Guerrilla History - Time with the Red Army Faction w/ Margrit Schiller [REMASTERED]

Episode Date: May 9, 2025

In this remastered episode of Guerrilla History (originally released in June 2022), we bring on a very special guest, Margrit Schiller!  Margrit was associated early on with the Red Army Faction, before being imprisoned and tortured by the West German state, being forced into exile in Cuba and Uruguay, and then having to move back to Germany more or less against her will.  A fascinating life story from someone just as committed to the struggle as ever! Margrit Schiller is author of Remembering the Armed Struggle: My Time with the Red Army Faction.  We highly recommend picking yourself up a copy from PM Press (https://pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1195).  Margrit's struggles within and against this system continue, and grabbing a copy of her book is a good way to help while we are still forced to operate within capitalism. Help support the show by signing up to our patreon, where you also will get bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/guerrillahistory 

Hello, guerrilla history listeners. This is co-host Henry, and I'm wishing you a happy victory day on May 9th, 2025, the day of release. So if you are listening to this on the day of release, today is Victory Day, the 80th anniversary of the defeat of fascism, Nazi fascism, and the day in which the Soviet troops entered Berlin. It's an important day to celebrate not only the victory over fascism, but to also honor those who, fell in the past. The Soviet Union alone lost 27 million citizens in the struggle against fascism, and it's important that we honor their memory today. Personally, I am honoring the memory of my great Antenla, Alameh Abdeneneva, who was the Red Army Scout operating covertly behind enemy lines in her native occupied Crimea. Crimea, of course, occupied by the Nazis in the early

part of the war. And while she was operating behind enemy lines with an injured leg after having parachuted behind enemy lines, gathering intelligence on the Nazi troops there and transmitting it to the Red Army in order to coordinate the efforts to liberate Crimea, eventually she was captured, tortured, and executed at just the age of 20. During her time while she was alive, she was awarded the Order of the Red Banner, and posthumously, in 2014, she was honored with Hero of the Russian Federation. Now, it's an interesting story as to why she was honored with Hero of the Russian Federation and not Hero of the Soviet Union. At around that time, those of you who know, and we have talked about this on the show in various episodes in passing,

but the Crimean Tatar population, and I should note that she was an indigenous Crimean Tatar, was deported. This was as a result of there being some Nazi collaborators amongst that population. However, it is, of course, worth noting that an order of magnitude more Crimean Tatars served with honor in the Red Army than there were collaborators with the Nazis who were occupying Crimea. In any case, as a result of the deportation of the Crimean Tatars, it became politically untenable to award very many heroes of the Soviet Union at that point. And the deportation took place just a couple of weeks after her execution. And as a result, that highest honor, the hero of the Soviet Union, was not conferred upon her. And only in 2014,

after the reunification of Crimea with Russia, did President Vladimir Putin personally bestow hero of the Russian Federation upon her, which again is the highest military honor in this country. I say in this country, I'm in Russia. So it's an important day to remember those who fell before us, particularly those who fell in the struggle against fascism and were martyred for struggling against fascism during, as it's called here, the Great Patriotic War, or as it's more commonly known as World War II. Now, with that out of the way, listeners, you know that at guerrilla history, we pride ourselves on being able to bring new material to you every week. But periodically, it's important for us to remind you that we have hundreds. and hundreds, probably close to 300 episodes at this point in our back catalogue, and we are cognizant of the fact that many of you are relatively recent new listeners of the show and may not

be familiar with a lot of the episodes in our back catalog. So from time to time, we take the opportunity to remaster with all of the editing software and editing techniques that we have learned over the years, remaster some of our old conversations and allow you to hear them in the highest possible audio fidelity and to discover some of the conversations that we had in the past. Today we're going to be bringing for you an episode with Margaret Schiller, my time in the Red Army faction. So many of you are probably familiar with the Red Army faction. This was a underground paramilitary formation, a guerrilla formation that was operating primarily in West Germany. There was also coordination in East Germany, but this was a formation that was

operating in West Germany against the imperialist, capitalist, leadership of the country, which of course was being propped up by the West at that point. Margaret Schiller was involved with the Red Army faction in her youth and was arrested for her time in the operating with the Red Army faction. And so today what I would like to do is to present to you that conversation, an over two hour long conversation that we had with Margaret Schiller about the Red Army faction, particularly her life story operating in the Red Army faction and her time after the Red Army faction. She has a terrific book on her time in the Red Army faction, which you can find in the show notes. It's out through PM Press. I highly recommend that you read that book. It's a fascinating

account of her time, both in and out of the Red Army faction. And while the Red Army faction is, of course, not directly associated with the Red Army that we are celebrating today on Victory Day, it is important to also honor those who fought in the struggle, whether that was in the actual Red Army or in underground communist cells like the Red Army faction in West Germany against capitalism, against imperialism. So, with that being said, I will now turn it over to our conversation with Margaret Schiller on her time in the Red Army faction, fully remastered. We hope that you appreciate that episode, and we hope that you appreciate the time that we spent remastering the audio so that you can listen to it in the best quality possible. Now, without further ado, here is that conversation.

You don't remember Dinn-Bin-Bin-Brew? No! The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare. But they put some guerrilla action on. Hello and welcome to guerrilla history, the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history

and aims to use the lessons of history to analyze the present. I'm one of your co-hosts, Henry Huckimacki, joined as usual by my co-hosts, Professor Adnan Hussain, historian and director of the School of Religion at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada. How are you today, Adnan? I'm doing really well, hope you are also.

It's great to be with you. Yeah, it's nice to see you too. Starting to warm up in Canada, finally? A little bit. I mean, it's rainy and a little chilly today, but we have turned the corner. winter is behind us finally. Yeah, we've still got, you know,

threats of snow here, but... Oh, my goodness. You know, I'm really, really far north. And also joined by Brett O'Shea, host of Revolutionary Left Radio and co-host of the Red Menace podcast. Hello, Brett. How are you doing today? Hello, I'm doing good. It's beautiful here in Omaha

for the time being, at least. Yeah, well, at least for one of us, we have nice weather right now, and, you know, that's better than none of us having nice weather. So today we have a very interesting topic with a very interesting guest. We're going to be talking about Margaret Schiller's book with Margaret Schiller, remembering the armed struggle, life in Battermeinhoff. Battermeinhoff, of course, being the more colloquial name for the Red Army faction. Now, in this introduction, instead of doing a very long explanation of who the Red Army faction was,

because they existed for quite some time, actually, like significantly longer than a lot of other clandestine guerrilla groups, particularly within imperialist countries. Instead of having a very long discussion of who the Red Army faction is, I will first direct listeners to a Red, sorry, a Revolutionary Left radio episode that came out, what, about two years ago, Brett, something along those lines. Excellent discussion about the history of the Red Army faction.

So if you haven't heard it already, I would recommend you pause this episode, go back, listen to that one first, and then come back here because we're not really going to be talking about the history of the Red Army faction so much. We're going to be talking about Margaret Schiller's experiences both in and out of the Red Army faction. So this is your warning now. Pause, go back, listen, then come back here. Brett, in lieu of the people having to listen to, you know, the hour and a half. half-long episode, again, if they've already heard it. Can you just remind the listeners briefly who the Red Army faction was before we get into the discussion? Sure, yeah. So in the simplest terms, the Red Army faction was a West German, this is still in the time,

this is in the 70s, it founded in 1970, 25 years after the end of World War II. In the western half of the division, right, after World War II, Germany was sliced up east and west. We all know that story. So this group comes out of Western Germany, where lots of Nazis, former SS officers, et cetera, are still in power. They're a radical Marxist, anti-imperialist organization that took up arms, basically, against the West German state and the West German ruling class. There's basically three iterations of, you know, like kind of like the IRA. There's like a first generation, you know, second, third generation. So that first generation, is where they get the name

the Bader Meinhauf group and that's when Bader, Meinhoff and some others were actually the most active. A lot of them get arrested in 72. You have the second generation, of which I think Margaret Schiller would probably fit most perfectly in. And then

you have this third generation, which exists in the 80s and the 90s. But the 70s is really when they were one among other left-wing militant groups engaging in direct action, but were very on the minds of Germans all over the news. It was a huge thing. And part of this story is, of course, when they were arrested, Margaret Schiller being one of them, a lot of experiments on how to break political prisoners, how to break prisoners in general, the introduction of forms of torture, solitary confinement, etc., were really carried out on these prisoners, including Margaret. And the U.S. was behind these experiments and, of course, solitary confinement, as we know it today. is, you know, its home base in a lot of ways is in the U.S. prison system where that, you know,

form of torture, I would argue, is routinely used. So, yeah, a Red Army faction, militants, you know, they carried out assassinations, bank robberies, bombings, police killings, killings of high officials, right-wing officials. That's basically who they are. Margaret Schiller was, as she says in this, I think she'll say in her book, and as she says, probably will say in this interview, wasn't necessarily a formal member, but was arrested before. before, you know, very quickly upon her interaction with the group and couldn't necessarily become a formal member. But for the German police state that arrested her, she was, by all intents and purposes, a member and was treated as such. So that's the basic breakdown.

But again, the whole history, the dive into the ideology, that's over at Rev Left. And it really, you know, a lot of times when we have these episodes, you could go listen to this one first or this one first. I really think in this case, it would help at least to have some background knowledge. You don't have to listen to that episode. But learning a lot of the episode, but learning a little bit about the basics of the Red Army faction could be very helpful because as Henry says, we don't have a lot of time to get into to that background details. We really just talk about Margaret, her experiences. Well, Brett says that you don't necessarily have to listen to that episode, but listeners, I'm going to say you have to listen to that episode. You have

no choice. Resistance is futile. Now, it's been a while since we've had an actual guerrilla or a political prisoner on the show. I think the last time we had one of either of those was Joma Sison, which was almost a year ago, not quite a year ago, something along those lines. And so it's really interesting to have the opportunity, again, to talk to somebody who was, you know, a gorilla and this time, one from an imperialist country. Adnan, let me turn over the conversation to you now. What are you looking forward to getting out of this conversation with Margaret? What did you find interesting about her story and things that perhaps you'd like to tease out?

Well, firstly, I think it's just so invaluable to have these opportunities to talk with people who are intimately involved with and suffered, you know, through the consequences of their political actions, their engagement in left-wing struggles globally. And, you know, I think of this as the oral history and the living history project of guerrilla history. So this is in some sense a debrief, you know, if we think of reconnaissance reports and, you know, dispatches and intelligence briefings. This is sort of like a debrief where we get a chance to really talk with somebody about what it felt like, you know, what they, what motivated them, where their sources of inspiration come from. And so those are some of the kinds of things I'm interested to hear about from Margaret Schiller's, you know, what really propelled her into becoming more than an analyst of matters taking place, but somebody who was an activist and wanted to explore working in genuine active resistance to capitalism and the imperialist state formations of her time. So that's one thing that I'm interested in. Of course, I'm also

interested to understand a little bit more about the techniques of resistance and the costs of those resistance inside the prison system. And, you know, we'll get a chance, I think, to talk about the hunger strike and about some of the other aspects of her experience in prison and solitary confinement. As Brett just mentioned, you know, some of these new techniques of repression were developed in West Germany, you know, in their response to these folks. And of course, I'm also interested just ultimately to see how a life led in resistance in West Germany and then subsequently abroad before returning to Germany. You know, what kinds of reflections does she have about the state of German, you know, society, the left? And, you know, her

her impressions on on contemporary German politics. So that's those are the kinds of things I'm interested to get a perspective on from somebody who's lived through, uh, this era of late 60s through the 70s and 80s of active struggle. Brett, what are you hoping to get out of this conversation with Margaret? Yeah, just learning more about the actual first person experience of it, you know, having studied the history and the ideology and examined it from that, you know, bird's eye third person perspective. It's going to be very interesting to get those, that first person perspective specifically. And, you know, shout out to the publisher, Kirst Blevadeb, obviously a great publishing house. And they, they worked with PM Press, I think, to get this book

out. But this book, remembering the arm struggle by Margaret Schiller, it's really good. I mean, just as like a, once you start reading, I felt myself captured by it, really drawn into it. It was a page turner. Very well written, very accessible. So if anybody likes this interview wants to learn more, I really recommend this book as a really popular, accessible text that it's hard to put down once you pick it up. Yeah, I second that. In terms of what I'm hoping to get out of this interview, the thing that I most interested in is how someone who is intimately involved in struggle and has faced repression, how that influences their ideology and their worldview, because it's easy for us to sit back and say, you know,

I have a fully developed worldview, but until you've been proverbially punched in the mouth by the system, by the state, and have to get chewed up by the system and spit out the other side, it's really interesting to see how that influences your ideology and how your ideology remains afterwards. Because we see many examples of people who are involved with various radical groups in their youth that end up going to very reactionary, right-wing causes in their later days. I mean, there's a lot of examples from like May 68, people who were involved in the student protests of France who ended up going pretty far to the right. And later on, we have examples of people who were in the anti-Vietnam War movement. Obviously, most of them

didn't end up becoming reactionaries, but a fair amount of them did. We have people who had radical upbringings with, you know, radical parents and then ended up being very right-wing reactionaries themselves. This is not the case for Margaret. Margaret has been put in the system. She spent seven years in prison, large parts of it in solitary confinement being tortured, and she comes out just as resolute as she was before she went in. And I think that this is really interesting to think about how we can go through repression and then come out the other side, still is resolute, still is determined to fight the system and fight for a better world. So that's what I'm really interested in trying to tease out of her in this conversation.

And now I think that we'll wrap up this introduction now because we want to spend as much time with Margaret as we can. So listeners, we'll be right back with our interview with Margaret Schiller, author of Remembering the Armed Struggle Life in Biter Monhoff. And listeners, we're back on guerrilla history. We're joined by our guest, Margaret Schiller, author of Remembering the Armed Struggle, Life in Batter, Mindhoff.

Hello, Margaret. How are you doing today? Oh, I'm fine. I'm getting older, but life is still with a lot of things to do and surprises. Yeah, it's an absolute pleasure to have you on the show. So, without further ado, Brett, why don't I let you get us into the interview here? Sure, yeah. Well, thank you so much again, Margaret,

for coming on the show. I guess the best way to start is maybe kind of just for people who might not even be fully informed on what this book is about. If you can kind of just talk about the book while you wrote it and the basic sort of stuff that we're going to be discussing today as a sort of intro into this broader discussion. Yes. I normally when I'm in all with audience, with people, it's for me important to mention my age. And when I was born, I was born in 48, three years after the end of the Second World War. And I was, I got older. I got awake in a society that was still very formed by Hitler fascism.

And I lived in a society where people didn't want to recognize what had happened in the time till 14 and 35. And when I asked my parents, when I asked in school, what had happened with Jewish people, what had happened in the time of Hitler, people said, oh, we didn't know. We didn't see nothing. No, there was nothing. They didn't want to speak about what they had lived and wanted to forget everything and deny it. but if you are in a certain way a conscious human being you feel that it's all a lie and it was a very authoritarian society where I grew up and where I felt this society wants to cut all my freedom, all my possibilities to live, wants to put me in a mold, how do you say, a pattern,

and that I do what they want, but that I can't find out what I want. And this was like that in school, it had home, in society, now that characterizes really Germany in the 50s, in the 60s, and this is one of the reasons why there came up what we named 68. And one of the big reasons, interior reasons. And the other big reason was the war in Vietnam.

In Germany, in that time, were stationed 6,600,000 U.S. military soldiers. From Germany, there were soldiers going to Vietnam and returning from Vietnam, and computers that were directing rapid forces, counterintelligence in Vietnam. And the German government said, no, no, we are not involved, but looking a little bit, it was clear how they were very involved. And so these different reasons were very important for us to say we have to do something, we want to do something. And, of course, there began protests and manifestations and things like that, in university especially, because there was the biggest possibility of discussions of thinking of politicization.

But social democratic government, Willi Brandt, they are especially important in counter-insurgency measures. threatening and trying to corrupt and trying to buy protests, and they did. So, of course, for more reasons, but student movements were less and less, but the situation didn't change in general, no? So there began, came up three different intents of guerrilla in Germany, three different concepts, three different groups. And one of them, the first of them, was the Red Army Fraction, where I had contact and where I tried to participate. It was a very quick entering and very quick finished in prison. And I was seven years in prison in the 70s, twice, and for my intent.

At first I was prison for two years, and then I came up out. intended to rejoin and we didn't succeed. And then I stood again five years. In 85 I went to Cuba to have asylum because I feared that they would take me to prison again and this time for how do you say

all my life because there exists a paragraph that is of the time of the German Emperor Kaiser that

but in one form or another in every society exist these kind of criminal of political organizing. And that says in Germany, when you get a judgment for the same paragraph, for the third time, you can get life sentence forever. And they had publicly threatened that it would, I would be the first case of that.

So in 85 I left Europe to Cuba to get asylum there And after a very short time As you asked for the book I come to the book It was For me living in Cuba I couldn't speak Spanish when I can't speak Spanish when I came there. I learned Spanish in the street.

I felt I have to reflect my life. I have to reflect my decisions and the things I had lived, why I had lived it and what had happened with me. Because there was something that I felt like a victim and I knew I was no victim. I was an activist, but I felt in a certain way as a victim and I had to change that.

So I needed dialogue and the only way finding dialogue was to write. There was no other possibility to find reflection in dialoging, that writing. So during eight years, I wrote the first book as something that was to reflect my life till that. And for me, it was very, very important to lose this sensation of being victim. I'm going to hop in here, Margaret. I think that that was an excellent overview of most of the conversation. that we're going to be having with you here as we dive more in death. So I want to turn us back to the very, very beginning, the beginning of your life.

As you mentioned, you were born in 1948, and you're from Bonn, which listeners may remember is the city that I lived the longest in in Germany. But your upbringing is not exactly what you would have expected from somebody who ended up being in the Red Army faction. Your father was in the military counterintelligence. Your mother was a member of the CDU, the Christian Democratic Union in the local city council. How did your upbringing influence you? And how did your thought process change over time?

Because I'm sure that, you know, when you were very, very young and you had your, as we say, family values instilled upon you by your parents, that obviously shifted. When did that shift take place? Look, the society in Germany, after 45, was no firm society. It was very instabil. You understand? It's English? Okay. And the life of my parents was in no way something that was really fixed.

They were looking, they were searching for something, how to stabilize their life. My mother had come from the east and had lost all her family, her background, because of the war. My parents had wanted to be something very different that, and then at the end, they could do. It was, my mother lived with deep depression, often in the band. And I lived in the first 10 years. It was not born. It was near Frankfurt, it doesn't matter. But I lived in a barrack, in a very poor outside of the city where we,

were really very, very poor. And my fathers tried to restructure their life now. But I lived in a very violent situation because of the barrier jumping to where I lived, not only because of my parents. My parents were violent of desperation. But I lived in a barrier where it was common. especially against women. And I had to learn to defend myself from more or less the beginning of my life.

And I think I began, me personally, I began very soon to see that it's a society, a life that doesn't give me a place. or that where I don't want to have a place, more important like that, no? Because this structure of violence, this structure of desperation, this structure of, oh, I, for me, it's very important, the most important of the word, what is thinking the neighbor about me, not what I'm thinking about my life. No, the neighbor, the notes of the neighbor, is more important than my own notes. oh no sorry that's really was very soon very early in my life something I said no it's not what I want what I feel where I want to go yeah that's very interesting and it comes through very much in your account in your book very clearly of this dissatisfaction with the state of the

society at the time and I think you make a wonderful point about how how unstable it was, and it seemed like there was a desperate attempt to impose some kind of stability because the post-war situation, clearly there could have been a lot of questioning and attempts to bring people to justice for previous crime. It could be a very politically, very difficult situation. And clearly the authorities tried to impose a kind of stability that was false to the experience. But I had a question for you also. You wrote a lot about, and you mentioned many times that, you know, there was news about many events taking place. There were a lot of demonstrations among students, criticism of the Vietnam War and Germany's involvement. But you also said many times for that period in the late 60s and that you felt that you weren't really very political or didn't have a big interest in politics. Even when you were aware of these things and you were going to many meetings, I wondered what you meant by that and how you felt your political involvement and becoming activism. And what made that happen in your view?

Yeah, there's something that for me until today is very important. I'm very, how do I say, I have no confidence when it's only words. Words, words, words, words. Now, for me, it's very important to feel identity between feelings and words. And where I can enter is where I feel bad. And of course, I came from a very deep, I said. I was often very depressed too, now, in my, when I was young, because of all the situation and I didn't feel where I can really do something that has importance.

But at the same time, I felt very deeply hate. I think that's something that is important. I reclaim it until today. Hate is something that is necessary when you really want to change society. It's not something that you make by analyzing and by theory. It's really you, we felt it. I felt it that I hate these kind of structures that try to, determine how you have to live

and I know they are really so destructive in the world, everywhere and they don't count with the death of so many people. Now, certain people count and the death of certain

people count. But you can see it again here now. Ukrainian people here count a lot and African people don't count. And I always felt it who counts and who not and that makes me very furious and makes me revoking this hate to that who can determine who counts and who not and that's this structure who which does try which is trying to determine every expression of life every

kind of organizing to change that and I was looking for more than for words I think when I look to my life and I found it at first with the drugs things what I'm explaining in the book and then the anti-psychiatric organization that I felt it has to do with the people. It's not words only.

And really there is taking care of people but at the same time trying to understand it politically to join that. That was what I'm looking for. And there it entered the contact with people of the rough, no? Yeah. Yeah, it's incredibly interesting. And the honesty about the hatred

that one feels living in a deeply unjust society is I think something we can all relate to. Even those of us that, you know, very much view ourselves as lovers of humanity, motivated by compassion and care about other human beings, looking at the ruling class, looking at who it devastates. I mean, living in the U.S., our imperial apparatus is a murder machine.

You know, you're not alive if you don't feel some level of hatred for that system, but you did end that answer discussing or you mentioning, you know, Red Army factions. So I'm just interested in how you move to the radical left, Marxism, and your encounter, your first, you know, person to person encounter with the members of RAF. I think it was in your, in your apartment more or less. So if you could talk about your political radicalization and then how you met the, how you met the Red Army. Yes, I described it in my book as a very quick entrance, a very quick short way. And for me, that was for a long time a problem that I said, oh, it was so quick. And in Germany, people say, or they feel it, they are convinced, you have to read five years, ten years books, and then you have the capacity to decide. I said, shit, no, it doesn't work like that. Now, no one does it. After reading five years, 10 years book, you never will decide in this way, never. But when I was finishing my book in Uruguay, in Montevideo, I was together with a lot of people who,

who had made the same ways like me. Now, the Tupama Rao people, they had been in prison. And I was in a group of ex-prisoners, woman, ex-prisoners. And I was talking about these things, and they said, oh, the major part of us made the way like you. You get to know someone who is yet more inside of the organization. organization and so you make the first contact and but the possibility to enter in this way is to create confidence and that there is a disposition because of your hate because of you don't

accept this way of social organization and you feel a deep distrust and a deep feeling against it. So it's not the way that you are analyzing, analyzing, analyzing. No, of course, you can have in some way success or in exit. No, you don't say exit in English. Success. You can succeed if you get together everything. if you really gain the possibility to analyze, to know,

to have theoretical information, capacities, and the feeling. All this together gives you, at the end, the possibility to succeed or not. It's clear. It's not only the feeling. But without the feeling, you can't get nothing. You can't succeed nothing. And of course, one of the first point not is analysis. It's really the disposition of, I don't accept this society in this way.

Yeah, I totally see that. But you talk about in your book, you know, you did engage with, you know, Marxist dialectics, reading a Marxist study group, you know, sort of equipping yourself. for equipping that feeling with some, you know, ideological analysis. So let me have gone there, Brett. So you mentioned in your book that you first became acquainted with Marx and Marxism as part of the socialist patients collective or at meetings of the Marx study group of the Socialist Patients Collective where you were diving into. We were not curious. You wanted to know, of course, really, in that time, we were reading, reading, reading, reading.

We really read more than nowadays, no one, no? It was for us very important and for me, very important to read, and I like to read today. Of course, this was a very important part, but it's not the first part. Yeah, it seems like it's a little bit like the difference you mentioned between your old boyfriend who was teaching in Mainz. You know, he was a Marxist. And you told about a conversation with a lawyer, friend of his, and they were criticizing some actions or some movements, and you felt displeased by the way they were talking about it. And maybe that's what you mean by they had a lot of analysis, they had a lot of ideological ideas, but they didn't feel that passionate desire to get involved in making change. That's the difference, it seems, yeah.

Yeah, the big arrogance. Right. Yeah, shit, yeah. My, that's something that we've talked about on our show a lot, you know, criticisms of the Western left, talking about Marx and then criticizing any movement that actually tries to do something in the real world to enact radical change within society. That's something that's a hallmark of the Western left. But Margaret, I'm curious now that we're talking about you becoming ingrained with

these organizations. So we talked about you meeting members of RAF. We've talked about you going to these working group meetings of the socialist patients collective. How did you really like dive into these organizations? Like you said, you kind of like almost stumbled into them in some ways. But what was your experiences like when you first got ingrained within these organizations? And then what did you try to, what kind of responsibilities did you try to give yourself within these organizations like what did you try to how how deeply did you try to ingrain yourselves and yourself within them that's different with the different steps because um the anti-psychiatric group and the release group um drugs no that i um i wanted to be

active and I could be active very quickly because I'm able to think. I'm able to analyze and I don't want only to watch. I put myself in the action, no? So I did. And that was not difficult. I was very quickly inside. No? That was different with Ruff.

Because I make in my book conversation at the beginning with Andreas and Goudron, I think, where when I made the step to illegalize myself and come to them, they were said, oh, not so good because you don't have the preparation to make it. It was too quick and I really felt that. It was clear. It was very quickly clear that it had been too quick. And I was arrested

before there was really a discussion how to go on. No? But it was like that. And I think for me it was important to describe this discussion I had with them in the book. because yeah not to say oh

I really was yet a member no I was not a member I that was at the beginning the first sentences we changed no I I tried to be but it was an intention and an intent

but before getting very forward I was yet yet in prison no? Yes. One quick thing. So as you mentioned you were trying to be a member but that wasn't how you were portrayed when you

first were arrested. As you mentioned overnight you went from a complete this is something you mentioned in the book. You went from being a complete non-entity one day to the next day your face is on the television it's in the newspapers. Margaret Schiller member of the RAF

and as you mentioned you were completely unprepared for that. So what was that feeling that you had as you woke up one day and you realized that in theory, everybody in Germany could look at their newspaper and see your name and plastered right on the front of it, member of the RAF? And then we'll transition to talk about your time in prison. But I'm curious about what that did kind of psychologically to have that feeling of everybody knows you all of a sudden overnight. Yeah, I've heard naked. They put me naked because really it was not only my name.

They put photos of my, when I was childhood, when I had 15 years, because my parents and the friends gave photos and told stories about my childhood and about me. And I was in the cell, and I read that, and I couldn't believe. And as I said, I felt naked, really naked. That was important for me to have that clear when I wrote my book. I said, they had put me naked. I have to lose in this direction nothing. Now I give my vision, my version, my vision.

but I have to hide nothing because they put me naked yet. Yeah, fascinating. Well, let's go ahead and move into the actual arrest and imprisonment because this is a huge part of this entire story and the torture, the mind games, the brainwashing, a lot of these techniques, some of them experimental, were really tried out on you and fellow members or fellow left-wing people who were wrapped up in this arrest.

arrested, et cetera. So can you talk about your arrests and, importantly, your time in prison and sort of what they did to you? Yes. In the seven years, I was in prison. I lived more or less every kind of conditions that in that time existed in Germany, two prisoners. I was in social, in total isolation, different levels of total isolation, and I was with other prisoners too now. One of the most important things I think is the white torture. And Germany, secret services, experimented with us, and they really controlled our reactions very near by observing every expression of us, making protocols about everything, and to see how they can manipulate us. and I lived that and it was

a situation where I had to fight every day against getting crazy and I woke up in the morning and I knew it is a hard fight against getting crazy

and I don't know if in the evening I'm still the same. And that I lived it for one year and a half totally. And after this one year and a half, I couldn't speak anymore. I left my possibility, I lost my possibility to say a complete sentence. I think it's an important example to hear. show what state is doing with people, they want to destroy. And now I know nowadays in US they are making it in a very wide sense, no, against a lot

of prisoners, not only against prisoners who are resisting or people who had resisted Before now, it's socially used. But in that time, it was especially against political resistance, where they tried to analyze how to make it. And it's very important for me when I speak about it to say, look, I'm able to speak very good as you can see it. and of course I had to re-learn it but I could learn it again it was not something that they destroyed forever

no and I think there is a lot of things they can destroy but not forever if you me I don't give up fight and so in this way

perhaps I make it in this moment. I think it's till now for me. Every day again, I have to make a decision to fight. It's not one decision that is value forever. No. Always again, I have to make the decision, yes, I want. And with this possibility for me to decide again, again, that I want to fight.

it's very there's a very big possibility to recover everything more or less but the main thing you can recover and regain it again well I wanted to follow up on that because in the book and I'm just

wondering about the long term psychological consequences as you say you we're dealing with a lot of stuff in prison but you never gave up the fight but in the book you mentioned like you know when you were first arrested you were put into your cell and the first thing you smelled was it smelled like autumn and then for the next 25 years

you had anxiety panic attacks more or less when you smelled the autumn air indicating you know deep sort of trauma that is that is that lived on so what were the long term psychological consequences in your estimation of being in prison and undergoing those various forms of torture oh i have till today nightmares um and um when i was living in What do I, once I said to a friend, ex-prisoner to, I have always nightmares. And she says, what do you think? We all have it.

It's normal for us that we have it. That's it. And I have it too now. But I live with it and that's okay. And it's like that. You can be lucky too. well go ahead of done oh i just wanted to ask um it comes through in your discussion of the time in prison that there were still many phases uh when you put it that you still every day had to

wake up to try and fight i wondered if you could talk perhaps a little bit about what the different forms of struggle you saw in the prison against the system because i think think in your analysis, you're, you know, fundamentally there's your personal struggle to survive and not be completely broken by the system, but it also, you are committed to the overturning of this oppressive system. And it seems that even in prison, there were many ways, even in your arrest, in the moment of your arrest, you did many things to help comrades, to delay the police to prevent them from being able to turn and achieve what they wanted. And the same in prison.

I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit more about how you experienced and how you analyzed the situation in the total control of the whole system is very oppressive and trying to control. but in prison there is the force that they have and you found various ways of trying to resist and perhaps you could tell us about what that experience was like. Yes, it depends a lot, of course, which form you find to resist. It depends of the conditions, the concrete conditions in which you are living. But perhaps I will answer you with the same. something that is something very different. Music was for me very, very important in isolation too.

When it was possible, it was not always possible to hear music. But to hear music and to be with music, because music is a very strong emotional force. and I when I was in the first time in prison we had there I was alone but it was in a social environment where there were other prisoners with whom I had no contact we had how do you say that what you have now on your headphones yeah we had headphones and music that came I had no radio, but there was a common radio, no? And sometimes there were music. I had headphones, and I put it very loud with the headphones, and I danced alone in my cell, really feeling that it brought me a lot of fools. Okay.

You didn't want, I didn't expect that response. But, of course, if you can make contact with others, in which form depends of the conditions, it's latter if there's no personal contact. If there is the possibility to cry and other can hear you, or if you are in the possibility to speak with someone, there are a very different. possibilities you can create there to fight and to give solidarity to the other and to feel that you are not alone. Because it's very, very basic that someone who is alone in a cell doesn't feel alone and that he feels, she feels that you have a common fight with whom ever outside, but that you. have a common fight with others in the prison too, now? And that there are people who are caring for you and that you can care for someone. This human relationship, it's very necessary to create it in conditions where human relationships

are being tried to destroy it all the time, now, where you doesn't exist as a human being, to concentrate and how to create in these conditions, human beings' relationship. Because that's the base of us, not? Right, right. Absolutely. So talking about your time in prison, you also write that you read a lot in prison. You started off by reading things about the Third Reich from the texts from you said everything from reactionaries to social democrats, to communists, et cetera, from both Germany,

the United States, the USSR. Then he moved on to these difficult texts from, as you say, Marx, Engels, Lenin, Lukach, Rosa Luxembourg, etc., etc., etc. So I'm curious, reading all of this in the confines of the prison, how this impacted your ideology, your worldview, your worldview, and how that tied in with also your experiences that were happening at the same time, because it's very easy for, you know, anybody to pick up a book and read and, ah, yes, here's an interesting point here. And there's other times where we have, you know, incredible hardship and we're able to understand that that hardship is impacting us.

I'm curious of how the confluence of these two things at the same time, if there was any additional, you know, transformation that happened in you as a result of having these incredible hardships and flat out torture imposed upon you by the state and the prison in particular, and also consuming these works to help you understand the society that you lived in, the society that it was immediately before, as well as theoretical texts from people who were trying to envision a better new society. So how did that transformation take place? How did it impact you? I think it's always like that. And for me, at least it's like that getting knowledge is making your stronger an orientation of the world and of

understand where you live and how it is constructed and reading kind of these books were something important to see oh there and There and there are fightings in the same direction. And the other forms of books are, oh, that is the fundamental of this system. Or I can understand better why it's like that, no, really to form a structure of the world to understand where I'm moving and how I can. perhaps act but basically

it's kind of help of orientation to understand the world that's reading and I love to read till today but I'm reading different things it's depending

of how I feel how I can have energy or and no, but it's very, very important to do it. And it helped me a lot in, have much more knowledge about the world that I didn't have before. Yeah, absolutely. I'm sure reading as well is something that keeps the mind stimulated, you know, like music keeps the emotional life alive. a reading can keep the mind alive and sharp, even in the darkest days of a prison sentence. So we know that you were arrested. You spent a short little stint in jail or in prison, and then you were let go and then re-arrested. Can you kind of talk about that re-arrest and

then getting out that second time? And then, you know, I want to move in after that to a discussion of your time in Cuba specifically. the second imprisonment was a feeling really very deep sensation of having failed that's not very helpful in having the possibility to fight and of course it's that's that moment that they put me in torture and white torture because they stayed secret service I say

knew very well in which moment what was our feeling when we were imprisoned at that time they saw it very quickly and said wow wow now we will come with everything we have to really get the last push to put them out now because they put me there in that moment after very short after being arrested and in white torture and you remember

I was lost in it really because I didn't understand why I was in the strongest situation of torture we knew because I felt very little important and I didn't understand why they put this measure against me and I lost ground truly I lost ground there but I had the luck in a certain way to say it that after putting me out because of the hunger strike they put me again in the same situation

and then I knew what they wanted so I found the possibility to regain possibilities to fight and regain ground in this way knowledge is very important not only of course theoretical knowledge but it's too

theoretical knowledge you know the measures what they are implementing against resistance and what they want with that and to understand that helps a lot to defend yourself. And okay. Just a quick follow-up that is going to be on the same subject.

So you mentioned that when you went back in, you kind of knew what to expect. I know you wrote that the first time that you were in prison, you read Ulrich Meinhof's. accounts of being in the dead wing, which I don't know, I don't think that we've mentioned specifically what the dead wing is. So perhaps you can let the listeners know what the dead wing is. And also, as we have Margaret explain what the dead wing is, listeners should understand that while this sounds like something that is not that out of the norm, because most of our listeners are based in the U.S. where solitary confinement for decades is something

that, you know, it's part and parcel of the criminal justice system in the United States. listeners should understand that this is not something that has been going on for a very long time. Like this is solitary confinement is not a widespread phenomenon, either in terms of the deray of history or geographically. Most places do not have solitary confinement anywhere. So keep that in mind as Margaret goes through this. But Margaret, can you tell us what the dead wing is and how reading Meinhof's account of being in the dead wing, how that played on you psychologically? because on one hand you knew what was coming but on the other hand you knew what was coming

you know yes but I had read it but I didn't realize that I was in it so that's the contradiction no that who is just I couldn't refer to that

it was in the opposite way I said no it can't be that because I'm not Ulrique No, it was like that. So I felt the results of solitary confinement, but I couldn't believe that I'm in solitary confinement. So there was a big contradiction in me. Solitary confinement, yes.

We were the first, how do you say in English, when you are the subject where they want to experiment something with you? Guinea pigs? Huh? Yeah. Guinea pigs. Yeah, we were that in the 70s. To be under conditions, I couldn't hear no other prisoner. I couldn't see no other prisoner.

I was really alone, alone. And this for weeks and month. And that is. the solitary confinement where no other human being exists in your perception, in your world that you can feel, that you can see, you are the only one. And there are guardians, but not persons with whom you can connect. You can have good contact, nothing. And they, I say, secret services, CIA think tanks, rent cooperation and so on,

were examining how they can make it more subtle, more in specific to really see what to do. And they succeeded to make crazy one German prisoner of us. They succeeded, really measuring and seeing, okay, he is going the way to get crazy, we continue, we continue. We make this and this and this. And no. Yeah. I just wondered if we could ask a little bit about the context for the hunger strikes and what that was like. I remember, for example, hearing a lot about the IRA.

prisoners going through hunger striking to resist the British government. And so I learned quite a bit from your book about the fact that this technique also was used in German prisons by you and comrades. And so perhaps you could tell us a little bit about that, the reason they took up that form, of that form of resistance and anything that would be helpful for people to understand about that intense experience.

Yes. These hunger strikes were very, very important. At first, of course, we made it because of isolation and because we knew, we saw it, we felt it,

that they wanted to destroy us in a way everyone isolated everyone alone and destroy and no one will hear nothing about the destruction and

nothing about the persons who are in this condition and they will be silenced they wanted to silence us with that in every way as human beings and politically. And

the hunger strikes were the first measure or end first something to defend us as persons and survive but they were very important to in a political way because to make it together there were we made big hunger strikes with a lot of persons and with all the risks and for a long time they succeeded to create a very big mobilization in Germany

it was a very big discussion and big manifestations and very important not to end all the political fight it was really something that

moved and I think in Ireland it was similar these these fights inside prison had a strong result

outside the prison in every kind people who were intellectuals people who didn't want to fight the system but they said oh no that's not

possible that they were in solidarity, but there were other part of people who said, wow, this system really I want to fight against the system to revoke, to make strong

again or remobilize every kind of fight. And without the hunger strikes, I think it would have been very different. Yes, yeah. Thank you so much for talking to us about.

I know you've written about these, but having to speak again about these very difficult conditions and experiences you went through. Can't be easy. We so much appreciate it. But the reason why is because you give this important analysis about the political value of that kind of resistance as much as it cost you and your comrades. So I very much appreciate it. you talking about this and also your whole experience during prison. Thank you.

Yeah, I absolutely second that. And, you know, those techniques, as you're saying, where you were the guinea pigs, all these things that were tried out with the backing of the United States. That was carried forward. It's still carried forward today. I've had discussions on one of my shows with a member of the New African Black Panther Party who is still in prison and solitary confinement is just par for the course. talks about his similar to your, the psychological struggle, the losing the ability to talk, the doing whatever you can to keep your mind sharp. It is torture. It's a human, it's a crime against humanity. And it's, it's grotesque in every way. And of course, to say nothing of what they're doing in Guantanamo Bay, the war on terror. I mean, these were taken to a new level in that context as well. But you mentioned earlier, your exile, you come out after being arrested twice. And for Americans, it's basically like a three-strike law.

The third time that you're wrapped up in something like this, they can give you a life sentence. And so you realized pretty quickly that you had to get out of there and you went to Cuba. And I'm very, very curious about your time in Cuba and specifically your understanding, relationship and learning about the Cuban government, the attempt to build socialism in Cuba and what your analysis and thoughts are of that, at least when you were there. Yes. I wrote a second book now about my time in exile in Cuba. Half of the book is that and half of the book is Uduwei. And I would like to make a first notice about it because for me, I describe my time in Cuba and what I lived and what I perceived. and it's not a political analysis of the system.

It's not a judgment. It's really trying to understand where I'm living and what I can see. And really, I don't want to get in another direction, no? Because, of course, we should. can have a political political discussion about the system, but please give me one week

to discuss it. Not 10 minutes or 20 minutes. Now that's impossible. And I think it's very, very important to be

the most possible with justice. I don't know how I say good in English. Like to do the topic full justice? Yeah, I don't want to be misunderstood. I don't want to be generalized in this way. Now, it's very concrete and I, of course,

therefore we can discuss one. week. And so, okay, perhaps we will get nearer to what is the situation of Cuba. I'm very, I think it's a terrible crime that is U.S. and Germany directly behind U.S., making with Cuba and trying to destroy it from the beginning and never giving a chance to really develop their own possibility and it's an enormous wonder that it exists

till today and it's really very, very hard fight they have to do and of course not everyone it's not possible that everyone is saying, oh, fine we love this fight.

Now, they are forced to do it and they have the baddest conditions they have. For me, personally, it was a very, very important time. And not so much in this way of political analyzing, but in a very living as a human being, I detected so much things. that in Germany doesn't exist in a way that there is people are so solidarity so

solidarious yeah solidarity they are living in a time together where they try to participate with everything they can have and when you come to a house and The first thing is they say you have to eat. They have nothing more to eat. But the last they have, they give it to you. Here, in Germany, they have everything to eat, and you enter, and they hide it. No? No, no.

They don't want to, how do you say it? Share. Yeah, that's what I'm just a word I'm looking for. Thank you. People there share, yeah. And that was something for me very, very important. The importance that children have there, they are treated like persons and not like something that has to be educated.

They really, I never wanted to have a child in Germany because of the fight, because I didn't want that they have to suffer consequences. but I didn't live in Germany as a country where it's worth to have children because it's so hard. So people are so egoistic, so individualistic. No, they don't share. And in Cuba, it's very different. People share and children are important.

And they have another place, another importance, no? So for me, I said, oh, perhaps it's possible. And before I was finishing to really think it, I had it. I cut to children. It seems to happen to me more that before I think something at the end, analyzing, analyzing, I just live it. with children, it was the same. Yeah.

Margaret, I have a quick follow up. Yes. I have a quick follow up for you because it's on the same topic. So, you know, you moved to Cuba in 1985 and then you moved to Uruguay in 1992 or 1993. 1993. Yes. So when you mentioned earlier in the interview as well as in the book that when you first moved to Cuba, you didn't speak any Spanish.

And you also mentioned just now that the people of Cuba are very generous. They're always willing to share with you, even despite the economic hardship that they face. But I would like to know just a little bit more concretely, like, how did you support yourself being transported to a country that you don't know the language of? And then living there for eight years and then living in Uruguay for another 10 years or so? Yeah. So how did you support yourself going to these countries beyond? just, you know, the generosity and the fellowship of men, you know, of Cuba and supposedly also Uruguay to some extent, though, I don't know about that.

Yeah, these are two very, very different experiences, Cuba and Uruguay. And Cuba was in respect to. of language all the time very difficult for me not only because of Spanish but because of my experiences in Europe

or in Germany that were so different than living in Cuba that for example when I tried to explain what I had lived in Germany

to my Cuban friend, she said, I don't understand what you are speaking about because I have no idea. I don't know that. It's so strange what you are telling to me. That is one point. The other point is that when I came to Cuba, Cuban government demanded that I don't speak with Cubans about my history, that I don't tell them about my asylum. And that was very, very hard for me that I couldn't, though they would not perhaps understand it,

like my Cuban friend where I decided to break this rule because I felt I have confidence with her. But generally I couldn't tell to Cubans why I'm there. So Cubans thought, I'm extravagant German, German woman that felt in love within Cuban. Oh, that's normal. That understands everyone there. And that's okay. Therefore, she is there. And when she is, how do you say, when you're finished with a Cuban guy, then she returns to Germany.

and that how she is because she is extravagant and with money very different than Cubans now she can do what she wants in the world and that I had come from a very different point of living they had no idea and they would not have understand it because for them Europe was and is something like paradise

It's the third way. The third street, no, it's not street, but U.S. is the enemy. No? Okay. But Europe is the other possibility. There is not imperialism like that, and there are European countries that are breaking blockade, not the blockade. And so they are better. Europeans are better than US.

That was the general vision of Cubans in that time. And they never would have imagined that we tried to fight for revolution. They didn't see the reason why. I lived it when in very few. few moments I tried to tell why I was there. They said, oh, you are lying. That's not possible. So there was no possibility to really discuss political things from my point of view.

I said I learned in Cuba. What is possible, was it not possible, what perhaps it functions in another way that I thought, but I can learn from a practical experience, but I can't exchange.

That was very different in Uruguay. In Uruguay, I lived together with people who had been in prison like me, other conditions, but not better. And a lot of people

who had been in exile and Europe and you return from exile to Uruguay, and we really could discuss about political convictions and political experiences that came from similar points of view, similar points of conclusions of an analysis of the world. So Margaret, then, at the end of your time at Uruguay, just before you moved out of Uruguay you made a trip to Germany and you mentioned this is in the epilogue of your book that when you visited Germany all of these journalists were asking you to denounce violence of any form this being less than a decade after the German greens of all

people kind of led the charge to have this depraved bombing on Yugoslavia and you point out the the contradictions that are present there. But in any case, what I'm going to be asking you now is that throughout your time in Cuba and Uruguay, you're still having these very, let's just say, negative feelings about Germany. And yet you had to move back there for economic reasons. I'm just wondering if you can briefly tell the audience about why you had to move back to Germany.

And then I know the guys have one or two questions to ask about. about Germany then since you've been back? Yes, I never wanted to return to Germany, but at the end, I had to because of economic reasons. Twice I had been a political migrant or exile, and at the end I was a economic refugee. Because there was a big economic crisis in Uruguay, and 92, because of the...

the bank crisis in Argentina in 2001 2003 or the bank system crashed in Argentina

and Uruguay is the next country that has a lot to do there's a no and so there

was a complete bank crisis in Uruguay too and in this way for example

there's There was a German bank in Uruguay. And this bank said, oh, we can't function anymore. We have to not to find the possibilities not to close up. Uruguayin state has to help us, a German bank. And they argued and they acted as if it was an Uruguayin bank that needed the help of the Uruguayan state. And so they got by the Uruguay and government money to stabilize the bank,

the German bank in Uruguay. So it's only one little detail of how bank crisis are functioning, but people lost their possibilities of working and I lost my possibility to work and to earn money. to feed my children. So I could not continue anymore to live in Uruguay. And so I had no other option than to return to Germany. And I decided to do it, though I really felt very bad with that. Yes. Well, so now you've been back in Germany for some time. I'm curious a little bit to hear about your analysis of contemporary German politics, how you position yourself, what reflections you have on it. I note that, you know, in Germany, as well as more widely in Europe, there's been

an upsurge in organized, far-right parties and movements, and even some having electoral success in Hungary, in other places. Also, of course, in Germany, the rise of movements, anti-immigrant movements, racist movements, groups like Pegida, parties like Alternative for Deutschland. And so I'm curious, you know, how upon your return, I mean, you didn't want to have to return to Germany, but what have you seen in the turn, perhaps, in the last decade or two, in the political situation in Germany and in Europe more broadly, with these far-right kinds of movements and without, it seems, any corresponding counter-left movements like those that emerged during a time that you were very politically active in the 60s, 70s, and so on. What reflections

do you have and how do you identify now in the political landscape in Germany? To give me two days to answer? That's a big question. At least. I would. I would try a little bit. When we came there, my children have a black father. Okay. We came there and

people leftist people, everyone was very, very racist. And when I said to people oh, to friends, oh, you are so racist, People said, but Margaret, no, we aren't racist, what you are telling to us.

Now, nowadays, if I say to a friend, you are racist, they say, oh, sorry, I will reflect it. And why did it change because of the refugees who came here and who are fighting? There were a lot of refugees that came in 2010, 11, 12, and they came and fought. They occupied a place here in Berlin, occupied a school here. They made big manifestation. They really fought and they throw away their papers and said, we want to fight we don't accept that and people

were very astonished and really it was something that make a break, made a break here not so profound but in a certain way it's nowadays clears that for a broader part of the people

they know oh shit here exists racism but of course it comes very clearly because of there are so racist groups, parties, police. And for a long time, everything was hiding. But it's not hidden anymore.

The racist and right-wing are going out. They are reclaiming these things. And at the other side, people who live racism and right-wing attacks, they come out and say, we don't accept it, we don't eat it, we will protest, and they are protesting against it. So there's a polarization in this society where it comes clearer, and of course, therefore I say, do you give me two days? Because it's not only Pegida and these kind of things.

There was a group, and I say it still exists. German authorities say no, but there exists a right-wing armed group that murdered Turkish people. Every year one, 10 people during 10 years, they murdered everyone with the same arm, the same pistol. And here the police and state said, oh, it's inside the Turkish community they are fighting against. never put them in the file that all the people were killed by the same arm. No, no one knew it. No. But when at the end it came open that there had been during so many years, this group,

left wing people said, oh, it's not possible. It's not possible. I say, oh, it's so easy to forget history. Now, in 60s, in the 70s, in the 80s, we knew that these kind of groups existed inside NATO and in Europe and with the US. And now there were books and I studied these books in the 60s and the 70s, the networks of the fascist group in the world. But in the 19th or after 2000, people didn't know nothing more about it. And they were very astonished and didn't want to believe it that there was something like that. So it's possible today to say to the German state and the justice to say no, yes, we punished three persons that had organized this fascist group and now it's finished.

No, it's so clear that's not finished, that they had the big ground where there was, we're working, and where they, in different parts of Germany, where they have a lot of people with hope, they are allied to their fascist groups, not? That made possible the murders and all that. And, no, it's silenced, but it's silenced all the long history of that. And nowadays, Ukraine, I say, oh, this country, I know since 70 years, it hasn't changed. They are so fans of militarization. All the society, arms, arms, we want arms, they have to give, and we want to fight there, and they are Europeans. And the They have blonde hair and blue eyes, just like such.

Yeah, that's it. Yes, I wanted to cite, to say, to say what had said the German Minister of Experians. This woman, Berbock, she was the other day in Kiev. Yeah, awful, awful, awful. But she was in Kiev and there was an interview with her by German television and she said, Oh, yes, I was in Boucher now and I saw what Russian have made here and it is like would be in Potsdam. So near to Berlin, it's very similar. I feel like I was in Potsdam.

And it's Europe, it's our Europe. We have to defend Europe here. Yeah, that's it. And you see the people who come from Ukraine have every privilege here and all the African people, Afghanistan people, Syrian people, Iraq people. They deport them. They deport them to Africa, to Afghanistan, to Iraq, to Syria and say, We don't want you.

Chow. And human rights, human rights, I don't know what is human rights here. Yeah, you mentioned Afghanistan. I knew several Afghan refugees when I was living in Germany. Listeners, if you're a newer listener of the show, I lived there for about three years. But I knew some refugees from Afghanistan that were living there. And pretty much the only way that they wouldn't be harassed continuously by the state is if they were PhD students. Like if they were refugees and were able to enroll in German higher education, then they were in an okay position.

But if they were just a refugee because of what was happening in the country and they weren't enrolled in higher education, they were being harassed continuously by the state, trying to be pushed out. As you mentioned, these people don't have blonde hair. They don't have blue eyes. They're not European. And you also mentioned Bearbach's name. And my goodness, every time I hear her name, I recoil. I follow the German news still because of my time there. and she really is a ghoul, an absolute ghoul.

But I want to follow up briefly. We talked about right-wing groups that are in Germany right now, but I also want you to just comment briefly on at least what I perceive to be a complete dearth of left-wing groups. So even groups that are trying to be like parliamentary, you know, D'Alinca is not, delinca is like the acceptable left in Germany and they are not that left. We've talked about that before with Manny Ness on the show. But, you know, also there is a German Communist Party, but this is the state of the German Communist Party.

In the last elections, they're so disorganized and there's so little support for them that they didn't even know that they had to file their paperwork on a specific day and therefore weren't eligible in the election. So people couldn't vote for members. of the German Communist Party because they were so disorganized they couldn't even file their paperwork. And this is, you know, the above ground left in Germany. And I don't see any traces of an underground left in Germany. And I'm wondering, you know, you've, I only lived there for about three years. You've lived there for a lot longer than that. And your latest stint is also a lot

longer than that. How is my read of the situation there? Like, as I see at the left is almost non-existent in Germany these days. The only thing that even passes for a left is DeLinka, which again, we've had conversations about before. There doesn't exist no radical left in Germany.

No. The thing, I something that I can see not only in Germany in Spain, too, I have a relationship, and move there, young women who have more or less than 30 years

that have no knowledge of history, but they are searching. The people that are older had forgotten to search. now there really is coming a new generation that have more or less less than 30 years and basically they are women that are trying to organize in another way

and they are interested in knowing they are reading they are organizing events to get to know experiences from me or from other women that have fought in the 70s and the 60s or that are relating to Kurdish fight that are relating to not in the way we did it or

European German leftist made it in the 70s to be solidarious with fight in other. No, they want to learn and they are trying to network. That's something very different, no? And they want to see what they can do and what experiences exist in the world. But they are young and it's new this, no? The older than 40 years, I stopped to discuss with them.

It's really, it's awful because they don't learn anymore. They are living with their privileges and they don't want to risk that. Yeah, just a brief mention, when I was living there again, the only mass action of any sort, and not even mass action, but the only action really that I saw that could be considered left in any regard was, one with regards to climate however most of that was co-opted by liberals with for obvious reasons and the only other thing that I saw that really was groups of people getting together to actually like protest was Cuban solidarity and I had been at a couple of Cuban solidarity protests when I was in Germany but that was the only thing that I had seen yeah yeah basic is climate but

who began it were the young now where the school and they really made it with a lot of desperation now because they felt they are threatened in their life perspective with what is happening in the world so that's something different than theoretical analysis

and making intellectual solidarity no and like it from there their vision of I have a life or I have no life anymore if it continues like that now so and there came really many many people together but other things now but I want to say the influence of the refuse is not so small in not only in respect of racism, but I say one of the slogans of the refugees who had taken the place here, no, occupied the place, Oraninplatz, in Berlin for two years and lived there in tents, was we are here because you were there where we come from.

Yeah. And they are that. They are the people who really are coming from the results of what imperialistic countries, Germany, had made in other. And so it's not any more abstract analysis. It's, they are here, no? And that, I think, really changed in a small level, in a small way. other necessity, other feeling that you can't continue as it is. Yeah, well, I mean, we live in dark and uncertain times, and certainly a lot of the patterns and developments happening in Europe

are also happening in their own way here in the U.S. and in Canada, the rise of the right, the rise of re-rise of racism, explicit fascist politics, et cetera. And so, you know, we're all kind of in the same boat with regards to that. I do want to say we're coming up on two hours, Margaret, we're very, very, I think I speak for all of us when I say that we're honored to have you on and we really appreciate you being so generous with your time and your memories and your story. I guess the last question that we would like to ask as a way to round out this conversation is just kind of

stepping back, you know, there are people all over the world, left-wing activists who want a better, different world. What lessons would you say that you would like to see younger, activist, younger left-wing-minded people take from your book and from your life and your experiences if you had to sort of boil it down to a couple lessons? I think I refuse to answer to this. Fair enough. Is the point just that they should take whatever lessons they can from it

and you don't want to impose that? Yes, I think it's the election of young people today to look how they can fight and if they want to fight and we can speak about everything but I never want to make an advice the decision is of others and I want to give the experiences and of course we can enter in more details of experiences. There's a lot of more than I wrote, but it's always a new decision of everyone how to fight and depends of the situation of the world, what is possible to make, and what do you see, what is possible? So, the conclusion, I can't.

Fighting is always, fighting is always always. I think that that's a good note. I said it, I said, hey, I think I didn't say it right. It's worthwhile. It's important to fight. That's what I wanted to say. And where is it something different? No, I wanted to say fighting is important.

Now, that's the note to end on. Everything. You know, just even, you know, I would encourage listeners to this show to, read your book, and if they, especially if they found something compelling in this discussion, in you talking about your experiences, because at least whether you don't want to prescribe for them the lessons and the way they should fight, I think that last point is very important. And your book and your experience shows an inspiring example for them of somebody who tried to fight. And that's a very important thing just to have these examples from our histories, from those experiences to encourage, and also for people to understand the great costs that are involved.

It is not an easy struggle. So we thank you very, very much for sharing those experiences with us. Absolutely. Again, listen as our guest was Margaret Schiller, author of Remembering the Armed Struggle, Life and Bader Mainhof. Thank you, Margaret for coming on the show. It was a pleasure talking to you. Really an honor for us to have you. And listeners, we will be right back with the wrap up.

And listeners, we're back. We just finished our interview with Margaret Schiller, author of Remembering the Armed Struggle, Life and Batter Meinhof. Really fascinating conversation. And I first have to say a big thing. Thanks to Margaret for being willing to spend so much time with us talking about all of these things that not only, you know, did they happen a very long time ago, but also most of the things that we talked about must be incredibly traumatic to recount. I can't imagine going through years and years of torture and then having to think deeply back to these times that, as she mentioned, she still has nightmares about this experience, having to go back and think in detail about exactly what happened. happened. Like, what days did things happen? What did they do to me? How long was I there for? What

were they trying to get out of me? Watching her comrades get suicided in many cases. And again, listeners, if you read about the Red Army faction or if you listen to the episode that Brett did on Rev Left Radio, you'll know what I'm talking about with regards to being suicided. We're going to do air quotes there, not that you can see them. But anyway, she's having to face all of this. And then she's willing to come on and talk about it at length. So a huge thank you to Margaret for being willing to do that. Adnan,

why don't I turn to you first and we can get your initial impressions from the interview that we had with Margaret? Is there anything that really stood out to you or that you want to highlight to the audience? I guess two things. One is just picking up on what you were just mentioning. I mean, I think the fact that she is able to discuss what happened

to her, what she suffered through in a pretty sober, clear way that tries to emphasize not only, you know, the personal costs, but also what the political goals were, I think is very courageous and very admirable. And we definitely appreciate that because those experiences are difficult to go through. And it's rare for us to have an opportunity to learn from. I mean, we can never really know unless we experience these things. but I think the fact that she's able to communicate something about what that experience was like and what kind of dedication it took and what sort of mental resources she had to use in order to keep herself composed through this.

You know, it's it's very instructive and inspiring and I really appreciated that in the conversation. But it was also combined with political analysis, which is why we have to talk about it and why she's shared it is, you know, she wanted to make certain points about, you know, the political value of mobilizing through something like a hunger strike as a conscious way to overcome the techniques of repression to try and silence and quarantine and hide, you know, what's happening, you know, with these political prisoners. So this was a way to kind of, you know, create a link and a political link between those on the inside and those on the outside and continuing and carrying forward some kind of political movement. So that was very important and useful to hear about. I think the other thing that I

really would take away from this is just a very fierce person still in terms of her critique of what's happening in society. There is no moderation with age. She's calling it exactly as it is, you know, about the rise of fascism in Germany today, all I can think of is that it must have been, and it must be, very disheartening, you know, to know that you did almost everything that you could possibly think of doing and suffering. And we're still at this stage where there isn't a radical left, as she told us, left in, you know, existing really in Germany. And so I think that's the real question is how that can be built, you know, our struggles. And I thought it was very interesting her response to the question about the lessons. I mean, she's written this book. Clearly, she wants to share her experience, but she's also conscious that that's her experience and that's of a different time and that every generation and every set of, you know, every movement and those struggling in it are going to have to make their decisions if they're going to fight how, what the best method is and

analyze the situation for themselves. So I thought that was a very interesting position at the end, that she didn't want to just sort of pass her, you know, experiences on in the form of advice and lessons that are programmatic. It was more as an example to inspire what the costs of struggle are and, you know, more as a model of inspiration and then it is. is of admonition, oh, you have to do this or you have to do that. And I think that's probably right. I think she's probably right about that. So anyway, those were two initial thoughts that I

had after the interview. Yeah, and I'll have more to say on the fact that she doesn't want to give recommendations or advice, but I'll give it after Brett. But Brett, as I turn it over to you, I also just want to direct the listeners to another episode of Rev Left that you did. You mentioned about having an interview with a current political prisoner who has been tortured in his time in prison, listeners, you can find that by going to the Rev Left feed on any podcast platform and looking up all power to the people, the Kevin Rashid Johnson interview. That is the name of that episode of Rev. Left that you should definitely listen to. It's a fascinating interview and one that does have certain parallels to the conversation that we had today. So, Brett, why don't

I turn it over to you now and we'll get your impressions from the interview. Yeah, very interesting parallels indeed. So, yeah, lots of things to say. I found this fascinating. We could have kept going for a long time. I think English is third, fourth language. So, you know, and she expressed that it does get exhausting after a while to try to, you know, go three languages down and translate all your thoughts.

So we're very thankful for her to that. But yeah, you know, the PTSD that she's still suffering, which is what it is, 50 years later, 50 years later still having nightmares and panic attacks and anxiety over what she suffered. I mean, it's absolutely brutal and it's completely heartbreaking. And the fact that she was basically forced due to economic conditions in Latin America to come back to Germany, having mixed kids and then seeing the renewed racism, you know, alive and well in Germany. And the double standard when it comes to Ukrainian refugees, blonde hair, blue eyes, as you said, Henry, compared to refugees from the global south. and you know Germany it is a tinderbox it is it's a long history of militarization of this obsession with with order and when you see some of those those patterns starting to

reemerge as she said in this interview for a while they were kind of shoved under the rug they were hidden out of view but still alive and now you're kind of seeing this reemergence into the public of these of this militaristic Germany with regards to Ukraine, with this racial Germany that, you know, certain refugees that look like us are acceptable. Other ones are not. The rise of hate crimes, the success of far right-wing electoral parties to say nothing of the non-electoral far-right. This is scary, scary stuff. And if you study the history of Germany, these little tremors often come before certain sort of earthquakes. Now, this is a different time. I don't know how that will play out. But something to keep an eye on for sure. I didn't want to ask you, Henry, though. The other thing was the Cuba situation and just how the people of Cuba think in collectivist terms, in altruistic terms, sharing, community. Well, for not only the socialist revolution, but when you're embargoed and cut off from the rest of the world, when your economy is being strangled to the point of death, you know, you have to almost take on a communal spirit, a spirit of sharing of helping one another. And to see that that's alive and well, you know, I wish we could have just, I guess, had a whole conversation about her experiences, her experiences there. But for Henry, I just had a question because at the end, you lived in Germany for three years. And both of you were sort of talking about the complete lack of any real German left. And I'm just wondering, based on your experience, is there a fundamental difference in the vitality of the American left right now? Because we often, you know, we can get navel-gazy and disappointed and kind of shit on ourselves a little bit.

about how weak the American left is, and surely it is, is German left more or less like that, or is it even, is there even more of an absence of a militant left? Yeah, so first of all, I hope that we can bring her back for a whole conversation on Cuba. That's my first note. The second thing that I want to say is that I'm going to preface this by saying that I am not an expert in Germany. I only lived there for three years. I know three years sounds like a long time.

It's not nearly enough to be able to say with certainty that, what my experiences were. I lived in three different cities in three different parts of the country. I lived in Bonn, Hamburg, and Rostock. So, you know, a very wide geographic spread. Bonn being kind of right in the middle of the country, north, south, but all the way in the west, Hamburg being all the way in the north, and then Rostock being all the way in the east, in the north. So like very, very different places in the country. But still, I only lived there for three years. And my German is like to say incredibly limited is an understatement. My German is really, really just not there. So my experience is, despite trying to ingratiate myself within these causes and trying to stay

as informed of what was going on as I could, I do have to preface what I'm going to say with that. So keeping that in mind, the left in Germany is very strange. And what I mean by that is this. If you're going to compare it to the United States, the left is much more vibrant. but also less radical. But it could also be looked at the other way around. It is more radical, but less vibrant. Now, what do I mean by that? In the United States, we have two big parties,

the Republicans and the Democrats, but really, they're like the same party, right? I believe, was it in Krumah that said that, or was it Raul Castro? One of the two said that, you know, that the United States has one party, but with typical American extravagance, they decided to have two anyway.

I think it was, I think it was an, it was an African revolution. It was in Cuba, I believe. So I think so. It's neither here nor there. The point is, is that the two parties that really people have a choice between are the Democrats and their Republicans. Now, there are some people within the Democratic Party that are a little bit more on

the left than the standard bearers of the Democratic Party, but like, really now. These people are still capitalists to their bones, is Elizabeth. Warren said. Germany actually has like fairly significant parties of people that will explicitly call themselves socialist like delinque. Now, of course, they did absolutely appallingly bad in this last election. But I mean, really appallingly bad. The only reason that they still have any federal funding is because of some bylaws that are in the German constitution based on how many regional governments they have control of. But they are a left-wing party. quote unquote. We've had discussions about the shortcomings of Delinca before, but they are far,

far to the left of any parties that we have in the United States, any of the big parties that is. But in terms of like the radical left, in terms of people that would be like Margaret Schiller, people that were that would have, you know, associated themselves either with the Red Army faction or at least would have had inclinations towards the Red Army faction if they, if they didn't themselves get active in that struggle. There's more in the United States. The United States has a much more, based on my experiences, and again with that preface, has a much more vibrant like underground revolutionary ethos and revolutionary groups.

Like we have, we don't have a large communist party, but we do have people that have revolutionary sentiments that will call themselves communists or anarchists or socialists or anarcho-sindicalists or whatever. You know, and they'll describe different tendencies to themselves. But these people like really are out there and they are trying to start

to get organized. The numbers are small, but you know, there are people there. In Germany, that almost doesn't exist. Like, what would have passed as radical left has been subsumed within DeLinke at this point, which as we mentioned,

is far to the left of what we would have the options to vote between in the United States, but it is not what you would expect to see within, you know, like communist circles in the United States. They are not communists. They are not anarchists, if that's your tendency. They're not, you know, Marxist Leninists or Maoists or anything like that. They're like very, very progressive. They use the language of Rosa Luxembourg and Marx, but they're not like super, super, anti-imperialist revolutionary type people.

We have that in the United States, just in tiny numbers. In Germany, it really doesn't exist. Anyway, sorry for that very long digression, but go back to what you were saying, Brett. Yeah, no, I just find that very, very interesting. We don't have a political institution through which to funnel actual left-wing politics like they do in Europe with multiple party systems, but we have a more vibrant basically by de facto, you know,

underground movement here in the here in the united states it's because they can't really be subsumed into anything like in germany if you had inclinations towards revolutionary politics you do have a party that at least kind of aligns with you that you might try to swing your support to in the united states your option is the democratic party now if you have revolutionary inclinations you're still not going to end up going into the democratic party yeah that's a conservative party in europe yeah yeah that's right but i think also the difference in places like Germany are that they already have, you know, a health care system that is public and universal. They already have very low student fees and tuitions for higher education.

They have other programs. They haven't completely dismantled the welfare state. The U.S. never really had a full welfare state, and it's dismantled many components or planks of it over the course of the last 40 years of neoliberalization and especially, you know, under the Clintons and the new, you know, the departure. The reason in some ways why there's perhaps some radical possibilities in the left is because the whole Democratic Party moved so far to the right during, you know, the 90s principally, but even starting in the late 70s. So I think that's one thing that kind of contains, you might say, the radical potentials. You have to have,

I think really that kind of situation where you're talking global decolonization and anti-colonial war in Vietnam and still the memory of World War II as she was discussing that like these people were still basically in power and were not held to account. And so there was a very unstable sort of order that was trying to impose itself to be stable to put World War II completely in the past. not open up any discussion and dialogue. And if you think about it, that was also something that I was quite interested in the book is also how false and fake that felt and how many of these social constraints were sort of predicated on just trying to reconstitute society after this incredible trauma and incredible criminality that had occurred and that that injustice is still unresolved, unatoned, just sort of suppressed and forgotten. I think that must have been, you know,

psychologically, somewhat intolerable if you had any kind of sense of critique, a sense of justice. And so when she talked about, which was, I think, a little jarring perhaps to have her say, you know, like, well, you have to have the hate. You know, it's like, okay, well, what she's saying is that you have to really feel the injustice to be motivated to act. And I think, that's clearly what it was for her, you know. It wasn't just some intellectual set of conclusions. And that's something that I did find very interesting in her own account was awareness of all of these political developments taking place. But what really was at stake was some sense that you couldn't be free living in such incredible injustice and

attempts to suppress, you know, that past. And so this is a kind of radical move to reopen the critiques, you know, and that turned her into a real activist. So, you know, I'm going to try to tie what you just said and what I said together in some way. So we've talked before about the imperial mode of living. And the imperial mode of living is much better distributed in Germany than it is in the United States. So we've talked about the imperial mode of living. And that's essentially to say that in the United States, even your very lower, lower working class people, like people that have jobs, but they're really, really bad jobs. The standard of living of these people, of course, it's absolutely appalling. In the richest

country in the world, you know, to live in squalor is an absolute crime by the state. There's no other way to put it. But that being said, the living conditions of somebody who's making minimum wage in the United States, despite it being not even close to what's necessary, is still much better than places that are exploited countries like the Philippines. We talked about this with Mani Ness. We've talked about this. I think we talked about it with Joma Sisson. These places in the global south, these exploited countries, the standard of living of the average working person there is significantly lower. And it makes it hard to have solidarity between the working class in these imperialist countries and the global south countries because if you had real solidarity

with these people, it said we needed to stop exploiting their countries, the standard of living would drop in the imperialist countries by definition. And so this imperial mode of living is a way of like propping up the lowest people in society with the exploited proceeds of the global south. In the United States, we have such an unequal distribution of wealth. that even with this imperial mode of living, we still have very, very visible signs of injustice within society, economically, particularly. I shouldn't say particularly, but in this instance that I'm talking about, economically. And that's why we have these kind of underground communist groups,

because it's so visible. The Democrats aren't addressing it. You don't have another party that could subsume you, so you have to stay underground within your communist or anarchist circles, even though you live in an imperialist country. in Germany they also have an imperial mode of living but because of the welfare structure of the society you don't have that really terrible living condition even that the United States has for most people you know and I lived in bad conditions in Germany like I was in a really really

crappy tiny little room that I was paying more money than I could afford to get but for Germans, the standard of living, even for people that are making minimum wage there, is pretty decent. You know, so their labor aristocracy in, you know, Lenin's terms, is even more aristocratic than the United States in some ways, despite the fact that the United States is the richer country because the United States doesn't have this welfare system to prop up people. And because of this, it makes it harder to have solidarity between those countries and other places. And also, I think this is linking back to what I said earlier, because of that,

it makes it easier for you to have like revolutionary, again, clandestine, more or less, revolutionary groups active in the United States because you have this like ever present feeling of destitution because of the inequality within the society. Whereas in Germany, it's much more equal. And so it's not quite as pressing on the. average person there anyway that's just neither here nor there Brett yeah just really quickly just like one of my final thoughts is the interesting uh perception on the part of regular cubans that Europe I think she was saying I think I was interpreting it as like as a third way compared to the Soviet Union in the US are I was pretty sure that's what she was saying but like

you know a lot of Americans have that idea too and at one time of my political development I had it which is like this romantic view of Europe is like much more progressive in every way than the U.S. Like, you know, they make fun of us because we're so racist and shit. But once you start studying history, studying Europe, my God, I mean, I forget, we're forgetting the quoters of quotes here, but, you know, this idea that America is the monster created by Europe. And it's the exact same fucking basic patterns.

I mean, they might have a little bit more robust, you know, welfare state, certainly, than they do here in the U.S., but, I mean, there is no superiority. With regards to racism or progressive worldview, it's so much similar. So I found that to be to be just very interesting. You know, we'd probably have to dive deeper to see exactly how those perceptions arose. But certainly looking, you know, up at the U.S. constantly attacking you, Europe is more of an abstract notion somewhere else. It could be easy to fall into that perceptual, that perceptual trap.

But, yeah, I thought that was interesting. Yeah, I think it was Fennell who was talking about it in his epilogue, the sort of crazy monster created by Europe and the U.S. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, there's so much actually to pick up on. I really wish we could have had talked with Margaret Schiller a bit more on things like that. International Solidarity kind of question, what she learned. She alluded to it a little bit, and that would have been interesting to note.

But I think getting back to this other question, I think that's also the reason why in Germany, the immigration issue is where the most kind of where the contradictions come out most, most fully and where the possibilities of more radical politics on either side or far right and far left, you know, emerge is because immigrants, while there are some programs and things for them, are definitely outside that system and more vulnerable. And as a result, they're much more like in the unequal positions that we see the U.S. society organized or under. But in general, I wonder if you folks had any other further thoughts about our conversation with Margaret. Just one for me.

Yeah, go ahead. The only other thing that I really wanted to say is that the last note that she had in the interview about not wanting to give recommendations other than one, she did give one recommendation, to not be afraid to fight. And I think that this is the most important lesson that we can take from not only Margaret's story, but of all of our, you know, favorite revolutionaries is that there always is a need to fight. The specific way that you go about your fight is going to differ based on the context in which you're living. Like the way that I would fight in the context I am in is going to be different than Brett or Adnan or Margaret Schiller or somebody in the global south.

Joma Sison, who is not in the global south right now, but, you know, he's from the Philippines. Or, you know, our comrades in South Africa who are fighting against the exploitation by the mining companies, et cetera, et cetera. Like the contexts in which you operate are going to be different. But what remains the same, and this is why she said that this is the recommendation that she was able to give because it is the universal recommendation. If you want a better world, you have to fight for it. we're not going to be able to overturn capitalism and imperialism by sitting back and saying,

well, the system is terrible. It's going to devolve on its own without any sort of push. We have to figure out what we need to do in order to aid the process of killing capitalism and killing imperialism. So that was my only other thing that I really wanted to say from the conversation is that we do need to fight. And I think that her story is an example of how they thought we can take some things that perhaps that were good ideas. We can find some things that were flaws with their ideas and we have to think about

how those different things would fit within our specific contexts. I think that's right. I mean, you know, one could argue and there are always these big debates, you know, probably when it comes to talking about the Red Army faction and other similar sorts of groups that emerge

or in the American context, you know, the Black Panthers, the weather underground, you know, corollary sorts of groups, although they had their different ideological programs, but they were responses to a sense that conventional politics and also even movement-based politics were not being effective. And some people felt that they had to go into direct action in order to confront the system. And they had their theory ideologically and go listen to the Rev. Left episode to hear more a little bit about their theory of provoking the confrontation, unmasking the,

you know, fascist nature of the state that was not apparent to the rest of society because of the way things were organized. So this was the kind of technique that the direct confrontation was supposed to unveil and galvanize mass support. So there can be lots of different discussions about the strategies and the tactics. And I think it was interesting that she didn't want to recommend that there is one way to fight or one way to struggle. And many people might look upon, you know, that period of late 60s and early 70s as having made a lot of mistakes, adventurism, or, you know, not really understanding. And, you know, that all can be discussed. But in our own time, we are definitely going to have to make these kinds of assessments.

This is what we are confronting. These examples are useful for us to think through. And I think it's really fascinating to talk with somebody who did take a certain step of courage, regardless of whether one wants to agree that whether that was the best strategy or tactic or whether ideologically. It makes the most sense. What we can really gain from is learning from and thinking with somebody from their experience who had the courage to fight, the courage to struggle and what that looked like in their context. So I really appreciated this conversation. I think we could have talked with her much further length about some of the specifics and other experiences. And she did allude to that I think even outside of what she included in the book,

there's so many other things that she could talk about in terms of her experiences. Maybe we'll get a chance to reconnect. I would certainly look forward to that. Yeah, I agree with that. My final words, too, kind of bouncing up what Adnan said is like, I don't, I personally don't have moral qualms with their basic strategy, like living post-World War II in Germany with Nazis still power, taking out some former SS soldiers who still hold political power, like, I'm not morally against that. But strategically, and this goes back to Lenin, it is worth pointing out the limitations of specifically terroristic criminal acts as an underground movement cut off from the masses, you know, through above ground organizing, for example. Like with the Black Panther Party,

they had the above ground organizing of the BPP and then the Black Liberation Army as an underground. And that allowed them to move on two fronts. taking away the overground and engaging in terrorist actions. It obviously took out some very bad fucking people, some evil people, but at the end of the day, their comrades were killed, they were locked up, they were tortured, and that in and of itself, I think, is a crucial lesson, not to cast aspersions on any of these people, because I understand where they're coming from and I understand why they did what they did.

But strategically, I think there is a lot to learn about the pitfalls of engaging in that type of activism and where it often leads. Very rarely, if almost ever in history, do we see that type of strategy ultimately succeed, right? It usually creates huge backlash. The people get caught up either killed or in prison. The movement gets squashed. Popular opinion can often even turn against, right?

So these are all things that the left, especially an emerging left, finding its feet in the United States, should think very, very carefully about. Yeah, and it's also worth noting, and I think that this will be the last note that in 19, I think 1998, which is when the Red Army faction officially disbanded, they put out one last paper with basically a retrospective as well as where their ideology stood at that moment. And in it, one of the big things that they pointed out in terms of mistakes is not having organized like an above ground wing of the Red Army faction, something akin to a political party, either, you know, fully. legal or semi-legal, but something above ground because the only way that they were having

conversations with people was clandestinely during the entirety of their existence. And of course, that was what they were doing most. Like, I know that there's a caricature of the Red Army faction that all that they did was bomb buildings and assassinate public officials and kidnap people. The vast majority of what they did was have conversations with people about ideology, about the need for overturning the state apparatus within West Germany. That was what they did primarily. However, those were all clandestine conversations. They didn't have any parallel organization that was operating above ground to have kind of more mass communique with the populace to, you know,

advertise what they were saying to the populace. And in 1998, that was highlighted as an issue. But, you know, this is something I was hoping to ask, Margaret, because in 1998, none of the original members of the Red Army faction were still in the organization. It was all, and she briefly touched on this. At the end, it was people who didn't even remember what it was like in the 70s. So, you know, to ask her opinion of what they're, what they highlighted is perhaps a flaw within their strategy of not having a parallel organization is something that I would have liked to know and something for us all to think about. Like now that you've heard the episode of Rev. Left on the Red Army faction, and now that you've heard this episode with Margaret

chiller about her personal experiences, maybe think through some of these things yourself and think, was this something that they could have done better? Is this something that maybe we want to incorporate within our own movements? Things like this. This is what this podcast is all about, is taking the lessons from history to analyze and perhaps change the present. So on that note, Brett, can you tell the listeners how they can find you and your other excellent podcasts?

Yeah, you can go to Revolutionary Leftredo.com. It has all the shows, all the, the respective patrons. Anything you need to know about the shows, you can find a revolutionary at left radio.com. And we're going to have at least one transcript of an episode up on there by the time that this episode comes out, and hopefully more soon for people that have hearing impairments or otherwise find text to be more useful.

So keep your eyes peeled for that. Adnan, how can the listeners find you and your other excellent podcast? Well, they can follow me on Twitter at Adnan-A-Husain, H-U-S-A-I-N, and you can check out the other podcast. I host called The M-A-J-L-I-S. It's on all the platforms, and it deals with Middle East Islamic World, Muslim diasporic histories, experiences, literature. We're doing an episode that should be out very soon by the time this comes out.

It should be out on South Asian literature, you know, about these romances, Dastan, sort of epic stories, heroes, and the fascinating history of that literature. Yeah, really looking forward to that myself.

As for me, listeners, you can follow me on Twitter at Huck 1995. I also just recently started another show with my co-host, Safi, who has been a guest host on guerrilla history,

twice before she was a guest host for the Art and the working class episode, as well as a guest host for the Ruth Vodok far-right discourse episode. So we just started a show that talks about all kinds of random things. By the time that this episode comes out, there will be a couple more episodes about linguistics and bilingualism as well as perhaps another interview or two with authors of books that we've been reading recently.

So you can find that by looking for what the hawk, H-U-C-K. And with a question mark and an exclamation point, if you follow me on Twitter, you'll see the promotions when the things come out. As for this show, you can follow us on Twitter at Gorilla underscore Pod, G-U-E-R-R-I-L-L-A- underscore pod, and you can support the show monetarily to help us keep the lights on by going to patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history. Again, G-E-R-R-I-L-A history.

Until next time, listeners, Solidarity. So, you know, I'm going to be able to be. Thank you.