“greetings from the underground” – documentation of Burkhard Garweg’s letter
We hereby publish an unofficial translation of excerpts a letter by Burkhard Garweg, a militant of the Red Army Faction, who remains underground and on whom a witch-hunt by the German state was unleashed, documented by DemVolkeDienen:
The taz has published what is believed to be a letter from Burkhard Garweg, excerpts from which we document here:
Police and bourgeois media say we are violent criminals or terrorists who will not shy away from killing for money.
The urban guerrilla project in the form of the RAF ended 26 years ago. However, for us who were persecuted as RAF militants, life in illegality did not end. The image of us which is tried to create describes a violently marauding gang of robbers who are dangerous to the public and are also prepared to kill – and only for money.
There is no reason to believe the police or judiciary anything because they are motivated by delegitimizing the fundamental opposition and creating a climate in which state violence and repression appear justified.
State violence affects many – the poor, the exploited, the excluded. It is directed against those who protest or against those who defend themselves against this state and do not accept this state of affairs as given.
… those who are demonstrating against the genocide in Gaza and against a German government that is supplying the weapons for it, and the authoritarian-violent mixture of police batons, capture, threats from the judiciary, threats from deportation, loss of jobs and secret service threats, exposure to surveillance or whose demonstrations are banned altogether …
… those who recognized that the state used Corona as an opportunity to promote the formation of the authoritarian state and are denounced for it.
… those who fight against fascism and Nazis in the Antifa and are therefore threatened by the police and justice system, illegal or locked up in prison.
… the masses in precarious working conditions. Those who have to sell their labor cheaply. Those who are squeezed from morning to evening and whose wages in the end are barely enough to live on.
… the thousands in former Yugoslavia whose lives were extinguished by NATO bombers, supported and commanded by the German federal government with the battle cry, “Auschwitz, never again”, which has become a battle cry and has been misused.
As part of the revolutionary left, we were – and I say: we are – convinced that a system based on violence has no legitimacy and that its emancipatory overcoming can be achieved.
The capitalist system has fallen into a comprehensive and multi-layered crisis. It’s not the top ten thousand who are paying for the crisis, it’s those at the bottom…
Politicians and the police like to talk about migrant clans as if they were society’s problem. However, they never talk about the Hohenzollern or Quant clans…
The authoritarian crisis state sets the primacy of internal militarization – the arming of the police and secret services as well as external militarization.
Two stabbers were enough … to justify a comprehensive police build-up, border controls, further steps in the process of revoking the right to asylum and mass deportations. However, 360 femicides in 2023 did not move those in power to do anything.
Today, the Muslim population and refugees became enemies desired and created from above, with which the rulers divide and channel the discontent of broad sections of the population and conceal the fact that they themselves and capitalism are the cause of the fundamental problems.
…an increased level of instability in capitalism. In his greed for profit it needs the possibilities of accumulation, which are becoming increasingly difficult to produce. It lurches from crisis to crisis. It is the age of wars, social upheavals and reactionary reflection on people and nation. But it also suggests that things could be slipping away from those in power and the question arises: What is to be done?
We are part of the history of global rebellions that have existed since there have been rulers and slaves. That has existed since patriarchy, since capitalism and colonialism have been the evil of humanity. From this perspective, the responsibility for repression lies with those in power and no one else. Repression is an instrument of power. From my point of view – and that would be our point of view – there is only one answer: solidarity.
Unite against today’s repression against Daniela!
Create (counter-)publicity! Show solidarity!
In the historiography of those in power there is fundamental resistance to the capitalist system: crime, violence and terror.
The image of the “terrorist” created is intended to depoliticize the history of resistance against capitalist violence, is intended to divide, is intended to obscure the fact that state violence and the violent relations of the capitalist system are really just terror for many people in the world.
Today, the term “terrorist” is primarily a means of domination. Exploitation, repression, Frontex regime, class justice and prison system; Hunger, wars, coups and military regimes under the direction of the capitalist centers and with the historical responsibility of every German federal government: the millions of dead can no longer be counted – terror has nothing to do with us, but everything to do with them and their system.
Solidarity among us – with those who rebelled, are rebelling or will rebel – yesterday, today or tomorrow against this system
Show solidarity!
… the reconstruction of the ability to act of an anti-capitalist, social-revolutionary and internationalist left that works beyond its own borders. The end of the Sleeping Beauty’s sleep: It’s time – it’s time – to move.
Solidarity with Daniela!
Solidarity with the comrades in exile, all those underground and the prisoners from the struggles of Antifa, the resistance, the Kurdish and Turkish comrades, the climate movement and all other emancipatory struggles in the world!
The demand for Daniela’s immediate release is justified.
Martin
(Burkhard Garweg)
