The Red Army Faction, a Documentary History

by J. Smith

121. Spiegel, “New Generation,” October 26, 1981.

  122. Ibid.

  123. “Kommunique: Für unseren Genossen Bernd Rössner,” in Marat, 100.

  124. Pressekonferenz am 18.8.1982 in Stuttgart.

  125. “Political Internment in the FRG,” in Prairie Fire Organizing Committee, 27. It is unclear to what extent psychiatric incarceration was used against the radical left in the FRG; there are certainly anecdotal accounts of squatters, anti-imps, and Autonomen who would be picked up at demonstrations and not seen for years, only for their friends to eventually learn that they had been committed. The fact that young people occasionally claimed to have some kind of psychological or mental illness in order to avoid compulsory military service could facilitate this process.

  126. Michel, 87-88.

  127. Moncourt and Smith Vol. 1, 152.

  Eighth Hunger Strike Statement

  THE SOLIDARITY OF THE PEOPLE

  IS GROUNDED IN REVOLT

  We, the prisoners from the RAF, are once again going on hunger strike.

  We will not stop struggling against torture, against the open and covert extermination campaigns, against the entire institutionalized and refined strategy to destroy our political identities.

  The state is calculating that by systematically creating separate prison regimes of individual and small group isolation, as perfected in the high-security units, and seeming integration, it can destroy the group’s collective structure and our collective unity. At the same time it hopes to undermine the national and international protests, including those of the International Commission, and, in the end, that of Amnesty International. They will not succeed. They can’t possibly succeed, because the concrete knowledge that this state is ready and able to commit any inhumanity is one of the things that led us to rise and take up arms in the first place.

  Having for years been isolated from one another, from any possible collective political process, and from the outside world, we are determined, using the only means available to us—the unlimited collective hunger strike—to break through this separation and establish the conditions necessary for a collective learning and working process, in order to be able to survive as human beings. We demand:

  The application of the minimum guarantees of the Geneva Convention for prisoners from the RAF and other anti-imperialist resistance groups.

  Association for these prisoners in conditions where they can interact with one another; such interaction is made impossible—as a result of acoustic and visual surveillance of communication—in isolation units where light, air, and sound are electronically controlled.

  Freedom for Günter Sonnenberg, because his continued incarceration makes it impossible for him to recover from his head injuries.

  The struggle doesn’t stop in prison, and the objectives don’t change; the only things that change are the methods and the terrain of the guerilla-state conflict, of the war. So the state reacts to this situation, in which we are imprisoned and unarmed and engaged in a collective hunger strike, as if it were under armed attack.

  The overall measures used against us leave no room for doubt: we are prisoners of war with the status of hostages. Every time the confrontation has escalated, an imprisoned RAF cadre has been executed: Holger, Siegfried, Ulrike. Once the RAF’s politico-military offensive had exposed the failure of the huge repressive effort to exterminate the prisoners using all possible means, the U.S. National Security Council’s “Special Coordination Committee” decided upon the final solution—the execution of Andreas, Gudrun, Jan, Nina,1 and our brothers and sisters of the Commando Martyr Halimeh.

  This was an attempt to wipe out every trace of their struggle, their example, and their persistence.

  “Snuff out the flame before it becomes a wildfire,” in order to deprive the people of the metropole of any hope of freedom. The torture and murder of political prisoners, like the executions in the streets, are no longer simply a matter of police tactics: in this Third Reich successor state, the methods and goals remain the same.

  For this, its third attempt, German imperialism is not acting against American capital, but with it. It is not acting independently, but is serving a function for American foreign policy, expressed as a global domestic policy. It must therefore liquidate the militant prisoners and the whole resistance movement, which pose a threat and raise the question of power here in the heart of the U.S. system of states, the key economic, political, and military launching pad for the aggressive policies of the U.S. since 1945.

  The torture and murder of political prisoners and the death squads in Turkey, Ireland, Italy, and Spain can all be traced back to the NATO Supreme Command, which wants to use the BKA and intelligence services to impose a unified domestic policy throughout Western Europe. This is the same Supreme Command which, in the latest NATO Review, openly reminded governments that there must be no question of considering demands for political status or for international inquiries into the torture of militant prisoners, and that they must stick to the agreed upon strategy for criminalizing revolutionary resistance.2

  The resistance developed on the wasteland of bourgeois resistance and the German workers movement, moving from the naive humanism of the Easter Marches and the antinuclear movement3 to the youth revolts and the Vietnam opposition, and finally to the urban guerilla. They respond to this humanity with the inhumanity of mass murder, because humanity gets in the way of their solution: to present brutality, misery, the overall violence of property ownership as “humanity’s cultural imperative.” They project their crimes onto the guerilla— “poisoned drinking water, nuclear contamination, deadly bacteria”4— to divert the fear that they produce away from themselves, so that no resistance will develop based on an understanding of the real source of these problems. The goal of the anti-RAF campaign is to prevent, at any cost, militant protest against rearmament, against the militarization of all areas of society, or against the deployment of the Bundeswehr in the streets from returning to what it was before it was suppressed thirty-five years ago—solidarity with the guerilla based on people drawing the same conclusion we have drawn: that illegality provides the liberated territory that the resistance in West Germany needs to develop its capacity to act.

  The state’s reaction reveals its weakness and vulnerability, as well as the possibility of speeding up the process of decline by constant attack, creating a “real state of emergency.” Nothing we can do will prevent the state’s transition to fascism, through which the state of emergency will be legally sanctioned, because it is inevitable.

  Since capital is now creating the conditions for its own aggressive reconstruction on a world scale, we must—all of us who want freedom, accountability, and a humane way of life—prepare to prevent this project in the countries from which this onslaught is to be launched. At this stage, we have to develop the political and military counterforce necessary to establish a “political barrier” to U.S. imperialism’s military overkill potential, with the ultimate goal of destroying it.

  If the militant left can recognize what imperialism has understood every time it has been defeated—that imperialism’s power ends at the point where its violence no longer frightens people—then it will have completely exposed the secret to imperialism’s apparent invincibility. Solidarity excludes compulsion and it cannot be cancelled like a line of credit.

  It is the practical expression of each person’s consciousness that there is no contradiction between individual and collective liberation, despite what the pathetic apologists for the satisfaction of individual needs believe. Rather, there is a dialectical relationship—just as liberation here cannot be separated from the liberation struggle of the peoples of the Third World.

  Solidarity manifests its reality and power as proletarian internationalism, i.e., through attacks against the common enemy, U.S. imperialism, at the strategic points where each of us encounter it. This is the basis upon which the anti-imperialist struggle can be unified.

  Our hunger strike is an ex
pression of solidarity with:

  the IRA and INLA prisoners and their long and determined struggle for political status.

  the Red Brigades prisoners in their struggle against the extermination strategy, in which they have seized the political initiative.

  all prisoners from the anti-imperialist resistance in Western Europe, particularly in Turkey.

  the struggle of the Palestinian prisoners for Prisoner of War status.

  with all prisoners who have begun to resist in prison and are struggling to organize themselves.

  ARM THE RESISTANCE!

  ORGANIZE THE UNDERGROUND!

  ORGANIZE ARMED RESISTANCE IN WESTERN EUROPE!

  Prisoners from the Red Army Faction

  February 6, 1981

  _____________

  1. Ingrid Schubert’s nickname.

  2. This article, by Margaret Thatcher’s advisor Paul Johnson, appeared in the October 1980 NATO Review, and is discussed on page 177.

  3. Here the prisoners are referring to the movement against nuclear weapons of the 1950s and ‘60s, not the movement against nuclear energy of the 1970s. Moncourt and Smith Vol. 1, 22-23.

  4. As part of its psychological war against the guerilla, police sources routinely warned that they had received information that the RAF was planning to use biological, chemical, or even nuclear weapons against the public. No evidence has ever been provided to indicate that any of these far-fetched stories was true.

  Statement Calling Off the Eighth Hunger Strike

  We’ve decided to break off the hunger strike, since it seems that following two interventions by Amnesty International prisoners will no longer be held in individual isolation and more prisoners’ groups will be formed. Also, over the past few days it has become clear that after ten weeks on hunger strike, Sigurd Debus died as a result of force-feeding carried out with the most brutal violence possible. We can barely express our pain about his death.

  His will could not be broken.

  Intelligence counteractions—such as the bombing of the Cologne subway, and other obscure targets, like laying tree trunks across train tracks—are meant to legitimize his death and the deaths of other prisoners should they occur.

  The fact that there is now a resolution doesn’t mean that the state has abandoned its extermination strategy. However, we don’t think that we will repeat the December 1980 experience of the IRA, not least of all because of the solidarity we’ve received.

  The prisoners from the RAF

  April 16, 1981

  Attack Against USAFE Ramstein

  ATTACK THE CENTERS, THE BASES, AND THE STRATEGISTS

  OF THE AMERICAN MILITARY MACHINE

  Today, with the “Sigurd Debus Commando,” we attacked the Ramstein Headquarters of the U.S. Air Force in Europe. The U.S. imperialists will not be permitted to prepare and carry out their plans for world domination in peace and quiet.

  They want war. They want to roll back history to the point before the liberation movements’ offensive undermined their political and military power around the world. To do this, it is essential that they disrupt the military balance between the socialist and imperialist states. Their stated goal is to reverse the historic changes and to become, once again, the most powerful ruling class in the world. That means they must be prepared to wage war on all fronts, both in Europe and in the Third World. All of the steps they have taken in the past ten years—the technological modification and the restructuring of the war machine since the peak of the Vietnam War, the achievement of NATO’s long-term objective of perfecting the neutron bomb, the “struggle against international terrorism” which included united action against uprisings in Western Europe, the supervision of mass murder in El Salvador, and the NATO putsch in Turkey.

  The imperialist war of annihilation is now returning from the Third World to Europe, its point of origin. The people of Europe, and of the FRG, understand that unless it can be stopped, this will mean their extermination. They are now getting a clear and direct idea of what reality has been like for people in Africa, Asia, and Latin America for hundreds of years, of the impact of imperialism when you yourself are its target. Imperialism, in its essence and as a system, means extermination—so far and so long as the resistance is not strong enough to stop this class from acting.

  In the face of all of the defeatist, escapist fantasies about an atomic inferno and all of the helpless pacifist hopes that accompany these fantasies, we assert that this monster can be defeated if resistance develops in the centers that addresses the gravity of the actual situation, and if an offensive strategy for speeding up the collapse of imperialism’s political base in the center is developed quickly enough to prevent the imperialists from proceeding with their plan.

  Ramstein, the European Headquarters of both the U.S. Air Force and of the NATO Air Force, is the largest American airport outside of the United States and is key for any nuclear war in Europe. Ramstein is where the headquarters for nuclear warfare are located. It is the launch pad for both the Cruise and Pershing II missiles. It is where jet fighters equipped with atomic missiles and AWAC reconnaissance planes leave from. It is the relay point for the U.S.A.’s strategic bombers and the gateway for its troops, and serves as the launch pad for war in the Third World. If the imperialists feel they are losing their hold on the Middle East or the Gulf region, their oppressive machinery will be launched from Ramstein.

  U.S. military strategy is the most extreme option available to the imperialist chain of states. All of the other political, economic, and social methods are based on this strategy, which determines the social developments within the NATO countries. This strategy serves as a focal point, reducing this system—imperialist politics overall—to its purest form: the slow death of the twenty-four-hour day in the metropole, the destruction wrought by the struggle for survival, the lack of perspective, the alienation, the dehumanizing labor, the widespread replacement of humans by machines in the production process, the destruction of people’s living conditions by the nuclear power industry, chemicals, and concrete, the prisons, and the regimentation of any expression of life, as well as the repression of anyone unwilling to adjust themselves to the system.

  BUILD THE RESISTANCE AGAINST THIS DESTRUCTION INTO THE FRONT FOR REVOLUTION IN EUROPE

  CARRY OUT THE STRUGGLE IN THE METROPOLE ALONGSIDE THE STRUGGLE OF REVOLUTIONARIES IN THE THIRD WORLD

  Red Army Faction

  August 31, 1981

  Attack Against General Frederick Kroesen

  ATTACK THE CENTERS, THE BASES, AND THE STRATEGISTS OF THE AMERICAN MILITARY MACHINE

  Today, with the “Gudrun Ensslin Commando,” we attacked General Kroesen, the supreme commander of the U.S. Army and of NATO’s Central Europe Section. He is one of the U.S. generals who directly control imperialist policies in an area stretching from Western Europe to the Gulf region. It is he who decides on the nature of missions and the methods to be used in cases of confrontation. He decides when conventional means of destruction are to be used and when and where neutron bombs are to be deployed. He commands the U.S. intervention troops that are stationed here for deployment in the Middle East. He and Rogers are the strategists who are called back to the Pentagon from the European front when decisions, such as the decision to intervene in Iran, are taken. Should the resistance seriously threaten the colonial status of the FRG, he will be one of the American military figures who will openly control this country instead of Schmidt, Genscher, Kohl, Strauß, or whoever it might be at the time. For that reason, information about the left in the FRG has been stored in the computers at the Heidelberg Headquarters for years now. He regularly meets with the BAW to coordinate what steps are to be taken, and he personally assesses the reports of the Western intelligence services working within the context of NATO to wage the U.S.’s war against the guerilla in Western Europe. Kroesen is a front line general.

  Western Europe is no longer the hinterland from which imperialism wages war. With the victories of the Third World li
beration wars, with the development of the guerilla in Western Europe, and with the generalized crisis now facing imperialism, it has become part of the worldwide front. While it is the region where they own everything, it has also become the critical region for the worldwide liberation process.

  The struggle in the metropole can keep the global imperialist system in check if a fresh breakthrough develops in conjunction with revolutionaries in the Third World. The struggles in the metropole now constitute genuine revolutionary steps in the centers themselves, and can now be seen as permanent upheavals within the process of developing revolutionary resistance.

  Resistance means attacks against the counterrevolutionary attack. Resistance means situating your own practice in the context of the guerilla. The guerilla, the struggle of the prisoners from the guerilla, and the struggle of the anti-imperialist militants are the elements that together form the revolutionary front in Western Europe—or will form it.

  CARRY OUT ALL STRUGGLES FOR DECENT LIVING CONDITIONS IN ALL AREAS AS ANTI-IMPERIALIST STRUGGLES AND AS PART OF THE FRONT.

  MAKE THE PRISONERS’ STRUGGLE, WHICH IS CENTRAL TO THE REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLE, YOUR OWN.

  SUPPORT THE PRISONERS HERE, IN IRELAND, IN TURKEY, IN ITALY, AND IN SPAIN.

  THE WEST EUROPEAN GUERILLA IS SHAKING THE CENTER

  STRUGGLE ALONGSIDE US

  Red Army Faction

  September 15, 1981

  Letter Addressing Police Fabrications

  Even if it’s not really our thing to issue rebuttals to police fabrications, we want to make a few things clear, because they are trying to make an example out of some public political figures to show that they can use whatever scare tactics they want—to spread terror.

  The cops don’t know anything about how we move about, how we plan our actions, or the practical details of how we work with the legal left. It is no surprise that they shamelessly resort to lying about the growing anti-imperialist resistance. Here they are: