The Pete Quiñones Show - Episode 1067: The Baader–Meinhof Gang (Rote Armee Fraktion) - Part 1 w/ Thomas777

Episode Date: June 16, 2024

60 MinutesPG -13Thomas777 is a revisionist historian and a fiction writer.Thomas begins a series in which he seeks to put into context the intention and activities of the Red Army Faction/Baader–Meinhof Group.Thomas' SubstackThomas' Book "Steelstorm Pt. 1"Thomas' Book "Steelstorm Pt. 2"Thomas on TwitterThomas' CashApp - $7homas777VIP Summit 3-Truth To Freedom - Autonomy w/ Richard GroveSupport Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's SubstackPete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

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So I really appreciate all the support everyone's giving me, and I hope to expand the show even more than it already has. Thank you so much. I want to welcome everyone back to the Pete Cagnano show. Thomas, how are you doing? I'm well. I've been recuperating from being on the road and the old glory club event, which was fantastic. You know, I just, the road kind of wears me out.

But the event was great. But I've been trying to catch up on some, I got some things on the can, even if it doesn't seem like I'm busy, like I'm always working on stuff, you know. So yeah, things are well, man. I appreciate you hosting me as always. Awesome. Well, we're going to start something new tonight. And why don't you introduce it? I think this one may be more than anything we've ever done.

People are going to have questions about, especially if they do not know the subject. Because let's face it, these are, this is a group of people that from the outside looking in, you'd be, why are you talking about them? You'd ask a question, why are you talking about them? well it's a huge topic that's why I needed extra time to prep for it

then I still it's going to take a few episodes to fully flesh it out and it touches and concerns things that far supersede and transcend typical Cold War intrigues and you know violence between the superpowers

short of open war it wasn't typical ledgered main of the sort that characterized the dynamic especially in the final phase of the Cold War

from you know the America's defeat in Vietnam until the wall came down. We're talking of course about the Bader Meinhauf gang or colloquially the Red Army faction they called themselves

the Roots Army Fraction and that was deliberate. It was somewhat mistranslated, but also news people and law enforcement and security state types thought of the typo, but those were deliberate. You know, the idea is that there was an organic hole that constituted the dialectical process as regards communism. and what the Bader Meinhauf gang or group or army represented was this fractious element that was the vanguard of the dialectical process as well as something that was organically

developing in real time you know now on the surface these kids were just and most of kids and there was three iterations that batter minehoff slash red army faction and we'll get into that at a glance and the way it was presented in western media was basically that these were these were these were just radicalized youth from the 1968 or student movement who were kind of like the weatherman but you know much more violent and much more well organized operationally that's not true at all they were both a proxy of the ministering for Statskyert, the Stasi, as well as very much, in my opinion, a European liberationist element. Now, what do I mean by that?

One of the founders of the Bader Meinhof gang slash World's Army fraction was Horst-Maller. Like people on the right probably know Mahler because in the 2000s he went to prison for quote Holocaust denial. Of course Mahler is a national socialist. Okay. He always was. You know, and there's Spiegel as well as as well as these internal security types. They presented Mahler as some crazy old man for clicking up with the NPD and

beginning to advocate, you know, these national socialist ideas or some kind of cynic. He's neither of those things. Okay. If you were interested in European liberation, if you viewed America slash NATO as like your op, as like you're the enemy of your people, you know, which many, many, many Germans did on the right, your only path to liberation is some kind of alliance with the Soviet Union, you know, during the Cold War. Just as now, in geostrategic terms, the only path to German liberation is, is complex. and it depends on Russia. Okay? So why would a guy like Mahler be advocating communism? People don't, people have to understand that especially during the Cold War and especially in Germany,

you know, the dialectical process is a real thing. Like whether you believe it's like the hand of Providence or the cunning of reason, you know, some kind of invisible hand in man's affairs that is the prime movement of history, or whether you believe it's just, you know, man's kind of own dialectic and discursive interaction with others that kind of like creates this um almost like feedback loop of intellectual production

like whatever you believe that it is it's a real thing okay and in 1972 there were um concept people's conceptual horizon was was was was was was was confined to the cold war you couldn't think outside that box okay there were like there were one-off um societies like i ran and arguably, you know, like, um, Peron's, um, Argentina, but Iran, obviously is like a more ideologically pure example that carved out, like truly third position regimes. But that's exactly what they were. They were outliers. Okay.

And now it wasn't just a matter of, it wasn't just a matter of optics or like a people like Mueller saying, like, well, we shouldn't, we shouldn't advocate national socialism because that'll make people upset. And say, that wasn't even possible. You know, it wasn't just a matter of like making people upset or. They're being with the times. It's like it wouldn't have a context or make any sense. You know, and again, for context, you know, the DDR, the Bader Meinhoff faction were all West Germans.

But for context, the DDR, again, we covered this in one of our earlier episodes, and I'll revisit some of these things now. They were literally at war with Israel, okay, as was the USSR. But the DDR, not only there is spearpoint, kind of like a sharepunk of war. of Warsaw-Pact power, you know, by proxy, especially in the third world. But there wasn't, there wasn't, in fact, like, an East German, like, foreign policy into itself. And they despised Israel. And they viewed them not only as a bastion of, you know, imperialism in the Leninist sense.

You know, they viewed them as an obstacle to the proletarian revolution in the Near East, which was key, you know, owing the geostatic factors and other things. But the, like, the East Germans were anti-Zionist and, like, anti-Jewish to the point that it superseded pragmatic decisions relating to high politics and, and dialectical conclusions. You know, this was payback for war or two. Okay. You can tell me that it wasn't, but I don't accept that. okay um the communist party line anyway like what the soviets would say um particularly when they were under pressure um

you know in the 1980s uh supposedly for you know anti-semitic legislation like they said that you know it's not like jews they're like why why would we why would we emphasize jewish suffering in the war two we lost 25 million people you know like we we bankrupt the third rike like why we're not going to we're not going to we're not going to count how to some reactionary jewish identity they just like refuse to acknowledge it you know so again you know i refer people to paul godfrey especially people who weren't alive during the cold war like the left won the cold war but the warsaw packed left lost okay like we're not we're not talking about wokeism we're not talking about you know guys who were sitting around reading foucault and marcoza we're not talking about you know

people who thought feminism was important and you know we need to make the races kind of blend together. Like, that was not remotely within, like, Stalinist contemplation. That's, like, not at all what, like, Marcos and Leninus priorities are. You know, like, um,

like, like, like, like, like, like, mercilinness of the, of the sort, um,

that, uh, you know, reigned in Warsaw Pact. They might, they might look at, like, the relationship between the sexes and the West as being, you know, colored by,

like, productive force of terminism. They might look at, like, blacks as like a hyper-exploited, like, you know, like proletary like lumping cast but they didn't but that's like where it stopped like it wouldn't occur to them to say like oh you need you know people's people's only path to fulfillment is like sexual expression you know we need we need to do away with with public morals and you know it's wrong

for you know men and women to find different rules in life like that that's not then that wasn't just like an east block and see like it's that there's not the way marxist think about things that's what i object to when people claim everything that was like Marxism you know like Like Kamala Harris is, they quote, Marxist. That doesn't make me sense. Okay. No, that's not to see like Marxists don't have fucked up ideas they do, but it's a different thing entirely.

But now, the point is in conducts. I'm going to kind of start from the end, the end of the Cold War. Because, again, like, what I postulate, my hypothesis, if you will, is that, A, like the Bader Meinhof gang, in its three iterations, was at base a European liberationist tendency that was fundamentally anti-American, anti-NATO for liberationist reasons. There were aspects of it and elements within it, particularly Horst Mahler, who wasn't

just a founding personage, he was their lawyer, he was very much like kind of like the court philosopher of Biden-Mindhofe. He was a national socialist. And finally, the final piece of my claim is that the Roth Army fraction, it was very much like an organ of the DDR. Okay. It was not this kind of like spontaneous organization of radicalized students. Like there were such organizations. Don't get me wrong. And, you know, the Bader Meunhoff gang also began like in prison, okay?

And as we'll see, there's a strong situationist element, too. And one of their key operators actually became radicalized in a psychiatric hospital. So these were not conventional, like, college student radicals. But beyond that, again, you'll see by their choice of targets, by their operational sophistication, by the overall pattern of their violence, they were equate. trained, directed, schooled by a highly sophisticated revolutionary military actor. And that actor was the DDR. Don't let foot pain or discomfort hold you back.

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They've asked me to read the whole lad at the same speed I usually use for the legal bit at the end. Here goes. This winter sports extra is jam-packed with rugby. For the first time we've bet every Champions Cup match exclusively live, plus action from the URC, the Challenge Cup, and much more. Thus the URC and all the same place. Get more exclusively live tournaments

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Further Terms apply Were you aware that Maller is still alive? Yeah Yeah, I... He's 88 years old, yeah Yeah, he's a fascinating guy If he was younger And it was, and my German was better

I'd reach out to him and try to take some of his testimony. But in any event, why am I saying we're going to start at the end? Because the conclusion of the Cold War, it brings the light things that relating to my hypothesis, you know, that in fact, you know, the Roat Army fraction was, in fact, like a direct action element to the DDR, okay? um in april 1992 now for context you know this the soviet union no longer existed you know this was there the kind of independent states but um the group of soviet forces in germany are

finally like leaving now like you know the withdrawal is like complete okay and that and um in some kind of concrete terms you know regardless the fact that you know the cold war was over now like about, you know, two, over two and a half years. You know, that final withdrawal of a Soviet, the Soviet military element was kind of like, when the rubber meets the road, like truly the end, you know, at least in formally divided Germany. This, this 2,300 word communique in April 92,

was sent to the French press agency. and interestingly like the REF, the Bader Meinhof, gang, they'd write their communiques in all lowercase type letters, which I presume was, you know, in order to clarify that, you know, these communications were legitimate, you know, because that wasn't generally released. Okay, but this communique was sent to the French press office in Bonn, which, of course, you know, was the, during the days of, partitioned Germany was the capital of the Bundes Republic.

It stated that it was issued forth from the quote, commandal level of REF. The REF organized itself into four different levels. There's the commando level. There was the prisoners, the resistance, and the sympathizes of political supporters. Like the commander or the direct action element,

okay? Like the prisoners were former commanders, former commandos who've been taken out of action, but whose interests and rights had to be guarded. And this became a big aspect of RIAF direct action was, you know, pressuring release of the prisoners or, you know, taking hostages in order to bargain the freedom of their people.

The, the quote, resistance for people like Horst Mallor, you know, who were like above board people, you know, who were presenting the, the um the the the marcus linens case and the and the revolutionary um and and the revolutionary paradigm that was you know demanding the liberation of europe among other things and obviously the sympathizers are people who you know um aren't in a position you know owing to you know only the social or a professional station or or health or age you know to participate directly okay um So in other words, the fact that they should forth from commandal level means that, you know, these, this is serious.

Okay, these are people who've been bloodied. At that time, at that time, it had been about a year since there was any activity by REF. But as we'll get into, when we get down the list of, like, some of their direct action, operations, even at the very end, they were hitting high-profile targets. Okay. This communication was basically divided into two sections. The first was basically like an elaborate, an elaborate, but not, you know, like, but not a really wordy description of, like, why, like, the REF's, like, arm struggle failed. and admission that

the enormous struggle under the banner of Marxism is done. It can't, you know, it's impossible for anything like that to endure or reemerge. The second section stated because of that, because, you know,

the historical process won't abide, you know, an ongoing revolutionary paradigm that, you know, the are like what wants a unilateral they're declaring a unilateral ceasefire

okay um the implication being that if you leave us alone like will basically will basically disappear you know like don't don't hunt our people down or still wanted for outstanding violence like basically you know they basically like let the past from the past

you know like nobody's nobody nobody nobody believes that you know a marcus slender this revolution is is possible in west germany and there's not even like a DDR anymore to like you know unify with so um it uh in uh their own words quote um it said we ourselves were confronted with the fact that the policy we pursued in years before 1989 did not strengthen us politically but weakened us um

we were faced with the fact that we had failed to accomplish our objective namely to achieve a breakthrough in the joint international struggle for liberation. Now, interestingly, too, as we'll see as this series goes on, there were instances. I don't know some people in the comments are going to pull out, like early on, especially, you know, people affiliated with the original, like, World Army Fraction or supporters, you know, they'd pull out typical, like, boilerplate, like, anti-fascist bullshit and claim that, like, you know,

Ednauer was a Nazi or that, you know, The, you know, the, you know, the communists, if the Buddhist Republic will throw a communist in concentration camps, you know, like, and like references to the Holocaust, as well as, as well as the kind of token suggestion that, you know, the REF was a Maoist organization, okay, because post-68, that was like very chic, okay? But very quickly, this is all kind of abated, you know, and the language, if not the optics of, of, of, of, um, the Roads Army Fraction became very orthodox Marxist list. Okay. And this kind of, this kind of letter declaring like the end of the armed campaign, like very much like reflects that. You know, like it's not.

There's none of this crazy, you know, kind of post-Marcist language, you know, about how like the fight will go on or about like alternative means of achieving liberation, you know, for the class is most affected. It's saying, like, look, like, the historical process, like, it didn't develop how we thought it would. And, like, it's no longer, it can no longer facilitate what we were trying to accomplish. You know, so this is out of our hands.

So it would be futile to continue. Not as futile with self-defeating. The RAF admitted that the 1989 revolutions, like, basically, like, crushed them. And again, if they were not, like, an appendage of Warsaw Pact, specifically, the DDR and in some way

that GRU and KGB though not as much as people might think. Like they wouldn't have been talking this way. You know, um, it, uh, you know, it, uh,

like it goes, I won't, I won't bore you in, and the subs with, you know, um, uh, like a,

um, a, um, a, um, a, um, a, um,

um, um, um, it says like when when the 89 revolution is like swept through you know and we realize that you know the the political core just like evaporated and like even the vanguard what had been the vanguard at least in officialdom um you know not just in the Soviet Union but in the satellite regimes like lack the will to act as a vanguard and and crush the resistance you know and see through you know the process of history you know like we we realized that we had to kind of like redefine our our situation politically. And again, as we'll get into, despite the fact that just said that this was a very orthodox, Marxist, Leninist, even Stalinist movement or actor, they very much run the cusp of, you know, kind of like developmental ideas. You know, they were, they, they were very aware of like the situationist perspective, the capital S, you know, and they believe that to inform the process of history. in like an immediate sense, okay?

Um, so this isn't, this isn't like a cope or whatever. In fact, it's, it's very much, uh, it's really kind of like a savage, like self-criticism. Okay. Like saying like our entire, our, um, our, uh, our entire like constellation of motives and the way we perceived, you know, the historical environment, like, you know, past and in, and in the moment in which we were actively, you know, killing people. and fighting this war, we were grossly mistaken.

And that, especially for somebody who's... I mean, that... It doesn't just require one to put one's ego aside to make such an admission, but if your entire, like, raison d'etre is, like, dialectical materialism and this kind of like...

this kind of, like, bastardized Higalian view of historical determinism, you know and suggesting that you know you were totally you were totally wrong in the way you read the proverbial um indicators you know that's um that's that that's that that's big okay um i uh you know and it indicates it suggests like um uh it's a kind of self reflection that's kind of rare among gorillas okay because the direct to action element generally um that's not to say like guys who actually put in, you know, who do dirt and put in work are stupid,

quite the contrary, but it, it's, um, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's different kind of man and they, they, and they're not, um, particularly reflective on the historical situation, regardless of their ideological persuasion. But, um, you know, this is a, like, a story begins here again, too, because if, if, if, if, if, if, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's kind of, radical student movement that somehow became habituated to direct action and violence and maybe received some assistance, you know, after it had already, you know, developed the kind

of ideological and social infrastructure required, you know, from the Warsaw Pact, officialdom. Like they, this sort of, this sort of like, what, like self-surrender letter, like, or self-crete. and formal kind of ending to the armed campaign, would not have been forthcoming. You know, why wouldn't have they just continued in the perpetuity, especially when these were, like, wanted men and women in large part. You know, it's not as if they could go back, just having, like, a normal life above board.

The, uh, and it goes out to say, too, like, it ain't exactly what I just said. It said that, um, it said that the, um, the commando level of the organization was afforded too much, of a leading role you know um their operational philosophy had always been to favor um the direct action element okay um it's the avant guard okay um not just as a kind of self-policing elitism but also because obviously the thing that's going to set them apart as we'll see like the rf

killed a lot of people it killed a lot of high-profile people it killed CEOs it killed top diplomats it killed it killed national political figures. You know, okay, these are not guys throwing pipe bombs at the outside the local beer garden. Or, you know, like beating up on, you know, people they decided were fascists or something. You know, this was, this, this, this, this was very, very serious. But at the same time, it's, you know,

the men who actually are fighting a war, whether you're talking about, you know, like, what you're talking about, like, combat infantry in a conventional war situation, or whether you're talking about a guerrilla vanguard involved in, you know, in killing people, incident to a political struggle. You know, you can't really see the force of the trees, like, just by virtue of where you're situated. You know, it's like being pressed up against an obelisk and trying to get, like, a feel for, like, what its dimensions are. You know, you've got to be able to step back several yards and, like, see how it's shaped and then kind of, like, contemplated. But if you're killing people and you're fighting GSG9 and you know, you're in, you know, American Army intelligence and, you know, British Army 5 and, you know, you're living by the, by the barrel of your, of your H&K machine pistol, you know, you're not, you're not, you're not thinking deeply about, you know, Marxist-Lenist dialectics and, you know, whether or not, you know, the things predicted or augured.

um they're in are actually coming to fruition you know that's just a fact um it um you know the uh don't let foot pain or discomfort hold you back at foot solutions we specialize in high quality supportive footwear and use the latest scanning technology to custom make orthotics designed for your unique feet if you want to free your feet in joints from pain improve balance or correct alignment book a free foot assessment at footsolutions.i or pop in store today. Foot Solutions, the first step towards pain-free feet. On the many days of Christmas, the Guinness Storehouse brings to thee, a visit filled with festivity.

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There's so much rugby on sports extra from Sky. They've asked me to read the whole lad at the same speed I usually use for the legal bit at the end. Here goes. This winter sports extra is jam-packed with rugby. For the first time we've got every Champions Cup match exclusively live, plus action from the URC, the Challenge Cup, and much more. Thus the URC and all the best European Rugby all in the same place.

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like vocish language or like outright nationalism or like nationalism with a lowercase end. You know, like nationalism, the type of the bogeyman type is dead, obviously. they talk about how the time has come. They need to look out for the German people and anybody politically engaged must because these are critical times. And anybody who would be interested in following them, it would be a mistake for to try and seek out opportune targets as this time of transition is underway. Because it wasn't clear like what the parameters were yet. as well as like what the objective would be you know and um divided germany was he was a unique

situation that was like neither war or peace you know like i made the point um people on the inter german border like particularly where um tactical nuclear forces were based and in the fold of gap you know where um um which would have been you know the the fold of gap in the german plane is where like wars of bank armor would have absolutely assaulted the event of war Like, if you visited, it was like, it was like some alternative reality where like World War III was already on. You know, it wasn't war, but it wasn't peace tide either. You know, and Berlin was a city full of intrigues, you know, full of spies, you know, full of, you know, full of political assassins, quite literally, you know, full of ideological intrigues of all stripes. You know, it was that they don't run away after the wall came down.

you know um and uh in in some ways um there was quite a bit more uncertainty obviously you know when they truly you know like in the unified like truly like peacetime germany um and i mean i mean this should this should be obvious but it's you know the people um even even even other sensible people they they they over-emphasize the the the significance of violence politically you know like um like direct action doesn't end up to self-accomplish anything you know um it's got to be

targeted it's got to be situationally um devised you know um and uh even then like it's it's got a the way it the way it indexes with the kind of conceptual horizon the body politic is key

you know um all this stuff and um you know that um this this sounds like this might sound obvious but it's really it's not obvious when you're when when the you like the royal you is like is insinuated into um you know a political uh um an hour political struggle um the uh and um and um beginning uh beginning around 97 i realize I'm jumping around a lot but one of the Congress again like I said there's a few aspects of my hypothesis, okay? You know, that being the the national socialist element or tendency within

the Roat Army fraction, that's not to say that they were a national soldiers grouping, but that element was there. Secondly, you know, their status as a, their de facto status as a true, you know, like Oregon slash element of the Warsaw Pact and not just a spontaneous rebel grouping, you know, an incident to that very much, especially during the middle phase of their campaign around 1978, they put a premium on opportunities to negotiate, you know, with both the bond government and the United States and the British government, as well as other, as well as the Netherlands and Belgium, where they had carried out, you know, homicides and terrorist acts, as we'll see. But the World War II Reaction, they started to emphasize as policy.

of negotiating release of their prisoners, as well as try to piggyback negotiations and release of those people with who they considered to be like adjacent and allied elements, like people, people from the popular threat for liberation of Palestine General Command, like people from the PLO, who in those days was dominated by Fata, which contra Hamas was at the secular wing. And the RAF trained with the PLO under Fata, which is one of the They learn to use weapons.

They learned basic, um, infantry tactics. Um, you know, you can't, you can't just like teach yourself these things, you know, um, something that that begs the question too, if the road army fraction was just these, these crazy 60 or college kids. Like what they were like, they were just like drilling in infantry tactics like out in the woods for fun. I mean, no. But, um, you know, the, uh, we'll get into that too.

But the, um, this, this gave the world army fraction in international. profile and we'll get in this in the second episode but you know this led to the um establishment of a japanese road army fraction the japanese communist party was very active had a lot of clout and was very very very um radical and um some people may know as they might not um figure the tangent but the japanese royal army fraction carried out this assault at um at um at um jetta airport in israel and killed like 26 people. But again, too, you know, borrowing, it's...

I mean, think about that, okay? There's, there's this, there's this hardcore German and Japanese armed groupings under the same banner, you know, when they're, and they're slaughtering people in Israel, under the banner of, you know, anti-imperialism. But if you don't, if you don't see the relationship to history there, like, I don't know what to tell you, okay? this is not accidental. It's not just, you know, it's not just splendidly

kind of like ironic optics or something. Like, oh, Germans and Japanese taking the fight to a Jewish state. I mean, again, it should be obvious, but have people counter signal beyond this all the time, which is, I mean, they're welcome to do that, but I don't just say things.

I can back this up, and I will. That's what we're doing here. But, um, the, um, this, uh, they called, uh, the Rotary fraction called this process like collating, you know, between themselves, like the Japanese, particularly, you know, the PLO as well as popular front of leverage in Palestine, which is primarily a Syrian outfit. And the East Germans in Syria were thick as thieves, you know.

And I've made the point again and again, Syria should have an outside significance to people on the right in a way not unlike Franco-Spain did. That's the subject for another episode, but the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the DDR military establishment was very insolid into Syria, um, Heinz Hoffman, who was, uh, the, the DDR, um, defense, uh, minister. He personally knew, um, Hephez al-Assad. They were very close. Um, he assisted him in modernizing the Syrian era of army. and you know incidentally the so as you have you have east Berlin indexing very tightly with Damascus and then you have the popular front for liberation of Palestine General Command which was a very Syrian outfit you know indexing with the road to army fraction and both are technically you know like these these independent non-state actors I mean this again too the kind of the interdependence here and the relationship of of um of state officialdom to these um

to these organizations like should should be clear to anybody but you know a truly um abtuce um person who's blind to kind of political realities um the uh the um the um that uh and it's also too Like one of the reasons why, you know, there's, um, you could tell, too, that, um, I, I, the Rotary fraction was taking some of their cues from the provisional IRA, like not in terms of the ideology or anything, but, you know, the, the provos were fixated, um, I mean, I don't mean that dismissively. I mean, it was, it was a correct emphasis. They, they were strongly oriented towards, um, their people being, who were locked down being recognized as political prisoners and not criminals, okay, because a few things happen there.

Obviously, the legitimizes your struggle and your people, you know, come to be viewed as soldiers and thus be entitled, if not, the full protection on the Geneva Convention, you know, they're at least, you know, afforded protection as, as enemy combatants, you know, which prior to the Bush administration, it's got to be enhanced with that, you know, they did. a, they did a, they were afforded some, some degree of protection, you know, where, I mean, obviously, obviously, because like, were they not, they, they, they would have just been taken out a shot. But, um, also, it's, um, you know, uh, there's a, it opens the door to negotiation, okay, and negotiation is, um, despite what Mr. Zelensky might claim, or despite what the Israelis claim about terrorists, or despite what, um, despite what, um, despite, what America claims about, you know, whoever it's, it's angry with at any given day, if you just claim you refuse to negotiate with opt for, like you're, you're pissing

under the wind, you know, you can't just sit about to resolve all political questions, like militarily or by like threat of force, that's assinine. But there has to, there has to be some sort of equality of status, you know, if not full equality, there's, you know, there's, you've got to be. treated as existing, if not on sovereign footing, at least on legitimate terms as a political actor. Again, this removes what would otherwise be criminal behavior, non-privileged homicide, things like this, from a category of a pure criminality.

So this is fundamentally important. And this also isn't obvious. I mean, like the, this was somewhat uncharted territory, you know, I mean, it's, we obviously, I mean, guerrilla fighters are as old as, is, literally as old as Christ, you know, that's what like the zealots were. But in, in the, in like the post-Westphalian system, like how we, how we, I'm not talking about, you know, like, the 20th and 21st century people who are representatives of, of sovereign states, you know, how, how we, how we. treat partisans, this was an issue of first impression in large parts. That's why it's such a huge part of Schmidt's book, Namos of the Earth, because he's saying, you know, he's writing at the peak of the Cold War, and he's saying, like, look, this is going to become like the face of warfare. You know, how are you going to respond to this? You know, there's got to be some sort of mechanism whereby, you know, there's some kind of, if not

moral, like at least pragmatic, you know, consensus about, you know, how we, how we deal with these situations, how we deal with these actors, you know, and what, like, the path to piece is when, you know, when a national state is, like, so engaged against such an element. But, you know, I, so, again, obviously, I, I don't see, like, 19 to 25-year-old kids just, like, devising this, okay? I know a lot of brilliant guys that age, don't get me wrong, but it's just not it's this is something that very much came from somebody like marcus wolf who was you know the um kind of like the man behind he was like the real brains of the stasi you know eric milka was a was was just was um you know he wasn't a figurehead he was really hands down

but he was he was basically just like a thug cop um wolf was really the he wasn't just like the spy master but he was he was uh of the dDR he was uh He was kind of, um, he was kind of like their, uh, their shining prints of all the things related to political warfare. And a fascinating guy, I highly recommend his autobiography, whatever anybody thinks of them. He's, um, he was probably, he was about the best, he was one of the best men that the Warsaw bag produced.

But, um, it's, uh, now, they get, the, for context here, and, um, Let me just see how long will be going. Don't let foot pain or discomfort hold you back. At foot Solutions, we specialize in high-quality supportive footwear. And use the latest scanning technology to custom-make orthotics designed for your unique feet. If you want to free your feet in joints from pain, improve balance or correct alignment, book a free foot assessment at footsolutions.i or pop-in store today.

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Get the facts. Be Drinkaware. visit drinkaware.e. There's so much rugby on Sports Extra from Sky. They've asked me to read the whole lad at the same speed I usually use for the legal bit at the end. Here goes. This winter sports extra is jam-packed with rugby. For the first time we've got every Champions Cup match exclusively live,

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Okay. For context here, again, let's break down some of what the Roeat Army fraction, its first and its first and second iterations. What kinds of activities who was engaged in and what kinds of targets it was hitting, okay? 22nd October, 19th, 71. Roald to Army fraction members

Arm Guard Bowler and Gerhard Muller They attempted to rescue their comrade Later in Margaret Schiller She was in the process of being arrested by the police After shooting it out with them after she'd been identified As an RF member A police sergeant named Heinz Lemke was shot and wounded

The sergeant on the scene When Norbert Schmidt was killed I mean, killing a cop, obviously, is a huge thing. I mean, it's really a point of no return in an absolute sense, but that doesn't prove that the RAF will just get down. Okay, I mean, they thought nothing of shooting it out with the German federal police. Two months later, December, 91, another cop, another, another Bundes Republic cop was shot,

by Rural Army faction members in the process of a bank robbery. He lived, but the heist crew made off of the 134,000 Deutsche Marks, which was a fortune in 1970s money. You know, the Deutsche Mark was, you know, the, like the Euro before was the Euro. You know, so we go, that's like, that's like $700,000 in like today's money, okay, for like a one-off score. That's freaking insane. Now check this out as time goes on These targets don't just become more and more brazen What like the ambition here is crazy

May 11th of 1972 at Frankfurt on Maine The US Army Five Corps headquarters Which is located in the IG Farben building The Roat Army fraction blew up the officers club They wounded 13-7 soldiers, they killed Lieutenant Colonel Paul Blumquist.

Blumquist was a war hero. He was an army aviator. He was a helicopter. It was a chopper pilot. He held four distinguished flying crosses. Silver Star, Purple Heart. I mean, this guy, this guy was like

like Audie Murphy. They tried to kill him. And attacking like the IG Farben's, you know, that wasn't just a symbol of like West German. kind of, you know, national manufacturing capitalism. But again, this was, this is the headquarters of an army corps, you know, striking that,

killing a lieutenant colonel and like a celebrated war hero with that. I mean, that's why it's the shot fired across the bow. That's real war. That same month at, in Augsburg, the road. Army for action bombed a police station. Specifically targeting the Bavarian State Criminal Investigation Agency. Five police officers were wounded. For the first time, there was a formal acceptance of responsibility.

The team called itself the Tommy Weissbacher Commando. They named themselves after either prisoners of their people who have been hanging prisoner of in KIA, like KIA in their mind. So like when R.A.F. took responsibility, there's always like the Tommy Weissbecker Commando, or, you know, like the, whatever, like the, um, the, um, like the, um, like the horsebowler commando, you know, which is, um, which is, again, it's like a callback to, like, Spanish Civil War stuff and like red October days,

you know, as I'm sure people picked up into the lore. Um, again in May, um, the, uh, A federal judge's car was bombed. In addition, they bombed the headquarters of the actual Springer Verloc Corporation, wounding 17. The Heidelberg, the U.S. Army in Europe Officers Club in Heidelberg was bombed. Followed moments later.

I guess people ran out across the street was the Army Security Agency. And they planted a bomb there too. So like, um, these people were fleeing the officers club. They got blown up. And then, uh, three American soldiers were killed and three more wounded. I mean, since this was, I mean, think about that was happening today. Like, that's totally insane. You know, it's, um, you know, my dad was stationed there.

Oh, wow. That's nuts. That's where, that's where I was born, yeah. No, no, yeah. I know, I know you're a Bundes Republic, uh, native, but, uh, which, which is actually got awesome, but yeah. What happened your pop wasn't so awesome. But, like, yeah.

The, um, now this was, um, now this was, um, What kind of seemed a real escalation, in 1974, the first, the first World Army for action, action of a 74, the West German embassy in Sweden, a hit team or an assault team calling themselves the Commando Holger Mainz. Um, Hoggar Mines was a Rural Army for Action member who died on a hunger strike in prison. And this is another thing too.

Like, again, like talking about the provos, like these, there were a number of them that did with Bobby Sands did and just star themselves at death. Like, these guys were, I mean, they were crazy.

You know, in, in, in a partisan sense, you know, they incredibly dangerous people. They, uh,

they carried out. They carried out this assault on, again, this is the German embassy, the West German embassy in Stockholm. You know, this this REF team stormed it, demanding the release of, you know, REF prisoners as well as a list of, you know, of adjacent comrades, you know, Palestinians, Japanese, others. they stated that if the police moved in, they said they'd wired the building with 15 kilos of TNT, and if the police moved on them, they'd blow themselves and everybody up.

The police decided they were bluffing. Well, I mean, the groupings are just six members. It was a most significant acclim was a guy named Shigfried Haugner, and I'll get into that in a minute. But it was a it was five men and one woman

band of the embassy took 13 official hostage including the ambassador like the German ambassador I believe the ambassador was Heinz Dietrich Stalker

I believe they took him up to the window so that you know the police could see him and then blew him away they did it to somebody I think it was a stalker and again they weren't the police to back off but they said that they'd

killed another they'd said they'd kill a hostage every hour um that the police didn't lift the uh you know didn't didn't retreat from the perimeter they established and again they they threatened to blow it the entire embassy up if the police moved to storm them but um or no it was actually it was one of the hostages killed was uh this is fascinating baron andreas van murbach who was the he was the german military at the shade of Sweden. He's the guy

who's marched out under the landing and shot dead. This is macabre but fascinating. In 1918, his ancestor, Wilhelm von Merbach, had been assassinated the German embassy in Moscow by socialist revolutionaries who stormed

to the freaking embassy. Like how how fucking insane is this? I don't know. It made me think that scene in Hannibal. you ever seen that movie where he kills the he kills the Italian policeman and he's like yeah and when your ancestors get like

vivisected by the um by the Borges he's like yeah how'd you know that and he like vizects him but uh only in Europe man but um Helmut Schmidt was a new chancellor who was very much uh

I mean West Germany in in the 70s was really kind of a mess and um the um Some of you believe that the government, you know, that's one, um, Billy Brandt, who was the longtime mayor of West Berlin, some viewed him as a fifth columnist, owing to his kind of friendly, uh,

his overly friendly posture towards the DDR. That's all the other story, like the whole espionage scandal with him, but, um, point being, um, the federal republic was kind of paralyzed, um, owing to the situation vis-à-vis the executive. As it happened, as the Swedish police bird, the storm in the building, the, the, the Rotterme Refraction blew out, you know, killing everybody. Now, the reason why...

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Brett taken views of Dublin City from the home of Guinness. Live entertainment, great memories, and the gravity bar. My goodness is Christmas at the Guinness Storehouse. Book now at ginnestorehouse.com. Get the facts. Be drinkaware. Visit drinkaware.com. The reason why I raised Siegfried Hausner, this is Hausner's background. And I'll wrap it up in a minute. But I, when I said before that much as the DDR itself and the Rural Army fraction, if you accept my hypothesis, and even if you don't,

as regards to the DDR, that the Rode Army fraction was very much like an appendage of Warsaw Pacto officialdom. You know, despite their kind of Orthodox, Marxist Lenin's posture, they borrowed very much from, you know,

secondary, like, dialectical lawsuits of, you know, kind of socialist discourse and revolutionary discourse generally cigarette house or had been in a mental hospital a psychiatric hospital and that's something I want to emphasize too you know these days all you hear about is like oh we didn't know

about mental illness in the old days that's a weird take okay I think mental mental illness is definitely overdiagnosed today people are definitely overmedicated but psychiatry was at a zenith in the 70s okay um it was

like there was a push for like mental mental health to be addressed okay it was definitely in people's radar. Now, the situation is the movement, as well as a student, like Frankfurt School type people, which the Rotemey Fraction were definitely accolades of for limited purposes. Grampsian Adorno featured very large in their kind of ideological horizon. but anyway, Sigrethriyner, he was part of what was called, translated to the socialist patients collective, or the SPK.

Okay, the core of the SPK, uh, its slogan was literally turned illness into a weapon. Now, what their notion was, was that mental illness is very real. You know, it's not, uh, it's not a misinterpretation of a of a psychic phenomenon under stress or something but that you know basically quite literally

capitalism and capitalist structures you know are first and foremost psychically oppressive and are literally breeding mental mental illness um so the idea of being that um somebody who's self-consciously mentally ill. They're aware of what the capitalist structure is doing to them.

And the only, the way to be cured is to reconfigure social conditions such that the alienation that bred their mental illness in the first place goes away. I mean, this is like literally like the radiology. Okay. And that's, uh, that's where Hausner came from, you know. and um he uh presumably he was a very eager volunteer for direct action because um you know somebody somebody tortured by mental illness if they come to believe rightly or wrongly or they come to sincerely believe that you know some kind of superstructural tendencies of you know the world

historical process is quite literally making them crazy you would you would die to remedy that you know um i find this fascinating but um you know i bring that i bring up howled or not just because he died in the service of a the road term of fractions idea but um in a very high profile um in a very high profile um terrorist operation but you know he like i said it uh there was there was an there's an ideological complexity here that is both the product of the times from which it was emergent but also like supersedes it um the uh and i think that it gives it we're going to um we're going to pick up next time um with um with what i think of as the road army fractions war against NATO what we've addressed so far really is there the war against the Bundes Republic um but um I think this is an appropriate stopping place and frankly like I'm in a lot of pain from sitting So if that's yeah, I think we've been going about an hour if that's cool But you will take this up in a couple days

Yeah, that sounds good I want to take the chance to remind everyone about our our movie reviews And how you know, we have this gum road page set up and On my website free man beyond the wall wall forward slash movies you get you can access i have links to all of it and um yeah there's uh we're gonna record another movie next week we won't tell anybody what it is right now we'll surprise people yeah so we got it's like mystery science theater 3 000 you know hopefully hopefully we can share some uh some cultural and um historical facts uh that are relevant to a lot

of the you know a few of the things we're watching No, man, I, I mean, I, I'm literally like a movie junkie, man. Like, I mainline and inject movies. And like I, I have since I was a kid and being able to like mouth off about movies and that people actually be interested in hearing that, that's, that's freaking wonderful, man. Like that's like legit, man. That's like free bubble gum like all day, every day. So yeah, I really appreciate people like being interested enough to subscribe. Yeah, me too.

You want to do plugs and get out of here? yeah man you know is always the best place I mean like one stop place to find me is in my website it's Thomas 777.com number 7h000h 777.com I'm on X which is doing all sorts of weird fucking stuff to like tweak their platform but I actually think it's getting better but um

I mean it's what we got whether it's getting better or worse but um I'm at real at capital REOAL underscore number seven HMS 7777 like the real like the real stuff is on my sub stack it's um including the pod it's a real time of 777s subsay.com there's like a bunch of other shit man like I'm on Tgram on Instagram like just like go to my website or like seek that shit out and you shall find you're on like a Google search for me man like I'm not saying I'm like noon coast to coast like I just like there's like a lot of there's like a lot

shit out there like with me in it you know like so if you just like Google me like you will find stuff I find stuff like I forgot that I did I mean I like I'd like I think that's because I do a lot of content not because I'm going to see you know who who fuck knows all right Thomas until the next time thank you very much yeah man