1968 and the RAF. The Development of Violence and Terrorism from a Social Movement

Studienarbeit aus dem Jahr 2014 im Fachbereich Geschichte Europas - Neueste Geschichte, Europäische Einigung, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Sprache: Deutsch, Abstract: Social Movements are one of the main forms of collectives that formulate a goal they want to achieve. This occurs under the use of various strategies to show their demands like collective protests and demonstrations. Social Movements are an important vehicle for the public to gain attention and formulate needs. In the society those Movements are standing next to other more institutionalized ways of protests, so they are an actor among others.

Today Social Movements represent an important part of the social landscape. They are different movements dealing with a lot of topics like abortion, human and civil rights, environmental protection, women etc. Also the Movements can have a global or a local nature. According to the development of Social Movements the researchers David A. Snow, Sarah A. Soule and Hanspeter Kriesi suggested that the society of the 21st century can be characterized as a movement society. One important step for the development and the proliferation of Social Movements are the 1960s. Even if there is no consensus among the scholars about the exact impact, the 1960s form a remarkable step in the history of Social Movements. In Germany this step was represented by the Student Movement of 1968 that, even if most of the political goals the movement wanted to achieve failed, played an important role.
Social movements are fuzzy phenomena and moving targets so it is difficult to give a definition about them. In structural terms a social movement is like a network of individuals, groups and or organizations. A network has no top and no clear center that could steer and control the whole of its activities Also the use of collective public protest is a key strategy of any social movement to pursue their goal. These strategies can also include the use of violence. This homework is going to show the connection of the Social Movement in Germany 1968, their image and their use of violence, together with the most extreme form of violence, the terrorism of the RAF.