When ‘Good Kids’ Go Radical: A Breaking History Special

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So I want to start off by just saying Jay Solomon and I have been friends for many years.

“I think he is really one of the best journalists I know in the national security space.”

His first book on kind of the history of U.S. Iran, Shadow War diplomacy is one of the best

accounts you read and I just am so delighted that we are colleagues at the free press. So welcome Jay to Breaking History Podcast again, thank you very much. I love breaking history. Oh, I appreciate you saying that. So the reason that we have Jay on the show right now is because he just dropped I think

a masterpiece. So let's start by just talking about the story that you've been working on and we've talked about, who is Call of Walsh and why is she in Lebanon? So Call of Walsh is now 21 years old and she's essentially a full-time propaganda now for the Islamic Republic of Iran, Hezbollah and other members of the Axis of Resistance.

As you said, living now in Lebanon basically almost in exile as far as I can tell because of legal troubles in the U.S.

But the story is amazing because just a few years ago when she was 17, she was profiled

on the front page of the New York Times, due to her Democratic Party activism and her efforts in Massachusetts to get Ed Marky reelected and fend off a challenge from the Kennedy family, Joe Kennedy III and she mobilized an online army called the Markyverse to help Marky get reelected. So the story I really was interested in was how did she go from A to B in such a show

work period of time and it really is a story of radicalization in the moment we're living in and just the myriad actors that were involved in getting her radicalized, everyone from the Cuban government to a political grifter named Fergi Chambers to the Seam Network, the Neville Seam Network with a lot of people have heard about recently and then the Iranian government itself.

So Calualsh is this woman, I kind of nicknamed her a little drummer girl in reference to a John Lichore novel about another story of radicalization, but she really is now kind of the Gen Z propagandist for the Islamic Republic. Well, before we go further with Calualsh, let's talk a little about the great John Karr, and my view is really up there with Graham Green as one of the great Spine Oveless

Why did you choose that as the kind of frame for your piece?

“The little drummer girl was a 1983 novel, was twice made into movies, but in the novel there's”

a young kind of a little dissolution British actor known as Charlie, who basically gets brainwashed

by the Israeli Mossad, and inserted into a Palestinian terror cell, and she ends up kind of, it's a bit unclear in the book, whether it's the brainwashing or she herself becomes a devotee to the Palestinian cause. She's trained with Palestinian terrorist groups in Lebanon, and eventually sort of moves bombs around for the Palestinian. So, Calualsh, I thought, there's no evidence she was brainwashed by the Mossad, but this way, this a bit kind of a young woman can kind

of get seduced by the revolution, seduced by militancy. I saw a lot of parallels there, and the title, the little drummer girl just stuck in the head. Okay, so let's start with the process. She is a high school student in Massachusetts. She likes Ed Marky. She volunteers for the campaign, and then at a certain point, she discovers

“the Democratic Socialist of America. Is that right?”

Yeah, she goes from being really active. As early as 15, she was helping to organize climate strikes in Boston. She gets into Democratic politics, big on the big in the marquee campaign. She also volunteered for the Elizabeth Warren, kind of shortly lived presidential campaign. So, she looks like she's going in that direction. I interviewed for the story, people who met with her back then, and said she was incredibly, you know, precocious at this age.

But then, just almost as quickly as she starts getting into it, she kind of pulls back. Sort of it. She wrote, kind of a long, me-to-screen about how she had been kind of groomed by kind of sexually abused in some ways by people in the Democratic Party ecosystem in Massachusetts.

“And then, I think kind of the seminal moment in her radicalization, as she goes to Cuba with,”

in an, or, you know, kind of a mission. They're called Brigadier Distas. They go for media celebrations. And she does this in 2022, the, the organization in Cuba that helped get her there is called I-CAP, which if you read, kind of, I read some old CIA reports. I think it's essentially an arm of Cuban intelligence that helps recruit and indoctrinate people. And they love kind of teenagers or young Americans who have kind of this leftist worldview.

And in college case talented in social media politically connected. So right, in the story, it really

seems like the Cubans were the first to really kind of spot her. Spot her. And, you know,

she talked about elders here in the US that kind of helped bring her over there. And I think that was the first kind of case where she really starts to break. So let's talk about one of the elders, I guess, Papay Cohen, who is Papay Cohen? Well, Papay Cohen actually is a former Cuban spy who defected in 1994. And he told me about how this, how this I-CAP group, how the Cuban really do look for people. They have very good intelligence networks in the United States,

just because they're so close. This conflict's been going on for, you know, 70 years. And Papay Cohen described like she, Kala Walsh was a mother load for these guys. She was, you know, all these political connections, a clear talent for social media. She was spotted, as you said, and went over there. And it's not like she would go there for a few days. She talks about going there for weeks at a time where she's, you know, tours, hospitals, and local elections, and the two,

you know, the memorials for Che Guevara and Fidel Castro. She came back all in, you know, Cuba was great in her worldview. And the U.S. was, was a decrepit dying imperialistic state. I guess she did not notice the poverty or the state failure. Now, I mean,

it's amazing because when she comes back, their investment in her was great. It was

she immediately at just the age of 18, becomes ahead of this organization that sort of organizes 60 some groups that are against the U.S. embargo, you know, all of her, all of Cuba's trails in, in Kala's worldview were just a result of American realism in the, in the embargo. So she comes back here and she's all over the place. She's even doing joint appearances with

Cuban people. But the poverty is all just the result of Western imperialism in her view. Nothing to do with the Cuban people. Okay. So at this phase, is she like, is this what she briefly is in the

“Democratic Socialist of America, right? And is that that's following Cuba I'm assuming?”

It's around the same time. She writes about being one of the youngest delegates. I think this is uh, when she's 17 years old. So the DSA stuff is right before she goes to Cuba. Okay. It's kind of in between, it's kind of in between step. Okay. So she's now kind of now to the left of Elizabeth Warren.

Correct. And at this point, she hooks up with what the people's forum and never sing them, right?

I mean, this is the network that has been out front with really the gossip protests. They have something called breakthrough news. Talk a little bit about singums network and how that enters into the call of wash story. Yes. I mean, it's one of the most interesting things. She spent all this

“time helping to get Marky reelected in 2020 and just a few months later, she's outside of his”

Massachusetts office with arms of the Sigmund network. Something called the People's Forum and codepink both of which are part of that network. Very much campaigning against Marky's decision to back increase defense spending for the Pentagon in the East Asia. And as you know, like the Sigmund network, US government officials believe it's tied to Chinese intelligence, which explains why Cala would would be out protesting against Marky's desire to support funding in East Asia. I mean,

she really, it's part of the story that's amazing. She kind of lives and moves from one

links to one intelligent service, whether it's Cuban to the Sigmund network, which allegedly

“has ties to the Chinese and then eventually the Iranian. So she really is kind of moving around”

almost getting passed around from these various forces against American Empire. When some ways that's not surprising, Sigmund has ties to China and probably Chinese intelligence and yet it's Sigmund's network that really is the kind of initial push right after October 7th, 23 to begin protests that are effectively praising the mass shooters and rapists of that deadly day. So, you know, you can ask yourself, well, what is Chinese communism have to do with the

you know, geotism of Hamas, but here we are, of course, they have they share an enmity to America. So she's in now the people's form network. How long does that phase last? And then what is the next step for her? She comes back from Cuba. Like you said, there is definitely people's form. That infrastructure is definitely ingrained in these trips to Cuba. So she ends up making four trips and doing all this lobbying inside of the United States on behalf of Cuba.

Then in 2023 sort of in the fall, another very kind of dangerous step in a radicalization. She hooks up with a guy named Fergi Chambers who is an heir. It's a self-proclaimed

Marxist. He was heir to the Cox Communications Empire. And in 2023 inherited something like $250 million

and he builds this sort of Marxist compound slash martial arts dojo in the Berkshire region of Massachusetts. And Caloalsh is amongst kind of a number of youngsters who joined something he called the Berkshire Communists. And Chambers was, you know, there's all sorts of stories what was going on there. Paramilitary training, Marxist training, drug use of it, there's all sorts of stuff. But after October 7th, this whole operation gets supercharged. They start descending

people in Chambers' Berkshire Communist start descending on local towns doing Prohamas. I mean, we talk about the Berkshire. We're talking about where William is college is and they have theater festivals. It is one of the most idyllic. If you wanted a poster for like why America, the American way is better having, I was in the Berkshire's last summer, go to the Berkshire's. It's beautiful. You know what I mean? It's like, you know, it's like all ice cream stands and antique

stores. And then it's a little fresh. Yeah, for each Chambers shows up. And then after a few weeks

Palestine Action UK. It's an anti-Israel activist group. The Berkshire government actually designated

“as a terrorist organization last year. But Waltz decides to help create a U.S., she says it was”

inspired, not like formally part of it. But they clearly got their manuals on how to stage activities. And their fixation became defense companies supporting these really defense forces in the U.S. In particular, Elbit systems, which is Israel's largest defense contractor, the Palestine Action people in the UK really went after. By the way, we should say, because there's a propaganda campaign about this. It was not nonviolent protest. It wasn't environmentalist training themselves to a redwood

tree to stop the forestation. This was pretty violent break-ins into a factory. There were individuals who were not killed, but they were nearly killed. And I'm talking about the UK, stuff that I've looked into as you know. So we should say Palestine Action is not civil disobedience.

“How would you describe Palestine Action? It's direct action, I think, the way it is. It's direct”

action. And essentially, use any means you can almost just stop to take these companies out. And there was a hunger strike for some of those activists who were arrested in the UK.

I mean, I think it was basically that they should be, I mean, they were trying to short-circuit

the entire legal process, basically. And, you know, my view was, you know, you could eat a sandwich, you know, but anyway, well, some of your friends are helping them out, it's particularly Roger Waters. Oh, really? We don't need one. Well, they got Asian, and the winner of the danger was brain. Yeah, when they got prescribed as a terrorist organization, well, water's joined there. Of course he did. He hates the Jews. Um, okay. So she wants to start this in our

States, but she has not had much success, right? I mean, we don't have, we have not seen these attacks or have way. Well, she launched to her and also launched two operations. One was against an little bit sort of R&D facility in Cambridge. Right. They got briefly, she gets, she gets briefly rested, released. And then they launched a pretty sophisticated operation against an Elbit facility in Miramak, New Jersey. It was her and three other women. I have to say, the whole

Fergie Chambers had a very kind of Manson family field to it, because you've got this older guru type with these younger women doing these actions. But they actually, it was a pretty like military operation. And what happened? They call it walls in three of her friends or colleagues to kind three of them stormed to the top of this Elbit system's facility. And they start essentially time to destroy the air, the air conditioning and other systems going into the building. So you had

one person locking them in at the bottom and people on the top sort of trying to using pain and, you know, other things to bash the air conditioning system. So if you're inside, you'd probably get a little bit panicky. They had 650 people there. So the police, they all got arrested and charged with charges. They could have netted them nearly 40 years in prison. So this is, this is late

“2023. So she spends most of 2024 dealing with the legal, you know, her case. And what happened?”

In the end, they cut a plea agreement and they only served two months. And they were charged with riot all sorts of, you know, sabotage all sorts of things. Who was the, who was the prosecutor that allowed that? Was that one of these progressive prosecutor types? I'm not, I mean, the person who was for, was a Republican DA in New Hampshire. I mean, people I've talked to, you said that if you were to have sure, this is a New Hampshire. Okay. Got it. I mean, you're back New Hampshire. Yeah, he was

criticized for going too much. I 40 years seemed like a lot. But then in the end, he cut a deal for just two months. And, you know, the terms were, she, they had to help, was, you know, financially make Elbit Hall. I don't know how they did that because the damages were apparently a

million bucks. Right. And they also were supposed to not kind of carry on other actions against

Elbit. Right. And what do you know, Israel still exists? Well, she's also being better than ever anyway. She's also still like targeting Elbit, even though she's done the U.S. anymore. But so she gets out after just two months. But she, you can tell she's not, you know, she hasn't been cowed at all. She's

chambers that were there in their coffee is cheering her on as are her parents. So she comes out after just two months

“pretty much fully committed to the revolution. Okay. Um, so 2024 is a year where, um, you know,”

Cowel Walsh is dealing with the consequences of her direct action. Correct. What happens in 2025.

Now, when did the Iranians kind of say, wait a second, we've got somebody here who looks like,

well, 20, she gets out in early 2025 from prison. Okay. She immediately kind of moves down to New York. And was kind of hanging around the tentafata stuff in Colombia. Okay. She, she immediately galvanizes support behind Elia's Res Regas. He's the, let's see. So she's on, she's online, who was kind of tell it, who is, uh, Elia's Rodriguez. So we should, Elia's Rodriguez is another activist. I think he was briefly, briefly in the DSA, briefly in the DSA. He murdered two Israeli embassy staffers

“in May of 2025 in Washington, D.C. Um, and she's, that's why I'm terrible. Terrible. Terrible. And he was”

screaming pre-Palestine after he got arrested. But she immediately mobilizes a kind of a free Elia's Res Regas operation online and calls for more Elia's. We should have a whole network to break them out of jail. Like, right. Yeah. She was, they get us out of she core type stuff. So she was, she's now gone full militancy. She's, she's, she's moving towards buttermindoff. And then this is where we see her start moving into the Iranian axis. Um, the US and Israel launched the

12 day war in June of 2025. She did not like that. She did not, and she goes to Iran for the first

time in 2020 in August of 2025. Okay. And again, it's another one of these things that you don't, these are not kind of, you know, free media banandes is, you know, the Iranian intelligence services are very ingrained in everything they do there. Anyone who goes there is going to be clear by the ministry of intelligence, their activities kind of coordinated. So she goes full, full Islamic Republic. She takes part in, uh, they take her to a IRGC kind of military weapon

site. And in a Shadour, she gets on stage and chance death to America, death to Israel. She's, she's all in of 25. Correct. I mean, you may not know this, but it's this is only a few months after Max Blumenthal does a similar kind of tour, by the way. There's a similar, he posts all these things also from military facilities on his, his, his, his propaganda site Grayzone. Yes, it's probably the, they went on the same tour. They did, or maybe not, it's not the same time, but it was the same

kind of tour, right? This was more activists, so to speak, right? Who will propagate whatever

line the, the regime wants? Got it. Like, because she was basically the live with the Iranians,

one that were the, the Western imperialists were about ready to fall. Right. And it's from that point from what I can tell she's, she basically is flown the coupe. Yeah. She is not coming home anymore. She after that August appearance in Iran, she then starts appearing in Lebanon. She in October, she takes part in this, it was a conference in a hotel that was like owned by Hezbollah. And it was one of these conferences to memorialize the Palestinian tour in prison. And she's up there with,

you know, people from PFLP, Palestinian, Islamic Jihad. In some ways, it was kind of her announcement that she had formally broke and was now, you know, kind of, by way back, we should say that sometime,

“I think in the 2010s, late 2010s, there was a new strategy that was adopted by the, that they used”

the term resistance to, by Palestinian terrorists called Unity of Fields, which meant that traditionally kind of Marxist secular groups like the Palestine front for the, or the people's front for the liberation of Palestine merged and began coordinating with Hamas, which is a jihadist organization that really believes in restoring the ancient Islamic caliphate and Palestinian Islamic Jihad also islamist. But the, they share a common goal, which is the destruction of Israel. And they also

include Caliphals, former volunteer for Senator Ed Marky. No, it's the red green alliance. It's

two Unity of Fields. That was its official title. So you're on to something. I think that kind of,

she's, she writes about a lot. She's like the Unity and Axis are the only ones really taking up arms against the, the Western empire of the Zionists, which is why, as a leftist, she's thrown in her lot with, with the Axis of resistance. So you managed to kind of talk to, talk to people who have interacted with her. Is that right? And you were able to get, you know, some insights into

“where it would, where she's up to right now in Lebanon. Yeah. So what, I mean, what did she say?”

I mean, what, what did she do in Lebanon at this point? I mean, it's interesting. She's kind of got,

on the one hand, she's got like a somewhat normal life for a 21-year-old. She's like taking

classes at the Lebanese American university, but she's a, but her main job, A, A, A, U, B, American you know, L, A, U. Those are two different goals. Sorry, because that, that's a, that would be, you know, a bitter irony of what's given. Not A, U, B, taking classes at L, A, U kind of enjoying, you know, the beauties of Lebanon and, and Beirut, but also like, almost like a full-time propagandists for Iranian state media and the broader act of resistance. She's constantly on

press TV, which is the English language arm of Iranian state media, which is a sanction entity. You know, taking part in discussions about the glories of, uh, got some salamani and his brilliance as a commander going down to South Lebanon to sort of check out the war between Israel and, and Hezbollah and just constant, like, as she did for the Marquis campaign, she is now doing for the access of resistance, just a constant deluge of social media postings. She's got a

substack virtually all of it promoting the line of, of Tehran and its, and its proxies. Right. So it's, yeah, it's kind of a, it's, it's where people meet her. She says there seems to be a bit of a disconnect. She still comes across as kind of, you kind of nice and wide eyed and in person and it's like,

“wow, where, where does this vitriol come from? And it's like, and clear, is it, is it just an act?”

Is she a sociopath? It's, it could be, it's kind of unclear, but she still, there still seems to be a disconnect between kind of a sweet, you know, Cambridge teenager and a member of the red brigades or something. Now, I, I have, you know, we've been talking about your, your piece. I've been so excited. And so,

by the way, read it. It's amazing. It's, it's a real journey like, you know, pour yourself a, a good

barolo and enjoy. But I wanted to kind of get a sense, because I've also been kind of monitoring her, her ex-feed and things like that. She hasn't really taken off and gone viral. I mean, what would, would you say she's had much success as a propaganda, so somebody kind of in social media that would radicalize others at this point? What, what is your assessment as she effective? You know, it's, well, target tell us like, sometimes you watch her and it's almost a bit comical the way she's like

trying to accent Iran or the kind of like, the accent, and sometimes it looks like she's

“greeting from a script. But at the same time, it's like, you, I think you and I and others were like,”

shocked what happened after October 7th. As far as the tentafadas in this kind of Gen Z support for the for the access for, for Hamas and the access of resistance. So it does seem like she's speaking to a certain, you know, element of American society that is, is dangerously close. Maybe not going as militant as she is, but at least kind of a siding with, you know, whether it's, you know, siding with Iranians in this war or siding with Hamas in the October 7th. She is speaking to an audience

that I think is receptive to what she says and she is like, she's smart. I mean, she knows how to use social media channels and I'm kind of surprised. It's not just press TV. There's kind of an ecosystem of these far left podcasters where she's constantly showing up. Did you get a sense about her family, her parents? Like, what do they make of all this? No, I tried to talk to them. All I got in the end was like a statement saying they both loved a love column that have serious

differences politically with them. But you know, the sense I got is that it was kind of, I mean, it's a really interesting family. Her father teaches English literature at Boston University and was sort of an anacolite. He was an acolite of saltbellow, the Nobel Prize winning novelist. And I would say,

environment of the universities there, progressive Israel, radical chic, radical chic.

So, you know, I got the sense that her parents kind of were her political elevation or influence. It seemed to sort of galvanize them in some ways. I mean, when she was in the facing prison terms, they were up there supporting her at the trial. And I've heard her speaking in podcast from Lebanon where she's still kind of talking to her siblings back in Cambridge about the, the glories of the access of resistance. So, it doesn't seem like they've severed ties with her,

even though they, they must know at some, at some level now that she's in deep, deep trouble.

“So, yeah, I think she kind of grew up in that of a family of the literary and books and progressive”

ideas. But a lot of people do. So, like, it still doesn't totally explain the militancy in part of

it just might be unique to her DNA and her need to sort of have relevance. Okay, all right, this is very useful. Now, let's kind of maybe try to put this in some historical perspective. At breaking history as you know, we did, we've done episodes on both whether underground and the bottom, mine, half group, and particularly Orico, mine, half. Now, Orico, mine, half is an interesting case. It's not quite parallel to Kalawasko. She, she, I would say, broke rad, so to speak.

Kind of in midlife. She had a successful career as a left wing journalist, but she was part of mainstream West German society. She had been doing journalism about the radicals of 68. And then she decided to sort of join a sect of them and help break out the leader on her spotter. And at that point, she devoted her life to the revolution. And she was willing to give up her daughters to a Palestinian orphanage. She was willing to put herself in great danger.

She was willing to turn on a, you know, one of her comrades who, you know, had questioned some of the embrace of violence. And she was willing to bomb innocent people in Germany, um, in order to bring out a socialist revolution. Do you see it parallel in some ways? I mean, the difference is that Kalawask did this, I mean, started her process when she was in high school. And,

“but nonetheless kind of ended up in the same way. Do you think there's a similar psychology there?”

I do. I think, like you said, it's it's younger and it's faster in some ways, but it does seem like she's just on this continuing, it's kind of ladder of radicalization. And one thing that's

interesting is like, first she ditches the Democrats. They're, you know, then she ditches the DSA.

She just keeps going up on this level of purity. Like, I think that might be some of the similarities with Ulrich of mine off. She just no, no one seems pure enough for Kalawask. She's been blasting Zorab, Mondani and Jamal Bowman in recent weeks as being sort of covert Zionist agents, because they're participating in the corrupt U.S. political system. It just feels like she's going up on this level. We're nothing, like, outside of complete revolution and a dismantling of the

“system will be good enough for her. So if that's your worldview, how do you come down from that?”

And how do you kind of integrate back into society? Because that's one of the things I was wondering, like, is there an offering for her? Can she still be kind of saved? And a lot of the counterterror experts I talked to you said they were worried. It's kind of like she's gone too far. Like, she's like totally brainwashed. So I think that's a similarity. Mine half got to a moment. Do you think, by the way, that there's a method to the madness? Is there a logic to it?

Which is to say, if I was to devil's advocate this or steal man per position, that America is too complacent, that it's the democratic party is not progressive enough. And by living as an example of a kind of pure radicalism, I'm moving the overture window. That was an argument, by the way, for some of the black militancy of Stokely Carmichael after Malcolm X has compared to Martin Luther King. I mean, I'm not agreeing with it. I'm just saying, could you see that as being a kind of

maybe non-crazy reason that would drive her to this radicalism? Yeah, I think, I think you call that. And she says that. It's like you can't be in the system.

role models is Asadashikur, who is Chupox Godmirek, but she also, in addition to being Chupox Godmother, somebody who was involved in the deadly shooting of a New Jersey State

“Trooper, and who escaped, I guess, was she escaped from prison or did she, her comrades?”

Yeah, she's sprung from prison and escaped to Cuba, where she spent the rest of her days. Correct. And Callowash sees her as one of her models. I don't know if she ever met Asadashikur, when she was in Cuba, it's possible. But when I keep thinking, like what you said, she does, in some of her appearances talks about, you know, why aren't we springing our comrades? Why is it there in effort? So when you think of what she might

do next, you know, you can see what's kind of, kind of in her head in this million-titsy,

it's, she does talk about, we need to spring our comrades, we need to, you know, up our active, active measures. So I think you're right, like there, there is a method to her madness if you want to see it, which is how our system is irredeemable and she needs to break. Okay. And then the other thing I wanted to get into is, and by the way, what's, I just want to back on Asadashikur for just a second. Asadashikur was valorized by the Black Lives Matter movement. So in the late

20 teens, that was a common phrase, you know, I learned it from Asadash or something like that. Like, so it's not surprising that a young and impressionable high school student would be in the middle of that and say, oh, I want to be like Asadashikur, you know, all the, the Black Lives Matter loves them, and I want to learn about her, and, you know, there is a certain, it makes a bit, it makes a sort of warp sense in a way. The other question I'm going to have is, is maybe

maybe is there something to, let's call it the radical mindset? So she starts off, and she

believes that the world is going to end because of climate change. That's her first cause.

Yeah. Um, and it's, once you kind of commit to believing in a kind of, let's call it an apocalyptic vision of things, it's very easy then to take up other kind of radical causes that seek to destroy an order that you think has been corrupted and is evil. I mean, is there something to that, which is that? I don't know, she talks about that when she's even like 15, she talks about how, you know, climate change is going to, I'm going to have no life because we're all going to,

you know, die because of climate change. And she's even at 15, she's already talking about intersectionality, you know, if, essentially, if you're, if you're on the climate change,

“Vanguard, you have to support Palestine, you have to support Black Lives Matter, you have to support”

defunding the police. So you're right, she's, she's got that, you can see that worldview, that maximalist position when she's even 15 or 16. And like you said, it pretty easily transcends to, if we don't free Palestine, you know, the rest of the world will go up in, in flames. It's, it's all of a kind of similar mindset. I think you're right on that. Um, so at this point, who do you think she's trying to reach out? Who is she, who does she want to hear her message?

She knows you and me will, you know, think she's not, but like who does she try to communicate to or persuade? I mean, I think she's trying to persuade, probably her, her Gen Z generation. I think that's kind of how she came about, you know, she was kind of lying eyes because she had this ability in in 2020 to mobilize people of her age or older kind of that Gen Z behind

Markey, which was kind of pretty kind of amazing. If you think about it, Markey was kind of in

his late 70s and this young Kennedy and his late 30s is running for a Senate. You think it'd be a lock in in Massachusetts and she helped flip the swits the script. So yeah, I think I think the Iranians and the Cubans and these other groups look why there are attractive tours that she's, she's young and does seem to have a track record of speaking, you know, conveying a message to people of in her generation and whether it's climate change or the glories of the Islamic

“Republic, I think that's who she's speaking to and I think that's why her patrons seem to want”

to have her engaged. Now, there is something funny in the tragedy of Calamalsh, which is that her timing is miserable. What I mean to say is that, you know, if she's been born 20 years earlier

and fruition of Cossam Soleimani's network of the Middle Eastern access of resistance. She could have

seen how Hezbollah went from a militant Southern Lebanon to effectively the most powerful

gang in the state and had taken it over from the inside. She could have lived to have seen the rise of the Houthis, the, you know, a series of things that would give her a sense of historical

“momentum. She's coming at what appears to be at the end of the party, you know what I'm saying?”

I mean, like, she decides to sort of, you know, go to Iran after midnight hammer and now she's in Lebanon working for Iranian propaganda and she went back to Iran. She went back to Iran last month. So, and then, you know, and she gets to be kind of bare witness to the decapitation of the Islamic Republic, the decapitation of Hezbollah and the military victory of Israel. And, you know, I'd say, we'll see what happens in the war, but in terms of this project,

she's got, she's picked the loser it seems, right? I mean, what is, is she aware of, like,

how the Islamic revolution is looks like it might be finally coming to its blessed end,

or does she think the Iranians are going to win? I mean, what, where do you get a sense of that

“with her? She, she thinks Iranians are going to win. She's totally blinkered. I mean, on this podcast”

she did last weekend, it was, this is, this is the momentous, this is the Suez, she didn't say, but this is the Suez canal moment for the, for the U.S. they're going to get bogged out in Iran. This is a moment that's going to re-galvinize the axis of resistance in the left. So, she's totally blinked. She knows that she was outside as in Moscow playing video games. She knows that, you know, Yaya Sinwar is dead. She knows this brother is dead. She knows that, this Raul is dead. She knows

common A's dead. She knows that all these people have been killed and the Israelis have not really suffered a military scratch and the United States certainly has not really suffered a military scratch and that Iran isolated, I mean, even Qatar now is expelling Iranian spies and commanders. I mean, too little too late, but like, okay, fine, like Iran is in every respect isolated. If you look at the vision of the late General Cosm Soleimani and yet, she still thinks, you know, she wants not believing in

the words of duty. She's all in, I mean, suffered for reportage from February. I mean, it was

basically just to cover up the massacring of thousands of Iranians, the massacres of Iranians in January.

She said it was a CIA massade operation that took peaceful protest and turned it into riots that got, you know, people killed and that the Islamic Republic has the rightful voice of the people put it down. I mean, she was making, that's an example of how the regime likes to use her. She she feed that message back and it gained some traction in the West, I'd have to say, but yes, she just, she doesn't, she doesn't see it. She's, I think she's too far gone. All right. Now, we talked earlier about

off, off ramps for her. Does she have a way out? Is there, is there, is there some way for common walls to maybe come back to sanity? And maybe one way is the defeat of her new patrons? You think? Like, if there's a color revolution in Iran, you think that that maybe that would cause her to think, perhaps my theory of the case is wrong, or do you think that she'll just find another radical cause? We'll go to China, or, you know, so she'll, she'll, she'll start agitating for

the, um, against the territorial integrity of Taiwan. I don't know. You know, I'm just throwing it out there. Like, what's left? Yeah, I don't think she's given up the cause. So she's going to fight on and that's

“kind of one of the sad things about this is she's still only 21. And then her life is like,”

what, whole life, and it's like, what, she comes back here. I'm pretty sure she'd be a rest. Okay. At this day. Okay. She, like, material support for terrorist designated organizations. I mean, the Lebanese government now has said has got a lot of criminal organizations. They have expelled the Iranian ambassador. I mean, these are big changes. I'm, what, what I'm trying to get at, you know, they're reviewing talking about having face-to-face discussions with these railways,

possibly leading the mutual recognition. I'm not holding my breath. But she must be aware of these things. She's an activist. This is her, this is her vibe, right?

maybe I picked the wrong horn. None of it's penetrating. Wow. None of it's, you know,

she's, she's, she's, she's victory. She's, she's victory is in within, within reach. I wonder if this, this conflict relation, this long overdue, because we've studied this conflict. I mean, this is a near 50 year war in many ways. Go back to these long overdue solutions, 79. It happens to coincide with with the, the, the full introduction of AI and the ability to kind of create very believable videos. We're seeing Iran, by the way, doing this on the propaganda sphere.

And I'm wondering if she just chooses to like live in an AI world where Iran is not defeated. I mean, to her credit, she goes out there. I mean, she's not just in front of the screen all day long. She's in South Lebanon. She's in Tehran. Like, I still don't know how she's getting from Bay Root. I've seen pictures of her in like trucks with, they look like to be a Hezbollah people like leaving Bay Root to go to to Iran. I don't know if they're flying

part of the way, but yeah, you can't say she's kind of lost in a on our computer series. She's going, she's going out there, but it's like, she just seems to be so kind of blinkered by what she's read and what she's, the people that she's been around that she's blind to everything else. Right. It's, it's feel where that her father's mentor saw Bello was like a

“super muscular Zionist. That's what, that's why I really wanted to talk to the father. I was trying”

to understand the connection. Right. I just, I wonder if she ever knew that. That is, that is a, a good question. Do you think, uh, I want, I want to kind of switch from her to Neville Singham and, and that

network. Do you think they've been effective? I mean, they have this breakthrough news. They have

other activist groups. They, they're beginning, they're now kind of on the radar of kind of young activists of the right. I mean, I saw some pretty, so a fascinating video of like a group of them kind of going and picking up all these signs and then making it look like an organic protest. It was very extraordinary. I forget it. I forget who did it, but I actually credit him, but he was, it was really good stuff. But do you think, um, at this point, enough people have sort of noticed, uh, the

network that Singham's money is funding and that, you know, they, they, they, they might now seem be targets or, uh, what, what, what do you say to that? I do think their network is now being

“identified. I think even, you know, when ten seven happened, you know, all these groups and names”

and those, like, really hard to understand who was behind what, who was funding. What I, I do think, you know, Congress is investigating the US government's investigating. There was a good, long series on, in, on Fox digital by Osirone Amani recently about just really identifying, which I saw that was great. She used to river. Yeah. So I, I do think, like, what's incredibly nebulous and hard to follow is now becoming more clear. So I, I do think, but that, you know,

they're, they're fueling stuff that wants to be fueled. So if, if they're, you know, indicted or whatever, to someone else filled a void, it's totally possible. But I do think, and it was so chaotic in the last few years that they were able to do things and people weren't able to connect the

“dots and those dots that are not being connected. Do you think she wants to be a martyr?”

I mean, I do think that's the risk. It's like she's, she's disavowing everyone around her as not pure enough or not devoted enough to the cause, whether it's, you know, Zara and Mamdoni or Jamal Bowman. What does that leave you? Often, certainly, these, whether it was or a minehough, they all end well, she, she, her, she, her tail is particularly tragic. She becomes strange from her daughter. And, you know, the, the kind of cosmic revenge of her daughter, between a role, is that she becomes,

like, a German neoconservative and exposes her mother's ties to East Germany during the Cold War, as a, as an adult journalist. Um, you know, which, uh, I find somewhat appropriate. But in a while,

other cases of bourgeois radicals, in America, at least, there was a second act for, uh,

Bill Ayers and Bernady and there's, and many of the weather underground became college professors. The university is welcome them. Could you see Colo Walsh going to graduate school, getting a degree in post-colonial feminist studies or whatever she wants to study or whatever. And then, you know, like, Bernady and Dorn, getting a job at Northwestern, uh, you know,

sounded a lot like Cala Walsh today. She too went to Cuba. She returned from Cuba with a,

“um, I think it was like an amulet or something that was like crafted from, uh, a US fighter jet”

that was shot down and Vietnam that she met like me and calling people gave this to her. Um, did she do ever, any joy, Delta, I forget. Did she ever have to pay me a couple years in jail in New York, but then they'd because of, uh, this is another irony of, of our recent history, is that because the FBI violated its own policies and US law and spied on them without a warrant,

they they dropped the charges basically. And in, in his memoir, uh, called fugitive days is, uh,

Bill Ayers writes, you know, yeah, I don't know, like something like, you know, like Scott Free out of jail is an, is an America great country. Like it's sort of like, they beat the system, um, in part because the FBI was out of control after the death of Jake or Hoover. Take or Hoover,

“I would say that FBI was also out of control and, uh, eventually because of the reforms introduced”

under starting with really general fore, but then Jimmy Carter and, you know, reforms of the justice department, they, they were able to uncover these abuses and that, you know, who, who was the

one of the, who was the main target of the FBI in the 70s was the weather underground and they ended

up being, you know, pretty much escaping jail. Now some of them joined other radical groups and then they did spend the rest of their life in jail. You know, like that, that, that is the, um, NIAC, New York, um, brings truck robbery and, uh, Chesa Boudine, uh, was raised by airs and Dorn and then he was briefly of all things that district attorney of San Francisco, though he was recalled. Um, so, uh, they're, but my point is that for that generation of the 68 generation in

“America, a lot of them did have a second act where they did have an exit ramp. Um, and some of them”

even, you know, would, I would, would, went so far as to, you know, recant their radicalism of that era. They thought it was wrong. But it, yeah, I mean, I still think there'd have to be a pretty extensive process for her to be deraticalized. Sure. And I do think she still has to pay the, like, I don't know how she's not in violation of her plea agreement to get only two months. She was supposed to assist from agitating against elpit systems. She's clearly not doing that.

And then she's, you know, working with sanctioned Iranian state media companies, it feels like she's she's gonna have to pay the paper at some extent. But yeah, I, you know, she's only 21 and clearly smart. You hope that there is some way back from the cliff because the other, you know, she's running around South Lebanon in Iran and Iran, sort of not too far from Israeli and American bombers and jet pilots, you know, you ask that she want to be murdered. She's certainly taking major risks

where she's running around these days. Yeah, especially now. When beloved family patriarchy, Gary Ferris went missing, his family looked everywhere on their property until they came across something horrifying. It's a homicide. Absolutely. The blame game in this family went round and round. This is bloodesticker, the Ferris wheel. I would, don't see how anyone can look at this story and think they were happy. Follow and listen to bloodesticker, the Ferris wheel on the free

Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts. Call of Walsh is not the first alleged terrorist

to have middle class beginnings. It's a phenomenon I'm calling breaking rad. When a well-off winner throws their life away for the thrill of political violence. More than 50 years ago, a West German columnist, Ulrika Minhoff, abandoned her family and her social status to pursue socialist revolution. Minhoff was celebrated. She became a celebrity. Marianne faithful. We are now listening to Marianne faithful, a 60s icon who famously ran away from a

condvin school to follow the Rolling Stones on tour, date Mick Jagger, and embrace sex drugs and rock and roll. Here she is on Saturday night live, singing a song she had dedicated to Rika Minhoff. And this is far from Minhoff's only artistic tribute. Her portrait hangs in the permanent collection at the New York Museum of Modern Art, the Clashes Frontman, Joe Strummer, often wore a t-shirt with the insignia of Minhoff's terrorist group, the Red Army faction.

Minhoff was a leader of the Red Army faction. The terror cell was young, radical, and famous.

“Everything that the modern rock star was desperate to be. But Minhoff was no marginalized”

destitute victim of the system. In fact, like many of the pop radicals of the punk era, she was bourgeois, intellectual, and fashionable. Unlike Marianne faithful, Minhoff's radicalism went further than heroin and synthesizers. Instead, the young German was bombing army bases, breaking psychopaths out of jail, and plotting murders.

Before breaking rad, a Rika Minhoff was a powerful journalist. She was part of a respectable

left, writing significant columns into baiting politics on television news. But at some point, she flipped, turning into the most notorious terrorist in Western history. And the impact of

“this transformation can still be felt. Minhoff's own daughter, Bettina Roll, has spent decades”

struggling with a legacy of her mother's terrorist group, the Red Army faction. And she spoke to us. The infiltrated anti-generations with these ideas. At the time, there were actually only circulating in small groups. But these ideas, that the state is bad, that capitalism is bad, that the rich are bad in general, and that we should be allowed to murder in order to turn society upside down, have actually become incredibly strong today. These very radical ideas from back then

have actually reappeared time and again in the decades since then. I'm Eli Lake, and you're listening to Breaking History. After the break, what drives a glamorous

“intellectual with all the right connections? To put down her pen and pick up a gun, coming up next.”

I'll re-combine Hoff's story begins in Aldenburg. She was born in 1934 into a world of trauma and doom, Nazi Germany. Her aunt was forced to wear a yellow star that marked her out as a Jew, persecution, madness, and total war in golfed wine hoff's childhood. He was 11 years old when Hitler killed himself in the bunker. Life inside the family home was no more secure. Her father died when she was six. Her mother when she was 16, leaving mine hoff in her sister, in the care

of a friend who rented a room in the family house. Before she graduated from high school, mine hoff's home was a tomb and her country, a crime scene. She spent her adolescence orphaned not only from her dead parents, but also a generation of Germans who had chosen to support or stay

silent as the death machine of the third Reich in golf era. She was clever and intellectually ambitious.

At university, she made a name for herself as a left-wing firebrand, involved with the anti-nuclear movement. Mine hoff's country was divided. West Germany, where she lived, was economically reborn by American money, pumped into the devastated nation to protect against the spread of communism. East Germany was trapped behind the Iron Curtain, a colony of the evil Soviet Empire. When she was 24, mine hoff meant "class Reiner Roll" who became her editor and publisher.

They fell in love and became a glamorous couple in Hamburg. They had twin daughters, owned a lavish villa, and hosted great parties with leading artists, writers, and thinkers. A frequent guest of theirs was Martin Nemoler, the author of a totemic poem about solidarity

in the face of fascism. In Germany, they came first for the communit, and I didn't speak up because

I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionist, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me. And by that time, nobody was left to speak up.

This is Karen Bauer, a German studies professor at McGill University, and the editor of a

“collection of mine hoff's writings. Everybody talks about the weather. We don't.”

They had this place in which they spent the summer in suit. So there was a lot of connections, a lot of journalists, most of them were middle, class, bourgeois, some of them. They were intellectuals, they were professionals, so that was her life, and that was her family. The scene was known locally as the Humberg Party Republic. The crowd embraced a radical chic, and mine hoff was a figurehead in this world, as concrete star columnist. In the 1960s,

German progressives would see themselves reflected in her righteous and striden columns. She wanted reconciliation between America and the Soviet Union. She pressed for disarmament and nuclear non-colliferation. She wrote early and often about senior Nazi officials that had

“managed to get important positions in the West German government. And she despised the Vietnam war,”

and her country's tacit support event. To mine hoff and many of her readers, America's war in

Indochina was no better than the Nazi conquest of Europe. At the same time, mine hoff was never

really happy. She suffered from debilitating headaches so severe that she underwent brain surgery to have a benign tumor removed. And then, in 1967, her life began to unravel. Mine hoff discovered her husband, class, was having an affair. After catching them in the act, she packed up the twins, Regina and Bettina, and moved to an apartment in Berlin. Her life in Hamburg was over. I don't think that played a role in necessarily

on her radicalization, per se. This is Karen Bauer again. But it certainly played a role in

“me told her, "Leave that scene and go to Berlin." And that was a definite change, but she had been”

unhappy with the whole scene finding her hypocrisy in that scene of liberals.

Alrica was isolated in her new city. Her personal letters expressed despair and solitude. One correspondent remembered how she was depressed and blamed everything on capitalism. And now this feeling was reflected by her surroundings. Her new city was on the verge of rebellion. 1967 was a time of appeal across the west. There was anger in the air. The energy of Berlin transformed minehoff forever. She was a 33-year-old mother of two. But the new friend she made in the capital

where younger and wilder. There was Gudun Enslin, an attractive PhD student who had briefly studied in the states and appeared in experimental political films. And there was also her lover, Andres Bauder. Bauder was a charismatic sociopath. He had moved from Munich to escape the law and had a fondness for drugs and guns. Not necessarily in that order. Enslin and Bauder were part of a radical collective called commune one. They squatted in abandoned buildings and protested

for socialist causes. They were younger than minehoff and didn't care much for the intellectual nuance of proper Marxist dialectic. No, they were in love with the idea of praxis. The act of putting theories of revolution into praxis. Compared to them, minehoff felt like a poiser. Perhaps she felt a little like Marion Faithful or Joe Stormer did when they looked at minehoff's own-direct political action a decade later. In 1967, the Shaviron, Resopalavi, came to Berlin

on a state visit. Minehoff, commune one, and the student movement all saw him as a brutal tyrant, who starved his subjects while his court lived in lavish style. Huge protest for staged. During one of these, a terrible error was made by the Berlin police, allowing pro-shot demonstrators to clash with the protesters. When the Shah goes to watch Mozart's magic flute at the Deutsche Oppa that evening, he's once again welcomed by protestors. The police are ordered to disperse

the protestors, giving their trunctions free reign. Around 8 o'clock PM, a shot is fired. Detective sergeant Karl Heinz-Kugas shoots a student at close range. The young man's name is Beno-Onezoch, all attempts to save him fail, and Onezoch dies the same night. The slain demonstrator, Beno-Onezoch, became a martyr for the new left, and radicalized the demonstrators of West Germany. Minehoff herself was inspired to produce a short documentary that claimed that, like its political ally

Iran, West Germany was itself a police state. Her friend, Gudrun Ensleen, agreed, telling fellow activists that a meeting after Onezoch's death, "They're going to kill us all, you know what kind of

discuss anything with people who created Auschwitz, they're armed, and we're not. We have to get armed

“to, they're going to kill us all." In 1968, Berlin was beset by mass demonstrations, like many”

of the major cities in Europe and America were. On April 2, that year, on her spotter and Gudrun Iceland turned up the volume, claiming responsibility for setting a department store of liais in Frankfurt. They turned their subsequent trial into a spectacle, smoking cigars, hurling vulgar epithets at the judge. They were courting public attention, arguing that the department store fires were a political act intended to stir the people out of their apathy and see the

horror of the Vietnam War for what it was. If you're talking about protest or terrorism, the goal is the same. It's the create drama, and by creating drama to attract attention to the cause and perhaps the organization behind it to build an even more expansive support base. This is Bruce Hoffman, one of the world's foremost experts on terrorism and a fellow at the council on foreign relations. So historically, especially in the late 1960s, 1970s, this is exactly what

happened in many western European countries, particularly in West Germany, Italy, to a lesser extent France and Belgium, but also in the United States with student protest movements, that provided the seed bed for more radical and indeed more violent offshoots. It's all about Vietnam, and it was the fact that the United States maintained army and air bases in West Germany, that the B-52s that were bombing North Vietnam often stopped in V-spotten at a US Air Force

base at its part of NATO, the NATO deployments for refueling before heading to Southeast Asia. By 1970, Meinhaf's life was being swallowed by her politics. Her friends, financing and fodder were now fugitives, on the run following the arch of the attacks. Meinhaf allowed them to hide in the apartment she shared with her two daughters. It became a hub

for revolutionary political action. Imagine the scene, a radical journalist, living with her twins

and two hardened criminals, as their associates set up a safe house to forge documents and plot heists. Here is how to retain a role, the daughter of Meinhaf, described living in an apartment taken over by terrorists. When insulin and body are lived with us, they were already taking herenum, LSD trips. Of course, I didn't know that at the time, but there was a different orbit, you know. And I was there, as I described it in my book, because our apartment was a

conspiritual apartment where the group talked about the revolution all night long. So, I didn't understand

“anything at that time, but I think I was the only one in that group, the only one of those”

trends, your 30 people who didn't lay to become a terrorist, of course. I was like a little eyewitness and observed. Eventually, under-spotter was busted, pulled over for driving without a

license and sent back to jail. This was the first domino in a chain of events that would lead to

the reign of Marxist terror in Germany. Botters, old comrades in Meinhaf's apartment began planning the first operation of what would become the Red Army faction. It was May 14th, 1970. The plan to free undress bother relied on a recombine-hop's national reputation as a political journalist, but it would be the last time she would be able to play this card. Meinhaf applied to meet with Bottere to interview him for a book.

Permission was granted and Bottere was transported to the Central Institute for Social Questions at Berlin's Free University. There was no book project. The meeting was a ruse. When Bottere arrived, he sat beside Meinhaf at a desk as a pair of guards washed from a distance. Suddenly, two commandos burst in, dressed in wigs and ski masks, armed with handguns into your gas. This wasn't an interview. It was a jailbreak. The getaway driver that day,

“Astrid Pearl explains here what happened next. I think we were all very nervous, yeah.”

I remember some people throwing up because we went so wonderful criminals, we went so wonderful with the getaway guns, we sort of involved a so-called criminal who could do it so much better than me and who was, you know, and he was so nervous and he shot somebody. He didn't kill him, but he shot him by badly and that was really, really bad for the whole start of it.

In this moment of unexpected violence, Meinhaf made the most important decision of her life.

The original plan had been for her to sit still and act surprised, as though she was only there

and enjoyed the best of both worlds, medical politics with a bourgeois salary, but something

“had snapped and she wasn't going back to a normal life. So as Bottere and the other terrorist”

climbed out of a first-floor window, Meinhaf decided to follow. They all sprinted to an

Alfredo Mayo parked across the street. At that moment, Meinhaf chose to abandon society and go underground. In 1968, in one of her more enduring essays, Aureka Meinhaf wrote, "Protest is when I say I don't like this, resistance is when I put an end to what I don't like." That day at the Institute, Aureka Meinhaf was through with protest and was on a doom and path to try to put an end to all that she disliked. This is the first official communication

from the red army faction. "Did the pigs really believe? We would let Comrade Boris sit in jail for two or three years. Did any pig believe that we would talk about the development of class, struggle, the reorganization of the proletariat without harming ourselves at the same time? Did the pigs

“who shot first, believed that we would allow ourselves without violence to be shot off like slaughter”

cattle, whoever does not defend himself will die, start the armed resistance built up the red army." A terrorist group was born and Aureka Meinhaf was at its heart. She entered a world of stolen identity papers, safe houses and shootouts. Her face was plastered on one-hit posters throughout the country. The army was sent to the border crossing. She died and cut her hair picked up her daughters in West Berlin and escaped to the east where she left the twins in the

care of her comrades. "We've earned fear of war now." So on the day of the so-called

border liberation, which is actually a prison break. Liberation was always sounds like well.

On the same day, my sister and I were taken to Bremen by the people in the group and then Sicily. "Here is Aureka Meinhaf's daughter Bettina Roll again on what it was like to be vanished."

“And we were already wanted by Interpol, by my father. That's why we had to cross the green border,”

but we didn't know that this was a kidnapping or abduction. We didn't know that and we were full of confidence that my mother would come and pick us up. So of course we had no idea that we wouldn't see her again until two or three years later. "Eventually Bettina and her sister Regina were taking to a hippie commune in Sicily where they lived in deprivation." We spent four months in Sicily, which is a very long time for children. What someone else come, my father, or my mother,

what would happen next? And a barrack camp like that isn't by the Sierra either. So it's not like you go to the beach every day and go on vacation, but it's a very thing because there were no windows, there was no running water, there were no kitchens, in other words there was no Italian happy life. Meinhaf was a fugitive, just like butter and ensling. The newly formed Red Army faction had to get out of West Germany, so they traveled to a training camp for the popular

front for the liberation of Palestine or PFLP in the Jordanian Desert. In 1970 the PFLP plotted bombings and assassinations against Israel and its allies abroad. The Red Army faction wanted to learn from these Palestinians how to be urban guerrillas, but perhaps predictably there was a culture clash. The PFLP was a seriously organized squadron of Arab Muslim men. While the Red Army faction was a fruit salad of drug-using artist radicals,

it was like the premise of an ambitious sitcom. The RAF demanded barracks for both the men and women to share. At one point, the Red Army faction trainees decided to sunbathe on the roof of their living quarters, scandalizing the pious terrorists who shared the facility. According to Stefan Alist, a former colleague of Meinhaf's at Concret and the author of one of the best histories of the Red Army faction, Meinhaf asked the PFLP if she could send her daughters to a Palestinian camp

for girls, where they would be trained as urban guerrillas as well. They told her that they would be

happy to take them in, but that she would never get to see them again. Her twins were only

seven years old, but Alureka agreed to the terms. But Bettina and her sister Regina were saved by Meinhaf's former colleague Stefan Alist, here's an excerpt from his book, The Butter Meinhaf Complex. We found out where the children were, made contact with the people looking after them, gave the password, and I then flew to Sicily to receive them there, claiming to be the group's accredited emissary. Our operation was successful, and when Badaz Real Envoyant is women companions

For this act of kindness, Alst was marked for assassination by his former comrades.

“Thankfully, the attempt on his life failed. When Meinhaf bought her an insulin return to Germany,”

they began robbing banks and placing bombs. Meinhaf was never very good at this sort of thing

though, during one robbery she left stacks of cash behind. Her real talent wasn't robbery. It was in writing, and she drafted the first Red Army faction communicates. These include a long essay on the principles of urban guerrilla warfare and a tribute to Black September, the terrorist cell responsible for the massacre of Israeli wrestlers at the 1972 Munich Olympics. In this period, the terrorist were treated by some as folk heroes. Journalists couldn't get

enough of this story, one of their own Arrika Meinhaf going underground, and her fame would grow. A 1971 poll found that one in four Germans under 30 years old expressed sympathy for the Red

“Army faction. 5% of all Germans said they would harbor an RAF fugitive.”

The apex mountain for the Red Army faction was May 1972. In a few short weeks, they pulled off a series of bombings at a US military base in Frankfurt, an Axel Springer publishing house in Hamburg, and a US military intelligence station in Heidelberg. Four US soldiers were killed, scores more were injured. The public who had previously been sympathetic to the cause of the RAF began to turn. It was one thing to rob banks and get into shootouts with the cops, but now it was

clear that these revolutionaries were murderous. In one botched plan, they injured the wife of a federal judge who was driving the car they had rigged with a bomb. In June 1972, the West German National Police received a tip from a teacher, who had agreed to harbor Meinhaf unaware of who she was. And when the police arrived, she was gaunt, ill, and had little luggage. Meinhaf was taken straight to prison. More raids of that month, NAB, bother, and insulin. The entire leadership of the

Red Army faction were imprisoned. For the next nine months, Ulrika Meinhaf would be confined to an isolated cell in Austinburg, prison. Everything in the room was white except for the pale green door. A neon light in the ceiling was kept on 24 hours a day, and she was the only prisoner in the building. It was torture. Here is how Meinhaf described it. The feeling your head is exploding.

The feeling the top of your skull should have really tear apart first, wide open. The feeling your

spinal column is pressing into your brain. The feeling your brain is gradually shriveling up like baked fruit. The feeling you're completely and start aptitiously wired under remote control. The feeling the associations you make are being hacked away. The feeling you are pissing the soul out of your body, as though you can't hold water. Eventually, she got to see visitors, including her twins. The first visit was an October of 1972. Ulrika wrote to Bettina and Regina

“who were now 10. "You were here. I think the whole prison was planned. That's how it seemed to”

me. Would you visit me again?" She kept up this correspondence for another year. She would discuss politics, advice for children on how to treat the weaker students at school, lecture them on the conditions of the working class in West Germany, but Meinhaf was losing touch with reality, as Stefan asked about. Shortly before Christmas 1973, Ulrika Meinhaf suddenly broke off contact with her children. An advent calendar they had made her was returned. She refused to accept it.

She stopped answering their letters. The girls never saw their mother again.

Meinhaf and the other RAF members, including Bauder and Einstein, were then transferred to Stanheim, and were allowed to share a floor. They worked on their legal strategy, wrote various communicates, but mainly they fought with one another. Meinhaf was soon the odd one out. Bauder and Einstein had turned on her. As their trial progressed, Meinhaf became despondent. On Saturday, May 8, 1976, she ripped apart pieces of the prisons, blue and white towels,

and twisted them together to make a rope. She moved her bed underneath a small grate covering the window, tied the rope to the grate, and made a news for her neck. The guards found her dangling corpse the following morning. It was Meinhaf, Mother's Day. Ulrika Meinhaf was dead. "The Bashaenikat is cruiser, thus he turns again more than four." Well, I mean,

issues. And then two camps formed at that time. Most lefty-like, for example, the Minister of the Interior Otto Chilli said that Ulrika Meinhaf had been murdered by the state, the federal Republic of Germany had murdered Meinhaf. And the others, like Stefan Auerst or my father,

“said it was suicide. And I think it's more likely that she was actually murdered, but not by the”

state, but by her own people, with whom she was in a corridor. They were together, Bada, Ernst and Yunkar, and since they also had pistols and radios and drugs, it's quite possible that they also had the key. After all, there were together all day. But I only dared to say that

for the first time a few years ago. Of course, you don't say anything about it when you are 13

years old. After Meinhaf's death, Europe's radicals erupted in protest. Bombs went off in Paris and Rome. Meinhaf did not leave a suicide note, and her supporters insisted that she had been murdered by the state. At her funeral, a procession marched with red banners displaying the RAF logo, a machine gun framed by a pentagram. The other red army faction leaders were still waiting for trial in Stamheim, prison, but their comrades were still in the wild.

“After Bada and Enslyn, and others were convicted of murder and domestic terrorism,”

again, of RAF operatives stormed the West German embassy in Stockholm, in an attempt to take hostages to trade for Bada and Enslyn and others. The plot failed. Soon after the group kidnapped the head of Germany's Employers Association, again demanding a trade for Bada and Enslyn.

That plot failed as well. Finally, on October 13, 1977, the popular front for the liberation of Palestine,

hijacked a liftons of flight and demanded the Red Army faction prisoners be released. But West Germany did not give into their demands. The hijackers killed the pilot and flew the hostages to Mogu Desu Somalia. There, a West German SWAT team stormed the plane, killed the terrorists, and freed the passengers. When Bada and Enslyn got worried that the hijackers had failed, they committed group suicide with a pistol likely smuggled in by their lawyers.

It was October 17, 1977. The first generation of the Red Army faction was finished. Now the story takes a bizarre and menacing turn. After Ulrika Meinhof's death,

instead of sending her body to be buried, the West German authorities removed her brain during

the autopsy. Placed it in formaldehyde and sent it for close examination and didn't really tell anyone. Dr. Bernard Bogartz told a press conference in 2002 that Meinhof's brain displayed neurological abnormalities which he attributed to that operation she received in 1962 to remove a brain tumor. He said at the time that his findings challenged whether Meinhof was ever mentally fit to stand trial. All of this raises a question. Was it really the Vietnam War,

the writings of Shagavara and Herbert Markus that turned Meinhof into a terrorist? Or was it scar tissue left over from that operation to cure her incessant headaches? For what it's worth, Bettina Roll rejects this theory. Suddenly in 2002 someone called and told me if I knew that Meinhof's brain had not been buried. But of course I didn't know that. And it's a pretty scary story when you suddenly realize that

there are journalists and researchers all talking about this brain that's in some kind of solution. And they wanted to research on this brain. Then my husband and I got together to do the research and we published the story and used paper and triggered a huge debate about the ethical background. Firstly, whether this is allowed at all. But secondly, whether it isn't also

“shallot from me because if you want to find terror in Meinhof's brain, then you would have to”

find it in all terrorist brains which is really absurd. For scientists it's very tempting to blame radicalism on a chemical imbalance and an errant brain cell or a chronic malady. It's perhaps more satisfying to point to a smoking neurological gun rather than a Rubik's cube of personal ideological and sociological motives. For Meinhof, Revolution was a process of socialization. In order to go from journalist to

terrorist, she needed a set of almost impossible circumstances. The early trauma of losing her parents in the collective trauma of Nazism in Germany, the cultural typhoon of 1968 radicalism divorced portrayal the existence of the Soviet Union. The misfortune of meeting dangerous lunatics like Andres Bauder, it is a cocktail of triggers and motives.

A lot of the descriptions of terrorism in the United States and elsewhere over the past decade

“or more. It hasn't been organization or groups. It's been radicalized individuals”

who on their own who don't have never joined a group who may not have any contact with any

organization, who themselves have become frustrated and take it upon themselves to carry out individual acts of violence in service to a broader ideology. That's become much more the pattern of terrorism in the 21st century.

“Mine Hoff would call this process of self radicalization the journey from protest to resistance.”

And the temptation to embrace violence in the name of writing and injustice is strong,

especially in our era of populist rage. But it's almost always a mirage and it never leads

anywhere good. Just consider mine Hoff's cautionary tale, ponder her fate in Stamheim prison. As she dangled from a window great, cut off from her friends, isolated from her daughters, and despised by her comrades, this once celebrated journalist learned from experience. Resistance is brutal. Thanks for listening to Breaking History. If you liked this episode, if you learned something,

if you disagreed with something or if it's simply sparked a new understanding of our present moment, please share it with your friends and family and use it to have a conversation of your

“own and remember, if you want to support Breaking History, follow us on Apple, Spotify or wherever you”

get your podcasts and leave us a five star rating and a nice comment too. Also, if you love this episode, there's more great content at vfp.com. Please become a subscriber today and until then, I'll see you next time.

Resistance forever. Resistance if you are ending arrest. Resistance if you know I would never.

But what I want to say is that you don't want to be a fan of the whole studio. The master-writer has left her to be a fan of the internet. So it's a master-writer. I'm saying, you can say that you're a fan of the whole studio. You're a fan of the studio, right? But you don't believe it. No, it's not. It's just a fake news. It's just a real story. And if you then work, you'll be able to do it. That's right. Save. This story.

Hold it, your money is back. Now, you're going to be a fan of the studio.