J. Smith (1)

This book about the Red Army Faction of American-occupied Germany is one that should be read by any serious student of anti-imperialist politics. "Volume 1: Projectiles for the people" provides a history of the RAF's development through the words of its letters and communiques. What makes the book especially important and relevant, however, is the careful research and documentation done by its editors. From this book you will learn the mistakes of a group that was both large and strong, but which (like our own home-grown attempts in this regard) was unable to success- fully communicate with the working class of a "democratic" country on a level that met their needs. While the armed struggle can be the seed of something much larger, it is also another means of reaching out and communicating with the people. Students interested in this historic era would do well to study this book and to internalize both the successes and failures of one of the largest organized armed anti-imperialist organizations operating in Western Europe since World War II. (Ed Mead, former political prisoner, George Jackson Brigade)
Starting in the Sixties, a new revolutionary strategy began to plague the capitalist metropolis - the urban guerilla. Warfare once waged by peasant armies in the countryside of a Cuba, or a Guinea-Bissau, was suddenly transferred to small cells of ex-students in the imperialist centers of Berlin, Rome and New York.

This first volume about the RAF is about a part of WWII that did not end when the so called allies defeated the nazis. The RAF warriors come from a strong socialist history and knew they were fighting for the very life of their country. Many victories and many errors were scored which provide this important look into REAL her/history lessons. A must read for all serious alternative history students who then in turn can use it as a teaching tool towards a better future. (r.d. brown), former political prisoner, George Jackson Brigade
Clear-headed and meticulously researched, this book deftly avoids many of the problems that plagued earlier attempts to tell the brief but enduring history of the RAF. It offers a remarkable wealth of source material in the form of statements and letters from the combatants, yet the authors manage to present it in a way that is both coherent and engaging. Evidence of brutal - and ultimately ineffective - attempts by the state to silence the voices of political prisoners serve as a timely and powerful reminder of the continued need for anti-imperialist prisoners as leaders in our movements today. At once informative and inspirational, this is a much-needed contribution to the analysis of armed struggle and the cycles of repression and resistance in Europe and around the world (Sara Falconer, Toronto Anarchist Black Cross Federation)
Starting in the sixties, a new revolutionary strategy began to plague the capitalist metropolis - the urban guerilla. Warfare once waged by peasant armies in the countryside of a Cuba, a China, or a Guinea-Bissau, was suddenly transferred to small cells of ex -students in the imperialist centers of Berlin, Rome and New York. No urban guerillas became more famed or more demonized than West Germany's Red Army Faction (RAF). We knew their signature bold actions in the headlines: from the damaging bombings of the u.s. army V Corps headquarters in Frankfurt in 1972, in response to Washington's mining of Hanoi's harbor in an escalation of the Vietnam War, to the kidnapping and later execution of the head of the West German industrialists' association, in an effort to negotiate for the releases of revolutionary prisoners. But we never heard their political voices. Since the RAF's political statements, debates, and communiques were untranslated and unavailable in English even within the left. Now, at last, a significant documentary history of the RAF has come into the spotlight, complete with a readable account of the postwar German New Left from which it emerged. Even better, this work was done by editors/translators who reject the obedient capitalist media's trivalizing ot the RAF as "pathological" death-wishing celebrities. In their hands, the words of the RAF are revealed as serious responses to the failure or parliamentary reformism, trade unionism, and pacifism, to stop the solidification of Germany's own form of a neofascist capitalism (lightly cosmeticized with a layer of that numbing "consumer democracy"). The young RAF fighters hoped for liberation in their dangerous experiment but were willing to accept tragic consequences, and their story is emotionally difficult to read with eyes open. Controversial as the RAF was, their systematic torture in special "anti-terrorist" facilities stirred worldwide unease and even protest. In fact, those special prisons were the eagerly studied forerunners for the u.s. empire's own latest human rights abuses, from Guantanamo to the domestic "maxi-maxi" prisons. We all and the RAF are much closer than the capitalist public wants to believe. It is all here, in this first volume of the Red Army Faction documentary histories, and we should thank all those who worked on this book. (J.Sakai, authors of Settlers: Mythology of the White Proletariat)… (altro)

(Vorsatzblatt): In this book Moncourt and Smith are offering some "institutional memory" for those of us who are struggling against the horrible situations that unbridled capitalism and imperialism have forced upon us. Such institutional memory is desperately needed. They remind us that a generation ago a RAF political prisoner in Germany wrote that the world was facing a "...fascism that no longer requires mass mobilization of ideologically motivated fascists, but only bureaucrats and technocrats in the service of the imperialist state." A political observation that a generation later we still have not adequately mobilized around. Here too, Ward Churchill lets us see that not nearly enough has been done to provide a similar institutional memory regarding those who struggled against the same forces in the United States in that same time period. Is it any wonder that the fight against prison isolation in the U.S. is hobbled by a failure to realize that this country's 80,000 isolated prisoners suffer under hellish conditions originally designed to destroy political prisoners? Knowledge that would force U.S. prisoners to recognize that their struggle requires political and not "legal" solutions. Moncourt and Smith also remind us of the crucial strategic roles wimmin played in the struggles centered in Germany. Widespread and courageous roles that even left me stunned as the how little I really knew of that aspect ! A realization that if patriarchal conditions can blind one who has been struggling over four decades against these same forces, then we all must step up our efforts to place the destruction of patriarchy and all forms of gender oppression on the same level as the fight to overcome capitalist and imperialist exploitation (Russell "Maroon" Shoatz, U.S. political prisoner)
Dancing with imperialism, the second volume in the Red Army Faction documentary trilogy, continues to excavate a fascinating history of the German revolutionary left in the 1970s and 1980s. It powerfully situates the RAF within a broader orbit of revolutionary politics and world events. It gives us the inside story of how militants did and might engage with police, prisons, informants, media and one another in the context of struggle. It is an exciting story, a global story, and very much a story for today's movements. (Dan Berger, editor of The Hidden 1970s: History of Radicalism)
The editors of this work, J.Smith and André Moncourt, have created an intelligently political work that honestly discusses the politics of the Red Army Faction during its early years. Their commentary explains the theoretical writings of the RAF from a left perspective and puts their politics and actions in the context of the situation present in Germany and the world at the time. It is an extended work that is worth the commitment required to read and digest it. Not only a historical document, the fact that it is history provides us with the ability to comprehend the phenomenon that was the RAF in ways not possible thirty years ago. (Ron Jacobs, author of The Way the Wind Blew : A History of the Weather Underground)
This first volume about the RAF is about a part of WWII that did not end when the so-called allies defeated the nazis. The RAF warriors come from a strong socialist history and knew they were fighting for the very life of their country. Many victories and many errors were scored which provide this important look into REAL her/history lessons. A must read for all serious alternative history students who then in turn can use it as a teaching tool towards a better future. (b -r.d.brown, former political prisoner, George Jackson Brigade)
This book about the Red Army Faction of American-occupied Germany is one that should be read by any serious student of anti-imperialist politics. Volume I - Projectiles for the People provides a history of the RAF's development through the words of its letters and communiqués. What makes the book especially important and relevant, however, is the careful research and documentation done by its editors. From this book you will learn the mistakes of a group that was both large and strong, but which (like our own home-grown attempts in this regard) was unable to successfully communicate with the working-class of a "democratic" country on a level that met their needs. While the armed struggle can be the seed of something much larger, it is also another means of reaching out and communicating with the people. Students interested in this historic era would do well to study this book and to internalize both the successes and failures of one of the largest organized armed anti-imperialist organizations operating in Western Europe since World War II. (Ed Mead, former political prisoner, George Jackson Brigade)… (altro)