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PARTISAN REVIEW
the actions of terrorists from man y Wes tern countries, especiall y in
Italy and Germany. The young age of most o f the terrori sts, they fear, is
itself a clue to a more general malaise among young people today.
Consequentl y, any dismissal of terrorism as merely the work of a
pa tho logical few does not seem to suffice and does not ass uage the
anxiety in the West concerning terrori sm.
T he foreign reaction
to
German terrori sm takes on a special
character because Germans are regarded as hi stori call y linked to terror,
viol ence, a nd repressive authoritari ani sm. T he intense interest in the
Bonn government's actions comes from those Western na ti ons who
twice in the twenti eth century were vicLOrs over German y, first against
what was viewed as aggressive mon archical authoritarianism (Wihel–
minian Germany) and then its brutal fascist successor (n azism ). A
carica ture of the German personality persists in these countri es, fu eled '
es peciall y through popul ar culture, in television and movie scripts: an
image of the German as fana tic, effi cient, repressed , clean, and as
proficient in science and scholarship as in terror and murder. Conse–
quentl y, the German terrori sts are open to parti cul a r suspicion no t
applica bl e, for exampl e, LO Palestinian or Mo ll uccan terrorists. The
reaction to the German rescuers was not compa rabl e to that accorded
the Israeli elite troops who staged the raid a t Entebbe. A film , compar–
able to the one on Entebbe, based on the German rescue a t Mogadishu
is p robabl y not now in prepara tion either in Ameri ca o r in Europe.
Such suspicion is heightened by the fact tha t most of the non–
German terrori sts appear LO opera te w ithin a famili ar and understand–
abl e tradition of political terrori sm. The Palestini ans are fi ghting,
pres umably, a na tional struggle, as are the Mo lluccans, Irish , and
Puerto Ri cans. La tin Ameri can and Spanish terrorists have been
vi ewed as attacking right-wing dictaLOrships, imperi alism, and mo–
nopol y capita lism all a t once. The Italians might be seen as fighting
within a cl assic context of cl ass confli ct. In contrast, wha t motiva tes the
German terrori sts appears incompreh ensibl e. Tha t fact has not escaped
Chancell or Schmidt, who has done hi s bes t LO link the German terrori st
to a genera l interna ti onal problem in the West among the young, so as
to
discredit the impress ion tha t German terrori sm is specificall y a
German probl em . "T errori sm is not specifica ll y a German phenom–
enon ," he argued, linking it to Irish and Spani sh terrorism and to an
Ameri can experi ence- wha t he describes as " the terribl e moral coll apse
a t the end of the sixties in the U. S."
Is German terrorism in fact more than a German exampl e of an
interna ti onal probl em? Ironi call y, although most of the foreign con -
