To Those Who Struggle Alongside Us

Today, we recognize that the shooting of the GI, in the concrete situation in the summer, was a mistake that blocked the effectiveness of the attack against the Air Base [1] and the debate about the politico-military purpose of the action, as well as the overall offensive. It is clear that the shooting of the GI represented an escalation that, in and of itself, had a strategic quality, for it meant intensifying the war against US imperialism, in the sense that, for us, all things connected to the US forces are everywhere and at all times legitimate targets for military attack. This step cannot be politically justified as a “practical necessity”, but must be based on a strategic quality. However, it does not correspond to the subjective development of the resistance and the objective situation that exists here today.

The attack against the Air Base had a specific goal, which was to attack the centers, the bases of the US war machine, as well as those troops who participate directly in the war between revolution and imperialism; meaning the intervention troops and special forces that prepare and carry out open and clandestine military operations against the liberation struggles in the Third World, the soldiers who carry out massacres in the Third World.

The contradiction regarding the objectives, which can only function as a barrier to discussion, blurred the meaning of the action. And, naturally – and this was exacerbated because we sent the ID card without comment – we supplied State Security and a bunch of arseholes on the left with ammunition for their attempt to alienate the resistance movement from the shooting. Our mistake was used against the unity of the revolutionary front, towards which both the resistance and ourselves had made a decisive step during the winter [2].

That this barrier has been addressed and the offensive has led to important discussions geared towards further development indicates how deep the process of unity already is, as well as how necessary a common political exchange is, an area in which we ourselves must do a better job.

We want to use this opportunity to talk about the action against the Air Base and, in this connection, also about the attack against the SHAPE School in Oberammergua [3].

We developed these actions around the resistance here, so as to advance the West European struggle against US-NATO military strategy, for which West Europe serves as a strategic centre for blitzkrieg and atomic war preparations. Our basis was the continuity and further development of attacks against the military strategy given the qualitative and quantitative evolution of resistance in the FRG and West Europe. The resistance has become aware that military force is the most extreme policy option available to the imperialist chain of states, to which all political, economic and social means are suited. The resistance has also become aware that this determines social developments in the NATO countries and is the violent constraint which establishes the parameters of the State apparatus, of the structure of the world market and, in this connection, also determines the solution to the crises here, and assures the success of the imperialist formation. In short, the general crisis of imperialism is to be resolved in an offensive to re-establish their global domination.

Against this, the resistance all across West Europe, and above all in the FRG, has increased in strength in its militant political campaigns and in its common work around the attacks of the guerrilla, and we have taken the first step towards the unity of the anti-imperialist struggle in West Europe. With these strengths as the subjective political basis for the leap forward, we will continue to escalate our attacks. The imperialist formation has a highly developed military strategy. What they want is a flexible military commando, so as to be able to wage war on all fronts simultaneously. The NATO officers at the SHAPE School are trained for that purpose, and the attack should be viewed in this light.

The struggle against the imperialist war strategy is our direct material contribution and an option available to us in the international war of liberation. THE REVOLUTIONARY FRONT IN WEST EUROPE CAN HAMPER THE MACHINE, WHICH WANTS TO INCREASE AND ESTABLISH ITS POWER WITHIN AND OUTSIDE OF THE CENTERS, AND CREATE, IN THIS STRUGGLE, CONSCIOUSNESS AND A NEW RESISTANCE TO THE SYSTEM, A SYSTEM THAT HAS AS ITS VERY NATURE ANNIHILATION.

We based the attack against the Air Base on the concrete balance of forces, as revealed by the reaction of the imperialist chain to the winter offensive.

IT WAS THE REACTION OF THE UNIFIED SYSTEM TO THE APPEARANCE OF THE REVOLUTIONARY FRONT IN WEST EUROPE.

On the basis of the dialectic of struggle, the strategic breakthrough of the West European guerrilla in connection with and as one result of the new point of departure of the resistance here; the unity of the resistance, the prisoners and the guerrilla; the leap forward in the struggle in the NATO states in the West Europe; and because they are politically incapable of halting the development in the metropolitan societies of conditions suitable to their overthrow… Because of all this, they were forced to expose themselves and to react as a unified system, to act together with the goal of liquidating the revolutionary resistance, following a militarily conceived line.

The NATO Crisis Committee was the center of the decision making process. The intervention of Schultz [4] in the West European governments, Spandolini’s frantic trips as the Chairman of the Council of Europe during this time, the statements from the NATO Ambassador and from Soares, Mitterand and Kohl [5]… these are the political proof that the West European governments have been integrated into the American strategy of prevention and retaliation against the international revolutionary struggle. The conversion to this unified imperialist logic here was based on the decision to murder the prisoners, so as to deal a heavy blow to the political victory of the front.

That was, for us, the subjective and objective situation, on the basis of which we decided to carry out our next attack against the US military strategy, against the core of its reactionary structure and of its political expression, the standardized State policy of the imperialist chain against the revolutionary struggle in West Europe and the Third World.

BECAUSE IT IS THIS STRATEGY AND THIS UNIFORM POWER STRUGGLE THAT CLASHES WITH THE RESISTANCE AND THE REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLE HERE, AND IT IS ON THIS THE LEVEL THAT THE CONFRONTATION PASSES THE POINT OF NO RETURN.

Since the winter, the development of the counter-revolutionary war here has exposed the psychological war being waged against the resistance – “terror in the streets,” “two hundred legal RAF members,” “the four levels of the RAF,”[6] “RAF on Hafenstrasse,” [7] etc. – and also against the guerrilla – “criminal murderers-animals-the plague.” It aims to discredit the revolutionary resistance and separate it politically from the people, thereby creating a climate in which the State is given a free hand to carry out any and all repressive measures. This is also why nothing appears in the media about the motives and goals of the resistance, only about “terror and blood;” nothing is said about the murder of Günther Sare [8], but instead the focus is on the “mob in the streets” and the “new terrorism.” Nor, if it actually gets to that point, should anything be said about the massacre of the Palestinians by the imperialists, but instead the focus should be on the “bloodthirsty lunatics” if the combatants take the war back to where it has been planned and received its political blessings, to those who supply the weapons to the Zionist army. They want, through psychological warfare, to establish an identification amongst the people in the metropole, so that all those who struggle against imperialism are outlawed and are turned over for “uncontrolled” annihilation, to enforce the escalation of police terror against the resistance – from deliberate attacks to murder – with hundreds of preliminary hearings and mass arrests, to enforce the State Security project, through which permanent Kontaktsperre [9] will be imposed on the prisoners step by step, and by which the identity and the struggle of the prisoners will be criminalized – “RAF in prison,” “the hunger strike is a RAF action” – and with it that of all those that struggle alongside them.

The totality of the terror is an example of the political agony of the imperialist system in crisis. It is evidence that they have already lost politically in their struggle against the revolution, so now all they can do is try to use violence to prevent revolutionary politics from spreading further. They know that if the front grows here in West Europe, if it continues to develop its politico-military capacity to act and succeeds in guiding the confrontation between the resistance movement and the State, a crack will open in their project for the formation of West Europe, a crack that could create real friction and shake the West European center. Since the winter, they have acted on the basis of thepossibility that the political-practical process that the West European front has established could, in the long term, strengthen and broaden the new consciousness. This is the definitive point from which they act.

THE FRONT CAN ONLY HALT THE FASCIST ADVANCE OF THESE STATES IF IT ATTACKS THEM ON ALL LEVELS AND IN ALL SECTORS, IN ORDER TO SHARPEN THE CONFRONTATION AND MAKE IT MORE GENUINE.

Since the winter, this has been the issue for us: to grasp the core of the experience, that the offensive has broken through, that the unity of resistance has become possible in the political conception and practice of the revolutionary struggle, in the orientation of revolutionary politics. It is struggle itself that mobilizes and accelerates the decisions, that allows us to make these leaps forward and that points the way for everyone, that achieves the beginning of resistance against the individual projects of the states.

And in the winter, it also became clear how fed up the resistance was with reformism. Wherever revolutionary resistance is the decisive orientation, all reformism is shattered and shows itself for what it is: crisis management against radical change, a factor in all confrontations between the resistance and the State here. The reformists have nothing more to say to those who take their protest and resistance seriously. The alternatives, whether green, red-green [10]or the morass of left alternatives, become increasingly insignificant with every confrontation and crumble more and more with every clash between the resistance and the State. So, the reformists will be recognized more and more clearly for what they always were: functionaries who support the ruling system, advance outposts of the State within the mass movement. All they do is reintegrate the resistance into the State and reinforce the people’s sense of powerlessness, so that nothing can be done against the fascist State, against the system’s claim to total power. In response to questions that go to the heart of the State’s power, they give the standard State rationalizations, because they no longer have political explanations. No more room to maneuver and no more fuel for the flames of “increased democracy and participation, increased quality of life,” etc.; only cops, BGS [11], water cannons, surveillance, arrests, truncheons and controls. This was the experience of many people in the resistance movement during the confrontations of the last few years; and on the basis of this experience, the possibility for the further development of revolutionary politics grew.

That is the political basis which gave rise to the dialectic of the guerrilla, the resistance and mass antagonism in the metropoles, and from which new possibilities for the further anchoring of revolutionary politics were opened up.

THE PROCESS OF RADICAL CHANGE WILL CONTINUE TO GROW AS A RESULT OF FURTHER ATTACKS – OR IT WILL NOT GROW AT ALL.

After the winter, we wanted to advance the practical process of the front on the basis of the altered subjective and objective conditions, that is to say, on the basis of what the front here and in West Europe had won and the reaction of the imperialist bourgeoisie to that victory; on the basis of the new starting point acquired for the struggle, which is the basis for the politico-military offensive. To start to develop an awareness of individual strengths, together with those who also desire this on the basis of their own subjective experience, and, having achieved that, to consolidate and develop it further, and with this to begin to carry on the discussion about the process of a common strategy and to arrive at a new quality in the politico-military organization of the front; to initiate revolutionary practice here by determining the contents and goals of the revolutionary struggle; to take a step forward by constructing the autonomous collective structures necessary for the struggle; and, as such, to break through the endless cycle of fucked-up resignation, confusion, isolation and all the rest of it.

Certainly, the offensive remained a weak one and we made mistakes. But it nevertheless contained new qualities from which we can continue to develop a practical connection with the militant resistance. We are not saying that the offensive has clearly answered all the questions which exist for the resistance, and that, naturally, also exist for us.

That is never the case.

However, the revolutionary process here can be developed. We will not succeed except through the attack itself, through the destruction of imperialist power and the construction of revolutionary counter-force, that is to say: our political determination, our concrete structures and our struggle. And always through the subjective leap forward in the struggles.

RESISTANCE, AS WE UNDERSTAND IT, IS ABOUT SMASHING THE SYSTEM.

It aims at the practical overthrow of the existing social structure, a radical change in the situation in the metropole. It offers radical change now, restoring full human dimensions to the combatants’ relationships. This is the revolutionary goal of every initiative, and only as such can they be deemed genuine. Only in struggle is there a radical break with everything that repeatedly drives the people back into the deadly garbage heap of the system. This is achieved by showing that it is possible to push the system into crisis and by showing how to do so, and in this way exposing the break in the consensus and destroying its political base, the last fragment of legitimate appeal of a decaying system, destroying the basis upon which it means to reproduce itself internationally. This is how revolutionary politics can be achieved here.

The practical development of the resistance makes it absolutely clear that the next step that must occur is intensive, concentrated discussion between those who have arrived at a conscious decision to struggle in the front – in any event, those considering it – about how the struggle here can be further developed, organized and made effective. And on this basis, they themselves must determine the conditions and the concrete practice necessary to create the politico-military offensive. That is the immediate goal. At the same time, the necessary precondition for this is that increasing numbers of people who struggle against individual State projects have begun to see a place for these individual struggles and for themselves within the revolutionary struggle. In this way, a political, practical-critical quality develops in each person who, regardless of the context, begins to lend support to the resistance. That is different than the concept of teaching “the masses” from above, which always means making people into objects, instead of making oneself into a subject, which is to say, into an antagonist of the system who through individual struggle sets a political process in motion. Those who want to struggle must separate themselves from everything that will hold them back (reformists, opportunists, windbags).

That the process of the front will not unfold without interruption or on a massive scale is clear. However, understanding itself to be a united front, it has already mobilized its capacities and its power and carried them to their political conclusion in the concrete confrontation with the State. It has done so through practical initiatives, in which it is clear to everyone that the break with the ruling system leads to a struggle for liberation.

THE SUBSTANCE AND THE FORM OF REVOLUTIONARY POWER DEVELOP IN THE PROCESS OF THE REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLE

Self-understanding and collectivity don’t exist outside of the struggle. Only within the struggle can they be established and can the barriers between people be torn down. Such is the process for constructing proletarian counter-power. The opposite of socially organized power, the unhindered repression of capital, is that which develops freedom within the existing conditions by establishing objectives and interventions that allow it to develop continuity andpower.

This process is only possible and only exists as a result of each individual’s decision and efforts, directed towards a common goal: the destruction of the system and revolutionary change, molded by the total interrelatedness of whole human beings in the context of the front.

THIS SUBJECTIVE LEAP FORWARD IS THE DECISIVE FACTOR THAT WILL DETERMINE HOW THE FRONT WILL DEVELOP HERE.

At the same time, it is the basis upon which those who have arrived at a political understanding and a practical conception will come together and construct the conditions necessary for action. It is the basis upon which they will develop their illegal consciousness, upon which they will learn to organize the struggle and to understand themselves, in everything they think and do, as a part of the whole – the front – and act accordingly.

Organization for struggle, as we understand it, is the open process of those who struggle, their subjective development, their leaps forward and the decisions by which they continuously advance. Self-awareness and the complete accountability of each individual are essential at every level of the struggle from the outset.

It is absolutely senseless, from the perspective of struggle, to expect a giant strategic plan at this point. We do not, in any case, wish to get into this or to philosophize about a Soviet Republic and morals. This only leads to one losing the basic ground under one’s feet, from which one must learn to work.

IT ALWAYS COMES FROM SUBJECTIVE ACTION, FROM WILLPOWER, FROM POLITICIZATION, FROM CONSCIOUS DECISIONS – FROM POLITICS.

What we hoped for from the action [12] in the summer was that everyone would clarify their own circumstances, that the break would be deepened, that they would understand themselves to be in a war and would sharpen their consciousness for the confrontation. And this is exactly what has occurred.

It was clear to us that our decision about the escalation in the summer, via the action against the Air Base, would not be understood immediately by everyone in the resistance as the correct and necessary step for the front. We knew that we would spark a discussion, that comrades would have to decide one way or another where they stood in this war and that all of the contradictions and all of the different ideas about the development of the front would clash. But we were certain that the subjective development had gone far enough to make our leap forward possible; not to mention that it was damned necessary based on the entire objective situation here and internationally, and not to mention that it was a positive step at this point to raise the entire question of “what the front wants” and how to proceed following the winter.

Naturally, as a result of our errors, not making the basis for the attack politically clearer and our silence about the GI, which created uncertainty as to whether it was a counter-action, we have made the discussion very difficult and triggered debates that are not, in and of themselves, relevant.

At first we didn’t understand the problem. Above all, we hadn’t reckoned on the neutralizing factors in the resistance still being so solidly established that the State could reinforce them through their counter-campaigns, especially after 1982 [13], when powerful militant actions occurred throughout the FRG.

“One cannot attack random GIs.” What is going to stop them then, and why do so many people go so far as to subject the US troops to a class analysis? To this we reply that the international struggling proletariat answered this question long ago; in Latin America, in South East Asia, in the Middle East… and here as well. Many people expected an absolute self-criticism from us and this enraged us. We didn’t want to believe that these were real questions. The interview [14] is an example; in the given situation, nothing else was possible. If people do not connect, do not talk together, a clarification is impossible. Everything is alien. We allowed this to occur. Then it became clear to us that we wanted nothing to do with these conditions. At that time, we had briefly lost sight of the fact that there were many who had been waiting for something like this in order to rant and rave or else legitimize their personal retreat. We had lost sight of the fact that absolutely nothing could be achieved with these people, but only with those comrades who wish to struggle here. It is in order to strengthen our unity with these comrades that we will clarify our differences and respond to the questions they have asked.

We are often asked why we’ve taken this particular step – attacking the soldiers on the Air Base. What is the perspective and desired effect of this action?

This is a practical question about how the revolutionary resistance here can stop imperialism, and American imperialism as its most aggressive example, from planning and carrying out their strategy of annihilation from here in peace. That is to say, how can we put so much political pressure on them that their plans are blocked before they can carry them out?

West Europe is at the center of imperialism’s capacity to carry out war. Further, the fact is that it is here that one finds the commando headquarters and logistical bases for atomic and conventional warfare against the liberation movements in Asia, Africa and the Middle East and against the socialist States. The revolutionary resistance must therefore assume that some of the troops, which could at any time intervene in the Middle East, in South East Asia or in Africa, are stationed here. Following changes in the Pentagon’s plan of action, some of the US troops stationed in West Europe have a dual function; they are no longer only troops for raids against the East, but are, at the same time, the “Central Command” which directs the interventions of the RDF and the “Eucom” [15] in the Third World, as well as reinforcements for the US military machine, through the “European NATO Column”. The fusion of the West German and French forces as the condition for the withdrawal of US troops from West Europe, so that they can be established in the Third World, is the – military – basis for the urgency to bring the military strategy to the level necessary for carrying out the war in a united way on all fronts.

Troop transports from Ramstein Air Base have so far included four hundred soldiers, the Air Force and the Delta Force in Sicily, the standby forces for the elimination of the Arab liberation struggle, Special Forces in Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Ramstein, Berlin, and Bad Tolz for actions in the Third World and against the resistance here, part of the RDF in Berlin (from the same unit which is stationed in the Middle East, a part of which met its deserved end in Newfoundland [16]), etc.

The ability to wage war is hardly a technical issue. They have the means, and, as such, the desire, to always and until the end be superior to us and all liberation movements. A war of liberation is not a material struggle. For us it is focused on the political effect that the military attack develops against them, from which new struggle is generated.

We have said (May 82 [17]): THE CONFLICT, AFTER VIETNAM, HAS SHIFTED FROM THE CENTRAL CONFRONTATIONAL POSITION OF THE WAR OF LIBERATION, FROM THE FRONT AND HINTERLAND, TO A LINE WHICH GOES CROSSWAYS THROUGH EVERY SECTION, EVERY CONTINENT, EVERY COUNTRY, BECAUSE EVERY SECTION IN THE UNIFIED SYSTEM CAN TRIGGER THE COLLAPSE OF THE BALANCE OF POWER AND, AS SUCH, BECOME A FRONT IN THE WAR OF LIBERATION.

That is the process by which imperialist power will be shattered, through a tendency towards unity in struggle across all areas, a united effect that has already been achieved at this point, and the realization that freedom from imperialism is only possible through the combined activity of the revolutionary struggles throughout the world.

When the front attacks here, it upsets the unified system’s capacity to act, shattering its power and, in the dialectic of the development of the struggle, its military strength as well. Here in the imperialist center, from where the political power, the economic strength and the military predominance necessary for their global offensive must be drawn. Smashing them at this point means intervening against the main planks of their strategic economic and military plan, so as to prevent it from being achieved; it means destroying them politically and preventing the centralization and accumulation of their economic and military power.

It is simply a question of how far forward we go or how far forward they go.

The front here can hinder them from constructing the political and military prerequisites for carrying out the war on all fronts.

When we speak of military interventions in the Third World, we are referring to the imperialist financed and trained Contra gangs in Nicaragua [18], Angola [19], Mozambique [20]… the attacks against the Palestinian and the Lebanese resistance, the bombing of the camps, the deployment of Special Forces terror commandos against the guerrilla around the world, the dirty war this beast wages against the struggling peoples, the bombs dropped on civilian populations, the massacres in Kurdistan [21], which the Turkish State organized with NATO. As such, war is the reality today, even when it is conducted without large-scale interventions; it is a reality to which they cling as a constant option. The revolutionary struggles and the resistance in the Third World and the metropoles have no politico-military border.

It is not possible for us here today to militarily obstruct imperialism’s power. Given the fact that the revolutionary resistance here is still weak and NATO is powerful, that would be a ridiculous idea.

Militant attacks against the US-NATO infrastructure are, nonetheless, effective and sound, as they destroy the material security of imperialism, which its machine requires if it is to act freely, which is what imperialism needs. And if they feel their military institutions are besieged, because they are under attack everywhere, that is good. That makes the soldiers themselves, as well as the overall strategy of war, key targets. The capacity to plan and evaluate their actions is, for their war plans, simply indispensable, as are “motivated soldiers.” Therefore, attacks along these lines have a strategic quality beyond the resistance’s limited capacity to destroy their technical means.

The FMLN [22] says, “IF WE TALK ABOUT HAVING AN EFFECT ON U.S. IMPERIALISM, THEN WE ARE TALKING ABOUT THEIR PEOPLE NOT ABOUT THEIR MACHINERY AND NOT ABOUT THEIR TECHNOLOGY. IT IS THEIR PEOPLE, THEIR MORALE AND THE THINGS WHICH THEY DEFEND THAT WILL BE DECISIVE AS TO WHETHER THEY WIN OR LOSE THE WAR.”

Our objective is that every guerrilla and the entire struggling front, regardless of location or specific local conditions, struggles against US imperialism.

So the goal of our action was not and could not have been to force them to withdraw from here. The US military would take control here if the FRG State was so shaken that it was no longer capable of acting.

The fact is that they must be confronted with anti-imperialist politics and revolutionary struggle here, because that is what builds uncertainty in the united military apparatus and demoralizes the soldiers. They must know that they are no longer safe anywhere in the world from the attacks of the revolutionary guerrilla, that there is no longer anywhere for them to withdraw to, nowhere to rest and prepare their interventions. It is an illusion, a very silly one, to believe that soldiers do not understand their own function. The fact that they do what they do hoping that it will not be them, but their colleagues, who will have to carry out the intervention is their problem. The fact is that they might have to do it at any time, given the fact, as should already be clear, that there is a war going on and that they stand on the side of the deadly enemy of humanity. They must desert.

The other thing is that it obviously puts enormous pressure on the US government and their military policy, because the people in the USA see even more clearly that US imperialism carries on a worldwide war, and does so openly, and for that reason will be attacked. So attacks against US forces always also target the contradictions within the USA itself; there is also a resistance against war policy there. With each attack the propaganda is damaged, the propaganda with which every US government legitimizes every war and every arms build-up, the propaganda that “Vietnam, Grenada, Central America, the Middle East, West Europe must be saved from the Russians.” It becomes clear that the interests being served are never those of the people, but those of US capital. It becomes clear that US imperialism is the main enemy of all peoples in their struggles for self-determination and liberation.

At the same time, the reaction of the FRG state to the attacks against US power here made their interests clear and has also exposed one of the FRG’s central functions since ’45: securing the ruling class in the center in the interests of US capital. The US military presence here is a condition for the political power interests of each FRG government since 1945. The “usefulness” of each regime is primarily to mystify how it is the opposite of what it claims to be, how it can secure the establishment and the smooth functioning of the US strategy here and in West Europe.

The determining factor for the summer offensive was the political and practical orientation of the front along this line of attack, the step forward in the attack against the military strategy; DEMORALIZE THE ENEMY, SHAKE THE APPARATUS, IMPEDE AND SABOTAGE IT – REMOVE IT FROM ACTION.

The further development of the front along this line is central, but it is not everything. Attacks against US-NATO military strategy and against the imperialist State are two operative lines of a single anti-imperialist, internationalist strategy in the metropole, towards which the struggles here must be further developed. “The system” can only be broken if the front smashes the concrete, existing projects of imperialism. One cannot think of the system as an unmovable block, which is the way that each person here experiences it, as an eternal, tormenting reality for his or her entire lifetime. Rather one must think of it in terms of the movement’s necessary political and strategic development

With AD, we named the Commando after George Jackson, because he is a role model for us and for everyone else who struggles in the metropoles. As a young man he received a sentence of “indefinite duration” for a gas station robbery, and in total isolation in prison, on the basis of the total defensive, in a situation where the State wanted to force everyone to accept their claim to absolute power, he refused and he became politicized. The cracks in the metropole, the powerful resistance against the war in Vietnam, played an important role in this process. Tenaciously, unwavering, determined to engage in a life or death struggle, he won his revolutionary identity and defended it in the face of permanent police terror. He was a cadre of the Black Panthers [23] and an example for the anti-imperialist resistance in the USA and West Europe. He embodied the break with the metropole, the struggle “in the heart of the beast” and the unity of the revolutionary resistance in the metropoles.

We have said that proletarian internationalism is the fundamental consciousness for the revolutionary struggle in the metropoles. It is the identification with the exploited and oppressed in the worldwide struggle against the rule of capital. It is the knowledge that the complete destruction of the imperialist system will only be possible if this perspective is also planted in the center of their power. That means we must confront the bourgeoisie here with the goals of revolution, sharpen the politico-military attacks against their power structure and destroy the basis upon which they hope to build the united ruling system, using wars, capitalist restructuring and repression to solve their sweeping crisis.

Through its attacks the West European guerrilla develops the strategy in which the select and partial struggles around life in the imperialist system become a part of the struggle for liberation, in which the mass antagonism within the political conception and practice of the revolutionary struggle becomes the standard and, on the basis of that, CONSTRUCTS THE FRONT OF THE WAR OF NATIONAL LIBERATION HERE.

Everyone who struggles here experiences, or can experience, the fact that life here in the metropole is structured to standardize the movement of the capital for the international monopolies, the standardized strategy of the imperialist bourgeoisie for addressing the global political, economic and social crisis of the system. In a system that produces annihilation, exploitation and impoverishment, power – and war – on a world scale, that provides only one option – the vote – for all resistance and every struggle for humane living and working conditions, for self-determination and against imperialist war. The concept of imperialism as a united system must be broken by unity in the revolutionary struggle, or we might as well give up.

We understand our attack on the basis of the development of the resistance, the break here and the movement for international class war; we understand it on the basis of the global relationship of power between revolution and imperialism. That is what we mean by proletarian identity and strategy: to think and to act as the international proletariat right from the beginning, defining ourselves within and for the international class war, in other words, the reconstruction of the class in the metropole as part of the world proletariat, the class which will overthrow imperialism. We understand revolutionary war as the means by which we will bring the imperialist system to collapse, and, therefore, we carry on the social revolution as a world revolution. The revolutionary front in West Europe develops itself as part, section and function of the international struggles, by whose combined efforts alone can we reach our goal.

ENGAGE IN REVOLUTIONARY WAR, STRUGGLE MEANS LIFE.

Red Army Faction
January 86

[1] Refers to the August 8th, 1985 bombing of the Rhein-Main Air Base by a joint Action Directe-RAF Commando. The RAF subsequently claimed responsibility for the killing of the American GI, Edward Pimental, whose ID card they used to gain access to the Air Base. An intense debate followed this action. [return to text]

[2] Refers to the December 84 – January 85 hunger strike by political prisoners. This hunger strike provoked several hundred solidarity actions, and was generally seen as a leap forward towards the anti-imperialist front in West Germany. [return to text]

[3] Refers to an attempted bombing by a RAF Commando against the SHAPE (Supreme Headquarters of Allied Powers in Europe) School in Oberammeragua, in January 85. The SHAPE School is a special school for high level NATO Officers. [return to text]

[4] George Schultz – US Secretary of State at the time. [return to text]

[5] Soares – Portuguese President. François Mitterand – French President. Helmut Kohl – West German Chancellor. [return to text]

[6] Four levels of the RAF – the State alleged that there were four levels to the RAF; the commandos, the prisoners, the support movement and the lawyers and the relatives committee. [return to text]

[7]  Hafenstrasse – site of a large left-wing squat in Hamburg. In an attempt to destroy it, the state claimed it was a RAF base. [return to text]

[8] Gunther Sare – anti-fascist activist killed when he was run over by a police water cannon at an anti-Nazi demonstration in Frankfurt in October 85. [return to text]

[9] Kontaktsperre – a law which allows West German authorities to hold political prisoners in 100% isolation, without newspapers, radio, TV or visits, including family and lawyer’s visits. [return to text]

[10] Refers to the two tendencies in the West German Green Party. [return to text]

[11] BGS – Bundesgrenzshutz, the border police, includes the international counterinsurgency unit, the GSG-9. [return to text]

[12] The Air Base action. (See note #1.) [return to text]

[13] Refers to large anti-military demonstrations and a large demonstration against a visit from George Bush Sr. (who was at the time US Vice-President), as well as a series of connected clandestine armed actions. [return to text]

[14] In September 85, the RAF released an interview in which they addressed concerns arising from the Air Base action. (See note #1.)   [return to text]

[15] RDF: Rapid Deployment Forces were established in 1979, largely as a  response to the Iranian Revolution. The concept was to develop an American military forces that could operate independently, with neither forward bases nor the facilities of friendly nations; geographical areas cited as requiring such cover included Korea, the Persian Gulf, and the Middle East. Eucom: The United States European Command primary mission is to provide combat-ready forces for NATO operations.   [return to text]

[16]  Reference to an airplane crash in Gander, NEwfoundland in December 1985, where a plane full of RDF operatives, on their way home for Christmas, were killed.   [return to text]

[17]  In May 1982 the RAF released a major theoretical paper which provided the framework for the development of the anti-imperialist front. The Guerilla, the Resistance and the Anti-Imperialist Front can be read here.   [return to text]

[18] The people of Nicaragua were the victims of a terror campaign waged by the Contras, a number of paramilitary groups armed and financed by the United States and international right-wing networks. Most Contra attacks were directed at civilian targets such as people involved with coffee plantations and farming cooperatives .In November 1984, the Nicaraguan government announced that since 1981 the contras had assassinated 910 state officials and killed 8,000 civilians. (For more see William Blum’s “Nicaragua 1981-1990 Destabilization in slow motion” from his book Killing Hope, or at http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/Nicaragua_KH.html)   [return to text]

[19] In Angola during the late 1970s and 1980s the (initially Maoist) group UNITA, led by Jonas Savimbi, received South African and American financing and arms to wage war against the Soviet-backed MPLA government (on occasion, troops from the Apartheid State provided direct support during UNITA battles with the MPLA forces).     [return to text]

[20] In 1976 the racist government in “Rhodesia” (later Zimbabwe) set up an anti-communist guerilla group, Renamo, in Mozambique in the hopes of preventing that newly-independent country from supporting the anti-colonial resistance in “Rhodesia”. Renamo outlived the racist Rhodesian regime, becoming one of the most violent and blood-drenched anti-communist guerilla armies in the world. In their raids on towns and villages, Renamo sometimes engaged in wholesale massacres of civilians, and by the late 1980s its war against the pro-Soviet Mozambique State had claimed over 100,000 victims, and caused 1,000,000 people to be displaced.   [return to text]

[21] The government of Turkey has waged a “dirty war” against the people of Kurdistan for decades, as a result of which tens of thousands of Kurds have been killed. Turkey has been supported by the other NATO countries in this genocidal war, and in some cases Western military personnel have been known to have participated in killings. Turkish military and other personnel have also been trained in the United States, including in methods of torture and assassination.   [return to text]

[22] FMLN – Frente Farabundo Marti por Libertad Nacional, Salvadoran guerrilla movement.   [return to text]

[23] The Black Panther Party – armed black self-defense group in the US in the late 60s and the early 70s.   [return to text]