Meeting Astrid Proll at a discussion organised by the Goethe Institute was not too inspiring -- in fact her speech was essentially what I learned from the Weather Underground film. She also seemed to have censored herself a lot, which is understandable for sure. So only a few scattered notes: one point she stressed and which was really new for me is that the superior fame of the RAF amongst similar organisations operating at the time was due to their well-chosen friends and enemies, namely a fanatic RAF researcher and the Axel Springer the journalist and media magnate who conducted a true news war against them at the time.

One typical misunderstanding was when Proll said that they had no idea what they were fighting for (no programme) but they were motivated by rage against exploitation, imperialism, etc. and their prime objective was to mobilise the masses around these issues. The liberal listeners and media and as far as I understand even herself understood this as a very good reason to dismiss the whole story as some youngsters running wild without self-reflection. However, my interpretation is completely the opposite. RAF was a marxist-leninist organisation with an anarchist spin, and such a strategy comletely falls in to the line pursued in this tradition. The communist critique starts from the analysis of the material conditions of everyday life and it is purely negative: it is an attack on the system and a call for mass action. If they would have had a programme of a plan for the future they would have been a vanguardist bolshevik style of organisation that I really despise because they want to impose their will on the people. The plan for the future should be decided by the people through spontaneous mass action and self-organisation and the world of communism cannot be possibly conceived by anybody living under capitalism!

We didn't ask any question but some comrades went on record in the news reports prophesising a general havoc for the coming years incited by the same problems RAF fought their war, thanking for the example. True indeed, as another questioner asked: "Were the methods of the RAF more cruel than those of the capitalist system we still live in?"