The Pete Quiñones Show - The Baader–Meinhof Gang (Rote Armee Fraktion) with Thomas777 - Complete
Episode Date: October 3, 20252 Hours and 48 MinutesPG-13This is the complete audio to the Baader–Meinhof Gang (Rote Armee Fraktion) series with Thomas777.Thomas' SubstackRadio Free Chicago - T777 and J BurdenThomas' Buy Me a Co...ffeeThomas777 MerchandiseThomas' Book "Steelstorm Pt. 1"Thomas' Book "Steelstorm Pt. 2"Thomas on TwitterThomas' CashApp - $7homas777Pete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support 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.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Ready for huge savings, we'll mark your calendars from November 28th to 30th because the Liddle Newbridge Warehouse Sale is back.
We're talking thousands of your favourite Liddle items all reduced to clear.
From home essentials to seasonal must-habs, when the doors open, the deals go fast.
Come see for yourself.
The Liddle New Bridge Warehouse Sale, 28th to 30th of November.
Liddle, more to value.
You catch them in the corner of your eye, distinctive by design.
They move you, even before you drive.
The new Cooper plugin hybrid range.
For Mentor, Leon, and Terramar.
Now with flexible PCP finance and trade-in boosters of up to 2,000 euro.
Search Coopera and discover our latest offers.
Coopera. Design that moves.
Finance provided by way of higher purchase agreement from Volkswagen Financial Services,
Ireland Limited, subject to lending criteria.
Terms and conditions apply.
Financial Services Ireland Limited. Trading as Cooper Financial Services is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland.
Ready for huge savings? We'll mark your calendars from November 28 to 30th because the
Liddle Newbridge Warehouse Sale is back. We're talking thousands of your favourite Liddle items
all reduced to clear. From home essentials to seasonal must-habs, when the doors open, the deals
go fast. Come see for yourself. The Liddle New Bridge Warehouse Sale, 28th to 30th of November.
Little more to value.
I want to welcome everyone back to the Pete Kenyano show.
Thomas, how are you doing?
I'm well.
I've been recuperating from being on the road
in the old glory club event, which was fantastic.
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 though it doesn't seem like I'm busy,
like I'm always working on stuff.
you know um so yeah things are well man i appreciate you hosting me as always awesome well we're
going to start something new tonight and um why don't you introduce it uh i think 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 uh 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 you know
characterized the dynamic
especially um
in the final phase of the Cold War from
you know the uh America's defeat in Vietnam
until
until the wall came down.
We're talking, of course, about the Bider-Meynhoff
gang, or
colloquially the Red Army
faction. They
called themselves the Roeth 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's an organic whole that constituted the dialectical process as
regards communism and what the Bader Meinhof 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 them were 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 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 Statskirat, 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 Maler 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 interdependence with 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 wound of history,
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
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 confined to the Cold War
you couldn't think outside that box
okay
there were like there were one off
societies like
Iran, and arguably
like Peron's Argentina, but
Iran obviously as a more ideologically
pure example that carved out
like truly third position regimes.
But that's exactly what they were.
They were outliers.
And now it wasn't just a matter of, it wasn't just a matter of
optics or like a people like Maler saying like, well,
we shouldn't advocate national socialism
because that would make people upset. It's like, that wasn't
even possible. You know, it wasn't
it's a matter of like making people upset or
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 Mineoff action 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 a spearpoint,
kind of like a sharepunk,
of um
of Warsaw Pact power
you know by proxy
especially in the third world
but there wasn't there wasn't there wasn't like an
East German like foreign policy into itself
and um
they despised Israel
and um
they viewed them not only as
a bastion of
you know imperialism in the Leninist sense
um you know they
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-Zionists and, like, anti-Jewish at the point that it superseded
pragmatic decisions relating to high politics and, and dialectical conclusions.
You know, this was payback for World War II.
Okay, you can tell me that it wasn't, but I don't accept that.
Okay.
The Communist Party line anyway, like what the Soviets would say, particularly when they were under pressure, you know, in the 1980s, supposedly for, you know, anti-Semitic legislation.
Like they said that, you know, it's not like Jews, they're like, why would we, why would we emphasize Jewish suffering in World War II?
We lost 25 million people.
You know, like, we vanquished the Third Reich.
Like, why we're not going to, we're not going to count how to some reactionary.
Jewish identity. They just like refused to acknowledge it. You know. So again, you know, I refer
people to Paul Gottfried, especially people who weren't alive during the Cold War. Like the left won
the Cold War, but the Warsaw Pact, 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 Marcosa.
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 remote.
within like Stalinist contemplation.
That's like not at all what like
Marxist-Leninist priorities are.
You know, like
like, um,
like,
like,
like,
like,
like,
like,
uh,
you know,
reigned in Warsaw Pact.
They might,
they might look at like,
the relations between the sexes and the West as being,
you know,
colored by like productive force of determinism.
They might look at like blacks as like a hyper-exploited,
like,
you know,
like proletary,
like lumpen 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 to do away with public morals.
And, you know, it's wrong for, you know, men and women
to find different roles in life.
Like, that's not, and that wasn't just, like,
an East Block and C, like, it's not the way Marxists think about things.
That's what I object to when people claim everything that was like is Marxism.
You know, like Kamala Harris says that they quote Marxist.
That doesn't make any sense.
Okay.
Now, that's not to see like Merxes don't have fucked up ideas they do, but it's a different thing entirely.
But now, the point is in context.
You catch them in the corner of your eye.
Distinctive.
By design.
They move you.
Even before you drive.
The new Cooper plugin hybrid range for Mentor, Leon, and Teramar.
Now with flexible PCP finance and trading boosters of up to,
2000 euro. Search Coopera and discover our latest offers.
Coopera. Design that moves.
Finance provided by way of higher purchase agreement from Volkswagen Financial Services
Ireland Limited. Subject to lending criteria. Terms and conditions apply.
Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland Limited. Trading as Cooper Financial Services is regulated by
the Central Bank of Ireland. Ready for huge savings?
We'll mark your calendars from November 28 to 30th because the Liddle Newbridge
warehouse sale is back.
talking thousands of your favorite Lidl items all reduced to clear from home essentials to
seasonal must-habs when the doors open the deals go fast come see for yourself the
Lidl Newbridge warehouse sale 28th to 30th of November Lidl more to value I'm going to 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 Mienhoff game
and its three iterations,
was at base a European liberationist
tendency
that, you know, 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-Mindhoff.
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 required.
trained,
directed,
schooled
by a highly
sophisticated
um,
um,
revolutionary military actor.
And that,
that actor was the DDR.
Were you aware that Maller is still alive?
Yeah.
Yeah.
He's 88 years old.
Yeah.
He's a fascinating guy.
Um, if he was,
if he was younger and it was,
my,
my German was better,
I'd reach out to him and didn't try to,
try to um
take some of his testimony
but um
in any event like why why am i saying
we're going to start at the end because
the conclusion of the Cold War
it
it brings the light
things that
relating to my hypothesis you know that
in fact um
you know the the
the Roat Army fraction was
was in fact um
like a direct action element
to the DDR okay
um
In April 1992, now for context, you know, the Soviet Union no longer existed.
You know, this was the area of the Commonwealth of Independence States.
But the group of Soviet forces in Germany are finally, like, leaving now.
Like, you know, the withdrawal is like complete.
Okay, and that in some kind of concrete terms, you know, regardless of the fact that, you know, the Cold War was over now, like about, you know, two, over two and a half years.
Um, you know, the, that final withdrawal of, of a Soviet, of the Soviet military element was, was kind of like, where the rubber meets the road, like truly the end, you know, at least in formerly divided Germany.
This, uh, this 2,300 word communique in April 92, um, was, uh, was sent to the, uh, the French press agency.
And interestingly, like the R.A.F, the Bader Meinhauf.
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, um, this communique was sent to the, the French press office in Bonn, which, of course, you know, was the, during the days of, uh, 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 sympathized of political supporters.
Like the commander were the direct action element, okay?
Like the prisoners were former commanders who have 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 Horstamal, you know, who were like above board people, you know,
who were presenting the, the, the, the, the marcus linens case and the, and the, the, and the, the, the,
revolutionary 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, aren't in a position, you know, owing to, you know,
to social or professional station or health or age, you know, to participate directly.
Okay.
So, in other words, the fact that it was issued forth from commandal level means that, you know,
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, and we get down the list of, like, some of their direct action operations,
even at the very end
they were hitting high profile targets.
This communication
was basically
divided into two sections.
The first was basically
like an elaborate
but not, you know, like
but not overly wordy
description of like why
the REF's like arm struggle failed.
An admission that
you know like the unarm struggle like
under the banner of Marxist colonialism 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 RF, like,
one 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 nobody believes that you know a marcus is this 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. Um, now interestingly, too,
like as we'll, 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
early on especially
you know
people affiliated with the original
like World Army Fraction or supporters
you know they
they 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
communists if the Bundes Republic will throw
a communist in concentration camps you know
and like references to the
Holocaust, 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, um, the road to army fraction,
became very orthodox Marxist leninist, okay? And this kind of, um,
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 there's none of this crazy you know kind of um post-martre's language you know about um 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 what 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 of self-defeating.
The RAF admitted,
You catch them in the corner of your eye.
Distinctive.
By design.
They move you.
Even before you drive.
The new Cooper plugin hybrid range for Mentor, Leon, and Teramar.
Now with flexible PCP finance.
and trade-in boosters of up to 2,000 euro.
Search Coopera and discover our latest offers.
Coopera. Design that moves.
Finance provided by way of higher purchase agreement
from Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland Limited.
Subject to lending criteria.
Terms and conditions apply.
Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland Limited.
Trading as Cooper Financial Services is regulated
by the Central Bank of Ireland.
Air Grid, operator of Ireland's electricity grid,
is powering up the Northwest.
We're planning to upgrade
the electricity grid in your area and your input and local knowledge are vital in shaping these plans.
Our consultation closes on the 25th of November.
Have your say online or in person.
So together we can create a more reliable, sustainable electricity supply for your community.
Find out more at airgrid.i.4 slash northwest.
That the 1989 revolutions basically like crush 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, it, you know, it, like it goes, I won't, I won't bore you in the subs with, you know, um, like, it goes, I won't, I won't bore you and, and the subs with, you know, um, uh, like,
like a, um, a, um, a, um, a, um, a, um, a, um, a, um, basically it says, like, when, when the,
when the, when the, when the, when the 89 revolutions, like, swept through, you know,
and we realize that, you know, the, the, the political core just, like, evaporated.
And like, even the vanguard, what had been the vanguard, at least in, in officialdom, um,
you know, not just in the Soviet Union, but in the satellite regimes, like, lack, like, lack the will
to act as a vanguard and, and crush the resistance, you know, and see through, you know, you know, the
process of history, you know, like 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 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?
So this isn't, this isn't like a cope or whatever. In fact, it's, it's very much, it's really
kind of like a savage, like self-criticism, okay? Like saying, like, our entire, our, our, our,
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
and and and fighting this war you know where we were we were grossly um mistaken you know um and that
uh especially for somebody who's who's I mean that that that it doesn't just require one of
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 Hagealian 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's, that's big, okay. Um, I, uh, 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 action element,
generally,
um,
that's not to say like guys who actually put in,
you know,
who do dirt and put in work or stupid,
quite the contrary,
but it,
it's,
um,
it's,
it's,
it requires a different kind of man and they,
and they,
and generally they're not,
um,
particularly reflective on the historical situation,
regardless of their,
ideological persuasion.
But, you know, this is a, like, our story begins here again, too, because if the Roat Army fraction,
and as the series continues, you'll see what I mean by this, if they were, in fact, again,
this kind of 19608 or radical student movement that, that, you know, 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, like, this sort of like, like, self-surrender letter, like, or self-pritique, and formal kind of ending to the armed campaign, like, would not have been forthcoming. You know, why wouldn't have they just continued into 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 um the uh and it goes down to say too like
it ain't it involves 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-to-action element okay um is the avion
guard okay um not just as a kind of self policing elitism but also because obviously the
thing that's 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 uh it killed national political
figures you know okay these are not guys throwing pipe bombs at at the outside the local
beer garden or you know like beating up on uh you know um people they decided
were fascists or something.
You know,
this was,
um,
this,
this,
this,
this,
this,
this,
this,
this,
this,
this,
this, this,
this,
this,
this,
it's,
um,
you know,
the men who actually
are fighting a war,
whether you're talking about,
you know,
like,
uh,
when you're talking about,
like,
combat infantry in a,
in a conventional war situation,
or you're talking about,
a guerrilla vanguard,
um,
involved in,
you know,
in,
in,
in,
in,
in,
in,
a political struggle,
you know,
you can't you can't really see the force of the trees like just by virtue of where you're situated
you know um it's uh 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 if you're killing people and you're
fighting gsg9 and you know you're and you know american army intelligence and you know british m5
and um you know you're you're living by the by the by the by the barrel of your of your h and k machine pistol
you know you're not you're not you're not thinking deeply about you know um marxas linus 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 you know the uh
What also is interesting is that it
Without it doesn't stray in anything approaching like vocish language or like outright nationalism or like nationalism or like nationalism with a lower-case end you know like nationalism of the bogeyman type is dead obviously but
They talk about how the time has come we you know they need to look out for the German people like and anybody politically engaged must because these these are critical times you know
and anybody who would be interested in following them,
you know,
it would be a mistake for to try and seek out opportune targets to,
you know,
as this time of transition is underway.
You know,
because it wasn't clear like what the parameters were yet,
as well as like what the objective would be,
you know,
and divided Germany was a unique situation.
that was like neither war nor peace.
You know, like I made the point,
people on the inter-German border,
like particularly where tactical nuclear forces were based
and in the fold of gap, you know,
where, um, which would have been, you know,
the fold of gap in the Northern German plane
is where like, like,
warsabank 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.
And Berlin was this city full of intrigues, you know,
full of spies, you know, full of political assassins, quite literally,
full of ideological intrigues of all stripes.
You know, it was that they don't run away after the wall came down.
You know, and in some ways, there was quite a bit more insuffer.
certainly, obviously, you know, in the truly, you know, like, in the unified, like, truly, like, peacetime Germany.
And, I mean, I mean, this should be obvious, but it's, you know, the people, even even other right, sensible people, they,
I think they, they over-emphasize the, the significance of violence politically. You know, like,
like, like, like direct action doesn't end of himself accomplish anything. You know, it's got to be targeted. It's got to be
situationally 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
political, uh, um, an armed political struggle. Um, the, uh, and, um, beginning, uh, beginning of
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 throat army fraction. That's not to say that they were a national
so does it grouping, but the element was there.
Secondly, their, you know, their status as a, their de facto status is a true, you know,
like Oregon slash element of the Warsaw Pact and not just a spontaneous rebel grouping, you know,
and, um.
Employers, did you know, you can now reward you and your staff with up to 1500 euro and gift cards
annually, completely tax-free and even better.
You can spread it over five different.
occasions. Now's the perfect time to try OptionsCard. OptionsCard is Ireland's brand new multi-choice
employee gift card packed with unique features that your staff will love. It's simple to buy,
easy to manage and best of all, there are no extra fees or hidden catches. Visit OptionsCard.i.e.
today. On the many nights of Christmas, the Guinness Storehouse brings to the Christmas
nights at gravity. This Christmas, enjoy a truly unique night out at the Gravity Bar. Save or
Best of Bites from Big Fan Bell, expertly crafted seasonal cocktails and dance the night away with DJs from love tempo.
Brett take infuse, amazing atmosphere, incredible food and drink.
My goodness, it's Christmas at the Guinness Storehouse.
Book now at giddlestorhouse.com.
Get the facts be drinkaware, visit drinkaware.com.
And 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 Army Fraction,
they started to emphasize this policy of negotiating release of their prisoners,
as well as try to piggyback,
negotiating and release of those people with who they considered to be,
like adjacent and allied elements
like people, people from the
popular front for liberation of Palestine General
Command, like people from the PLO
who in those days was dominated by FATA,
which contra Hamas
was, you know, at the secular
wing.
And the RAF trained
with the PLO under FATA,
which is one of the ways they learned to use
weapons, they learned basic
infantry tactics.
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 and International Profile.
And we'll get into this in the second episode, but, you know, this led to the, um, establishment of a Japanese Roat Army Fronauts.
The Japanese Communist Party was very active, had a lot of clout, and was very, very, very radical.
And some people may know something might not.
Forgive the tangent, but the Japanese rule of the army fraction carried out this assault at Jedi 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 um
armed groupings
under the same banner
you know when they're and they're
slaughtering people in Israel under the
under the banner of um 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 um 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 me on 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 the, um, this, uh, they called a, the, the, the, the, the Rotary Fraction
called this process like collating you know between them themselves like the
Japanese particularly you know the PLO as well as popular front
leverage in Palestine which is primarily um a Syrian outfit and um the East
Germans in Syria were thick as thieves you know um and um I've made the point
again and again Syria should have an outside significance to people on the
right um in a way not unlike Franco Spain did that's a subject for another um
episode, but um, the, um, the, uh, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the,
syddhers, um, the, uh, the ddr, um, defense, uh, minister. He personally knew, um, Fezal
Assad. They were very close. Um, he assisted him in, in modernizing the Syrian Arab army. Um, and, um, you know, incidentally, the, 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 Roeth Army fraction.
And both are technically, you know, like these independent non-state actors.
I mean, this, again, too, the kind of the interdependence here and the relationship of,
of state officialdom to these, um, to these, um, to these organizations.
organizations like should should be clear to anybody but you know truly um obtuse um person who's blind to kind of political realities um
the uh the um that uh and it's also too like one of the reasons why you know there's um you can tell too that um i i i the
road army fraction was taking some of their cues from the provisional IRA like not in terms of
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 right who were locked down being recognized as political prisoners and not criminals okay
because um a few things happened there that obviously that legitimizes your struggle um
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, um, as, as enemy combatants, you know, um, which, uh, prior to the Bush administration is kind of making a hash with that, um, you know, they did, uh, 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 of a shot. But, um, also it's, um, um,
you know, there's a, it opens the door to negotiation.
Okay, and negotiation is, I mean, despite what Mr. Zelensky might claim,
or despite what Israelis claim about terrorists,
or despite what, despite what America claims about, you know,
whoever it's angry with at any given day,
if you just claim you refuse to negotiate with opt for,
like you're pissing under the wind.
You know, you can't just,
you can't just sit about to resolve all political questions like militarily or by like threat of force
that's assinine um but there has to there has to be some sort of equality of status um 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 um at least on legitimate um at least on legitimate terms as a political actor okay you know and
again this this removes what would otherwise be you know criminal behavior
behavior, you know, non-privile homicide, you know, things like this, you know, from a, from a category of the pure criminality. So this is fundamentally important. And this also isn't obvious. I mean, like the, there's a somewhat uncharted territory, you know, I mean, it's, we obviously, I mean, guerrilla fighters are as old as, or as old as Christ, you know, that's what like the zealots were. But in, in the, in like, the, in, like, the, in, in, in, in the, in, in, in, in the, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in,
like a post-west phelian system like how we how we i'm talking about you know um like um the 20th
21st century people who are representatives of of um of sovereign states um you know how how we treat
partisans um this was uh this was this was this was this was an issue of first impression in large
part that's why it's such a huge part of schmidt's book nomads of the earth because he's saying
you know he's writing in the you know in um at the peak of the cold
war and he's saying like look like this is going to become like the face of warfare you know how how are you
going to respond to this you know um it's there's got to be some sort of mechanism whereby um you know um
there there's some kind of if not moral like at least pragmatic you know consensus about um you know how
we how we deal with these situations how we deal with these actors you know and what and what like
the path to pieces when um you know uh when when a national state is like so engaged against such
element. But, you know, I, so, I mean, 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, is this 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, was, was, was, was, um,
you know, he wasn't a figurehead, he was ready hands down on, but he was basically just like a thug cop.
Wolf was really the, he wasn't just like the spy master, but he was, he was, of the DDR, he was, you know, he was, he was kind of, um, he was kind of like their, uh, their, their shining prints of all the things related to political warfare.
And a fascinating guy, I highly recommend his autobiography, whatever anybody thinks of him.
He was probably he was about the best he was the best men the the the Warsaw bag produced
but um it uh now they get the for context here and um let me just hold who we're going
okay for context here um again let's let's break down some of what the the wrote army fraction um
its first and its first and second iterations.
Air grid, operator of Ireland's electricity grid, is powering up the northwest.
We're planning to upgrade the electricity grid in your area,
and your input and local knowledge are vital in shaping these plans.
Our consultation closes on the 25th of November.
Have your say, online or in person,
so together we can create a more reliable, sustainable electricity system.
supply for your community. Find out more at airgrid. i.e. forward slash northwest.
Employers, did you know, you can now reward you and your staff with up to 1500 euro and gift cards
annually completely tax-free and even better. You can spread it over five different occasions.
Now's the perfect time to try Options Card. Options Card is Ireland's brand new multi-choice
employee gift card packed with unique features that your staff will love. It's simple to buy,
easy to manage, and best of all, there are no extra fees or hidden catches. Visit OptionsCardt.e. today.
What kinds of activities who was engaged in and what kinds of targets it was hitting, okay?
22nd October, 1971, World Army Fraction members, Arm Guard Bowler and Gerhard Muller,
they attempted to rescue their comrade, leading 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
Bundes Republic cop was shot
by the World 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 Euro before was the Euro.
You know, so let me 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, but like
the ambition here is crazy.
May 11th of
1972 at Frankfurt on Maine.
The U.S. Army
Five Corps headquarters
which is located in the IG Farben
building.
The Roat Army fraction blew up the
Officers Club.
They wounded 13 soldiers. They killed
Lieutenant Colonel Paul Blumquist.
Blumquist was a war hero.
He was an army aviator.
He was a, you know, 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
Audie Murphy,
you know, and they straight
have killed him. And attacking
like the IG Farben's, you know, that just 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
of an army corps,
striking that,
killing a lieutenant colonel and
a celebrated war hero with that.
I mean, that's one of there's a shot fired across the bow.
That's real war.
That same month
at
in Augsburg,
the Royal 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 Weissbacker
Commando they named themselves
after either prisoners
of their people who've been taking a prisoner
I've been KIA, like KIA in their mind
so like when ARA took responsibility
was always like the Tommy Weissbacker Commando
or you know like the whatever like the um
the um like the um like the horse mowler commando you know which is um
which is again it's like a callback to like spanish civil war stuff and like right 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 um in addition they bombed the headquarters
The actual Springer Verloc Corporation, wounding 17.
The Heidelberg, the U.S. Army in Europe, Officers Club, and 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, these people were fleeing the Officers Club.
They got blown up.
And then 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, but my dad was stationed there.
Oh, wow, that's nuts.
That's where I was born, yeah.
No, I know, yeah, I know you're a Bundes Republic, uh, native,
but, uh, which is actually kind of awesome, but yeah.
What happened to your pop wasn't so awesome, but, like, yeah.
The, um, now this was, um,
what kind of seemed a real escalation, uh, in 1974, the first, uh,
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 Minds.
Hulgar Mines was a Royal 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 a partisan sense, you know, they, incredibly dangerous people.
They, they carried out, they carried out this assault on, again, this was the German embassy, the West German embassy.
in Stockholm.
You know, they, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this REOF team stormed it.
Demanding the release of, you know, REF prisoners as well as a list of, you know, of,
um, adjacent comrades, you know, um, Palestinians, Japanese, others.
Um, they, um, they stated that, uh, 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,
they'd blow themselves and everybody up.
The police decided they were bluffing.
Well, I mean, the Grubians are just six members.
It was a most significant acclum was a guy named Shigfried Haugner,
and I'll get into that in a minute.
But it was five men and one woman.
Band of the embassy took 13 officials hostage,
including the,
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 stalker.
And again, they weren't the police to back off, but they said that they'd killed another,
they said they'd kill a hostage every hour.
But the police didn't lift the, you know, they didn't retreat from the perimeter they'd
established and again they they threatened to blow it the entire embassy up if the police move to storm
them but um or no it was actually it was one of the hostages killed was uh this is fascinating
baron andreas von murbach who was the he was the german military at the shade of sweden um
he's the guy who's marched out under the landing and shot dead um this is macabre but fascinating
in 1918 his ancestor
Valhelm von Murbach had been assassinated the German embassy
in Moscow by socialist revolutionaries
who stormed the freaking embassy like how
like how fucking insane is that
like um
it I don't know maybe it's seen in a Hannibal
you've seen that movie where he kills the
he kills the Italian policeman and he's like
yeah didn't when your ancestors get get like
been affected by the um by the Borges
He's like, yeah, how'd you know that?
And he'd like, good to sex him.
But only in Europe, man.
But Helmut Schmidt was a new chancellor.
It was very much, I mean, West Germany in the 70s was really kind of a mess.
And some people believe that the government, you know, that's one in Philly Brandt,
who was the longtime mayor of West Berlin.
Some of you know him is a fifth columnist.
owing to his kind of friendly uh is overly friendly posture towards the dDR that's all
other story like the whole espionage scandal to him but um point being um the federal
republic was kind of paralyzed um owing to the situation vis-à-vis the executive um as it uh as it
happened as the Swedish police bird the storm in the building the the the
the the rotation blew up you know killing everybody now the reason why
the reason why I raised Siegfried Housner this is Houseners background and I'll
wrap it up in a minute but I when I said before that air grid operator of Ireland's
electricity grid is powering up the
We're planning to upgrade the electricity grid in your area and your input and local knowledge are vital and shaping these plans.
Our consultation closes on the 25th of November.
Have your say online or in person.
So together we can create a more reliable, sustainable electricity supply for your community.
Find out more at airgrid.i.4.Northwest.
Employers, did you know you can now reward you and your staff with up to five.
1500 euro and gift cards annually completely tax-free. And even better, you can spread it over five
different occasions. Now's the perfect time to try Options Card. Options Card is Ireland's brand new
multi-choice employee gift card packed with unique features that your staff will love. It's simple to buy,
easy to manage, and best of all, there are no extra fees or hidden catches. Visit OptionsCard.I.E.
today. Much as
the DDR itself
and the Royal Army Fraction, if you accept
my hypothesis, and even if you don't,
as regards to the DDR,
that the Royal Army fraction was
very much like an appendage of
Warsaw Pegged officialdom.
You know, despite their kind of orthodox,
Marcus S. 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.
Sigridhauser had been in a mental hospital, a psychiatric hospital.
That's something I want to emphasize too.
You know how 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 illness is definitely overdiagnosed today.
People are definitely over-medicated.
But psychiatry was at zenith in the 70s.
Okay.
It was like, like there was a push for like mental health to be addressed.
Okay, it was definitely on people's radar.
Now, the situation is the movement, as well as a student, like Frankfurt School type people,
which the Rotterme fraction were definitely accolades of for limited purposes.
Gramsian Adorno featured very large in their kind of ideological horizon.
but anyway, Siegfried Hauser, 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
illness
um
so the idea being that
um
somebody who's self-consciously
mentally ill. They're aware
of what the capitalist structure is doing
to them.
And 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 literally like the
radiology. Okay?
And that's
where Hauser came from, you know?
And
he
presumably
he was a very eager
volunteer for direct action
because
you know
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 die to remedy that
you know
I find this fascinating
But, you know, I bring that, I bring up how and not just because he died in the service of a
Thorot Army for Actions idea, but in a very high profile
in a very high profile terrorist operation. But, you know, he, like I said, it, though
there was an, there's an ideological complexity here that is both a product of the Times
from which it was emergent but also like supersedes it.
The uh and I think that it gives it we're going to um
we're gonna pick up next time um with um with what I think of as the
Rotemian Reactions war against NATO what we've addressed so far really is there
the war against the Bundes Republic um but um I I think this is
I know I think this is an appropriate stopping place and from
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,
we'll take this up in a couple days.
Yeah,
that sounds good.
I want to take the chance to remind everyone
about our movie reviews
and how,
you know, we have this gum road page set up.
And on my website,
Freeman Beyond the Wall,
forward slash movies, you can
access. I have links to all of it.
And, yeah, we're going to 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, man.
Hopefully we can share some cultural and historical facts that are relevant to a lot of the, you know, a few of the things we're watching.
No, man, I mean, I, I'm literally like a moment.
movie junkie man like I mainline and inject movies and like I have since I was a kid and uh
being able to like mouth off about movies and that people actually be interested in hearing that
that's that's that's freaking wonderful man like that's uh like like legit man that's like free bubble
gum like all day every day um so yeah i really appreciate people like being interested
enough to subscribe yeah me too um you want to do plugs and get out of here yeah man you know
is always the best place i mean like one-stop placed up
find me is in my website. It's
Thomas 7777.com
number 7-h-M-A-S-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, I mean, it's what we got, whether it's getting better or
worse, but I'm at
real, at capital REL underscore
number seven, HMS-777.
like the real
like the real stuff is on my substack
it's um including the pod
it's a real thomas 777s substack.com
there's like a bunch of other shit man like I'm on tgram
I'm on Instagram like just like go to my website
or like seek that shit out and you shall find
you run like a Google search for me man like I'm not saying I'm like
I'm like noon coast to coast like I just like
there's like a lot of 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'd like to think that's because I do a lot
of content, not because I'm going to see now who the fuck knows. All right, Thomas. Until the next time.
Thank you very much. Yeah, man. I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekina show here with Thomas.
How you done, Thomas? I'm doing well, man. What I wanted to emphasize today,
I assume people are getting something out of this. I'm not being up to.
I mean, I, the Bader Meinhuech phenomenon, you've got to understand, there's two things that I think are key to understanding it.
Okay.
First is that there was, there truly were three iterations of it.
This armed grouping that had a common lineage existed from 1970 to 1998.
And every five to seven years, because their operators got, got killed, ended up in car.
or disappeared underground, some of whom didn't reemerge for decades, despite being hunted by the Bundes Republic, you know, counter-terrorist police and the off, what they were the euphemously we call the office of the detection of the constitution, which is no joke. These people have limited resources. But, you know, the original Bader Meinhauf,
grouping,
they really were
they really were a product
of a peculiar time and place.
And that was at an hour as Bundes Republic.
And their parentage,
a lot of these guys' fathers
had died in the war
or just never come home.
There was a lost generation of people, as we'll see,
because we're going to get into their biographies.
and they had kind of a confused understanding of what they wanted to do.
Like Horstmaller, I maintain, was always something of an ideological pole star for the group.
And I believe he was always a national socialist.
But he was different than the rest of him, and he wasn't a direct-action operator.
However, by the last iteration of the Root Army fraction,
they were totally indexed with the Stasi.
and they were basically running operations for the DDR.
You know, like it had totally changed into something different.
You know, and did it become solidly in the Stalinist Warsaw Pact camp?
You know, which was a huge coup for Marcus Wolfe and
the minister for Statskirat to be able to do that.
in America, you know, the Soviets true, after the common turn would, like, cease to exist formally.
Okay.
What replaced it was this aggregation above ground, you know, it was common form, which was basically kind of like the communist version of the G7, you know, or the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, maybe is more correct.
but you know the um air grid operator of ireland's electricity grid is powering up the northwest we're planning to upgrade the
electricity grid in your area and your input and local knowledge are vital and shaping these plans our
consultation closes on the 25th of november have your say online or in person so together we can
create a more reliable sustainable electricity supply for your community find out more
at airgrid.I.E. 4.Northwest.
Employers. Rewarding your staff?
Why choose between a shop voucher or a spend anywhere card
when with options card you can have both?
With options card, your team gets the best of both worlds.
They can spend with Ireland's favourite retailers
or choose a spend anywhere card.
It's simple to buy and easy to manage.
There are no hidden fees, it's easy to use and totally flexible.
They can even re-gift or donate to a good cause.
Make your awards.
more rewarding visit options card.i today the communist party the Soviet Union um they
had their tentacles in many things and they were constantly trying to flip leftists in the
UK and America like to the Warsaw Pact camp like away from this schismatic post 68
ideology you know and um they had some success with that in the UK but in America but in
America, like, it was always hitting the wall.
You know, like Gus Hall,
I mean, it's an interesting.
There were some guys on the right,
especially in the earlier phase of the Cold War,
like James Hartung-Mattle,
who I believe were signaling to
some of these
Warsaw-pack-type
agents
in America.
the notion being this is similar to what Gerbil's notion of clicking up with the KPD, you know,
during like the years of struggle to smash the Social Democrats.
You know, there is an internal logic there.
But my point is, you know, the Stasi managed to basically totally and completely flip the,
the batter mine off tendency, you know, and make it literally like an organ of the deity.
are violent separatists and I find that fascinating so I wanted to get into the first iteration the first
iteration the literal batter Mainhoff faction um and talk a bit about these personalities that
constituted it and what their backgrounds were because I think that is essentially as essential understanding
the German situation.
It's essential understanding why these people did what they did.
I make the point again and again,
you know, zeitgeist is very real.
That's not just some conceptual prejudice I have.
Like, what is possible in, you know,
the political realm is its own sphere of activity.
Okay.
And if you're talking about radical partisan action,
like what is going to have resonance?
What is going to index with the culture
and the historical moment as it then exists
is very historically contingent.
You know, German young people
who wanted to strike out at
regime authority,
really the only way they could conform that tendency
was some sort of communism.
Okay?
Germany had literally been annihilated
and was part of,
partitioned and under hostile occupation to prevent a fascist going tendency from ever reemerging.
You know?
And even those that were emergent, obviously early on, were entirely adjacent to Soviet Union.
not in terms of their deep values or anything,
but in terms of geostrategic realities,
as well as certain ideological interdependencies
that were just essential in a bipolar world
with a Soviet superpower as the lesser enemy of Europe.
than the true foe of Europe, which was America.
So I want to get into that a bit.
The Royal Army Faction came into existence in May 1970,
and it was when there was an Andvis Bader was sprung from prison.
Bader had been locked up. In 1968,
Hemen is a girlfriend
at his at the time. He'd set fire
to this department store
to strike back at capitalism.
And he said that he did it
because the Bundes Republic there was an apathy about
what was happening in Vietnam.
You know?
And
it's interesting.
that at first these guys and ladies were taking their cues very much from kind of like the American
radical left and that's why like Nam was kind of their conceptual focus that changed very much
and um the uh Palestine very much became their like the scherpunkk in their view of
of revolutionary activity abroad and kind of like the key battleground against
you know
the
the capitalist
global structure
which I think
reading between the lines it's pretty clear why that is
okay
but in any event
you know as of 1968
Bader
was still very
much kind of
a rebel without a cause
you know he drew a custodial sentence because Germany was very very draconian in these days
you know and um at an hour who was kind of hated by both the right and the left but he was in purely
objective terms he was a pretty remarkable executive you know and he managed to
insinuate himself as all things to all people you know outside of the
outside of the the national socialist right would remain
of it and and the you know the far left but he he realized a certain kind of conformity had to be
imposed you know Germany was very much rearming and reconstituting to fight World War
three and Adnard made it clear that you know nuclear arms were going to be based in Germany
the Bundeswehr was going to participate in their deployment and use when more day came
this is incredibly controversial for all kinds of reasons you know some prosaics
some rather complicated but um in any event that's the context so young
Andre is Bader at this point I believe it's kind of acting out to act out okay
a lot of young people get in now you know those were a rather gifted
intelligence it it's um you have to you have to live a little
life, like literally just in terms of duration to get a true perspective on the historical
situation.
Interestingly, while he was incarcerated, obviously, I say May 14, 9070 is the day when
kind of the World Army Fraction came into existence.
That's when he was sprung out of prison.
Okay.
Now, for whatever reason, and we'll get into Bader's, like, background in a minute, like
his upbringing.
He was an incredibly contentious, violent person.
He wasn't traditionally charismatic, but people apparently would,
would, would gravitate to him and treat him as a natural leader.
Okay. Um, he, uh, it within his orbit was very much a quarter of young outsiders, as it were.
all right
and
despite his kind of
like his nature
went beyond cantagoras
he was like a violent person
you know he if people
disagree with them he would attack them
physically they became his ops
you know like
and some degree of that
like has to live in kind of like the heart and mind
every partisan but in his case it was
it was truly
extreme
the primary architect that springing him out of prison
was Eureka Meinhove
who was
his sometime girlfriend but more of kind of an
ideological fellow traveler
one thing that was unusual about the Bader Meinhauf
grouping
they always had women with them
now at first it was probably i mean not to be crass about it but they were you know because they
were young and horny and like young guys want women around and vice versa you know young women
gravitate towards guys in their age group and but there was a there was an odd ideological
dimension to it too like when i say an odd ideological dimension i mean it was shaped by the
conditions of of the immediate post-war years you know it wasn't it wasn't dummy feminism
operator of Ireland's electricity grid is powering up the Northwest.
We're planning to upgrade the electricity grid in your area and your input and local knowledge are vital in shaping these plans.
Our consultation closes on the 25th of November.
Have your say, online or in person.
So together we can create a more reliable, sustainable electricity supply for your community.
Find out more at airgrid.i.4 slash Northwest.
Friday, game, stream and go full speed with one gig, Sky broadband.
And watch unmissable shows like all her fault on Sky.
These nice people, killing you, John.
And Ballad of a Small Player starring Colin Farrell on Netflix.
I've made some mistakes. Right, who hasn't?
Get one gig Sky Broadband, Essential TV and Netflix, all for just 44 euro a month for 12 months.
Our lowest ever price.
Availability subject location, new customers only, 12 month minimum terms, standard pricing thereafter, TV and broadband sold separately.
terms apply for more info
he's skydada e slash beads
and dummy feminists don't
like lock and load and
and start knocking over banks
and springing
their people out of prison and
and shooting cops
okay obviously
you know
this caused some odd challenges
for them later especially
as they came to index
with Islamic resistance fighters
obviously
not because like Muslims
there's no problem training women to fight
and they do, but they can't have men and women cohabitating and sleeping in common quarters,
and they can't have women in men's barracks and vice versa.
We'll get into that later.
But one of the reasons in America, at least, the World Army faction, I think, this kind of fascination
developed around them is because there was like these good look in, like, European broads
always, like, clicked up with them.
You know, and kind of like the Patty Hearst thing, you know, like, people,
like, really, like, Americans
are always, like, really fascinated by, like,
women handling weapons. It was, like, literally,
like, a quasi, like, pornographic genre
of, like,
of, like, half-naked girls, like, like, ripping rounds
through, you know, like, like, assault weapons.
You know, like, it's a thing, you know?
Um, and it's not,
I'm not being some, like, corny academic to say it's,
like, obviously, like, very sexual.
You know, like, it's, this is, this is to be clear to anybody.
But, um,
You know, Andre's Bader, he gets sprung from this high security prison, you know, by, you know, a masked man and these two young women, you know, as the police opened fire on him.
He leaped out of window, like literally.
You know, like, it's, um, it's, um, and, um, you know, they, uh, their, their, their, their, their, their wheel man, uh, was able to snag him streetside, you know, and get away.
You know, like, this kind of thing just didn't, this kind of thing just didn't happen in, you know, in, like, in post-war Germany.
You know, Germany's a really orderly place, you know, that's not just a cliche.
You know, during the struggle,
Elenrique Meinhue Meinhue who'd disguise herself
with, like, this long, like, wig.
Like, one of the police who tried to grab her by the hair
like snatched his wig off, you know, revealing that she had, like, you know,
like a military style, like blonde haircut.
You know, and there was some confusion as to whether she was like a man
a woman too like an initial identification you know so this was a very this was a crazy situation
you know um and um this made uh this didn't just make this didn't just make you know
national headlines in the bundus republic but it was something like the police weren't
prepared to deal with this i guess we'll get into the police had agents insinuated into all the
major trade unions and especially for some reason like the transportation and and like railroad workers
union was shot through with communists like pro warsaw pact you know like marcus leninists
so they viewed them as their ops okay like the police did like these kinds of crazy guys
who are getting like sprung out of out of the joint you know by gun-toting females you know and um
are pulling off, you know, wild operations, at least if to that point not particularly
organized or well thought out, you know, like the firebombing department stores and, you know,
and sloganeering revolutionary stuff, you know, this, um, they just weren't prepared for it.
You know, like it was an issue of first impression. And it wasn't traditional, it wasn't traditional
street volatility of the kind that Europe's used to.
You know, like, something very like, almost kind of like American about that.
You know, those kinds of, those kinds of outlaw actions.
You know, um, so who was Andreas Bader?
Andreus Bader was born in 1943 in May.
He was born in Munich.
His father was a historian and archivist and, like a real intellectual.
He'd been conscripted into Vermont, you know, like all able-bodied men.
He was taken prisoner by the Russians in 45 and just was never seen again.
He just never came home.
You know, and Bader's mother never remarried.
So Andre Bader, as a boy, he lived with his widowed mom, you know,
who kind of, you know, continued to pine for that someday, you know, dad was going to come home.
you know, a grandmother, and, like, various, you know, aunts and uncles.
But he basically lived in this, like, female household without a father, you know, and there
was millions of men who just never came home, you know, because, and hundreds of thousands
where their fate was unknown. You know, they were either, they were taking prisoner and
died in some gulag. You know, they were cut to pieces, you know,
small arms fire and died in the snow and during the desperate retreat they they were their body was
never recovered right on a fight you know so it's um i'm telling you that that impacted the perspective
of these boys when they became you know young men you know this like generation of fatherless
boys who grew up in this authoritarian society yet that didn't really index with them culturally
there's armed
men everywhere who are there to police
them who aren't of their culture
who they can kind of relate to
racially and linguistically
at least like the white troops
this had to be an incredibly confusing
situation
you know
and pretty much without exception
the early Bader-Meynoff
grouping
they all had some kind
of background like this
Well, nobody
thinks of West Germany
what is, what was to be called
West Germany, as actually
being under occupation.
They saw West Germany
as the free
Western democracy
as opposed to East Germany.
Which is crazy, too,
because, yeah, no, you're absolutely right.
You know, like, if you look at just,
you know, West Germany,
like a, a,
A quarter of Germany was, you know, the DDR historical Germany.
So you have West Germany, the occupation forces from 49 until 91 were 300,000 men, Americans.
There's a quarter million contingent of British, French, and Benelux troops, too.
half a million men in a country smaller than Wyoming.
You know, armed the teeth, you know, ready for war at a moment's notice.
You know, and at checkpoint Charlie, you know, it was, things were fairly civilized,
but when you went to the true inter-German border, like, my dad told me, and this tracts of that William Odom said,
and with what, you know,
enlisted men who served there said it felt like a war.
You know, they were getting buzzed constantly by DDR aircraft.
Sappers would, uh,
would screw with, um, the concertina wire
and like probe their, uh,
you know, the,
the hardness of their,
other fixed defenses.
This was not remotely normal,
you know, and so,
and on top of it,
like I said, basically, you know, Germany lost five and a half million men.
You know, there was, the country was full of like little kids, like old people and women.
And like nobody had a father.
You know, like David Irving talked about that because he said in England it wasn't really as bad,
but he's like, you know, Irving's dad didn't die, but he just kind of like went nuts and left the family.
he was like a Royal Navy vet who like couldn't adjust a civilian life.
And everything's like going to school with a bunch of guys who had no dad.
You know, um, that that completely, that creates weird pathologies, you know.
And especially the Germans, like they were, you know, um, the kind of, the kind of like
soft peddle to Morganthal plan that became their constitution.
That's totally bizarre.
I mean, aside in the fact, it's, aside in the, like, the moral aspects and aside from the
fact that you know it's it's it's it's it's it's tailored to kind of destroy the will of people
perpetuate itself like that's bizarre you know you're like you're going to school and some guy
or some lady is like reading off a lesson book that came from the department of the army air grid
operator of ireland's electricity grid is powering up the northwest we're planning to upgrade the
Electricity grid in your area and your input and local knowledge are vital in shaping these plans.
Our consultation closes on the 25th of November.
Have your say, online or in person.
So together we can create a more reliable, sustainable electricity supply for your community.
Find out more at airgrid.i.4 slash northwest.
This Black Friday, gain stream and go full speed with one gig sky broadband.
And watch unmissable shows like all her friends.
fault on Sky. These nice people
killing each other. And Ballad of a Small
Player starring Colin Farrell on Netflix.
I've made some mistakes. Right, who hasn't?
Get one gig Sky broadband, essential
TV and Netflix, all for just
44 euro a month for 12 months.
Our lowest ever price.
Availability subject location, new customers only,
12 month minimum terms, standard pricing thereafter,
TV and broadband sold separately. Terms apply for more
infoosies sky.a slash beads.
Like written by some crazy Zionist
educating you about how like
educating you about how like you're part of this
like murderous race of people, you know, who must atone to the Jews because your history from
Meister Eckart until Adolf Hitler is about anti-Semitism. Like, that's literally insane.
You know, like, it's, um, and, um, that kind of thing made it impossible for people to trust an
authority, you know, and, uh, Germany, more than most societies was, was and is one based on social
capital, you know, like that, that made people act really screwy.
You know, and I, in my opinion, the later iterations of the buyer of mine off
faction are more complicated.
And some ways it's more simple and some of that's more complicated.
Just to inject this, my, my mom would go, my dad told me that my mom would go to East,
East Berlin.
So she'd go through, she'd go through Charlie.
and he made it sound like, you know, because he was a cold war,
he made it sound like, you know, she was being, you know,
she would have to do strip searches and stuff like that.
No, I asked my mom, my mom's like, I had,
I was treated much worse coming back into West Germany
by people who looked like me and sounded like me.
Yeah, yeah. No, I'm sure that's true.
Because they have, and she's going to the museums over there.
People don't realize they had amazing museums in like East Berlin.
Oh, yeah.
It's the traditional, I mean, that was a traditional government district, among other things, too.
You know, I mean, like, there's a reason why the Soviets wanted Berlin and why East Berlin became the capital.
You know, I mean, that's, that wasn't just a mark on a map.
You know, it was, um, or just like a prestige objective.
You know, I mean, um, that's Europe central, you know, quite literally.
And yeah, it's, it's an incredible place.
And, um, you know,
But yeah, the, uh, as, um, apparently, uh, bothered reputation, even as a, even as a little kid, as, um, being highly volatile, extraordinarily strong-willed.
Um, he apparently resisted all authority, sort of instinctively.
Um, I don't, I don't, I don't trust these, uh, official psychological takes on people.
you know, in America or Western Europe
that declare, you know,
oh, oppositional defiance disorder.
But
Bader, even some of his
even some of his comrades
and like Rappies basically
attracted what they said about him.
And apparently
he came to strongly
resent religious instruction. He refused
to celebrate holidays. He refused
to even celebrate Christmas or observe his own
birthday. Um, you know, and it, and again, even as, uh, his people who'd grown up with him
were emphatic that even as a little kid, he was, he was like a kid that others followed.
You know, um, they, uh, but as he was sprung from prison on May 14, 1970,
his comrades didn't, they didn't have a plan. Like, they literally had no,
plan.
Ulrichi Minov, she literally had a friend who's this actress who lived a few streets away
from the Central Institute of Social Research.
Ulrichi Minoff was an academic, you know, like social science type, and that's where she
worked.
So her big, her and the guy's big plan was, well, we'll go to your friend's house and
demand it, you know, she let us, you know, like use it as a safe house until we figure out
to do, you know.
And I mean, they traded shots with police, you know, one of whom was seriously injured,
you know, which, which again, I mean, rarely, rarely happened in Germany, you know,
then or no.
This friend of, of Riki Meinov, probably under some degree of duress, you know,
know, they, they simply rang the doorbell and said, we need your solidarity.
You know, the revolution has started.
This poor, I was expecting a woman and got, like, you know, she was housing these fugitives.
And this was, this was one of the biggest man hunts of post-war times, you know, and almost,
almost everybody they were looking for was, like, sitting in this poor, like, random
ladies' apartments.
but um when this really kind of becomes um when this really kind of becomes interesting is
is their their next planned move and this this also represented the change in the ideological
disposition of the of the fraction and it all but it also um you know like I said it
it indexed with a basic German tendency towards revolutionary action that was authentically German.
Whoever sort of couched it was in Marxist-Lennonist pseudoscience or, you know, gobbledygook,
or however much it was kind of framed in these like liberationist narratives of the 1960s,
they agreed the next move
would they had to leave Berlin as soon as possible, obviously.
And they
uniformly agreed
they'd go to the Middle East
and
you know, the Palestinian resistance
would provide them like aid conference
fellow revolutionaries.
Somehow
either
Ehrlich Mianov
butter or both
they made the acquaintance of a man named
Saeed Doudin
Saeed Doudin is still alive
He
He was a Jordanian emigrate
He was the son of a Jordanian emigre
to West Berlin
And he was a political scientist
And his father was this big shot
Like social researcher
And like regional studies expert on
Like Arab societies and political cultures
Syed Doudin has never been convicted of a crime
although he's been hassled by the police
you know over decades
for various reasons
um
Said Doudin
contacted
his people in Jordan
he arranged tickets
with uh
East German
interflug airline
which was the DDR's national airline
he booked them nine rooms in East Berlin under assumed names
and he arranged for people to transport them to East Berlin
you know about three weeks subsequent so on June 8th
1970 the first group of R a.F.
operators departed
Stonefield Airport in East Berlin
for Palestine.
Interestingly, and I believe this
when I have to describe was all course de Maller.
Before they departed
for the Middle East
and in the immediate aftermath, I'm talking several days
of the prison break.
an anonymous phone call was made
to Michel Ray.
She was a former Chanel model and she was a
big shot lady journalist
in French media.
I'm trying to think of
you know, back, this was back in the day when you had
like, you know, true like celebrity, like news people.
She was a super glamorous
um,
um, like figure, like personage.
Ulrichi Mianoff
undoubtedly told,
Horst Mahler, whoever placed this call,
and I'm telling you, I'm certain it was Horstomah
who orchestrated this,
about, like, named Michelle Ray,
because they'd very slightly known each other
from this magazine called Conkrit,
which was kind of like,
it was kind of like Vanity Fair, but more serious.
And Ulrichi Meinov,
you know, being this kind of university type,
like mingle in some high society circles,
you know, she'd come across Michelle Ray and undoubtedly, because like women are good to recognize these things.
She's like, look, if you want, if you want to capture cheap clout and you want like rapid headlines, you know, we got to contact her.
Because if we talk to a German journalist or whatever, they're going to try and suppress this.
So Michelle Ray was told that if she came to Berlin, she would get, you know, a quote big story about like the, you know,
the new resistance, you know, from the radical left.
Only a combination of curiosity and maybe naivete,
she agreed to meet them.
She arrived in Berlin a few days before the departure to Palestine on June 4th.
And she first met Andries Bader.
Andri's Bader
escorted her back to an apartment safe house
where Uriki Mianoff himself
and a woman named Gudrin Enslin
lived.
Gudrin Enslin was
It's hard to tell because of the
kind of
These weren't really polyamorous hippies
That's what some people try to characterize it as
This Andre's Bader like having sex
A lot of girls
who he was also like doing dirt with in the street and like carrying out terrorist activities with.
So like Gudrin Enslin and Ulrichi Meinov, like they were both like his girlfriends at various times.
You know, like it, depending on what was going on.
And Gudren Enslin was very much more of like a doer.
Like Gudren Enslin, as we'll see, she kind of seems like the kind of broad who like could be your wheelman if you're like knocking over a bank.
Like Oriki Mineoff was definitely down.
I mean, she handled a gun to help spring
Bader, but she was very much kind of like a public
intellectual type who could do things like getting this French
glamorous news lady to show up. Okay.
So it was pretty obvious
Bader like Manson, and I'm not saying, I actually
hold Manson as I'm not saying this is a cast shade on
Bader. He was very good at identifying certain
talents in women and getting women to do things that he
wanted. Okay.
and certain kinds of men, that's like they're hustle.
It's not just that they're hornying like girls a lot, although that's part of it.
Women have certain skill sets.
Women can kind of fly under the radar.
That is an effective strategy depending on what you're trying to do.
It is.
That's why I tell guys not to be down on women and talking about revolutionary conditions,
because that's very wrong-headed.
but that's kind of
the way to understand it. Like it's not
like I said you'll read these kinds of
seedy
deliberately lurid kind of
American or British accounts and it's
they they present it like
oh these were a bunch of hippie degenerates
just having some big orgy it's not what was going on
and I think that's important
to understanding the kind of dynamic here
you know
but also
three of them were disguised.
Michelle Ray had annoyed who they were, really.
Apparently, she didn't even recognize O'Reiki Minoff,
even though they very vaguely knew each other.
And most importantly, of course, Mowler was there, okay?
And Mowler was one who basically engaged her.
You know, and like I said, Moller, who remains,
who remained an important figure under the 21st century
in dissident
quarters, I believe
he truly was like the
the ideologue behind this
whole enterprise.
He was older, he was a lawyer.
You know, he was,
um,
he wasn't a hot head like batter.
You know, he,
it just, it tracks
if you,
you know,
index it with,
with similar
groupings.
of people under
revolutionary conditions
or conditions they believe are eminently revolutionary.
Okay, he represents a type.
They told Michelle Ray
that, you know,
they kicked off the revolution
that, you know, the Buddhist Republic,
the center could not hold.
That, you know,
they were leaving Berlin
to go to Palestine and fight,
as Fedellin and possibly murder themselves.
You know,
Michelle Ray,
um,
she passed a copy of the tape she made to Der Spiegel,
which went nuts and blew it up.
You know, and, uh,
the Roth Army faction overnight
became this internationally known mob of dangerous terrorists.
Air Grid,
operator of Ireland's electricity grid is powering up the northwest.
We're planning to upgrade the electricity grid in your area, and your input and local knowledge are vital in shaping these plans.
Our consultation closes on the 25th of November.
Have your say, online or in person.
So together, we can create a more reliable, sustainable electricity supply for your community.
Find out more at airgrid.i.4.n. Northwest.
On the many nights of Christmas, the Guinness Storehouse brings to thee Christmas nights at Gravity.
This Christmas, enjoy a truly unique night out at the Gravity Bar.
Saver festive bites from Big Fan Bell,
expertly crafted seasonal cocktails,
and dance the night away with DJs from Love Tempo.
Brett take infuse, amazing atmosphere,
incredible food and drink.
My goodness, it's Christmas at the Guinness Storehouse.
Book now at giddlestorhouse.com.
Get the facts be drinkaware, visit drinkaware.com.
You know, and of course, you know, in America,
the claim was like, oh, this is a lot of it.
this is the Ivan's like these these people are you know like KGB or G or you know um the uh
the Buddhist Republic was convinced that you know there was there's hundreds of people
and cells that were about to become active you know um it uh like the like the European
security internal security apparatus you know uh like completely shit its pants in other words
so Maller knew exactly what he was doing.
Later, when asked why
they'd sprung Bader from custody,
Ulrichi Meinov said,
well, there were three reasons.
She said first, she said, quote,
first of course, because Andres Bader is a cadre.
The road term infraction,
they've got their own vocabulary.
When they say cadre, they use the word
in a singular noun and denoting a
like a squad leader
you know or like a cell commander
you know or or like a platoon leader
you know
and that's also
why
up until 98 when they ceased
operations
they'd always name like the action group
that was engaged
you know after either somebody
who was, either somebody who'd been like
deceased in action
or somebody who was imprisoned
you know, like from their organization.
You know,
um,
it,
it had its own culture that
was kind of interesting
because nobody else did that.
It was very much its own thing.
You know,
um,
and their symbol was the red star
with,
uh,
with a heckler and,
and,
and,
and,
and,
and,
um,
SMG, you know, not like a clashnikov, not a hammer and sickle.
You know, it was, it's interesting.
But, you know, and she said second, you know, we, we had, you see, said, we freed a prisoner, you know, his identity being incidental because, you know, we need to show people what politics is all about today.
and politics today is about
smashing the ability of the state
to
to impose coercive measures
okay and if that means killing
policemen you know extreme and deranged that might sound
that people need to get obituated to that
you know and you can only habituate people of that by
by doing it over and over and over again
until it becomes normal okay
and finally
she said
if you can
free somebody from state custody
it's quite clear that you mean business
and you're a serious military actor
okay
which as rag tag as they were at first
that is somewhat true
spring a man out of close custody
is not a small thing
okay
and again
that might sound kind of basic
but it's really not
it's sophisticated from what
they were trying to do
And again, I believe that's all Horace-Maller.
I'm sure he had input from the others,
but that's exactly kind of the program he should have been pursuing,
you know, for what was about a rationality of what they were trying to accomplish,
you know, which was basically discredit the Bundes Republic.
And so doing, you know, create revolutionary conditions on the ground
whereby the extant structure, including its ability to wage war,
as a key component of NATO, is no longer possible.
Okay.
And when you consider it in that context,
I think my whole kind of hypothesis of the matter becomes a little bit more persuasive.
But we're kind of getting ahead of ourselves.
who was Ulrich Meinov
or Ulrique Meinov
She was older than the rest of them
She was born in the 30s
She was born in 1934
In Oldenburg
Her dad
came from a long line of Protestant theologians
And again, something you'll notice here
These kids, these people, these young people
They were basically without acceptance
all from the Protestant heartland of Germany.
The National Socialist Heartland in Germany
was the Protestant Northeast.
Like it was not, these guys at Goldhagen
who in the 90s were obsessed with claiming
like, you know, the NSTEP was something like Catholic
organization or something. It was not at all.
And even that aside, like literally
the National Socialist Heartland was working.
in suburban
northeast Germany
literally Protestant
pietist Germany
okay and
especially
especially this first
iteration
you know this
this got a deeply felt Protestant pietism
was
like an essential part of their upbringing
as well as other strange things
Now
O'Riki Mainoff also grew up
without a father basically her father died when she was very young of a pancreatic cancer
her dad had been curator of the Yanan Museum which was prestigious but not well paid
so when he died O'Riki's mother and
her and her sister were in somewhat dire straits.
You know, she was at five and a half years old.
She went over to father in the picture.
Her mother, and it's not clear,
her mother took to having borders live in the house,
you know, for money.
And this young woman from the university,
from the university moved in named
Renada Remick
and it's not
people obviously today would speculate
or that
O'Riki's mother and Renada Remick
were like lesbians I don't think it's necessarily
the case at all but they ended up like moving in together
and like raising the girls together you know
so um
O'Ricke lived in this kind of
heavily
like Protestant household with no father
you know just like the rebeal counterparts
you know raised by these two kind of
somewhat
you know kind of kind of dower
Protestant women
um
she she her primary school was an all-girls school
run by like nuns
so this is again this is a totally abnormal environment
you know like an environment
to avoid of kind of like normal male
authority figures you know
that's not accidental
I don't think
um
it uh
Renata Rimeick after Ulrique's mom
died when she was a teenager
got to became her surrogate mom
and she convinced
Ulrique to join the social Democrats
and at this time Billy Brant
Billy Brant later
became the mayor of West Berlin
and West Berlin was really kind of like a culture into itself in all kinds of ways.
It wasn't like the rest of the Bundes Republic.
But Billy Brandt, he, a consulatory posture with the East and with the Soviet Union,
was his big kind of policy coup.
He became consular, he went down in flames.
His constant companion and personal assistant, Gunther Guillaume,
who was a Vermacht veteran who became a,
Stasi agents, deep cover agents,
Gunter Guillaume stole the NATO nuclear codes
from the secured location
in the Nanda Consular's private safe.
And I mean, this was,
the, it was, it was,
It was report, like William Odom said, like, we, we meaning military intelligence,
never recovered from that intelligence breach.
You know, they're like, the Warsaw Pag's had our number after that.
In terms of, uh, air grid, operator of Ireland's electricity grid is powering up the
Northwest.
We're planning to upgrade the electricity grid in your area and your input and local knowledge
are vital in shaping these plans.
Our consultation closes on the 25th of November.
Have your say, online or in person.
So together we can create a more reliable, sustainable electricity supply for your community.
Find out more at airgrid.com.
This Black Friday, game, stream and go full speed with one gig, Sky broadband.
And watch unmissable shows like all her fault on Sky.
These nice people killing each other.
And Ballad of a Small Player starring Colin Farrell on Netflix.
I've made some mistakes. Right, who hasn't?
Get one gig Sky Broadband essentially.
TV and Netflix, all for just
44 euro a month for 12 months.
Our lowest ever price.
Availability subject location, new customers only,
12 month minimum terms, standard pricing thereafter, TV and broadband sold separately.
Terms apply for more infoosies sky.a slash speeds.
You know, our ideas on strategic escalation and everything else.
You know, so, but Billy Brandt at this time was like,
it was like a rising star.
You know, and so Renata Remick and Young O'Riki Mineoff,
you know, join the Social Democrats.
and, you know, all kind of like progressive people at that time, you know, they, they opposed Adnauer, you know, who, who did Social Democrats was, you know, a fascistoid, um, represented a fascistoid resurgence, you know.
Ulrichi became insinuated into academe because they were not a remake, who was a professor at the Velberg Institute, like, educational institute, okay?
and this was more so than America, especially, you know, Germans kind of like invented the public education system.
You found a lot of radicals, especially female radicals, who came out of this academic culture, including Hanukkah's wife.
Okay.
that's why like I said I think very much
had O'Riki
Mineoff not clicked up
with Andre's Bader she probably would have been some
like SPD organizer who you know like married some guy
who was you know some kind of like milk toast you know
social Democrat you know I
I really believe that
you know
but she did have you know it was her
her her
it was her kind of
respectability
that allowed them to index
with media you know again she was the one who
identified you know Michelle Ray as the journalist they should seek out
you know this this was an essential part of their
of the propaganda aspect of the campaign
Now who was Gudron Enslin?
Gudrin Encelain was Swabian.
She grew up in a village called Bartholoma,
which was not and is not in the Protestant heartland.
We talked about a minute ago, but her father was literally a Protestant minister.
Okay.
Her folks had been big in the von der Vogel movement.
when in like the you know the pre-national socialist days and a little bit beyond um this
this was kind of like a naturalist movement you know vonder Vogel means like migrating birds
um it was very it was around kind of like the folkish culture okay um in 958
gudron visited the USA where she learned to speak English as she was an exchange student for a year
She stayed in Pennsylvania with this Methodist community, and she liked the Americans, and they liked her.
But she reported back to her friends and, like, her, you know, her Swabian village and her parents said, like, well, you know, the Americans aren't pious enough.
You know, they, they, um, there's something superficial about, you know, like, the way, the way they're practicing Protestantism and Eisenhower's America.
You know, um, she had that.
kind of like radical piteous perspective, you know, that I think indexed with national socialism
in a basic way. When she came back, she started studying English language and a German educational
theory, but she quickly lost interest in that when she met the son.
of the Vilvesper.
Bill Vesper was a folkish poet and a dedicated national socialist.
Okay.
And his son was very much in that vein.
You know, and he was this kind of like passionate, wild guy who was like a poet himself.
And he traveled to Spain a lot because in those days, obviously Spain was friendly to people like him and his father.
Okay.
Gudron's parents were upset by the kind of passion they saw with this kind of like wild guy
and her father was prone to throwing him out of the house when he'd catch him there.
They were amolified when the couple got married.
But, you know, it, uh, again, this, uh, this, uh,
Burnwald Vesper was the son of Ville.
apparently the father and the son
there was
huge tension between them
beyond the kind of ordinary
you know
difficulty between fathers and sons
but nevertheless again
you know
he was still
marinated in that
blood and soil ethos
and he was making regular pilgrimage to Spain
you know this is the first
trip he took her on was to Spain.
And I mean, even if
even if in a critical capacity
you know,
the son,
Bernvard,
was,
uh,
was kind of like rejecting,
you know,
like the faith of the father.
I mean,
you can't,
you can't truly, like,
escape,
like, your,
heritage,
theologically or politically,
okay?
So it's the only one's first love,
which was this incredibly passionate affair,
was with a son of a national socialist poet
who himself wrote
like blood and soil poetry and took her to Franco Spain.
You know, I mean, I
can't believe that
Gudrin Elson simply like shed all sensibilities
of that, you know,
and spent the remainder of her life, you know,
like staying up late reading Communist Manifesto
with her new comrades.
You know, or Das Kapital, perhaps.
but that
and like I said
she, by the time she'd
by the time she'd connected up with
her World Army Fraction Comrade
she'd become kind of
she was kind of drifting in life
but that
that was basically the core
of
the first
iteration of
the Royal Army Fraction
and for
context, you know, to distinguish too, kind of like the German youth movement from, you know, kind of the American SDS movement and its liberty nature. You know, Germany was not a free society.
Adnard's successor as consular was Ludwig Erhard.
Ludwig Erhardt, he basically banned the public, um,
the playing of music publicly, unless it was like an officially sanctioned performance.
Like the reasoning being, you know, stuff that stirs the passions, whether it's art or music
or any kind of evocative things, they can easily be transposed into nationalist sentiments,
and this will be a return to Weimar.
So kids who'd convene for spontaneous music festivals or even guys just plugging into an amp and
you know, while wanting to play
a kind of spontaneous set in their college courriard,
they'd literally be broken up by the police,
you know, and told to cease and desist.
In the summer of 62,
this became a story known as
as the Schvabing riots, okay?
And then referring to the Schvabing district,
where most of these, you know,
disturbing the peace incidents were
you know, kind of most
enforced in the most kind of heavy-handed
way, technically speaking.
You know, so it's not, I
wanted to disabuse people this idea, again,
that these are like SDS hippie kids
were kind of the same,
comes from the same cloth as like non-draft Dodgers
or, like, you know,
fools following Abby Hoffman
and having like a chip on their shoulder about shit.
Like, it wasn't like that.
You know, I probably got more,
um,
I probably got sympathy for the devil in a way that many people don't.
But I think this is important, not because of my own feelings on the matter or private passions,
but, I mean, because the struggle of record in this regard is not correct.
I don't mean to be abrupt, but I'm in a lot of pain right now.
If we could pick this up, if we could pick this up,
with a final episode.
I can go for 90 minutes or so and wrap it up.
Sure. Sure.
Is that okay? Yeah, yeah.
Absolutely.
Knock out a couple plugs and we'll get out here.
Airgrid.
Operator of Ireland's electricity grid is powering up the northwest.
We're planning to upgrade the electricity grid in your area
and your input and local knowledge are vital in shaping these plans.
Our consultation closes on the 25th of November.
Have your say online or internet.
person so together we can create a more reliable, sustainable electricity supply for your community.
Find out more at airgrid.com.com.
This Black Friday, game, stream and go full speed with one gig, Sky broadband, and watch
unmissable shows like all her fault on Sky.
These nice people killing each other.
And Ballad of a Small Player starring Colin Farrell on Netflix.
I've made some mistakes, right, who hasn't?
Get One Gig Sky Broadband, Essential TV and Netflix, all for just for.
44 euro a month for 12 months.
Our lowest ever price.
Availability subject location, new customers only,
12 month minimum terms, standard pricing thereafter,
TV and broadband sold separately.
Terms apply for more infooshees sky.a slash speeds.
Yeah, for sure, man.
I'm visibly updating my substack,
and we're well into season two of the pod.
You can find both at Real Thomas 777, number seven,
HMAS 777.7.substack.com.
I'm on Instagram.
I'm on T-Gram.
I remain on Twitter.
There's still some productive discussion there, I believe, where I wouldn't still be there.
And the way to post new contacts.
I'm at capital R-E-A-L.
underscore
number seven
HMAS
777
it's the real
Thomas
um
and yeah
I'm
I'm busily
trying to get this manuscript
banged out
by
by fall
and that's where I'm at
and again forgive me
if I ended this abruptly
no problem
that was not my intention
and head over to
my website
where I have
page that's dedicated just to Thomas and my movie reviews and links to all of it.
And we'll probably have to talk about setting up the next one.
So yeah.
Yeah, man.
Yeah, mystery science theater.
Yeah, I've been very much enjoying it, man.
And we've been getting a lot of like really great feedback from people.
That makes me feel good.
Yeah.
All right, Thomas.
Thank you.
Yeah, man.
I want to welcome everyone back to the Pete Cignonas show.
So, Thomas is here and
gotta wrap up the
Road Army fraction, huh?
Yeah, that's what I was thinking.
All right.
Well, where are we going with us?
I wanted to drop a little bit of biographical
information about Horstamauer because I think he's kind of the key
to understanding
not just
kind of like the post-war ideological culture
in divided Germany,
but he's sort of the key to understanding
the German right as it existed.
today and um i i'm very i i support alternative for dutchland entirely i think they're doing
great things i'm not like putting shade on them but the fact is if they continue to gain ground
they're just going to be banned okay like any any truly like right wing tenancy in the
bunez republic just it just gets unceremoniously banned okay so considering that there was there's a
radicalism just kind of intrinsic to any kind of right-wing tenancy, you know, during the Cold War as well as today.
But during the Cold War, you know, whether you were on the right or the left, there was situations in places like Italy and to a lesser degree in France where like a true like hard right was tolerated.
Some of that owed Operation Gladiote type intrigues, which is a whole like, a whole like,
other topic that, you know, we could devote three episodes to. Part of that I go to the fact that
some of these EU states, what became EU states, I mean, then it was just, you know, the EC
adjacent countries, you know, they had to tread somewhat lightly. Like, you didn't want to come
down too hard on anti-communist elements, you know, less you kind of offer the appearance of
ingress of enemy
dialectics into
into
the political
discussion.
West Germany was
in a strange position.
We talked in the first episode
I think about why
Andres
Bader,
especially.
But
Ulrichi Meinhoff
and some of the other kind of
core
personalities of the first
Roat Army fraction
were so fixated on Vietnam.
Like, it's not just because
this was the
television era when, you know, and for the
first time,
this civilized world was
truly kind of plugged in to, like, a
common visual experience.
But the Bundes Republic,
it really was this, like,
occupied, you know,
client state of America in a way
that no other country was.
like not even Japan was,
only the kind of the cultural
barriers there.
So,
you know, and when you consider it too
that the Bundes Republic was literally like
the front line of the Cold War
and it was clear that
they were basically
going to absorb the
brunt of
Warsaw Pact assault, including
nuclear weapons, you know,
if and when war came and in those days
it seemed very probable that war would arrive.
like this is why
like Vietnam was so much on their mind
okay like they weren't
they weren't just being like
virtue signaling
fools or something
or they weren't just trying to score points
with
you know
kind of the
the international peace movement
like they weren't on that tip at all
especially the road dummy fraction
types they had almost like
Sorrelian sort of
enthusiasm for violence
okay so that's important
understand. And secondly, you know, I'm not saying this to repeat myself for its own sake, but
the degree to which any sort of radical or revolutionary or dynamic tendency, especially
among young people and in youth cultures, you know, things like that, tendencies like that,
they're always kind of confined to the zeitgeist, okay, and the spirit of the age, all right?
So it wasn't just that, it wasn't even that people, you know, I mean, academic types would think this way, but it's not like, it's not like guys and girls like prone to radical direct action.
It's not even like they were thinking like, oh, you know, national socialism and fascism was a disaster and it's evil.
so we we've got some moral obligation to kind of take up the red banner.
Yeah, there were some people who thought that way,
but by and large, the only really conceivable modality of revolt or revolutionary activity
was either, you know, Marxist-Leninist or adjacent to that.
You know, like the degree to which, you know, an above board, if, you know, very, um,
much outside the law,
you know, guerrilla
tendency, like, it wasn't
really conceivable for
such a tendency on the right
to emerge, okay? It just
wasn't, you know, I can't emphasize that enough.
You know, I realize I'm
I realize I'm very much
a Hegelian and
some people disagree with that, but I
but, you know, examples of this
phenomenon or Legion, you know, not just
in the Buddhist Republic of the Cold War.
But obviously, that's,
kind of the most
striking and pure like
example of that. And I come back to the
person as of course to Mahler again and again.
I think he's an interesting guy, but
he's kind of like the distilled
essence of that
tendency.
It's
in Maler's background, he was older than
his comrades. You know,
he was born in 1936.
in Cilacia.
His father had been a dentist
and a dedicated national socialist.
He attended the Free University of Berlin,
and then he immediately joined a Thuringia Association,
which was an old school right-wing
student fraternity.
You know, this is a kind of fraternity that guys
like Calder joined, okay?
You know, but that,
Then immediately after graduation, he, you know, in his grad student, immediately after taking his, you know, with the equivalent of his undergrad degree, he joined the member, he joined the socialist student body, you know, and he started participating in these protests against, you know, nuclear weapons being based in the Boonez Republic.
You know, now this led some people to say, like, oh, he was, he was, he was something.
sort of intelligent spook. I don't think that's the case at all. And there's not really any evidence
of that. Like what Mueller was doing was, you know, like I said, it's my belief the guy was always a
national socialist. He was looking at like what's possible, you know, within the political
culture that he was situated. Okay. And everybody in the, on the real right wing in the
Bundes Republic, you know, whether you're talking about Otto Reamer, or whether you're talking
about Hans Rudel, you know, or any of these, or any of these guys who constituted the early,
you know, like, Socialist Reich Party, Socialist Reich Party, which became like the NPD later,
like these guys all favored, like a demilitarized Germany for obvious reasons, okay?
you know not just because that would spare Germany from destruction and event of
of war between the United States and and Warsaw Pact but also it would liberate the
political culture from from from these confining parameters you know and as I'm sure
people know you know Stalin the famous Stalin memo which
you know, the American State Department wouldn't even entertain, you know, Stalin proposed a totally demilitarized Germany, you know, that, and a constitution that guaranteed, you know, absolute neutrality.
But, of course, that would have allowed, if not facilitated, you know, complex interdependence with the Soviet Union, you know, and, um,
and the position has always been
of the American regime
that that's got to be prevented at all costs.
I mean, look at
that that's in large part
what under what underlies like this
this war against Russia with Ukraine as a proxy.
I mean, look at, look at the terrorist
attack on
European energy infrastructure
and, you know, the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline.
Okay, so I don't think,
I think if one understands
kind of the variables and the ideological
tendencies that
you know
underlie what one's
priorities are if they are a
you know either a national socialist or
or any kind of right wing partisan
in the Buddhist Republic then is now
Erling Mahler's
trajectory is that conspiratorial
in 1963
Mahler uh he took his law degree
he set up a legal practice in Berlin
and his
specialty was basically
industrial and labor law
and he was very successful
with that, okay?
And he
continued to immerse himself
in kind of student radicalism
obviously because he was older
or now in a professional man, like in sort of like a
sponsorship and mentoring capacity.
You know, he began to provide
like legal advice to a lot of these people you know providing them funding that a
lot of them desperately needed because you know these these guys of NGOs I mean
not just student organizations but any kind of NGOs particularly in those days
that weren't adjacent the bond regime were you know always like start of cash and
and things of this sort I mean that was you know this was a this was a consistent
activity that he was
immersed in
and when we last left off
and we were talking about how
the core of
the
of the
of the Roat Army fraction
you know they ended up
after after
Andreas Bader was sprung
from jail
you know
they ended up
they ended up traveling
to the Middle East
you know
through by way of East Berlin and
um you know owing to their contact on the ground
Saeed who'd been a who was the son of a
of a political science professor of some
prestige you know like I said like it's never been clear
exactly kind of like what Saeed's like a resume is but he's
been harassed by security forces for decades I believe he's still
alive but I believe that Horstamalor like for
facilitated these sort of context, okay?
And in those days,
um,
in those days,
Fata was the dominant element of the PLO.
It's an imperfect analogy,
but the PLO is a,
I mean,
they,
they fought a war with each other about a decade ago.
But,
um,
it was always a tense alliance between,
um,
Hamas and Fata.
And Fata traditionally was a secularist, you know,
Marxist-Leninist-adjacent, non-state actor.
An imperfect analogy would be what became combined loyalist
to military command in Northern Ireland,
between the UBF and the UDAUFF, okay?
But in those days, you know, Fata,
I was definitely, like, the dominant element.
And their competitor was the popular Front for Liberation of Palestine, which had been founded by a Greek Orthodox Christian.
The PFLP enjoyed a lot of support from the East Block.
And their tactical and strategic orientation were both how much oriented towards a global kind of a military.
politic. What I mean by that is
they were very, very
active in Africa.
They were very, very active
in Europe.
They were very, very active
in Indonesia for a time.
You know,
they said that, you know, we've got to
we've got to treat us as an international
struggle. Yeah, yeah, so the
liberation of Palestine.
Obviously, first and foremost is
you know, it's got to be our
the kind of
sphere punk of our
of our
military activity
but this has to be
international and character
you know
and
and
for those to remember
or those who are students of
Cold War history
the bombing of the discotheque
in West Berlin that
you know
killed three American
soldiers and wounded
a few dozen people
the LaBelt Disco Tech
which was a known hangout for
U.S. occupation forces
there's the popular front for liberation
at Palestine General Command that pulled
that off. You know, very much
hand in glove with the Stasi.
Okay, but
Fata, PLO
you know, they felt
they felt like they had something to prove in this regard.
Okay, they felt comparatively
like very provincial.
You know, they felt like they were kind of like
losing the propaganda battle in in in the court of world opinion okay so the guy like
i'm speculating here but i think the facts of one kind of reads me in the lines the man like
horace de maller you know who by this time again he wasn't a kid he was in his 30s you know
he was a he was a he was a well-off attorney you know with a with a law practice in berlin um
i believe he spoke a few languages you know him approaching
Fata and saying, you know, I have these, like, young people and they're very much committed to the revolution. And, you know, they, you know, they, they, they, they want to learn, basically, uh, they, they basically want to learn, like, guerrilla warfare from you. I think that would have been, like, very appealing to them, you know, um, now, this first, the first iteration of the road to army fraction, like, as we've talked about it, had many problems. Um, Bader
himself, Andriess Botter, I think, was something of a crazy person. He was a thrill seeker.
He was probably a psychopath. You know, Gundred Enslin, I think, was actually very committed.
And, you know, men and women are different what we've talked about, but female revolutionaries are
important. They serve an important role. And people shouldn't be down on them because many of them are
very, very, very, very committed, okay?
Like, it's not, like, women
aren't weaker than men.
Like, uh, I mean, physically, obviously,
there's, you know, a disparity there.
But I think Goudron,
Enslin, especially going to her kind of
pite his background,
was, uh,
was, was, was probably
kind of like the most stable
of, of that coterie.
Um,
Ulrichi
Mineoff
was kind of a
cliche
you know like a middle class
lady who
you know kind of was easily
misled I believe
you know this was not the best
mentioned material around which to build a revolutionary
coterie and
later that changed later iterations
of the Root Army fraction
were incredibly effective.
And like as we talked about,
as we'll talk about some more,
I, by that,
by the 1980s,
um,
the third iteration of the RIF had,
had become very much,
like an,
like an implement of the Stasi,
okay?
You know,
they were,
the kind of ops they were pulling off then was,
they were trying to murder Alexander Hague and things like this,
okay,
like this,
you're talking about an entire labor and caliber of,
of,
people and an entirely an entirely more ambitious operational sensibility but
when the Road Army Fraction arrived in Jordan Horstomaller was already there
and their hosts their POLO hosts were originally pretty suspicious
of them. Like, not because they thought
that they might be ops who were
you know, they're
as double agents or something, but
they just weren't convinced they were serious.
So initially
they kind of
treated them like they were tourists.
You know,
basically, you know, took them
around and kind of filled them with
political
propaganda about, you know, Israeli
atrocities, which were true.
I mean, they weren't, you know, this wasn't,
being confagulated.
You know, they'd take them to their rifle range and things like this.
They'd, you know, they'd let him sit in on classes about, you know,
um, you know, where they, they, they'd study things like, um, you know,
Mao was a red book.
This soon caused a fair amount of hostility.
But when, uh, and Bader insisted on being treated
like any other revolutionary cadre,
he started
he kind of started showing his
uh
showing his bourgeoisie colors
like um
he uh
he started
he refused to wear
BDUs and caps
um
you know he'd wear like
uh he'd wear like civilian pants
like jeans or like
the kinds of velvet trousers
that like hipster types like in those days
war
like even during like training in
maneuvers, you know. So you got this guy, like, you know, wriggling under barbed wire,
like on the training ground, like, you know, wearing his, like, designer jeans and stuff.
The, as I think I mentioned before, the, uh, the, uh, the Fata had no, um,
they had no problem with, uh, they had no problem with, like, training women to fight, you know,
because they had to, you know, in any revolutionary circumstance that's essential anyway.
But, you know, they obviously, like, sleeping quarters and stuff were segregated as were facilities.
And, um, Bader and, um, Mienhof, like, refused to accept this.
You know, they presented under the auspices of, you know,
equality between the sexes, but, you know, like for context, a lot of these young, a lot of these young Arab fighters, you know, were like little more than kids. Like, they, they'd never even seen like a naked woman before. You can, like, imagine, like, how disruptive this was. And this, uh, almost led to the Camp Commandant, who was an Algerian, you know, almost the, uh, almost, uh, almost, uh, um,
most of them, you know, like banning them from the camp and, you know, putting them on a plane back to Berlin.
But Mahler was able to, kind of like finesse things, at least in the short term.
And like, apparently one of the student types who, um, in the World Termy Fraction had brought along as a recruit,
like, asked why there was no Coca-Cola machines, like, in camp.
Like, you know, like, these people were completely, completely disengaged from reality.
So this was not, I emphasize this because, like, this was not, like, an auspicious start to the Roat Army fraction.
And, um, it, it's important to consider that because, like, again, a lot of what you'll read, particularly,
in the era.
I mean,
really from the 80s,
from like later Cold War,
when the IRAF,
when the third iteration
was still active,
like we'll talk about it as if it was
this Stasi
the kind of squad of terrorists
that, you know,
from inception was,
was a sort of highly effective,
you know,
cadre element.
Like, it's not the case at all.
It was a very spontaneous
development is very much an organic development of the kind of Berliner student culture.
Like the fact that the Stasi, and in my opinion, specifically Marcus Wolf was able to, was able to, you know, kind of molded into something highly effective as a credit to, um,
Stasi operational sophistication as well as the kind of learning curve that emerged as
these kind of asymmetrical conflicts of which you know like Vietnam I mean Vietnam was with many things including like a very very much a conventional war but there was also an asymmetrical aspect to it but as these kinds of conflicts you know sort of
jumped off in earnest, you know, people, um, with partisan leaning,
became kind of like more and more habituated to the reality of these things.
But this, this was very early on in that, in that kind of conflict cycle.
Um, you know, in these, these Palestinians, I mean, for years, you know,
they'd been, they'd been living on canned meat, you know, like military rations.
Um, you know,
stuff from
like canned
canned goods
from United Nations
relief organizations
you know
they
they uh
they
they you know like
fresh meat was
and um
and vegetables
and fruit was I mean like a
you know it was a luxury
to them
you know so I mean this
this spread
a fair amount of resentment too
and there was a
there was a
anecdote of apparently
O'Reiki Meinhoff
on
the firing range
an instructor
handed her a Soviet
grenade which were like
unlike the
old Vermont potato master grenades
these are the ones
that they look kind of egg
like, you know, and you don't
do the cap
to free up the ring, you know,
and then like you'd pull the, you'd pull the ring
to pull the pin.
So finally instructor
showed O'Reiki how to like,
you know, unspeer the cap, you know,
to liberate the ring.
And then she pulled it and like
held it as like the grenade band of his and they asked like,
what do I do now?
And, uh,
and start just like, throw it, throw it.
somebody like ran for cover
but um
this is the kind of stuff
uh
this is the kind of stuff they were dealing with
um the Palestinians I mean
like uh
kind of a kind of a crazy man
um
and um
and the person of
of Bader and
most of the others
uh you know
a lot of
a lot of balls
and no common sense
whatsoever.
I do
but it would
however,
something that did do, I think
those who,
including Andriy's Bader himself,
the experience in Jordan,
none of these
people except
Ulrichi
9-off had been a little
kid during the war years.
And so
had Mahler, although Mahler was obviously
as, you know, we just discussed, had kind of a more sophisticated sensibility in all kinds of ways.
But the rest of them had no experience of war or combat.
The, and in this, in this Fetian camp where they were training, you know, Israeli bombers were regularly surplice sky.
Jordanian troops were at a stab with the mainline of resistance, only a few kilometers of war.
from the camp everybody was issued live ammunition at all times because at any
time you know the idea of consult you know so whatever however crin some of
these antics might have been it did it did prepare these people for real
combat situations you know in a way that
ordinary training could not.
And I think that that
is significant too, because
this
this training
lark
is a lot of court historians write about
it. It was just a sort of like fiasco
and kind of like comedy of errors, but
I disagree, man.
Like, yeah, there was that aspect of it, but
Yeah, if you situate anybody in a combat zone like that, you know, while they're undergoing an intense kind of regimen of, you know, it's only just like great basic, you know, kind of like inventory skills and things and like, you know, how to read a map and a compass and, you know, how to keep your clashed deck off clean and how to, you know, how to load it and how to, you know, use iron sights and things, you know, that, um, learning these practical skills when you're quite literally in a combat.
zone.
Even if you're not taking hostile fire every day or something,
I think that that
I think that that confers a certain
benefit that can't easily be quantified
by traditional metrics.
But also, too, because Palestine
was very much, it wasn't just the front line
of the Arab and Islam and
struggle against Israel, but, you know, the Algerian war was still fresh in everybody's mind,
and it was still underway in some ways.
You know, there was a certain prestige factor to making contact with the...
with the camp, commandant, and other personages around him, like Abu Hassan, who the Palestinians were on very good terms with.
And, you know, the fact that, the fact that these ARIA recruits, and in particular, Horace Tamalers, again, like I said, he was, he was and is basically a political animal.
you know
the generated
enduring
channels and communication
you know and like I said
I
I write a lot about
Johann von Lears
as well as
some other
third-to-right personages
who quite literally during the Cold War
like joined the Arab camp
you know Von Lear himself
he converted to Islam
took the name Omar Amin, served in the court of Nasser.
You know, he viewed Islam as the dialectical antithesis of Judaism,
and thus, you know, the perfect sort of principle, like rallying principle,
in order to defeat what he perceived as a then-triumphant,
Jewish dialectic in the zeitgeist.
Okay, I'm not saying that, like, Maller was, you know,
was thinking these sorts of things like Von der Leer's was.
But instinctively, I think that he very much was within that,
you know, like engaged in that paradigm psychologically.
such that it was
too, the
really kind of the
the zenith of
the first
iteration of the RIF
was the hijacking of Lufthansa
Flight
181.
This was after
most of the key
personages of the
Rotter Army fraction, the
Bader-Mindhoff iteration of it.
I didn't have been killed or captured
you know, arrested.
The, uh,
the security elements
of the
of the Buddhist Republic had gotten a tremendous
um,
boom.
Um,
owing to,
you know, the, the, these terrorist
activities that were underway.
And specifically, um,
you know, the, the,
the Munich situation in 1972,
or the Israeli athletes were, um,
were slaughtered. But um,
Lufthons of Flight 181
on October 13th,
1977. In the summer of 77,
um,
colloquially
became known as the German autumn
owing to the
an epidemic of political violence. And this is
considered to be, you know, kind of one of the most,
um,
what would be one of the,
one of the,
one of the most brazen
instances of it
for
operators
from the popular front for liberation
of Palestine
hijacked
Lyftans of Flight 181
and
their specific objective
was to secure the release
of the imprisoned
Roald Army faction
okay
and again I
this is what I was getting at when I
was talking about
Horstamalor
and what I believe
is, you know,
rather profound
ability to index
with other revolutionary
elements.
And like we talked about before,
the popular front of liberation of Palestine,
part of their whole grand strategy
was to demonstrate an ability to project power
globally. You know, and this
endured, this endured,
until the end of the Cold War.
Interestingly, the Popular Fronts Liberation of Palestine still exists.
I don't know to what degree
they still abide a Marxist-Leninist program,
but they fought on the side of Assad
against ISIS.
And I believe that
they're active in
the Yemen Civil War
and
there's a militia
also under arms in Yemen
that calls itself
you know something like the
the
armed grouping of
South Yemen or something like that
now South Yemen
was of course
was a Soviet client state
and no longer exists but it was the only
it was the only Marxist-Leninist
Arab state so it was kind of like a feather
in the cap of Warsaw Pact
but I speculated very strongly
that the sudden emergence of
these guys like riding
under the banner of South Yemen
and clicking up with the PFLP
like that's, they are
very much in a Russian patronage. I think that
should be clear. I find that kind of fascinating.
But
be as it may,
there's this
spectacular
raid
to free
the hostages
on flight
move to flight
181
the plate that ultimately landed in Mogadishu
Somalia
and the Somali army
they
provided a distraction
they detonated this ordinance
on the runway
in front of the nose of the aircraft
so the hijackers rushed the front, the sea was underway,
and then these commandos from GSG9,
which is the Bundesfez, like special operations element,
and these British SAS guys, you know, they then blew open
the passenger door and took out the terrorist.
But it, uh, pretty much immediately, um, after, uh, like after the, like, I'm talking like, you know, days after the, uh, the incident, um, the, uh, a bunch of the imprisoned REF members, uh, died. Um, supposedly by suicide. Um, um,
including Andres Bader, Gudrun Insulin, John Carl Rasp, and Ingrid Moller, who supposedly attempted suicide but survived her injuries.
But the claim of Moller, as well as others, was that, you know, these people were murdered by the guards.
and it was in the immediate aftermath.
Helmut Schmidt, who was the consular of the Buddhist Republic.
He was hailed as a hero in the Western world for his decision to storm the aircraft
and refused to negotiate.
And, you know, he...
And interestingly, West Germany and Somalia became very tight after the time.
this like going to their operational integration
militarily
and
obviously like Somalia
you know having a substantial
Muslim population
this was like good PR
but it it was believed
again by people like
Korsmaller and others
like some sympathetic to the Ruth army fraction
some not that
you know
that
you know Schmit's
people like had
had these
road to army fraction prisoners murdered as part
of their, you know, basically because they're saying like,
look, like you're not, no
nobody's going to, nobody's going to
hijack our planes and hurt our people like to try
and, you know, spring motherfuckers like this.
We're just going to, we're just not,
we're going to kill them.
I think that's, and I mean,
that's, that kind of thing probably seems like
unthinkable today, not because of brutality or something,
but, I mean, within the Cold War,
the context stuff.
but I mean it was um
like certain things
like certain things were acceptable
um
but they just like weren't discussed
you know there was kind of like a hush-hush-wink wink like aspect to it
and I think that's
I think that's
I think that's pretty clearly what happened
also too it's you know the
something that would
change too in the later
iterations of the butter
of the road
army fraction.
First of all, they became very adeptic
at striking, you know,
like prestige targets, you know,
like businessman, industrialists,
bank presidents.
You know, like I said, what was going to be kind of like
the feather in the cap, I, I,
I'm not trying to be crass by,
you know, discussing
an attempted homicide
and flipping terms.
But, um, kind of like their big
their big coup was going to be
blowing up
General L. Hague
when he was Supreme
Commander of NATO
it's
like their operational focus
very much shifted
towards
you know
kind of proceeding as
the vanguard of an occupied
country
and that was very different than what
the Bader-Mindhofe Federation
of the Roald Army fraction was doing.
You know, I mean, not only was the initial
organization
kind of scattershot on their priorities,
but they were very much trying to index
with, you know,
kind of like the global, like, proletarian revolution,
liberation movement, you know.
And like I said, I, Horace de Maller
had an outsized impact
on the strategic operational priorities
and him
kind of viewing Israel as like the primary adversary
of a revolutionary German armed grouping
made perfect sense
but the fact that later
you know
the legacy what was the
self an unfight like legacy organizations
or success organizations
their targets became, you know, the economic, like the high financial economic infrastructure,
the Bundes Republic and NATO, you know.
I mean, and that's very, I think that very much indexes with an understanding of them being, you know,
a DDR client regime.
Like, the Stasi's notion always was, and this was proper if you're,
ambition is to discredit
the Bundes Republic
was to
you know
first, last and always
portray the bond regime
as this
militaristic
like an American client regime
that had
no real legitimacy
and had no
real support from the body
politics.
you know and that
in of
like the
existence itself
preserved
um
you know
an elevated
state of
a arousal for lack of a better term
of armed forces in theater
because its very existence
was dangerously provocative
you know
and don't get me wrong
like Warsaw up Hagg definitely
was at war with Israel.
They were literally actively at war with Israel.
But,
you know,
a
West German
non-state
actor element
that Warsaw Pact
was aiding and abetting
and, um,
you know,
providing
operational priorities to
the way
like it makes perfect sense
that you know their
their targets would be
NATO officers
and um
and um
and key personages in
the West German
infrastructure
um
we can uh
that's about all I got
on like the Bader Meinhof
iteration we can get into the
subsequent
um
manifestations
of this phenomenon
if you want to
or if you want to change direction
and get a different topic
we can come back to it but it's
it's a huge
topic like the
I've got
like I'm powering my way through
and refresh my recollection
like these two
volumes on like the entire history
and it felt like halfway
through
but I don't
I don't want to spend
too much time on one
discrete topic though I will
if you want to but that's um something we can come back to if we have a uh a one-off episode we want
to do we're already doing that one we're already planning a one-off episode coming up later this
week um and then i figure we just probably after that just start on a new topic yeah no that's great
and yeah also as we get into um yeah when it was when it's topically appropriate um
like to uh get into like evil archer era cold war
I'll come back to it, but
I don't want people
I mean people are free to criticize me
like whoever they want.
But I mean like I don't want people thinking like
okay what the hell like you didn't
you're only covering you know like basically like one third
of the subject. It's like
and it's not because I'm like
lacking or because I don't realize that there's like
a lot more to cover. And also I think
for at least for our purposes
or for my purposes rather
like I said I think the personage of horse maller is
very important.
he's presented as some kind of
crank or some kind of opportunist
or some people
accuse him of being
you know
some sort of intelligence agents who
you know simply
took on
the role of a term code because
you know his
his agency's ops became you know
like neo-Nazis in lieu
of communists if the one that's that's
complete nonsense
um
and I don't
I don't see how people in that case
because I mean the man went to prison for like five years
you know, for
um
for a quote unquote
Holocaust denial.
But yeah, I hope
I hope people,
this series has been getting a lot of praise
and I'm very like honored and humbled by that.
I hope people
continue to get a lot out of this
series with this episode.
Um,
so I'm very,
I'm very fortunate.
and you're willing to invite me on to cover these topics, man.
And I want to thank everybody very much for their kind words and constructive feedback.
Of course.
Do quick plugs and we'll get out of here.
Yes, sir.
Oh, yeah, too.
We also got to get back to our Mystery Science Theater 3,000 series.
Yeah, we'll do that next week.
Yeah, man.
The best place to find, like, kind of the one-stop,
site for
all my content
it's just my website
it's Thomas 777.com
number 7h-h-h-M-A-777.com
You can find everything there.
My substack, that's where I do
long-form stuff. That's where the podcast is at.
It's real Thomas-777.7.com.
You can find me on X, formerly Twitter.
at real capital R-E-A-L underscore number seven, H-M-A-S-777.
I'm on T-Gram.
It's a M-Faser is my T-Gram.
It's named after the pod.
But if you just look for a time of 777-A-T-Gram,
like you'll find it.
I'm active on there every couple of days.
I'm not super active because I'm not a big fan of T-Gram.
back in the days when I literally could not
like get a social media account without it being
nuked in minutes. I relied heavily on it but I am
on there. And yeah that's on
Instagram and yeah, see you can each you'll find.
All right Thomas until the next time. Thank you.
