LEON BOTSTEIN
189
A general concern for protectin g democracy from both terrorism
and an extreme reaction to it prevails in the cases of three nations–
Italy, Germany, and Japan-where contemporary democracies
emerged after popul ar fascism and are seen as rela tively fragil e when
compared to the older democracies of the United Sta tes, Great Britain
or France. Of these three, the signifi can ce of terrori sm and the reaction
to it in the case o f Wes t Germany is particu larl y fascina ting.
Right after the acts of terror in the fall of 1977, the offi cial reaction
of the West German government was the subj ect of considerable
journalistic fascination in Western Europe and Ameri ca. Key elements
in the French press, notabl y
L e Monde,
criticized the German govern–
ment's reaction to the wave of terrorism and expressed a perhaps
widespread con cern tha t the West German cure for terrori sm-more
effi cient police controls, grea ter res trictions on civil liberti es- were
uncomfortably remini scent of German y before 1945. The French
criticism in earl y November was signifi cant enough to warrant a
special intervi ew, repl ete with assurances, with Chancell or Helmut
Schmidt on Fren ch television . A Dutch journalist, writing in
The New
York T imes
sh ortl y thereafter, sought to draw attenti on to " the offi cial
craze for
Ordnung"
and the trends towards "repression " current in
West German y, and warned tha t the response to terrori sm might no t
refl ect a much-needed sobriety and modera ti on, and threa ten democ–
racy. His letter represented well the na ture of foreign concern regarding
German terrorism. Terrorism in its German expression raises the
spectre of the past.
In May 1977 a correspondent in the British
The Guardian
voiced
his hope that German y, in reacting to terrori sm, would not "slide once
more down the slippery o ld slope," towards the arbitrary use of power
and authority ch aracteri sti c of the German pas t. German terrorism and
the offi cial German response to it have developed in to a public tes t case
on the question of how real, h ow p rofound, and how permanen t
democracy has become in a na tion which less than fifty years ago
embraced nazism.
T errori sm, wha tever its origin and location , has fascina ted and
mystified o bservers. Recent books, such as Albert Parry's
T errorism:
From Robespierre to A ra/at
and Walter Laqueur's
T errorism
have
appeared. In the affluent West, the interes t in newspapers and tel evi–
sion has focussed on the personaliti es of German terrori sts, on the fact
that they come mos tl y from prosperous middle-class famili es, and on
the possibility that their behavior may be symptoma tic of the decline o f
Western democracy in genera l. The older generation is mys tified, for it
cannot discern sympa theti c traditional ideals of either left or right in
