BARBELITH underground
 

Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.


Underground > Conversation >

Laptop Terror Images: am I the only one?

  
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
19:42 / 16.08.04
I'm a little perturbed by this thread. I don't want to object within the thread any more, but I'm unhappy with the idea of branding one's tools with the images of what is unquivocally a terror group which killed a bunch of people, some of them perhaps bad people, some of them not.

I don't hold with executing bad people anyway, but that's another story.

But if someone wanted to put the face of Ezhov or Douche on their laptop, we'd think they were on the sicker side of cool. Or at least, I hope we would.

Is that because Ulrike Meinhof was cute? Or because the R.A.F. have a kind of mythologised status as goodies, derived in part from the fact that the security servies of the time went significantly outside the law (shocker) in dealing with them?

Doing vile things to unpleasant people is not better than doing vile things to anyone else.
 
 
Char Aina
19:50 / 16.08.04
one might argue against the wearing of the stars and bars or union jack on similar grounds.
both represent groups who have in the past killed and destroyed to further their agenda, no matter how noble an agenda it was.

what do you see as okay? fictional ones?
 
 
Grey Area
20:02 / 16.08.04
I don't think you can compare a country's flag with the insignia of a terrorist group...there are connotations with terrorist insignia that, while possibly also inherent with certain national emblems, are not the only ones you would have when declaring your allegiance by displaying them.

An example: If I were to wear a Union Jack shirt, I would be ostensibly displaying my pride in the country, the belief that it is a cool flag, or that I support it's efforts overseas in creating a free world. However if I wear a shirt that bears the logo of the Ulster Volunteer Force, all that, plus the belief that it is good and right for me to go out and beat up/kill those on the other side of the divide come to the fore.
 
 
Grey Area
20:10 / 16.08.04
I guess what I'm trying and failing to say is that a country's emblem might have more redeeming, or neutral qualities implied than that of a terrorist group, which would have more (only?) negative connotations.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
20:16 / 16.08.04
Hmm... this is something I'm horribly guilty of myself (Baader Meinhof, Manson Family and blatantly gung-ho Vietnam T-shirts)... I'll come back to this thread when I'm not drunk, I think. That'd be tomorrow, then.
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
20:46 / 16.08.04
I might well argue against having the Union Jack on your laptop for similar reasons. I'd be uncomfortable with (for example) the Cross of St. George - although that symbol might equally be a sign of a fondness for football.

On the other hand, national flags are rarely intended to be about terror. The R.A.F. were very much into the philosophy of terror. Terror - as Lenin insisted - was part of the natural order of political debate and ideological purity. That's partly why I mentioned Ezhov and Douche - there's a theoretical genealogy to be traced there.

The point is that this is being represented as a Cool Thing. I'm not at all sure that it is a cool thing. I think it may be a pretty ghastly thing - unless it's going to be a thing which acknowledges the troubled history of Meinhof and her sexy eyes, staring at us over that bandana, and the many and involuted threads which lead to and away from her and tie her forever to the death of poor bloody Irwin the boatbuilder.

Maybe it's the Cocacolonisation of a bloody and painful moment in history, in which children raised under Nazism exploded into an attempt to shock the world into an understanding of (amongst other things) the transience of material wealth; it was confused and furious. The R.A.F. group killed Hanns-Martin Schleyer, who was apparently a former minor Nazi, but they also considered striking Jewish targets purely as a way of purging themselves of guilt towards the Jews in the aftermath of the Nazi Holocaust.

This is not a bumper sticker. This is a murky and complex political and social timeline whose consequences probably run into now, and whose significance is probably better summed up by the dead - Reinhold Brändle, Roland Pieler, and Helmut Ulmer, for example - than an Athena image of Ulrike.
 
 
w1rebaby
21:26 / 16.08.04
On the other hand, national flags are rarely intended to be about terror.

Well, that's a matter of opinion. Sometimes they are. I'm sure the BNP would like the Union Jack to strike fear into the hearts of immigrants to take the obvious example. They're certainly quite frequently about aggressive nationalism, which has definite terroristic connotations. Simultaneously, if you're just going to go on intention, a laptop with Hans Baader on it may not be intended to be about terror, or may be about terror but in a perfectly reasonable way.

There are instances where the display of a symbol or portrait might indicate that the person display it is an arsehole, or an idiot who doesn't recognise the connotations, but I don't think that's automatic by any means. It's rather hard to make a judgement without knowing whether someone has put it there because they think it's Cool, how much they have thought about it and so on. One might even be combining the Cool Thing status with a serious point, nothing wrong with having both.
 
 
Char Aina
22:26 / 16.08.04
che guevara would be okay though, eh?
 
 
pointless and uncalled for
06:39 / 17.08.04
Fair enough point that the RAF roundel is very much a symbol of military action (which I find it a little crass to align with terrorism), but there is also the very poignant fact that it has been systematically co-opted by socially dissenting groups for nigh on 40 years.

I'll reference this article here, from where this quote is derived "The high street fashion group argued the roundel was brought into the public domain by the Mod movement of the 1960s."

Now this lawsuit is something of a formalisation of accepted usage, but the basis is very clear. It is also clear that non-military groups have for many years been using military symbols and imagery as part of fashion and identity and at the same time expressing anti-war, anti-government and anti-oppression/aggression views.

Celibate, in this instance you have completely and utterly failed to take into account the full history and usage of the roundel. Not only that, but in the process you have basically accused iconoplast as being pro-terrorist.

Well done, very clever.
 
 
Grey Area
06:59 / 17.08.04
che guevara would be okay though, eh?

Did you even read that last paragraph, toksik? If I want to put Che on my laptop, T-shirt, backpack or whatever because I admire what he did and wish to affiliate myself with the principles he espoused, why should I have to avoid the stylised portrait of him? Because it's not edgy enough? The bottom line is that I know why I put him on the cover, and I am confortable with having him there. What anyone else thinks is of no consequence.

The same applies to RAF rondels, hammer and sickle iconography, foetal abortion pics and a hi-res printout of a multiply pierced penis. If someone tries to engage me in serious debate because of it, grand so, I'm always up for a good verbal tussle. If someone calls me a wanker simply because of a badge I'm wearing, and isn't prepared to debate the issue, I can still sleep easy because such moronic behaviour is not worth losing any time over.
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
07:41 / 17.08.04
Fair enough point that the RAF roundel is very much a symbol of military action (which I find it a little crass to align with terrorism)

Hello? "Military action"? Against unarmed civilians? That is one thin fucking figleaf.

The R.A.F. represented almost none of the German people, yet they intended that their use of force should govern the future of that nation. They used violence against individuals not part of the government or military structure, and they deployed in peacetime. Yes, they asserted that they were a revolutionary elite (wake me when you're done) and that they were fighting a monolith of oppression. They compared themselves to guerillas in Latin America, fighting despots, without a choice in their tactics. I don't accept that. They engaged in the use of terror for political gain, and they did so in the most contemptible way; by attacking 'soft targets' - people of whose politics they disapproved.

From Build Up The Red Army:

7. What does it mean, to carry the conflicts too far?  That means to not let yourselves be slaughtered.  That's why we are building up the Red Army.  Behind the parents stand the teachers, the Youth Authority, the police.  Behind the foreman stands the master craftsman, the personnel office, the factory security force, the welfare service, the police.  Behind the building superintendent stands the administrator, the landlord, the bailiff, the eviction notice, the police.  What the pigs manage with censorship, dismissals, notices of termination, with the bailiff's seal for seized belongings and the nightstick, they do with those things.  Of course, they grab for the service pistol, the tear gas, hand grenades and machine pistols.  Of course they escalate the [means of oppression]weaponry, if they are otherwise bogged down ["...nicht weiterkommen" is a military term for an advance that is being held up].  Of course, the GI's in Vietnam were retrained in guerilla tactics, the Green Berets given a course in torture.  So what?  Of course, the execution of sentences for political [prisoners] is intensified.  You have to make clear that that it is Social Democratic garbage to assert that imperialism, including all the [Kurt] Neubauers and [Gen. William] Westmorelands, Bonn, the [Berlin] Senate, the State Youth Office and the borough offices, that the whole filthy bunch would allow itself to be infiltrated, to be led around by the nose, to be overpowered, to be intimidated, to be abolished without a struggle.  Make it clear that the Revolution will not be an Easter Parade, that the pigs will naturally escalate the means as far as they can, but also not further.  In order to push the conflict as far as possible, we build up the Red Army.
 
 
pointless and uncalled for
08:02 / 17.08.04
Yes well, I guess we have a difference of opinion there. I hope that you don't for a moment consider that I approve of or condone the actions of the RAF where they have been a tool of oppression and unwarranted agression. I simply find that that use of the words terrorist and terrorism dilute their meaning, much like the media's use of the word hero.

Still, it's subjective and interpretational and I respect your opinion, however derived.

So how then do you feel on the subject of the roundel in the public domain? By your own arguments at the opening of this thread is seems that you are quite willing to brand mods, punks and other social groups as pro-terrorist. I personally find this rather hard to reconcile, how do you do it?
 
 
Grey Area
08:04 / 17.08.04
The R.A.F. represented almost none of the German people? I beg to differ. 25% of the population admitted harbouring sympathy for their ideals. 10% of the population stated that they would provide shelter for an RAF member being pursued.

And you need to differentiate between the first and second generation of the RAF. The first generation, the group that formed around Baader, Meinhof and Ensslin, admitted to having issues with civilian casualties. They went on the record in their 'Konzept Stadtguerilla' that they would not have tried to free Baader in 1970 if they had known that an innocent party would have been injured. This attitude was also apparent in the bombings of 1972, which were carried out in a manner that targetted only 'justified' targets (military personnel). The second generation, the one that carried out the Shleyer kidnappings, was a lot more ruthless. The mythos that has been built around the RAF is centred firmly around the personalities of the first generation.

Plus, you cannot ignore the fact that the German government was extremely heavy-handed. There are numerous documented incidences of legislation being rushed through in order to justify and legalise the treatment of RAF prisoners (isolation within the jails, denial of access to lawyers, etc).
 
 
pointless and uncalled for
08:17 / 17.08.04
Celibate - did you in actual fact rebuke me with a somewhat biased representation? That seems so unlike you.
 
 
Kit-Cat Club
08:52 / 17.08.04
I think he thought you were talking about the RAF (Red Army Faction, i.e. the followers of the Baader-Meinhof gang) where it seemed to me that you were talking about the RAF (Royal Air Force). Is that right?
 
 
Cat Chant
09:19 / 17.08.04
(Thanks, Grey Area and fridgemagnet - good points and very nicely put. This is really just a footnote to what you've already said.)

Celibate:

This is not a bumper sticker. This is a murky and complex political and social timeline whose consequences probably run into now,

And that might be exactly why someone wants to sum it up in a relatively simple image. I have a photo of Patricia Hearst holding a machine gun in front of the Symbionese Liberation Army banner Blu-Tacked to my computer, because it summons up all manner of 'murky and complex' things for me and I want those things to be associated with the terminal which connects me to myself, via my work and via the internet and communities like that. Like a tutelary deity, but a complex of thoughts, concepts and stories rather than an entity.

Images like this may look like homogenization, coolification or Coca-Colonization, but often they are a way of attempting greater precision, awareness and specificity in the bearer through the mobilization of an image which is not immediately legible as complex to the onlooker. There's a certain pleasure, which I can't explain adequately, in... something like using a common symbol, an available image, to differentiate yourself. I mean that there's a complex of reasons around the mobilization and contextualization of symbols like the Red Army Faction (or the Symbionese Liberation Army) that does not boil down either to a simple performative "I am in the Red Army Faction" or to a simple citational "I like the Red Army Faction". (In other words, why do you think that you know what a bumper sticker is?)

And... Hmm. I wanted to say when I first saw your post the thread you link to that I too am a bit perturbed by what I sometimes feel (maybe unjustly) is a habit of thought of yours: that is to assume that anyone who does anything which is ethically or politically complex, or murky, can only be doing it for ill-thought-out reasons which do not match the correctness of your own analysis. You say:

I'm unhappy with the idea of branding one's tools with the images of what is unquivocally a terror group which killed a bunch of people, some of them perhaps bad people, some of them not.

Which is fine, and which is why you don't brand your tools with such images. But - and maybe this is just a stylistic effect of the way you write - it feels like a blanket condemnation of anyone who would ever do such a thing for any reason. Hmm. I'm not putting this very well. What I'm associating this with (and this may be a misattribution, but I don't think so), is way, way back in the mists of time when I mentioned writing Harry/Snape slash, and you said something about how you had a problem with that because it was ethically very bad for teachers to have sex with students. Well, yeah, obviously as a general rule this is true, but that doesn't mean that every story about a teacher/student sexual relationship is going to have the uncomplicated attitude you seemed to be implicitly ascribing to it. Do you see what I mean? Making images about murky and complex political and social stuff whose consequences probably run into now and inscribing them on tools, on websites, on bodies, happens in a lot of ways and for a lot of reasons, and I feel like you don't give that enough credit.
 
 
pointless and uncalled for
09:24 / 17.08.04
See, acronyms are bad for people. A varient of the roundel appeared in the original thread and I was thinking that Celibate's orginal post refered to it.

Oh well, it appears I know nothing.

Still quite funny the Celibate didn't pick up on my repeated use of the word roundel, or for that matter check the link I put in.

To quote Homer "with hilarious consequences".
 
 
Cat Chant
09:39 / 17.08.04
derived in part from the fact that the security servies of the time went significantly outside the law (shocker) in dealing with them?

I'm sorry, I just spotted this, and would like to splutter incoherently for a moment

*splutter*

before saying: what? So we are supposed to be shocked by the illegal and violent actions of the Red Army Faction, but we're not supposed to be shocked by the illegal and violent actions of the State? Why? How does that work? It's all in the day's work for the security services to kill people of whose politics they disapproved, because they don't call it terrorism?

Oh, and one more thing:

a bloody and painful moment in history

Name me one moment in history that's not bloody and painful. Here's Walter Benjamin:

Whoever has emerged victorious participates to this day in the triumphal procession in which the present rulers step over those who are lying prostrate. According to traditional practice, the spoils are carried along in the procession. They are called cultural treasures, and a historical materialist views them with cautious detachment. For without exception the cultural treasures he surveys have an origin which he cannot contemplate without horror... There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism. And just as such a document is not free of barbarism, barbarism taints also the manner in which it was transmitted from one owner to another.

At least if you're painting the Bader-Meinhof Brigade on your laptop, you're making that visible, instead of passing off the bloody, painful and violent history of all cultural artefacts as a neutral aesthetic that transcends the conditions of its production and transmission.

Hmm. I seem to feel very strongly about this.
 
 
lord nuneaton savage
11:02 / 17.08.04
That's all very well, but I've got a friend who (funnily enough) has the Baader Meinhof mugshots as his screen saver and every time I see it I attempt to have a debate about it with him.
The mugshots are still there despite him admitting the validity of my argument (they murdered people 'cos they did'nt agree with them). This leads me to one conclusion, pwople think that the RAF (that's the Red Army Faction) are cool.
I blame The Clash.
At least the Angry Brigade were so inept they could'nt kill anybody.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
11:55 / 17.08.04
Or possibly that his relationship with the Baader Meinhof pictures is more complex than "they did bad things, and therefore I should not have their pictures on my computer". That is, that you are winning the wrong argument. It's like... you know the band, Baader Meinhof? I don't think Luke Haines is actually endorsing whole-heartedly the actions of the Red Army Faction by calling his band that. He is doing something a bit more complicated. You may still think he is doing something unpleasant and/or undesirable, of course...

CM, how does, say, the Barbeloid currently known as Kustom Kar Kommando fit into this?
 
 
Cat Chant
12:17 / 17.08.04
Yeah... I'm not sure that 'thinks it's cool' is any easier, more obvious or less complicated than 'a bumper sticker', to be honest. What does it mean to think that the Red Army Faction is cool? Obviously it's not the same as being in the Red Army Faction, nor is it, probably, the same as wholehearted endorsement of their philosophy and actions - especially since what Mink seems to be objecting to is, in part, (what he sees as) the detachment of their image from the nexus of historical and political circumstances in which that image should be considered. That is, promoting the image despite not being in entire agreement with the referent (or, in this case, what Mink wants to define as the only possible referent for the image).

Bit muddly and rambly, I know, sorry. Have to go back to work.
 
 
Char Aina
14:18 / 17.08.04
Did you even read that last paragraph, toksik?

yes.

If I want to put Ché on my laptop, T-shirt, backpack or whatever because I admire what he did and wish to affiliate myself with the principles he espoused, why should I have to avoid the stylised portrait of him?

you shouldnt. that was not my point.

Because it's not edgy enough?

i dont really care how edgy your PC looks, and i personally quite like that particular image of ernesto. it has a romantic quality about it that would be there even if he werent a revolutionary.


what i am curious about is what makes ché a good guy, apart from the consensus belief that he is one.
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
15:33 / 17.08.04
You were talking about the Royal Air Force.

I quit.

Deva - you've misunderstood the focus of my derision. I don't find it shocking that the security forces overreacted because that's what they do. It's an expression of one of the reasons Barbelith exists in the first place - GM's exploration of power and violence. No one here asserts that the security forces are cool. "Police Rock" is unlikely to find its way onto a Barbelith t-shirt. The Baader-Meinhof gang, however, seemed to be getting carte blanche; I wanted to question the revolutionary cool a little - I have as much difficulty with people whose other ideals I share using force as I do with those whose ideals I dislike.

Although I'm frankly now utterly bewildered by this thread, and I don't know if I can bear to go back through it looking at the misunderstandings.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
15:48 / 17.08.04
Are you *kidding*? The misunderstandings were the best part. I am going to have to marry Kit-Cat Club for her terribly polite suggestion that you two were talking at cross purposes. It was *hysterical*. The link to the MoD trying to copyright the RAF symbol (which would have been pretty good if they had in fact been trying to launch a series of T-shirts with Ulrike Meinhof's face), you saying that the RAF represented a tiny minority of the German people (presumably, since the ideals of the RAF were to drop bombs on their cities in large numbers and from a great height, that minority was *wery* magnanimous)... it was pretty much the best misunderstanding ever.

Anyway. I think you've missed Deva's larger issue, here, which could do with some love and attention if you do make it out of the bewilderness.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
15:56 / 17.08.04
Yeah, totally. For a while there this was my favourite thread ever. I even printed it out to show to a friend.

ANYWAY... I think I'm broadly in agreement with Deva- need to digest the argument a bit more before I stick my own neck on the line, though. (I got yelled at at work once for sticking a picture of Andreas Baader over my desk. Admittedly, in context- surrounded by pictures of Lemmy, Bagpuss and Eliza Dushku- it may not have been as sinister as they assumed).
 
 
We're The Great Old Ones Now
16:26 / 17.08.04
Yeurch...

I'm going on holiday. I've been getting stupider since May.
 
 
Cat Chant
17:04 / 17.08.04
It's not that I don't think you've got a point, Mink - it's just that I think the question "What makes it cool/what does it mean to think that Red-Army-Faction imagery is cool?" is more interesting and less shutting-down-in-advance than showing us pictures of dead people and shouting "Is this cool??"

And I'm with Haus. The RAF/RAF understanding is one of the best, funniest and most thought-provoking things I've ever seen (apart from this laptop I saw once with a picture of the Baader-Meinhof Gang on it ). We have just proved that the difference between the two entities is so non-transparent and so much a matter of debate that an exchange of some length can be carried on at cross purposes. Genius.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
17:45 / 17.08.04
Before we get too much back on-topic, this could be the moment to point out that the most common reaction I get while wearing my Ulrike Meinhof T-shirt is, in fact, "is that Steffi Graf?" (although one particularly perceptive individual DID say "who's that bird, then? Looks like a fucking terrorist, dun't she?")
 
 
Grey Area
18:27 / 17.08.04
And my printout of a poster advertising a student demo in support of both the RAF (terror, group, German for the carrying out of) and the establishment of political status for IRA prisoners gets many a confused look from my colleagues.
 
 
Ganesh
18:50 / 17.08.04
That's all very well, but I've got a friend who (funnily enough) has the Baader Meinhof mugshots as his screen saver and every time I see it I attempt to have a debate about it with him.

I (predictably enough) have Morrissey mugshots as my wallpaper, and every time he sees it, a particular colleague attempts to have a debate about it with me - along 'why are you promoting racism' lines.

We can't help our friends. Sadly.
 
 
Ganesh
22:11 / 17.08.04
And, on a tangential note, this reminds me of the SPIN back-and-forth between George Morrison and Pat Kane, prior to the publication of The New Adventures of Hitler.

The acronym misunderstanding, however, makes me want to start a thread on CBT...
 
 
Cat Chant
10:47 / 18.08.04
I don't find it shocking that the security forces overreacted because that's what they do. It's an expression of one of the reasons Barbelith exists in the first place - GM's exploration of power and violence. No one here asserts that the security forces are cool. "Police Rock" is unlikely to find its way onto a Barbelith t-shirt.

I think part of the point I was stumbling around and failing to make clearly was that one of the things that circulating the image of the Baader-Meinhof Gang does is to put into question the discourses that legitimate violence - when are the RAF the RAF, as it were. Where the police represent the legitimacy of violence wielded (weilded? They both look wrong*) by the State, the Red Army Faction (or the Symbionese Liberation Army - hello Patty) represent the ways in which that discourse can be appropriated and demonstrate its own incoherence. An exploration, rather than a statement, of legitimacy.

I used to have images of Federation troopers (from Blake's 7) on my computer, and I wouldn't be surprised if there were people with storm troopers (from Star Wars) or Judge Dredd tshirts/wallpapers - does that count as Police Cool? If not, why not? There are ways of mobilizing police imagery that puts into question the legitimacy of police violence.

I also don't think, actually, that anyone has suggested making a t-shirt that says "Red Army Faction Rocks" or, indeed, asserted that the Baader-Meinhof lot are "cool" (only that it would be a cool image on a laptop, which is a very different thing, I think).

*And don't say "i before e except after c", because it's just not true and it will make me want to sieze you and carry you off to undergo a wierd fate. ("I before E except after C... when the sound is 'ee'... apart from sometimes" is true but not really very helpful.)
 
 
Jackie Susann
13:07 / 18.08.04
or the Symbionese Liberation Army - hello Patty

I think you mean hello Tanya.

End threadrot.
 
 
fluid_state
14:14 / 18.08.04
Y'know, after reading and rereading the thread, I'm thinking that throwing a pic of mr. bader on your laptop would be worthwhile if only to provoke discussion in the RealLife places you take it. Bring Barbelith to the people, people.

(and Ganesh, my glib and meaningless reply to your coworker would be "Ah, but he makes racism look oh so sexy.")
 
 
iconoplast
01:31 / 19.08.04
I'd like to just comment that I wanted an Andy-Warholized series of Baader images.

And I'm not sure this thread has dissuaded me. Because I think it's a neat way to talk about to commodification of dissent. You know?

But, anyway - this thread is about images of terrorists, the other one is about whether or not to wear TShirts with logos or nor. I may actually start a third, just to talk about neat ideas for images to put on a laptop...
 
  
Add Your Reply