University of Warsaw

An Overview of Left-wing Terrorismin the 70's and 80's of the 20th century

Adrian Nikolov

Asymmetric Threats (Instructor: Marek Madej, PhD)Institute of International Relations

Warsaw 2012

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1. Introduction

Nowadays, when we hear the words terrorism and terrorist, the first association that appears in

our minds are arabs/muslims, who, driven by their religious or racial hate towards the western

world conduct suicide bombings, kidnap people and hijack airplanes. And, in the majority of

cases, when it comes to the recent examples of behavior, which we usually refer to as terrorist,

the case is exactly the one, described above. But, the phenomenon is far older, and far wider

than this; actually, what is known as arab or muslim terrorism first appeared several decades

ago, when the cause for liberation of Palestine developed a militant side1. Of course, to answer

the question when did acts of terrorism occurred first, we have to be able to define the topic

precisely: for the purposes of the present study, I'm going to adopt the definition, given in the

Online Academic edition of Encyclopedia Britannica, namely “the systematic use of violence

to create a general climate of fear in a population and thereby to bring about a particular

political objective”2, augmented by the condition that this violence is conducted by a group,

which is not directly connected with a government or state authority (otherwise the studied

field will inevitably prove to be too large). The use of the word itself dates back to the age of

the French revolution, and examples of what is now known as terrorism can be found

throughout history, all the way back to ancient Rome3. But it was not until the big political

clashes and diversification of political ideologies in the 19th century that the arsenal of terrorism

started playing a key role in politics. And, since ideas are divided mainly in two categories,

namely left and right, so do the different types of terrorism. In history (until recently) usually

the right side of the political spectrum was associated with the establishment, the old rule, the

state and traditions, and, on the contrary, the left side represented anti-establishment,

progressive, modern and oppositional ideas. For that reason, the most popular acts of terrorism

1 A timeline of the events on http://www.camera.org/index.asp?x_article=795&x_context=72 Complete definition to be found on http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/588371/terrorism3 More information on: http://www.historynet.com/terrorism-in-the-ancient-roman-world.htm

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were conducted by communist, socialists and anarchists; so were the most feared and long-

lasting terrorist organizations. It is no coincidence that these happened mostly in the cradle of

those political ideologies – Europe, and especially Germany, France and Italy. The current text

aims to explore and attempt to classify these different European left-wing terrorist groups, as

well as to define and show their similarities and differences of their methods, ideas and history.

2.First examples

Terrorism has been a part of the actions of the left-wing political organizations almost for as

long as such have existed. Since that was back in the late ages of predominant monarchic

systems in Europe – the second half of the 19th century, when the main goal of the lefties

organizations was the overthrowing of the monarchy and establishing democratic states,

removing the status of serfdom and ensuring the rights of the hired workers. The first notable

and drastic example of left-wing terrorist activity is the Russian organization, known as

Narodnaya Volya (Народная Воля)4. Their main goals were, as stated above, the removing of

the Tsarist monarchy and aristocratic system as well as universal suffrage, creation of a written

constitution and transferring ownership of factories and land to the peasants/hired workers.

Since their propagandist action on the masses was generally a failure, including their well-

known newspaper, bearing the same name as the organizational, decision was taken to conduct

a display of power, aiming against the Tsar. For that reason, a special terrorist wing of the

organization was created, a notable member of which was Alexandr Ulyanov, Lenin's older

brother. They made a several bombing attempts, and ultimately succeeded in the killing of Tsar

Alexander II, which happened in 1881. However, the successful assassination did not serve its

intended purpose, because it did not inspire a people's revolt, like the members of Narodna

Volya planned to. For that reason it was rather easy for the new Alexander III government to

eradicate most of the organization; however, it persisted till the 90's of the 19 th century, when

4 More information on Narodnaya Volya on http://revsoc.org/archives/2822 and http://www.narovol.narod.ru/ (in Russian)

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the revolutionary cause was largely abandoned by the remaining members. But their quick

downfall is as important as the fact that Narodnaya Volya set the example and paved the way of

future left-wing organizations, employing the methods of terrorism.

Another early example of left terror comes from Bulgaria – one of the biggest terrorist acts in

the history of Europe was conducted in 1925, in the church “St. Kral”5: during the Easter

festivities all the supreme army officials and high administration, including King Boris III were

gathered in the church for a ceremony, when terrorist from an unnamed communist “partizan”

organization blow up the roof of the church, claiming more then 200 lives and beheading the

military and the civil administration. This led to a twenty-year civil war with different levels of

intensity, which ended in 1945, when, with the assistance of invading soviet troops the

communist groups seized the power in Bulgaria (this is also one of the few cases, in which

groups involved in terrorist activity achieve their ultimate goal) and held it till 1989.

3. Peak of the left-wing terrorism (70's and 80's of the 20th century)

Regardless of the spectacular actions, conducted during the “early period” of left-wing

terrorism, it was not until the 70's when it reached its peak of illegal bombings, hijacks,

murders and kidnappings. These could easily be called “days of red terror” in European history,

because of the dominance of these organization in the terrorist landscape of the age. Here I'll

present and describe the most notable of these organizations, founded and acted on the territory

of Europe in the 70's and the 80's. (It is very hard to grade the organizations by their impact,

therefore the order in which they are represented here does not bear any specific meaning.)

3.1 Rote Armee Fraktion (Red Army Fraction)

As is visible from their title, RAF are a German left terrorist and propagandist organization,

5 The full story here: http://www.glasove.com/navurshvat-se-86-godini-ot-komunisticheskiya-atentat-v-tsurkvata-sv-nedelya-13278 (in Bulgarian)

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which was active for more then 3 decades (from 1970 to 1998), considered by some the authors

of most concepts, methods and techniques of modern terrorism6. Their ideas are described in

detail in the most well-known publication Das Konzept Stadtguerilla7, later considered to be an

“urban terrorist guidebook”. In a nutshell, the base idea, driving the actions of RAF is that after

the KPD – the German far-left communist party – was outlawed, the only available way to

present and draw public attention to the thesis of the representatives of far-left ideologies was

underground pamphletry and terrorism. RAF defined their main goals as the overthrowing of

western capitalism, as well as that of righ-dominated government and conservative media; their

ultimate goal was defined as achieving a utopian, classless society; unlike early Marxists

though, their preferred path to reaching such a society was through ideological aggression and

imposing of ideas through brute force. One of their key goals was to put an end to the alliances

between Germany and NATO, seen as a world-scale military oppressor, as well as to withdraw

Germany's support to autocratic and “unjust” third-world governments and regimes. The other

main enemy of the group were big multinational corporations.

That is what brought together Andreas Baader, ultraleft “professional” terrorist, and Ulrike

Meinhof, author and political journalist, and gave birth of RAF. Their two personalities define

the style of RAF – constant underground publishing and propaganda, combined with

kidnappings, street shootings and bombings. Important actions, carried by the so-called first

generation RAF were the bombing of the US embassy in West Germany, a series of bank

robberies and bombings at shops, as well as a few shootings, who killed as many as 34 people;

these drew a lot of attention and the group gained huge recognition and formidable support; so

far, they were successful in their goals. The turn in the activity of the organization came in

1972, when the leaders, including Meinhof and Baader were caught, imprisoned and a high-

6 Detailed information on the RAF can be found on their dedicated website, http://www.baader-meinhof.com/7 Full text of the pamphlet can be found on

http://www.nadir.org/nadir/archiv/PolitischeStroemungen/Stadtguerilla+RAF/RAF/brd+raf/004.html (in German)

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profile lawsuit started, which would last years. At that time, the “second generation” RAF ran

the organization, and during that period terrorist activity was on a huge scale: a few instances

of that are the kidnapping of CDU Berlin mayorship candidate and the seizure of West German

embassy in Stockholm. The peak of RAF came in 1977, in the so-called “German autumn”,

during which the organization kidnapped and murdered several more government and bank

officials, as well as the failed hijacking of a flight from Palma de Mallorca to Frankfurt. After

these events, the organization was pretty much crippled; almost all of the “original” member of

RAF were dead, the second generation lost its will to continue fighting after the blood bath and

the failure of the hijacking. Despite that, in the following years a few more terrorist acts were

carried out under the name RAF, these including a few car bombs in various cities in Germany

and attacks on US army and NATO bases. In 1997 the group is officially disbanded, and since

that no activity has been carried out under their name.

One could consider what the RAF did a general failure, since none of their actions managed to

gather enough public support as to turn them into a real public movement or to coerce the

German government to agree with any of the terms the RAF tried to impose through its terrorist

actions. However, their role in the history of terrorism is far greater than the immediate impact

of their actions – first of all, the RAF demonstrated that an outlawed, terrorist group can

survive and flourish for more then 20 years despite all the attempts of the authorities to destroy

it, and, during this time, to conduct numerous and various terrorist acts, both in scale and

nature, and in the same time to keep attracting more and more people to its cause. In a way, it

can RAF can also be considered to have set the standard of modern terrorist activities when it

comes to methods, organization and completion.

3.2 Action Directe

The “urban guerrilla” model, set out by the RAF was followed by many organizations, one of

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the most notable of which was French libertarian-left Action Directe8 (AD). Although it never

had the impact or the scale of activity of RAF, it was operational for more than a decade, and

was also the biggest organization to act in France for the period. From an ideological point of

view, the two organizations were very similar: AD's main goals were to put an end to

“proletarian exploitation” and to promote proletarian internationalism and the abolishment of

conservative nation states in favor of self-ruled worker communities (that is the reason why AD

are considered libertarian). The USA and Israel,which was considered to be a projection of US

influence in the Middle East were perceived as the main source of imperialistic influence and

therefore they were one of the main targets of the attacks of AD. Formed on 1977, the

organization was a blend of two previous illegal communist groups, in order to be able to

radicalize and militarize the pursuit of their common goals. Their main activity consisted in a

number of assassinations and assassination attempts, which were carried out in the period

between 1979 and 1987, most targeting heads of large businesses, especially those of the

military establishment and the energy sector, or retail chains, as well as army and police

officials. After they AD announced that together with RAF they made a “common front”

against imperialism, the organization also carried out a few bombings against military targets.

Unlike the RAF, when the heads and originators of AD were arrested in 1987, the entire

organization was disbanded and practically ceased to exist. The campaign for liberating the

leaders, however, is active even today, because they are seen as martyrs of the ultra-left cause,

and French government has been the target of many criticism regarding the conditions and

legality of the prison sentences the leaders of AD are being subjected to; for that reason the

name of the organization is mentioned quite often – sometimes as an example of one of the

most common faith of “urban guerrillas”, sometimes as one of questionable treatment of

8 Information on Action Directe sourced from their dedicated website http://www.action-directe.net/ (in French/German) and the dedicated section in reference sites http://www.urbanguerilla.org/actiondirecte/index.php and http://www.start.umd.edu/start/data_collections/tops/terrorist_organization_profile.asp?id=3498 (in English)

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“uncomfortable” prisoners.

3.3 Επαναστατική Οργάνωση 17 Νοέμβρη (Revolutionary organization 17 November)

Like most of the lefties terrorist organizations in Europe, “November 17 th”9 was founded in the

70's; unlike most of them it lived to see the new millennium as an active and operational

structure; it acted for almost three decades. The organization owes its name to a protest against

the Greek Regime of Colonels, which took place on the said date; originally, the group was

formed as an answer to the bloody suppression of the protest, willing to exact revenge on the

regime. At the end, it outlived it, but the group's loose ideological concepts allowed it continue

its activity after the change of government – it was comprised mostly by Marxists and Leninist

communist, but also a number of anarchists, held together by a rather strong nationalism. The

main ideological goal of “November 17th” was the withdrawal of Greece from all multinational

organization (mainly NATO and, later, the EU), the reclaiming of Cyprus and, after that, the

construction of a socialist order on the basis of Greek autonomy and self-governance. For these

reasons, both their targets and their methods varied greatly: they did gun assassinations,

bombings, abductions, shootings, even poisoning attempts and rocket attacks, aiming at both

US army officials and bases in Greece, police and army staff and members of the public

administration, including ministers and political party leaders. Not a single attack could be

called random though; each of them was followed by a communique, which claimed

responsibility and explained the reasons behind the terrorist act and the political goals that the

group was aiming at through it. The fact that, despite the large number of terrorist act

conducted by it (estimated as an over 50), until 2002 not a single member of “November 17 th”

was captured, is mainly due to the extremely small size of the terrorist core – around 20 active

terrorists and around 100 “trustees”, which supported them, and also because there are no

9 Information on “November 17th” on http://www.ahistoryofgreece.com/press/november17terrorists.htm, http://www.cdi.org/terrorism/17N.cfm

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proven connections between them and other terrorist groups (like the RAF, for example, part of

who's network was discovered and destroyed because of their participation in illegal terrorist

training camps in Palestine; “November 17th” only offered support to foreign organization

willing to operate from or through Greece). This was also the reason why when a single

member of the group was discovered in 2002, the rest of them were caught within days. As of

now, it is unclear whether the entire organization has been destroyed, because after their

capture a message was sent, claiming that the structure is still active. No terrorist acts have

been performed by them after that. It is important to know that, unlike other organizations of

the same type, “November17th” has never had much popular support – surveys show that in its

peak it reached no more then 15% popular approval, so, it is safe to say that the organization

has failed to achieve its goals – its message has reached a wide audience, because of its log-

term activity, but hasn't won followers and supporters.

3.5 Grupos de Resistencia Antifascista Primero de Octubre (First of October Anti-Fascist

Resistance Groups)

GRAPO10 is yet another long-lasted terrorist organization, which outlived even the “November

17th”, surviving a full three decades (1976 – 2006). It shares the same origin as “November

17th” – it has its roots in the resistance against the authoritarian regime of Francisco Franco,

after the change of government in the 80's it continued to oppose the newly formed

constitutional monarchic regime. Ideologically speaking, GRAPO is easily the most radical of

Europe's terrorist organization, drawing its inspirations from Maoist partisan action and the

Leninist reading of Marxism; like all the rest, it was also anti-capitalist, anti-globalist and

10 Information on GRAPO on http://www.start.umd.edu/start/data_collections/tops/terrorist_organization_profile.asp?id=188 , http://www.cdi.org/program/document.cfm ? documentid=2873&programID=39&from_page=../friendlyversion/printversion.cfm and http://www.fas.org/irp/world/para/01_oct.htm

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opposed to NATO, USA influence and Spain's EU membership; their ultimate goal was the

creation of a Maoist-type republican state in place of Spain's democratic monarchy. The group's

tactics were quite simple – usually they employed street shootings and killings of police

officers and soldiers (GRAPO is known for its high killing rate, in its history the organization's

terrorist act have killed around a 100 people) as well as kidnappings of key members of

businesses in order to coerce companies to change their policies and also for ransom; GRAPO

employed bombings every now and then, but these were not their well-known acts. During the

years many members of the organization had been arrested, but it never failed to find new

recruits. Despite that, it is safe to say that GRAPO is the most-hated left-wing organization in

Europe, mainly because of the means of its financing – like many others, they often did bank

robberies to fund their actions, but sometimes they resorted to mere banditry, robbed and

pillaged people's homes for money; for that reason GRAPO never had wide recognition and

support, which even diminished after the heavy blows that the organization suffered from

police actions. As of today, it was never officially proclaimed inactive, but since 2006 the

organization hasn't claimed responsibility for any terrorist acts.

3.6 Brigate Rosse (Red Brigades)

Brigatte Rosse11 is slightly older then the rest of the organizations described in the current text;

it originated in the late 60's, when Italy had a large number of communist organizations and

groups, some of which were fighting between themselves for support and popularity. BR began

as a student communist group, which was deemed radical even by the Communist party of

Italy, though due to its mixed composition it is hard to determine what were the exact goals of

the organization. In the beginning their main activity were factory sabotages, in order to

promote the rights of workers; soon they got engaged in a struggle between the different Italian

11 Information from Dugdale-Pointon, T. (19 November 2007), The Red Brigade Terrorist Group and Alessandro Orsini, Anatomy of the Red Brigades, Cornell University Press, 2011

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militant groups, and opposed mainly neo-fascist groups. At that point, their main actions

became murders and kidnappings, their main target – the police and judicial system, partially

because the group's founder Renato Crucio and a few other high-ranking members were

arrested in 1974 and BR was demanding their release. After 1975, their goal was defined a the

overthrowing of the current regime and “the liberation of the working class”. The peak of their

activity was the kidnapping and murder of key christian democratic political figure Aldo Moro,

which had a twofold effect on the organization – moderate left organizations condemned (even

the imprisoned founder of BR did so); it gained popularity and support only among the ultra-

radicals. This event led to increased pursuit of the group; many of their member were caught

and some of them fled the country. In the 80's BR split in two different organizations, but both

did no more then a few political and military assassinations, mainly due to the constant

measures the authorities took to hunt them down which resulted in many arrests; it was

officially disbanded in 1988, though in the 90's a new organization with no proven links to BR

took their name and committed a number of political crimes. The BR was best known mainly

for its vast network, at certain times reaching as much as thousands of militants, involved in

different types of action, varying from sabotage to murder (statistics show that BR are

responsible for an impressive 14.000 illegal acts and between 70 and 80 killings).

3.7 Cellules Communistes Combattantes (Communist Combatant Cells)

While the terrorist organizations, described above can be described as “extensive”, i.e. their

terrorist activities were carried out during long periods of time, with changes of the frequency

of their activity and recognition, The Cellules Communistes Combattantes (or CCC)12 were

what I would define as an “intensive” organization; their time, in which the organization was

12 Information on the CCC in John Jeesup, An encyclopedic dictionary of conflict and conflict resolution, 1945-1996, and on reference site http://www.start.umd.edu/start/data_collections/tops/terrorist_organization_profile.asp?id=299

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engaged in terrorist activity was slightly more then an year, between 1984 and 1985; the

importance of the CCC comes not from prolonged activity, but from their “explosiveness” and

large number of terrorist act conducted during their short lifespan. Their sphere of activity was

Belgium – their country of origin. Despite the fact that they were a national organization, the

main part of their ideology was communist internationalism, their main goal – fighting

imperialism and the removing the influence of multinational corporations, so they mainly

targeted objects of military importance to the NATO and property of various companies

(including Motorola, Honeywell, Litton and Bank of America). Their preferred weapon were

bombs, as they tried to destroy only property but not kill people; for that reason their every

attack was announced before it was carried out. For the single year the organization was active,

it was very “productive” - it succeeded in making 20 bombings; after that its core, inspiration

and creator Pierre Carette was arrested, and, unlike the leaders of RAF or AD, quickly

sentenced; this essentially put an end to the CCC. In 2003 he was released, and made a failed

attempt to revive his organization.

133.8 Forças Populares 25 de Abril (Popular Forces 25 of April)

“April 25th” was yet another reactionary movement, born from the resistance against a

totalitarian regime – in this case this is the Salazar regime in Portugal. It shares many of the

characteristics of the CCC – most of all its short-lived history and intensive action. It was

active between 1980 and 1986, its goals – again the establishment of a Marxist state and

fighting the influence of “international imperialism” and the corporations. The main difference

comes in the methods employed – although they mainly used bombings, a few shootings,

assassinations (only of foreign military officials) an kidnapping also were performed. The

group did not survive the arrest of its creator, Otelo de Carvalho, and was dissolved shortly

13 Information on “April 25th” in John Jeesup, An encyclopedic dictionary of conflict and conflict resolution, 1945-1996 and http://fantasian.tripod.com/pf25.html

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after it.

4. Conclusions

After reviewing the major left-wing terrorist organizations of the 70's and the 80's, several facts

have become apparent. Given the pre-specified criterion i.e. organization from the far-left side

of the spectrum, their ideological belonging is obvious, and, therefore, their goals are similar –

changing current political order to a classless communist society and reducing the influence of

supra-national organizations and international corporations. But, there are many other

similarities – for example in their methods, which usually cover almost everything we consider

as terrorism – namely bombings, street shootings, assassinations, extortions and kidnapping,

and most of these organizations performed all of them. Their operation funding methods are

also similar – usually they employed bank robbing, as well as received support from

international communist organizations and existing – at the time – communist regimes. What

differs them from one another are mainly the length of their operation; in the end, all of them

were successfully destroyed (if not confirmed for some) and their members sentenced.

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