A Terrorist Group’s Strategic Communication : The Case of the Red Army Faction

Recent terrorist attacks in Europe point to the intense terrorism-propaganda-connection that has been described by both communication and terrorism studies scholars. The current debate, however, neglects the fact that Europe, in the past, has already experienced attacks from terrorist groups that were accompanied by sophisticated public relations and propaganda, their motives, however, being social-revolutionary, not religious. Therefore, this article elaborates to what extent the Red Army Faction applied strategic communication in order to achieve its (political) goals. Theoretical considerations about the concepts of terrorism as propaganda of the deed, terrorism as a media event and Fourth Generation Warfare precede the case study. An important finding is that even though the RAF was indeed a very media-savvy group at the time, this savviness did not help them to achieve their long-term goal of political revolution