"The Urban Guerrilla Is History..."
The Final Communique From The Red Army Fraction (RAF)
Almost 28 years ago, on May 14, 1970, the RAF was born from
an act of liberation: Today we are ending this project. The urban
guerrilla in the form of the RAF is now history.
We, that is all of us who were organized in the RAF until
the end, are taking this step jointly. From now on, we, like all
others from this association, are former RAF militants.
We stand by our history. The RAF was the revolutionary
attempt by a minority of people to resist the tendencies in this
society and contribute to the overthrow of capitalist conditions.
We are proud to have been part of this attempt.
The end of this project shows that we were not able to
succeed on this path. But this does not speak against the
necessity and legitimacy of revolt. The RAF was our decision to
stand on the side of those people struggling against domination
and for liberation all across the world. For us, this was the
right decision to make.
Hundreds of years in prison terms for RAF prisoners were not
able to wipe us out, nor could all the attempts to eradicate the
guerrilla. We wanted a confrontation with the ruling powers. We
acted as subjects when we decided upon the RAF 27 years ago. We
remain subjects today, as we consign ourselves to history.
The results are critical of us. But the RAF - like all of
the left until now - was nothing more than a phase of transition
on the path to liberation.
After fascism and war, the RAF brought something new into
the society: The moment of a break with the system and the
historic flash of decisive opposition to the conditions which
structurally subject and exploit people and which brought about a
society in which the people are forced to fight against one
another. The struggle in the social cracks, which marked our
opposition, pushed a genuine social liberation forward; this
break with the system, a system in which profit is the subject
and people are the objects, and the desire for a life without the
lies and weight of this distorted society. Fed up with stooping
down, functioning, kicking, and being kicked. From rejection to
attack, to liberation.
The RAF Arose From The Hope For Liberation
Backed by the courage which emanated from the guerrillas
from the South to the rich nations of the North, the RAF came
about in the early 1970s in solidarity with liberation movements
in order to take up a common struggle. Millions of people saw in
the struggles of resistance and liberation around the globe a
chance for themselves as well. The armed struggle was a hope for
liberation in many parts of the world. In Germany, too, tens of
thousands of people were in solidarity with the struggles of the
militant organizations Second of June Movement, the Revolutionary
Cells (RZ), the RAF, and later Rote Zora. The RAF came about as a
result of the discussions of thousands of people in Germany who
began to think about armed struggle as a means to liberation in
the late 1960s and early 1970s. The RAF took up the struggle
against the state, a state which had never broken with its
national-socialist past following the liberation from Nazi
fascism.
The armed struggle was a rebellion against an authoritarian
form of society, against alienation and competition. It was a
rebellion for a new social and cultural reality. In the euphoria
of the global attempts at liberation, the time was right for a
decisive struggle which seriously aimed at overturning and no
longer accepting the pseudo-natural legitimacy of the system.
1975-77
With the 1975 occupation of the German embassy in Stockholm,
the RAF launched a phase during which it did everything possible
to liberate its prisoners from jail.
First came the "1977 Offensive", during which the RAF
kidnapped Schleyer. The RAF posed the question of power. This
began a radical and decisive attempt to push through an offensive
position for the revolutionary left against the state power. It
was exactly this which the state wanted to prevent. The explosive
escalation of the conflict, however, also came against the
background of German history: The continuity of Nazism in the
West German state, which the RAF attacked with its offensive.
Schleyer, a member of the SS during the Nazi regime, was,
like many Nazis in all levels of society, back in office with all
his honor intact. Nazis built careers in the West German state in
government positions, the courts, the police apparatus, the armed
forces, the media, and in major corporations. These anti-Semites,
racists, and genocidal murderers were often times the same people
responsible for crimes against humanity under the Nazis, and now
they were back among the powerful elite.
Schleyer worked towards the ends of the Nazis and the
capitalists to create a European economic region under German
dominance. The Nazis had wanted a Europe in which there were
neither struggles between industrial workers and capital nor any
resistance whatsoever to their system. They wanted to end the
class struggle by utilizing German workers or workers who could
"be made like Germans" and incorporating them into their society.
All others were to be enslaved to forced labor or systematically
destroyed in concentration camps.
With the liberation from Nazi fascism came the end of the
industrial destruction of people by the Nazis, but there was no
liberation from capitalism. After 1945, Schleyer worked towards
the same economic goals - in a more modernized form. The push
towards modernization came with the social democratic model of
the 1970s. As the chief of industry, Schleyer was continually
building up a system to contain social resistance to the
conditions of capital - for example, by locking out workers - and
to integrate workers into the system by means of negotiated
contracts for social security. This integration was meant to
incorporate the German portion of the society most of all,
meanwhile capital increasingly exploited immigrant workers and,
at the global level, dominated and exploited the people of the
southern hemisphere, which resulted in massive destruction from
hunger. The continuity of the system which Schleyer embodied - in
the 1970s during the period of the social democratic model - was
a crucial moment in the building and development of the Federal
Republic of Germany.
The Absolute Necessity To Approve Of All Measures Enacted By The
Crisis Staff And The Repression Of All Critical Voices, Going So
Far As To Try And Eliminate The Political Prisoners - These Were
The Same Reactionary Techniques Utilized By The Nazis
The actions of the 1977 offensive made it clear that there
were elements in the society which would in no way be integrated
into or controlled by the system. After the Nazis had eliminated
the resistance, the actions of the urban guerrilla groups after
1968 marked a return to a moment of class struggle, no longer
integrated to the ruling powers, in post-fascist West Germany.
The abduction of Schleyer heightened this aspect even more. The
state did not by any means react with panic, as has often been
said. The state reacted by suppressing all forms of expression
which did not support the state of emergency measures. The state
ordered all media to follow the line of the Crisis Staff, which
most willingly did. All who refused risked a confrontation with
the system. Intellectuals, who everyone knew did not sympathize
with the RAF, but who nonetheless contradicted the state of
emergency, were no longer safe from smear campaigns and
repression. The members of the government's Crisis Staff, some of
whom had military backgrounds, reacted with the same means in
1977 as the Nazis had done - although the Nazis, of course, went
to a far greater degree of barbarity - to prevent and wipe out
anti-capitalist and anti-fascist struggles. Under Nazi fascism,
and in 1977, the state's policies were aimed at eliminating any
space between total loyalty to the state in an emergency
situation on the one side and repression on the other.
When it became more clear that the state was prepared to
abandon Schleyer, the RAF gave its approval for a civilian
airliner to be hijacked in a guerrilla action as part of its own
offensive, and this made it appear as though the RAF no longer
differentiated between the top and bottom sectors of the society.
Although the attempt to free the prisoners from torture was
justified, the social-revolutionary dimension of the struggle was
now no longer visible. From the break with the system and the
rejection of the conditions in the society - the preconditions
for any revolutionary movement - had come a break with the
society as a whole.
>From The 1970s To The 1980s
The RAF had gambled everything and suffered a huge defeat.
In the process of struggle until the end of the 1970s, it became
clear that the RAF was left with just a few people from the
period of the 1968 upheavals. Many people from the '68 movement
had given up on movement politics and used their chances to build
careers. The RAF, as part of the global anti-imperialist
struggle, had taken up the war of liberation within West Germany.
The year 1977 had shown, however, that the RAF had neither the
political nor the military strength to direct the situation after
the subsequent reaction, the domestic war. It was right to make
use of the historical situation at the beginning of the 1970s and
open a new and previously unknown chapter of struggle in the
metropoles in the fight between imperialism and liberation. The
experiences of the defeat of 1977 revealed the limitations of the
old urban guerrilla concept of the RAF. There needed to be a new
concept of liberation.
The front concept of the 1980s was an attempt to achieve
this. The RAF wanted new ties and a basis for a joint struggle
with radical segments of the resistance movements which had
arisen in the late 1970s. But the front concept held on to many
of the basic notions of the old project from the 1970s. Armed
actions remained the central focus and the decisive moment of the
revolutionary process, which was seen as a war of liberation.
The Anti-Imperialist Front Of The 1980s
In the early 1980s, there were several struggles directed
against inhumane projects of the system, but which were also
expressions of the search for free forms of living. A social
revolt which sought a new social reality, now.
Thousands of people from these new movements went onto the
streets in the 1980s to protest the same thing which the RAF
sought to attack since 1979: The militarization policies of the
NATO states, which would enable the West to wage "one and a half"
wars simultaneously, the war against the Soviet Union and, at the
same time, warlike interventions against liberation movements and
revolutions, like in Nicaragua, where the first step towards
liberation from Western dictatorship had been taken.
The RAF assumed that they would not be alone during this new
phase. The concept was fueled by the hope that militant sectors
of various movements would join a common front. But this concept
failed to recognize that, in the given social situation, only
very few people saw any purpose in a liberation struggle on the
level of a war. The liberation struggle, whose central moment is
that of war, only makes sense when there is a possibility that
there are forces in the society who are willing to take it up and
expand it - at the very least, the radical elements of the
movements.
But even those who were in solidarity - and they were by no
means few in number - did not take up the struggle with this in
mind. A guerrilla war requires a perspective for expansion to a
level of struggle. This is necessary for the existential
development of the guerrilla, and we were not able to achieve
this.
The RAF's notion of armed action at the focal point of the
struggle placed less importance on the political and cultural
processes outside of the political-military struggle. Overcoming
this strategic direction, which had come from the fundamental
structure of the concept in the 1970s, should have been a
precondition for any new revolutionary project. The front could
not become this new liberation project to remove the distinctions
between the movements and the guerrilla.
In the 1980s, the RAF operated under the assumption that a
social-revolutionary approach lay in the attacks on the central
power structures of imperialism. With this approach, the RAF's
politics became increasingly abstract. This led to a split of
what should be united: anti-imperialism and social revolution.
The social revolutionary outlook disappeared from the theory and
praxis of the RAF. The orientation became reduced to the
anti-imperialist line, and the result of this was the
anti-imperialist front. The RAF was not a factor in social
questions. This was a fundamental mistake.
Subsuming all social and political content under the
anti-imperialist attack against the "entire system" produced
false divisions instead of a process of unity; and it led to a
lack of identity on concrete questions and the content of the
struggle.
The resonance within the society remained limited, because
the proposal to create consciousness in the society and to break
the consensus between the state and the society - a central
moment of any revolutionary process - disappeared. Instead, the
RAF sought to destroy the state's dominance of control by
increasing the intensity of its attacks. The priority shifted to
the military dimension. This emphasis remained throughout the
1980s and it defined our struggle.
We carried out attacks against NATO projects as well as the
military-industrial complex of capital, together with other
guerrilla groups in Western Europe; an attempt was made to forge
a West European Guerrilla Front comprised of the RAF, Action
Directe in France, and the Red Brigades/PCC in Italy.
The RAF concentrated - as far as its strength allowed - on
attacking NATO projects and, after 1984, the formation of a new
power bloc by West European states. The focus remained on our own
limited forces and those militants who closely identified with
the RAF. The attempt to form a front with other groups from the
resistance movement did not broaden into reality. For this
reason, the front collapsed, because too much energy was spent on
trying to adhere to the "correct" line. This narrow focus
prevented any political dynamic from being created. Instead of a
new horizon, which seemed possible given the variety of
resistance in the early 1980s, the rigidness and narrowness of
the politics increased as the decade wore on.
There was a great discrepancy between the willingness of RAF
militants to give everything in the confrontation and the
ability, at the same time, to seek new ideas for the process of
liberation. In this respect, very little was risked.
During this time - the concept of the 1980s was by then a
few years old already - there was also development on our side,
which was characterized by demonstratively coldly driven
politics, which was little more than "making politics", and which
was far removed from anything having to do with liberation.
But this was also a time when the RAF and its prisoners,
despite all the difficulties and defeats, showed with their
determination that they had remained uncorrupted by the course of
history and remained committed to changing the conditions against
the will of the ruling powers. This gave others hope as well and
drew in people who wanted to struggle for collectivity and
togetherness and against isolation and loneliness in the society.
The struggle by the prisoners against isolation detention and for
their regroupment, their struggle for dignity and freedom, which
other people longed for as well, was something many people could
identify with. The determination and lack of compromise by the
RAF and the prisoners against the ruling powers stood in the face
of all attempts by the authorities to suppress all struggles for
another way of living.
We, Most Of Whom Became Organized In The RAF Very Late...
...joined in the hope that our struggle could contribute new
impulses for global revolt in the changed conditions. We sought
changes for the liberation struggle, for a new path on which we
could join ourselves with others. And we wanted to give something
back to those who had taken up the struggle before us, and who
had died or been sent to prison. The struggle in illegality had a
very attractive affect on us. We wanted to break though our
borders and be free of everything which confined us within the
system.
Armed struggle in illegality was, for us, nothing more than
the only possible and necessary way for the liberation process.
But also, especially considering the crisis of the left all
around the world, we wanted to further develop the urban
guerrilla as a possibility and keep illegality as a terrain for
the liberation process. But we recognized then that that alone
would not be enough. The guerrilla, too, would have to change.
Our hope was to create new ties between the guerrilla and
other sectors of the resistance in the society. To do this, we
sought a new proposal, in which all struggles from the city
neighborhoods to the guerrilla could stand together.
It Was Important For Us, Following The Collapse Of East Germany,
To Bring Our Struggle In Tune With The New Existing Social
Situation
We wanted to take steps to relate to all those people whose
dreams had ended with the collapse of the DDR and its annexation
into West Germany. Some had realized that "real existing
socialism" was not liberation after all. Others, who were part of
the opposition to real existing socialism in East Germany, had
dreamed of something different from either capitalism or real
existing socialism. Most people who had lived in the DDR and who
had demanded reunification with West Germany began to examine the
new, depressing social situation which had come about, with
social security measures having been drastically done away with.
We wanted to relate to all those people, during this historical
situation which was unknown to everyone, who had struggled for
liberation in confrontation with the West German state and also
those who were fed up with the racist and completely reactionary
developments unfolding in the now non-existent East Germany. We
did not want to abandon these people to resignation, or to the
right-wing.
Later on we saw that the dimension of this change could only
result in a new and internationalist liberation project if the
new reality in both East and West were dealt with. The RAF, with
its roots in the history of resistance in the old West Germany,
could not achieve this.
The Attempt To Anchor The RAF In The 1990s Was An Unrealistic
Proposal
We wanted to transform a concept which had arisen from the
1968 movement into a new, social revolutionary and
internationalist concept in tune with the 1990s. This was a time
when we sought for something new, but - weighed down by the
dogmas of the past years - we did not go radically enough beyond
the old concept. So we made the same mistakes which all of us
made after 1977: We overestimated the support for this continuity
of our conception of struggle. Fundamentally, the danger exists
of discrediting armed struggle when it is maintained without
explaining how it concretely advances the revolutionary process
and leads to a strengthening of the liberation struggle. It is
important to deal with this issue in a responsible manner,
because otherwise the armed struggle becomes discredited - even
for another situation, in which it is needed again.
The crisis, when the left reached its limits in the 1980s
and began partially to disband, made our attempt to link the RAF
into some new project an unrealistic proposal. We were much too
late - even to transform the RAF after a period of reflection.
Criticism and self-criticism do not aim at ending something,
rather at further developing it. In short, the end of the RAF is
not the result of our process of (self-)criticism and reflection,
rather because it is necessary, because the concept of the RAF
does not contain the necessary elements from which something new
can arise.
When we examine this segment of our history today in light
of the historical process in general, the attempt to bring the
RAF back into a strong political process was more than anything
just the prolongation of something which had long since had the
perspective of a project at its end. We needed to realize that
the form of struggle, above all else, was what had remained from
the old concept. There was no new meaning, something which could
offer a perspective of an alternative to the labor society and
its inhumane, profit-oriented economy, something which could
serve as the foundation for the liberation struggles of the
future and bring many people together.
Following our defeat in 1993, we knew that we couldn't just
keep going on as we had since we began the break with our
struggle in 1992. We were sure that we had set the correct goals
for ourselves, but that we had made some serious tactical
mistakes. We wanted to think things over one more time with those
who were in prison, and take a new step together.
But in the end, the very hurtful split of one group of the
prisoners from us, who declared us to be enemies, completely
erased the very conditions which had given rise to the RAF in the
first place - solidarity and the struggle for collectivity.
The Process Of Our Own Liberation...
...was important to us, and yet we always seemed to become
stagnant. We desired collectivity just as we desired the joint
overcoming of all forms of alienation. But the contradiction
between war and liberation often got pushed off or talked away by
us. Revolutionary war also produces alienation and structures of
authority, which is in contradiction to liberation. Dealing with
that, so that it does not become established as a structure, is
only possible if there is consciousness about it. Otherwise it
goes without saying that new structures of authority will arise,
as well as a hardening in both politics and relationships. That
fact showed itself during the often changing hierarchical
structures of the front in the 1980s and the authoritarian
tendencies during the split in 1993. And it showed itself during
the relapse into mainstream analysis and thought, which, in the
history of the RAF, led to many people who struggled here no
longer being able to see a justification for total revolt any
longer.
It Was A Strategic Mistake Not To Build Up A Political-Social
Organization Alongside The Illegal, Armed Organization
In no phase of our history was an outreaching, political
organization realized in addition to the political-military
struggle. The concept of the RAF knew only the armed struggle,
with a focus on the political-military attack.
In the formative communiques of the RAF up to the mid 1970s,
this important question was never even posed, nor could it have
been. In the metropoles in general, and especially in Germany,
there was no previous experience with an urban guerrilla. Many
things had be discovered and learned along the way, and shown to
be true or false in practice. Nevertheless, there was never an
orientation to the decisive question, whether the project of
liberation can be fulfilled by an illegal organization and the
armed struggle - or if the building up of the guerrilla should go
hand in hand with the expansion of political structures which can
grow in the base processes. In January 1976, our imprisoned
comrades wrote about this, stating that only an armed struggle
from illegality could be a practical-critical opposition to
imperialism. The concept in the May 1982 paper also maintained
this position, despite all the contradictions and despite the
fact that it was an attempt to find a new political association
together with other people. Because this concept, too, did not
break with the notion that the armed struggle should be central
in the metropoles. The political activities which arose from the
front process got bogged down in communicating the attacks within
the structures of the radical left.
The lack of a political organization for more than 20 years
resulted in the continual weakening of the political process. The
over-estimation of the political-military actions in the
metropoles of the last few decades was the precondition for this
concept. The RAF based its strategy on armed struggle, in
different ways during different phases, but at no point did it
arrive at the point where militant actions aim at: The tactical
option of a comprehensive liberation strategy. This weakness also
led to the fact that our organization could not transform itself
after two decades. The preconditions for placing the focus of the
struggle on the political level - which is what we wanted to do
in 1992 - were not at hand. But, in the end, that was simply the
result of fundamental strategic mistakes. The lack of a
political-social organization was a decisive mistake by the RAF.
It wasn't the only mistake, but it's one important reason why the
RAF could not become a stronger liberation project, and in the
end the necessary preconditions were lacking to build up a
fighting counter-movement searching for liberation, one which
could have a strong influence on social developments. The
mistakes inherent in the concept, such as these, which
accompanied the RAF throughout its entire history show that the
concept of the RAF can no longer be relevant in the liberation
processes of the future.
The End Of The RAF Comes At A Time When The Whole World Is
Confronted With The Effects Of Neo-Liberalism - The International
Struggle Against Displacement, Alienation, And For A Just And
Fundamentally Different Social Reality Is In Opposition To The
Entire Development Of Capitalism
Global and inner-societal relations are becoming heightened
in the turbulence of the historical developments following the
end of real existing socialism. Nevertheless, it is not a
contradiction for us to end our project while still recognizing
the necessity that everything which is useful and possible must
be done so that a world without capitalism can come about, one in
which the emancipation of humanity can be realized. Considering
the devastating effects of the collapse of real existing
socialism world wide, and the mass poverty of millions of people
in the former Soviet Union, it's not enough to talk today of the
chances which have been brought about by the end of real existing
socialism. Nevertheless, we recognize that true liberation was
not possible under the model of real existing socialism. It is
possible to draw consequences from the anti-emancipatory
experiences with the authoritarian and state bureaucratic
concepts of real existing socialism and to recognize future paths
to liberation.
With the collapse of real existing socialism, the
competition between systems ended, meaning that the proponents of
the capitalist system no longer feel the need to make their
system appear to be "better". In the absence of an ideological
check on capital, a process of global unleashing of capital has
resulted: All of humanity are to be subjected to the needs of
capital. Neo-liberalism is the ideological and economic
foundation for a world wide push towards optimization and the
evaluation of people and nature according to the demands of
capital. Representatives of the system call this "reform" or
"modernization".
It is more than clear that the present stage of the
development of the system will bring an overwhelming majority of
humanity further social and existential difficulty. For the
majority of the people in the world, neo-liberalism adds a new
dimension to the threats on their lives.
In the struggle for political hegemony and economic power,
only those economies survive which increasingly orient their
capacities towards the blank profits of the corporations and an
ever smaller segment of the society. The side effects of this
system lead to deep changes within societies. Furthermore,
increasing poverty and the increasing brutalization of a further
unleashing of wars and barbarity. If their own economic and
political interests are at stake, the rich nations will intervene
in these conflicts with their own wars, in order to secure
"unlimited access to raw materials" in the earth and to enhance
their positions of power. They will never concern themselves with
actually solving the problems of people, rather they wish to
control the destruction which their system sets into motion so as
to squeeze out profits for the few.
It is not a contradiction, rather it is a part of the logic
of the system that transnational corporations are more powerful
than ever, with larger profits than ever, in this phase of
political systems in crisis all around the world, the breaking
apart of societies, and the impoverishment of wider sectors of
the metropolitan masses who had previously been spared from
material problems.
Paradoxically, the successful maximization of profits by
capital and the process of social collapse called forth by it
seems to be pushing capitalism to its limits. This development
threatens, above all else, to result in further outbreaks of
barbarity: From the independent dynamic of system development,
this negative process will continue, until such time as there is
a proposal for liberation which can call forth a new force to
overturn the system. But today, there is not only the defeat of
the historic left and the violence of the global social
relations, there is also a wealth of rebel movements who can draw
on the experiences of the global history of resistance.
In this global development, capitalism, in the metropoles as
well, tries to buy social peace by means of "welfare systems".
Instead, however, increasingly large segments of the society
become marginalized when they are no longer needed in the
production process. The "world power" and the "welfare state" can
no longer exist together under one roof. In Europe, for example,
the old "welfare states" are coming under the political and
economic hegemony of Germany, with Germany serving as a racist
frontline state in an entire continent which is turning into a
police state.
The police and military are deployed against those fleeing
from poverty, war, and oppression. A society full of prisons.
Cops and security forces tossing the homeless out of the consumer
shopping areas, as well as youths and anyone else who upsets the
regular customers and the bourgeoisie. The re-introduction of
closed facilities as prisons for kids. The attempt to exert total
control over refugees in the near future by means of computer
chip cards, with other social groups coming later on. Police
batons and weapons against the foreseeable revolts by those
pushed to the edges. Exclusion, repression, and displacement.
Even the total perfection of humans by means of genetic
engineering can no longer be considered unthinkable.
Exclusion and repression through a lack of social feeling
within the society as well is normal both here and elsewhere.
Racism from below threatens the lives of millions, which in
Germany is the murderous mark of the historical continuity which
this society carries with it. The exclusion of handicapped
persons from above and aggression against them from below are
expressions of the day to day brutality of the society. Only
people who don't contradict the efficiency of the economic system
are desired, as well as anything which can be capitalized.
Anything else which is outside of the needs of the capitalist
society are given no place. The great many people who can no
longer live here, or who no longer want to - and there are many
people who chose to end their lives every day - speak of the
emptiness of the system and the hardness in the society.
The marketing of people and the violence in the home and on
the streets, these are the violence of suppression, the social
coldness against others, the violence against women - all of
these are expressions of patriarchal and racist conditions.
The RAF always stood in contradiction to the conscious
mentality of a large segment of this society. That is a necessary
moment in the process of liberation, because it's not only the
conditions which are reactionary, rather the conditions produce
reactionary character in people, and this continually suppresses
their ability to become liberated. Without a doubt, it is a
matter of existence to resist and fight against racism and all
forms of oppression. Future outlines for liberation must be
measured according to this, and they must find a key to unlocking
the closed, reactionary consciousness and awakening the desire
for emancipation and liberation.
The Reality Of The World Today Proves That It Would Have Been
Better If The Global Wave Of Revolt, Which The RAF Was A Part Of,
Had Been Successful
The global wave of revolt, which the RAF arose from as well,
did not succeed, which does not mean that the destructive and
unjust developments up until today can't still be turned around.
The fact that we still don't see sufficient answers to these
developments weighs more heavily upon us than the mistakes which
we made. The RAF came from the revolts of the last decades, which
did not exactly foresee how the system would develop, but which
at least recognized the threat which it posed. We knew that this
system would allow fewer and fewer people around the world to
live their lives with dignity. And we also knew that this system
seeks total access to people, so that they subjugate themselves
to the values of the system and make them their own. Our
radicalism sprung from these realizations. For us, we had nothing
to lose with this system. Our struggle - the violence with which
we resisted these relations - had a difficult, a heavy side. The
liberation war has its shadows, too. Attacking people in their
capacity as functionaries for the state is a contradiction to the
thoughts and feelings of all revolutionaries in the world - it
contradicts their notion of liberation. Even when there are
phases in the liberation process when this is viewed as
necessary, because there are people who desire injustice and
oppression and who seek to defend their own power or the power of
others. Revolutionaries desire a world in which no one has the
right to decide who may live and who may not. Nevertheless, our
violence upset some people in an irrational way. The real terror
is the normality of the economic system.
The RAF Was Not The Answer For Liberation - It Was One Aspect Of
It
Although many questions remain open today, we are sure that
from the liberation ideas of the future the seed of free
relations can arise, if it truly does embrace the variety which
is needed to overturn the conditions. It is useless to speak of
"the correct line", the aspect of life outside of which
everything else seems inefficient, just as it is to seek a
revolutionary subject. The project of liberation in the future
will know many subjects and a variety of aspects and content, and
this had nothing to do with being random. We need a new proposal
in which seemingly very different individuals or social groups
can be subjects, and yet still be together. In this sense, the
liberation project of the future will not contain the old
concepts of the German left since 1968, not those of the RAF or
other groups. The joy of building an encompassing,
anti-authoritarian, and yet binding organizing project of
liberation lies before us still, sadly too little attempted up
until now. We see that there are people all over the world who
are trying this, to finds ways out of the vacuum.
We draw hope from the fact that everywhere, even in the most
remote corners of this country - where the cultural hegemony of
the fascist right is no longer a seldom thing - there are people
who have the courage to join together against racism and
neo-nazism, to defend themselves and others and to struggle.
It is necessary to recognize that we are at a dead end and
we need to find ways out. So it makes sense to abandon things
which can only be carried forward in a theoretical sense. Our
decision to end something is the expression of our search for new
answers. We know that we are joined with many other people around
the world in this search.
There will be many future discussions until all the
experiences have been brought together and we have a realistic
and reflective picture of history.
We want to be part of a joint liberation. We want to make
some of our own processes recognizable, and we want to learn from
others.
This excludes the notion of a vanguard which leads the
struggle. Although the concept of being the "vanguard" had been
dropped from our understanding of the struggle for years, the old
concept of the RAF would not allow this to be actually done away
with. That's another reason why we had to cut ourselves loose
from this concept.
The Guerrillas In The Metropoles Brought The War Back Into The
Belly Of The Beast, To The Imperialist States Which Waged Their
Wars Outside Their Own Centers Of Power
Despite everything which we could have done better, it was
fundamentally correct to oppose the conditions in West Germany
and to seek to wage resistance to the continuity of German
history. We wanted to open up chances for revolutionary struggle
in the metropoles as well.
The RAF took up its own social terrain of struggle and
sought to develop it for more than two decades, a terrain which
historically knew little resistance, lacked a movement against
fascism, and which was characterized by a population loyal to
fascism and barbarism. Unlike in other countries, in Germany,
liberation from fascism had to come from the outside. There was
no self-determined break with fascism "from below" here. There
were very few people in this country who resisted fascism; too
few with any trace of humanity. Those who struggled in the Jewish
resistance, in the communist resistance - in whatever
anti-fascist resistance - were right to struggle. And they will
always be right. They were the few glimmers of light in the
history of this country since 1933, when fascism began to kill
off all that was social in this society.
In contrast to these people, the trend in this society was
always more or less to accept what those in power said; authority
determined what is legitimate. In the social destruction of this
society, which was a precondition for the genocide by the Nazis,
the indifference to any other essential moment remains today. The
RAF broke with German tradition after Nazi fascism and refused to
grant it any legitimacy. The RAF came from the revolt against it.
It not only rejected this national and social continuity, it
waged an internationalist struggle in place of this negation, a
struggle whose praxis rejected the ruling conditions in the
German state and attacked the military structures of its NATO
allies. All over the world, this alliance, in whose hierarchy the
USA was the driving force and the unquestioned leader, sought to
defeat social rebellions and liberation movements by means of the
military and war. The guerrillas in the metropoles brought the
war, which the imperialists waged outside their centers of power,
back into the belly of the beast.
We answered the violent conditions with the violence of
revolt.
It is not possible for us to look back on a smooth and
perfect history. But we tried to do something, and in doing so we
overstepped many of the ruling powers' laws and the internalized
boundaries of bourgeois society.
The RAF was not able to point out the path to liberation.
But it contributed for two decades to the fact that there are
still thoughts about liberation today. Putting the system in
question was and still is legitimate, as long as there is
dominance and oppression instead of freedom, emancipation, and
dignity for everyone in the world.
There are nine former militants from the struggle of the RAF
still in prison. Although the struggle for liberation is far from
over, this conflict has become part of history. We support all
efforts which seek to get the prisoners from this conflict out of
prison upright.
At this time, we'd like to greet and thank all of those who
offered us solidarity on our path for the past 28 years, who
supported us in various ways, and who struggled together with us
in the ways that they could. The RAF was determined to contribute
to the struggle for liberation. This revolutionary intervention
in this country and in this history would never have taken place
if many people, not organized in the RAF themselves, hadn't given
a part of themselves to this struggle. A common path lies behind
all of us. We hope that we will all find ourselves together again
on the unknown and winding paths of liberation.
Our thoughts are with all those around the world who lost
their lives in the struggle against domination and for
liberation. The goals which they strived for are the goals of
today and tomorrow - until all relations have been overturned in
which a person is but a lowly object, a downcast, abandoned, and
contemptuous being. It is sad that so many gave their lives, but
their deaths were not in vain. They live on in the struggles and
the future liberation.
We will never forget the comrades of the Popular Front for
the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) who lost their lives in the
fall of 1977 in an act of internationalist solidarity, seeking to
liberate the political prisoners. Today we would especially like
to remember all those who chose to give their all to the armed
struggle here, and who lost their lives.
Our memories and all our respect goes out to those whose
names we do not know, because we never knew them, and to
Petra Schelm
Georg von Rauch
Thomas Weissbecker
Holger Meins
Katharina Hammerschmidt
Ulrich Wessel
Siegfried Hausner
Werner Sauber
Brigitte Kuhlmann
Wilfried Bose
Ulrike Meinhof
Jan-Carl Raspe
Gudrun Ensslin
Andreas Baader
Ingrid Schubert
Willi-Peter Stoll
Michael Knoll
Elisabeth van Dyck
Juliane Plambeck
Wolfgang Beer
Sigurd Debus
Johannes Timme
Jurgen Peemoeller
Ina Siepmann
Gerd Albartus
Wolfgang Grams
The revolution says:
I was
I am
I will be again
Red Army Fraction
March 1998
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Arm The Spirit is an autonomist/anti-imperialist information
collective based in Toronto, Canada. Our focus includes a wide
variety of material, including political prisoners, national
liberation struggles, armed communist resistance, anti-fascism,
the fight against patriarchy, and more. We regularly publish our
writings, research, and translation materials on our listserv
called ATS-L. For more information, contact:
Arm The Spirit
P.O. Box 6326, Stn. A
Toronto, Ontario
M5W 1P7 Canada
E-mail: ats@etext.org
WWW: http://burn.ucsd.edu/~ats/
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