Bringing the war home

Description

"Why Did Young, Middle-Class Radicals in prosperous democratic societies attempt to overthrow their governments by armed force in the 1960s and 1970s? How did they carry out this program of violence? These questions form the basis of this first comprehensive comparison of left-wing violence in the United States and West Germany. Using a wealth of primary material, ranging from interviews to FBI reports, Jeremy Varon reconstructs the motivations and ideologies of America's Weather Underground and Germany's Red Army Faction. Varon conveys the heated passions of the era -- the moral certainty, the depth of Utopian longing, the sense of danger and despair, and the exhilaration over temporary triumphs. Varon explores the strong similarities between the Weather Underground and the RAF and the reasons for their developing shared values, language, and strategies in spite of their different settings. Addressing the relationship of historical memory to political action, Varon demonstrates how Germany's fascist past influenced the escalating brutality of the West German conflict in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as why left-wing violence dropped sharply in the United States during the 1970s. Bringing the War Home is a fascinating account of how social movements come to embrace violence, how states can respond to radical dissent and forms of terror, how the rational and irrational can combine in political movements, and finally how moral outrage and militancy can play both constructive and destructive roles in efforts at social change. Varon's narrative is compelling and has wide implications for the United States's current "war on terrorism." Book jacket."--BOOK JACKET.

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