J. Smith is the pseudonym of an activist who has been involved in
the radical left for over twenty years.
Andr� Moncourt is the pseudonym of a writer with his political
roots in the movements of the seventies and eighties.
Ward Churchill was, until moving to Atlanta in 2012, a member of
the leadership council of Colorado AIM. He is a life member of
Vietnam Veterans Against the War and currently a member of the
elders council of the original Rainbow Coalition, founded by
Chicago Black Panther leader Fred Hampton in 1969. Now retired,
Churchill was professor of American Indian Studies and chair of the
Department of Ethnic Studies until 2005, when he became the focus
of a major academic freedom case. Among his two dozen books are
Wielding Words Like Weapons and Pacifism as Pathology.
"This collection is not simply a documentary of the West German
revolutionary Left at a particular point in the Cold War 1970s. It
is more important for the insights it provides into the challenges,
obstacles, and opportunities of waging armed struggle within the
context of a wealthy, well-resourced, Western capitalist state. In
this, the experiences and activities of the RAF are unique in the
lessons they might teach organizers in Western capitalist milieus.
In our own context, it is likely that future conditions of radical
social change, and certainly revolutionary struggles, will more
closely approximate those engaged by the RAF in 1970s West Germany
than the much more influential examples of Russia in 1917 or Spain
in 1936."
--Jeff Shantz, Upping the Anti "The editors of this work, J. Smith
and Andr� Moncourt, have created an intelligently political work
that honestly discusses the politics of the Red Army Faction during
its early years. Their commentary explains the theoretical writings
of the RAF from a left perspective and puts their politics and
actions in the context of the situation present in Germany and the
world at the time. It is an extended work that is worth the
commitment required to read and digest it. Not only a historical
document, the fact that it is history provides us with the ability
to comprehend the phenomenon that was the RAF in ways not possible
thirty years ago"
--Ron Jacobs, Counterpunch (on Volume 1)
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