Currently browsing tag

moncourt and smith

Helmut Pohl, 1943-2014

“I can still see myself sitting there with Gudrun and Andreas, in front of us a long report on Vietcong attacks in the US military’s hinterland in South Vietnam. Guerrilla units had attacked US military headquarters right in enemy territory. One single attack already conveyed the entire strategy.……… Read the rest

Rolf Clemens Wagner, a Life of Resistance

Former Red Army Faction member Rolf Clemens Wagner died on February 11, 2014. Wagner had first become involved in underground armed politics in the aftermath of the RAF’s 1972 May Offensive in West Germany. Dozens of guerillas had been captured, and were being held in strict solitary confinement (in some cases, entire prison wings were emptied to isolate the political prisoners) and subjected to various forms of abuse.……… Read the rest

Christa Eckes – Honor Her Memory!

The first time Christa Eckes made the news was back in 1970, when as a teenager growing up in the West German city of Hamburg she was expelled from high school for starting a political action group. The “Basisgruppe LS-Schülerinnen” (LS Students Grassroots Group) was said to have distributed leaflets, organized resistance to the school board, the school administration and the parents’ advisory board, organized a questionnaire about sexual problems without informing the school administration and also to have disrupted a Christmas party.……… 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

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

1. Seven Years of Struggle Against the State

The first in a series of installments about the Red Army Faction, specifically their 1977 campaign which led to the “German Autumn”…   Seven Years of Struggle Against the State The Red Army Faction had, by this time, engaged in a campaign of armed struggle for seven years, beginning with the action that freed Andreas Baader from custody in 1970 – he had been serving a three-year sentence for setting fire to a department store to protest the war in Vietnam.……… Read the rest