We Have To Be As Radical As Reality: Conditions and Limitations of the Continuity of Revolutionary Clandestine Political Violence

Comparisons between protagonists and episodes within interrelated cycles of political violence regularly emphasise similarities between different cases. A set of common dynamics seems to define the trajectory of politically violent campaigns emerging from relatively marginalised positions in non-revolutionary situations such as the left-wing armed struggle in late 20th century Europe. This paper proposes a more nuanced approach and attempts to re-frame the dynamics of political violence by focusing on actual strategies legitimising the armed struggle rather than on mere ideological affinities. It combines Apter’s proposition to understand episodes of clandestine political violence in terms of symbolically (re)producing discourse communities with Luhmann’s understanding of communication as a medium of social differentiation. The paper conceptualises a set of interrelated factors defining critical moments and decisions in the reproduction of self-referential legitimisation strategies. This conceptualisation is illustrated by a comparison of legitimisation discourses of the Italian Red Brigades and the German Revolutionary Cells.