Ulrike Meinhof and Gudrun Ensslin
Comrades of the 883: there is no point in explaining the right things to the wrong people. We have been doing that for long enough. It’s not up to us to us explain the Baader liberation campaign to the intellectual jawsmiths, the chickenshits, the know-it-alls, but to the potentially revolutionary segments of the people.
This means to all those who can understand the act straight away because they are captives themselves. Those who cannot take seriously the gibberish of the “Left” because it has not let to any results or actions. Those who are fed up! It’s up to you to explain the Baader liberation campaign to the youths from the Maerkisches Viertel district, to the girls from Eichenhof, from Ollenhauer, from Heiligensee, to the boys from the Jugendhof, from the Jugendhilfsstelle, from the Gruenes Haus, from the Kieferngrund [EDIT: these names refer to youth rehabiliation centres and reformatories]. To the families who have many children, to the young workers and apprentices, to the pupils of comprehensive schools, to the families from urban renewal areas, the Siemens and AEG-Telefunken workers, those from SEL and Osram, the married working women, who on top of running the household and bringing up kids have to do piece work – dammit!
You have to explain the campaign to those who will not be compensated for the exploitation they have to suffer through standard of living, consumption, a mortgage, small-scale loans, a medium range car. Those who cannot afford the whole shebang, those who are not tied to that. Those who have recognized as lies all the promises about the future made by their educators and teachers and caretakers and welfare workers and foremen and apprentice trainers and union functionaries and district councillors, and whose only remaining fear is the fear of the police. You have to tell to those – and not to the petty-bourgeois intellectuals – that it’s over now, that things are taking off now, that the liberation of Baader is only the beginning! That an end of the reign of the cops is in sight! You have to tell to those that we are building up the Red Army, it is their army.
You have to tell to those that things are taking off now. They won’t ask silly questions such as “why right now?” They’ve already been through all the walks to authorities and offices in a thousand different ways, all the dancing with the procedures, the opening hours and waiting rooms, the date on which everything should have finally worked out but didn’t work out. And the word with the friendly female teacher, who ultimately did not prevent the kid to be transferred to the special needs school, and the helpless nursery school teacher who couldn’t offer a place either. They are not asking you “why right now” dammit.
They will obviously not believe a word you say if you can’t even get it done to hand out the newspaper before it gets confiscated. Because it’s not your task to agitate the leftist suckups but the objectively leftist people, you have to build up a distribution system which the pigs cannot get to. Don’t blab that this is too difficult. The Baader liberation campaign wasn’t a walk in the park either. If you grasp what’s happening (and your comments show that you do grasp something, but that you would also get a bullet in your stomach, which obviously was opportunistic crap – arseholes) [EDIT: the original German version of the text in brackets is as incoherent/incomprehensible as my translation], if you grasp anything you have to organize the distribution better. And we will not tell you anything about the methods, as we will not tell you anything about the action plan – you dimwits! As long as you let them catch you, you cannot not give people advice on how to not get caught. What does it mean after all, to be an adventurer? It means to find your own ways [EDIT: literally “It means to build your own lamps.
So.
What does it mean: to bring the conflicts to the boil? It means: to not let them slaughter you. That’s why we’re building up the Red Army. Behind the parents there’s the teacher, the office for juvenile affairs, the police. Behind the apprentice trainer there’s the foreman, the human resources office, the plant security guard, the welfare worker, the police. Behind the caretaker there’s the property manager, the bailiff, the eviction notice, the police. Whatever the pigs can regulate through school marks, firing people, eviction notices, sticks and truncheons, they will regulate in those ways. Sure, they reach for their service guns or resort to tear gas, hand grenades and machine guns, of course the means escalate if they can’t manage in any other way. Of course the GIs in Vietnam have been retrained to guerilla tactics and the Green Berets to means of torture. So what? Of course the penal system is being aggravated for political prisoners.
It’s up to you to make clear that it’s Social Democratic rubbish to claim that it’s possible to infiltrate, string along, take by surprise, intimidate, remove without violent struggle Imperialism with all its Neubauers and Westmorelands [EDIT: the names of industrial bigshots], Bonn [EDIT: then the capital of West Germany], the senate, the federal office for juvenile affairs and the councils, all that filthy business. Make clear that the revolution will not be a nice walk in the park. That the pigs will only let the means escalate as far as they can, but no further. To bring the conflict to the boil we are building up the Red Army.
Without building up the Red Army at the same time, every conflict, all political struggle at work and in Wedding and in the Maerkisches Viertel and in Ploetzensee [EDIT: districts in Berlin] will degenerate into reformism, i.e.: all you will achieve is improved means of disciplining people, improved means of intimidation, improved means of exploitation. That only destroys the people, it doesn’t destroy what destroys the people!
Without building up a red army, the pigs can do as they please, the pigs can keep on: imprison, fire, dispossess, steal children, intimidate, shoot, reign. To bring the conflict to the boil means that they can no longer do what they want, but instead have to do what we want.
You have to make it clear to those who don’t gain anything from the exploitation of the Third World, from the Persian oil, from the Bolivia’s bananas, from South Africa’s gold – those who don’t get a piece of the cake, who have no reason to identify with the exploiters. They can grasp that what is taking off here has already taken off in Vietnam, in Palestine, in Guatemala, in Oakland and Watts, in Cuba and Chine, in Angola and New York. They will grasp it if you explain to them that the Baader liberation campaign is not an isolated campaign and never was, that it was only the first of its kind in West Germany. Dammit.
Don’t sit on that couch that has been subject to house search and count your loved ones like petty huckters. Built up a proper distribution apparatus, leave the chickenshits and social workers behind, those who don’t do anything but chumming up anymore, that gang of rascals.
Find out where the reformatories are, and the families with many children, and the sub-proletariat, and the proletarian women that only wait to punch the right one. They will take over the leadership. And don’t get caught and learn from them how to not get caught – they know more about it than you do.
Develop the class wars.
Organize the proletariat.
Let the armed resistance begin!
BUILD UP THE RED ARMY!
Source: Baader-Meinhof
Simurg 