120-499: The Red Army Faction ( Rote Armee Fraktion , pronounced [ˌʁoːtə ʔaʁˈmeː fʁakˌtsi̯oːn] ; RAF [ˌɛʁʔaːˈʔɛf] ), also known as the Baader–Meinhof Group or Baader–Meinhof Gang (German: Baader-Meinhof-Gruppe Baader-Meinhof-Bande [ˈbaːdɐ ˈmaɪnhɔf ˈɡʁʊpə] ), was a West German far-left militant group founded in 1970 and active until 1998. The RAF described itself as
240-605: A communist and anti-imperialist urban guerrilla group. It was engaged in armed resistance against what it considered a fascist state. Members of the RAF generally used the Marxist–Leninist term " faction " when they wrote in English. Early leadership included Andreas Baader , Ulrike Meinhof , Gudrun Ensslin , and Horst Mahler . The West German government considered the RAF a terrorist organization. The RAF engaged in
360-504: A "questionable" political persuasion from public sector jobs. Student activists, who associated older generations of Germans with Nazism, argued against peaceful reconciliation: They'll kill us all. You know what kind of pigs we're up against. This is the Auschwitz generation. You can't argue with people who made Auschwitz. They have weapons and we haven't. [ sic ? ] We must arm ourselves! The radicalized were, like many in
480-506: A "shopping list" to the KGB. The writings of Antonio Gramsci and Herbert Marcuse were drawn upon. Gramsci wrote on power, cultural, and ideological conflicts in society and institutions – real-time class struggles playing out in rapidly developing industrial nation states through interlinked areas of political behavior. Marcuse wrote on coercion and hegemony in that cultural indoctrination and ideological manipulation through
600-607: A Nazi. People started discussing this only in the 60s. We were the first generation since the war, and we were asking our parents questions. Due to the Nazi past, everything bad was compared to the Third Reich. If you heard about police brutality, that was said to be just like the SS. The moment you see your own country as the continuation of a fascist state, you give yourself permission to do almost anything against it. You see your action as
720-485: A Red Army Faction logo, a drawing of a machine gun against a red star." – Stefan Aust , author of Der Baader Meinhof Komplex When they returned to West Germany, they began what they called an " anti-imperialistic struggle", with bank robberies to raise money and bomb attacks against U.S. military facilities, German police stations, and buildings belonging to the Axel Springer press empire. In 1970,
840-484: A brutal dictator that should not have been welcome in West Germany. The protest was repressed by police and Iranian agents who beat protesters and resulted in the fatal shooting of Benno Ohnesorg . The police officer involved, Karl-Heinz Kurras , was acquitted on the grounds of self-defense. Protests against police brutality erupted across the country and led the mayor of Berlin and the police chief to resign. In
960-915: A centre-left movement. The association of Marxism–Leninism with the Soviet Union also caused Eurocommunism to be developed as a democratic communist movement in Western Europe, but it only briefly saw electoral success in the 1970s. In the Years of Lead in Italy, far-left militants, such as the Red Brigades , justified the usage of political violence as a revolutionary means and defense against far-right terrorism and neo-fascism in Italy . The Chinese Communist Party had been active since 1921, but it did not seize power in China until its victory in
1080-592: A cult of personality in his favor. This also entailed the Great Purge in the late 1930s, an interpretation of Lenin's revolutionary violence that saw hundreds of thousands of Stalin's opponents killed, often to be replaced by ambitious loyalists. By this time, Marxism–Leninism was seen as the definitive implementation of communism by most communists globally, justifying the Great Purge as an effort to eradicate fascist infiltrators, with state censorship obscuring
1200-409: A fair trial." In February 1976, when interviewed by Der Spiegel he stated that "We do not need regulation of our jurisdiction, national security survives thanks to people like me and Herold [chief of BKA ], who always find the right way". Eventually, on 28 April 1977, the trial's 192nd day, the three remaining defendants were convicted of several murders, more attempted murders, and of forming
1320-475: A group with two figureheads. "The Red Army Faction's Urban Guerrilla Concept is not based on an optimistic view of the prevailing circumstances in the Federal Republic and West Berlin." – The Urban Guerrilla Concept written by RAF co-founder Ulrike Meinhof (April 1971) The origins of the group can be traced back to the 1968 student protest movement in West Germany . Industrialised nations in
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#17327764129041440-492: A leading spokesman for protesting students, was shot in the head in an assassination attempt by the right-wing sympathizer Josef Bachmann . Although badly injured, Dutschke returned to political activism with the German Green Party before his death in a bathtub in 1979, as a consequence of his injuries. Axel Springer's populist newspaper Bild-Zeitung , which had run headlines such as "Stop Dutschke now!",
1560-650: A manifesto authored by Meinhof used the name "RAF" and the red star logo with a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun for the first time. After an intense manhunt, Baader, Ensslin, Meinhof, Meins, and Raspe were eventually caught and arrested in June 1972. After the arrest of the protagonists of the first generation of the RAF, they were held in solitary confinement in the newly constructed high security Stammheim Prison north of Stuttgart . When Ensslin devised an "info system" using aliases for each member (names deemed to have allegorical significance from Moby Dick ),
1680-440: A peasant or rural-based guerrilla war and instead situating the struggle in the metropole or cities. Many members of the RAF operated through a single contact or only knew others by their codenames. Actions were carried out by active units called ' commandos ', with trained members being supplied by a quartermaster in order to carry out their mission. For more long-term or core cadre members, isolated cell-like organization
1800-414: A police road block 400 meters from the court. The police noted their data and the number-plate and photographed their cars. After that they had to pass three verification audits, and finally they were undressed and two judicial officials thoroughly searched their bodies. They were allowed to keep only a pencil and a notepad inside the court. Their personal items including their identity papers were withheld by
1920-616: A rallying point for the West German New Left . The Berlin 2 June Movement , a militant-Anarchist group, later took its name to honor the date of Ohnesorg's death. On 2 April 1968, Gudrun Ensslin and Andreas Baader , joined by Thorwald Proll and Horst Söhnlein , set fire to two department stores in Frankfurt as a protest against the Vietnam war. They were arrested two days later. On 11 April 1968, Rudi Dutschke ,
2040-584: A rebuke of Dutschke and his associates in the West Berlin SDS chapter. Unsurprisingly, Marcuse did the opposite in a speech emphasizing "solidarity of sentiment". The event was followed by street demonstrations which led to the arrests of Dutschke, his wife, and 84 others. In June 1967, during a state visit by the Shah of Iran Mohammad Reza Pahlavi , the SDS organized a protest of his visit, criticizing him as
2160-401: A rope made from jail towels. An investigation concluded that she had hanged herself, a result hotly contested at the time, triggering a plethora of conspiracy theories . Alternative theories suggest that she took her life because she was being ostracized by the rest of the group. Her comrades consistently denied this hypothesis, repudiating alleged jailhouse recordings cited as evidence. During
2280-868: A series of bombings, assassinations, kidnappings, bank robberies, and shootouts with police over the course of three decades. Its activities peaked in late 1977, which led to a national crisis that became known as the " German Autumn ". The RAF has been held responsible for 34 deaths, including industrialist Hanns Martin Schleyer , the Dresdner Bank head Jürgen Ponto , federal prosecutor Siegfried Buback , police officers, American servicemen stationed in Germany, as well as many cases of collateral damage , such as chauffeurs and bodyguards , with many others injured throughout its almost thirty years of activity; 26 RAF members or supporters were killed. Although better-known,
2400-411: A sit-in to demand involvement in the reform process of universities, included democratic management of colleges. Echoing Marcuse, Rudi Dutschke considered the politically complacent working classes to be a lost cause when it came to revolutionary agitation. Instead, he hoped to build a coalition between Western intelligentsia and third world communist revolutionaries. To that end, Dutschke organized
2520-537: A substantial safehouse /support base among the urban population was stressed in Marighella's guide. This publication was an antecedent to Meinhof's The Urban Guerrilla Concept and has subsequently influenced many guerrilla and insurgent groups around the globe. Although some of the Red Army Faction's supporters and operatives could be described as having an anarchist or libertarian communist slant,
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#17327764129042640-505: A terrorist organization; they were sentenced to life imprisonment. A new section of Stammheim Prison was built especially for the RAF and was considered one of the most secure prison blocks around the world at the time. The prisoners were transferred there in 1975 (three years after their arrest). The roof and the courtyard were covered with steel mesh. During the night, the precinct was illuminated by 54 spotlights and twenty-three neon bulbs. Special military forces, including snipers, guarded
2760-447: A total reformation of society and its functions. Proponents of the horseshoe theory interpretation of the left–right political spectrum identify the far left and the far right as having more in common with each other as extremists than each of them has with centrists or moderates . This theory has received criticism, however, by many academics. Communism has historically emphasized economics and class over social issues. In
2880-466: A wedge between the generations and increased suspicion of authoritarian structures in society (some analysts see the same occurring in post-fascism Italy, giving rise to " Brigate Rosse " ). In West Germany there was anger among leftist youth at the post-war denazification in West Germany and East Germany , a process which these leftists perceived as a failure or as ineffective, as former (actual and supposed) Nazis held positions in government and
3000-511: Is an ideological group that seeks the creation of a communist society . Modern communism is a form of revolutionary socialism based on support for the communist society described the theories of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels , known as Marxism . Offshoots of Marxism include Leninism , Marxism–Leninism (which was distinct from both of its eponymous ideologies), Maoism , Eurocommunism , anarchist communism , and others. Anarchism seeks to create an alternate form of society that excludes
3120-455: Is credited with first using the term communism , though his usage was unrelated to the ideologies that were later known as communism. Early anarchists emerged in the 19th century, including Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Mikhail Bakunin . These anarchists endorsed many utopian ideas, but they emphasized the importance of revolution against and complete abolition of the state for a utopian society to exist. Bakunin argued that peasants rather than
3240-450: Is generally considered to be a centre-left socialist ideology. Socialism seeks to create a socially equal society in which every individual has access to basic necessities and in which prosperity and knowledge are shared. It is derived from ideas of egalitarianism . Democratic socialism is generally considered to be a reformist left-wing or radical-left ideology, and it has historically been considered centre-left , though it
3360-436: Is generally regarded as a right-wing ideology. Far-left groups support redistribution of income and wealth . They argue that capitalism and consumerism cause social inequality and advocate their dissolution. Some far-left groups also support the abolition of private property . Scholars, such as Luke March and Cas Mudde , propose that socio-economic rights are at the far left's core. Moreover, March and Mudde argue that
3480-522: Is occasionally considered far-left. Democratic socialism is sometimes used interchangeably with social democracy in political rhetoric, but is often used to describe political movements to the left of or following radical social-democracy. Communists may also identify as democratic socialists to contrast themselves with Stalinists . Democratic socialists reject Third Way social democracy for its association with neoliberalism , and they reject communism for its association with authoritarianism . Communism
3600-818: Is seen as radical politics because it calls for fundamental change to the capitalist socio-economic structure of society. Radical-left politics, rejecting both neo-liberal social-democracy and revolutionary action, instead seeking to enact change from within government, prioritize equality of outcome over equal opportunity . Post-Soviet radical left-wing movements in Europe and the United States are associated with anti-globalization and anti-neoliberalism . Various courants and movements of socialism are considered far-left. Socialism has historically been divided into left-wing reformist socialism and far-left revolutionary socialism . Modern social democracy
3720-439: Is situated between the far-left and social democracy . Per Richard Dunphy, "the radical left" desires fundamental changes in neoliberal capitalism and progressive reform of democracy such as direct democracy and the inclusion of marginalized communities, while per March "the extreme left" denounces liberal democracy as a "compromise with bourgeois political forces" and defines capitalism more strictly. Far-left politics
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3840-595: Is talked about in terms of generations: On 20 April 1998, an eight-page typewritten letter in German was faxed to the Reuters news agency, signed "RAF" with the submachine-gun red star, declaring that the group had dissolved. In 1999, after a robbery in Duisburg , evidence pointing to Ernst-Volker Staub and Daniela Klette was found, causing an official investigation into a re-founding. The usual translation into English
3960-538: Is the "Red Army Faction"; however, the founders wanted it to reflect not a splinter group but rather an embryonic militant unit that was embedded, in or part of, a wider communist workers' movement, i.e., a fraction of a whole. The group always called itself the Rote Armee Fraktion , never the Baader–Meinhof Group or Baader–Meinhof Gang. The name refers to all incarnations of the organization:
4080-595: The 1968 movement in West Germany ( German : 1968 Bewegung in Westdeutschland ), was a social movement that consisted of mass student protests in West Germany in 1968. Participants in the movement later came to be known as 68ers . The movement was characterized by the protesting students' rejection of traditionalism and of German political authority which included many former Nazi officials . Student unrest had started in 1967 when student Benno Ohnesorg
4200-746: The Außerparlamentarische Opposition . The more leftist wing of the SDP in the Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund (Socialist German Students Union - SDS) split from the party line and joined the Außerparlamentarische Opposition. In 1965, Rudi Dutschke was elected to the political council of the West Berlin SDS. With Michael Vester, SDS vice-president and international secretary, Dutschke imported ideas from
4320-532: The Chinese Civil War in 1949. As with the Soviet Union, the newly formed People's Republic of China carried out purges of political enemies, killing millions of land owners. The peasants were not targeted, however, instead using them as a base of political support. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, China under the rule of Mao Zedong distanced itself from the Soviet Union. Maoism then grew in popularity as an alternative to Soviet-style communism. At
4440-585: The Cold War brought an end to communism's political influence in most of Western Europe, and the development of post-industrial society caused many of the traditional sectors associated with communism to dissipate. Following Stalin's death, the workers of several Eastern European countries staged revolutions against communist rule, which were suppressed by the Soviet military. Many of these countries were led by Stalinist rulers, who were forced out and replaced by
4560-604: The German Autumn of 1977, Habermas said the charge of fascism had been an overreaction. At a conference in September 1967, Dutschke and Hans-Jürgen Krahl called for the creation of "action centers" at universities to organize "urban guerrillas ". The International Vietnam Congress ( German : Internationaler Vietnamkongress ) was an event that took place in West Berlin on 17 and 18 February 1968 to oppose
4680-558: The Nazi Party during the Nazi regime. Social movements grew as younger people became disillusioned with the political establishment, worrying it was reminiscent of Germany's Nazi past. West Berlin became a center for these movements since many left leaning people would take residence in West Berlin to avoid the military draft that was in effect in the rest of West Germany. These social movements were also becoming popular among
4800-627: The New Left , influenced by: RAF founder Ulrike Meinhof had a long history in the Communist Party. Holger Meins had studied film and was a veteran of the Berlin revolt; his short feature How To Produce A Molotov Cocktail was seen by huge audiences. Jan Carl Raspe lived at the Kommune 2 ; Horst Mahler was an established lawyer but also at the center of the anti- Springer revolt from
4920-500: The Red Army Faction , which continued to engage in arson and other terrorist acts for more than a decade. Dutschke, Enzenberger, and Nirumand wrote an apologia for terrorism based on Walter Benjamin 's Critique of Violence and Herbert Marcuse's Repressive Tolerance . Despite the failure of the student movement a change in political consciousness lasted throughout the country. Criticisms of West German officials' ties to
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5040-666: The Russian Revolution emerged in 1917 amid political instability caused by World War I . The Bolsheviks seized power, under the rule of Vladimir Lenin and his ideology of Leninism. The state ideology developed during the Russian Civil War from 1918 to 1921, setting the preservation of Bolshevik power as the highest priority to assure the building of socialism as well as seeking to spread communist revolution to other nations. Some additional communist governments formed in Europe, but they lasted only months. Though
5160-583: The Situationists . Baader was arrested again in April 1970, but on 14 May 1970 he was freed by Meinhof and others. Less than a month later, Gudrun Ensslin wrote an article in a West Berlin underground paper by the name of Agit883 ( Magazine for Agitation and Social Practice ), demanding a call to arms and a building of the Red Army. The article ended with the words, "Develop the class struggles. Organize
5280-515: The Taborites , who attempted to create a social structure that resembled a communist society. Early examples of communist societies in fiction include Utopia by Thomas More , which proposed a society without personal property, and The City of the Sun by Tommaso Campanella , which proposed a society without the family unit . Modern far-left politics can be traced to Europe and North America in
5400-562: The Vietnam War . It was organized by Rudi Dutschke and Karl Dietrich Wolff, with an estimated 3,000–4,000 people attending the conference and a total of 12,000–15,000 people involved in the following demonstration. At the congress, Dutschke and his Chilean friend Gaston Salvatore presented their translation of Che Guevara 's letter to the Tricontinental Conference , which called for bloody guerrilla warfare against
5520-586: The conservative media as biased – at the time conservatives such as Axel Springer , who was implacably opposed to student radicalism, owned and controlled the conservative media including all of the most influential mass-circulation tabloid newspapers. The emergence of the Grand Coalition between the two main parties, the SPD and CDU , with former Nazi Party member Kurt Georg Kiesinger as chancellor, occurred in 1966. This horrified many on
5640-632: The war in Southeast Asia and engineering the remilitarization of Germany with the U.S.-led entrenchment against the Warsaw Pact nations. The ongoing events further catalyzed the situation. Protests turned into riots on 2 June 1967, when Mohammad Reza Pahlavi , the Shah of Iran , visited West Berlin . There were protesters but also hundreds of supporters of the Shah, as well as a group of fake supporters armed with wooden staves, there to disturb
5760-428: The "first generation" RAF, which consisted of Baader, Ensslin, Meinhof, and others; the "second generation" RAF; and the "third generation" RAF, which existed in the 1980s and 90s. The terms "Baader–Meinhof Gang" and "Baader–Meinhof Group" were first used by the media and the government. The group never used these names to refer to itself, because it viewed itself as a co-founded group consisting of numerous members and not
5880-450: The ' superstructure ' of society was vitally important to understanding class control (and acquiescence). This Gramscian and Marcusian contribution could perhaps be seen as an extension of Marx's work, as he did not cover this area in detail. Das Kapital , his mainly economic work, was meant to be one of a series of books which would have included one on society and one on the state , but his death prevented fulfillment of this. Many of
6000-413: The 1830s with the publications of British reformer Robert Owen , who self-identified as socialist. Owen, as well as others such as Henri de Saint-Simon , Charles Fourier , and Étienne Cabet , developed the utopian socialist movement, and these utopian socialists established several communes to implement their ideology. Cabet responded to More's Utopia with his own novel, The Voyage to Icaria . He
6120-518: The 1960s and 1970s, among them the CPI (Maoist) , Montoneros , New People's Army , Prima Linea , the Red Army Faction , the Red Brigades and the Tupamaros . These groups generally aimed to overthrow capitalism and the wealthy ruling classes. German student movement Incidents The West German student movement ( German : Westdeutsche Studentebewegung ), sometimes called
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#17327764129046240-509: The 1970s and 1980s, far-left movements in Western Europe were increasingly defined by the new social movements , which gave prominence to issues such as environmentalism, animal rights , women's rights , the peace movement , and promoting the interests of the Third World . These ideas as a singular movement became less prominent in far-left politics as they were subsumed by green politics, but they are still disparately supported by many in
6360-403: The 1970s was still a guilt-ridden society. When the gang started robbing banks, newscasts compared its members to Bonnie and Clyde. (Andreas) Baader, a charismatic action man indulged in the imagery, telling people that his favourite movies were Bonnie and Clyde, which had recently come out, and The Battle of Algiers. The pop poster of Che Guevara hung on his wall, [while] he paid a designer to make
6480-596: The American SDS ( Students for a Democratic Society ) and New Left , such as direct action and civil disobedience . Drawing inspiration from Herbert Marcuse , Dutschke sought to build a coalition of marginalized identity groups to be a vanguard for socialism in Europe. Finding that Germany had no population group with revolutionary potential comparable to America's Black Power movement, Dutschke sought to mold Germany's student movements into seeing themselves as an oppressed minority . His plan for accomplishing this
6600-689: The Bolsheviks identified as communist, the term socialist was often used interchangeably at the time. By 1922, as Russian SFSR became one of the founding countries of Soviet Union , it responded to widespread hunger and poverty with the New Economic Policy , which restored market enterprise for smaller industries. After Lenin's death, a power struggle between Nikolai Bukharin , Leon Trotsky , and Joseph Stalin ended with Stalin taking power by 1928. Stalin implemented his ideology of Marxism–Leninism, which reorganized society and created
6720-540: The Great Purge's extent. Anarcho-syndicalism was developed as a form of anarchism in the late 19th century, and it grew popular around 1900. It remained relevant in far-left politics through 1940. During the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s, anarcho-syndicalists seized control of multiple regions in Spain, but this ended when the nationalist faction won the war. This, along with the rise of communism, ended
6840-475: The RAF conducted fewer attacks than the Revolutionary Cells , which is held responsible for 296 bomb attacks, arson and other attacks between 1973 and 1995. The group was motivated by leftist political concerns and the perceived failure of their parents' generation to confront Germany's Nazi past, and received support from Stasi and other Eastern Bloc security services. Sometimes, the group
6960-534: The RAF emerged at that time, consisting of sympathizers independent of the inmates. On 27 February 1975, Peter Lorenz , the CDU candidate for mayor of Berlin, was kidnapped by the 2 June Movement as part of pressure to secure the release of several non-RAF detainees, alongside estranged member Horst Mahler (who declined to be freed). Since none of these were on trial for murder, the state agreed, and those inmates (and later Lorenz himself) were released. According to Aust,
7080-618: The RAF's main trial judge in Stammheim, had been a Nazi Party member. Along with Federal Prosecutor Heinrich Wunder (who served as senior government official in the Ministry of Defense), Buback had ordered the arrest of Rudolf Augstein and other journalists regarding the Spiegel affair in 1962. Theodor Prinzing was accused by defense attorney Otto Schily of having been appointed arbitrarily, displacing other judges. At several points in
7200-644: The SDS looked to Hans-Jürgen Krahl for leadership. Krahl however favored theory to direct action. In May the West German government considered using the Emergency Acts in response, allowing the Cabinet to suspend parliamentary rule and enact laws in times of crisis. On May 11 protesters gathered in the West German capital Bonn to demand that the laws not be used. The government agreed with protesting labor unions to only use limited concessions, passing
7320-519: The Stammheim trial of Baader, Ensslin, Meinhof, and Raspe began, named after the district in Stuttgart where it took place. The Bundestag had earlier changed the Code of Criminal Procedure so that several of the attorneys who were accused of serving as links between the inmates and the RAF's second generation could be excluded. On 9 May 1976, Ulrike Meinhof was found dead in her prison cell, hanging from
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#17327764129047440-405: The Stammheim trial, microphones were turned off while defendants were speaking. They were often expelled from the hall, and other actions were taken. It was later revealed that the conversation they had between themselves as well as with their attorneys were recorded. Finally it was reported by both the defendants' attorneys and some of the prison's doctors that the physical and psychological state of
7560-402: The United States. Holger Meins presented an instructional film on making Molotov cocktails . On 11 April 1968, Rudi Dutschke was shot by the far-right Josef Bachmann . Dutschke was injured but survived the shooting. The attempted assassination of Dutschke would be later regarded as the formal beginning of the West German student movement. Dutschke had previously been labeled an " enemy of
7680-529: The accused. Judge Weiss (Mahler's trial) had judged Joachim Raese (president of the Third Reich's court) as innocent seven times. When he threatened Meinhof that she would be put into a glass cage she answered caustically, "So you are threatening me with Eichmann's cage, fascist?" ( Adolf Eichmann who was an Obersturmbannführer in the SS , was held inside a glass cage during his trial in Israel.) Siegfried Buback ,
7800-409: The authorities during the trial. Every journalist could attend the trial only twice (two days). The Times questioned the possibility whether a fair trial could be conducted under these circumstances which involved siege-like conditions. Der Spiegel wondered whether that atmosphere anticipated "the condemnation of the defendants who were allegedly responsible for the emergency measures". While
7920-467: The beginning. From their personal experiences and assessments of the socio-economic situation, they soon became more specifically influenced by Leninism and Maoism , calling themselves " Marxist–Leninist " though they effectively added to or updated this ideological tradition. RAF frequently cited Mao Zedong in its public statements, especially in its early years. One of the Maoist doctrines emphasized by
8040-566: The border in East Germany during the 1980s. "The Baader–Meinhof Gang drew a measure of support that violent leftists in the United States, like the Weather Underground, never enjoyed. A poll at the time showed that a quarter of West Germans under forty felt sympathy for the gang and one-tenth said they would hide a gang member from the police. Prominent intellectuals spoke up for the gang's righteousness [as] Germany even into
8160-502: The chance of voting radical left"; and second, radical-left voters tend not to share the social nationalism of the radical-right, instead having a socio-tropic, or other-regarding, bias based on the ideological concern for economic egalitarianism. Other characteristics may include anti-Americanism , anti-globalization , opposition to NATO , and in some cases a rejection of European integration . Many far-left militant organizations were formed by members of existing political parties in
8280-473: The early 19th century to describe the egalitarian ideas of redistribution promoted by writers like François-Noël Babeuf and John Thelwall . Inspired by the French Revolution , these writers objected to the existence of significant wealth, and Babeuf advocated a dictatorship on behalf of the people that would destroy those who caused inequality. Socialism was recognized as a coherent philosophy in
8400-486: The economy. The Communist Party of Germany had been outlawed since 1956. Elected and appointed government positions down to the local level were often occupied by ex-Nazis. Konrad Adenauer , the first Federal Republic chancellor (in office 1949–1963), had even appointed former Nazi sympathiser Hans Globke as Director of the Federal Chancellery of West Germany (in office 1953–1963). The radicals regarded
8520-521: The event "Vietnam – Analysis of an Example" ( German : Vietnam – Analyse eines Exempels ) at the University of Frankfurt Institute for Social Research with Marcuse as the headline speaker. SDS president Walmot Falkenburg privately requested that Marcuse emphasize solidarity with the Vietnamese on the basis of traditional Marxist concerns with labor and material interests, which would have been
8640-471: The fall of 1967 students established "Critical Universities"; students occupied classrooms and gave critiques of university structure as well as educating other students in New Left thought. It was revealed in 2009 that Kurras had been a Stasi informant. Prosecutors revisiting the evidence concluded Ohnesorg had been murdered as a premeditated act, but not enough evidence survived to evaluate whether Kurras
8760-501: The far left is to the left of the political left with regard to how parties or groups describe economic inequality on the base of existing social and political arrangements. Far-left groups are anti-establishment , opposing existing political and economic structures. Both anarchist and statist far-left ideologies may support disestablishment of traditional sociopolitical structures. They are opposed to liberalism and liberal democracy . They may be classified as radical , supporting
8880-543: The far-left and social-democracy) or far-left. At the same time, in the United Kingdom and the United States of America , populist movements formed around Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders . While left-wing populist parties were in power in the 2010s, they were often forced to put aside their strong anti-neoliberalism and accept neoliberal policies, either proposed by their larger allies or imposed due to
9000-575: The far-left declined after the dissolution of the Soviet Union , and it remained relatively subdued during the 1990s. In many Eastern European countries, communist parties were banned by the new governments. In others such as Moldova, they saw continued electoral success. Of the five communist states that survived into the 21st century, three of them — China, Vietnam, and Laos — had restored private ownership and reintegrated with global capitalist markets although state and public control continued as well. For instance, Peter Nolan argues that land in China
9120-494: The far-left varies in the literature and there is not a general agreement on what it entails or consensus on the core characteristics that constitute the far left, other than being to the left of mainstream left-wing politics . As with all political alignments, the exact boundaries of centre-left versus far-left politics are not clearly defined and can vary depending on context. Far-left ideologies often include types of socialism , communism , and anarchism . The radical-left
9240-507: The far-left. Societies resembling communist society have been postulated throughout human history, and many have been proposed as the earliest socialist or communist ideas. The ideas of Plato have been described as an early type of socialism. In medieval Europe, some philosophers argued that Jesus believed in shared ownership of property and that the hierarchy of the Catholic Church was contrary to his teachings. This included
9360-428: The four prisoners were able to communicate, circulating letters with the help of their defense counsel . To protest against their treatment by authorities, they went on several coordinated hunger strikes ; eventually, they were force-fed. Holger Meins died of self-induced starvation on 9 November 1974. After public protests, their conditions were somewhat improved by the authorities. The so-called second generation of
9480-560: The group was the importance of organizing political resistance to bourgeois society, and that armed struggle from the fringes of society will bring the revolution into mainstream society as well, with the bourgeois state revealing its oppressive apparatus by overreacting to fringe groups and their activities. A contemporaneous critique of the Red Army Faction's view of the state, published in a pirate edition of Le Monde Diplomatique , ascribed to it "state-fetishism" – an ideologically obsessive misreading of bourgeois dynamics and
9600-682: The group's leading members professed a largely Marxist–Leninist ideology. That said, they shied away from overt collaboration with communist states , arguing along the lines of the Chinese side in the Sino-Soviet split that the Soviet Union and its European satellite states had become traitors to the communist cause by, in effect if not in rhetoric, giving the United States a free pass in their exploitation of Third World populations and support of "useful" Third World dictators. Nevertheless, RAF members did receive intermittent support and sanctuary over
9720-627: The ideas of Japanese writer Kōtoku Shūsui , who was in turn inspired by Peter Kropotkin . This movement saw its greatest prominence in the 1920s in China. Communism in early 20th century Europe often gained power in countries with significant polarization between segments of the population on an ethnic, religious, or economic basis, and in countries that were destabilized by war. It was less prominent in industrialized nations, where social democracy maintained electoral success over communist parties. The first communist revolution took place in Russia, when
9840-690: The international context. In Europe, the support for populist left politics comes from three overlapping groups: far-left subcultures, disaffected social democrats, and protest voters—those who are opposed to their country's European Union membership. European populist left politics share many of the values of centre-left politics , including cosmopolitanism , altruism , and egalitarianism . They overlap in some areas with far-right politics concerning radicalism , economic nationalism , Euroscepticism , and populism . Two clear distinctions emerge: first, "education [...] tends to statistically significantly lower chances of voting for radical right but increases
9960-424: The late 18th century, when industrialization and political upheaval caused discontent among the working class. Socialists were those who objected to the changing social and economic structures associated with industrialization, in that they promoted individualism over collectivism and that they created wealth for some but not for others, creating economic inequality . The term socialism first came into use in
10080-417: The late 1960s experienced social upheavals related to the maturing of the " baby boomers ", the Cold War , and the end of colonialism . Newly-found youth identity and issues such as racism , women's liberation , and anti-imperialism were at the forefront of left-wing politics . Many young people were alienated from their parents and the institutions of the state. The historical legacy of Nazism drove
10200-467: The laws on May 30. This agreement dealt a blow to the growing student movement and signaled its demise. The SDS formally dissolved on March 21, 1970. On 22 May 1967, a fire at the L'Innovation department store in Brussels killed hundreds of people. Kommune 1 issued a leaflet celebrating the fire and calling for more such occurrences to bring parity between Western countries and Vietnam. The leaflet
10320-600: The left and was viewed as a monolithic, political marriage of convenience with pro- NATO , pro-capitalist collusion on the part of the social democratic SPD. With about 90% of the Bundestag controlled by the coalition, an Extra-Parliamentary Opposition (APO) was formed with the intent of generating protest and political activity outside of government. In 1972 a law was passed – the Radikalenerlass – that banned radicals or those with
10440-796: The left on the left–right political spectrum than the standard political left . The term does not have a single, coherent definition; some scholars consider it to be the left of communist parties , while others broaden it to include the left of social democracy . In certain instances—especially in the news media — far left has been associated with some forms of authoritarianism , anarchism , communism , and Marxism , or are characterized as groups that advocate for revolutionary socialism and related communist ideologies , or anti-capitalism and anti-globalization . Far-left terrorism consists of extremist , militant , or insurgent groups that attempt to realize their ideals through political violence rather than using democratic processes. The definition of
10560-538: The local level and a one-party state at the regional level. In reaction to the neo-liberal turn of European social-democracy under the Third Way , populist left-wing parties and politicians emerged in the late 2000s and early 2010s as a Eurosceptic , anti-globalist response to the Great Recession . These parties and movements are qualified by various observers as either left-wing , radical-left (between
10680-431: The means of communication ("repressive tolerance") dispensed with the need for complete brute force in modern ' liberal democracies '. His One-Dimensional Man was addressed to the restive students of the sixties. Marcuse argued that only marginal groups of students and poor alienated workers could effectively resist the system. Both Gramsci and Marcuse came to the conclusion that analyzing the ideological underpinnings and
10800-717: The nature and role of the state in post-WWII societies, including West Germany. It is claimed that property destruction during the Watts riots in the United States in 1965 influenced the practical and ideological approach of the RAF founders, as well as some of those in Situationist circles. According to one former RAF member, in meetings with KGB in Dresden the group was also met by Vladimir Putin , then KGB resident in East Germany . In these meetings RAF members would discuss weapons that were needed for their activities, and pass
10920-517: The normal course of the visit. These extremists beat the protesters. After a day of angry protests by exiled Iranian radical Marxists, a group widely supported by German students, the Shah visited the Berlin Opera , where a crowd of German student protesters gathered. During the opera house demonstrations, German student Benno Ohnesorg was shot in the head by a police officer while attending his first protest rally. The officer, Karl-Heinz Kurras ,
11040-493: The old Nazi Party brought the concept of Vergangenheitsbewältigung (coming to terms with the past) to the forefront of political discussion. Other various left-wing causes also gained popularity and helped solidify a protest culture in Germany. Those who were involved in the protests of 1968 in West Germany would come to be known as the "1968 generation". Some would develop unique political paths, with some finding roles in government, while others embraced terrorist activities of
11160-464: The order; the rest went underground and made their way to France, where they stayed for a time in a house owned by prominent French journalist and revolutionary Régis Debray , famous for his friendship with Che Guevara and the foco theory of guerrilla warfare. Eventually they made their way to Italy , where the lawyer Mahler visited them and encouraged them to return to Germany with him to form an underground guerrilla group. The Red Army Faction
11280-510: The people " in the Axel Springer -owned tabloid newspaper Bild-Zeitung . Student activists believed the shooting was inspired by critics of the student movement such as Springer's tabloids . Demonstrations and clashes later occurred outside Springer offices in reaction to the shooting. In the aftermath of the shooting, student leaders became more willing to embrace violent tactics in their movements. With Dutschke incapacitated, many in
11400-414: The prisoners held in solitary confinement and white cells was such that they could not attend the long trial days and defend themselves appropriately. By the time the Stammheim trial began in early 1975, some of the prisoners had already been in solitary confinement for three years. Far-left Far-left politics , also known as extreme left politics or left-wing extremism , are politics further to
11520-706: The proletariat. Start the armed resistance!" Baader, Ensslin, Mahler, and Meinhof then went to Jordan , where they trained with Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) guerrillas and looked to the Palestinian cause for inspiration and guidance. But RAF organization and outlook were also partly modeled on the Uruguayan Tupamaros movement, which had developed as an urban resistance movement, effectively inverting Che Guevara 's Mao-like concept of
11640-458: The radicals felt that Germany's lawmakers were continuing authoritarian policies from the country’s past and that the public's apparent acquiescence to these policies was a consequence of the indoctrination that the Nazis had pioneered and implemented in German society ( Volksgemeinschaft ). The Federal Republic was exporting arms to African dictatorships, which the radicals viewed as supporting
11760-623: The relevance of anarchism among the far-left globally after 1940. As mass production became more common, the traditional style of labor that anarcho-syndicalists objected to ceased to exist, preventing any significant resurgence in the movement. The Soviet Union's influence during and after World War II spread communism, directly and indirectly, to the rest of Eastern Europe and into Southeast Europe . New communist governments were formed in Albania , Bulgaria , Czechoslovakia , East Germany , Hungary , Romania , and Yugoslavia . The onset of
11880-666: The resistance that your parents did not put up." – Stefan Aust , author of Der Baader Meinhof Komplex All four of the defendants charged with arson and endangering human life were convicted, for which they were sentenced to three years in prison. In June 1969, however, they were temporarily paroled under an amnesty for political prisoners , but in November of that year, the Federal Constitutional Court ( Bundesverfassungsgericht ) demanded that they return to custody. Only Horst Söhnlein complied with
12000-467: The role of the state. Some objected to the increase in the state's involvement, while others believed that the state was a stronger alternative to protect worker's rights than labor movements. Many of the former moved to anarchism, while many of the latter responded with the development of social democracy. East Asian anarchism developed in the 1900s during the Russo-Japanese War , based on
12120-624: The roof. Four hundred police officers along with the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution patrolled the building. The mounted police officers rotated on a double shift. One hundred more GSG-9 tactical police officers reinforced the police during the trial while BKA detectives guarded the front of the court area. Finally, helicopters overflew the area. During the trial, accredited media correspondents had to pass
12240-487: The same time, North Korea and North Vietnam were established as communist governments, triggering the Korean War and the Vietnam War against South Korea and South Vietnam , respectively. By the late 1970s, Maoism in China was replaced by the ideology of Deng Xiaoping , which restored the private sector and market pricing. The Cuban Revolution led to Fidel Castro becoming the ruler of Cuba in 1959. Though he
12360-398: The state entirely. Anarchism incorporates elements of both socialism and liberalism , and it was a prominent ideology among the far-left globally from 1900 to 1940. Anarchist movements include classical anarchism , anarcho-syndicalism , social anarchism , individualist anarchism , anarcha-feminism , black anarchism , and queer anarchism , and green anarchism . Anarcho-capitalism
12480-526: The strength of the West German military, worried some in West Germany that there was a return of authoritarian government. In the fallout of the affair, the suddenly-unpopular Christian Democratic Union formed a political coalition with the Social Democratic Party (SPD), known as the grand coalition . Critics were disappointed with the parliament's appointment of Kurt Georg Kiesinger as chancellor of West Germany, as he had participated in
12600-516: The subsequent Soviet government. Yugoslavia distanced itself as a neutral communist nation, aligned with neither the East nor the West. The New Left developed in Western Europe as an alternative to communism in the 1950s, taking positions on social issues and identity politics . Green politics developed as an offshoot of the New Left, but it was deradicalized by the end of the 20th century and became
12720-561: The success of this operation led to the RAF themselves to attempt their own exchange: on 24 April 1975, the West German embassy in Stockholm was seized by members of the RAF; two of the hostages were murdered as the German government under Chancellor Helmut Schmidt refused to give in to their demands. Two of the hostage-takers died from injuries they suffered when the explosives they planted detonated later that night. On 21 May 1975,
12840-499: The trial progressed, the prisoners received visits from lawyers (and on rare occasions relatives; friends were not allowed). For those visits, three jailers were always present to observe the conversations between prisoners and visitors. The prisoners were not allowed to meet each other inside the prison, until late 1975 when a regular meeting time was established (30 minutes, twice per day), during which they were guarded. The judges and their pasts are considered important by supporters of
12960-470: The trial, more attacks took place. One of these was on 7 April 1977, when Federal Prosecutor Siegfried Buback , his driver, and his bodyguard were shot and killed by two RAF members while waiting at a red traffic light. Buback, who had been a Nazi member during WWII, was considered by RAF as one of the key persons for their trial. Among other things, two years earlier, while being interviewed by Stern magazine, he stated that "Persons like Baader don't deserve
13080-541: The working class should lead a socialist revolution, and he popularized calls to violence among the anarchist movement. Anarchist ideology spread to the Americas shortly after its development. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels introduced Marxism in the 1840s, which advocated revolutionary socialism . As the state bureaucracy was developed in the late 19th century and labor rights were increasingly recognized by national governments, socialist movements were divided on
13200-426: The youth of West Germany. The movements included the opposition to the United States' involvement in the Vietnam War , opposition to consumer culture , liberation for the third world , and criticisms of middle class moral values. Some were embracing communal lifestyles and sexual liberation . All these various social movements and the non-parliamentary organizations that hoped to spearhead them, grouped together as
13320-623: Was absent or took on a more flexible form. In 1969 the Brazilian revolutionary Carlos Marighella published his Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla . He described the urban guerrilla as: ... a person who fights the military dictatorship with weapons, using unconventional methods. ... The urban guerrilla follows a political goal, and only attacks the government, big businesses, and foreign imperialists. The importance of small arms training, sabotage , expropriation , and
13440-435: Was accused of being the chief culprit in inciting the shooting. Meinhof commented, "If one sets a car on fire, that is a criminal offence. If one sets hundreds of cars on fire, that is political action." "World War II was only twenty years earlier. Those in charge of the police, the schools, the government – they were the same people who'd been in charge under Nazism. The chancellor, Kurt Georg Kiesinger, had been
13560-549: Was acquitted in a subsequent trial. It was later discovered that Kurras had been a member of the West Berlin communist party SEW and had also worked for the Stasi , though there is no indication that Kurras' killing of Ohnesorg was under anyone's, including the Stasi's, orders. Along with perceptions of state and police brutality , and widespread opposition to the Vietnam War , Ohnesorg's death galvanized many young Germans and became
13680-559: Was acting under official orders. On the occasion of Ohnesorg's funeral , a conference was held which is most remembered for a debate between Rudi Dutschke and Jürgen Habermas . Dutschke argued that the time was ripe for students to engage in direct action. Habermas, although generally sympathetic to the student movements, criticized Dutschke's plan as action for its own sake without regard for consequences. When Dutschke would not clarify his stance on employing violence, Habermas accused him of Linksfaschismus ("Left fascism"). Later, during
13800-544: Was decollectivized but not privatized, with control of land remaining in the hands of the community. The Party of the European Left was established in 2004 as a pan-European political party for the far-left. The far-left parties during this time were rarely new creations, instead descending from earlier far-left parties of the 20th century. In 2012, the autonomous region Rojava in northwestern Syria established self-governance based on an anarchist direct democracy at
13920-500: Was formed with the intention of complementing the plethora of revolutionary and radical groups across West Germany and Europe, as a more class conscious and determined force compared with some of its contemporaries. The members and supporters were already associated with the ' Revolutionary Cells ' and 2 June Movement as well as radical currents and phenomena such as the Socialist Patients' Collective , Kommune 1 , and
14040-751: Was not a communist, he aligned the nation with the communist movement to seek Soviet support. Many other nations adopted socialism distinct from Marxism–Leninism during the Cold War, particularly in Africa and Latin America. Communism was rapidly replaced between 1979 and 1992, in which eleven of the world's sixteen communist states were disestablished. By the 1980s, the Soviet Union moved away from ideas of international communism as such efforts came to be seen as too inconvenient. By 1988, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev had effectively abandoned communism. In Europe,
14160-482: Was shot by a policeman during a protest against the visit of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi , the Shah of Iran . The movement is considered to have formally started after the attempted assassination of student activist leader Rudi Dutschke , which sparked various protests across West Germany and gave rise to public opposition . The movement created lasting changes in German culture. The Spiegel affair of 1962, in which journalists were arrested and detained for reporting on
14280-546: Was to provoke violent confrontations with government authorities. He wrote in 1965, "Authorized demonstrations must be guided into illegality. Confrontation with state power is essential and must be sought out." The West German parliament had proposed to expand government powers in the Emergency Laws , as well as to reform universities. On 22 June 1966, 3,000 students from the Free University of Berlin staged
14400-466: Was widely condemened and caused a split between Kommune 1 and the SDS. On 2 April 1968, members of the Außerparlamentarische Opposition, Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin committed arson at a department store in Frankfurt to protest the Vietnam war. Although convicted, they were released while pursuing an appeal and went underground when it was denied. They were joined by Ulrike Meinhof in forming
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