The Red Army Faction, a Documentary History by J Smith Read Free Book Online Page B

barbed wire and water cannons; the police announced that nobody would be allowed to leave without submitting to a search and presenting their ID. Rather than agree to this, people began to attack the barriers of what some would later refer to hyperbolically as a makeshift concentration camp. 26 In this they were supported by latecomers who remained outside of the fenced area, and soon the riot spread. 27 According to one account,
    Demonstrators built barricades, set fire to cars parked in the area, threw stones at police, and torched and plundered stores in the area. At times, the intensity of the flying stones hurled by protesters prevented firefighters from extinguishing the blazes. Hundreds of anarchists repeatedly charged the police lines, seeking to break through the barriers. Some statistics give an idea of the scope of the riots: police made 271 arrests, 87 police officers were injured
in the melee, 40 demonstrators had to be hospitalized, and more than 200 injured people were treated at the scene. 28
    As one anti-imp report put it:
    This time we had discussed the objective of the demo at a national level and organized it nationally. In spite of the state’s efforts to demoralize people, thousands came to Nollendorfplatz determined to demonstrate….
    [U]ltimately, it read as if it were always just us—sometimes fewer, sometimes better organized—who were involved in the fighting at these demos. But that’s not true. A great number of young people who are not part of our scene and who weren’t involved in the organizing participated in all of these demos. They participated not because they agreed with our goals, but because of their own living conditions (no work, no homes, no future) and because they knew they had to defend themselves. 29
    Of those arrested, twenty-one were charged with serious breach of the peace; they would eventually receive sentences of up to three and a half years. 30 As further payback, the day after the riot persons unknown firebombed the
Alternative Liste’s
main offices and preferred pub, which had become important gathering places for the left. Both were completely destroyed. 31
    Violent demonstrations in West Berlin were nothing new, but the fact that some radicals now sat in the city’s Senate complicated the equation. While the AL remained more connected to its militant grassroots than did the Greens, in both cases a dynamic existed whereby violence from the base, while it may have continued to radicalize the movement as a whole, provoked pressure on activists operating in the political arena, forcing them to move in a more conservative direction. As an example of this, following the Reagan visit, the AL apologized for having made a “mistake” in “permitting” the demonstration to erupt into violence, and pledged to promote nonviolent resistance in the future. 32 Even the former guerilla Dieter Kunzelmann was quoted as saying that, “Thepeacemakers must become more courageous, and the militants must become more reasonable.” 33 At the same time, this meshed with the internal clampdown within the peace movement, part of the process of strict nonviolence being adopted by all organizations and initiatives endorsed by the national Coordinating Committee. 34
BACK TO THE RAF
    While NATO and the peace movement dominated the headlines in Europe, around the world there was no shortage of imperialist depredations. The Malvinas War between England and Argentina was in full swing; with the help of the United States, El Salvador’s government was carrying out a bloody counterinsurgency war against the FMLN; and, just before the “peace through strength” Bonn Summit, Israel had invaded Lebanon—in September it would arrange for Phalangists to massacre thousands of Palestinian civilians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. Over the coming year, U.S. forces would bomb Beirut, and a few days later invade the Caribbean island of