Oh how hard it is, in the age of information, to hold a recent memory; our intense focus on the present blurs and distorts our perception of just a generation or two ago, and if you were to ask people about terrorism today, I believe most of them would easily (as easy as a mere pavlovian reflex) think about Islamic extremism, and would wholeheartedly miss those far long lost times before 9/11, when the world was an undisturbed green peaceful land. Truth is, terrorism as a medium of dissent and coercion was rampant during the second half of the XX century, and assumed spectacular forms, testimonial to the fact that individual commitment to an all-out war against states or ideologies was a deemed a real possibility at the cold heart of the surveillance-driven modern society; in short, that it was in fact possible for individuals to change History. Also, worth reconsidering this term, ''terrorism''; nowadays this term rings with the bloody bell of self-immolation, and the mass murder of circumstantial civilians in order to force political change, or simply retaliate. Yet, this same word can apply to simple property destruction, such as that carried out by the Weather Underground and many ''radical'' envornmentalist groups (DAPL was enough for media personalities to throw the word around). Can also be applied to organized abductions or magnicides of key political or religious personalities. And, of course, can be used as a handy representation of any declared enemy: for Israel, any short of confrontation sparked by Palestinians will be in fact deemed as terrorism, yet bombing refugee camps in Gaza is the standard military procedure by a ''sovereign state''.
These are murky waters, and the only easy way out would be to stick to broad brushes; too broad to be detailed, concrete: real. Studying the circumstances behind armed organizations implies an analysis of the personal, the ideological and the material circumstances of real people, and not taking them at face value. Not only product of, but rather makers of History (whether brilliant or infamous), women took an extraordinary role as writers and leaders of many an organization engaged in armed struggle. In sharp contrast with nationalist-driven terrorist organizations (exception made of the iconic IRA girls, and some others), women (and young, well-learned women at that) took a revolutionary role in many marxist, anarchist or simply internationally-scoped organizations, specially after the 68 movement and the Vietnam War. In USA, a young activist named Bernardine Dohrn overnight becomes the CIA's most wanted person. In West Germany, journalist, commentator and mother of two Ulrike Meinhof puts her life in peril as she flees a crime scene in which she does not take part, joining the perpetrators under the banner of the Red Army Faction (RAF). Even weirder, a Japanese girl, marxist daughter to a prewar Tennō-worshipper ultranationalist (and they get along quite well) partakes in the wild Tokyo riots of the 60's, and after changing underpaid jobs and academic curricula, she leaves Japan for Beirut, establishing a cell destined to uphold World Revolution striking everywhere, from Kuala Lumpur to France, fights along the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and only gets caught of her own accord, returning to Japan giving the thumbs up, in July, 2000. All of these cases happened almost simultaneously: Fanon, Marx and Sartre's ideas are in the air. The American retransmision of Vietnam (thanks to our media, now we are mercifully blind to the suffering our governments inflict in our name, avoiding any kind of antiwar movement) backlashes as soon as Buddhist monks and children lose their skin to napalm, released from American planes fueled and deployed in Okinawa. The young Japanese, resenting the rushed and barely discussed Security Treaty with America, as well as the previous USA-backed Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi [岸 信介], (atrocious war criminal of the worst kind during WWII), are fed up and ready to riot, before Japan militarized its police.
As you can already guess, there is no easy introduction to this rare documentary by Shane O'Sullivan. A pile of books and even movies would be necessary to really pierce the veil of collective memory, so as to understand the key figures here: Ulrike Meinhof and Fusako Shigenobu. Beautifully edited, richly commentated, it closely follows the personal memories of their respective children: Bettina Röhl and Mei Shigenobu. Born to two of the most important women of their times, both of them (Bettina in German, Mei in perfect English and Japanese) lay down the entire story of their very particular childhood as really valuable footage unveils key events and locations: the childhood and family photos of their mothers, the environment where they grew up, the places where they used to hide. As Mei brilliantly explains, it does not matter how undercovered a person, the raising and socializing of children, their learning and the family life that comes with it, are public activities by its very nature. Therefore, Children Of The Revolution focuses on the personal without rejecting the political; even more, it analyses the political with the perspective of time and the personal memory of the witnesses: in this regard, this is a unique and most valuable resource, specially regarding the astounding lack of bibliography on Fusako and the Japanese Red Army (JRA).
A firm contrast in their respective relationships. The tender, close relationship between Mei and Fusako developed in arab-style extended families; Mei herself being half-arab half-japanese (as her father was a PFLP member), she grew up speaking many languages, with also many identities in permanent shift. Changing name, look, school and house was common, in order for her to flee kidnapping or murder at the hands of the Mossad. Her name is symbolic in itself, as Mei [命] signifies both ''life'' and compounds ''revolution'', yet it was registered in Japan as foreign katakana. As Fusako often vanished for months, other PFLP and JRA members such as new wave filmmaker Masao Adachi raised her. Graduated at the university on journalism, now she does not have any reason to hide, often working in television as she visits Fusako in prison all weekends. Committed to the Palestinian cause not vicariously, but as a Lebanon child with family there, there is a fondness for her mother and the ''freedom-fighting''. Sure enough, time has really cast shadow on the conflict; this very year Israeli troops have targeted and sniped paramedics, people in wheelchairs and children on purpose, and the situation has indeed worsened since Fusako's participation in the conflict. Her writings and premonitions concerning at least this, as well as the disastrous and meaningless Irak War (illegal under International Law, along with USA's meddling in the Middle East after her arrest) have provided more than one argument against imperialism and the greed of the military industrial complex.
At the other extreme, the troubled, emotionally layered relationship between Ulrike Meinhof and Bettina Röhl. An early divorce before Ulrike famously started writing on Konkret (one of the most popular underground magazines of divided Berlin) marked her two girls, as the taciturn journalist slowly grew disenchanted with the passivity of intellectual discourse. It was easy for her to feel drained of energy and motherhood, even if delivered with love, felt like a burden, as she stated in one video interview. Bettina remembers her smoking entire packs of cigarettes while writing, and is fair to assume that Ulrike, despite her vigorous writing, was often depressed (worth mentioning that she underwent brain surgery and endured the insertion of a metal plate without painkillers; this very fact sparked infinite debates around her psychology). In fact, her very style melts together political revolution and personal alienation, due to every aspect of our environment: the rat-race for food, the corporate propaganda, our ugly functionalist architecture, our prison-like education and the mass manufacture of thought. As a result of all these factors, Bettina and her sister were often left in custody, and a crazy attempt to withdraw them from Germany to the Mediterranean and then Palestine was interrupted by friends of the family. The rest is also History; Ulrike's meeting with Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin, seasoned saboteurs and sleazy, even if committed terrorists. She was spokesperson for the known Baader-Meihof gang, sparking a huge following which continued after their detention and suicide in prison. Unlike Fusako's ride, hers was short and bleak.
Even considering some differences in this regard, no one would agree that the difference between their fates was an ideological one. It was more of a life orientation: the mercurial Shigenobu was able to establish all kinds of contacts on her own, and to dissappear without a trace, crossing unlimited prefectures (and eventually, countries on fake passports), reappearing with money on her pocket and new allies along her side. Meinhof was analytic and introverted; her desire to belong and deepen her critique far surpassed her quality as leader and active member of an armed group in constant need of falsify documents, traffic weaponry, launder money and flee the ever-watching police a month ago. Fusako grew a family overseas of Japan (where starting a revolution soon became impossible); Masao Adachi and others were not only cheerful and exiled comrades but friends and informants who even watched for her daughter. Ulrike truly had no one; she divorced a cheating husband, contacted people whom she barely knew on Konkret and then joined as a gang member along with cold and rushed people of the underground, some of them (as Baader himself) arguably borderline. The only RAF imprisoned interviewee, Astrid Proll, feels really detached from her memory, and internal tension between Ulrike and others often sparked, due to her condition of ''intellectual bystander'', even if she was betting her life as everyone else in the movement. Nothing is lost on Ulrike, however, as her writings are widely available in various re editions (in sharp contrast with Fusako's, only in Japanese except for scarce English communications, along with the reluctance of the Japanese Government); the Red Army Faction created such a media alarm over the entire cold-war Europe that she widely eclipsed the furtive Shigenobu: that was her legacy.
Fusako's JRA was, however, the absolute enemy of Japan during entire decades, and she remains imprisoned (until 2026, it seems). She's not on the frightful Japanese Death Row (in which also historical Shōkō Asahara has been executed this week) since she has not personally killed anyone nor conspired to do so, same as had happened with Ulrike. Worth noting how Ulrike's massive coverage and following gave an excuse to the authorities to incarcerate her on isolation regime, something that quite surely prompted her suicide. While the RAF far outlived Ulrike and Baader, being dissolved in 1996, Fusako herself disbanded the JRA in 2001. Just on a side note, in order to avoid confusion of the casual reader: in Japan, there were numerous armed cells under really similar names:
-Japanese Red Army Faction: widely notorious for hijacking Japan Airlines Flight 351 and landing it North Korea (a legendary move in which nobody died, and even comedy happened).
-United Red Army: The collaboration of two armed branches, one under Hiroko Nagata's command, other under Tsuneo Mori. Arguably the worst of the branches, the Maoist group retired into the mountains in a ''training retire'', then purging itself out of existence in the worst possible way. One by one most of them were tortured and killed by colleagues, including Toyama Mieko, beloved campus friend of Shigenobu (who at the time was establishing her own group in Beirut). This earned Nagata serial killer status. The survivors were detained after the Asama-Sansō Incident.
-Japanese Red Army: The internationally oriented armed group was established by Fusako and others, who traveled under the guise of volunteers or university students, then establishing themselves in the Middle East. Among the many operations, the most infamous was the Lod Airport massacre, carried out by a jointed operation of both the JRA (Kōzō Okamoto) and the PFLP (Wadie Haddad).
Overall a fantastic effort, Children Of The Revolution offers not only a pleasant tempo and invaluable footage from both Japan and Germany's student movements but a reflection that merges the personal circumstances of two young female terrorists and the political termoil of an era we're still trying to understand. Most of this material has never been shown in 30 years (2010), and both Bettina and Mei are reserved, even if known as journalists. Bettina happily raises her own child, and Mei, dynamic and cosmopolitan, saves her earnings in order to live with Fusako when she gets released. A political documentary worth finding indeed.
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