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1980 Rightwing Terror Attacks Reopened

Discussion in 'General political debates' started by vAsSiLy77, Oct 26, 2011.

  1. vAsSiLy77

    vAsSiLy77 Experienced Member Uploader Experienced member Forum Member


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    Jun 21, 2010
     
    Oktoberfest Bombing Under Review
    Officials Ignored Right-Wing Extremist Links

    By Tobias von Heymann and Peter Wensierski
    Photo Gallery: Oktoberfest Bombing Case Reopened

    Thirty-one years after the 1980 Oktoberfest bomb attack, officials have reopened the case. Previously unknown documents reviewed by SPIEGEL show that the perpetrator, allegedly a lone wolf, was involved with the neo-Nazi scene and Bavarian conservatives. But the unwelcome clues were likely ignored.
    The first booths were already open and a brass band was playing when a group of serious-looking people gathered at Munich's Oktoberfest in late September.
    Tears were flowing, and some quietly placed red flowers at the entrance to the Theresienwiese, the site of the annual beer festival. They had come to commemorate their loved ones, their parents, siblings and spouses, who were murdered at this spot exactly 31 years ago, in the worst terrorist attack in postwar German history. Thirteen died and more than 200 people were injured.
    Robert Platzer, one of the survivors, was 12 at the time. "I saw a young man bending over a waste basket at the entrance," he recalls. "It was as if he were trying to lift something heavy with both hands." At that moment, a bomb exploded in the young man's hands. Platzer witnessed the deaths of two of his siblings, whose bodies were ripped apart and hurled through the air.
    At the commemoration ceremony politicians from all major parties vowed to reopen the case. Before that, the Bavarian state parliament had already adopted a nonpartisan resolution to resume the investigation.
    Too many questions are still unanswered. Who was Gundolf Köhler, the man who had tried to plant the bomb and died in the process? Who or what made him a killer? And what were the political motivations for his crime? Was the attack part of a long series of right-wing extremist acts of violence that shook Western Europe at the time?
    Early in the case, there had been speculation about Köhler's right-wing extremist background. And last year serious doubts emerged as to whether the 21-year-old was truly alone at the scene of the crime on Sept. 26, 1980. But the question of why the authorities never completely solved the case remains unanswered to this day. Could it have been that the party in power in Bavaria at the time, the conservative Christian Social Union (CSU), had no interest in seeing the case solved?

    Looming Election
    It was less than two weeks before the Oct. 5, 1980 German parliamentary election, and the CSU and its then Bavarian state governor and chancellor candidate, Franz Josef Strauss, were not interested in right-wing extremist terrorism. In their worldview, the threat always came from the left. The social climate was toxic, and the Strauss camp, and others, treated left-wing extremist terror group the Red Army Faction (RAF) and its sympathizers as Germany's public enemy number one.
    What did not fit into this worldview was the idea that right-wing extremist groups were at the same time developing their own, loosely defined terrorist network, with cells in Hamburg, Nuremberg, Esslingen near Stuttgart, as well as in Antwerp and Bologna. Not surprisingly, efforts to investigate the threat from the far right were half-hearted at best.
    For three decades, the official explanation for the Oktoberfest attack involved the theory of a confused "sole perpetrator." In May 1981, after just eight months of investigation, the Bavarian State Office of Criminal Investigation (LKA) postulated this theory in its "final comment" on the case. The Federal Prosecutor's Office also noted that there was "no evidence whatsoever" that "third parties" could have influenced Köhler. Case closed -- or so it seemed.
    Until now, this final comment was the only document relating to the case that had been made available to the public, while the investigation files on which it had been based remained unknown. Now SPIEGEL has evaluated these files for the first time, in addition to dossiers from the former East German secret police, the Stasi, and other records, some of which were formerly classified -- a total of 46,000 pages.

    Important Clues Ignored
    The documents show that a number of Bavarian and federal government agencies were already aware of Köhler's right-wing extremist connections before the attack, but did not seriously follow up on important clues. Evidence, including what was left of the bomb, was removed on the night of the attack, witnesses were not adequately questioned and important leads were not pursued.
    More thorough investigations would likely have uncovered the right-wing extremist network behind Köhler. But this would have highlighted connections Strauss and other CSU politicians had to the far-right. Politicians and investigators threw away an important opportunity, and terrorism coming from the right, unlike leftist terrorism, was long downplayed and characterized as an aberration by "sole perpetrators."
    This was precisely what happened in the Köhler case. The "final comment" in the investigation report by the Bavarian LKA makes no mention whatsoever of direct right-wing connections or possible accomplices.
    The investigators described Köhler as the unremarkable son of middle-class parents in Donaueschingen, a town in the southwestern state of Baden-Württemberg. He was a geology student who became interested in chemistry and fossils as a teenager. The investigation report concluded that his motives were unknown, with the authors merely noting that the fact that Köhler had failed an important intermediate examination could have provided "the final impetus" to commit the crime.
    But as the newly released documents show, the authorities knew more about the case than the report suggested. Köhler's first interactions with the far-right NPD party began when he was 14. He attended the party's state convention and campaign events. In Donaueschingen, he was in close contact with a former Nazi who served as a father figure and strongly influenced his worldview. For years, Köhler kept a portrait of Hitler above his bed, and he also collected badges, books and pictures from the Nazi era. For one of his birthdays, he treated himself to a steel helmet and military boots, and he joined a shooting club to practice using a weapon.
    "He supported the extermination of Jews and communists in the Third Reich," one of Köhler's friends told police after the bombing. The friend also said that Köhler had raved about being part of an SS or Reichswehr military organization in Germany, "to be able to take action against communists." Köhler once traveled to the eastern French city of Strasbourg to visit a brothel. Friends who had accompanied him later said that when he saw a group of orthodox Jews there, he said that "Adolf had forgotten to gas them, and now we had to pay for the pensions of these old men." One of Köhler's brothers later told the police: "This radical right-wing sensibility stabilized over the years."

    CSU Downplayed Neo-Nazi Activity
    Still, in their final comments the Federal Prosecutor's Office and the Bavarian LKA downplayed Köhler's worldview and his strong connection to right-wing extremist organizations.
    Köhler was a member of the Viking Youth, which, modeled after the Hitler Youth, was the most important German neo-Nazi youth organization at the time. The group's several hundred uniformed members were led by a Gauführer, a term meant to invoke the Nazi officials known as Gauleiter. They learned how to shoot, committed pipe-bomb attacks and, calling themselves "youth loyal to the German Reich," were determined to combat the left. In 1978, "Viking disciples" attacked four NATO soldiers at a military training area in the northern state of Lower Saxony and stole several submachine guns and magazines.
    But the Munich police still did not feel that the neo-Nazi connection was was worth pursuing. During a search of Köhler's room, they even failed to recognize his Viking Youth membership card. "Because I was unfamiliar with this organization (Viking Youth), I paid no attention to this membership card. I considered such cards to be part of Gundolf Köhler's collection, a hobby," the operations manager of the "Theresienwiese Special Commission" wrote in a report.
    The officers did take the membership card with them when Köhler's room was searched again two weeks later. But this piece of incriminating evidence was not mentioned in the final comment, and there was no further investigation of the organization.
    The authorities also showed little interest in Köhler's involvement in the Wehrsportgruppe (Military Sports Group, WSG) paramilitary organization run by the neo-Nazi Karl-Heinz Hoffmann, or that he had attended one of their meetings "sometime in the past." At the time, right-wing extremist activities were being downplayed by those at the very top of the political ladder in Bavaria. Speaking in the state parliament in March 1979, Strauss said: "Don't make fools of yourselves by attributing significance to certain groups -- you mentioned Hoffmann's Wehrsportgruppe Hoffmann today -- that they have never had, do not have and will never acquire in Bavaria."
    The CSU chairman also had nothing but derision for the ban of Hoffmann's WSG by the coalition government of the center-left Social Democratic Party and the business-friendly Free Democratic Party in Bonn in January 1980. Hoffmann, he said, ought to be "left alone" if he "happens to enjoy going for a walk in the country on a Sunday with a backpack and 'battledress' held up with a waist belt."
    The extensive investigation files now indicate that the authorities knew about Köhler's contacts with Hoffmann before the attack. The German military counterintelligence service had intercepted letters between Hoffmann and Köhler that remain classified today. The Baden-Württemberg state intelligence service also had Köhler under observation, because his name had appeared on two WSG membership lists in 1977 and 1979. The police also knew about Köhler's ties to the Viking Youth and Hoffmann's WSG long before the Oktoberfest bombing. They too had found his name on membership lists they had seized from right-wing extremist groups.
    But according to the investigation files, Köhler was only in contact with the WSG until 1976. The investigators did not find it sufficiently interesting that he had completed a type of guerilla training in Hoffmann's group and had even discussed "the possibility of a civil war in Germany" with other members.
    The Viking Youth and the WSG were not the only stations in Köhler's extremist career. As a student in the southwestern city of Tübingen, he also gravitated toward the center of the far-right scene there. On Hoffmann's advice, he contacted the right-wing extremist group Hochschulring Tübinger Studenten, or "University Ring of Tübingen students." Its leader was Axel Heinzmann, an NPD member today and, at the time, a young politician for the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU), the national sister party to Bavaria's CSU. He was also known at the university by his -- and Hitler's -- initials, "A.H."
    In a letter to his young protégé, Hoffmann had advised him to seek Heinzmann's help in developing a local Wehrsportgruppe. This placed Köhler at the interface between right-wing extremism and the nationalist conservative establishment. Heinzmann cleverly addressed two milieus, the neo-Nazis and the CSU. He was a driving force behind the Aktionsgemeinschaft Vierte Partei (Fourth Party Action Group), which had ties to the CSU and aimed to expand the party's reach nationwide. Heinzmann and his neo-Nazi friends also attended joint conferences between NPD officials and CSU members of the Bundestag, including the party's foreign-policy spokesman at the time, Hans Graf Huyn.
    Fighting communism was the subject of these meetings, known as Africa Seminars. In perfect harmony, neo-Nazis and Strauss supporters, including a number of CSU Bundestag members, discussed how best to vanquish the red threat. "Our freedom is being defended on the Cape," one of the meeting slogans read. To demonstrate their solidarity, CSU and NPD politicians traveled to southern Africa in the late 1970s. In 1981 Edmund Stoiber, the general secretary of his party at the time, campaigned for the CSU trips "with a number of interesting interlocutors." On another occasion his boss, Bavarian state governor Strauss, said: "One mustn't be too squeamish with auxiliary troops," no matter how reactionary they might be.

    Damning Witness Testimony
    Heinzmann's militant leanings had been public knowledge in Tübingen for some time, a circumstance that led to a bloody brawl in December 1976, when about 200 anti-fascists tried to prevent a neo-Nazi meeting from taking place. Hoffmann, Heinzmann and their friends, including Köhler, were in the thick of the brawl. The local press described it as one of the "most brutal altercations in the city since 1945." In a flyer titled "Is Bloodshed Necessary?" Hoffmann bragged that he and his supporters had beaten seven leftists so bad that they had to be hospitalized, and had also "injured many others." Köhler also bragged about the beatings. He had "participated in the activities of a radical right-wing group in Tübingen" and had "really cleaned up," he later told friends in Donaueschingen.
    But Köhler's relationship with Heinzmann, his role in Tübingen right-wing extremist circles and the connections between the CSU and the far right were all clues that investigators did not pursue. The public was also not familiarized with the immediate background of the attack, even though witness testimony in the extensive files clearly indicate that Köhler had more on his mind than his problems at university.
    In early August 1980, a few weeks before the attack, the student spoke with close friends about the Bundestag election scheduled for that October. He wanted to vote for Strauss, he said, but added that it was also important for the NPD to receive more votes. In the end, he said, only violence could produce change. It was about time, he said, for someone besides the left to stage an attack, namely the right.
    In the conversation, Köhler also said that it might be a good idea to commit a bombing attack in Bonn, Hamburg or Munich. The attack, he added, "could be blamed on the left, and then Strauss will be elected."
    Neo-fascists in Italy had already done something similar. Only eight weeks earlier, a bomb attack had devastated the train station in Bologna, killing 85 and injuring 200. The right-wing extremist attack was initially portrayed as the work of leftist terrorists. The strategy apparently fascinated Köhler and other right-wing radicals in Germany. They envisioned a series of bombings that would spark fear throughout the country, setting the scene for the establishment of a new Nazi dictatorship.

    A Meeting in Italy
    Another clue also raises questions about the background of the Oktoberfest attack. A few weeks earlier, Köhler's idol Hoffmann apparently met in Italy with the internationally feared neo-fascist Joachim Fiebelkorn. The neo-Nazi from the town of Eppstein in the Taunus Mountains near Frankfurt was an informant for the German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) and a number of intelligence agencies. He also helped Klaus Barbie, the former head of the Gestapo in Lyon, build a paramilitary combat group in Bolivia. According to previously unknown Stasi documents, Fiebelkorn, "at the instruction of Chiaie," had met with "Karl-Heinz Hoffmann in Rome on July 13, 1980," as well as with French and Italian right-wing extremists.
    The Italian neo-fascist Stefano delle Chiaie was viewed as one of the leading international terrorists of the day, a sort of right-wing counterpart to the left-wing terrorist "Carlos." Western intelligence agencies held Chiaie and his varying terrorist organizations, like "Ordine Nuovo," responsible for anti-communist attacks on several continents in the 1970s and 1980s. Bu what did Hoffmann discuss during his meeting in Italy, if it took place as the Stasi had noted? Did the men merely discuss ideological issues? Or the possibility of staging attacks in Germany based on the Italian model?
    Hoffmann, who was in prison for several years for other crimes and now raises woolly-coated pigs in Saxony, says today: "I was not in Italy in 1980, I never saw or spoke with Fiebelkorn, and I don't know anything about him. I was neither the mentor nor the instigator for Gundolf Köhler, who, incidentally, was not a perpetrator but the victim of a staged attack. All investigative proceedings against me in that case were discontinued."
    According to the files on the Oktoberfest attack, Köhler spoke with friends about his mentor Hoffmann three weeks before the attack. "Gundolf quoted Hoffmann, who had said several times that the bigger the target and its values, the more victims there could be," one witness was quoted saying.

    Possible Accomplices Sighted
    Then the bomb exploded in Munich, creating a scene of carnage at the exit from the Oktoberfest grounds. Body parts and dying victims were strewn across the path, while scores of people who had been in good spirits only moments earlier were now injured and confused. But what no one has known until now is that there were already signs at the time that Köhler may have had accomplices. Four youths told police that they had seen Köhler with several young men wearing German armed forces parkas shortly before the attack. They drew sketches of Köhler and his possible accomplices that largely coincided with the statements made by another witness. But the investigators also showed little interest in this possible lead.
    The SPD/FDP federal government had wanted to send investigators to the crime scene that night, but the Bavarians put them off. Strauss appeared at the Theresienwiese festival grounds late that night. The Bundestag election campaign was in full swing, and the Bavarian candidate for the chancellorship promptly went on the offensive and tried to blame the left for the attack.
    A few hours later, Strauss wrote an opinion piece for the weekly newspaper Welt am Sonntag. "For months I have been receiving indications that an attack was to be expected before the elections," he wrote, noting the question of whether the attack had come from the left or the right was irrelevant. "The terror began on the left. We have been warning against such a development for years." Strauss later speculated on possible perpetrators, saying that such an attack might be the work of then Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, the Stasi or the KGB.
    The Wehrsportgruppe Hoffmann, on the other hand, was exculpated after the attack by the Bavarian interior and close associate of Strauss, Gerold Tandler. "At no point," Tandler said, did the group constitute "a threat."
    As a result, Köhler's act of violence was not used as an opportunity to thoroughly investigate the Wehrsportgruppe, the right-wing extremist terrorist network in Germany and the role of the perpetrator. It would have been a chance to shed light on the right-wing clique backing Köhler. Instead, his associates were able to continue what they were doing.

    Right-Wing Extremist Violence Continues
    Less than three months after the Oktoberfest drama, the Jewish author Shlomo Levin and his girlfriend were murdered in Erlangen, near Stuttgart. Levin had written a critical report about the Wehrsportgruppe and had compared its leader Hoffmann with Hitler. The police suspected that the murder had been committed by Uwe Behrendt, one of Köhler's acquaintances from Tübingen. But Behrendt fled to East Germany through Hoffmann's Bavarian residence at Ermreuth Castle. He was found shot to death, under suspicious circumstances, in Lebanon three months later.
    A wave of bank robberies designed to raise cash, based on the RAF model, ensued. In one case, a robbery led to a deadly shootout in a Munich street between neo-Nazis and the police. Car bombs wounded US soldiers in the central German city of Giessen, and another friend of Köhler's, Stefan Wagner, went on a rampage in Frankfurt. Before he turned his gun on himself, Wagner told his hostages that he had been an accomplice in the Oktoberfest bombing.
    Despite their extensive findings, the authorities held onto their theory that the Oktoberfest bomber was a "sole perpetrator." In fact, even Köhler's brother Hermann had told the police that he didn't believe that the killer had acted alone. "He wanted change within Germany, and he felt that he was part of a small elite unit that felt the same," he said when he testified about his brother Gundolf. "In the event of a change in Germany, this group was to be prepared to assume power." His brother, he added, had advocated a "violent overthrow," insisting that then "the people would clamor for a Führer."
    Strauss's assertion that the security services had everything "under control" was therefore a deliberate deception.
    Köhler's friends in the Hochschulring Tübinger Studenten, the Wehrsportgruppe and other right-wing terror cells remained out of control after the Oktoberfest bombing and the failure to fully investigate it -- and right-wing extremist violence remained an ongoing problem in Germany.

    Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan
    http://www.spiegel.de/international/ger ... 22,00.html
    http://www.spiegel.de/international/ger ... -2,00.html
     

  2. Bentheanarchist

    Bentheanarchist Experienced Member Uploader Experienced member


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    Kohler had ties with NATO and Bundesnachrichtendienst and Gladio, and is strongly believed to be a agent for west germany's central intelligence Bundesnachrichtendienst. One things for sure; he did not commit the act of terror on his own; he had help.
     
  3. nike

    nike Experienced Member Experienced member Forum Member


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    the connection with us-/nato-sidekicks like "stay behind" & gladio is very obvious because of the similiarities between the italian rightwing terror-attacks like bologna and munich, each time t'was a situation for the "stragegy of tension" = if we blame it on the left, we'll get an right government.
    some sources connect köhler with Heinz Lembke, a nazi and BDJ-veteran with close connections to "stay behind", lembke kept stashes with automatic weapons, 14000 shots of ammunition, 50 anti-tank weapons, 156 kg explosives and 260 frag grenades hidden in a forest in the Lüneburg Heath, he was arrested by the federal police and allegedly hanged himself after two days in jail...

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio
    http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladio#Deutschland - is a bit more detailed on italy and germany

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategy_of_tension
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_flag
     
  4. nike

    nike Experienced Member Experienced member Forum Member


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    another bit about the connections between german secret services and the neo-nazi-bunch NPD:
    horst mahler was a founding member of the "left-wing" RAF, practically the first one promoting the "armed struggle"...
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_D ... of_Germany
     
  5. Bentheanarchist

    Bentheanarchist Experienced Member Uploader Experienced member


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    Horst Mahler was never really a serious member of RAF; while in prison he wrote a Manifesto about RAF and all the other RAF members didn't approve of it, and expelled him from RAF. Horst Mahler then turned to Maoism, and later was visited in prison by Far-Right thinkers, and he turned to the Far-Right. Horst Mahler hired a lawyer who later become chancellor of Germany and was pardoned of his charges and permitted him to practice law again. Horst Mahler formed a defense fund for holocaust deniers. Horst Mahler had speeches calling for the eradication of the Jews and sympathy for Adolf Hiter. Currently, Horst Mahler is serving a 12 year sentence for incitement of popular hate. Horst Mahler was a confused idiot, not a serious RAF member.
     
  6. vAsSiLy77

    vAsSiLy77 Experienced Member Uploader Experienced member Forum Member


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    neyneyney, horst mahler was definitely a more than "serious" founding member of the RAF:
    he started around 1964 to get involved with the APO (outter parlamentarian opposition), because he was a lawyer he defended almost every known hero of the movement at the courts, including the people of the commune 1, rudi dutschke, andreas baader and gudrun ensslin and many more.
    the family of benno ohnesorg (the guy who's been shot in berlins at june 2, 1968 while reza pahlevi was visiting - the resulting riots practically mark the start of the militant APO) engaged mahler as a lawyer, he said in a later interview that he heard "the bullet from ohnesorgs head clicking into the metal bowl at the autopsy": guess that was the begin of his own radicalisation.
    bader and ensslin were convicted and wanted arsonists when they met mahler again in their italian hideout and he proposed the funding of a "social-revolutionary urban guerilla front" and claimed to have access to weapons and explosives.
    THIS IS WHERE THE STORY GETS INTERESTING AGAIN:
    his "source" was peter urbach, liaison officer and agent provocateur of the berlins office for the protection of the constitution, a very virulent and ambitious creep with "good" contacts - maybe even again to "stay behind"/gladio (berlins senator of the intern, kurt neubauer never uncovered the actual source of his employee urbachs opportunities, but he denied that the weapons and explosives came directly from the secret services).
    urbach gifted horst mahler with his very own 9mm browning pistol, delivered 12 molotovcocktails to the springer riots after rudi dutschke was shot in berlin, he offered herman von rohde "a whole box with 50 berettas", "because in case of an uprising we have to be armed".
    urbach delivered 12 (1) dudd bombs to several known militant individuals and communes when us-warcriminal nixon was visiting berlins - bommi bauman and georg von rauch installed two of these along the route nixon's parade took through the town - surprise, surprise:
    both bombs failed to explode, and the rest was collected back by the cops in a big raid on leftwing adresses all over the city.
    urbach "buried" a cache of automatic weapons, side arms and explosives on a cementary yard in berlins buckow - this cache became the first arsenal of the RAF - and he was the "contact" of the "deal" resulting in andreas baaders seizure/arrest on april 4th 1970 by the cops setting up a "traffic control"...
    with bader in arrest, horst mahler took the lead and organized the "free andreas"-action, going into the history books on may 14th 1970 in berlin. the involved masked "weapons specialist" who shot and seriously wounded one employee of the library and a cop "because he mistook the gas revolver with a "sharp" weapon", was never identified - but it's most likely that this man was either horst mahler or peter urbach. mahler was convicted for his involvement in the freeing of baader, but the prosecution never gained enough evidence against him, so the sentence was set aside later.
    after baaders arrest peter urbach's cover was completely blown, so the office for the protection of the constitution pulled him out and protected him, he witnessed for the prosecution in the trial against irene goergens, horst mahler und ingrid schubert - but under strict limits set by his boss kurt neubauer, senator of the intern - he was ordered to refuse giving answers about his weapon-deals with the militant left, his bomb distribution or his own actions during the springer riots. after the trial peter urbach vanished, the officials gave him a new identity and send him out of state, he's probably still alive somewhere in the south americas.
    horst mahler's RAF-career collided with andreas baaders re-taking of the lead of the group, his draft for the RAF-manifesto didn't went well with the "avantgarde"-claim of baader and ensslin - indeed it included maoist ideas of "swimming in the masses like fishes in the water" (which would have been the more acceptable version) - but after mahler was more or less neutralized and isolated in jail, baader simply made mahler an outsider.
    officially mahler renounced "terrorism" 1975, but he was never expelled by the group by themselves. his "career" while he was injailed was much of a project of rightwing liberals like gerhard schröder (his lawyer and later german spd-chancellor) and his ex-lawyer jürgen schily (rising star of the green party, then switching to the social democrats and finally minister of the intern in the schröder government) and a bit naive liberals like the christian theologian helmut gollwitzer.
    mahlers contacts with rightwing conservatives like social philosopher günther rohrmoser began in a project started by the social democrat led government to research the "intellectual and philosophical motives of terrorism" - mahlers conversation with liberal federal minister of the intern gerhard baum were published as a book 1980 - mahler was the perfect example of a rehabilitated "terrorist", politically he stood near the liberal party's positions.
    maybe he hoped for some kind of a career after his release from prison, supported by his aides schröder, schily and gollwitzer - but it didn't happened - so the story took the next weird turn:
    horst mahler's family had a more than average nazi-background before 1945, his uncle reinhard nixdorf was a famous leader of the SA - after 1945 the clan lived in the former communist DDR and mahler had to bow very deeply to be allowed to study at the university. the family left the DDR and headed west early in the 50's - some sources claim that young horst mahler was already a member of the DDR-secret service for state security, at least until 1970 he kept contact with officials of the DDR and the soviet union.
    his first involvement with right wingers began when he went to university and became a member of the "duelling" student fraternity "Landsmannschaft Thuringia" 1953. nothing is known of this time and he left the fraternity 1956 because he became a member of the social democratic party and his membershipt with "thuringuia" collided with the party membership.
    his first public right-wing speech came up 1997 at the celebrations for günther rohrmoser's 70th birthday - and mahler became quite famous, confessing former weapon-ss-member and "democratic nazi" franz schönhuber (founder of a ultra-right populist party challenging the bavarian CSU (christ-social union led by franz josef strauss) wrote a book with mahler about the "occupation and colonialisation" of post-war-germany by the WW2-winners.
    smelling a career chance horst mahler took the next step - promoting the blessings of neo-paganism and "völkischer" ideology, wishing germany back into the time of the old germanic tribes and their religion - in my youth i was part of a group trying to observe the actions of his sect near starnberg in the south of munich, mahler published kind of a fanzine offering paper patterns for "germanic" clothing and articles about "pagan" rituals - sometimes a whole bunch of people - most famous amongst them a daughter of ss-heini himmler - went out into the woods at night to celebrate wotan/odin and freya if the moons were right - sometimes we chased them back home with stones and sticks...
    i guess his contacts to highranking nazis like himmlers daughter and organisations like HIAG (supporting members of ss and nazi-war criminals legally and socially) set him on his final trail: open antisemitism and holocaust denial - something his former liberal friends and aides can't tolerate - mostly because of their own reputation endangered by this fuckingly ambitious opportunist.
     
  7. Bentheanarchist

    Bentheanarchist Experienced Member Uploader Experienced member


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    I think don't he was really commited to the left-wing ideaology if he became a far Right-Winger. I just don't see how a so called leftwinger could become a Neo-Nazi. Red Army Faction targeted state figures and businessmen that were former Nazis. How could he become one himself? Maybe he could not make up his mind of what path to take. If you think about it compared to the Weathermen in United States; RAF were terrorists. They didn't check theyre bombing targets for innocent civilians and the bombs killed innocent bystanders. The weathermen were not the American RAF; the RAF were confused and violent and too authoritian for my tastes. I like the weathermen better because they were careful were they're bombs were planted, so it would property and not kill civilians. The RAF were blood thirsty terrorists who killed innocent bystanders for an Authoritian revolution. The RAF lost too; the Weather Underground lasted longer because they were underground. RAF was backed by soviet east germany; weather underground wasn't backed by any government, and in fact believed in stateless marxism.
     
  8. nike

    nike Experienced Member Experienced member Forum Member


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    the problem with going "underground" are the self-dynamics developing if a group starts isolating itself from the main movement - i think it gets even more worse if the group consists of people lacking the experience to assess the actual situation in general - and in addition to this, misses the point to realize it's own background and it's inherent contradictions. most of the core-members of the RAF had only a very brief time in the APO, only ulrike meinhof was a christian pacifist activist in the anti-nuclears movement before her involvement in berlin - almost everybody else was just a middle-class background student leaving the family home for the first time, getting carried away by the APO and the sudden rumble in the all so quiet fatherland.
    (exception baader, he dropped out of school early, bounced around as a small time criminal stealing cars and motor cycles and gaining a reputation as "babyface for action".)
    so we have gudrun ensslin, daughter of a protestant priest preaching with biblical furor the crusade "against the pigs", talking endlessly of self-sacrifice and martyrdom "for the cause" in face of the coming doom of a fascist state... while baader started playing the alpha-wolf and screamed down each and every uncomfortable discussion or critics - just like he did with his mother and aunts back in the time when he still stood with his family...
    the RAF started their hierarchical infight very soon after forming up in the underground, producing a constantly growing list of "traitors" and "untrustables" to be harrassed, isolated and even worse: peter homann who was almost murdered by his comrades in jordan after he dared to oppose baaders position and physically defending himself against baaders attacks.
    according to homann baader and mahler dwelled on occasion in fantasies of torturing and executing "enemies" - up to an extend where the palestinians threatend to send "the german kindergarden" home again - finally they helped homann to escape his execution, c'est fini RAF...
    the only time the RAF fought for anti-imperaialism and their pipedream of a marxist-leninist revolution was between 1970 and 1972, when they attacked us-military installations or tried to blow up high ranking war criminals like alexander haig - the rest of the time was the vain attempt to free the imprisoned "first generation" better the hardcore of baader, ensslin and meinhof - pure self-interest remote controlled from out of the high security jail...
    sorry, but i see some of the same mistakes with the weathermen - like the RAF they felt like an avantgarde, blaming - in true leninist tradition - the white working class to be unable to free themselves - but i wanna ask: how much experience and knowledge did they have to be able to make such a judgement? they claimed to be solidaric with the black panthers and other movements of colour - the hispanic and black activists blamed them of limiting their role in racial issues...
    and it isn't true that the weathermen never got support from the outside:
    the weathermen received money, weapons and explosives from cuba, some trained there and met officials of north vietnam "to learn from their revolutionary experience" - and promised to support the struggle in vietnam by turning the imperialist war into a civil war - that's leninism at it's best again...
    "stateless" marxism is an illusion - realities proved it again and again:
    as soon as one accepts the "necessity" of authority and the dictatorship of whomever, the race is already run by professional revolutionaries fighting each other for the throne, the lead or the right to order somebody else around...
    unlike Bakunin marx-brother carl never recoverd from the contradictions of his background - and even worse: lenin formulated the excuse for the authoritarians hypocrisy just to paint oppression "red"...
     
  9. Bentheanarchist

    Bentheanarchist Experienced Member Uploader Experienced member


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    The weathermen were anti-imperialist because the fought the US government to protest the Vietnam war. All the members of Weather Underground were hippies and before Weather Underground were pacisfists. The most anti-imperialist thing they did was try to blow up the united states senate building in 1983. I examine their warfare tactics because those tactics can be used to form leaderless anarchist guerillas.
     
  10. nike

    nike Experienced Member Experienced member Forum Member


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    if i remember it right, this one is interesting:
    The Weather Underground (2002), by Sam Green & Bill Siegel
    http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4437380 ... ocumentary
     
  11. Bentheanarchist

    Bentheanarchist Experienced Member Uploader Experienced member


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    I saw half of that documentary; very interesting.
     
  12. vAsSiLy77

    vAsSiLy77 Experienced Member Uploader Experienced member Forum Member


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    horst mahler wasn't the only ex-APO-hero turning right wing after some time where the left and ultra-left lost it's public appeal, he is only the most extreme example and the one catching the biggest attention of the media, part of it might even have been done with some intent after his bouncing around between franz schönhubers "republikaner" and the NPD - mahler left the party and took the next step from "nationalism" to public holocaust denial and antisemitism - mind me thinking that he was about to found his own "movement" during the time some ultra-nazis blamed the NPD for "going soft"? - and maybe here his former liberal friends and contacts backfired on him, he over did his little project and became a danger to the reputation of everyone who was in touch with him.
    but as i said before, he wasn't the only "former radical" turning into the opposite - people like schily, "squire" joschka fischer and some others from the green party, gerhard schröder (who had a great "left" time in the SPD-youth) changed "a bit" and ended up as minister of the interior (schily), fischer as the first former pacifist foreign minister pulling germany into the nato-kosovo-war - and schröder...
    jutta ditfurth (the most prominent ex-green fundamentalist, kicked out of the party by fischer) wrote a lot about the green movement turning "right" in the early nineties, the machinations and manipulations of party structures and the everpresent pressure of "we need to be reliable". that way the political "democratic" system is eating up the opposition as soon as they accept to play the game too - personal ambition and greed for power and attention only speed up the process.
     
  13. nike

    nike Experienced Member Experienced member Forum Member


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    well said! and if i look at some of the NWO/anti-civ/primitive/animal liberation nutters abusing leftwing terminology and structures just to keep their underlying misanthropic and fascist messages about dehumanisation and genozide "acceptable":
    there is not much of a difference to "neo-pagan" antisemit horst mahler preaching the blessings of a "germanic" paradise... :o
     
  14. Bentheanarchist

    Bentheanarchist Experienced Member Uploader Experienced member


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  15. nike

    nike Experienced Member Experienced member Forum Member


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    good tip, thanks! - and guess who funded delle chiaie via the bavarian/german "hans seidel" foundation runned by the bavaria-only (and uber alles) CSU?
    franz josef strauss!
    http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefano_Delle_Chiaie
    one of the contact "agents" was marcel hepp:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMa3XDRE5SI - political TV-magazine "kennzeichen d"
    translated by me:
    really a fine compadre to franz josef strauss who said:
    and oh-my-gods: this creep was bavarian prime minister and 1980 candidate for the chancellorship! :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o
     
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