André Moncourt

André Moncourt is the pseudonym of a writer with his political roots in the movements of the seventies and eighties.  Moncourt lived in West Germany for a time during the eighties, where he worked with the movements supporting the various guerrilla groups, as well as with political prisoner support organizations, an experience that went some way to shaping his politics thereafter.

• Book events
• Reviews
• More from André

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About

1977 was to be a year of reckoning. Through daring attacks and devastating errors, the West German guerilla brought their society to the brink, mounting one of the most desperate and incredible campaigns of asymmetrical warfare ever waged in postwar Europe. That they failed is no excuse to not learn their story, to see who they were and what they fought for – and, most tragically, to bear witness to the lengths the state would go to silence them. This pamphlet is our very modest introduction to this story.

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Praise

“Of all the revolutionary organizations to have been forged by the so-called sixties generation, the German Red Army Faction has been perhaps the most mythologized and maligned. Here at last is their story, told in their own words through “official” communications, comprehensively assembled and available for the first time in English translation. This is essential material for anyone wishing to know what they did, why they did it, and to draw consequent lessons from their experience.” —Ward Churchill author of On the Justice of Roosting Chickens

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Praise

“This collection is not simply a documentary of the West German revolutionary Left at a particular point in the Cold War 1970s. It is more important for the insights it provides into the challenges, obstacles, and opportunities of waging armed struggle within the context of a wealthy, well-resourced, Western capitalist state. In this, the experiences and activities of the RAF are unique in the lessons they might teach organizers in Western capitalist milieus. In our own context, it is likely that future conditions of radical social change, and certainly revolutionary struggles, will more closely approximate those engaged by the RAF in 1970s West Germany than the much more influential examples of Russia in 1917 or Spain in 1936.”
—Jeff Shantz, Upping the Anti

“The editors of this work, J. Smith and André Moncourt, have created an intelligently political work that honestly discusses the politics of the Red Army Faction during its early years. Their commentary explains the theoretical writings of the RAF from a left perspective and puts their politics and actions in the context of the situation present in Germany and the world at the time. It is an extended work that is worth the commitment required to read and digest it. Not only a historical document, the fact that it is history provides us with the ability to comprehend the phenomenon that was the RAF in ways not possible thirty years ago”
—Ron Jacobs, Counterpunch (on Volume 1)

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Book Events

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Reviews

• Red Army Faction Vols. 1 and 2 Reviewed in Turning the Tide
• Red Army Faction on dotrad.com
• The Red Army Faction – A Review
• Daring to Struggle, Failing To Win – A Review
• The Red Army Faction Volume 2: – A Review
• The Red Army Faction – A Review
• Polemics for the People?
• Reflections on Germany’s Red Army Faction
• The Red Army Faction in Perspectives on Terrorism
• The Red Army Faction in Radical Criminology
• “Det finns mycket att lära från RAFs historia”

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Interviews

• Armed Struggle, the RAF, and Projectiles for the People

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Mentions

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Blog

• International campaign for the release of Georges Abdallah
• Moncourt and Smith on the Recent Statement by Some Former RAF Members
• Wienke Zitzlaff Obituary
• I obeyed my conscience
• “…because my sister and I were very close”
• Historiography and Armed Struggle
• “…because my sister and I were very close”