Leben in der Stadt

Consumption and Violence

“…This can even amount to "coordinated destruction"-that is, an entire programme of targeted damage to objects. 65 Actors using the "threat of disruption" can thus gain considerable political leverage. 66 Violence is itself a type of communication; more importantly, however, political violence is both the result and starting point of political communication.…”

“…See Giovanni Blumer, Die chinesische Kulturrevolution 1965/67 (Frankfurt, 1968); Enzensberger, Jahre der Kommune I, 79;Slobodian, Foreign Front, 170-99;Gilcher-Holtey, 1968, 35-41. 63. Kommune I pursued the semiprofessional pirating of books 65 and carried on a flourishing mail-order trade in Mao Bibles, their own writings, texts by Wilhelm Reich, Horkheimer, and others as well as revolutionary stickers and badges. There were enthusiastic customers but also frequent complaints regarding issues of money.…”

“…Ibid.,9. systematically smashed, and management reported damages of five hundred thousand deutsche marks. 65 This became the prototype for countless attacks against the windows of retail institutions. Neitzke and Semler criticised such tactics: "Not accompanied by propagandistic measures, the lightning operation against the windows of KaDeWe constitutes .…”

“…Like the members of Kommune I, Neitzke and Semler were inspired by the blacks of the ghettos of Newark and Chicago, who, in the German activists' reading, realised themselves as a revolutionary class through the looting and destruction of white-owned shops and department stores. However, Marxists did not content themselves with storming the centres of distribution but aimed for the 65. "Nach dem Protestmarsch klirrten die Scheiben," Berliner Morgenpost, 19 January 1969.…”

“…Morality has disappeared." 65 Like most of her contemporaries, Meinhof was not prepared to view all humans as consumers in one way or another. To her mind, consumption was a new phenomenon of the twentieth century: "In the past, there was no consumption.…”