” What exactly did the media get wrong about the serial murdering terrorist group?
Bruce LaBruce, a columnist at Eye Weekly, gave us some insight about the true motives of the exhibition when he related the following;
“I suppose the reason I’m waxing nostalgic about terrorist organizations is that I’m here in Germany working on a project that revolves around the Baader-Meinhof, aka the Red Army Faction, the extreme left-wing terrorist group from ‘70s Germany. Considering the resurgence of anti-American sentiment here as a reaction against the new imperialist policies of the Bush administration, it’s not surprising that art and culture have picked up on the subject of the RAF. In fact, my friend Klaus Biesenbach, the director of Kunst-Werke, the Berlin Institute of Contemporary Art, is curating with his colleagues an exhibition of work related to the RAF in November, to which I will be contributing. To this end, Klaus recently arranged a dinner at which I was seated beside Felix Ensslin, the son of Gudrun Ensslin, one of the four main members of the RAF who committed suicide in prison (some still claim they were murdered by the authorities) in 1977. As Felix is also involved in curating the exhibition, it was my delicate task to explain my project to him, a quasi-porn movie that features a woman who names and patterns herself after Gudrun Ensslin and forces her male acolytes to have sex with each other in order to free themselves from the shackles of heterosexual bourgeois normalcy.
This isn’t as far-fetched as it sounds: radical post-Freudian psychoanalytic thinkers such as Reich and Marcuse likely would have supported such a notion. Felix, who is well versed in revolutionary theory and who has stayed true to his mother’s leftist ideals by working for the Green Party in German parliament, was charmed by the idea, much to my relief.”
There really isn’t much room for doubt in LaBruce’s statement.
On the subject of Green Party politicians; Antje Vollmer, who passionately supported Mohnhaupt’s release from prison, recently became a member of the Board of Directors for the KW Institute. Such unsavory characters tend to gravitate towards one another and love nothing more than to be funded by taxpayers (if possible). Wunderbar!
…And then there is Astrid Proll. She is a former RAF terrorist who freely admits to be profiting from her sordid past. In an interview in the British newspaper The Observer she stated, “I earn my money from the RAF, so why not keep it up?” Now … I recognize that everyone is in one way or another a hypocrite because the vast complexities of life do not allow us to maintain complete consistency to our ideals, but this woman is a real piece of work.
After serving a lenient prison sentence Proll edited a book of photographs about the RAF called “Baader-Meinhof: Pictures on the Run 67 – 77”. Only a few of the photos in the book highlight the brutality of the gang and most portray the RAF in a sympathetic light (especially as victims). To advance her “career” Proll makes appearances to speak about the RAF and was even invited to the exhibition at the KW Institute. Yet she addressed her popularity among modern day radicals in this light, “I haven’t put it behind me, it will keep coming up - but it’s not me who finds it difficult to forget, its other people.” …Nothing is ever Proll’s fault. The government was to blame for overreacting to RAF terrorism and her fans made her cash in on her notoriety. Only an indulgent culture of leftwing radicalism could cushion her so that she doesn’t have to fully apologize for her past and her exploitation of it.
I also find it unsettling that Proll used her ill-gotten popularity to somehow forge links with the German Green Party. She has at least enough influence to give Felix Ensslin a job with them. He sought her out to learn more about his mother, the terrorist who abandoned him as a child. Proll has befriended other children of RAF terrorists as well and has spread the message of the group to another generation.
To further illustrate how she has become a cause celebre for terrorist sympathizers, there is even a popular Puerto Rican band that named themselves “Astrid Proll” in her honor. I’ll let them describe their feelings about the Red Army.
“The band takes its name from one of the survivors of the Red Army Faction, also known as the Baader-Meinhof gang, a German student protest movement of the 1970’s that declared war on a fascist government with ex-Nazi Party members in Parliament. This movement took radical action against social conformity and state-sponsored oppression. Astrid Proll, the band, shares that revolutionary ideal regarding individual action, channeled through music and multimedia art.”
Although the RAF was inspired by the student movement, most of them were not students. Besides not even knowing the history of the terrorist group that they revere, I am appalled by their reference to “radical action”. Do they honestly believe that kidnapping, murder, bank robbery and terrorist bombings are radical actions that they should glorify?
Such terrorist chic is exemplified by the exploitation fashion trend, “Prada-Meinhof”. It is mainly a European phenomenon. Shirts glorifying the RAF began to appear all over the continent, much like Che Guevara shirts have done worldwide over the last decade. Two events spurred this wave of nostalgia. October of 1997 marked the 20th anniversary of the “German Autumn”, which was the peak of RAF notoriety, –and– the 1998 announcement of the formal dissolution of the terrorist group. This meant that Revisionists could now remake the image of the terrorist group with much less opposition.
UrbanDictionary.com has seen fit to include the term in its online slang dictionary.
1. Prada Meinhof
Descriptive of those participating in political causes or campaigns who see marches or demonstrations as an alternative fashion show with themself as the main model.
Example: I see one of those globalization campaigners is wearing Jimmy Choo shoes. How very Prada Meinhof.
These days the art scene consists of nothing but intellectually lazy, upper middle class, parasitic Marxist “artisans” seeking to redistribute the wealth that is produced by the working class so they can get a piece of it.
Last week Germany announced that the Red Army Faction (RAF) terrorist, Brigitte Mohnhaupt, will be given a parole after completing her minimum required sentence of 24 years in prison. The families of the nine people that she was convicted of murdering are upset because she was sentenced to a maximum of five life terms, but she is being let go at the earliest possible time. Widespread criticism of this generous parole centers on the fact that Mohnhaupt is too proud to show remorse. Through her lawyer she justified her stance by saying, “I think it would be inappropriate to say now, ‘I regret my crimes’. It would come over as rather insulting to the families of the victims.” However, the widow of one of her victims, Hanns-Martin Schleyer, publicly criticized Mohnhaupt for remaining silent on this issue. She stated, “We have not heard a single word of apology from her. She remains unrepentant.”
Lying shouldn’t prevent a criminal from being paroled, but a lack of remorse is a key indicator that such a criminal could be prone to commit more crimes. The last time Mohnhaupt was released from prison she immediately went underground. Less than six months later a banker, Jurgen Ponto, came to his door to find a smiling couple that was there waiting for him with flowers. When he turned to get a vase Brigitte Mohnhaupt and fellow terrorist Christian Klar killed him in a hail of bullets.
It is unsurprising that leftwing activists have been clamoring for the early release of this cold blooded murderer. During the entire existence of the Red Army Faction, the members of the terrorist organization have received much more sympathy from the Left than what was given to their victims (I will address this point later). Antje Vollmer, a prominent member of the German Parliament, justified Mohnhaupt’s parole by stating, “Both (Mohnhaupt and Klar) have been in jail longer than any person who committed Nazi crimes”.
This questionable statement ignores the fact that a substantial number of Nazis were executed for their crimes. Its not as if Mohnhaupt was treated worse than hanged Nazi war criminals like Wilhelm Keitel or Joachim von Ribbentrop (Keitel suffered from a terribly botched hanging which took 27 minutes to strangle him).
Besides, I don’t know how Vollmer could overlook the extremely long incarceration of Rudolph Hess, who was imprisoned for 46 years until he committed suicide at the age of 93.
Such a silly argument should not be unexpected from a politician who is most well known for her accusation that the U.S. Catholic pedophilia scandal from a couple of years ago was really a plot to undermine former Pope John Paul II. This was alleged to be in retaliation for the Polish Pope’s opposition to the liberation of Iraq. She also claimed that the plot was further advanced by giving Poland a prominent role in occupation of Iraq. It’s amazing that rabid activists can directly associate everything from a pedophile scandal to the Katrina hurricane and pin them to the conduct of the Iraq war. While these leftists struggle to connect wildly unrelated circumstances to their pet conspiracies, they simultaneously make as many excuses as possible for unrepentant leftwing and Islamist criminals.
It is particularly disturbing that Vollmer is not just some isolated basket case, but a very prominent German politician who has served as the vice-president of the country’s parliament. This indicates how mainstream extremist ideologies have become over the last 30 years.
My disgust with the widespread sympathy shown for the RAF has led me to name this post in honor of Ingeborg Barz. She is a former member of the Red Army Faction that disappeared shortly after calling her mother to say she was quitting the terrorist group and wanted to come back home. While it will probably never be conclusively proven that Barz was killed by the gang, the murder is widely believed to have occurred. The unwillingness of most RAF members to come clean about their crimes has prevented the truth from being fully disclosed. Thanks to them her family may never recover her body and obtain any sense of closure. The lack of remorse by former RAF terrorists is echoed in their ominous silence about her fate.
When executing missions the RAF liked to name terrorist units after members of the group that were killed, incarcerated or committed suicide.
On April 24th, 1975 the RAF seized the West German embassy in Stockholm, mined it with TNT and held the staff hostage. When the RAF demands were not met, they announced that they would kill a hostage every hour until West Germany capitulated. Dr. Heinz Hillegard was forced to stand in front of a window and was shot. His lifeless body was callously left to hang from the window. All told, there were two innocents and two terrorists killed (one died about two weeks later from his injuries). Most of those in the embassy (including the terrorists) suffered bad burn wounds when the explosives were accidentally set off due to the incompetence of the bomb makers.
The Siegfried Hausner Commando was named to honor a gang member that was killed in the embassy attack. This “retaliatory” mission resulted in the kidnapping of businessman, Hanns-Martin Schleyer. In the process of committing this crime three police officers were killed along with Schleyer’s chauffeur. After a number of setbacks for the RAF, Schleyer’s body was discovered in the trunk of an Audi. He had been shot three times in the head. The terrorist group boasted, “His death is of no significance in our pain and rage at the slaughter of Mogadishu and Stammheim.” The reference to Mogadishu relates to a failed hijacking of a West German plane that Palestinian terrorists planned to exchange for imprisoned Red Army leaders. One hostage was executed before West German commandos stormed the plane killing three of the terrorists and wounding one other. All of the remaining passengers survived and the commandos came home to a hero’s welcome. Stammheim was the prison where the RAF leadership committed suicide because of their lost chance for freedom that resulted from the failure of the Moghdishu hijackers.
By naming their operations after terrorists that met their downfall, the RAF attempted to promote the same propaganda that most terrorist groups strive to disseminate even today. “Martyrs” are created to perpetuate a myth of invulnerability and to cultivate sympathy for their cause. The objective is to cower their victims into believing that such terrorist organizations cannot be stopped because when their members are killed or captured, their comrades will only be inspired to retaliate with even more acts of violence. Ideally this will create the impression of an unbreakable circle of violence that will render its victims too demoralized to fight back against such suicidal maniacs.
Now that the RAF has been defeated for over a decade, we can look back to see how leftwing sympathizers assisted these terrorists to spread their message.
On July 15th, 1971 Petra Schelm became the RAF’s first “martyr”. She was a very young and beautiful woman who was caught in a stolen BMW. As she and her accomplice fled from the car they opened fire on the police who were pursuing them. This led to a running shoot out in which Schelm was killed. The public was so horrified at the death of the young terrorist that a national poll taken shortly after the shooting determined that as much as 20% of the Germans interviewed felt some sympathy for the Red Army.
While pictures of the wholesome looking girl even elicited some of my own sympathy, the ugly truth is that she was caught in the act of committing a crime and tried to murder the police officers attempting to stop her. Schelm was a ticking time bomb who received several months of military training in a PLO terrorist camp. She was very eager to put that training to use.
Police officers often don’t get much respect for the risks that they place on their life because many people take it for granted that it is a part of their job. On the other hand, terrorism was Petra Schelm’s “job” and over the years the RAF went on to kill many police officers who were only performing their duty to protect the public. She doesn’t deserve much sympathy for anything other than the fact that she made too many bad choices in her short life. Her actions were decided by her own free will.
Schelm’s death forged a template for the justification of the Red Army’s violence. In May of 1972 the RAF claimed responsibility for a terrorist bombing on a US army base in Frankfurt. The statement was signed by the “Petra Schelm Commando”. One person was killed and thirteen were wounded. West Germany would be gripped by fear for two decades.
Despite a ruthless campaign of bombings, bank robberies, kidnappings and murders the RAF continued to command sympathy from Europe’s students and leftwing activists.
When the high profile terrorist, Ulrike Meinhof, committed suicide in her prison cell – fellow RAF member, Jan-Carl Raspe, used a courtroom as his soapbox to say, “We believe that Ulrike was executed”. This lie spread like wild fire and massive demonstrations were held throughout West Germany to protest Meinhof’s alleged “execution”. Bombs were set off in Nice, Paris and once again at the American air base in Frankfurt.
There never was any proof that Meinhof was murdered. Red Army propaganda was accepted without question by the thousands of mourners and activists who showed up at her funeral. This was despite the fact that two post-mortem examinations were held and both ruled that all the evidence was consistent with a suicide by strangulation. The second examination was requested by the Meinhof family and the RAF defense team. Medical examiner Dr. Werner Janssen concluded, “To judge by the usable findings of the second post-mortem, Frau Meinhof suffered death by hanging. The findings of the examination so far available give no grounds for suspecting any extraneous factors.” In addition to her imprisonment and alienation from her fellow terrorists, Meinhof was distraught because she had given up her two precious daughters to join the RAF. Facing the possibility of life in prison, she killed herself on Mother’s Day.
After the suicides of the remaining RAF leadership, the Left went berserk. Of course they claimed that the government killed the terrorists again. This pretext was used to justify even more “commando” missions. According to Time Magazine things got a little crazy in the aftermath of these suicides.
“The terrorists presumably hoped that in death they would become instant martyrs for their radical cause. Outside Germany, news of their suicides sparked scattered but ugly protests. In the Italian cities of Turin, Bologna and Leghorn, bombs were tossed into showrooms displaying German cars. Two unoccupied German tourist buses were set aflame in Paris. In Rome, police used tear gas to disburse some 800 youths, armed with Molotov cocktails, who were marching toward the German embassy and the Lufthansa ticket office. Leftists also demonstrated in Athens and Vienna; in London, protesters chanted Murder! Murder! outside the German embassy.”
Throughout the RAF terror campaign of over twenty years there were many public demonstrations held in support of the gang. Yet these leftwing activists showed little public support for the victims of the RAF. All of the Journalists, chauffeurs, librarians, bank tellers, diplomats, businessmen, policemen, attorneys, judges and their families who suffered from Red Army terrorism didn’t warrant as much sympathy as their tormentors did. Meanwhile government buildings were surrounded by barbwire and sandbagged gun emplacements. West Germany was living in a state of fear that was not created by the government, it was the offspring of the RAF.
The Birth of Terrorist Chic
That fear is now just a faded memory and Germans are starting to look back at the Red Army Faction with nostalgia. Two years ago an art exhibit at the KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin featured the RAF as its theme. The families of RAF victims created such an uproar that it delayed the opening of the show for over a year. An application for substantial federal funds was abandoned due to these protests so the organizers held an eBay auction to raise capital.
When the exhibit finally opened there was a panel discussion that caught my eye. It was called, “Political Modernity in Germany – Susceptible to the Lure of Totalitarianism?”
“Has the lure of totalitarianism been present throughout the era of political modernity in Germany? Social scientists have repeatedly pointed out the existence of a connection between the society and culture of modernity on the one hand and the formation of a specific type of ‘bourgeois coldness’ (Adorno) on the other.”
The guiding doctrine of the Red Army Faction was based on such a scenario. Theodor Adorno was a Marxist philosopher whose theories helped to give birth to the radical student movement that the RAF sprang from. However, Adorno condemned his Frankenstein creation and became ridiculed by his students. In reality many of the exhibitors and staff at the KW Institute strove to revive the Marxist ideals that motivated the RAF and used the notoriety of the terrorist group to generate publicity at the expense of the victims’ families.
The exhibition scored a rather questionable victory by securing the services of Felix Ensslin as a curator. He was the abandoned son of Red Army terrorist leader, Gudrun Ensslin, who jumped on the opportunity to cash in on his mother’s name. SF Gate related that Ensslin believes that the media’s coverage of the RAF was somehow wrong. He said, “The art on view allows viewers to think about the painful events of the past with something of a sense of distance from the mass-media ‘reality’ that has shaped the public’s understanding of the RAF years.” What exactly did the media get wrong about the serial murdering terrorist group?
Bruce LaBruce, a columnist at Eye Weekly, gave us some insight about the true motives of the exhibition when he related the following;
“I suppose the reason I’m waxing nostalgic about terrorist organizations is that I’m here in Germany working on a project that revolves around the Baader-Meinhof, aka the Red Army Faction, the extreme left-wing terrorist group from ‘70s Germany. Considering the resurgence of anti-American sentiment here as a reaction against the new imperialist policies of the Bush administration, it’s not surprising that art and culture have picked up on the subject of the RAF. In fact, my friend Klaus Biesenbach, the director of Kunst-Werke, the Berlin Institute of Contemporary Art, is curating with his colleagues an exhibition of work related to the RAF in November, to which I will be contributing. To this end, Klaus recently arranged a dinner at which I was seated beside Felix Ensslin, the son of Gudrun Ensslin, one of the four main members of the RAF who committed suicide in prison (some still claim they were murdered by the authorities) in 1977. As Felix is also involved in curating the exhibition, it was my delicate task to explain my project to him, a quasi-porn movie that features a woman who names and patterns herself after Gudrun Ensslin and forces her male acolytes to have sex with each other in order to free themselves from the shackles of heterosexual bourgeois normalcy.
This isn’t as far-fetched as it sounds: radical post-Freudian psychoanalytic thinkers such as Reich and Marcuse likely would have supported such a notion. Felix, who is well versed in revolutionary theory and who has stayed true to his mother’s leftist ideals by working for the Green Party in German parliament, was charmed by the idea, much to my relief.”
There really isn’t much room for doubt in LaBruce’s statement.
On the subject of Green Party politicians; Antje Vollmer, who passionately supported Mohnhaupt’s release from prison, recently became a member of the Board of Directors for the KW Institute. Such unsavory characters tend to gravitate towards one another and love nothing more than to be funded by taxpayers (if possible). Wunderbar!
…And then there is Astrid Proll. She is a former RAF terrorist who freely admits to be profiting from her sordid past. In an interview in the British newspaper The Observer she stated, “I earn my money from the RAF, so why not keep it up?” Now … I recognize that everyone is in one way or another a hypocrite because the vast complexities of life do not allow us to maintain complete consistency to our ideals, but this woman is a real piece of work.
After serving a lenient prison sentence Proll edited a book of photographs about the RAF called “Baader-Meinhof: Pictures on the Run 67 – 77”. Only a few of the photos in the book highlight the brutality of the gang and most portray the RAF in a sympathetic light (especially as victims). To advance her “career” Proll makes appearances to speak about the RAF and was even invited to the exhibition at the KW Institute. Yet she addressed her popularity among modern day radicals in this light, “I haven’t put it behind me, it will keep coming up - but it’s not me who finds it difficult to forget, its other people.” …Nothing is ever Proll’s fault. The government was to blame for overreacting to RAF terrorism and her fans made her cash in on her notoriety. Only an indulgent culture of leftwing radicalism could cushion her so that she doesn’t have to fully apologize for her past and her exploitation of it.
I also find it unsettling that Proll used her ill-gotten popularity to somehow forge links with the German Green Party. She has at least enough influence to give Felix Ensslin a job with them. He sought her out to learn more about his mother, the terrorist who abandoned him as a child. Proll has befriended other children of RAF terrorists as well and has spread the message of the group to another generation.
To further illustrate how she has become a cause celebre for terrorist sympathizers, there is even a popular Puerto Rican band that named themselves “Astrid Proll” in her honor. I’ll let them describe their feelings about the Red Army.
“The band takes its name from one of the survivors of the Red Army Faction, also known as the Baader-Meinhof gang, a German student protest movement of the 1970’s that declared war on a fascist government with ex-Nazi Party members in Parliament. This movement took radical action against social conformity and state-sponsored oppression. Astrid Proll, the band, shares that revolutionary ideal regarding individual action, channeled through music and multimedia art.”
Although the RAF was inspired by the student movement, most of them were not students. Besides not even knowing the history of the terrorist group that they revere, I am appalled by their reference to “radical action”. Do they honestly believe that kidnapping, murder, bank robbery and terrorist bombings are radical actions that they should glorify?
Such terrorist chic is exemplified by the exploitation fashion trend, “Prada-Meinhof”. It is mainly a European phenomenon. Shirts glorifying the RAF began to appear all over the continent, much like Che Guevara shirts have done worldwide over the last decade. Two events spurred this wave of nostalgia. October of 1997 marked the 20th anniversary of the “German Autumn”, which was the peak of RAF notoriety, –and– the 1998 announcement of the formal dissolution of the terrorist group. This meant that Revisionists could now remake the image of the terrorist group with much less opposition.
UrbanDictionary.com has seen fit to include the term in its online slang dictionary.
1. Prada Meinhof
Descriptive of those participating in political causes or campaigns who see marches or demonstrations as an alternative fashion show with themself as the main model.
Example: I see one of those globalization campaigners is wearing Jimmy Choo shoes. How very Prada Meinhof.
These days the art scene consists of nothing but intellectually lazy, upper middle class, parasitic Marxist “artisans” seeking to redistribute the wealth that is produced by the working class so they can get a piece of it.
If you’re a blogger please name your next post;
The Dr. Heinz Hillegard Commando
– or –
The Jurgen Ponto Commando.
Show sympathy to someone who really deserves it.
38 comments:
OK, I'm exhausted. Picture(s) will come later this week...
I'm sure you're exhausted. Extensively researched and well-written.
A couple of things I wanted to mention.
1. Even in societies that have abolished capital punishment, five life terms should at the very least mean no parole, no early release. How can it be justified that after 24 years a non-repentant murderer is released after the deaths of nine people? Failure to even say that she regrets her actions should be grounds enough to keep her imprisoned.
2. Most of the first-generation Red Army Faction were born in the period just before World War II or soon after..reaching maturity in the late sixties/early seventies. There must have been tremendous support from the Soviet Union and public unrest in post war Germany. I wonder if a stronger US presence immediately after the war could have stopped this movement in its beginnings or would it have made it worse?
3. This was a substantial movement. There were at least three generations of RAF membership. When one leader died, another assumed their position. This is reminiscent of the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoots. I don't think this would have happened without Soviet support.
4. Like Islamic Jihadist, there is a lot of support from those on the left. Sympathies lie more with those committing terrorist acts than with the victims, even the police.
Propaganda superseds truth.
Suspicion outweighs substance.
I wonder with the increase of Islamic terrorism, maybe Germany might want to re-examine these sympathies.
I tried to find some pictures of Petra Schelm but all I can find was the same one. Shooting at police officers doing their job should not qualify for martyrdom.
Hiya Freedom...brilliant post truly............., but a lack of remorse is a key indicator that such a criminal could be prone to commit more crimes. ..even if they seem to show remorse..--some crimes should never be forgiven and some should never be allowed to live amongst free men again!!!
Thanks Oh Honorable One.
AC,
1. Its Germany, nothing makes sense when it comes to the rule of law in that country.
2. The KGB heavily invested in Islamic terrorism in the 70s. They frequently used their Eastern European puppets to do their dirty work. This was also the case with the RAF. Unrest in Germany didnt occur until the late 60s after the fear of Communism died down a bit. The Soviet Union literally raped East Germany and pro-Western sympathy was guaranteed until the German people had time to take the West for granted.
3. There were direct connections to the East Germans, but the Soviets were too smart not to use proxies.
4. You would think so. Time will tell…
There aren’t many pictures of Schelm out there, but this is what I have:
Petra Schelm Pic 1
Petra Schelm 2 (Before and After leftwing propaganda poster)
Prison is cruel enough as it is.
We should pay them lots of cash for speaking engagements and buy their books instead.
Wait a minute... we already do that.
OK you convinced me, they should have been put to sleep instead.
Those are the same pictures I found. I guess that if there were more...we would be seeing them on T-shirts.
Nice well written novel there FN. None of this really amazes me since leftists will always believe (even to the grave) that an evil criminal can be rehabilitated. So the no remorse part of this killer doesn't surprise me.
All you have to do is "express" your solidarity with the poor and opposition to imperialism. That guarantees you a blanket of immunity from remorse and you can also earn the tacit support of the Left.
This applies no matter how many human rights you abuse.
Its a fantastic deal. I'll even throw in a Che coffee mug at no extra charge.
Bottoms Up!!!!!!!!!!!
Nietzsche, "Genealogy of Morals"
14
Of course, this list is not complete. Obviously punishment is overloaded with all sorts of useful purposes—all the more reason why people infer from it an alleged utility, which in the popular consciousness at least is considered the most essential one. Faith in punishment, which nowadays for several reasons is getting very shaky, always finds its most powerful support in precisely this: Punishment is supposed to be valuable in waking a feeling of guilt in the guilty party. In punishment people are looking for the actual instrument for that psychic reaction called "bad conscience" and "pangs of conscience." In doing this, people still apply reality and psychology incorrectly to present issues—and how much more incorrectly to the greater part of man's history, his prehistory!
Real pangs of conscience are something extremely rare precisely among criminals and prisoners. Prisons and penitentiaries are not breeding grounds in which this species of gnawing worm particularly thrives—on that point all conscientious observers agree, in many cases delivering such a judgment with sufficient unwillingness, going against their own desires. In general, punishment makes people hard and cold. It concentrates. It sharpens the feeling of estrangement and strengthens powers of resistance. If it comes about that punishment shatters a man's energy and brings on a wretched prostration and self-abasement, such a consequence is surely even less pleasant than the ordinary results of punishment—characteristically a dry and gloomy seriousness.
However, if we consider the millennia before the history of humanity, without a second thought we can conclude that the very development of a feeling of guilt was most powerfully hindered by punishment, at least with respect to the victims onto whom this force of punishment was vented. For let us not underestimate just how much the criminal is prevented by the sight of judicial and executive processes from sensing the nature of his action as something reprehensible in itself, for he sees exactly the same kind of actions undertaken in the service of justice, applauded and practised in good conscience, like espionage, lying, bribery, entrapment, the whole tricky and sly art of the police and prosecution, as it develops in the various kinds of punishment—the robbery, oppression, abuse, imprisonment, torture, murder (all done as a matter of principle, without any emotional involvement as an excuse). Such actions are in no way rejected or condemned in themselves by his judges, but only in particular respects when used for certain purposes.
"Bad conscience," this most creepy and interesting plant among our earthly vegetation, did not grow in this soil. In fact, for the longest period in the past no notion of dealing with a "guilty party" penetrated the consciousness of judges or even those doing the punishing.. They were dealing with someone who had caused harm, with an irresponsible piece of fate. And the man on whom punishment later fell, once again like a piece of fate, experienced in that no "inner pain," other than what came from the sudden arrival of something unpredictable, a terrible natural event, a falling, crushing boulder against which there is no way to fight.
...like "execution".
From one of the first links in this posting:
In an apparent swipe at the detention by US authorities of terrorism suspects without trial at Guantánamo Bay, Benneter added: "Our legal system demands that we give such criminals the chance to come free. That's what distinguishes us, that we apply the rules of justice and law even to such terrorists."
Is there no end to the idiocy of leftists?
I guess not.
Releasing a remorseless terrorist is JUSTICE???
An excellent piece on a topic about which I knew nothing until I came here. Well done, FN!
AOW,
I liked that one too. Moonbats will always jump on the chance to prove that they can appease fascism better than anyone else.
The Red Army Faction were German citizens that committed crimes against their own state.
The Gitmo terrorists are members of a stateless army waging illegal war against many countries. They are not American.
Theres a huge difference.
Anyways, Happy Birthday young lady...
having read the entire article and most of the links, i have nothing to add - you stole all my words and any i would add would be useless so i'll just go ahead, right now - and not say another thing.
except what flo said!
you do great work, fern.
Nanc,
I apologize for stealing your words. It is true that I am a compulsive Word-Klepto, but I am seeking out help.
Thanks
Yes, these are the "pathfinders" for today's terrorist tactics. The Western governments should have crushed them like bugs. But since they were our kids, we established new precedents that allowed them to get away with murder. And what could be cooler than to be a kid, and get away with murder? These are the "heroes" of the sixties generation, being emulated (or accepted) by greater and greater numbers of colege students each year... encouraged to become "activists" by ever increasingly "political" institutions.
We're still paying the price today.
These 60s radical are doing a full court press to try and revive their antiquated movement.
Its as relative as if the suffrage and Abolitionist movements were trying to restart their activism in the 21st Century. The only difference is that those movements had much more legitimacy about them.
The "idealistic" terrorists of the 60s are being released from jail and they want book contracts.
Actually, it's probably a good thing some of these old radicals are still out there. It shows today's "activist" college student just how pathetic their fore-runners actually were. No "romantic" dead heroes like "Che". Just cop killers and ugly old fat b*astards like Fidel.
afternoon fern!
Hi Nanc,
Top of the evening to ya!
FJ, well some of these RAF apologists are trying to whitewash the history of the terrorist organization.
They want more blame for the West German government and to push the same stupid agenda as they did about 9/11...
...that is to say that "the methods were wrong but the message was right".
Ultimately anything that "fights" the system ends up to become glamorous. Leftist radicals have a serious problem with critical thought outside of criticizing the state.
Kuhnkat,
A while back a girlfriend of mine convinced me to rent the movie Heavenly Bodies. Recently I found out that the book on which it was based on was ghost written by one of the murderers.
That doesnt make me feel good about renting that movie, but there is nothing I can do now...
Freedom Now,
These 60s radical are doing a full court press to try and revive their antiquated movement.
And some of them are behind the lectern in college classrooms. Tenured, at that!
Where else can they get a job?!!!!
There is only a limited amount of gallery space that can be devoted to con-“artists” so it’s either tenure-ship as a revisionist historian or street corner panhandling.
Have some compassion for these blood sucking lowlifes.
That explains the popularity of "Fahrenheit 9/11" and "Star Wars, Episode IVXIVII".
A lot of people have uncritical tastes...
I can now appreciate all you went through with nanc, FN.
The horror! oh, The horror!...
What act of evil has she committed now?
Is there no end to her villany?...
Didn't you see what she threatened to do to my blog? She threatened to hang curtains!
So its curtains for you too?
This is not a coup it is genocide...
How well we both know it! The Islamic Terrorists have got nothing on her.
i smell a coup brewing behind my back...
kuhnkat to the rescue?
The Praetorians could always use another good man!
The weak are being weeded out...
Rats!!!!!!
Nanc's secret police followed you here Agricola. Her treachery knows no limits.
Nanc, Beware the Ipods of Macintosh...
sooooo, that's what happened to my posterior! i'd like a new one please.
...can't pass the quarter test, eh? Can I get a new posterior, too?
Quarter test? This conversation has gone off subject.
Didn't your drill sergeant ever try and bounce a quarter off your rack to see if it had been proberly made (that ought dig a deeper hole for this conversation)????
If it bounced... it passed. Je-e-e-e-e-ez!
How horrific when family members witness cold blooded killers go free..sigh
Thanks for stopping by Oh Honorable One. I didnt realize that my link to your site was out of date. That is fixed.
o.t. - your attention is needed at this location!
You are unrelenting young lady...
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