What I read and how I felt about it, RAF edition

Above: Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin: two leading members of the West German leftist group "The Red Army Faction"

I just finished reading "Baader-Meinhof: The Inside Story of the RAF" by Stefan Aust. I thought the book was really fascinating, and I was inspired to read it after I watched "The Baader-Meinhof Complex," the 2008 movie which was based on this book.

The author has an obvious conservative bias which makes the book sort of hard to get through at certain times. Many of his criticisms of the RAF seem very valid and seem to hold up pretty well, but it's clear that Aust has a limited understanding of the oppressive nature of the capitalist/imperialist system. He seems sympathetic to the RAF's goals of ending German support for the Vietnam War, but his ability to understand the harms of capitalism seem to end there. But the book documents in great details tons of stories and literature relating to the RAF, so the book is very much worth reading.

One of the RAF characters who I find most fascinating is Ulrike Meinhof. She was a journalist in 1960s Germany who went from being a bourgeois journalist covering the 1960s protest movement to ultimately becoming an armed underground urban guerilla militant who produced many of the RAF's manifestos and communiques. She famously wrote: "protest is when I say this does not please me. Resistance is when I ensure what does not please me occurs no more." Unfortunately, it's hard to conclude that the RAF was particularly effective at resisting the system of capitalist/imperialist oppression as it was based in Germany at that time. You could say they were very brave allies of the Vietnamese people in their time, but it came at an unbelievable cost to the members of the RAF, and it's not clear how much their actions really did to oppose the war in Vietnam and other forms of capitalist oppression. That said, it's easy to judge with hindsight. 

The book's closing chapters detail the kidnapping of a former Nazi and banking executive, Hans Martin Schleyer, and a Lufthansa jet carrying dozens of civilians. These kidnappings were orchestrated with the hopes of forcing the German government to release RAF leaders Andreas Baader, Gudrun Enslin, as well as other members (Meinhof was already dead by this point in time, either by suicide or murdered my the German state, depending on whom you ask -- the account given by Aust is plausible but suspicious at the same time). This attempt failed -- the kidnapped passengers were freed in a rescue operation, and the German state refused to negotiate on behalf of Schleyer, who was ultimately executed by his captors. Baader, Enslin and their comrades in jail were dead not long after (again, either suicide or murder depending on whom you ask -- not all the details are clear). 

Despite what I would consider to be the noble intentions of the RAF members, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that their efforts were doomed to failure. Take a German public already largely indifferent to the war in Vietnam, antagonize them further by killing and abducting civilians -- that is not going to make the German public any more receptive to your cause. RAF and anti-colonial activists in that time might not have had any good options at their disposal, but it's hard to conclude that ultra-left splinter terrorism will lead to anything but disaster. Kidnappings in particular seem almost guaranteed to backfire. The imperial system and its supporters are already callous to human life, whether it be the lives of their opponents or their supports. (It's hard to read this without thinking immediately of the hostage situation in Palestine -- the Israeli government is as happy to abandon Jewish Israeli hostages in Gaza as they are willing to obliterate the lives of Palestinians. The supporters of the imperial system are not humanists no matter whose skin color is on the line). So it's hard to conclude that hostage taking is anything other than counterproductive, though I also recognize my own positionality and privilege in the capitalist west).

And then again, what if the rescue operation of the Lufthansa jet had succeeded, and Baader, Enslin and co. had been freed? Would we judge them differently in that case? 

Anyway, despite the author's hostility to the group, this was a very good read, and I certainly recommend it. Now it is time to return the book to the library :(  

I think I could talk and think about books related to these topics for days, but I'm in the library and my fingers are sore from typing. The other fascinating topic in this book is the connection the RAF militants had with Palestinian militants in their time. Specifically the PFLP. The contents of this book and the issues that come up are hardly buried in the past, and in contrast are deeply relevant to this exact moment in the present.