Baader Meinhof Group example essay topic

Though the Baader-Meinhof gangs name should strictly identify the co-leaders of the group, but in reality, Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof were not as important as everyone thought of them. The name Baader-Meinhof gang was made up by German press after Meinhof helped Baader escape from prison. More liberal newspapers used to call them Baader-Meinhof Gruppe, and more conservative ones called them Baader-Meinhof Bande. In reality, the members of the organization never called themselves this way. Meinhof was definitely one of 10 to 12 hardcore group members and was a weighty figure in the organization, but if there was a female leader in the group than it was Gudrun Ensslin. As for Baader, he was rude and brutal figure and often used to belittle other members of the organization.

In many ways Meinhof was the most important member of the group. It was Meinhof's fame that made the group famous. It is hard to come up with a current American example of a left-leaning woman journalist of her fame doing something like what she did perhaps Barbara Ehrenreich. Picture Ehrenreich putting her two young kids into hiding and helping to break a convicted arsonist out of prison custody it must have been quite a shock for her. It was Meinhof that put this group on the map and forced the German govt. and population to stand up and take notice. Once a part of the group, Meinhof was as committed as Ensslin and the other members; but she was constantly plagued by self-doubt.

The dynamic Baader and Ensslin were the types to be leaders in any situation and they naturally took this role in the RAF. But the RAF was pretty decentralized, and a lot of their activities were planned by committee anyway. It wasn't always Gudrun and Andreas telling everyone what to do Ulrike Meinhof was a very famous journalist in Germany in 1970. But because of her probably low self-esteem she spent much of her life attempting to alleviate her self-doubt that she was plagued with.

They say that Meinhof motivations that lead her to become a member of a terrorist organization were more emotional than political ones. When she came into the organization, she became very important member of it, for she wrote their well-known manifesto The Concept of Urban Guerilla, but she was not one of the top two leaders (Wright, 56). During her stay in the Stamm heim prison in Germany, other prisoners ostracized Meinhof. Probably this was the reason for her to commit suicide there. After she turned her back to all her friends and relatives, she realized that the all the rest who left turned their backs to her. Remarkable to mention that the Raf guerrillas got a lot of their training in one of the Palestinian guerilla camps in the Middle East.

At that time, the left-wing guerrillas from all around the world showed in those camps very often to stay and train for a week or two. However, the training that was arranged by the Palestinians was mostly for propaganda purposes, established in order for all who come to their camp to come back home and tell everyone about the Palestinian causes. Nevertheless, when the Baader-Meinhof gang arrived into Amman camp in 1970 they said they did not want the tourist version of the training and started to demand a real one. They also refused to follow the rules established in the camp, such as that men should live separately from women. The RAF members wanted to live altogether, and their women wanted to sunbathe naked in front of the Palestinians.

Andreas Baader once screamed to the Palestinians in the camp: F ing and fighting are the same thing! finally the Palestinians asked their guests to leave after two months of their training because of getting tired of such an extreme behavior. The RAF was very successful in evading the police for a long time. The reason for their success lied in a new constitution that was set up by the allies after the separation of Germany. Anxious of another Hitler taking over the control over Germany forced the government to divide Germany into confederation of strong states, each having its own police.

There was no such structure as federal police, and the gang took advantage of the lack of coordination between the federal counties of Germany. The origin of the gang is also controversial. The Baader-Meinhof Gang is thought to be an extension of the German student movement, sometimes named 68 movement. But there is some additional information on this.

It is true that the many of the gang members really came out of the student movement, but most of them were not students before becoming terrorists. However, the student movement inspired much of the philosophy of the group. Considering some major members of the group, it becomes evident. Ulrike Meinhof was older than the rest of the group and in the late fifties and early sixties was a politically active student. Gudrun Ensslin, an important figure in the RAF, was a student but dropped his studies in 1966. Baader was for the most juvenile delinquent.

Jan-Carl Rape was also a student, but before he entered the terrorist organization he had not been in school for two years (Wright, 84). In its early activities the Baader-Meinhof gang was inspired by the book The Mini manual of the Urban Guerilla by Carlos Marighella. The book was published in Berlin a week before Meinhof helped Baader to break out of the prison. The gang members tried to completely follow the book, robbing the banks and issuing communique afterwards. According to Marighella, the role of an urban guerilla is to attack the state and provoke the state to respond in a fascist and oppressive way. Under his theory, if the state reacts this way, it should make the people rise up and overthrow the state.

Basically, urban guerilla must be a spark that must inflame the revolutionary fire. Terrorism became a horrible reality today. Though the RAF does not exist any more, they left a big legacy after them. They fought for what they never would have got. Basically, they were anti-fascist and anti-imperialist group fighting for the freedom.

But freedom in their eyes looks a very controversial topic. The means they used for obtaining their freedom would have never brought anyone any good, and they never will. The RAF members called themselves Marxist and their goal was to change the society. But there was not much clarity in their theory. They followed Marx, but they did not follow the theories of Marx that described the Russian society, for instance. They were not much enamored with the policy of Iron Curtain exercised by the Soviet Union and Eastern Block countries.

They definitely liked more the models like Cuba and North Vietnam (Wright, 104). Many researchers say that the Baader-Meinhof group was dreaming of a utopian society. But in reality they hardly did. Rather, they were concerned with non-capitalist state and were striving to eliminate all the injustices that the capitalism brought with it. Like the majority of the European terrorist groups, the Red Army Faction had the ceaseless problem. In order to succeed and implement their ideas to life, the organization should have obtained the mass support of the proletariat masses.

This never happened to any terrorist group, that is why none of them was ultimately successful in reaching its goals. Baader, Meinhof, and the rest of the group members considered the proletariat to be enslaved in the seeming comfort of the developing capitalism. They believed that the aforementioned proletariat had to be educated by the enlightened elite, which they considered themselves to be, and they considered that it was their role to educate the uneducated. In their eyes the education process lied in attacking the state, provoking massive fascist response, and let the proletariat understand the real nature of the German beast. Unfortunately for the RAF, they were too involved into the intellectual Marxist debates of that time, and what they missed was that the actual never understand and accept the actions of the group as appealing. As it was mentioned several times, RAF stands for Red Army Faction.

The word faction, looked up in the web means A group of persons forming a cohesive, usually contentious minority within a larger group. This is more closely what they really were. The RAF called themselves as vanguard and elite, meaning a smaller group on the forefront of a larger group. Because the members of the RAF never really understood the proletariat way of thinking, they never succeeded in being at the vanguard of any mass movement.

Though it may sound harsh, but this self-appointed elite has never been at the vanguard of anyone but each other. Terrorism has a long and violent history that has taken many forms over the years. First, the French revolution and the regime de la terre ur and how it influenced Leftist Marxism and State terror in the Soviet Union. The historical example of the regime de la terre ur has set the stage for other communist groups that employ terror such as The Red Brigade in Italy, Mao in China and even the Weatherman in the United States. All of these groups sought to destroy the existing capitalist system and replace it with one of socialism through violence. Also, the evolution of religious fanaticism will be discussed.

The terror itself has changed in the areas of strategy and tools of the trade. Let us not be confused by other violent episodes in history, which took the form of guerrilla warfare or civil war. These events, while they were bloody, were not terrorism (Laqueur 8). Terrorism is a form of warfare, mostly desperate warfare. Like more conventional warfare, terrorism is properly understood as the continuation of politics by other means. The political problem to be dealt with is the pyramid of supporters and sympathizers upon whom the terrorists depend.

The individuals who sacrifice themselves in terrorist attacks are not crazy and, to the extent that they may hate us, their hatred is derivative of their attachment to the group they claim to represent. The terrorists worst fear is business as usual, to deliver their maximum blow and watch their enemy go on unaffected. In early times, there have been instances of political and religious violence, which manifested itself in the form of assassinations and religious revolt. But Modern terrorism began with the French revolution. The movement was known as the regime of the Terror and was led by Maximilien Robespierre. He insinuated that terrorism was virtuous in the time of revolution (Hoffman 16).

His actions and the actions of his group, The Terror, were not unlike terrorists who would follow in his footsteps. They had a goal: to overthrow the monarchy in France, a proposed solution: early socialism, and a means to achieve it: violence. The deeds of this group were deliberate, systematic and very violent. But Robespierre believed that this was the only way to ensure that his objectives would be achieved. The actions of this group would be echoed in the writings of Marx, The Bolsheviks and the German Red Army Faction. There is a belief that terrorism itself cannot be successful.

This statement cannot be true, because terrorism has been successful when it was a part of a goal that was supported by a large mass of supporters, by the majority. For instance, the Irgun movement that helped to attain the Israels independence had much in common with terrorism. So was the 1920's essence of Ireland's IRA (Irish Republican Army) which gained independence for most of Ireland. In case of the RAF the goals of the organization were really far from those of the people, this is why it was destined for failure from the very beginning of its activity.

Bibliography

1. Paul Pillar. Terrorism and U.S. Foreign Policy. Washington D.C., Brookings Institution, 2001.
2. Bruce Hoffman. Inside Terrorism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.
3. Walter Laqueur. The New Terrorism: Fanaticism, and the Arms of Mass Destruction. New York and London: Oxford University Press, 1999.
4. M. Stephen Walt, The Origins of Alliances. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press 1987.
5. Joanne Wright, Terrorist Propaganda. The Red Army Faction and the Provisional IRA, 1968-1986.
London: Macmillan 1991.
6. Myers, D.G. (2001).