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Staying Alive: Sensory Deprivation, Torture, and the Struggle Behind Bars

By 1972, practically the whole founding generation of the RAF were behind bars. Yet there was still a second generation and a third generation. Why? Primarily because of the conditions of imprisonment and state-organized terror. Dieter Kunzelmann former K.1 Communard[1] Having captured the ideological leadership of the RAF, the West German state set in motion the second element of their counterinsurgency project: one which would eventually become known as the “Stammheim Model.”……… Read the rest

On the Recent Statement by Some Former Members of the RAF (André Moncourt and J. Smith, May 2010)

The events of 1977 that would come to be known as the “German Autumn” actually came at the end of a Red Army Faction offensive that had begun on April 7 of that year with the assassination of Attorney General Siegfried Buback, widely considered to be the state figure primarily responsible for the torture and murder of revolutionary prisoners.……… Read the rest

“We Wanted to Push the Revolutionary Process Forward” junge Welt interview with Helmut Pohl and Rolf Clemens Wagner

The interview was conducted by Rüdiger Göbel, Peter Rau, Wera Tichter, and Gerd Schumann. junge Welt: The media has squeezed everything possible out of the 2007 anniversary of the “German Autumn.” The events of 1977 came to a bitter end. The way it is being depicted on TV, on the radio, and in the print media constitutes a sort of hysterical coming to terms with the Red Army Faction (RAF): The Stammheim Night (Spiegel), a series; The Terror Years (Die Zeit), a special issue; The Bourgeois Children’s War, a primetime ARD documentary.……… Read the rest

4. The Stammheim “Suicides”

The Stammheim “Suicides” (1) In previous installments we have seen how the Red Army Faction survived the arrest of its leading members Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, Ulrike Meinhof, Holger Meins, and Jan Carl Raspe in 1972. Over the next years these individuals and other RAF political prisoners were subjected to isolation and sensory deprivation torture, and yet through the strategic use of hunger strikes managed to inspire a new generation of guerilla fighters on the outside.……… Read the rest

3. German Autumn, Bitter Defeat 

As we saw in our previous installments, by late summer 1977 the Red Army Faction was poised to carry out its most ambitious gambit to free its members being held captive in West German prisons. Dozens of guerillas had spent years in isolation, at times subjected to sensory deprivation torture, and yet they continued to fight for their political identity, and indeed their own sanity, through hunger strikes which mobilized support on the outside.……… Read the rest

2. The Summer of 77: The Prisoners’ Struggle Heats Up 

  As we saw in yesterday’s installment, by 1977 the Red Army Faction had shown that it had survived the arrests of its founding members five years earlier. Successfully countering isolation, psychological conditioning and sensory deprivation torture, the prisoners had in fact inspired their own successors, and through the strategic use of hunger strikes had come to symbolize resistance to the West German state and U.S.……… Read the rest