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The roots of terrorism

a b
Paul Oestreicher
a
Vicar of the Church of the Ascension , East London
b
Chairman of the British Section of Amnesty International ,
Published online: 15 Apr 2008.

To cite this article: Paul Oestreicher (1978) The roots of terrorism, The Round Table: The Commonwealth Journal of
International Affairs, 68:269, 75-80, DOI: 10.1080/00358537808453310

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00358537808453310

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 THE ROOTS OF TERRORISM
WEST GERMANY: A SPECIAL CASE?
PAUL OESTREICHER

A CLOSER look at all that the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon has come

to mean for Germany and Europe has convinced me that although
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there are certain elements of the situation peculiar to the German scene,
there are others—perhaps the mort important ones—which must be seen in
a much wider context.
I begin with two quotations, the first from a personal letter by a sensitive
and sympathetic British observer of the German scene:
" . . . young Germans today, specially those with energy and imagination,
find it desperately hard to discover a channel for their hopes. This is not to
excuse a regression into murder (an apt perversion of a corrupt idealism of
the individual) but it may help us to understand something of their cruel
dilemma. Our own situation is scarcely better. Our own children are
brought up to believe in the balance of terror as a safeguard of society. . . .
Terrorism is in large measure the internalised social reflection of this massive
general corruption."
And now a longer quotation dating from 1932 and unrelated to Germany.
It comes close to getting the subject into its right context:
" Tolstoy and his disciples felt that the Russian peasants would have the best
opportunity for victory over their oppressors if they did not become stained
with the guilt of the same violence which the Czarist regime used against
them. The peasants were to return good for evil, and win their battles by
non-resistance. Unlike the policies of Gandhi, the political programme of
Tolstoy remained altogether unrealistic. No effort was made to relate the
religious ideal of love to the political necessity of coercion. Its total effect
was therefore socially and politically deleterious. It helped to destroy a
rising protest against political and economic oppression and to confirm the
Russian in his pessimistic passivity. The excesses of the terrorists seemed to
give point to the Tolstoyan opposition to violence and resistance. But the
terrorists and the pacifists finally ended in the same futility. And their
common futility seemed to justify the pessimism which saw no escape from
the traditional injustices of the Russian political and economic system. The
real fact was that both sprang from a romantic middle-class or aristocratic
idealism, too individualistic in each instance to achieve political effectiveness.
The terrorists were diseased idealists, so morbidly oppressed by the guilt of
violence resting upon their class, that they imagined it possible to atone for
that guilt by deliberately incurring guilt in championing the oppressed.
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 THE ROOTS OF TERRORISM

Their ideals were ethical and, to a degree religious, though they regarded
themselves as irreligious. The political effectiveness of their violence was a
secondary consideration. The Tolstoyan pacifists attempted the solution of
the social problem by diametrically opposite policies. But, in common with
the terrorists, their attitude sprang from the conscience of disquieted indivi-
duals. Neither of them understood the realities of political life because
neither had an appreciation for the. significant characteristics of collective
behaviour. While the pacifists erroneously attributed political potency to
pure non-resistance, the romantic terrorists failed to relate their isolated acts
of terror to any consistant political plan." (Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man
and Immoral Society, New York, 1932.)

It is almost uncanny how closely the above analysis fits the radical
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opponents of capitalist society and most particularly so in West Germany.

After a post-war decade of feverish reconstruction and then a decade of
gradual disillusionment with the " economic miracle ", West Germany's young
intellectuals—a very large body of students—in the latter half of the 1960s
came to the conclusion that western capitalism was, despite its liberal trap-
prings, as oppressive as Leninist communism. This oppression was primarily
economic. Its victims were held to be the exploited of the Third World—
and, unwittingly, the wealthy workers of the West whose real oppression was
thought to lie in their inevitable incorporation into bourgeois society. They
were the willing dupes of the great multi-nationals, degraded into the role of
ambitious consumers in a corrupt and corrupting system. It called for total
liberation and total repudiation of the bourgeosie, to which these students
all belonged.
A Moral Critique of the Western World
T is not my task here to analyse this "New Left" analysis of modern
I society. Suffice to say that I have a great deal of instinctive sympathy
with it and that, on the evidence known to me—practical and theoretical—
this analysis deserves to be taken seriously. It is a moral critique of how
the western world lives, based on a great deal more than emotional fervour.
Its validity does not depend on an almost religious acceptance of Marxist
ideology. The liberal critique of the economic philosophy of the New Left
also deserves to be taken seriously. Indeed the strongest case against this
New Left is that its analysis leaves the existing order devastated without
putting anything substantial in its place. Lenin and Mao were more practical.
But Marcuse and Adorno and Dutschke are not cast in the mold of Lenin
and Mao.
Now there is little doubt that the Baader-Meinhof generation of self-styled
soldiers, at war with western capitalism, are products (though at some remove)
of the New Left. That they have in practice become the enemies of, any
possible radical social reform is both paradoxical and true. These terrorists
have done incalculable harm to the left—as, in a totally different context,
did Stalin. Little wonder that the success of " Eurocommunism " will depend
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 THE ROOTS OF TERRORISM

on its acceptability to the bourgeoisie of which the western labour movement

is now a part.
What happened then to the German student movement of the 1960s?
Where have all the "communards" of Berlin and Frankfurt (and many
other places) gone? The majority have reverted to becoming what society
expects of them: "moderate" citizens, though many no doubt feel guilty
at their own willingness to be absorbed into the consumer society so easily.
Others have remained at the edge of society, private dissenters, psychological
dissidents, sectarian dreamers, religious idealists. There remain a few early-
middle-aged communards, a threat to no one. And some, inevitably, have
succumbed to drugs or alcohol. There are many forms of disillusion and
many personal and inter-personal ways of trying to cope—or of going under.
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Tolerance is not a characteristic of German society. Neither the

conformists nor the dissenters have much of it. Live and let live has never
come naturally. Indeed it has been regarded as morally suspect. The
" good " German is expected to declare himself. And that implies declaring
not only what he is for but even more what he is against. And " what"
quickly becomes " who ". You do not fight an opponent's ideas and then
take him out for a quiet drink.
Inevitably (with hindsight) the disillusion of the 1960s led some of the
idealists to terror as the untried alternative, not practical, but morally and
psychologically satisfying. That is one consequence of frustrated people with
ideas, ideals and courage. Gudrun Ennslin and Ulrike Meinhof had lots of
all these. And they were the intellectual and spiritual leaders of a terrorist
generation which may or may not have died with them. It is much too early
to tell. I had the strange privilege to get to know them, together with Baader,
Raspe and several of their comrades during one of their long hunger strikes
in prison. This was a way of getting to know them in the last stages of what
they regarded as their struggle against a totally oppressive system. I found
in my role as a visiting priest, looking for a way of helping to save their
lives, that I could not in any way despise them. My total rejection of what
they had done and were continuing to do did not in any way lead me to
reject them as persons. Society had every right to regard them as dangerous
criminals. Yet to me—subjectively—they were the prisoners of war they
held themselves to be. They were not monsters. Given differing circum-
stances they might have been celebrated as heroes and decorated with military
awards.
Comparisons with Nazusm

D OES this then mean that they were, and those still alive are, in my
eyes, pure, though misguided, idealists? This is the point at which
the analysis becomes difficult. In a much misunderstood article in The Times
I likened them collectively to the Nazis. The hatred of the Jews led to
Auschwitz, the hatred of the bourgeoisie to the death of the banker Ponto,
the ex-Nazi industrialist Schleyer and ultimately (" all's fair inlove and war •")
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 THE ROOTS OF TERRORISM

a whole kidnapped airliner. Before that there had been other "symbolic"
victims, from inanimate warehouses to American officers. The Nazi analogy
was bitterly resented by many on the liberal left, and with some validity.
The truth of the analogy lies simply in the belief that murder is justified in
the pursuit of a good end. (That assumption also underlies our collectively
approved nuclear defence, legitimising terror on a scale that defies imagina-
tion.) And when idealistic Germans hold a belief they are a little more
likely to act on it than some others. Subjectively Hitler did have ideals. But
they were in the fascist tradition of anti-idealism. To me they are demonic.
In that sense the Nazis were in no way the precursors of Ensslin and Meinhof.
Jillian Becker's strangely cynical book, Hitler's Children (Panther Paperback,
1978), totally fails to justify its title. The children who became the Red Army
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Group (Rote Armee Fraktion) were not the products of a Nazi upbringing or
even of violent reaction against it.
Ms. Becker's book, though infuriatingly superficial and snidely journal-
istic, is worth reading for the background it gives to the key personalities of
Ensslin and Meinhof. Both started out from strictly Christian backgrounds,
pietistic in Ensslin's case, radical in Meinhof's. Both were deeply immersed
in the struggle for a more humane world. Both were motivated by love and
compassion—and both were haunted by their own complicity in the guilty
structures of society. Most of their companions were in one way or another
originally on that kind of wave-length. The beginnings of this idealism were
pacifist. From passionate, idealistic pacifism in which unrealistic hope is
vested to the despair of the machine-gun is a logical tragic progression. " The
terrorists were diseased idealists", said Niebuhr in my opening quotation.
The Times, after the Schleyer kidnapping, accurately and yet misleadingly
headlined my analysis of the group: " Germany must stand up to these sick
gangsters." Praise was thereupon heaped upon my article by those very
Germans who bear heavy responsibility for this phenomenon: the complacent
capitalist establishment which has consistently refused to take its critics
seriously and which wrote off the student movement of the 1960s as " com-
munist scum"; the successful citizens, managers, bureaucrats and workers
for whom the word " student" became an expression of contempt. The mass
circulation Bild Zeitung and its serious pendant Die Welt epitomise this
attitude. " Why don't you all go across the wall to East Germany? " was
(and remains) their level of argument. The students were de-humanised.
A few—and paradoxically some of the most idealistic—turned to terror. If
reform cannot even be seriously discussed (except in endless talk with
powerless well-meaning " liberals ") and is swamped by balanced television
presentations which leave all the options open; if the pen and the camera are
powerless to effect change, what is left but the gun?

Leading to a Dead End

UT the gun, too, could only—metaphorically and literally—lead to a dead
B end. Ulrike Meinhof's suicide, ahead of the others, as she had been in
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 THE ROOTS OF TERRORISM

other ways too, was a logical end. But it is not total nonsense, only dramatic
over-statement, to say that a sick society killed her. The Baader-Meinhof
phenomenon is as complex as any social development involving differing
human beings. Yet these human beings, though they became gangsters in
objective terms, were also crusaders. The people they symbolically sought
to liberate were the poor of Chile, the blacks of South Africa, even the
supposedly duped workers of Diisseldorf. And all that led them into blind
and vicous hate and in the end to self-destruction.
I asked: were they all such idealists? Was not Baader just a swash-
buckling adventurer, womaniser and pirate? Quite possibly, though even his
kind of romanticism needed some kind of moralistic content. As each person
acts with mixed motives, so each group is " mixed " in its moral make-up.
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No army ever rejects a good commander because his motives leave a lot to
be desired. A society which washes its hands of its violent opponents as
though they were not at least in part products of its own corruption is a
dangerous society.
That is why I am frightened by the West German reaction to its tiny
terrorist minority. Whoever tries to understand the phenomenon is classed as
a " sympathiser". The humane and deeply anti-violent novelist Heinrich
Boll has become a symbol. He has refused to chime into the chorus of
anti-terrorist hate. Instead he has asked society some painful questions.
So, he and his like are made " spiritually responsible " for the terror. A total
distortion of reality.
The Christian Democratic Party has even published a list of so-called
sympathisers—a smear list. It is this that puts German democracy at risk.
And a shaken, humane Social Democratic government allows itself to be
pushed into passing anti-terrorist laws which will be the only monument to the
terrorists that is erected. For these laws begin to open the door to the truly
repressive, " strong" state which the terrorists, in their paranoia, already
believed had already arrived.
Involving the Name of Christ
RANZ Josef Strauss, leader of the Bavarian Christian Social Union, has
F suggested that he would not mind if the German people took the law
into their own hands and put paid to these terrorists. Who are " Hitler's
children " in reality today? The name of Christ is invoked by reactionary
politicians and industrialists and twisted into the opposite of what Jesus of
Nazareth stands for. He was as hated as he was, not least because he
preached love of society's enemies. At least some leaders of the German
churches have taken that to heart—and they are paying a heavy price. " The
Bishop of Terror ", screamed the headlines when Dr. Kurt Scharf, Bishop of
Berlin, took his duty as a pastor seriously and visited Ulrike Meinhof in
prison, just as he had visited other criminals, including Nazi war criminals.
Pastor Heinrich Albertz, once Governing Mayor of West Berlin, is similarly
branded as a clerical sympathiser. It was he who flew out to the Middle
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 THE ROOTS OF TERRORISM

East as a hostage when a group of terrorists were released after the kid-
napping of the CDU politician, Peter Lorenz. Pastor Albertz, a man of peace
and compassion, is not willing to fan the flames of hatred any more than
Bishop Scharf or the much vilified pastor of the left-wing students of the
Free University of Berlin, Professor Helmut Gollwitzer.
These men of the Church and men like Boll are protected by their
eminence. Many others are afraid to speak—and, if they are public servants,
afraid to lose their jobs. Chancellor Schmidt already deeply regrets that his
party initially supported a law which now, by debarring dissidents from many
professions (from professor to train driver), makes the Federal Republic in
this respect at least uncomfortably like the German Democratic Republic
in the East. No, West Germany is not a police state. It is sad to have to
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add the word " yet"—as a necessary and one hopes effective warning.
The hysterical reaction of West German society to its sworn enemies does
not bode well. But there are many—perhaps more than in other western
nations—who are prepared to defend a genuinely humane and open society.
I wrote in the article in The Times (and I have already said how differently
I would write it now) that the West German Government has my sympathy.
" . . . may they stand up to the terrorists and to a frightened and increasingly
reactionary public." The first they have done and done well. The second
is even harder and in the long run more important, not least because the
imposition of a strong state is now demanded by many opposition politicians,
and even welcomed by many Catholic and Protestant Church leaders.

No Room for Stereotyping

ET there is no room for easy stereotyping, either within Germany or of
Y the Germans as a nation. It was the CDU mayor of Stuttgart, Dr.
Rommel—son of the Field Marshal—who in the face of public opposition
saw to it that Baader, Ensslin and Raspe were given a decent funeral in a
civic cemetery. Germany is part of our world. It is perhaps a place where
light and darkness are more heavily accentuated than in most other countries.
But the problem of terror and of repression is not a German problem. I write
these lines as a citizen of the London Borough of Lewisham where Britain
as a racist society can be experienced at its worst. I can envisage white
terror in its streets and black terror in response. I have been within earshot
of an IRA bomb exploding in the centre of London; the British exploitation
of Ireland coming home with a vengeance. Totally unjustified, yes—but not
to those who commit their cause—however irrationally—to the outcome of
violent struggle.
Terrorism has a long history. It can usually be suppressed, though at
great social cost. But it will keep recurring until societies come to terms
with their own violent methods of social control. To denounce terror without
renouncing institutionalised forms of violence is one way of refusing to grapple
with the problem at its roots.

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