Monika Berberich Responds to the Alleged RZ Letter

Only one thing is clear about this letter: its state security function, its function for Buback’s extermination strategy against us in the form it is now taking: psychological warfare to destroy the raf’s politics.

That is to say, what is clear in it is the treachery of a section of the undogmatic left, their capitulation to Buback, and their total subservience to his objectives. Even if the letter doesn’t come from the rz, Info-bug published and distributed it and nobody from that section of the left did anything to prevent it. The lies, falsehoods, and denunciations in this letter are nothing new, nor is the fact that Info published it. But this letter is different, because it doesn’t come from a prisoner support group, but from the rz (in any event, that’s where it claims to come from)—an organization that struggles—and this gives it a totally different kind of credibility and authority.

The function of this letter is to disorient those people in the undogmatic scene who want something other than the private, insubstantial screwing around of the sponti groups, those who really want to know something about us, who want to orient themselves around us, to struggle or to support us. It also serves to let Buback know that the section of the left that wrote this letter and those who find it accurate will not resist his efforts to liquidate the raf’s politics and the prisoners, to kill Andreas, to completely seal the holes, etc. But not just that: it also tells him that this left is not prepared to support a hunger strike that we believe is necessary; rather it is ready to support and is already supporting the creation of propaganda to justify his countermeasures.

The disorientation campaign unfolds following the pattern of psychological warfare—through allegations and lies about us. They don’t talk about the state’s repression, just like when the bourgeois media publish state security information about us: “there aren’t many left lawyers remaining to defend revolutionary prisoners”; the support groups disband because of police repression; the Informationsdienst writer can only respond to criticism like the ultimate bourgeois journalist—aggrieved and offended, as if his article was a favor to us.

Info-bug demands we respond to an insignificant Red Aid/Prisoners Collective article. The sponti left, as a result of its many splits and its totally defensive posture, is incapable of grasping the objective and subjective circumstances of the struggle, and is incapable of drawing on the facts and coming to an accurate appraisal of the balance of power. Instead it acts on the basis of a blind, narrow-minded, apolitical self-assessment, or else in an undifferentiated and ill-conceived way on the basis of various concepts and forms of struggle and mobilization. Then there’s the claim that it’s our job to offer revolutionary commentary and assessments of other groups and popular mobilizations. (“What’s your position regarding the politics of the action…”) Solidarity is not a question of politics and consciousness, but of feelings (“don’t feel that they are your comrades”), etc.

All of this has the objective of telling the comrades being written about that they don’t need to start struggling, to start figuring things out for themselves, or to support us as long as we “greet it with silence” and “don’t put our cards on the table.” It has the objective of preventing the potential mobilization and radicalization that could develop as a result of a new hunger strike. The support for Buback’s extermination strategy is based on the complete acceptance of all the state’s allegations about us, which make up the core of the psychological warfare being waged against us: that the raf has a gang structure, that we are hierarchically structured, “tools” and of course “those at the top”—that is implicit in all the bullshit in this document, in which they characterize their relationship to us in this way: “to all raf comrades” (in italics); “We will be used and subordinated…”; “…blindly praying that they meet your rigid demands…”; “…we appear to be nothing more to you than a tool to be discarded…”; “… as a result many comrades can only then be mobilized…”; “…mobilizations are the result of psychological pressure…”; “our solidarity will be more a torment…”; etc..

Then, with teeth bared: we’re “mistaken,” with “foolish ideas,” which have “totally overshadowed our relationships and experiences”—this is the babble of psycho-cops; we have only ourselves to blame if we’re isolated (“…you have isolated yourselves…”)—the Federal Constitutional Court said the same thing in their ruling, in which they legally sanctioned torture; and finally—and this is consistent—we are “throwing away our lives”—which is an endorsement of the state’s claim that Ulrike committed suicide—as with the deaths of Holger, Siegfried, and Katharina, who are “themselves responsible.”

In Müller’s case, it took state security three years using isolation, torture, and brainwashing to bring him to the point where he presented this idiotic ss[1] construct as his own experience—also precisely on the theme chosen here: the structure of the group. These leftists arrive at these conclusions on their own, facing no concrete threat, just their own naked fear. Their solidarity with us could cost them the ridiculous privileges that they cultivate in their idyllic counterculture.

One must also understand the method adopted in this letter, with its introduction and explanation about why it was written now, or rather why it wasn’t written sooner (“an unrealistically hostile response—objective cop/state security action”) which is meant to suggest that this letter can in no way be that, and which thereby pre-empts any critique which says that that is in fact exactly what it is.

Given the way the letter is constructed, precisely following the pattern and techniques of psychological warfare, it is possible that it is not only objectively a state security product.

Monika Berberich
January 10, 1977