The Red Army Faction, a Documentary History, Volume 1

by J. Smith

  The Appeal of the Fedayeen: To All the Free People of the World

  On Monday, September 11, 1972, the Palestinian Press Agency published a group statement from the Black September members who were killed in Munich. This statement was drafted before the operation in Munich began. (M. & S.)

  We do not intend to kill any innocent people with our action. We are struggling above all against injustice. We do not want to disturb the peace, rather we want to draw the world’s attention to the filthy Zionist occupation and the real tragedy our people are suffering.

  We ask that the free people of the world understand our action, the goal of which is to thwart imperialism’s international interests, to expose the relationship between imperialism and Zionism, and to clarify for our Arab nation what “Israel” is and who its allies are.

  We are a significant element in the armed Palestinian revolutionary movement, which is itself part of the Arab revolution. We ask you, in spite of the enemy’s conspiracy and the difficulties presented by the struggle, not to lay down your weapons. The earth can only be freed with blood.

  The world only respects the strong. Our strength does not lie in speeches, but in action.

  We apologize to the young athletes of the world if their sensibilities are disturbed by our undertaking. But they should know that there is a people whose homeland has been occupied for 24 years. This people has suffered anguish at the hands of an enemy that moves amongst them in Munich.

  It is irrelevant where we are buried; the enemy can defile our corpses. What we hope is that Arab youth are ready to die in the service of the people and the fatherland. We call upon the “Black September” fedayeen and the Palestinian revolutionary movement to carry the struggle forward.

  LONG LIVE OUR PEOPLE!

  LONG LIVE THE WORLDWIDE REVOLUTION FOR FREEDOM!

  The Black September Action in Munich: Regarding the Strategy for Anti-Imperialist Struggle

  Proletarian Revolutions… are constantly self-critical, repeatedly come to a standstill, return to past undertakings to begin them anew, pitilessly and thoroughly mocking their own half-measures, and the weakness and shabbiness of their own preliminary efforts. They seem to throw down their adversary only in order that he may draw new strength from the earth and rise again, more gigantic, before them. They shrink time and again from the unimaginable enormity of their own goals, until they reach a time which makes all turning back impossible, and the conditions themselves call out: hic rhodus, hic salta.1

  Karl Marx

  THE STONES YOU HAVE THROWN AT US WILL FALL AT YOUR OWN FEET.

  The Black September action in Munich has simultaneously clarified both the nature of the imperialist ruling class and of the anti-imperialist struggle, in a way that no revolutionary action in West Germany or West Berlin has. It was simultaneously anti-imperialist, antifascist, and internationalist. It indicated an understanding of historical and political connections, that are always the province of the people—that is to say, those from whom profit is sucked, those who are free from complicity with the system, those who have no reason to believe the illusions fostered by their oppressors, no reason to accept the fantasy their oppressors pass off as history, no reason to pay the slightest attention to their version of reality. It revealed the rage and the strength that these revolutionaries get from their close connection to the Palestinian people, a connection resulting in a class consciousness that makes their historical mission to act as a vanguard perfectly clear. Their humanity is firmly based in their knowledge that they must resist this ruling class, a class which as the historical endpoint of this system of class rule is also the most cunning and the most bloodthirsty that has ever existed. It is based in the knowledge that they must resist this system’s character and its tendency towards total imperialist fascism—a form which has many fine representatives: Nixon and Brandt, Moshe Dayan and Genscher, Golda Meir and McGovern.

  The West German left can reclaim their political identity—antifascism—antiauthoritarianism—anti-imperialist action—if they cease to embrace the Springer Press and opportunism, if they begin to once again address Auschwitz, Vietnam, and the systemic indifference of the masses here.

  BLACK SEPTEMBER’S STRATEGY IS THE REVOLUTIONARY STRATEGY FOR ANTI-IMPERIALIST STRUGGLE, BOTH IN THE THIRD WORLD AND IN THE METROPOLE, GIVEN THE IMPERIALIST CONDITIONS CREATED BY MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS.

  1. IMPERIALISM

  Anti Imperialist Struggle

  The action was anti-imperialist.

  The comrades from Black September, who had their own Black September in 1970 when the Jordanian army massacred 20,000 Palestinians,1 went back to the place that is the origin of this massacre: West Germany—formerly Nazi Germany—now at the centre of imperialism. Back to the site of the power that forced the Jews of both West and East Europe to emigrate to Israel. Back to those who had hoped to profit from the theft of Palestinian land. Back to where Israel got its reparation payments and, until 1965, officially, its weapons. Back to where the Springer Corporation celebrated Israel’s 1967 Blitzkrieg in an anticommunist orgy. Back to the supplier who provided Hussein’s army with panzers, assault rifles, machine-pistols, and munitions. Back to where everything possible was done—using development aid, oil deals, investments, weapons, and diplomatic relationships—to pit Arab regimes against each other, and to turn all of them against the Palestinian liberation movement. Back to the place from which imperialism launches its bombers when other means of repressing the Arab liberation movement fail: West Germany—Munich—the NATO airport at Fürstenfeldbruck.

  Vietnam

  Do people think Vietnam is a joke? Guatemala, Santo Domingo, Indonesia, Angola are all just jokes? Vietnam is an atrocious example for the people of the Third World, an example of how determined imperialism is to commit genocide against them if nothing else achieves the desired results—if they don’t agree to being markets, military bases, sources of raw materials and cheap labor.

  And the opportunistic left in the metropole behaves idiotically—being the labor aristocracy of imperialism (Lenin) who benefit from this theft, they sit on their arses. They only take to the streets if something affects them, if the war escalates, if some of them are shot—like during Easter 1968 in Berlin or May 1970 at Kent State.2 If the system does something against them like what is always being done in the Third World, all of a sudden they get upset, they run to the police, they chase after that rat-catcher McGovern, they run for a post on the labor council and they write a bunch of poems against the war.

  The Imperialist Centre

  Black September has brought its war from the Arab periphery of imperialism into the centre. The centre means: central to the multinational corporations, the market’s command centre, where they determine the laws of economic, political, military, cultural, and technological development for all countries within their market. The centre is the U.S.A., Japan, and West Europe under the leadership of the FRG. The volume of business, the numbers employed by the corporations, these are only the formal, quantitative data—their weapons production is only one of the sectors of their productive capacity that is directed against the liberation movements, their price controls for raw materials constitute just one of the many ways they ensure their rule over the Third World.

  The Aggressive Character of Imperialist Investment Policy

  Marx analyzed machinery as a weapon that led workers in the 19th century to destroy machines. Marx:

  Machinery is the most powerful weapon for repressing strikes, those periodical revolts of the working class against the autocracy of capital. It would be possible to write quite a history of the inventions made since 18801 for the sole purpose of supplying capital with weapons against the revolts of the working class.

  This was the machinery that created unemployment for the working class, that created the wageworker, at the same time offering the proletariat no choice but starvation or overthrowing the dictatorship of capital.

  It is now time for someone to write a history
of the imperialist investment strategy and in their analysis to demonstrate that it was “made for the sole purpose” of eliminating the liberation movements in the Third World.

  Multinational Corporations

  The multinational corporations control everything in the countries that imperialism has deprived of the opportunity to develop. They use this control against them. At one and the same time, capital creates divisions, skims profits, and then uses these same projects, investments, and profits to play the countries dependent on them off against each other—they use the very raw materials they rely upon the Third World for to oppress the people of the Third World.

  Weapons

  Their weapons consist of the potential of capital, technology, the means of communication and information control, and the means of transportation. Their strategy for conquest is based on investments, transfer of profits, information policy, diversification, marketing, sales planning, and stockpiling. Their occupier or colonial ideology means controlling currency and creating work. Their goal is to assimilate, repress, and rob—the alternative offered is starvation and extermination.

  Oil Investments

  Oil is the primary issue in the states that support the Palestinian liberation movement. 70% of Western Europe’s oil imports come from there. Western Europe’s demand for oil will double by 1985 (1970: 647 million tons). The corporations and their governments are determining their oil policy based on the spectre of revolutionary Arab regimes using this demand for oil to carry through their own industrialization. This would mark the end of oil corporations making profits of more than 100%.

  Algeria’s Natural Gas

  American corporations are investing millions of dollars in profit liquefying Algerian natural gas and shipping it by sea, so as to play Algerian natural gas off against that of Libya and against Arab oil: Kuwait, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia.

  Pipelines

  West European consortiums (Bayerngas—Saarferngas—Gasversorgung Süddeutschland) invest billion-dm sums to build pipelines (1 km costs between 1 and 2 million dm)2 to transport Algerian natural gas so as to partially reduce their dependence on Middle Eastern oil.

  North Sea Oil

  Oil companies and governments invest billions in oil and natural gas extraction in the North Sea. With regards to development costs, North Sea oil is ten times as expensive as oil from the Persian Gulf—only every sixth drill point is successful, construction and installation expenses for platforms, underwater pipelines. (North Sea oil makes up an estimated 1% of the world reserves; reserves in the Middle East make up 60%.) This is considered preferable to having a flexible approach to the Middle East. According to the European Economic Community (EEC) Europe Committee, “The increasing pressure on Western societies from some oil countries could lead to supply problems in the case of a political crisis”—meaning the problems that corporations will have maintaining their current high rates of profit.

  Australia and Canada

  Regarding raw materials available in Australia and Canada, the economic edition of FAZ wrote with cynical, capitalist bluntness, “The developing countries’ position has deteriorated as a result of the discovery of enormous natural resource reserves in Canada and Australia. The geologically favorable sites in these countries, with their stable governments, lower taxes, and developed industry, have attracted the attention of multinationals from all over the world.”

  The Conference in Santiago de Chile

  In April and May 1972, at the conference in Santiago de Chile, the “developing countries” attempted to establish fixed prices for raw materials. In response to their powerlessness, the FAZ writes, with the condescension and consciousness of a corporate bulletin, “The developing countries overlook the fact that natural resource reserves alone do not constitute wealth. In the final analysis, development, transport, and technical research are more important, and we control an ample share of the world’s reserves of those. It is no accident that the powerful multinational corporations, with their restrictive policies, exercise substantial restraint in their investments in the developing countries.”

  Overexploitation and Stockpiling

  For one thing, the corporations over-exploit the raw materials of the Third World. In Kuwait, for example, the fear is that in 16 years—the oil boom in Kuwait began in 1934—the oil could be exhausted. 95% of Kuwait’s income comes from oil—800 million dollars per year for 740,000 residents. Kuwait, with 12.8% of the world’s annual oil income, has built up the royal treasury—a sort of nest egg. What will they do when the oil and the money is all used up, return to herding sheep? Libya and Venezuela have already reduced their oil production to safeguard their reserves.

  At the same time, a policy of stockpiling has been developed in the EEC and the FRG, increasing stocks from 85 to 90 days—Iran’s portion of that is 10 million tons—the FRG needs approximately 133 million tons of oil per year.

  The U.S.A. has undertaken a massive conservation program—by 1980, 365 million tons of oil will have been saved—however 770 million tons will still be required. The conservation measures will include shifting commercial transportation from trucks to the railroad, passenger traffic from the air to the ground, and city traffic from automobiles to mass transit.

  Oil and Traffic-Related Deaths

  In the FRG, to give one example, the automobile industry has demanded a tribute of 170,000 traffic-related deaths over the past ten years—in the U.S.A., 56,000 deaths are projected for 1972, in the FRG it’s 20,000—all in the service of greater profits for oil and automobile corporations.

  This idiotic automobile production will be reduced to create a situation suitable to corporate interests: the wiping out of the liberation movements in the Third World. In this way the obstacle presented by the people of the Third World will be eliminated.

  The fear and the circular logic of consumption—the anarchy of capitalist commodity production, which is governed by the market and not the needs of the people—can exceed the limits of the human psyche, especially with the drivel about “quality of life,” for instance. In a situation where everything has been reduced to consumption—“shitty products”—the decline of the masses’ loyalty has already begun. The mass mortality in the streets through the alienation and brutalization of the people is hitting the system in the pocketbook in a way they don’t like.

  Boycott

  The goal is another oil boycott like that of the early 50s against Mossadegh’s1 nationalization of Persian oil, which cleared the way for the Shah, that puppet of U.S. imperialism. In response to the nationalization measures in Iraq at that time, Iran quickly stated its willingness to increase annual production from 271 million tons to 400 million tons. This is the kind of government that suits imperialism.

  In the 60s, it was hoped that atomic energy would allow for the gradual reduction of dependence on oil as the most important source of energy. By that time—or so it was hoped—high temperature ovens with which coal could be converted to oil would also exist—which was the basis for the talk of the comeback of coal.

  The objective of imperialist energy policy is not only to guarantee the continuing theft of oil from the oil-producing nations for all time to come, but also to prevent them from industrializing and establishing their political independence.

  Encirclement Policy

  Regarding the rest of the Middle East, imperialism is hoping its policy of quiet encirclement will succeed.

  In the West, they are thoroughly implanted in the Maghreb—Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco. West German corporations have invested in mining (raw materials), in the clothing industry (cheap labor), in dam projects (electrical power), and in the automobile industry. Tunisia and Morocco are the main recipients of West German development aid among the Arab states—both countries also receive West German military aid.

  In the East and the North, it’s Turkey and Iran. Both countries are also the sites of American military bases. In the context of NATO, the FRG supplies weapons to Turkey. In the
context of the free market economy, Siemens has recently been supplying television relay stations, with which the government’s message—“This is the criminal police speaking”—can reach Eastern Turkey.1 The German enclave in Tehran is well known—the quantity of weapons being provided by West Germany is not.

  Military Bases

  There should be no illusions about the desire to transform the Maghreb in the West and Turkey and Iran in the East from markets into military bases.

  And there should certainly be no illusions about what conditions will be like in Algeria in three years if natural gas development by American corporations—that is to say, by big money—has begun and Algeria still attempts to maintain its principled solidarity with the other Arab states. It could only end in disaster.

  Imperialism is the Weapon

  Imperialism is the weapon that the multinational corporations use to address the contradictions between developed countries and the desire for development in the countries they plunder, between states with elected governments and states with CIA-backed governments, between rich and poor countries. Imperialism unifies North and South as the centre and the periphery of a single system.

  It is a system that allows the constitutional state to function in much the same way as fascism. It doesn’t eliminate the contradictions, it simply coordinates them, plays them off against one another, integrates them as various interrelated profit-making conditions for their various subsidiaries.

  “Slaves of the System”

  Outwardly, they adjust to the existing conditions—making use of them where possible—creating domestic capital reserves, surrendering middle management to the local population, learning the local language, respecting local laws, all the time using their normative power to establish their control of the market.

  The FAZ condescendingly informs “developing countries” that are attempting to protect their mineral resources by reducing mining that they misjudge the marketplace. It informs them that they are actually establishing themselves as slaves of the system if they fail to take note of the “dilemma” created by their own foreign currency needs, on the one hand, and the necessity to protect their natural resources, on the other: “The developing countries, in implementing policies against international natural resource companies, are tying their own hands.”