The Red Army Faction, a Documentary History Read Online Free PDF Page A

back—they had no choice but to remain underground or face lengthy prison sentences. Had they surfaced, §129a would have been the least of the charges against them. It has been said that the other RAF members described the dropouts as“our mistakes,” 6 and resolving the problem of what to do with them had finally fallen to Viett and the
Stasi.
The proposed front provided a place for militants who were not ready or suited for the underground, and as such, it might be hoped that it would prevent this problem from reoccurring.
    The second revision in the May Paper concerned the potential for revolution in the First World, more commonly referred to as the “metropole” or even just the “center.” Whereas the RAF had traditionally held that theirs was a rearguard position, with the central struggle being found in the Third World, the May Paper argued that the struggle in the metropole had itself now become an important variable in the world revolution. The system was apparently slipping into deep crisis, and in its desperation might even resort to nuclear annihilation. At this critical juncture, imperialism needed to maintain its control everywhere at once; it therefore followed that it could be destabilized by resistance breaking out anywhere at any time.
    Within this global field, pregnant with possibility, Western Europe was singled out as occupying a particularly important position, it being the “point of intersection between East and West, North and South, state and society,” a “cornerstone” for the world revolution, and “ripe” for radical change.
    Although never explicitly stated, by repeatedly describing the proposed guerilla front as “West European” (as opposed to West German), the May Paper also raised the prospect of greater formal cooperation between guerillas in different countries, an idea that would be more fully taken up in due course. With some ambiguity, over the years to come, the term “the front” would be used to refer to each of these concepts: the front formed by aboveground and underground combatants, the front formed by the revolutionaries of the metropole and those of the Third World, and eventually even a front formed by different West European guerilla groups working together.
    The May Paper’s third theme was an appraisal of the events and consequences of ‘77. Admitting it had made mistakes, and that ‘77 had dealt the guerilla its largest setback to date, the RAF nevertheless proposed that the overall effect had been to push the movement forward:
    [I]n the autumn of ‘77, all real opposition was faced with a new situation and new operating conditions, both in terms of the existing reality and in terms of the prospects for future struggle. This forced everyone to fundamentally redefine their relationship to power—or else renounce their identity…. This leap in
consciousness was the personal, living moment within real people where the conditions of struggle here changed: IN FAVOR OF DEVELOPING A REVOLUTIONARY FRONT IN THE METROPOLE.
    The RAF noted the stark contrast between the optimistic, student-based, sixties left and the eighties “no future” rebels in the squats—“Cold, without illusions, expecting nothing from the state”—and, furthermore, viewed this as a positive development, explaining that, “This is the terrain upon which the revolutionary front in the metropole is now developing.” Despite conceding that it had made some errors, the RAF largely credited its own actions for this new hardline attitude:
    [T]he dialectic of the ‘77 confrontation led to qualitatively new subjective conditions of struggle here and to the definite integration of contradictions in the center into the development, the imperative, and the possibility of international class war. In this sense, it came at the right time.
    Finally, although Western Europe now stood alongside