84 research outputs found
Varieties of Sympathy for the “RAF” in Germany: When Terrorism Was Cool
Get PDFTerrorism has flooded the international stage with radical ideologies and spectacular explosions, kidnappings and assassinations. It has left fear, loathing and heaps of innocent bodies in its wake. But this was not always the case. There was, once upon a time, when terrorism was “cool!” Drawing from sociocultural and geopolitical events in post-war Germany, I examine how West German citizens in the 1970s were able to sympathize with a leftist terrorist organization known as the Red Army Faction. I aim to examine the sympathetic tendencies toward terrorist organizations in the 1970s by studying specific subgroups of the sympathetic German public in this ear into: hyperactive, active, passive, hyper-passive, and the disassociators. The findings shed light on how sociocultural and geopolitical events, especially as reported by the media, influenced sympathetic audiences of this terrorist organization
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