Speaker 1: I want to welcome everyone back to the Peak Kenyanas show. Thomas,
how are you done?
Speaker 2: I'm well. I've been recuperating from being on the road
in the Old Glory Club event, which was fantastic. You know,
I just the road kind of wears me out, but
the event was great. But I've I've been trying to
catch up on some I got some things in the can,
even if it doesn't seem like I'm busy, like I'm
always working on stuff, you know. So yeah, things are well, man,
I appreciate you hosting me as always awesome.
Speaker 1: Well, we're going to start something new tonight, and why
don't you introduce it? I think I think this one,
maybe more than anything we've ever done, people are going
to have questions about, especially if they do not know
the subject, because, let's face it, these are this is
a group of people that from the outside looking in,
you'd be why are you talking about them? Yeah, you'd
ask the question, why are you talking about them?
Speaker 2: Well, it's a huge topic. That's why I needed extra
time to prep for it. Then I still it's going
to take a few episodes to fully flesh it out,
and it touches and concerns things that far supersede and
transcend typical Cold War intrigues and you know, violence between
the superpowers, sort of open war. It wasn't typical ledgered
main of the sort that you know characterized the dynamic,
especially in the final phase of the Cold War, from
you know, the America's defeat and Vietnam until until the
Wall came down. We're talking, of course about the bider
Minehoff Gang or colloquially the Red Army faction. They called
themselves the Roads Army fraction, and that was deliberate. It
was somewhat mistranslated, but also newspeople and law enforcement and
security state types the thought of the typo, but those
are deliberate. You know. The idea is that there's an
organic whole that constituted the dialectical process as regards communism,
and what the boder Minehoff Gang or group or army
represented was this fractious element that was the vanguard of
the dialectical process as well as something that was organically
developing in real time. You know, now, on the surface,
these kids were just and most of our kids, and
there's three iterations that boder Minehoff slash Red Army Faction
and we'll get into that at a glance. And the
way it was presented in Western media was basically that
these were these were just radicalized youth from the nineteen
sixty eight or student movement who were kind of like
the Weatherman, but you know, much more violent and much
more well organized operationally. That's not true at all. They
were both a proxy of the Minister for Stought Security,
the Stazi, as well as very much, in my opinion,
a European liberationist element. Now what do I mean by that?
One of the founders of the Bottom minehoff Gang Slash
wrotees army frauction was horse to Mahler like people in
the right, probably no maler because in the two thousands
he went to prison for quote Holocaust denial or smaller
as a national socialist Okay, he always was, you know.
And the Spiegel as well as as well as these
internal security types they presented model or rather as some
crazy old man for clicking up with the NPD and
and beginning to advocate you know, these national socis ideas
or some kind of cynic He's neither of those things, okay.
If you were interested in liberating, in European liberation, if
you viewed America slash NATO as like you're op as
like you're the enemy of your people, you know, which
many many many Germans did on the right. Your only
path to liberation is some kind of alliance with the
Soviet Union, you know, during the Cold War, just as
now in geostrategic terms, the only path to German liberation
is is complex andd it depends with Russia. Okay. So
like why would got like mol or be advocating communism?
People don't if people have to understand that, especially during
the Cold War and especially in Germany, you know, the
dialectical process is a real thing. Like whether you believe
it's like the hand of providence or the cutting of reason,
you know, some kind of invisible hand in man's affairs
that is the prime moent of history, or do you
believe it's just you know, man's kind of owned dialectic
and discursive interaction with others that kind of like creates
this almost like feedback loop of intellectual production. Like whatever
you believe that it is, it's a real thing, okay.
And in nineteen seventy two, there were concept people's conceptual
horizon was was was confined to the Cold War you
couldn't think outside that box. Okay, there were like there
were one off societies like Iran, you know that, and
arguably you know, like Parnes Argentina, but I ran obviously
as like a more ideologically pure example that carved out
like truly third position regimes. But that's exactly the where
they were outliers, okay. And it was it wasn't just
a matter of it wasn't just a matter of optics
or like a people like molars saying like well we
shouldn't we shouldn't advocate national socialisms that will make people upset.
It's like that wasn't even possible, you know. It wasn't
just a matter of like making people upset or or
being with the times. It's like it wouldn't have a
context or make any sense, you know. And and again
for context, you know the d DR that the bottom
mine off action were all West Germans. But for context,
the d d R, again we covered this in one
of our earlier episodes, and I'll be reave some of
these things. Now, they were literally at war with Israel, okay,
as was the USSR. But the d d R not
only were there a spear point kind of like a
share punked of of warsaw pack power you know, by proxy,
especially in the Third World. But there was, there was,
There wasn't. There was, in fact, like an East German
like foreign policy into itself. And they despised Israel and
they viewed them not only as a bastion of you know,
imperialism in the Leninist sense, you know, they viewed them
as an obstacle to the proletarian revolution in the Near East,
which was key, you know, owing the geo strategic factors
and other things. But the like, like the East Germans
were anti Zionists and like anti Jewish at the point
that it's superseded pragmatic decisions relating to high politics and
and and and and dialectical conclusions. You know, this this
was this was payback for World War Two. Okay, you
can you can tell me that it wasn't. But I
don't accept that. Okay. The Communist party line anyway, with
the Soviets would say, particularly when they were under pressure,
you know in the nineteen eighties, uh supposedly for you know,
anti Semitic legislation, like they said that, you know, it's
not like Jews, like they're like, why would we why
would we emphasize Jewish stuffering in the Wor War too,
we lost twenty five million people, you know, like we
we vanquished the Third Reich. Like why we're not gonna
We're not gonna count how to some reactionary Jewish identity,
They just like refuse to acknowledge it, you know, so again,
you know, I refer people to pulp Godfreid, especially people
who weren't alive during the Cold War, Like the left
won the Cold War, but the warsaw packed left lost. Okay,
Like we're not we're not talking about wocism. We're not
talking about you know, guys who were sitting around reading
full Co and Marcuza. We're not talking about you know,
people who thought feminism was important. Then you know, we
need to make the races kind of blend together, like
that was not remotely within like Stalin's contemplation. That's like
not at all. What like Marcus Lenni's priorities are you know,
like like, uh like Marxist Lenin is the of the
sort that uh, you know, ragined and warsaw packed. They
might they might look at like the really between the
sexes in the West is being you know, colored by
like productive force determinism. They might look at like blacks.
It's like a hyper exploited like you know, like proletary
like lumping cast. But they didn't. But that's that, that's
like where it stopped, Like it wouldn't occur to them
to say, like, oh, you need you know, people's people's
only path to fulfillment is like sexual expression. You know,
we need we need to do away with with public
morals and you know it's wrong for you know, men
and women to find different roles in life like that.
That's not then that wasn't just like an an East
block and seat, Like I said, that's not the way
Marxists think about things. That's why I object to when
people claim everything that like it's Marxism, you know, like
like Kamala Harris is the quote Marxist. That doesn't make
any sense. Okay, Now that's not to say like Marxists
don't have fucked up ideas. They do, but it's it's
a different thing entirely. But now the Pozson conducts, I'm
going to kind of start from the end the end
of the Cold War because again, like what I partially
my hypothesis, if you will, is that a like the
Bottom Minehoff Gang and its three iterations was at base
a European liberationist tendency. That you know, it was fundamentally
anti American, anti NATO for liberationist reasons. There were aspects
of it and elements within it, particularly Horse Mahler, who
wasn't just a founding personage. He was he was their lawyer.
He was very much like kind of like the court
philosopher of Bottom Minehoff. He was a national socialist. And finally,
the final piece of my claim is that the uh,
the Growth Army fraction, it was very much like an
organ of the d d R. Okay, it was not
this kind of like spontaneous organization of radicalized students like
there there were such organizations, don't get me wrong. And
you know, the the Bottom Minehoff Gang also began like
in in in prison, okay. And as we'll see, there's
there's a there was a strong situationist element too, and
one of their key operators actually became radicalized in a
psychiatric hospital. So these these were not conventional like college
student radicals. But beyond that, again you'll see by their
choice of targets, by their operational sophistication by their the
overall pattern of of of their violence. They were equipped, trained, directed,
schooled by a highly sophisticated revolutionary military actor, and that
that actor was the d DR.
Speaker 1: Were you aware that Mahler is still alive. Yeah, yeah,
he's eighty eight years old. Yeah, he's a fascinating guy.
If he was, if he was younger, and it was
and my my German was better, I'd reach out to
him and then try to try to take some of
his testimony. But in any event, like why why am
I saying we're gonna start at the end. Because the
conclusion of the Cold War.
Speaker 2: It it brings the light things that relating to my hypothesis.
You know that in fact, you know, the wrote Army
fraction was was in fact like a direct action element
to the d d R. Okay in April nineteen ninety two,
and not for context, you know this the Soviet Union
no longer existed, you know, this was there, the kind
of independent states, but the group of Soviet forces in
Germany are finally like leaving now, like you know, put
there the withdrawals like complete okay, in that and in
in some kind of concrete terms, you know, regardless of
the fact that you know, the Cold War was over
now like about you know, two over two and a
half years. You know that that final withdrawal of of
a Soviet the Soviet military element was was kind of
like where the Rubi me's the road, like truly the end,
you know, at least and formerly divided Germany. This UH,
this twenty three hundred word communicate in April ninety two
was UH was sent to the UH, the French, the
French press agency and interestingly, like the RIF, the bottom
minehoff Gang, they they they they'd write their community case
and all all lowercase type of letters which have rezoom
was you know, in order to clarify that you know,
these these communications were legitimate, you know, because that wasn't
generally released, okay, But this communicate was sent to the
French Press office and Bond, which of course you know
was the in during the the days of a partition
Germany was the capital of the bundest Republic. It stated
that it was issued forth from the quote commandal level
of RAF the RIF to organize itself into four different levels.
There's the commando level, there was the prisoners, the resistance
and the sympathizer, the political supporters, like the command over
the direct action element, okay, like the prisoners or former
command whos have been take former commanders who've been taken
out of action, but whose interests and rights had had
to be guarded. And this became a big aspect of RIF.
Direct to action was you know, pressuring release of the
prisoners or or you know, taking hostages and order to
bargain the freedom of their people. The uh, the the
quote resistance or people like Horse to malor you know
who are like above above board, people you know, who
were presenting the the that the Marxist Lennon his case,
and the and the the revolutionary and and and the
revolutionary paradigm that was you know, demanding the liberation of Europe,
among other things. And obviously the sympathizers are are people
who you know, aren't in a position you know, owing
to you know, owing to social or professional station or
or health or age, you know, to participate directly. Okay.
So in other words, uh, the fact that issued forth
from commandal level means that you know, these this is this,
this is serious, Okay. These are people who who've been bloodied.
Uh at that time, at that time, it had been
about a year since there was any activity by RAF.
But as we'll get into when we get done, the
list of like some of their direct action operations. Uh
even even at the very end they were hitting high
profile targets. Okay. This communication was basically divided into two sections.
The first is was basically like an elaborate, an elaborate
but not you know, like but not overly worthy description
of like why like the RFS like arms struggle failed
and admission that you know, like the unarmed struggle like
under the banner of Marcis Leninism is done. It can't
you know, is impossible for anything like that to endure
or re emerge. The second section stated because of that,
because you know, the historical process won't abide, you know,
an ongoing revolutionary paradigm that uh, you know, the RF
like what wants a unilateral they they're declaring a unilateral ceasefire. Okay.
The implication being that if you leave us alone, like
will basically will basically disappear, you know, like don't don't
hunt our people down or still wanted for outstanding violence
like basically you know they basically like let the past
from the past you know, like nobody's no nobody, nobody
believes that you know, Marcist Leninist revolution is is as
possible in West Germany, and there's there's not even like
a d d R anymore to like, you know, unify
with so it uh in uh their own words quote
it said, we ourselves were confronted with the fact that
the policy we pursued in years before nineteen eighty nine
did not strengthen us politically, but weakened us. We were
faced with the fact that we had failed to accomplish
our objective, namely to achieve a breakthrough in the joint
international struggle for liberation. Now interestingly too like as well
as we'll see as the series goes on, there were
instances and I know some people in the Commerce are
going to pull out, like early on, especially you know,
people affiliated with the original like wrote to army fraction
or supporters, you know, they they pull out typical like
boilerplate like anti fascist bullshit and claim that like you
know ed now or was it Nazi or that you
know the you know, the you know, the communists, if
the Boodas Republic will throw a communists and concentration camps,
you know, like and like references to the Holocaust as
well as as well as the kind of token suggestion
that you know, the ARIF was a Maoist organization, okay,
because post sixty eight that was like very chic okay,
but very quickly it's all kind of abated, you know,
and the language, if not the optics of of the
Route Army fraction became very orthodox Marcus Lenists, okay. And
this kind of this kind of this kind of letter
declaring like the end of the arm campaign like very
much like reflects that, you know, like it's not there
just there's no there's none of this crazy you know,
kind of post Marxist language you know, about about how
like the fight will go on, or about like alternative
means of achieving liberation, you know, for the class is
most affected. It's saying like, look like the historical process
like what it didn't develop how we thought it would,
and like it's it's no longer, it can no longer
facilitate what we were trying to accomplish, you know, so
this is out of our hands to it would be
few that look in continue not as feud out with
self defeating. The ARIF admitted that Uh, the nineteen eighty
nine revolutions like basically like crushed them. And again if
they if they were not like an appendage of Warsaw
Pack specifically the d d R and in some way
the g RU and kg B, though not as much
as people might think, like they they wouldn't have been
talking this way, you know it Uh, you know it's
uh like it goes I won't, I won't, I won't
bore you, and and the subs with you know, uh
like a a Falon like reading of the of the statement.
But you know, basically it says like when when the
when the eighty nine revolutions like swept through, you know,
and we realized that, you know, the the political core
just like evaporated and like even the vanguard what have
been the vanguard at least in officialdom, you know, not
just in the Soviet Union, but in the satellite regimes
like lack the will to act as a vanguard and
and crust the resistance, you know, and see through you know,
the process of history. You know, like we we realized
that we had to like kind of like redefine our
our situation politically and again, as we'll get into despite
the fact that just said that this is a very
orthodox Marxist, Leninist even Stalinist movement or or actor. They
they very much run the cusp of you know, kind
of like developmental ideas. You know, they were they they
were very aware of like the situationist perspective of the capitals,
you know, and they believe that to inform the process
of history in like an immediate sense. Okay, so this
isn't this, this isn't like a cope or whatever. In fact,
it's it's very much Uh, it's really kind of like
a savage like self criticism, okay, like saying like our
entire are are our entire like constellation of motives and
the way we perceived, you know, the historical environment like
you know past and and in and in the moment
in which we were actively you know, killing people, and
and and and we're fighting this war. You know, where
we were. We were grossly mistaken, you know. And that uh,
especially in somebody who's who's good. I mean that that
that it doesn't just require when to put on is
ego aside to make such an admission. But if your
entire like rithmon tetro is like dialectical materialism, and uh,
it's kind of like this kind of like bassardized he
gaily in view of historical determinism, you know, and it's
and suggesting that you know, you were totally you're totally wrong.
And the way you read the proverbial indicators, you know,
that's that's that that that that's big okay, I uh,
you know, and and it indicates it suggests like it's
a kind of self reflection that's kind of rare among gorillas, okay,
because the direct action element generally that's that's not to
say like guys who actually put in you know, who
do dirt and put into work or stupid point the contrary,
but it it's it's it requires their own kind of
man and they and generally they're not particularly reflective on
the historical situation, regardless of their ideological persuasion. But you know,
this is a like a story begins here again too
because if the road Army fraction, and as the series continues,
you'll see what I mean by this. If they were
in fact, again, this this kind of nineteen sixty eight
or radical student movement that that that you know, somehow
became habituated to direct the action and violence and maybe
received some assistance, you know, after it had already you know,
developed the kind of ideological and social infrastructure required, you know,
from the Warsaw Pact. Official them like they this this
sort of this this sort of like what like self
surrender letter like or self pretique and formal kind of
ending to the arm campaign like would not have been forthcoming.
You know, why why wouldn't have they have just continued
into perpetuity, especially when these were like wanted men and
women in large part. You know, it's not as if
they could go back just having like a normal life
above board the uh. And it goes out to say too,
like in loves of what I just said, it said
that it said that the the commando level of the
organization was afforded too much of a leading role. You know,
their operational philosophy had always been to favor the direct
action element. Okay, it's the advant guarde Okay, not just
as a kind of self policing elitism, but also because
obviously that's something that set them apart. As we'll see,
like the era killed a lot of people. They killed
a lot of high profile people. It killed CEOs, they
killed top diplomats, they killed uh, it killed national political figures.
You know, Okay, these are not guys throwing pipe bombs
at at the outside of the local beer garden or
you know, like beating up on uh, you know, people
they decided were fascist or something. You know, this was
this this this this was very very serious. But at
the same time, it's you know, the men were actually
are fighting a war, whether you're talking about you know,
like where you're talking about like comed infantry and in
a conventional war situation, or whether you're talking about a gorilla
vanguard involved in you know and in killing people incident
to a political struggle. You know, you can't you can't
walk through the force of the tree, like just by
virtue of where you're situated. You know. It's uh, it's
like being pressed up against an obelisk and trying to
get like a feel for like what its dimensions are.
You know, you've got to be able to step back
to what you ares and like see how it's shaped
and then kind of like contemplated. But if you're if
you're killing people and you're fighting GSG nine and you
know you're in you know, American Army intelligence and you know,
pretty shaw my five and you know you're you're you're
living by the by the by the barrel of your
of your agent k machine pistol. You know you're not
You're not you're not thinking deeply about you know, Marxist
Leninist dialectics. And you know whether or not, you know,
the things predicted or augured they're in are actually coming
to fruition. You know, that's just a fact. It's you know,
the uh. What also is interesting is that it without
it doesn't stray anything approaching like vocus language or like
outright nationalism or like nationalism with the lower his end,
you know, like nationalism. The type of the Evan type
is dead obviously, but they talk about how the time
has come we you know, they need to look out
for the German people like and anybody politically engaged must
because these these are critical times, you know, and any
anybody who would be interested in following them, you know,
it's they It would be a mistake for to try
and seek out opportunity targets to you know, as as
this time of transition is underway, you know, because it's
not it wasn't clear like what the parameters were yet
as well as like what the objective would be you know,
and divided Germany was it was a unique situation that
was like neither war nor peace, you know, like I
made the point people on the inner German border, like
particularly where tactical nuclear forces were based. And then the
folding gap, you know where which which would have been
you know, the the fall the gab in the Returman
plane is where like wars, the bank armor would have
absolutely assaulted evental war like he visited. It was like
it was like some some alternative reality where like World
War three was already on. You know, it wasn't war,
but it wasn't peace time either, you know. And and
Berlin was the city full of intrigues, you know, you know,
full of full of spies, you know, full of them,
you know, full of political assass and it's quite literally
you know, full of ideological intriguers of all stripes. You know.
It was that they don't went away after the wall
came down, you know. And uh in in some ways
there was quite a bit more uncertainty obviously, you know
when the truly you know, like and the and the
Unified like truly like peacetime Germany, and I mean, I
mean it should this should be obvious, but it's you know,
the people even even though my sense of people, they
I think they they overemphasize the the significance of violence politically,
you know, like it like like direct action doesn't even
up self accomplish anything. You know, it's got to be targeted.
It's got to be situationally devised, you know. And uh
even then like it's it's gotta the way it the
way it indexes with the kind of conceptual horizon. The
body politic is key, you know, all this stuff, and
you know that this this sounds like, this might sound obvious,
but it's really it's not obvious when you're when when
you like the royal you was like is insinuated into them,
you know, a political uh an our and political struggle
the uh and mhm beginning uh beginning of ninety seven.
It doesn't jumping around a lot, but one of the Congress. Again,
like I said, there's a few aspects of my hypothesis. Okay,
you know that being the national socialist element or tendency
within the road Army fraction. That's not to say that
they were a national solvices grouping, but the element was there. Secondly,
the you know, their uh, their status as a their
de facto status is a true you know, like Oregon
slash element of of the Warsaw Pact and not just
a spontaneous rebel grouping, you know, and and and an
incident to that very much, especially during the middle phase
of their campaign or on ninety seventy eight, they put
a premium on on opportunities to negotiate, you know, with
with the Bond government in the United States and and
and the British government as well as other as well
as the Netherlands in Belgium where they had carried out
you know, homicides and terrorist acts as we'll see. But
the Road Army fraction, they started to emphasize this policy
of of of negotiating release of their prisoners as well
as try to piggyback negotiations and release of those people
with it they considered to be like adjacent and allied elements,
like people people from the Popular Front for Liberation of
Palestine General Command, like people from the POO, who in
those days was dominated by FATA, which contra Hamas was
you know at the secular wing and the the RAF
trained with the POO under FATA, which is one of
the ways they learned to use weapons, they learned basic
infantry tactics. You know, you can't you can't just like
teach yourself these things. You know, something that that that
basic question too. If if the Road Army for Action
was just these these crazy sixty ter college kids like
what they were like they just they were just like
drilling and infantry tactics like out in the woods for fun.
I mean no, but you know, the uh, we'll get
into that too. But the this, this, this, this gave
the World Army Fraction an international profile. And we'll get
into this in the second episode. But you know, this
led to the establishment of a Japanese wrote Army fraction.
The Japanese Communist Party was very active, had a lot
of clout and was very very very radical and some
people may know that he might not figure the tangent,
but the Japanese Route Army Fraction carried out this assault
at at Jeda Airport in Israel and killed like twenty
six people. But again too, you know, borrowing, it's I mean,
think about that. Okay, there's there's this, there's this, there's
this hardcore German and uh Japanese armed groupings under the
same banner, you know, when they're and they're slaughtering people
in Israel under the under the banner of you know,
anti imperialism. But if you don't, if if you don't
see the relationship the history there, like, I don't know
what to tell you. Okay, this is not accidental, it's
not just you know, it's not just splendidly kind of
like ironic optics or something. But oh, Germans and Japanese
taking the fight to a Jewish state. I mean again
it should be obvious. But people counter signal be on
this all the time, which is I mean, they're all
going to do that, but I I don't just say things.
I can back this up and I will. That's what
we're doing here. But the this, uh they called uh,
the rotary paction, called this process like collating you know,
between themselves like the Japanese particularly you know, the PLO,
as well as Popular Front deliveries in Palestine, which is
primarily a Syrian outfit, and the East Germans and Syria
were thick as thieves, you know. And I've made the
point again and again the Syria should have an outside
significance to people on the right in a way, not
unlike Franco's spanded that's a subject from another episode. But
the the UH, the d the d d R military
establishment was very insanely into Syria. Heinz Hoffman, who was
UH the UH, the d d R Defense Minister, he
personally knew al Asade. They were very close. He assisted
him in modernizing the Syrian er of army. And you know, incidentally,
the so as you have you have East Berlin and
indexing very tightly with with Damascus, and then you have
the Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine General Command, which
was a very Syrian outfit, you know, indexing with the
Road Army fraction, and both are technically you know, like
these these these independent non state actors. I mean this
again to the kind of the interdependence here and the
relationship of of of state officialdom to these to these
organizations like should should be clear to anybody, but you know,
truly up to person who's blind to kind of political realities.
The UH, the that UH. And it's also too like
one of the reasons why you know, there's you could
tell too that I the Rotary Refraction was taking some
of their cues from the Provisional IRA like not in
terms of ideology or anything. But you know, the the
provos were fixated. I mean, I don't mean that dismissively.
I mean it was it was a correct emphasis. They
they were strongly oriented towards there are people being who
were locked down being recognized as political prisoners and not criminals. Okay,
because a few things happened there that obviously the legitimized
that your struggle and your people, you know, come to
be viewed as soldiers and thus be entitled, if not
the full protection of the Jeeva Convention. You know, they're
they're they're there at least you know, afforded protection as
as ah as enemy combatants you know, which prior to
the Bush administration is gonna making hashed with that. You
know they did, uh, they did. They were afforded some
some degree of protection you know where I mean obviously
obviously because like were they not they they would have
just been taken on shot. But also it's you know, uh,
there's a it opens the door to negotiation, okay. And
and negotiation is I mean despite mistards the Lenski might claim,
or despite what these Raelis claim about terrorists, or despite
what despite what America claims about you know whoever it's
it's angry with at any given day, you if you
just if you just claim you refuse to negotiate with
OP four like you're you're pissing under the wind. You know,
you can't just you can't just sit about to resolve
all all political questions like militarily or a boy like
threat of force. That's Assen nine. But there has to
there there has to be some sort of equality of status,
you know, if not full equality, there's you know there
there's you've got to be treated as existing, if not
on sovereign footing, at least on legitimate at least on
legitimate terms as a political actor. Okay, you know, and
again this this removes what would otherwise be you know,
criminal behavior, you know, non privileged homicide, you know, things
like this, you know, from from a from a category
of a pure criminality. So this, this is fundamentally important.
And this and this also isn't obvious. I mean, like
the this is somewhat uncharted territory, you know, I mean
it's we obviously, I mean gorillaters or as old as
literally as old as Christ, you know, that's what like
the Zealots were, but in in the in like the
in like the post Westphalian system, Like how we how
we I'm talking about you know, like like the twenty
twenty per century people who are representatives of of of
of sovereign states, you know, how how we treat partisans?
This was this was this is an issue of first
impression in large parts. That's why it's such a huge
part of of Schmid's book almost of the Earth, because
he's saying, you know, he's writing in the you know,
in in at the peak of the Cold War, and
he's saying, like, look like this is going to become
like the face of warfare. You know, how how are
you going to respond to this? You know, it's there.
There's got to be some sort of mechanism whereby you know,
there there there's some kind of not moral like at
least pragmatic, you know, consensus about you know, how we
how we deal with these situations, how we deal with
these actors, you know, and what and what like the
path the pieces when you know, uh, when when a
national state is like so engaged against such an element.
But you know I so I mean again, obviously I
I don't see like nineteen to twenty five year old
kids just like devising this. Okay, I know a lot
of brilliant guys that age, don't get me wrong, but
it's just not it's this is something that very much
came from somebody like Marcus Wolf was, you know, the
kind of like the man behind He was like the
real brains of the Shazi, you know. Eric Milka was
a it was was it was just it was you know,
he wasn't a figurehead. He was very hands on, but
he was. He was basically just like a thug cop.
Wolf was really the He wasn't just like the spymaster,
but he was. He was of the d d R.
He was, uh, you know, he was he was kind
of he was kind of like there uh, there's there's
shining prints of all things really to deplit it warfare
and a fascinating guy. I highly recommend his autobiography. Whatever
anybody thinks of them, he's he was probably was. He
was about the best. He was one of the best
men in the worst out back for those but it's uh,
now they get for context here and let me just
see how long we've been going. Okay, for context here again.
Lets let's let's break down someone with the Roade Army Fraction.
It's first and and this first errat first and second iterations,
what kinds of activities was engaged and what kinds of
targets it was hitting? Okay, twenty second October and now
he's seventy one World Army Fraction members frem Guard Bowler
and Gerhard muller Uh. They attempted to rescue their comrade,
leading Margaret Schiller. She was in the process of being
arrested by the police after shooting it out with them
after she'd been identified as you know, an an RAF member.
A police sergeant named the Heinz Lemke was shot and wounded.
The sergeant on the scene when Norbert Schmidt was killed.
I mean, killing a cop obviously is a huge thing.
I mean it's really a point in overturn and in
absolute in an absolute sense. But that doesn't prove that
like the RIF will just get down, okay, I mean
they they thought nothing of shooting it out with them
with the German Federal police. Two months later, December nineteen
seventy one, the another cop, another another boons for public cop,
was shot by Worte Army Faction members in the process
of a bank robbery. He lived, but the the heist
crew made off of one hundred and thirty four thousand
Deutsche marks, which was a fortune in ninety seventies money.
You know that the deutsch mark was you know, the
like the euro before the euro. You know, so they go,
that's like, that's like seven hundred thousand dollars and like
today's money. Okay for like a one off score. That's
freaking insane. Now check this out. As time goes on,
these targets don't has become more and more brazen. But
like the ambition here is crazy. May eleventh of nineteen
seventy two, at the Frankfurt Main the US Army five
Core Headquarters, which is located in the ig Farban Building,
the Roade Army for Action blew up the Officers Club.
They wounded thirteen soldiers. They killed Lieutenant Colonel Paul Bloomquist.
Bloomquist was a war hero. He was an Army aviator.
He was he was a you know, a helicop, was
oppera pilot. He held four Distinguished Flying crosses, Silver Star,
purple Heart. I mean this guy, this guy was like,
uh like Audie Murphy, you know, and uh, they killed
him and attacking like the I G I G. Farban's
you know, that just wasn't just a symbol of like
West German kind of you know, national manufacturing capitalism, but
again this was this is the headquarters of of of
an army corps, you know, striking that killing a lieutenant
colonel and and like a celebrated war hero with that.
I mean, that's that's one of thos. A shot fright
across the bow. That's real war. That same month, at
UH in Augsburg, the Royal Army for Action bombed a
police station, specifically targeting the Bavarian State Criminal Investigation Agency.
Five thes were wounded. For the first time. There's a
formal acceptance responsibility the UH. The the team called itself
the Tommy Weissbacker Commando. They named themselves after either prisoners
of the like their people who've been taking prisoner of
k I A like k I in their mind, So
like when are too responsibility always like the Tommy Weissbacker
Commando or you know, like the whatever, like the the
like the Horse Boller Commando, you know which is which
is again that's like a callback to like Spanish civil
war stuff and like right October days, you know, as
I'm sure people picked up into the lore again. In May,
the U a federal judges car was bombed. In addition,
they bombed the headquarters the actual Springer of Verlad Corporation
and wounding seventeen. The Heidelberg the US Army in Europe
Officers Club in Heidelberg was bombed followed moments later. I
guess people ran out across the street was the Army
Security Agency and they planned a bomb there too, So
like these people were fleeing the officers club, they got
blown up, and then three American soldiers were killed and
three more wounded. I mean, since this was, I mean,
think about that was happening today, Like that's totally insane.
Speaker 3: You know, it's you know, my dad was stationed there.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, that's nuts.
Speaker 3: That's where I was born.
Speaker 2: Yeah no, no, yeah, I know, I know you're a
wounded republic native but which which is actually got awesome,
But yeah, what happened your path wasn't so awesome. But like, yeah,
the now this was what kind of see the real escalation.
In nineteen seventy four, the first uh, the first rotar
army for action action of A seventy four the West
German embassy.
Speaker 3: And UH.
Speaker 2: In Sweden, a hit team or assault team calling themselves
the Commando Holger Mines Holger Minds with a rogue arm
refaction member who died on a hunger strike in prison.
And this is another thing too, like again like like
talking about the provos like these, there were a number
of them that that that didn't Bobby Sands, didn't just
star themselves at death like these guys were. I mean
they were crazy, you know, and and in in a
parisan sense, you know, they incredibly dangerous people. They uh,
they carried out, they carried out this assault on again.
This was the German embassy, the West German Embassy in Stockholm.
You know this this this uh this this RIF team
stormed it, demanding the release of a RIF prisoners as
well as a list of you know of adjacent comrades
you know, Palestinians, Japanese others. They they stated that if
the police moved in, they said, they wired the building
with fifteen keels at TNT and if the police moved
on them, they blow it, They blow themselves and everybody up.
The police decided they were bluffing. Well, I mean, the
groups are just six members. It was a most significant
of whom was a guy named Siegfried Hausener. And I'll
get into that in a minute, but it was, uh,
it was. There's five men and one woman. Theyandered the embassy,
took thirteen official hostage, including the uh, the ambassador like
a German ambassador. Uh. I believe the ambassador Heinz Deatrich Stalker.
I believe they took him up to the window so
that you know, the police could see him and then
blew him away. They did it to somebody, I think
it was Stalker. And again they weren't the police to
back off, but they said that they'd killed him. They
said they'd kill a hostage every hour if the police
didn't lift the uh you know, they didn't, didn't retreat
from the primity established And again they threatened to blow
it the entire embassy up if the police moved to
storm them. But I don't know it was actually it
was one of the hostages killed. Was This is fascinating.
Baron Andreas von Mirbach, who was the he was the
German military at the Shade of Sweden. He's the guy
who's marched out under the landing and shot dead. This
is macab but fascinating. In nineteen eighteen, his ancestor, Veilhelm
von Murbach had been assassinated the German MC in Moscow
by those revolutionaries who stormed the freaking embassy. Like how
like how how fucking insane is that? Like I don't know,
maybe think of that scene in Hannibal. You ever seen
that movie where he kills the he kills the Italian
policeman and he's like, yeah, then when your ancestors get
get like vivisected by the by the Borgias and he's like, yeah,
how'd you know that? I think, like, but only in
Europe Man, but Helmut Schmidt was a new chancellor. It
was very much I mean, West Germany in the seventies
was really kind of a mess. And the some people
believe that the government you know, you know that's one
of Philly Brandt, who is the long time mirror of
West Berlin subdue him is a fifth columnist. Oh my, no,
it's kind of friendly. Uh, it is overly friendly past
or towards the d d R. That's all the other story,
Like there's whole Espionize scannell to him. But point being,
the Federal Republic was kind of paralyzed owing to the
situation Visavis the executive as it as it happened, uh
as the sweetest police payers, the storm in the building,
the uh that the road time refraction blew up, you know,
killing everybody. Now the reason why, the reason why I
raised uh, Siegfried Hausner. This is Housner's background, and I'll
wrap it up in a minute. But I when I
said before that much as the d DR itself and
the World Army fraction, if you accept my hypothesis, and
even if you don't, as regards the Red Army as regardless,
the d d R, that the Road Army fraction was
very much like an appendage of a worse peg officialdom.
You know, despite their kind of orthodox Marxist in this posture,
they borrowed very much from you know, secondary like like
dialectical lawsuites of a you know kind of socialist discourse
and revolutionary discourses generally security house or had been in
a mental hospital, a psychiatric hospital. That's something want emphasize too.
You know how these days all you hear about is like, oh,
we didn't know about mental illness in the old days.
That's a weird take, Okay, I think mental illness is
definitely over diagnosed today, people definitely over medicated. But psychiatry
was at his zenith in the seventies. Okay, it was.
It was like like there was a push for like
mental mental health to be addressed. Okay, it was definitely
in people's radar. Now, the situationist movement as well as
UH student like Frankfurt school type people, which the rotimyfraction
definitely acolytes of for limited purposes, Grams and Adorno featured
very large in their kind of ideological horizon. But anyway,
Sacred House and there he was part of what was
called UH translates to the Socialist Patients Collective or the SPK. Okay,
the core of the SPK uh It's idiot, it's it's
slogan was literally turned illness into a weapon. Now, what
their notion was was that mentalness is very real. You know,
it's not uh, it's not a misinterpretation of a of
a a psychic phenomenon under stress or something, but that
you know, basically quite literally capitalism and capitalist structures, you know,
our first and foremost psychically oppressive and are literally breeding
mental illness. So the the idea being that somebody who's
self consciously mentally ill, they're aware of what the capitalist
structure is doing to them, and the only the way
the way to be cured is to reconfigure social conditions
such that the alienation that bred their mental illness in
the first place goes away. I mean this, this is
like literally like the ideology, okay, And that's uh, that's
where a Houser came from, you know, and he uh,
presumably he was a very eager volunteer for direct action
because you know, somebody, somebody tortured by mental illness, if
they come to believe rightly or wrongly, or they come
to sincerely believe that you know, some kind of superstructural
tendencies of you know, the world historical process is quite
literally making them crazy. You would you would die to
remedy that. You know. I find this fascinating. But you
know I bring that, I bring up how or not
just because he died in the service of a throat
refractions idea, but in a very high profile in a
very high profile terrorist operation.
Speaker 4: But you know, he, like I said, uh, there there's
there was there was there's an ideological complexity here that
is both the product of the times from which it
was emergent, but also like supersedes.
Speaker 2: It's the uh and I think that gives I'm gonna
we're gonna pick up next time with with what I
think of as the rofractions Morgan's NATO, what we've addressed
so far released there there wargans the boot is Republic,
but I I think this is you know, I think
this is an appropriate stopping place. And frankly, like I'm
in a lot of pain from sitting, so if that's yeah,
I think we've been going about an hour of this pool,
but you will. We'll take this up in a couple
of days.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that sounds good.
Speaker 1: I want to take the chance to remind everyone about
our our movie reviews and how you know, we have
this gum road page set up and on my website
Freeman Beyond the Wall Forward slash movies you get you
can access I have links to all of it. And yeah,
there's uh, we're gonna record another movie next week. We
won't tell anybody what it is right now, We'll surprise people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we got it's like Mystery Science the year
three thousand men.
Speaker 1: Hopefully hopefully we can share some uh, some cultural and
historical facts that are relevant to a lot of the
you know a few of the things we're watching.
Speaker 2: No, man, I I uh, I mean I I'm literally
like a movie junkie man, like I meanline and inject
movies and like I since I was a kid and
being able to like mouth off about movies and that
people actually be interested in hearing that. That's that's freaking wonderful, man.
Like that's uh like like legit, man, that's like free
bubble gum like all day every day. So yeah, I
really appreciate people like being interested enough to subscribe.
Speaker 3: Yeah, me too. Do you want to do plugs and
get out of here?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Man? You know it is always the best place,
I mean, like one stop place to find me is
in my website. It's Thomas seven seven seven dot com
number seven. Each of me is seven seven seven dot com.
I'm on X, which is doing all sorts of like
weird fucking stuff to like tweak their platform. But I
actually think it's getting better. But I mean it's what
we got, whether it's getting better or worse. But I'm
at real at kevil r e a L underscore number
seven hm as seven seven seven, like the real, like
the read. The real stuff is on my sub stick.
It's including the pod. It's a real Thomas seven seven
seven at subsec dot com. There's like a bunch of
other ship man, Like I'm on t gram on Instagram.
Like just like go to my website or like seek
that ship out and you shall find you're on like
a Google search for me. Man. Like I I'm not
saying I'm I'm like now cools to Coos, but like
I just like there's a lot of there's like a
lot of shit out there, like with me in it.
You know. Like so if you just like google me, like,
you will find stuff. I find stuff that like I
forgot that I did. I mean, I I'd like to
think it's because I do a lot of content because
I'm going senile be fuck knows.
Speaker 3: All right, Thomas, So the next time, thank you very much.
Speaker 1: I want to welcome everyone back to the Pea Show
here with Thomas hate On.
Speaker 3: Thomas.
Speaker 2: I'm doing well, man. What I wanted to emphasize today,
I assume people are getting something out of this. I'm
nothing up twos. I mean, I the bottom MINEHFF phenomenon.
You've got to understand there's two things that I think
are keep understanding it, okay, firstus that there was there
truly were three iterations of it. This armed grouping that
had a common lineage existed from nineteen seventy to nineteen
ninety eight, and every five to seven years because their
operators got got got killed, ended up incarcerated, or disappeared underground,
some of whom didn't like re emerge for decades despite
being you know, hunted by by by the Buddhist Republic,
you know, counter terrorists and the offer what they what
they euphemistically called the Awese section of the Constitution, which
is no joke. These people have limitless resources. But you know,
the original boder Miinhoff grouping they really were. They really
were a product of a peculiar time in place, and
that was adan Auer's Buddhist Republic and their parentage. A
lot of these guys fathers had died in the war
or just never come home. You know, there was like
lost generation of people as well. Seeks we're gonna get
into their biographies, and they had kind of a confused
understanding of what they wanted to do. Like Horse and Mahler,
I maintain was always something of an ideological pole star
for the group, and I believe he was always a
national socialist, but he was diferent than the rest of
him and he wasn't a direct action operator. However, by
the last iteration of the RhoD Army fraction, they were
totally indexed with the Stazi and they were basic they
were running operations for the DDR, you know, like it
had totally changed into something different, you know, and it
had becomes solidly in the Stalinist Warsaw packed camp, you know,
which was a huge coup for Marcus Wolf and the
administer first starts secure to be able to do that
in America, you know, the Soviets. True, after the Common
Turn was like ceased to exist formally, okay, what replaced
it was this aggregation above ground, you know. It was
common form, which was basically, uh kind of like the
communist version of the G seven, you know, or the
Shanghai Cooperation Organization maybe is more correct analogy, but you know,
the the communist part of the Soviet Union, the other
tentacles and many things, and they were constantly trying to
flip leftists in the UK and America like to the
Warsaw Pact camp like away from this schismatic post sixty
eight ideology, you know, and they had some success with
that in the UK, but in America, like it was
always hitting the wall, you know, like Gus Hall, I
mean his theice thing. There were some guys on the right,
especially in the earlier phase of the Cold War, like
James Hartzung Medal, who I believe were signaling to some
of these warsaw pack type agents in America, their notion
being this is similar to what Girbel's notion of clicking
up with the KPD, you know, during like the years
of struggle to smash the social democrats. You know, there
is an internal logic there. But my point is, uh,
you know, the uh the Stazi managed to would basically
totally completely flip the bottom mine off tendency, you know,
and make it literally like an organ of a of
the ddr UH violence apparatus. And I find that fascinating.
So I wanted to get into the first iteration, the
first iteration the literal botder mine Off faction and talk
a bit about these personalities that constitute it and what
their backgrounds were. I think that is essentially as essential
understanding the German situation, and it's essential understanding why these
people did what they did. I mean the point again
and again, you know, zeitgeist is very real. That's not
just some conceptual prejudice I have, Like what is possible
in you know, the political realm with its own sphere
of activity? Okay, And if you're talking about radical partisan action,
like what is going to have resonance, what's going to
index with the culture and the historical moment as it
then exists, is uh, is very historically contingent. You know,
German young people who wanted to strike out at regime
authority really the only way they could conform that tendency
was some sort of communism. Okay, German it had literally
literally been annihilated and was partitioned and under hostile occupation
to prevent a fascist going tendency from ever re emerging.
You know, and even those that were emergent obviously early on,
we're we're uh, we're entirely adjacent to the Soviet Union, you know,
not in terms of the deep values or anything, but
in terms of you know, geostrategic realities as well as
you know, certain ideological interdependencies that were just essential in
a in a in a bipolar world, with a Soviet
superpower as the as as as the as the lesser
enemy of Europe than the truth full of Europe, which
was America. So I want to get into that a bit.
The uh, the the rohod Army faction came into existence
in May nineteen seventy and it was when there's an
obvious Botter was sprung from prison. The batter had been
locked up in nineteen sixty eight him and is a
girlfriend of his at the time. He'd set fire to
this department store, you.
Speaker 5: Know, to.
Speaker 2: Strike back at capitalism, you know, and he said that
he did it because the Buddhas Republic, there's an apathy
about what was happening in Vietnam, you know. And it's
interesting that at first these guys and ladies were taking
their cues very much from kind of like the American
radical left, and that's why like Nam was kind of
their conceptual focus. That changed very much, and the Palestine
very much became their like the share punk in their
view of revolutionary activity abroad and kind of like the
key battleground against you know, uh, the uh, the capitalist
uh global structure, which I think reading between the lines,
it's pretty clear why that is okay, But in any event,
you know, as of nineteen sixty eight, Botter was still
very very very much kind of a rebel without a cause.
You know, he drew up custodial sentence because Germany was
very very draconian in these days, you know, and at
an hour who was kind of hated by both the
right and the left, but he was in purely objective terms,
he was a pretty remarkable executive, you know, and he
managed going to insinuate himself as all things to all people,
you know, outside of the outside of the national socialist
right would remained of it, and and and the you know,
the far left. But he he realized a certain kind
of conformity had to be imposed. You know, Germany was
very much re arming and reconstituting to fight World War three,
and ad made it clear that, you know, nuclear arms
are going to be based in Germany. The Bundesbega was
going to participate in their deployment and use when war
day came. This is incredibly controversial for all kinds of reasons,
you know, some prosaic, some rather complicated, but in any event,
that's the context. So young Andrea has bought her at
this point, I believe it was just kind of acting
out to act out. Okay, a lot of young people
inn now, well those were rather gifted intelligence. It's you know,
you have to you have to live life like literally
just in terms of duration to get a true perspective
on the historical situation. Interestingly, while he was incarcerated, obviously,
I say May fourteen seventy is the day when kind
of the the roode Army fraction came into existence. That'sn't
even sprung out of prison. Okay, now for whatever reason,
and we'll get into the Bouders like background in a minute.
Like his upbringing, he was an incredibly contentious, violent person.
He wasn't traditionally charismatic, but uh, people apparently would would
would would would gravitate to him and and treat him
as a natural leader. Okay. He uh, within his orbit
was very much a quarter of young outsiders as it were.
All right, And despite his kind of like his nature
won't be onond cantagrious. He was like a violent person.
You know. He if people disagreed with them, he would
attack them like physically. They became his ops, you know,
like and some degree of that like has to live
in kind of like the heart and mind every partisan,
but in his case it was it was truly extreme
that uh the primary architect that's springing him out of
prison was uh Ulrika Meinhoff, who was is sometimes girlfriend
but more of kind of an what kind of an
ideological fellow traveler. One thing that was unusual about the
bottom Minehoff grouping they always had women with them. Now,
at first it was probably I mean, not to be
crass about it, but they were, you know, because they
were young and horny and like young guys want women
around and vice versa. You know, young women gravitate towards
guys and their age open. But there was a there
was an odd ideological dimension to it too. Like when
I say an odd ideological dimension, I mean it was
shaved by the conditions of of the immediate post war years.
You know, it wasn't it wasn't It wasn't dummy feminism,
and dummy feminists don't like lock and load and and
and and and start knocking over banks and and springing
and springing their people out of prison and and and
shooting cops. Okay, obviously, you know this caused some odd
challenges for them later, especially as they came to index
with Islamic resistance fighters. Obviously not because it's like mos
Loas have no problem training women to fight, and they do,
but they can't have men and women cohabitating and sleeping
in common quarters, and they can't have women and men's
barracks and vice versa. We'll get into that later. But
the one of their is in America, at least, the
World Army Faction. I think this kind of fascination developed
around him. It is because there was like these good
looking like European broads always like clicked up with them,
you know, and kind of like the Petty Hurst thing,
you know, like it people like really like like Americans
are always like really fascinated by like women handling weapons.
It was like literally like a quasi like pornographic genre
of like of like half naked girls like like ripping
rounds through you know, like like assault weapons. You know,
like like like it's a thing, you know, and it's
not I'm not being some like corny academic to say
it's like obviously like very sexual. You know, like it's
this to be clear to anybody, but you know, under
his body, he gets sprung from this high security prison,
you know, by by you know, a masked man and
these two young women, you know, and as the police
opened fire on Andrew's body, he leaped out a window
like literally, you know, like it's some it's and you
know they uh, they're uh they're they're they're real. Man.
Uh was able to snag him street side, you know,
and get away, you know, like this kind of thing
just didn't this kind of thing that didn't happen. And
you know, and like in post war Germany, you know,
Germany's orderly place, you know, it's not just a cliche.
You know, during uh, during the struggle uh Elrique Meinhoff
who to disguise herself with like this long like like
like wig like one of the police who tried to
grab her by the hair like snatches wi go off,
you know, revealing that she had like you know, like
a military style like blonde haircut, you know, and there
was something confusion as to whether she was like a
man or a woman too, like an initial identification. You know.
So this was a very this was a crazy situation,
you know, and this made uh, this didn't just make
this didn't just make you know, national headlines in the
Bunas Republic, but it was something like the police aren't
prepared to deal with this. I guess we'll get into
The police had agents insinuated into all the major trade unions,
and especially for some reason like the Transferred hation and
like railroad Workers Union was shot through with communists like
pro Warsaw Pact, you know, like Marxist Leninists, so they
viewed them as their ops. Okay, like the police did,
like these kinds of crazy guys who are getting like
sprung out of out of the joint, you know, by
gun toting females, you know, and are are are pulling
off you know, wild operations at least if to that point,
not particularly organized, well thought out, you know, like the
firebombing department stores and you know, sloganeering, revolutionary stuff. You
know this that this weren't prepared for it, you know,
like it was an issue of first impression and it
wasn't traditional. It wasn't traditional street volatility by the kind
of Europe's used to, you know, like something very like
almost kind of like American about that. You know, those
kinds of those kinds are outlaw actions. You know, So
who who is Andrea's bought her? Andrea's bad is born
in nineteen forty three in May. He was born in Munich.
His father was a historian archivist and like a real intellectual.
He'd been conscripted into Wehrmacht, you know, like like all
evil bodied men. He was taken prisoner by the by
the Russians in forty five and just was never seen again.
He just never came home, you know, and bought his
mother never remarried, so Andrea's baughter. As a boy, he
lived with his widowed mom. You know, uh who kind
of you know, continued to pine from that someday you know,
dad was gonna come home, you know, a grandmother and
like various you know, aunts and uncles, but he basically
lived in this like female household without a father, you know.
And there were there's millions of men who just never
came home, you know, because and and one hundreds of
thousands of their fate was unknown. You know. They were
either they were taking prisoner and died in some gulag,
you know, they they were cut to pieces you know
as small arms fire and died in the snow and
during you know, the desperate retreat they they were their
body was never recovered or identified, you know. So it's
some I'm telling you that that impacted the perspective of
these boys when they became you know, young men. You know,
this like generation of fatherless boys who grew up in
this authoritarian society, yet that didn't really index with them culturally.
There's armed men everywhere who are there to police them,
who aren't of their culture, who they can kind of
relate to, you know, racially and linguistically, you know, at
least like the white troops. You know that this had
to be an incredibly confusing situation, you know, and pretty
much not exception the early bottom mine off grouping, they
all had some kind of background like.
Speaker 1: This, well nobody, nobody thinks of West Germany, what is
what what was to be called West Germany as actually
being under occupation. They saw West Germany as the free democracy,
western democracy as opposed to East.
Speaker 2: Germany, which is crazy too, because yeah, no, you're absolutely right.
You know, like if you look at just you know,
West Germany, like a quarter of Germany was you know,
the DDR historical Germany. So you have West Germany. The
occupation forces from forty nine and to ninety one were
three hundred thousand men Americans. Another content there's a quarter
million contingent of British, French and Banalugs troops too. Half
a million men in a country smaller than Wyoming, you know,
armed to the teeth, you know, ready for war at
a moment's notice, you know, and at at checkpoint Charlie.
You know, it was things were fairly civilized. But when
you went to the true like inner German border, like
my dad told me, and this track that William Odom said,
and with what you know, enlisted men who served this,
it it felt like a war. You know. They were
getting buzzed constantly by DDR aircraft sappers would uh would
would screw with the concertina lire and like probe their
uh you know the hardness of their other fixed defenses.
This was not remotely normal, you know. And so and
on top of that, like I said, basically, you know,
Germany lost five and a half million men. You know,
there was the country was full of like little kids,
like old people and women and and like nobody had
a father, you know, Like David Irving talked about that
because he said in England it wasn't really as bad,
but he's like, you know, Irving's dad didn't die, but
he just kind of like went nuts and like left
the family. He was like a Royal navy man who
couldn't adjusted civilian life and everything's that he went to
school with a bunch of guys who had no dad.
You know that that that completely that that creates weird pathologies,
you know, and especially the Germans like they were, you know,
the kind of the kind of like soft pedal and
Morgenthele plan that became their constitution. That's totally bizarre. I mean,
aside the fact it's not like the moral aspects, and
aside from the fact that you know it's it's it's
it's tailored to kind of destroy the will of people
to perpetuate itself. Like that's bizarre. You know, You're like
you're going to school and some guy or some lady
is like reading off a lesson book that came from
the Department of the Army, like written by some crazy Zionists,
educating you about how like educating you about how like
you're part of this like murderous race of people, you know,
who must atone to the Jews because your history from
Meister eck Art until Adolf Hitler is about anti Semitism,
like that's literally insane, you know, like it's and that
kind of thing made it impossible for people to trust
an authority, you know. And uh, Germany, more than most
societies was was in his one based on social capital,
you know, like that that that that made people act
really screwed, you know, and I that, in my opinion,
the later iterations of the body mine off faction are
more complicated. It's something that's more simple, it's just more complicated.
Speaker 1: Just to inject this, my my mom would go My
dad told me that my mom would go to East
East Berlin, so she'd go through she'd go through Charlie.
And he made it sound like, you know, because he
was a cold water. He made it sound like, you know,
she was being you know, she would have to do
strip searches and.
Speaker 3: Stuff like that.
Speaker 1: No, I asked my mom, my mom's like I had.
I was treated much worse coming back into West Germany
by people who look like me and sounded like me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, no, I'm sure that's.
Speaker 1: The museums over there. People don't realize they had amazing
museums and like East Berlin.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and it's the it's the traditional I mean,
that was the traditional government district among other things too,
you know what I mean, like there's reason, there's the
reason why the Soviets wanted Berlin and why East Berlin
became the capital, you know, I mean, that's that was.
That wasn't just a mark on a map, you know,
it was it was just like a prestige objective, you know.
I mean, that's europe Central, you know, quite literally, and yeah,
it's it's an incredible place, and you know, but yeah,
the as apparently uh bodery reputation even as a even
as a little kid, as being highly volatile, extraordinarily strong willed,
he apparently resisted all authority sort of instinctively. I don't,
I don't, I don't trust these uh official psychological takes
on people, you know in uh in America or Western
Europe that that declare you know, operational defiance, oppositional defiance, disorder.
But bout her, even some of his uh even some
of his comrades and like Rapis basically attracted what they
said about him, and uh apparently apparently he he can't
strongly resent religious instruction. He refused to celebrate holidays. He
refused even celebrate Christmas or observe his own birthday, you know,
and it and and again he even as uh his
people had grown up with them, were emphatic that even
as a little kid he was he was like a
kid that others followed, you know, they uh. But as
he was sprung from prison on May fourteen, nineteen seventy,
his comrades didn't they did they didn't have a plan,
like they literally had no plan. Olriki Minoff she she
literally had a friend, who's this actress who lived a
few streets away from the Central Institute of Social Research.
Alriqi Minoff was was an academic, you know, like like
social science type, and therefore she worked so her big,
her big her in the in the guys big plan
was well, well, we'll go to your friend's house and
demand it. You know. She let us, you know, like
use it as a safe house until we figure out
what to do, you know. And I mean they traded
shots with police, you know, one of whom was seriously injured,
you know, which which again I mean rarely rarely happened
in Germany, you know then or no, this friend of
uh riky Minoff probably under some degree duress, you know,
they they simply rang the doorbell and said we need
your solidarity. You know, the revolution is started. This poor
was effecting a woman and then got like, you know,
she was housing these fugitives. And this was this was
one of the biggest manhunts of of of post war hines,
you know, and almost, uh, almost everybody they were looking
for was like sitting in this poor like randomly the's apartment.
But when this really kind of becomes when this really
kind of becomes interesting, is is their their next plan
to move? And this this also represented the change in
the ideological disposition of the of the fraction and all.
But it also, you know, like I said, it indexed
with a basic German tendency towards revolutionary action, and that
was authentically German. Whoever sort of couched it was in
Marxist Leninists pseudoscience or you know, gobbledegook or however much
it was kind of framed in these like liberationist narratives
of the nineteen sixties. They agreed the next move would
they had to leave Berlin as soon as possible, obviously,
and they uniformly agreed they'd go to the Middle East
and uh, you know, the Palestinian resistance would would provide
them like aid and comfort as fellow revolutionaries. Somehow, either
el Riki Minoff Bottr or both, they made the acquaintance
of a man named Said Dudin. Sai Dudin is still alive.
He he was a Jordanian emigrat. He was the son
of a Jordanian emmigrate to West Berlin. And he was
a political scientist. And his father was this big shot
like like social researcher and like regional studies expert on
like Arab societies and political cultures. Sai Dudin's never been
committed convicted of a crime, always be en hanceled by
the police, you know, over decades, for various reasons. Said
Dudden contacted UH his people in Jordan. He arranged tickets
with UH East German inter Fluge Airline, which was the
DDRS National Airline. He booked them nine rooms in UH
East Berlin under assume names, and he arranged for people
to transport them to East Berlin. You know, about three
weeks subsequent, So on June eighth, nineteen seventy, the first
group of U of RIF operators departed Stonefield Airport in
East Berlin for Palestine. Interestingly, and I believe this and
I have to describe was all Horse to Mahler before
they departed for the Middle East and in the immediate
a man, I've been talking several days of uh, the
prison break, an anonymous phone call was made to Michelle Ray.
She was a former channel model and and she was
a big jot like lady journalist in French media. I'm
trying to think of, you know, back that this was
back in the day when you had like, you know,
true like celebrity like newspeople. She was a super glamorous
like like figure like personage. Ol Ricky Manoff undoubtedly told
Horst Mahler whoever plays this call, and I'm telling you,
I'm certain it was Horse Mahler who orchestrated this about
like name like named Michelle Ray. Because they'd very slightly
known each other from this magazine called Concrete, which was
kind of like it was kind of like Vanity Fair
but more serious and uh Olrik min Off, you know,
being this kind of university type like mingle in some
high society circles. You know, she'd come across Michelle Ray.
And undoubtedly, because like women are going to recognize these things,
She's like, look if you want, if you want if
you want to capture cheap clout, and you want like
rapid headlines. You know, we got to contact her because
if we talked to a German journalists or whatever they're
they're going to try and suppress this. So Michelle Ray
was told that if she came to Berlin, she get
you know, a quote big story about like the you know,
the the new resistance, you know, from the radical left.
In a combination of curiosity and maybe naivete, she agreed
to meet them. Uh uh. She arrived in Berlin a
few days before the departure to Palestine on June fourth,
and she she first met Andre's botter. Andre's bought her
escorted her back to an apartment's safe house where Ulriki
Minoff himself and a woman named Gudrin Ensulin lived. Gudrin
Enslin was, Uh, it's hard to tell because of the
kind of these more really polyamorous hit these like that's
what some people try to characterize it as, because Andrew's
bought her, like like like having sex with a lot
of girls who was also like doing dirt with in
the street and like carrying out terrorist activities with It's
like Gudrin Enslin and and Lriki Minoff like they were
both like his girlfriends at various times, you know, like
get uh, depending on what was going on. And Gudrin
and Ensulin is very much more of like a doer
like Gudrin Enslin, as we'll see, she kind of seems
like the kind of broad who like could be your
wheelman if you're like knocking over a bank like Oricky.
Minoff was definitely down. I mean, she handled a gun
to help spring Botter, but she was very much kind
of like a public ineleectual type who could do things
like getting this French glamorous news lady to show up. Okay,
So it's pretty obvious Botter like Manson. And I'm not
saying I actually hold Manson is on a steem. I'm
not saying this is a cast shade on Botter. He
was very good at identifying certain talents and women and
getting women to do things that he wanted, okay, and
certain kinds of men that's like their hustle. Okay. It's
not just that they're only in like girls a lot,
although that's part of it. Women have certain skill sets,
women can gonna fly under the radar there. That is
an effective strategy depending on what you're trying to do,
you know, it is. You know, that's why I tell
guys not to be like down on women and talking
about revolutionary conditions, because that's very wrong. Head. But that's
kind of the way to understand it. Like it's not
like I said you you'll read these kinds of cd
uh deliberately lurid kind of American or British accounts, and
it's they they presented like, oh, these were a bunch
of hippie degenerates, just him and some big orgy. It's
not what was going on. And I think that's important
to understanding the kind of dynamic here, you know. But
all three of them were disguised. Michelle Ray annoy you
who they were really Apparently she didn't even recognize l
Ricky mine Off, even though they thevery vaguely knew each other.
And most importantly, of course, Mallard was there, okay, and
Mahler was going who basically engaged her, you know, And
like I said, my who remains remain an important figure
into the twenty first century and dissident quarters. I believe
he truly was like the the ideologue behind this whole enterprise.
He was older, He was a lawyer, you know, he was.
He wasn't a hot head like Botter, you know. He
It just attracts I if you you know, index it
with with with with similar groupings of people under revolutionary
revolutionary conditions or conditions they believe are eminently revolutionary. Okay,
it's that he represents a type. Okay. They told Michelle
Ray that you know, they kicked off the revolution that
you know, the Buddhists Republic, the Center could not hold that.
You know, they were leaving Berlin, uh to go to
Palestine and fight as fitting and and and possibly murdered themselves,
you know. Michelle Ray, she passed a copy of the
tape she made to their Spiegel, which went nuts and
blew it up, you know, and uh, the Roade Army
faction overnight became this internationally known mob of dangerous terrorists,
you know. And of course, you know, in America, the
claim was like, oh, this is this is the Ivans,
like these these these people are you know, like KGB
or g r U. You know, the uh, the Buddhist
Republic was convinced that, you know, there was there's hundreds
of people and cells that were about to become active.
You know it uh like the the like the European
Secure Internal Security Apparatus, you know, like like completely shits
pants in other words, so Miller knew exactly what he
was doing. Later, when asked why they'd sprung Botter from custody,
Alriki Minoff said, well, there were three reasons, she said.
First quote, she said quote. First, of course, because Andrea's
Botty is a is a cadre, the road arm refraction.
They've got their own vocabulary. When they say cadre, they
use the word in a singular noun and denoting a
like a squad leader, you know, or like a cell commander,
you know, or or like platoon leader, you know. And
that's also why A until ninety eight when they ceased operations,
they'd always they'd always name like the action group that
was engaged, you know, after either somebody who was either
somebody had been like deceased in action or somebody was imprisoned,
you know, like from their organization. You know, it had
its own culture that was kind of interesting because nobody
else did that. It was very much its own thing,
you know. And their symbol was the red star with
a with a heckler and and coke SMG, you know,
not like an not a class and a call, not
a hammer and sickle. You know, it was it's interesting,
but you know, and she said, second, you know, we
we we had we had he said, we free to prisoner,
you know, his identity being incidental because you know, the people,
we need to show people what politics is all about today,
and politics polop politics today is about smashing the ability
of the state too to impost course of measures. Okay.
And if that if that means killing policemen, you know,
extreme and durante, that might sound that people need to
get habituated to that, you know, and you can only
habituate people that by by by doing over and over
and over again. And he hope becomes normal. Okay. And
finally she said, if you can free somebody from state custody,
it's quite clear that you mean business and you're a
serious military actor. Okay, which, as ragnag as they were
at first, that is somewhat true. Springing a man out
of close custody is not a small thing, okay. And
again that might sound kind of basic, but it's really not.
It's it's sophisticated from what they were trying to do.
And again I believe it's all horse demoler. I'm sure
he had input from the others, but that's exactly kind
of the program he should have been pursuing, you know,
for what living about a rationality of what they were
trying to accomplish, you know, which was basically this credit
the Buddhist Republic and in so doing, you know, create revolutionary,
revolutionary conditions on the ground, whereby the extant structure, including
its ability to wage war as a key component of NATO,
is no longer possible, Okay, And when you consider it
in that context, I think my whole kind of hypothesis
of the matter becomes a little bit more persuasive. But
we're kind of getting ahead of ours. Who was Ulric
Manoff or Ulriki Minoff. She was older than the rest
of them. She was born in the thirties. She was
born in nineteen thirty four in Oldenburg. Her dad came
from a long line of Protestant theologians. And again something
you'll notice here, these kids, these people, these young people,
they were basically, without exception, all from the Protestant heartland
of Germany. The national socialst herland in Germany was the
Protestant Northeast, like it was not these guys like Goldhagen
who in the nineties were obsessed with claiming like you know,
VENSDP was some like Catholic organization or it was not
at all, and even that aside, like literally the national
soulci's heartland was rural and suburban Northeast Germany Protestant literally
Protestant pious Germany. Okay, and especially especially this first uh iteration.
You know this, this kind of deeply felt Protestant Pietism
was like an essential part of their upbring as well
as other strange things. Now. Riki Manoff also grew up
without a father. Basically, her father died when she was
very young of pancreatic cancer. Her dad had been curator
of the Yenna Museum, which was prestigious but not well paid.
So when he died, uh Olrik's mother and her and
her sister were in somewhat dire straits. You know, she
was at five and a half years old, you know,
she went over at a father in the picture her mother,
and it's not clear her mother took to having borders
live in the house, you know, to for money, and
this uh young woman from the university moved in named
uh we're not a remix and it's not people obvious
today which would would speculate or that uh Olriki's mother
and we're out a remake. You know, we're like lesbians.
I don't think it's necessarily like necessarily the case at all.
But they ended up like moving in together and like
raising the girls together, you know, so well Rique live
in this kind of heavily like Protestant household with no father,
you know, just like her male counterparts, you know, raised
by these two kind of somewhat you know, kind of
a kind of dour Protestant women. She she her primary
school was an all girls school run by like nuns.
So this is this is again, this is a totally
abnormal environment, you know, like in an environment to avoid
of kind of like normal male authority figures. You know,
that's that's not accidental. I don't think at uh b'nada
raimc After Olriki's mom died when she was a teenager,
kind of became her surrogate mom, and she she convinced
Elrici to joined the Social Democrats and at this time
Billy Brandt. Billy Brandt later became the mayor of West Berlin,
and West Berlin was really kind of like a culture
into itself in all kinds of ways.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: It wasn't like the rest of the Bunus Republic. But
Billy Brandt, he a conciliatory posture with the East and
with the Soviet Union was as big a policy coup.
He became counselor, he went down in Flames. His constant
companion and personal assistant, Gunter Guillam, who's a Behrmach veteran
who became a Stazi agent deep cover agent. Gunter Guillam
stole the UH NATO nuclear codes from UH the secured
location in in UH and then the consular is private
safe And I mean this was the UH. It's it
was reporting, Like William Odoms said, like we we never
were like we meaning military and tell Us never recovered
from that intelligence breach. You know, they're like the Warsaw
Pack just had our number after that in terms of
UH you know, the uh O, our our ideas on
strategic escalation and everything else. You know. So but Billy
brand at this time was like it was like a
rising star, you know, and so we're not a remick
and and and young uh Riki mine Off you know,
joined the Social Democrats and you know, all all kind
of like progressive people at that time. You know they
they they opposed ad now or you know who who who?
Who do the Social Democrats was you know a fascist
aid whether than a fascistoid resurgence. You know, ULRIKEI became
insinuated into academ because they were not a remake who
was a professor at the Velber against a like educational institute. Okay,
and this was more so than America especially you know,
Germans kind of like invented the public education system. You
found a lot of radicals, especially female radicals who came
out of this academic culture, including a Honaker's wife. Okay.
That's why, like I said, I think very much. Had
uh Elrike mine Off not clicked up with Andrew's Botter,
she probablyould have been some like SPD organizer who you know,
like married some guy who was you know, some kind
of like milk toast, you know, social democrat. You know,
I uh I I really believe that, you know, but
she did have you know, it was her her her
it it was it was her kind of respectability that
allowed them to index with the media. You know. Again,
she was the one who identified, you know, Michelle Ray
as the journalist they should see out. You know this,
This was an essential part of their of the propaganda
aspect of the campaign. Now, who is Gudrian Ensulin. Gudrian
Enslin was Swabian. He grew up in a village called Bartholoma,
which was which was not and is not in the
prost and of Heartland. We talked about it a minute ago,
but her father was literally a Protestant minister. Okay. Her
folks uh had been big in the vander Vogel movement
when and like then, you know that the pre national
Socialist days and a little bit beyond this. This was
kind of like a naturalist movement, you know, vonder Vogel
means like migrating birds. It was very it was very
part of like the focused culture. Okay. In nineteen fifty eight,
Gudran visited the USA, where she learned to speak English.
She was an exchange student for a year. She stayed
in Pennsylvania with this Methodist community and she liked the
Americans and they liked her. But she reported back to
her friends and like her, you know, her Swabian village
and her parents that like, well, you know, the the
Americans aren't pious enough, you know, they they they're there,
there's something superficial about you know, like the way the
way they're practicing protonism Inowers America. You know, she had
that kind of like radical pious perspective, you know that
I think indexed with national socialism in a basic way.
When she came back, she started studying English language and
uh German educational theory. But she quickly but she quickly
Uh well, it's interested in that when she met the
sun of uh the gil Vesper. Bill Vesper was a
focused poet and a kid national socialist, okay, and his
son was very much in that vein, you know, and
he was this kind of like passionate wild guy was
like a poet himself, and he traveled to Spain a
lot because in those days, obviously Spain was friendly to
people like him and his father. Okay. Gudrian's parents were
upset by the kind of passion they saw with this
kind of like wild guy, and her father was trying
to throw him out of the house when he'd catch
him there. They were mollified when the couple uh got married.
But you know it uh again this uh this uh Burnwall,
the Vestper was the son of Villa. Apparently the father
and the son. There was there was huge tension between them,
beyond the kind of ordinary you know, difficult between fathers
and sons. But nevertheless, again you know, he was still
marinated in that blood and Soil ethos and he was
making regular pilgrimage to Spain. You know, this is the
first trip he took around was to Spain. And I mean,
even if, even if in a critical capacity, you know,
the son Burnvard was uh it was kind of like rejecting,
you know, like the faith of the father. I mean,
you can't, you can't truly like escape like your your
heritage theologically or politically. Okay, so this is the other
one's first love, which was this incredibly passionate affair, was
with the son of a national socialist poet who himself
wrote like Blood and Soil Poets, where he took her
to Franco Spain. You know, I mean, I I can't
believe that Gudrian Elson simply like shed all sensibilities of that,
you know, and and and then spent their maide of
her life, you know, like staying up late reading Communist
Manifesto with her new comrades, you know, hers capital. But
that and like I said, she by the time she'd uh,
by the time she connected up with who wrote army fraction, comrade,
she'd become kind of a she she was kind of
drifting in life. But that that was basically the core
of the first iteration of the Roue army fraction. And
for context, you know, to distinguished to kind of like
the German youth movement from you know, kind of the
American SDS movement its liberty nature. You know, Germany was
not a free society at our successor as consular was
Ludwig Erhard. Ludwig Erhard. He basically banned the public They're
like the like the playing of music publicly unless it
was like an official sanctioned performance. Like the reasoning being,
you know, stuff that stirs the passion in is whether
it's art or music or any any kind of evocative
things that can easily be transposed into in the nationalist sentiments.
And this will be a return to Weimar. So kids, uh,
who'd convene for spontaneous music festivals or even guys just
plugging into an amp and you know, while wanting to
play uh that kind of spontaneous set in their college courtyard.
They'd literally be broken up by the police, you know,
and told to cease and desist. In the summer sixty two,
this this, this became a storically known as as the
Schabing riots, okay, and then referring to the Schabing District
where most of these you know, disturbing the peace incidents
were you know, kind of most enforcing the most kind
of heavy handed way to ethinkly speaking, you know, So
it's not I want to disabuse people this idea again
that these these were like sds hippie kids were kind
of with the same couch from the Saint Cloth as
like non draft dodgers or like you know, fools following
Abbie Hoffman and having like a chip on their shoulder
about ship. Like it wasn't like that. You know, I
probably got more. I probably got somebody for the double
in a way that many people don't. But I think
this is important not because of my own feelings on
the matter or private passions, but I mean because the
historical record in this regard is not it's not it's
not correct. I don't uh, I don't mean to be
a propt, but I gotta I'm in a lot of
pain right now. If we could pick this up, if
we could pick this up with a final episode, I
can go for ninety minutes or so and wrap it up.
Speaker 3: Sure, sure is that okay?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, knock out a couple of plugs and we'll
get out here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. Man. I'm uh. I'm busially updating my
sub stack and we're well into season two of the pod.
You can find both at Real Thomas seven seven seven
number seven hm A S seven seven seven dot substec
dot com. I'm on uh Instagram, I'm on UH, I'm
on t Gram. I remain on Twitter. There's still some
productive discussion there, I believe, or I wouldn't still be there,
and a way to poach new contacts. I'm at UH
Capital r E A L Underscore number seven h O
A S seven seven seven. It's the Real.
Speaker 5: Thomas and yeah, I'm uh. I'm busily uh trying to
get this manuscript banged out by uh by fall. And
that's where Yeah, and again, forgive me if I entered
this abruptly the problem, that's okay.
Speaker 1: And head over to my website where I have a
page that's dedicated just to Thomas and my movie reviews
and links to all of it. And we'll probably have
to talk about setting up the next one.
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, man, Yeah, Mystery Science Theater. Yeah, I've
been very much enjoying it, man, and we've been we've
been getting a lot of like really great feedback from people.
It makes me feel good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right, Thomas, thank you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, man, I want to welcome everyone back to the
Pete Cononas show. Thomas is here and uh going to
wrap up the Rhode Army fraction.
Speaker 2: Huh yeah, that's what I was thinking.
Speaker 3: All right, well, uh where are we going with this?
Speaker 2: I mean, I wanted to drop a little bit of
bio graphical information about horse tomal Or because I think
he's kind of the key under standing not just kind
of like the post war ideological culture and divided Germany,
but it's sort of the key to understanding the German
right as it exists today. And I I'm very I
I support Alternative for deutsch Land entirely. I think they're
doing great things. I'm not like putting shade on them,
but the fact is if they continue to gain ground,
they're just gonna they're just gonna be banned. Okay, Like
any any truly like right wing tendency in the Buddhist
Republic just just gets unceremoniously danned. Okay, So considering that
there was there, there's a radicalism just kind of intrinsic
to any any kind of like right wing tendancy. You know,
during the Cold War as well as today. But during
the Cold War, you know, whether you were on the
right of the left, there was there was there were
situations in places like Italy, into a lesser degree in
France where the true like hard right was tolerated some
that owed uh Operation Gladio type intrigues, which is a
whole like other topic that you know, we could devote
three episodes to. Part of that go to the fact
that some of these EU states what became EU states,
what I mean then it was just you know, the
the e C and adjacent countries. You know, they had
to trend somewhat lightly like you didn't want to come
down too hard on anti communist elements, you know, lets
you lest you kind of offer the appearance of ingress
of uh of enemy dialectics into into into the political
discussion West Germany was it was in a strange position,
you know, like we talked in the first episode. I
think about why Andres Botterer especially, but uh Elriki Mainhoff
and some of the other kind of core personalities of
the first uh Rote Army fraction were so fixated on Vietnam.
Like It's not just because this was the this was
the television era when you know, for the first time
this civilized world was was truly kind of plugged into
like a common visual experience. But the Bunis Republic it
really was this like occupied, you know, client state of
America in a way that no other country was, like
not even Japan was owing to the kind of the
the cultural barriers there. So you know, and when you
consider too that the Bondis Republic was literally like the
front line of the Cold War and it was clear
that they were basically going to storb the the brunt
of Warsaw Pact assault, including nuclear weapons, you know, if
when war came, and in those days, it seemed very
probable that war would arrive. Like this is why I think,
this is why, like Vietnam was so much on their mind. Okay,
like they weren't They weren't just being like virtual signaling
fools or something, or they weren't just trying to score
points with you know, kind of the the international peace movement, Like,
they weren't done that tip at all, Like especially the
Rotimi fraction types, they had almost like Sourellian sort of
enthusiasm for violence. Okay, So that's important to understand. And secondly,
you know, I I'm not saying this to repeat myself
for its own sake, but the degree to which any
sort of radical or revolutionary or dynamic tendency, especially you know,
in among young people under youth cultures, you know, things
like that, tendencies like that, they're always kind of confined
to the zeitgeist, okay, and the security age. All right,
So it wasn't just that, it wasn't it wasn't even
that people, you know, I mean academic types would think
this way. But it's not like it's not like guys
and girls like prone to prone to radical direct action.
And it's not even like they were thinking like, oh,
you know, national socialism and fascism was a disaster and
it's evil, so we we we've got some moral obligation
to kind of take up the red banner. Yeah, there
were some people who thought that way, but by and large,
the only really conceivable modality of revolt or revolutionary activity
was either you know, Marxist Leninist or adjacent to that,
you know, like the degree to which uh uh, you know,
an above board if you know, very much outside the law,
you know, gorilla tendency, Like it wasn't really conceivable for
such a tendency on the right to emerge. Okay, it
just wasn't, you know. I can't emphasize that enough. You know,
I realize, I'm I realize I'm very much a Hegelian
and and and some people disagree with that, but I
but you know, examples of this phenomenon legion, you know,
not just in the Budus Republic of the Cold War,
but obviously that's kind of the most striking and pure
like example of that. And I come back to the
persons of course Tomler again and again, not just I
think he's an interesting guy, but he's kind of like
the distilled essence of that tendency. It's the Malay's background.
He was older than his comrades, you know, he was
born in nineteen thirty six in Celesia. His father had
been a dentist and it dedicated national socialist. He attended
the Free University of Berlin and then he immediately joined
at Thuringy Association, which was an old school right wing
like student fraternity. You know, this is the kind of
fraternity that guys like Colin Runner joined, Okay, you know.
But then immediately after, amazingly after graduation, he you know,
in his grad student immediately after taking as you know,
with the equillment of his undergrad degree, he joined the
member he joined the socialist student body, you know, and
he started participating in these protests against you know, nuclear
weapons being based in the Bunis Republic. You know. Now
this led to some people that say, like, oh he
was he was some sort of intelligent spook. I don't
think that's the case at all, and there's not really
any evidence of that. Like what Mahler was doing was
you know, like I said, it's my belief the guy
was always a national socialist. He was looking at like
what's possible you know, within the political culture that he
was situated, okay, and everybody everybody in the on the
real right wing in the Buddhist Republic, you know, whether
you're talking about Otto Reimer, or whether you're talking about
Hans Rudel, you know, or any of these or any
of these guys who constituted the early you know, like
Socialist Rights Party, Socialist Rights Party which became like the
NPD later, Like these guys all favored like a demilitarized
Germany for obvious reasons. Gay you know, not just because
that would spare Germany from destruction an event of of
of of war but of war between the United States
and and Warsaw Pact, but also it would liberate the
political culture from from from the from these confining parameters,
you know. And as I'm sure people know, you know, Stalin,
the famous Stalin Memo, which you know, the American State
Department wouldn't even entertain. You know, Stalin proposed a totally
demilitarized Germany, you know that, and and and a constitution
that that guaranteed you know, absolute neutrality. But of course
that would have allowed, if not facilitated, you know, complex
and independence with the Soviet Union, you know. And and
the position has always been of the American regime that
that's got to be prevented at all costs. I mean,
look at that that's what under that's that's in a
large part of what underlies like this this war against
Russia with Ukraine as a proxy. I mean, look at
look at the terrorist attack on a European energy infrastructure
and you know, the destruction of the North Stream pipeline. Okay,
So I don't think. I think if one understands kind
of the variables and the ideological tendencies that you know,
underlie what one's priorities are a fairy a you know,
either a national socialist or or any kind of right
wing partisan in the Buddhist republic, that is now, I
don't think Mahler's trajectory is that conspiratorial. In nineteen sixty three,
Mahler h he took his law degree. He set up
a legal practice in Berlin, and is uh his specialty
was basically, uh, industrial and labor law, you know, and
he was he was very successful with that. Okay, it's
and he he he continued to immerse himself and kind
of student radicalism obviously because he was older. Now I'm
a professional man. Like it's sort of like a sponsorship
and mentoring capacity, you know, Like he see he began
providing like legal advice to a lot of these people,
you know, providing them funding that a lot of them
desperately needed, because you know, these these kinds are n
g os. I mean not just student organizations, but any
any kind of ng os, particularly in those days that
weren't adjacent the bond regime er you know, always like
start of cash and and things of this sort. I
mean that was uh, you know that that's that this
was a consistent activity that he was, that he was Immerston.
And when we last left off, and then we were
talking about how the core of uh the of them,
the Rode Army fraction, you know, they ended up after
after au Andreas Botter was sprung from jail, you know, uh,
they they ended up. They ended up traveling to the
Middle East, you know, through by way in East Berlin,
and you know, owing to their contact on the ground,
said who'd been a who was the son of a
of a political science professor of some of some prestige,
you know, like I said, like it's never been clear
exact kind of like what Sayid's like a resume is,
but he's been harassed by security forces for decades. I
believe he's still alive. But I believe that horse tom
all are like facilitated these these sort of contexts, okay,
and in those days, in those days, FATA was the
dominant element of the PLO. It's an imperfect analogy, but
the PLO is a well I mean this. They they
thought a war with each other about a decade ago,
but it was always a tense alliance between Hamas and Fata,
and Fata traditionally was was a secularist, you know, Marxist
Leninist adjacent non state actor. An imperfect analogy would be
what became combined loyalists and military command in Northern Ireland
between the UVF and the uda UFF. Okay, but in
those days, you know, fata I was definitely like the
dominant element, and their competitor was the Popular Front for
Liberation of Palestine, which had been founded by a Greek
Orthodox Christian. The PFLP enjoyed a lot of support from
the East Bloc and they're tactical and strategic orientation. We're
both very much oriented towards a global kind of a
military politique. What I mean by that is they were
very very active in Africa, they were very very active
in Europe. You know, they were very very active in
Indonesia for a time, you know, they're they they said that,
you know, we've got a we've got to treat this
as an international struggle, you know. Yeah, so the liberation
of Palestine, obviously first and foremost is you know, it's
got to be our the kind of share punk of
our of our of our military activity. But this has
to be international in character, you know. And uh, for
those who remember or those who are students of Cold
War history, the bombing of the Discotheque in West Berlin
that you know, uh killed three American soldiers and wounded
a few dozen people. You know, the label Discothech which
was a which was a known hangout for US occupation,
for USS it was the popular front for the liberation
at Palestine. General command that pulled that off, you know,
very much handing the glove with the Stazi. Okay. But
but fata Plo, you know, they felt they felt like
they had something to prove in this regard. Okay, they
felt comparatively like very provincial. You know, they felt like
they were kind of like losing the uh, the propaganda
battle and in the court of world opinion. Okay, So
the guy like I'm speculating here, but I think the
facts of one kind of reads me the lines the
man like horse Tomaler, you know who by this time again,
he wasn't the kid. He was in his thirties, you
know he was. He was a He was a well
off attorney, you know, with a with a law practice
in Berlin. I believe he spoke a few languages, you know,
him approaching Fata and saying, you know, I have these
like young people and they very much committed to the revolution,
and you know they they you know, they they they
want to learn basically, uh, they basically want to learn
like real warfare from you. I think that would have
been like very appealing to them. You know. Now this
first the first iteration of the road attorney Fraction, like
as we've talked about, it had many problems. Botter himself,
Andrea's Bodder I think was something of a crazy person.
He was a he was a thrill seeker. He was
probably a psychopath, you know. Gundrd Enslin I think was
actually very committed. And you know, men and women are different,
like we've talked about, but female revolutionaries are important. They
serve an important role and people shouldn't be down on
them because many of them are very very very committed. Okay,
like it's not like women aren't weaker than men, like uh,
I mean physically obviously there's you know, a disparity there.
But I think Gundrian Enslin, especially going to a kind
of pied his background was uh was was was probably
kind of like the most stable of that Coterie el
Riqui mine off was kind of a it was kind
of a cliche, you know, like a middle class lady
who you know, kind of was easily misled. I believe
you know, this was not the best mentioned material around
which to build a revolutionary codery. And later that changed.
Later iterations of the Root Army Fraction I were incredibly
effective and like as we talked about as we'll talk
about some more I by that by the nineteen eighties,
the third iteration of the RIF had become very much
like a like an implement of the Stazi. Okay, you
know they were the kind of ops they were pulling
off then, was they were trying to murder Alexander Haig
and things like this. Okay, like this're you're talking about
an entire lady caliber of people and an entirely an
entirely more ambitious operational sense of building of the But
when the road Timmy fraction arrived in Jordan's horse Tomler
was already there and their their hosts, uh, the the
their their PLO hosts were originally pretty suspicious of them,
like not because they thought that they might be ops
who were you know, they're as double agents or something.
But they just weren't convinced they were serious. So initially, uh,
they kind of treated them like they were tourists, you know,
uh basically you know, took them around and kind of
filled them with with political propaganda about you know, Israeli
atrocities and which which were true. I mean, they weren't
you know that this this wasn't being confabulated. You know,
they take them to their rifle range and things like this.
They'd you know, they'd let it sitting on classes about
you know, you know, where they they where they they
study things like you know Mao's uh Red Book. This
soon cast a fair amount of hostility. But when Botter
insisted on being treated like any other revolutionary cadre, he
started he kind of started showing as uh showing his
bourgeoisie colors like he uh, he started he refused to
wear BDU's and caps. You know, he'd wear like uh,
he'd wear like civilian pants like jeans or like bekinds,
like velvet trousers that like hipster types like in those
days were like even during like training maneuvers. You know,
so you got this guy like, you know, wriggling under
barbed wire like on the train around like uh, you know,
wearing is like designer jeans and stuff. The as I
think I mentioned before, the uh, the FATA had no
they had no problem with then. They had no problem
with like training women to fight, you know, because because
they had to, you know, and in any revolutionary circumstance
that's uh essential anyway. But you know they obviously like
sleeping quarters and stuff were segregated, as were facilities and
body and Minehoff like refused to accept this. You know,
they presented them their auspices of you know, equality between
the sexes. But you know, uh, like for context, a
lot of these young uh, a lot of these young
Arab fighters, you know, we're like we were more than kids.
Like they they've never even seen like a naked woman before.
You can imagine like how disruptive this was. And this
uh almost led to the camp commandant who was an
Algerian you know, almost the almost you know, like like
like banning them from the from the camp and uh,
you know, putting them on a plane back to back
to Berlin. But Mahler was uh was able to kind
of like finesse things at least in the short term.
And like apparently one of the uh, one of the
student types who know the Rotimi fraction, it brought along
as a recruit like uh asked why there was no
Coca Cola machines like in camp, Like you know, like
these people are completely completely, uh disengaged from reality. So
this was not I emphasized this because like this was
not like an auspicious start to the Rogue Army fraction.
Then it it's important to consider that because like again
a lot of what you'll read, particularly in the era
I mean really from really from the eighties, from like
later Cold War, when the Iraf, when the third iteration
it was still active, Like we'll talk about it as
if it was this Stazi, the kind of squad of
terrorists that you know from inception was it was a
sort of highly effective you know, cadre element. Like it's
not the case at all. It was a very spontaneous development.
It was very much an organic, uh development of the
uh the kind of Berliner like student culture. Like the
fact that the Stazi and in my opinion specifically Marcus
Wolf was able to was able to uh, you know,
kind of molded into something highly effective, is is a
credit to Stazi operational sophistication as well as uh, you know,
the kind of like learning curve that emerged as these
kinds of asymmetrical conflicts of which you know, like Vietnam.
I mean, the Vietnam was was many things, including like
a very very much a conventional war, but there was
also an asymmetrical aspect to it. But as these kinds
of conflicts you know, sort of jumped off in earnest,
you know, people with partisan leaning, it came kind of
like more and more habituated to the reality of these things.
But this this is very early on in that and
that kind of conflict cycle. You know, in these these Palestinians,
I mean for years, you know, they've been they've been
living on canned meat, you know, like military rations, you know,
stuff from uh like canned canned goods from United Nations
relief organizations. You know, they uh, the the you know,
like I like fresh and meat was and and vegetables
and fruit was. I mean like a you know, it
was was a luxury to them, you know. So I
mean this this brit a fair amount of resentment too.
And there was a there's an anecdote of h apparently
uh oh ricky meinhoff on uh on the firing range.
An instructor uh handed or uh a Soviet grenade, which
we're like unlike the uh unlike the old Vermont potato
mash or grenades. The these are the ones uh that
they look kind of egg like, you know, and uh,
you unscrew the cap to free up the ring, you know,
and then like you pull up you'd pull you pull
a ring to pull the pin to fill. The instructor
showed ol Rike how to like you know, underscoo the
cap you know, to liberate the ring. And then she
pulled it and like held it as like the grenade
band of hass And they asked like what do I
do now? And uh just throw it, throw it like
ran forever. But this is the kind of stuff, uh,
this is the kind of stuff they were dealing with
the Palestinians. I mean, like uh kind of a kind
of a crazy man. And in the person of bot
Her and uh, most of the others, Uh, you know,
a lot of a lot of balls and no common
sense whatsoever, I do. But what what, however, what something
that did do? I think those who, including Andrew's Bottter himself,
the experience in Jordans None of these, none of these
people except uh l Riki mine Off had been a
little kid during the war years, and so I had Mahler,
although Mahler was obviously as you know we just discussed,
had kind of a more sophisticated sensibility all kinds of ways.
But the rest of them had no experience of war
or combat. The uh. And in this in this Fetiine
camp where they were training, you know, Israeli bombers were
regularly circle the sky. Jordanian troops were at a stabs
the main line of resistance only a few kilometers away
from the camp. Everybody was issued live ammunition at all time.
Is because at any time, you know, and the idea
of consult you know. So whatever, however however cringe some
of these antics might have been, it did, uh, it
did prepare these people for for real comic situations, you know,
in a way that ordinary training could not. And I
think that that's significant too, because uh, this uh, this this, this,
this training lark is a lot of court of Storian
is right about it if it was just a sort
of like fiasco and and kind of like comedy of errors.
But yeah, I disagree, man, Like, yeah, there was that
aspect of it. But you have you situate anybody in
a combat zone like that, you know, uh, while they're
undergoing an intense kind of regiment of you know, it's
only just like great basic you know, kind of like
imagery skills and things, and like you know how to
read a map and a compass, and you know how
to keep your clash tack off clean and how to
you know how to load it and how to use
iron sights and things. You know, that learning these practical
skills when you're quite literally in a combat zone, even
if you're not taking hostile fire every day or something.
And I I I think that that I think that
that confers a certain benefit that they can't easily be
quantified by traditional metrics. But uh, also too, because Palestine
was very much it wasn't just the front line of
of the Arab and Islamic struggle against Israel. But you know,
the the Algerian War was uh was still fresh in
everybody's mind, and it was still underway in some ways.
You know, the there was a certain prestige factor two
to making contact UH with the with the camp commandant
and other personages around him, like Abu Hassan, who Uh
the Palestinians were on very good terms with. And you
know the fact that the fact that these are effront
fruits and in particular horse tomolars. Again like I said
he was he wasn't is basically a political animal, you know, degenerated,
enduring channels and communication, you know, And like I said,
I I I write a lot about Johann Vondeliers as
well as UH some other third right personages like quite
literally during the Cold War, like joined the Arab camp.
You know, von Leers himself. He he converted to his
Lamb to the name Omar mean certing the court of Nasser.
You know, he viewed is Lam as as the dialectrical
antithesis of Judaism. And thus you know, the perfect UH
sort of principal like rallying principle in order to defeat,
in order to defeat what he perceived as a then
triumphant Jewish dialectic UH in the zeitgeist. Okay, I'm not
saying that like Mahler was, you know it was was
was thinking these sorts of things like von Leers was.
But instinctively, I I think that he very much was
within that, you know, like engaged in that paradigm psychologically
such as it was to the UH. Really kind of
the the zenith of UH, of the first UH. The
first iteration of the RAF was the hydro I think
of Lufthansa flight. This was after most of the key
personages of the roote army fraction the bottom of minehaut
iteration of it, I did they'd been killed or captured,
you know, arrested. The UH. The security elements of the
of the Buddhist Republic had gotten a tremendous boone owing
to you know, the the the these terrorist activities that
were under way, and specifically, you know, the the Munich
situation in nineteen seventy two, or the the Israeli athletes
were were slaughtered. But lufthans A flight on October thirteenth,
seventy seven and the summer of seventy seven colloquially became
known as the German Autumn owing to the an epidemic
of political of violence, and this is considered to be,
you know, kind of one of the most what one
of the one of the most brazen instances of it.
For operators from the Popular Front Fliberation at Palestine hijacked
liftions of Flight one eighty one, and their specific objective
was to secure the release of the imprisoned Ruth Army faction. Okay,
and again I this is what I was getting at
when I was talking about Horse to Maler, and what
I believe is is, you know, rather profound ability to
index with other revolutionary elements. And like we talked about before,
the Popular Front Filiberation of Palestine kind of their whole
part of their whole grand strategy was to demonstrate an
ability to project power globally, you know. And this this
endured until the end of the Cold War. Interestingly, the
Popular Front Liberation of Palestine still exists. I don't know
to what degree they still abide a Marxist Leninist program,
but they fought on the side of Asad against Isis,
and I believe that they're active in the Yemen Civil War,
and they there's a militia also under arms in Yemen.
They called itself UH, you know, something like the the UH,
like the Armed Grouping of South Yemen or something like that.
Now South Yemen was, of course, uh, it was a
Soviet client state. It no longer exists, but it was
the only it was the only Marxist Leninist Arab state.
So it was kind of like a feather in the
cap of Warsaw Pact. But I speculate very strongly that
the sudden emergence of these guys like fight riding under
the banner of South Yemen and clicking up with the
PFLP like that's they they were. They were very much
into a Russian patronage. I think that should be clear.
I find that kind of fascinating. But because it may
the UH, there's this uh, there's this spectacular UH raid
the free the hostages on flight lift on the flight
one one they played it ultimately landed in Mogadishu, Somalia,
and the Somali Army they uh, they provided a distraction
and they detonated this ordinance on the runway in front
of the nose of the aircraft. So the hijackers rushed
the front to see was underway, and then these these
commandos from GSG nine, you know, which is the like
Special Operations Element and these British sas guys, you know,
they then uh they then blew open the passenger door
and uh and and and took out the terrorists. But
it uh pretty much immediately after uh, like after the
like I was talking, like, you know, days after the
the incident, the UH, A bunch of the imprisoned ARIF
members UH died supposedly by suicide, including Andrea's batter, Gudrun Insulin,
John Carl Rasp and Ingrid Moeller who UH supposedly attempted
suicide but survived her injuries. But the believe, the claim
of Mahler as well as others, was that you know,
these these people were murdered by by the guards and
uh it was in the immediate uh aftermath. Helmut Schmidt,
who was the consular UH the Buddhist Republic, he uh,
he was hailed as a hero in the Western world
for you know, for his decision to storm the air
craft and refuse to negotiate, and you know he uh
and interesting in West Germany and Somalia like became very
tight after this, like going to their operational integration militarily
and obviously like Somalia, you know, having a substantial Mauslim population.
This was like good pr but it it was believed
again by people like course Mahler and others like some
some sympathetic to the Royal Army Fractions, some not that
you know that uh you know Schmidt's uh, people like
had had these Rotarmy Fraction prisoners murdered as part of
their Basically they're saying like, look like you're not. No,
nobody's gonna nobody's gonna hijack our planes and hurt our
people like to try and you know, spring motherfuckers like this,
We're just gonna. We're just not We're gonna, We're gonna
kill them. I think that's and I mean that's that
kind of thing probably seems like, I'm thinkable today, not
because the brutality or something, but I mean within the
Cold War the context of it, I mean, it was
like certain things like certain things are acceptable, but they
just weren't discussed. You know. There was kind of like
a hotshots wink wink like aspect to it. And I
think that's I think that's I think that's pretty clearly
what happens also too. It's you know, the something that
what changed to in the later iterations of the butter
of the of the Rote Army Fraction. First of all,
they became very adept at a striking you know, like
prestige targets, you know, like businessman, industrialists, bank presidents. You know,
like I said, what was going to be kind of
like the feather and the cap. I'm not trying to
be crashed by, you know, discussing an attempt at homicide
and flipping terms, but kind of like their big their
big coup was going to be, you know, blowing up
General l Hague when he was Supreme Commander of NATO.
It's like their operational focus very much shifted towards you know,
kind of proceeding as the vanguard of an occupied country.
And that was very different than what the bottom Minhaw
Federation of the Rose Army Fraction was doing. You know.
I mean, not only was the initial organization kind of
scattered shot in their priorities, but they were very much
trying to index with you know, kind of like the
global like proletarian revolutionary liberation movement, you know, And like
I said, I horse de Mahler and outsized impact on
their strategic operational priorities, and him kind of viewing Israel
as like the primary adversary of a revolutionary German armed
grouping made perfect sense. But the fact that later, you know,
the legacy what was what what was the sul An
unfighted like legacy organizations or success organizations. You know, their
targets became, you know, the economic the high financial economic infrastructure,
the bud Is Republic and NATO, you know, I mean,
and that's very I think that very much indexes with
an understanding of them being you know, a DDR client
regime like the Chazi's notion always was. And this was
proper if your ambition is to discredit the buds Republic
was two you know, first last, and always portray the
bond regime as this this militaristic like American client regime
that had no real legitimacy and had no real support
from the body politic, you know, and that in and
of it, like that whose existence itself preserved you know,
an elevated state of arousal for lack of a better term,
of arn't forces in theater because its very existence was
dangerously provocative, you know, and don't get me wrong, Like
Warsaw Pack definitely was at war with Israel. They were
literally actively at war with Israel. But you know a
H a West German UH non state actor element that
Warsaw Packed UH was aiding and at betting and you know,
providing operational priorities to the way, Like it makes perfect
sense that you know their their their targets would be
the NATO officers and and and and key personages and
the West German infrastructure. We can UH, that's about all
I got on like the bottom Minehoff iteration. We can
get into the subsequent manifestations of this phenomenon if you
want to, or if you want to change direction and
getting a different topic, we can come back to it.
But it's it's like it's a huge topic, like the
UH I've got like empowering my way through to refreshment recollection,
like these two volumes on like the entire history about
like half way through. But I don't I don't want
to spend too much time on one discrete topic. I
will if you want to, But that's.
Speaker 1: Something we can come back to if we have a
one off episode we wanted to do. We're already doing
that one up. We're already planning a one off episode
coming up later this week, and then I figure we
just probably after that just started on a new topic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, it's great. And yeah, also as we get
into yeah, when it when it's when it's topically appropriate,
like to uh get into like able arch or ara
cold war. I'll come back to it. But I don't
want people, uh, I mean people. People are free to
criticize me like whoever they want, but I mean, like
I I don't want people think, Okay, what the hell,
like you didn't you know you're only covering you know,
like basically like one third of the subject. It's like
and it's it's not because I'm like lacking or because
I can't realize that there's like a lot more to cover.
And also I think for at least for our purposes
or for my purposes rather like I said, I think
the percentage of horse and Molleler is very important. And
he's presented some kind of crank or some kind of
opportunists or uh, some people accuse him of being, you know,
some sort of intelligence agent who you know, simply it
took on the role of a turn coat because you
know his uh his agency's ops became you know, like
neo Nazis and lieu of communists. If the what that's
that's complete nonsense. And I don't I don't see how
old man that k is gonna sing the man went
to prison for like five years, you know, for for
a quote unquote Holocaust denial. But yeah, I hope, uh,
I hope people this series is been getting a lot
of praise and I'm very like honored and humbled by that.
I I hope people, uh continue to get a lot
out of this series, but with with this episode. So
I'm very I'm very fortunate you're willing to invite me
on to cover these topics, man, and uh, I want to.
I want to thank everybody very much for their their
kind words and constructive feedback.
Speaker 3: Of course it do quick plugs and we'll get out of.
Speaker 2: Here, yes sir, Oh yeah too, we got we We
also got to get back to our mystery science year
three thousand. Seriously.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we'll do We'll do that next week.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. Man. The best place to find like the
kind of the one stop uh site for like all
my content is my it's just my website. It's Thomas
seven seven seven dot com number seven h M A
S seven seven seven dot com. You find everything there.
My sub stick that's where I do long form stuff.
That's where the podcast is at. It's real Thomas seven
seven seven dot subsec dot com. You can find me
on x formally Twitter at real Capital r E L
Underscore number seven ho An seven seven seven. I'm on
a t gram. It's a mind phaser is my t gram.
It's named after the pod. But if you just if
you just look for Thomas seven seven seven and t gram,
like you'll find it. I'm not I'm I'm active on
the every couple of days. I'm not super active because
I'm not a big fan of t gram. Back in
the days when I literally could not like get a
social media account without a thing nuked in minutes, I
relied heavily on it. But I am on there and
yeah that's I'm on Instagram, and yeah, seeking you so
fine
Speaker 3: All right, Thomas, So the next time, thank you,