The RAF

The RAF, which is the Red Army Faction, is a guerilla group standing up against the Grand Coalition.  The coalition comprised of two main political parties (SPD and CDU) and the Chancellor, Kurt Georg Kiesinger, a former Nazi Party member.  In 1966 ninety-five percent of the Bundestag was controlled by the coalition.  The RAF was in existence from 1970 to 1998.  The group was founded by their first leader Andreas Baader and described themselves as a communist and anti-imperialist “urban guerilla” group.  They were considered an extreme left-wing militant group fighting against fascism.  There were three generations that succeeded in the existence of the RAF group.  The first generation consisted of Andreas Baader and his associates.  One of his associates was Ulrike Mienhof, a well-known German journalist.  This generation operated in the mid to late sixties and into the late 1970s.  The wave of the second generation came about with the joining of former members of the Socialist Patients’ Collective.  The RAF actions between the 1980s and 1990 is considered the third generation of activists.  The end of the RAF was announced by an eight page letter being faxed to the Reuters news agency declaring the group had dissolved.  The similarities I see today with terrorist attacks and the RAF is that they are taking extreme measure to get attention.  The attention of whom they are trying to get is usually a government body that doesn’t seem to listen or hear opposing views until it’s blown up in their face.