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airpl ane hij acking by Croa tian s whi ch took place in the spring of 1977.
T he world became aware once aga in tha t modern Yugoslavi a is,
compara ti vely peaking, an artifical na tional constructi on (as its name
imp li es) whi ch mas ks a long hi story of ethni c heterogen eity and
fru stra ted na ti onal aspi ration s. Th e case of the German terrorist, the
seeming ly senseless suicides of comrades, and the continuing threa ts to
blow up planes full of innocent victims in order to "commemorate"
their comrades can hardl y be cl assed with those acts of terrorism whose
audi ence is the world , and whose goal possesses some recognizabl e
nati onal or interna ti onal relevance.
In
fact, one seemin gly consistent obj ective of today's German
terrorists is, like the Nazis', the psychological impact of terror on
innocent peopl e. As Hor t Mahl er argu ed, the terrorists aim to fri ghten
the majority of people, who, unfortuna tely, continue to rely o n society
as it now exi sts. Through fear and individual acts of violence, they seek
to
des troy the sta tus quo without signifi cant support. T hi s a ttitude
reminds one of a passage from a pro-Nazi pl ay, Johst's
Schlageter,
first
performed on Hitl er's birthday in 1933 and quoted in Walter Laqueur's
T errorism.
T he pro tagoni st sta tes tha t the absence of mass support for
individual acts o f violent terror is of no consequence, for if the
alternati ve for th e future is society essenti all y unch an ged or a society
turned by individual violence into a cemetery, a "decent cemetery" is
preferable. T o pursue the analogy with the Nazis, the German terror–
ists embrace direct personal vi olence with relish (as the murder at point
blank range of industri alist Jiirgen Ponto, the solicitor general of
Germany in hi s car; the shoo ting of Martin Schl eyer and four body–
guards; and the seemingly senseless shootin g of the Lufthansa pilot a t
Mogadishu all indi ca te) and are uninhibited by "respectable" moral
standards of behavi or. Like the Nazis, they have contempt fo r them as
bourgeois and decadent. A la te November 1977 sta tement from the
Baader-Meinhof group is couched in such terms, terms convincingly
comparable
to
Nazi propaganda and justifica ti ons: " ... our obj ections
will now be capitali st profiteers and their lackeys. We shall bl ow them
up in fli ght when our ta rget is there. We shall act everywhere, in
tearooms frequented by their painted women , in select clubs, luxury
movi e houses, at galas, p remi eres and in pl aces of hi gh fin ance." As
with the Nazis, the in pira ti on to terror is drawn from a "decadent"
culture (the earl y German fascists spoke of a "doomed bourgeois
society"); as with the Nazis, the prospecti ve vi ctims canno t reall y be
ide11lified, for the ca tegori es ("their lackeys") and qualities of po tential
victims are ever expanding and continue to justify the presence o f
