Bruce Allen Scharlau PhD thesis - Research@StAndrews:FullText

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indicate goals and stimulate aspirations. On the other hand, television
arouses people I
leaves them feeling impotent. 20
but does not provide a release for this arousal, and
Contagion, the transfer of ideas from one place or person to
another, contributed to the first bombs planted on 2 April 1968 after
Ensslin and Baader talked to Langhans and Teufel of Kornmune I the week
after their acquital in court for incitement to arson as mentioned in
chapter two. Media coverage of US activities in Vietnam added both to
their feeling that they had to do something about Vietnam because they
wanted to avoid the mistakes of their parents' generation, and combined
these feelings with ideas from the court case in their own
attempt. 21
arson
Second, the media reduce complex political structures and events to
the actions of individuals and institutions. This leaves the impression
that if individual people are removed, or eliminated, then the problems
are solved. 22 The public and government thus present the mirror image of
the terrorists' belief systems as they dehumanise the terrorists as
angry monsters, whose actions have no political significance and present
images of the 'good' establishment and 'evil' terrorists. The terrorists
lose their human features along with their contact to the social base.
Choosing somewhere between the two
treachery.23
is thus either backsliding or
Third, for people with hungry egos, the media provide publicity and
visibility. People can be known and named by the media. Perhaps this is
why Christian Klar left his fingerprints everywhere for the authorities
to find and report. 24
Fourth, the media can incite people, wittingly or not, to terrorist
acts. The attempted murder of Rudi Dutschke by Josef Bachmann falls into
this category. When Bachmann was arrested he had newpaper clippings of
the right-wing Deutsche National Zeitung from 22 March 1968 that said:
"Stop Dutschke now! Otherwise there will be a civil war. "2 S
The first item above, contagion, was also apparently at work in
Bachmann's assassination attempt on Dutschke. On 4 April 1968 Martin
Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis f Tennessee f over a week
after the Deutsche National Zeitung article. Now f
arguably, Bachmann had
an idea of how to stop Dutschke, but had television, wi th i ts emotive
2Q Schmid, de Graaf, 137-8.
21 Aust (1987), 48-9.
22 Schmid, de Graaf, 138-9.
23 Orr, 53; Hozic, 73, and see the opening chapter quote from Boell.
24 Schmid, de Graaf, 139; rr 'Da ist irgendwo ein Nest' rr Der Spiegel
15/1991, 22.
25 Aust (1987), 52.