The Red Army Faction Volume 1: Projectiles For The People: A Documentary History

(Paperback)

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Description

The first in a two-volume series, this is by far the most in-depth history of the Red Army Faction ever made available in English. Volume 1 presents the manifestos and communiques issued by the RAF between 1970 and 1977. The three main manifestos - The Urban Guerilla Concept, Serve the People and Black September - are all included as are inportant interviews with Der Spiegel and Le Monde Diplpomatique.

Reviews

"This collection is not simply a documentary of the West German revolutionary Left at a particular point in the Cold War 1970s. It is more important for the insights it provides into the challenges, obstacles, and opportunities of waging armed struggle within the context of a wealthy, well-resourced, Western capitalist state. In this, the experiences and activities of the RAF are unique in the lessons they might teach organizers in Western capitalist milieus. In our own context, it is likely that future conditions of radical social change, and certainly revolutionary struggles, will more closely approximate those engaged by the RAF in 1970s West Germany than the much more influential examples of Russia in 1917 or Spain in 1936."
--Jeff Shantz, Upping the Anti

"The editors of this work, J. Smith and Andr 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 Not only a historical document, the fact that it is history provides us with the ability to comprehend the phenomenon that was the RAF in ways not possible thirty years ago"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, Counterpunch (on Volume 1)

Author Bio

J. Smith is the pseudonym of an activist who has been involved in the radical left for over twenty years. Andr Moncourt is the pseudonym of a writer with his political roots in the movements of the seventies and eighties. Ward Churchill was, until moving to Atlanta in 2012, a member of the leadership council of Colorado AIM. He is a life member of Vietnam Veterans Against the War and currently a member of the elders council of the original Rainbow Coalition, founded by Chicago Black Panther leader Fred Hampton in 1969. Now retired, Churchill was professor of American Indian Studies and chair of the Department of Ethnic Studies until 2005, when he became the focus of a major academic freedom case. Among his two dozen books are Wielding Words Like Weapons and Pacifism as Pathology.