The Baader Meinhof Complex

I have just seen the Baader Meinhof Complex, a German film about the notorious terror group that called itself the Red Army Fraction. It’s a fairly good film, and I recommend it to everyone interested in modern European history.

One sequence I found particularly interesting in the film portrayed the naivety of the young Western communists during a visit to a Palestinian terrorist training camp. The men and women from Berlin undress and go sunbathing on a rooftop while the Arab militants stare at them with contempt. The Germans then start to shout something about “fucking being a part of the revolution”, not realizing that the Islamist revolution represents the exact opposite to the sexual revolution of the Western 1970s.

I have often noted the same kind of naivety among leftist activists today. The prevailing idea among communists in Europe is that anti-capitalist radicals everywhere are the same, which is why European communists so eagerly support Taliban rebels one day and so enthusiastically march for women’s rights the next.