Der Baader-Meinhoff Komplex

"Shooting is like fucking."

Violent revolution has its own sex appeal.  Recently watched (and was fascinated, somewhat morbidly by) this excellently crafted movie  (in German, with English subs) dealing with a gang of leftwing extremists operating in West Germany in the early '70s.  The movie is essentially a drama, closely following the lives of a few of the terrorist outfit's important leader-members, portraying them in a very human, though obviously flawed, light. It is however closely faithful to real historical facts, and could be seen as some sort of biopic. The viewer is taken through a roller-coaster ride of being alternately sympathetic with the revolutionaries, being impressed by their bravado and commitment to their cause, mildly disapproving their misguided ways, and being shocked and disgusted by their demented acts of violence.

It was a big surprise to me that Western Europe ever had such a virulent leftwing terrorist movement in the first place. One associates communist insurgencies with poor third world countries in Latin America or Asia.

This too is mostly in the form of jungle, guerrilla warfare by very organized well-armed groups with a support base of sympathetic locals.  Yes France had student riots in 1967, students in North America protested the Vietnam War sometimes going overboard with acts of violence, and Calcutta, India had its own tryst with urban guerrilla warfare in the '60s and '70s.  But the Baader-Meinhoff  (named after two prominent members - Andreas Baader, the out-and-out violent revolutionary, action hero, somewhat pompous, loved by women, always having his way kind of person,  and Ulricke Meinhoff - mother of two, middle class intellectual- turned unlikely revolutionary who is in charge of the outfit's propaganda apparatus) gang is bigger than most when it comes to real action. They indulge in bank robbery to finance their weapons, bomb media outlets, hijack airplanes, take people hostage in the German embassy in Sweden (ruthlessly executing some of them), assassinate judges who pass unfavorable sentences on their members - i.e. every conceivable act of cynical urban terror, that one usually associates with the nationalist terrorist groups like IRA or PLO, and of late the Islamic terrorists a la Al Qaeda. 

Why would young people in one of the world's richest democracies actively take up arms for a cause that is usually associated with dispossessed people waging a class struggle?  How do they justify blowing up buildings and killing innocent people as a legitimate way to attain a more just and equitable world?  These questions fascinate me, and constitute the essence of the "Baader-Meinhoff complex".  

The generation that grew up in postwar Germany was very different from say its French counterparts.  For many of them there was the question of coming to terms with the Nazi past of their parents, the fact that many of the elders filling official positions were once part of a Fascist setup.  The strategy adopted by Germans was to look away from their troubled recent past and to invest instead in economic progress.  The economy was burgeoning from the Marshall plan and West German capitalism, and unbridled consumerism helped to keep out uncomfortable questions. Well, mostly. A certain section was however sick of this materialism, they grew up angry with their parents and the establishment, and turned to leftwing radicalism. For French youth this was mostly intellectual fashion,  some mock scuffles with the police when their favorite Cinematheque was being shut down. They had intellectual giants of the stature of  Sartre (who once famously said "terrorism is bad, but it's the only weapon the weak have) or Barthes to look up to.  The disillusioned German youth did not have the patience for such theoretical preoccupations, probably because they had more issues to grapple with. Also the history of German student involvement in radical politics was very recent, and they hardly had any constructive role models to follow. Unlike a France or Russia, student culture in Germany had historically been very restrained and conservative. All this was to explode in the 60s and 70s in a firecracker of pent-up energy.

The late sixties and early seventies were turbulent times everywhere. Cold war,Vietnam, civil rights in the US, the sexual revolution, a burgeoning protest culture fed on drugs and rock n' roll : everything was happening in the Western world.  Turbulent events across the Iron Curtain such as the Prague uprising, Palestine, the Shah of Iran, the Cultural Revolution all played out on  the periphery of Western consciousness. The  Baader-Meinhoff phenomenon naturally fed on all of these. West German intelligentsia were disgusted with their government's tacit support of American actions in Vietnam.  Frustrated youth found outlets in mob violence, and a single incident of a student being accidentally shot by the police during a meet protesting the Shah's state visit in Berlin, was capitalized on by a more radical section of the protesters. Meinhoff, the enlightened and very politically aware journalist, was radicalized by this one incident, and came to lend some intellectual credence to the ultra-violent Red Army Faction (that's what the group called itself).

Not everything about the RAF was concern for the poor peasants of Vietnam, and unwavering ideological commitment.  Some people in it, such as the extremely hot-blooded  and somewhat Byronic Baader, come across as adrenaline junkies, brought up in an unstable society, on nihilism and violence, just looking for some action. A bit of ideological justification is not so bad either. Baader quit his high school after reportedly feeling the need for a "revolutionary orgasm". He is mostly an inveterate bully, used to always having his way, indulging in excesses of drugs and sex and getting away all the time with almost anything.  His attitudes are clearly brought out in this episode when his group decide to train with the PLO in Jordan. Baader is impatient, unwilling to adapt to the local culture and often racist with his Arab hosts. Finally the RAF leaves on his insistence that this kind of desert training would hardly help the RAF's intended operations in urban areas. Yet for all his flaws he is an inspirational leader,  has a way with people, especially women, and his no-holds-barred approach is what drives the group. No matter that Sartre met him in prison and thought that he was a "complete idiot". 

The sexual revolution is a key inspiration behind the RAF's workings, and a surprisingly large number of the revolutionaries are female. More than half of the core group of 10 odd people (like most terrorist organizations, the RAF is organized concentrically, with members of the outer circles receiving instructions from but knowing little about the goings on in the central ones) were women.  One of the founder leaders was Gudrun Enslinn, all anarcho-feminist, provocative peroxide-blonde with looks to die (and kill) for, a brilliant student at the university, daughter of a village church minister (whom she had rebelled against) and a descendant of Hegel (perhaps symbolic of the shifting away of  Europe's intellectual center of gravity from Germany in the 19th c to France in the 20th). She is lover and muse to Baader, and graduates from hot air to firebombing department stores to more serious terrorist acts.  During their Jordan stint, military regulations at the PLO camp require men and women to sleep in separate camps. The RAF radicals respond not only by sleeping together, but by going around in the nude in their camp, much to the embarrassment of their Arab hosts,  many of whom had never seen a woman naked before.  The violent urge in these women to prove themselves as capable as their male comrades in carrying out terrorist operations might have added an extra edge to the RAF's ruthlessness. Baader repeatedly uses sexual metaphors for his revolutionary agenda (the opening line for example) showing how central sexual anarchy was to the RAF's worldview of political anarchy.

Things end tragically for the top RAF leaders. I politely desist from giving too many spoilers.  Except that their lives were as interesting after incarceration as it was before.  In 2009, it was revealed that the police man who "accidentally" shot dead a student protester in the "German Autumn" of 1967 was actually an undercover Stasi agent.  So much for the Revolution.  And the bratty kids in a rich country who figured they might do something about it. And we're always left wondering...why?