From: aforum@moose.uvm.edu (Autonome Forum)
Subject: AF/ATS: interview with Red Army Fraction (RAF) prisoners
Organization: University of Vermont -- Division of EMBA Computer Facility
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1992 13:13:56 GMT

subject: an interview with Red Army Fraction (RAF) prisoners
posted by: AF/ATS
--

"They Want To Destroy Us"
An interview with Red Army Fraction political prisoners

(The following is an interview with Karl-Heinz Dellwo, Knut
Folkerts, and Lutz Taufer which was held in a prison in Celle in
West Germany. Dellwo and Taufer have been in prison since April
1975, each sentenced to two life terms on charges of murder and
kidnapping relating to a RAF commando's take-over of the German
embassy in Stockholm. Folkerts has been in prison since September
1977, serving a life term for the RAF's attack on state
prosecutor Buback. In this interview, the three RAF prisoners
give their thoughts on the RAF's latest communiques, in which
the RAF have announced a halt to their armed actions. This
interview - the first these men have ever been allowed to give -
was conducted by Thomas Ebermann, Rosita Timm, and Hermann
Gremliza of the German left-radical paper "Konkret". We have
translated it from issue 12 of the Dutch left-radical paper
"Konfrontatie".)

Gremliza: "If it's true that American imperialism is a paper-
tiger, then that means that it can be defeated; and if the notion
of the Chinese communists is correct, that American imperialism
can be defeated if it is opposed in all the far corners of the
world, so that imperialism's strength is spread out and weakened;
if all this is true, then there's no reason why any country or
region should be excluded from the anti-imperialist struggle,
just because the revolutionary strength there is weak or the
reactionary forces are strong. It is just as wrong to discourage
revolutionary groups by underestimating them as it is to propose
terrains of struggle which would just lead to their destruction."
     That is a quotation from the RAF paper "The Urban Guerrilla
Concept" published in April 1971. The latest statement from the
RAF, which we are discussing today, makes that closing conclusion
some 21 years after the founding document was issued: because it
seems imperialism is not a paper-tiger, it cannot be defeated, so
there's no point in wasting energy on a hopeless struggle. Is
this what is meant?

Taufer: The world of the 70s was different than the world of the
90s. At that time, we lived, thought, and fought as part of the
world-wide uprising against U.S. imperialist hegemony. The world
was comprised of two blocks; the Soviet Union placed imperialism
in a power situation where its intervention possibilities against
liberation movements in the Three Continents were limited. In
Latin America, each country had at least one armed resistance
group; there were successful liberation movements in Africa,
Asia, and the Middle East. In Vietnam, a nation of small farmers
wearing sandals made of car tires placed the world's most
powerful military machine in a no-win situation. And then there
were the uprisings in the metropoles themselves. We now know that
the protest movements against the Vietnam War, especially in the
U.S., helped lead Nixon and Kissenger to conclude as early as
1968 that the war could not be won.
     The fact that West German politicians at that time decried
the growing "contempt for authority"; the fact that one of the
primary investigations of the Trilateral Commission (1) was the
"crisis of democracy", because the metropoles were being swept up
in a wave of base-democracy; and finally, the fact that then-
chancellor Willy Brandt continually spoke as though West Berlin's
freedom was at stake in Vietnam; these facts are typical of the
dominant consciousness regarding the world-wide critical
situation at that time.
     Then there was our insight, that imperialism found itself
"on a strategic defensive". All over the world, there were
simultaneous uprisings against U.S. imperialist domination; and
against the background of Auschwitz and Vietnam, the politics and
morals of an attempt at armed struggle in the center of
imperialism gave us the strength to link ourselves to these
uprisings. The dubious and unclear relationship between the
political institutions, the industries, the justice system, and
the army and Germany's fascist past, on the one and, and their
clearly stated position regarding the genocide taking place in
Vietnam, on the other, made it seem possible for fascism to once
again rise in Germany. Armed resistance in Germany was, in a
certain sense, an attempt to revive "The Resistance".
     Our prediction that U.S. imperialism was close to collapse
seems to have been mistaken. Today we live in a completely
different world. In the 60s and 70s, people sought to create
"one, two, three, many Vietnams" so as to undermine the Western
system of profit and exploitation. In line with this, the non-
aligned nations called for a new economic world order. Now things
seem exactly the reverse: imperialism has the upper hand and can
easily write off entire populations. Their cheap labor and cheap
natural resources are no longer needed, therefore they have lost
their right to existence.
     The world is no longer held between two poles, Third World
vs. Metropoles; the world is split between those who have and the
poor who have-not. You find both of these worlds in Germany, the
U.S., Brazil, Chile, Egypt, India, and Nigeria. They exist
everywhere. In the U.S., the pretensions of a new world order and
diffuse uprisings are mere blocks apart. When the marines came
home from Grenada and Panama, they were sent to Los Angeles. The
marginalized - the majority of the world's people, thus - find
themselves in a Robinson Crusoe-like situation. They are being
drowned by imperialism and the world market; their fate is
uncertain. Their biological and social survival is dependent on
them scraping together what they can from what's around them.
     The coming time will be one of social movements and economic
and social discoveries. The precondition is that attempts are
successful at winning space to make concrete utopias that have
some global meaning. The other possibility is an increase in
violence by and against people who are just fighting to survive.
And then the RAF's input on the violence-question would be
irrelevant in the face of this escalation. The latest RAF
statement deals with this changed world situation. This is not
capitulation, but a necessary re-orientation to a situation which
lies in the way of armed action.

Gremliza: Do you have anything to add to the latest RAF
statement, or any criticisms of it?

Dellwo:   I think the statement is excellent. The essence of it
is, we have reached certain limits, but we shouldn't give up. I
wouldn't want to criticize things which others formulated and
arrived at on their own.
     The RAF has reached a boundary, and we all have the feeling
that we have been at this for 20 years, but that we can't get and
further. For the RAF in it's founding period, the urban-guerrilla
concept was a question of power. We were able to break through
our powerlessness and to concretely oppose the politics of those
in power. We wanted to create a space for the left, an
illegality in which each person can be a subject - a political
subject - that goes on the attack. The state, the politics of the
ruling class, the question of the system - that was not up for
negotiation, and those who were on the bottom had to just keep
quiet. That also had to fought against, because a logical
consequence of power is keeping people down. We shot back, and
turned this top-down relationship inside-out.
     Now, something else is going on, and it can't be kept in
check by the authorities. What is arising is a new social
thought, a new historical and social aim for the society. I know
that this has something to do with the need to regain the self-
determination of people and nature. But our immediate obstacle is
alienation within society.
     Of course, we had such things in the back of our minds, like
the disenfranchisement of the means of production;  that's a goal
you can start with. But it remained very vague. Is was more
about: you can't possibly live any longer in this world dominated
by capital; you no longer wanted to just sit by and watch the
crimes being committed across the globe. Your usefulness to the
system is already calculated before you're old enough to tie your
own shoes. Against this, you just had to tried to resist and hold
your own. With the collapse of real-existing socialism, our frame
of reference did not disappear. The structure of that society did
not conform to our goal. But that society was a real-existing
system of opposition to capitalism. And another idea - in terms
of an entire system, that is - has not yet developed. We have
continually stated: we have no history, we always start at square
one. Now I think that that was more encompassing that we
ourselves were aware of. At this time, we have no general
perspective. Maybe we'll never arrive at one, but that doesn't
constitute a break per se. The old perspective did keep its form,
but it didn't help to give a new vision of the world and of life.
This is something we need concretely to find. And that's part of
coming to grips with the day-to-day affairs of society. We need
to introduce a moment of change into this day-to-day. Only in
this way can we develop a vision of society in its totality. I
think that there are breaks from the system that exist within the
day-to-day. We need to seek these out.

Gremliza: When I compare the situation of 1970/71 to that of
today, I find only one difference: that the real-existing
socialist countries no longer exist, and many of the movements
which sprung from these have disappeared.

Taufer:   It's still a question whether that's a positive or a
negative change, because the support that existed was double,
even during the Vietnam War. The foundation of a social
perspective was supported by this. And as the discussions of the
Tupamaros (2) have recently shown, the collapse of the real-
existing socialist states has also had a liberating effect on the
left and on political movements. They have been forced back upon
their own resources, and they now have to develop a socially
emancipatory perspective from out of their own conditions and
history. And the left here needs to do the same thing.

Gremliza: Here in Germany, the left - even parts of the left that
always spoke out against real-existing socialism - does not seem
relieved, does not feel any sort of liberation or emancipation,
but rather has sworn off all resistance and joined up with the
successful fatherland.

Taufer:   If we're talking about the love of the fatherland that
many people have come to hold, this seems based on the fact that
the spirit of fundamental opposition to capitalism of the 68-
movement has been liquidated by the legend of total democracy
that that self-same 68-movement gave rise to. I think that the
discussions which the RAF have initiated should also reevaluate
the entire past 25 years.

Ebermann: When I read the latest RAF statement, I get the feeling
that the consequences are correct, but that the argument jumps
around. I feel as though it's description of how big the defeat
is is not convincing. 

Dellwo:   And if we don't have a feeling of defeat?

Ebermann: Then there's a political difference here, and you can
just cynically hope that you are more correct than those with a
more somber opinion.

Folkerts: Winning and losing are two relative terms. We have had
to work with defeats and endure losses; both inside and outside
jails, we have experienced some really tough situations. But even
now, in this difficult transition period, we will never maintain
that we have lost. In all those years we have wanted to become
social partners, to come together with other experiences. That's
why we are seeking contact with as many people as possible, on
the left - what still remains - and with groups that have arisen
out of the new contradictions. We have had a lot of experiences
in this long confrontation, we have gained strength, but all
without booking any major successes - maybe it's less visible and
spectacular, but I'm convinced that we've gained something.

Dellwo:   I also don't get the feeling that we've been defeated.
We've been in jail for 17 years, Knut for 15 years; all that
time, we have experienced how the state tries to destroy you. But
they haven't succeeded, quite the contrary: you have the feeling
of having survived it all. As for the RAF, we have reached a
boundary, and so I ask: have we achieved something, or not? Have
we - like we wanted to - done something historic? What will
happen with those experiences that would not have been if not for
us?

Taufer:   Right now, the trend on the left is to dwell on all of
the defeats. Personally, I haven't been able to get a good idea
of what's going on from in prison. If any place in Western Europe
has had a strong left since 1966, it's Germany, starting with the
first sit-in at the Free University, all the way until the RAF's
latest actions. Where else in Western Europe has the left been so
regenerative?
     I am all for examining the past 25 years to find all the
mistakes and weak-points. But our potential will largely be
determined by whether we are led by a historical pessimism or if
we're full of trust. In Germany, and in the whole world, the left
seems to have hit a boundary and is in crisis; so now I think we
have a unique opportunity to learn from the past, things we used
to think we didn't need to learn.
     There have been numerous important experiences, including
our own. We have been living under totalitarian conditions, for
10 years we were in the super-security wing, a sort of mini-Third
Reich; but they couldn't get to us, even though they monitored
every aspect of our lives with video cameras, microphones, brain-
washing, and other such things. We have experienced things that
could only possibly take place in the super-security wing. And we
mean both regarding ourselves and the left, including the
question of defeat, we have had a lot of experiences that are of
good use to those on the outside.

Ebermann: Of course you could say that you could only talk of
defeat if they had been able to deny us our political thought and
opposition. If that's what is meant by defeat, then certainly
neither you nor I have been defeated. It hasn't reached that
point, and it hopefully never will.
     But there's also the notion of defeat which simply implies
that the stated goals have not been reached, and as for the
experiences gained in the struggle, they are pushed off to the
side: 'We won't talk about that, that was a flop. No one in the
struggle can possibly learn from that; so let's just forget about
it.' This stance is often taken with people who have failed to
reach their stated goals. This also makes criticism of real-
existing socialism distasteful; everyone seems to want to
proclaim how they never believed in it in the first place. I
personally have written dozens of pages criticizing real-existing
socialism, but I always hoped that the DDR would hold its own in
the face of West Germany; I had hoped that it would prevent
certain plans from being realized, like armament, which allows
people to be silently killed far away while we here never hear of
it; I had hoped it would helped check the murderous armament
policies and economic penetration. If I were to deny all that and
claim that it was never a question of socialism, to deny any
emancipation, to claim the alienation and commodity relations
were the same, then I'd destroy anything which could be learned
from.
     But this second definition of defeat isn't what I mean
either. When I talk of defeat, then I mean in terms of social
power relationships. First, the state hasn't broken you all and
it hasn't broken me, and second, not everything that happened
during that time was rubbish. But the social power relationships
have placed us in a position of isolation unlike I have ever
before experienced.

Dellwo:   You mean, the system is more stable now than 20 years
ago?

Ebermann: Yes, I think the system is more stable now. I don't
want to just dismiss our hope - that the metropoles could not
collapse without our help - as total fantasy. But I'm just trying
to look at our history, and for a while it wasn't clear which
powers would get the upper hand in the world. We shouted the
slogan "Create one, two, three, many Vietnams!", not because it
was hopeless, but because at that time it was realistic.
     At the present time, historical writings portray us as a
bunch of idiotic fanatics; if we had just been a little more
realistic, we could have better anticipated imperialism's fate.
This is a gross manner of writing history, typical of self-
satisfied fools who simply take pleasure in the fact that they
never threw bricks 20 years ago. But today, our experiences
remain outside the public debate. I experienced this as follows:
if there was a struggle in society, there was always a spectrum,
to which we were the radical wing, but which nonetheless had
sufficient ties to certain left-reformist groups or some
prominent social democrat or media figure. At present, there are
plenty of debates - about the Soviet Union, shortages in the
public sector, what is to happen with the former DDR, etc. - but
we have no place in those debates.

Folkerts: That just shows that the left's frame of reference has
disappeared. The dividing line between East and West, the anti-
colonialist struggle and the movements in the metropoles and all
that went along with that with any revolutionary potential - the
historical phase that began with the October Revolution is at an
end, and a break needs to be made. We need a new uniting of
emancipatory forces, because the old ones - like the APO (3) -
were all determined by history. New social places, relationships,
and ties will come into being, even at the international level.
And as for our isolated position - we can't avoid this. In our
illegality, we learned to swim against the current; in the
loneliness of our isolation cells, we learned that it's still
possible to stand despite being overwhelmed. This has given us
lots of trust, a trust in ourselves and a trust in the potential
of those people seeking change.

Taufer:   If the left is so weak at present, then maybe that's
because it no longer offers a believable utopia.

Ebermann: No, I don't think you're correct about that. There's no
lack of utopia's, it's just that people don't want to hear about
them. Take, for example, the criticism of production, which until
a few years ago was still widely discussed, with its good and bad
sides, with over-done idealizing of alternative factories and
romantic notions of the old ways on the one hand, and absurd
self-exploitation on the other. But still, there was a discussion
of whether this manner of production, which chained people to the
industrial process by means of machines and assembly-lines, was
something to fight against or not.
     So about 5 or 10 percent of the population entertained the
dream that things would be nicer if done in some other way. And
that's a utopian notion. And that's exactly what's gone now.
There is so little desire within society to overcome alienation
that one almost has to conclude that the other side has indeed
won: they've won, because they've gotten people to believe that
the world we have now is the best we can hope for.

Folkerts: Maybe that's because you're still going about things
with the old model. You have to closely examine how the
contradictions take on new forms and how they manifest themselves
in society.
     Naturally, that's why a left-wing force is necessary, and
the circle becomes whole again, because this left-wing force is
absent today, and that's why the reactionaries have the upper
hand.

Timm:     The main area of difference between Thomas (Ebermann)
and you all seems to be the assessment of the imperialist
system's stability. And I get the impression that Thomas is
looking at the economic side: that economic stability and
breadth, and the economic possibilities which have sprung from
this, are playing an important role in the former socialist
countries.
     I refer back to Vietnam, where all this came from: the
economic and military superiority of the U.S. was pitted against
a people with little more at hand than it's own will for
independence, a will which could not be broken by superior
military and economic strength.
     And today, this same economic power is at work, and no one
pays heed to fundamental ideas or ideals, not even the ruling
class. If someone starts talking about "the intensification of
democracy", then everyone just laughs. Another problem is the
question of where to begin. How can you analyze something if you
just trust the published account of public's opinion? If
everything that happens just stays in small circles and doesn't
get written about - like the developments in the Hamburg
neighborhood St.Georg, where cooperation has started between
social-pedagogical initiatives, residents, and the Grey Panthers
(4) against the city government's drug policies. And it isn't
just the ideological question of providing free heroine; what's
concretely stated is, we don't like what the police are doing. If
they sweep the junkies out of the train station, they just shoot-
up in front of peoples' houses. The result has been, people have
organized and called for the police to get the hell out of the
neighborhood. That's something concrete, and it's a good
starting-point.

Ebermann: I assume that people there are doing something useful.
But that's not a way to discuss politics and society!

Timm:     Why not?

Ebermann: I'll give a counter-example and a citation. First the
example: In Schleswig-Holstein, all asylum-seekers would be lined
up outside the doors of the social services department to
illustrate their misuse of the welfare system. In all of
Schleswig-Holstein, about 200 people protested against this. I am
convinced that this shows the basis of the ruling powers'
ideological hegemony; the fact that they have seemingly shown
that, no matter how bad shit is in this world - and no one doubts
that - the brutality of everyone against everyone is taken for
granted. And that translates into a lack of opposition to the
racism which is vented against refugees.

Taufer:   I also look at it that way. But you'll also find
historical situations where movements for solidarity and freedom
had been infiltrated by the state's ideological hegemony, and
still you often found that resistance developed more often. At
this moment in the U.S., the ruling powers have no solutions to
offer for the social problems there. And these are no longer
confined to the blacks in the ghettos, but also the middle-class
is being affected, even though they initially slide to the right.
The question is, how can we develop counter-powers, and that
means assimilating the history of the last 25 years, to learn its
strengths and weaknesses.

Dellwo:   Thomas (Ebermann) says that the system has become more
stable over the last 20 years. I don't agree. We had to deal with
a very specific process and go down many false paths, which we
won't go down again, but which we had to go down at the time. But
given our present lack of direction and the fact that we find
ourselves in a vacuum at present, because we have no central
perspective, and because of the fact that real-existing socialism
was the first historical attempt at a solution, and it failed,
and we need something new - all of these facts don't mean that
the system has become more stable.
     We could give a whole list of things which show how the
system is weaker now and more unstable than it once was. But this
won't help us advance. Because the other side's decay does not
increase our strength. There is no automatic link between
suffering and liberation. And just because the system is stable,
that's not the reason for our weakness. I can't think in this
way. Whether the system is more stable or not - everyone that
doesn't want to waste his/her life in this society needs to be
rid of the dominant consensus and use his/her own mind and fight
for life and develop a counter-reality in this society. That's
how I interpret the statement from our comrades.
     We are seeing the situation from different backgrounds. We
have accepted our isolation as our starting-point. Sometimes that
was extremely difficult, but it hasn't broken us. In other words:
we have continually faced up to times when making the break with
the system was hard. Others were scared of this isolation and
ended up there anyway, only unnoticed and not knowing why. I just
think it's wrong to say that's because the system is so strong
instead of self-critically realizing that you always give up
something along the way. Many people have maintained that a break
with the system has to be something tangible in our lives, and
for myself, I don't care if I go it alone or not. In any case, a
precondition for each successive development is taking a look
around the next corner. But it should be much easier to solve
now, since the question of competence is much clearer. How many
chances to we need to give to capitalism to solve humanity's
pressing problems? And isn't that in fact proof of the
instability of the system?

Taufer:   Yes, if you define stability as the total of brutality,
egoism, and unrestrained push towards profit that the mechanism
can possibly socially sustain and still further develop. You
could speak of stability in this way. But this egoism and
brutality are also extremely destructive to the society.

Ebermann: Maybe I can make it clearer what I mean, by citing the
RAF statement: "It's an important question, how long the state
will tolerate racism against refugees and treat them as 'sub-
humans' so as to make both the state and industry not seem
responsible for unemployment, housing shortages, poverty among
the elderly, etc., and how long the state can continue to deport
these people back to the impoverished conditions which the state
helped create in the first place."
     I find this horrible. We live in a time in which almost
everything in this sector could strike at the roots of society -
the call for open borders, for example, was positively received
in liberal/church circles - but instead is all wiped out by the
consensus that refugees need to be treated harshly and
mercilessly. And there's little relevant social resistance to
this. If I compare this to the above citation, then I get to
thinking that if the question of what to do next is being linked
with the need to call off armed actions, then I think the authors
of the statement are still working under the assumption that they
have booked some successes and are now looking for the next
practical step. 
     Another point makes this more clear; they write that "there
are fractions within the state apparatus that have come to
understand that the resistance and the social contradictions
cannot be controlled by police and military measures." First of
all, the state has realized this for quite some time, that those
aren't the only means they should employ; and secondly, adding
structure to politics will always result in repression in the
future.
     Both quotations seemed linked to one another, and they seem
to say: Since things are going so well, it's time to step over to
a new means of struggle.

Dellwo:   I see it differently. The fact that a guerrilla has
come into being means that it cannot be excluded from history,
even if it halts it actions. It can always come back into
existence. That is what is meant here. In my mind, the RAF is
saying: the outbreak of a murderous power dynamic by the
authorities against minorities and the opposition. We know what
happened to the DKP (German Communist Party -ed.) after 1945, we
know how they dealt with the 68-movement, I know how our
squatting action in Hamburg was halted by MEK storm-troopers with
machine-pistols drawn - and they were ready to shoot! We put in
place a structure to counter-act this, and it's still in place.
The state has not crushed the RAF. The state has not broken the
RAF prisoners.
     We have fought to create a potential, the possibility to
utilize a certain form of resistance should the need arise. Until
now, that has been limited to us, to all those in illegality or
in jail, and a few others. And this position of being prepared to
stand up for something is something I'd like to see become more
generalized. I'm not talking about our means of struggle, because
we'll have to decide anew about that. But just the willingness to
stick with a certain task and the will to concretely solve a
problem that you yourself have taken on and want to answer.
     This hasn't been the case with most leftists. They always
seem to stay put at a certain point. The RAF address this point:
you all also have to fight for your right to resist! Today I just
realized: you all have been involved in left-wing circles for
longer than me, and yet you've not ended up in jail. Why is that?
Why have you all never fought so hard for something that you've
had to pay a price for it? Most leftists are lacking something. I
think it needs to reach that point.

Gremliza: So we need to get leftists in jail?

Dellwo:   No, not in jail, but the left needs to become more
committed. When we struggled in here for the regroupment of
prisoners, we went to the end. There have been deaths among the
prisoners, but we always knew this was a price that you had to
pay if you wanted to survive. You have to fight. Imagine, you are
sitting here in an isolation cell, and you realize that it all
could lead to the complete destruction of your humanity. And you
know that would be total defeat. So you resist this, and you
survive. And then you know what it means to really fight for
something.
     And if you all say that so incredibly much has been lost,
then that's partly because you all didn't say: we won't accept
that! You all could do with a bit of self-criticism yourselves.

--
1    The Trilateral Commission was created by Rockefeller to stem
the competition between between the major multi-nationals and to
make price-fixing agreements. The 200 biggest corporations from
Japan, Europe, and the U.S. are on the commission and are not
answerable to any government authority. Meetings are held two or
three times each year, where such topics as reasearch and moving
operations to countries with cheap labor are discussed.

2    The Tupamaros were an urban guerrilla organization in
Uruguay in the 60s and 70s and today function as a left-wing
mass-movement.

3    APO = extra parliamentary opposition

4    a struggling organization of elderly persons
--

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