Attack on Hans Tietmeyer

Today, with the Commando Khaled Aker [1], we attacked the Secretary of State for the Minister of Finance, Hans Tietmeyer.

Tietmeyer is a strategist and a key figure in international crisis management, which, on the national, European, and international levels, strives to render the economic crisis of the imperialist system governable and to prevent the collapse of the economic and financial system. He is deeply involved in the formulation, coordination, and establishment of imperialist economic policy – in recent years he had a part in every important monetary and economic decision that was taken.

He is responsible for genocide and widespread misery in the Third World. As a delegate to the IMF and World Bank [2], to G5 and G7 [3] meetings, world economic summits (which, since 1982, he has organized as the government’s representative), he developed and enforced the imperialist policy of extermination through hunger and counterinsurgency against the people in the dependent countries in the South – a policy which for the majority of the world means misery and death, all in order to secure profits and power for international capital.

He is responsible for the intensification of exploitation, poverty and oppression in West Europe. In different EC [4] Committees, on the bilateral (as in the German-French Economic and Financial Advisory Committee) and on the national level, he has laid the groundwork for the aggressive restructuring of capital and the expansion of transnational banks and corporations throughout West Europe – which means greater exploitation and the destruction of millions of people’s livelihoods – especially in the poor countries of Southern Europe and in Ireland.

Imperialist crisis management means more and more misery and death in the metropole and in the Third World. It is the attempt to stabilize by any and all means the current intensified and catastrophic confrontation between imperialism and liberation; it means countering the growing liberation struggles and the system’s internal breakdown, as well as preventing any further collapse.

Imperialism can only develop destructive power; its essence is destruction. By establishing world rule, imperialism imposes the extermination of peoples through genocide; it imposes a senseless and degrading existence, in the face of which there is the constant reality that people, wherever they are, cannot live in this system. For this reason people everywhere are developing and reinforcing themselves in opposition to imperialism and in favour of self-determination and human dignity. These shared conditions and goals form the basis of struggle for all sections of the international front; they provide the basis for unity and are the source of progress around the world.

Life is not possible in this system of profit and power, and it is the experience of this fact that is at the root of all revolutionary and antagonistic struggles in the metropole – everyone whose senses have not become completely dulled experiences this destructiveness and senselessness as an attack against themselves and all oppressed people, and experiences the fact that this system is hostile to all individual needs and all conceptions of humanity and human dignity.

Opposing this is the concept of self-determination in life, the reappropriation of natural capacities and human richness and the goal of a free and humane society in which the person is central. This is only possible by struggling for the radical overthrow of society. These values, as current and future goals, must always be formulated anew, and re-established in relationship to those struggles which are victorious.

Our shared  goals can and must be characterized as the shared subjective moment for the UNITY OF REVOLUTIONARIES and for the conscious uniting of revolutionary struggles in the West European center.

Revolutionary struggle requires the deepening of the subjective and political processes of consciousness – that means transforming one’s existential experience of the system into political terms, developing individual ideas and goals, and being clear about the objective conditions, i.e. the power of imperialism, which stands against the above and which must be the target of revolt. Revolutionary identity consists of the conscious and irreversible decision to develop the struggle for the fundamental overthrow of the empty spiritual condition and negative quality of individual lives; it stands for an offensive and continuous praxis and against capitulation and betrayal.
The goal of revolutionary struggles around the world is to stop the destructive form of development which imperialism is from spreading in all directions and to replace it with development for the people. The goal is to create a possibility for ending imperialist rule and barbarism. In this struggle, the West European Front (as a section of the international front) has a special importance given the centrality of West Europe and its increasingly important political-economic-military function within the unified imperialist system. The struggle against the concrete projects of imperialist strategy must be carried out with the goal of establishing politico-military barriers to their projects, of blocking and hindering them and of encouraging their breakdown.

BUILD REVOLUTIONARY UNITY!

CARRY OUT THE STRUGGLE IN THE IMPERIALIST CENTER IN STRATEGIC UNITY WITH THE STRUGGLE OF THE 3 CONTINENTS! [5]

SOLIDARITY WITH THE UPRISING OF THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE!

Commando Khaled Aker – Red Army Faction
September 20th 1988

We did not succeed in shooting Tietmeyer. We intended to eliminate the driver first so as to bring the car to a stop, but the automatic pistol jammed. By this time two members of the Commando were already out of their hiding places, so they had to try to stop the car with only a “pump” – which failed.

Red Army Faction
September 21st 1988

[1] Khaled Aker, a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), was killed on November 25, 1987 during an attack on an Israeli militay base. [return to text]

[2] IMF – International Monetary Fund, a body overseeing international imperialist economic policy World Bank – The IMF’s Bank. [return to text]

[3] G5 and G7 – meetings of heads of the most powerful industrialized states to establish a common imperialist policy. [return to text]

[4] EC – European Community. [return to text]

[5] 3 Continents – Latin America, Africa, and Asia. [return to text]