I have just finished reading and watching The Baader-Meinhof Complex, a film about one of Germany’s most infamous terrorist groups, the Red Army Faction. The book by Stefan Aust has been made into a film of the same name. The film is essentially the book transferred to the screen and is not that good. It is too didactic and much of the psychological element of the book is lost in the translation from print to motion picture.
However, it is frightening to read the book and recognise so many similarities between the R.A.F. and our local paramilitaries of all hues. The self-delusional, cancerous rhetoric is similar; the narcissistic, shallow intellect of the leadership; the brutal and merciless violence that they use in the pursuit of their aims and the international fraternity of like-minded friends is all there. One of the most striking things is the fact that the R.A.F. did not formally wind up their operations until 1998 – similar timing with our home-grown ‘heroes’.
In the early 1980s I was on a school trip to Germany and saw the letters R.A.F. written on a wall, this would have been about the time of the first IRA hunger strike. I hadn't a clue what it meant and thought, in my innocence, that it was drunk members of the Royal Air Force damaging private property! Of course, the really terrifying thing is to realise that while the R.A.F. leadership and many local paramilitaries have recognised the futility of their actions, one still remains in existence and armed – the UDA.
Saturday, May 09, 2009
Red Army Faction
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1 comments:
I think the comparisons you draw between the RAF and the PIRA are quite interesting but ultimately superficial. You list a series of personality or character flwas for those who are more inclined to join and run such groups but these traits have no dynamic within movements as large as the PIRA in the 70's and 80's. I will concede that smaller organisations like the Red Brigades in Italy and Germany may have been largely born out of the cult of the personality, the republican movement dynamic derived form the specific social, political and economic conditions of the time more than the RAF. That's why some ex-PIRA members go on to work in charities in Africa, while others (similar to your descriptions) do on to run the drugs trade in their local communities.
I am far from condoning any group or individual who commits violence, but I do think that the complexity of the Irish Troubles and the groups involved cannot be reduced to simply the narcissistic personalities in the paramilitary groups.
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