R.a.f

[safeduck]

Some say they were just a group of criminals others say they were revolutionary heroes. What are your opinions on the R.A.F (red army faction)?

[Bostana]

Royal Air Force?
:D

The R.A.F. did the wrong things for the right reasons.

[Искра]

Their tactics (terrorism etc.) has nothing to do with class struggle. I don't care for anything else.

[Q]

I always find this text by Trotsky (http://www.marxists.de/theory/whatis/terror2.htm) explaining very well why communists oppose terrorism.

I hope it helps.

[Os Cangaceiros]

They were true OG's. :closedeyes:

edit:


I always find this text by Trotsky (http://www.anonym.to/?http://www.marxists.de/theory/whatis/terror2.htm)

lol it was only a matter of time

[Crux]

Students.

[Q]

lol it was only a matter of time

So? He's making the argument rather well.

Maybe we should republish it without a name, so the non-trots wouldn't be horror struck and actually read it.

[Rafiq]

Products of their enviroment.

[Bostana]

So? He's making the argument rather well.

Maybe we should republish it without a name, so the non-trots wouldn't be horror struck and actually read it.

No I think he meant it was only a matter of time when you start using Trotsky.

[gorillafuck]

Products of their enviroment.is that your only input to everything?

maybe you should just drop the political content of your views and just call yourself a determinist.

[Q]

No I think he meant it was only a matter of time when you start using Trotsky.

I know what he meant and replied to that.

I don't really care that it was written by Trotsky. If it was written by, say, Stalin, I would've still posted it because it is a good piece.

But oh well.

[Bostana]

But oh well.

Yah I guess so huhh?

[Os Cangaceiros]

So? He's making the argument rather well.

Maybe we should republish it without a name, so the non-trots wouldn't be horror struck and actually read it.

It's just that I hate it when certain topics come up and they invariably get knee-jerk responses on RevLeft. One of those topics is the RAF/Red Brigades/Weather Underground etc. and the inevitable tie-in to terrorism and the value of terrorism. And someone will inevitably come into the thread and post that piece of writing by Trotsky, often with very little comment. And the article isn't that great, honestly, including certain inaccuracies that expose Trotsky's bias, such as the dig at Vera Zasulich and the radical populists (see here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2185312&postcount=42)).

I'm just so tired of canned leftist talking points.

[Prometeo liberado]

Though I don't agree with their timing I understand it. I am impressed by their level of organizational and intelligence skills. As much as people want to compare The Weather Underground with the R.A.F. their really is none. RAF had the support in dollars if not words from communist countries. They were better organized as "urban guerrillas" and set up an international network to do the same. Long after the violence stopped they still offered their analysis on the movement. Did their time in prison and tried to organize the convicts. They mirrored much of their discipline on the cell structure of the IRA.

[Rafiq]

is that your only input to everything?

maybe you should just drop the political content of your views and just call yourself a determinist.

Dynamic Determinism isn't something I oppose too much. But anyway, what is the "content of my views" and why must I drop them in order to retain a consistant materialist analysis?

Perhaps you should go to the grave of Marx and tell him the same.

Anyway, this case is unique in that, although the tactics of the RAF were idiotic, one could sympathize and understand their motives. They were, after all, just originally students, discovering the Fascist nature of their state (former nazis in power).

But no, go ahead and assume I just will insert this response for everything.

[The Douche]

Kind of support them to a degree, find them fascinating, love the movie, would drink with them, would probably have hidden them at the time, if not joined them.

[The Douche]

Also "students" is not necessarily the most accurate description of them.

[Os Cangaceiros]

To give my "serious" assessment of them for a moment, I feel, like Rafiq, that they were a product of their time. I generally try not to be a "crude materialist" but a good argument can be made for this. They had the same shitty politics of most student and/or New Left groups of the era (late 1960's into the 1970's). They were able to operate in the manner in which they did largely due to the bipolar nature of the world at that time; there were two competing economic powers, and each had their own "benefactors" which they supported either directly or indirectly (such as neo-fascists in Italy, or the RAF in Germany, etc). Groups like the RAF benefited tremendously from a network of socialist and national seperatist movements that had sprung up around the world. Ultimately no, what they did had not much to do with "class struggle", and didn't really even find it's original impetus in class struggle, unlike Brigatte Rosse in Italy. But the early RAF did have a very sizable pool of support among German youth, didn't something like 50 percent of them support a militant front against capital at one point? Not something to be shrugged aside, in my opinion.

[Искра]

ES I like your post... Also I personaly find Brigatte Rosse more interesting than RAF, because of their connections with working class and all that. Still, I don't support the methods..

[GoddessCleoLover]

Autonomia Operaia, Lotta Continua and Prima Lina had ties to the working class, but Brigatte Rosse not so much.

[Rafiq]

Also "students" is not necessarily the most accurate description of them.

Well, they were originally students.

It always fascinated me how mere student study circles become militant as a result of their studies.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Autonomia Operaia, Lotta Continua and Prima Lina had ties to the working class, but Brigatte Rosse not so much.

The core leadership of Red Brigades had participated in the Hot Autumn of 1969, and were based out of the industrial city of Milan where they were rooted into the local workplace committees and Potere Operaio. Their earliest actions were things like distributing literature, burning strike-breakers cars and attacking unpopular managers. They definitely had roots in the working class.

[GoddessCleoLover]

The Red Brigade as well as Autonomia Operaia, Lotta Continua, and Prima Lina all had their origins in the '69 Hot Autumn. By the mid 70s the Red Brigade had gone its own way into focoism, terrorism, armed struggle and by then the Red Brigade had become deeply unpopular with the Italian working class and even lost its cachet among the extraparliamentary Left when the RB murdered Aldo Moro. Trust the witness. I knew some Italian comrades back in the 70s who were sincere revolutionaries and absolutely loathed the Red Brigade.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Well I'm not old enough to have known anyone during the 1970's, but I've done a fair deal of research into this topic...Books For Burning, Memoirs of an Italian Terrorist and Storming Heaven are on my bookshelf as I type this and I've taken college courses which have covered the "years of lead" as well, so I know what the RB eventually devolved into. But I thought that it would've been evident by the way I phrased my previous two posts ("original impetus", "had roots") that I knew there was a difference between late 60's RB and mid 70's or even later the "hey let's go kidnap a NATO official" RB.

[Rafiq]

You do realize western powers (CIA etc) spent a tremendous amount of effort to fuck the RB's popularity, from fake assassinations and kidnappings to heavy propaganda.

It's no surprise they lost support

[GoddessCleoLover]

IMO Explosive Situation has an excellent grasp of the situation in the Italian revolutionary left of the late 60s through the 70s. Even now, I am perplexed as to why Autonomia Operaia, Lotta Continua and Prima Lina failed to develop a mass following among the Italian working class. Clearly, LC and PL in particular were subjected to vicious repression by the Italian state and all three were stigmatized as being somehow associated with RB. Perhaps the moral of the story is that the bourgeois state can use its mass media to obsfucate basic facts and portray all revolutionaries as terrorists. They seemed to have done so back in the 70s anyway.

[The Douche]

Autonomia Operaia, Lotta Continua and Prima Lina had ties to the working class, but Brigatte Rosse not so much.

Fuuuuuuuck off. The red brigades were comprised primarily of young factory workers. No ties to the working class? Their militants were members of the workling class. The red brigades represent an aberration of the 60's-70's urban guerrilla trend, because they were legit working class youths, in essential proletarian positions, who lashed out against the bosses and the state, not just from an ideological inspiration, but from a material necessity.


I might be drunk, but at least I know about urban guerillas.

[His Dudeness]

The early RAF had a lot of potential in the German youth thanks to their actions, but they wasted it. They didn't try to organize the masses for a revolution, so all their efforts was for nothing, except some great solidarity actions with Palestine and Vietnam.

[el_chavista]

From "A Brief History of the Rote Armee Fraktion" (my post at the history forum)


The Red Army Fraction creates the connection between legal and illegal struggle, between national struggle and international struggle, between political struggle and armed struggle, between the strategical and tactical position of the international communist movement.

With the victorious liberation of Southeast Asia and Africa, the front is moving nearer the centre, it is coming closer to the metropoles and makes the tactical and strategic retreat of U.S. imperialism inevitable. In other words, the so-called 'displacement of the strategic crucial points' is towards West Europe.

[Optiow]

I think it's sad how so many feel the need to 'distance' themselves from the RAF as if they were the bubonic plague itself.

The RAF were a product of their environment. I sympathise with their struggle (their Final Communique is one of my favourite political writings), but it shows that no matter how heroic, a bunch of guerrillas can not bring about the world revolution. Only the organized working class can do that.