You are cordially invited to an IWP movie night for
with an introduction by
Nathalie Vogel
German extremism expert
and
Dr. Marek Chodakiewicz
Professor of History at IWP
The Kościuszko Chair in Polish Studies
Friday, November 1
6:00 PM
The Institute of World Politics
1521 16th Street NW
Washington, DC 20036
Please RSVP to kbridges@iwp.edu.
The Baader Meinhof Complex, a 2008 German film by Uli Edel, points out the affinities between extremist movements. The story commences in the late 1960s–the era of the great counter-cultural revolution–when a group of West German radical leftists stages a protest against the Shah of Iran upon the monarch’s visit to Free Berlin. Hating the Persian king an alleged oppressor of his people, the young German leftists were apparently ignorant of or indifferent to the suffering of millions forced to live under Marxist tyrannies. The German police suppressed the disturbance, shooting one of the radicals in the process. To avenge themselves, the group took up terrorism. Soon enough, the young Marxist terrorists allied themselves with fellow extremists among Arab national socialists, pointing to a nexus between Western radicals and Middle Eastern radicals–based on a mutual antipathy towards Western Civilization–that survives to this day.
The movie will be introduced by Nathalie Vogel, a German extremism expert, and by Dr. Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, who teaches a directed study on extremist movements in history at IWP.