Michael Baumann, (aka “Bommi the Bomber”), Germany’s greatest rock star revolutionary, died last night after a long illness. In 1975, while on the run, he published a banned book that repudiated his violent past and his many bombings (none of which took any lives), by explaining that after being raised in the post-WWII ghetto of East Berlin, he had been trained towards violent behavior his entire life. But after a few years of promoting terror against the state, he’d realized this was a path the authorities wanted him to pursue. It’s taken decades for me to absorb some of the nuances of the 1960s counter-revolution. Why has most everything gone so wrong since then? Recent discoveries lead me to believe revolutionary terror is encouraged by intelligence agencies, a conclusion Bommi came to earlier than most.
The pro-democracy student movement in Germany in the 1960s was also called SDS and it was also non-violent, at least until June 2, 1967, when the second day of an ugly protest against the visiting Shah of Iran took place in Munich. To counter the protesters, the Shah unleashed a goon squad attacking the crowd with wooden bats, cracking heads and inflicting serious damage while police melted away, temporarily disappearing. During the melee, a student named Benno Ohnesorg was executed by a policeman with a shot to the back of his head. Still wracked with PTSD from WWII, Germany went into a state of shock after newsreels of the beatings and killing appeared on tv, and despair intensified after the policeman, Karl Kurras, was found innocent of wrongdoing.
The bloody terror campaign of the Beider-Meinhof RAF gang that followed reminds me of similar actions undertaken by the bloody Weather Underground immediately following the assassination of Black Panther leader Fred Hampton by the Chicago police. Notice the leader of the Weather Underground and the leaders of the Neo-Con movement that fomented two devastating and unnecessary wars all emanated from the Rockefeller-funded University of Chicago. This is no accident in my judgment. Like the Weather Underground, the RAF was led by grandstanding publicity seekers who favored plush lifestyles, not the sort of lower-class upbringing Bommi sprang from. Also, Bommi did most of his actions with a sense of humor, something severely lacking in the RAF and Weather Underground.
While I can’t pretend to have penetrated the ranks to determine which German revolutionaries were double agents, Manchurian candidates or true believers, I can tell you with absolute certainty Karl Kurras was an agent of the East German Stasi intelligence agency. And in 1972, Bommi gave an enormous list of names of everyone he knew during an epic interview with the Stasi. Before he died, George Orwell did the same thing for MI5. It was Orwell who’d first explained how the revolution is actually a mirage secretly created by agents of the state to draw the rebel moths to their flames. If you read between the lines, you realize 1984 is an expose of Communism as a controlled dialectic created by Capitalism, which is why all Communist revolutions are fascism in sheep’s clothing.
Bommi says he was arrested by Stasi while crossing the border with a fake passport and was given the option of telling Stasi everything he knew about the movement (and they had plenty of inside intel to verify if he was telling the truth), or he would be shipped back to West Germany to rot in jail. Bommi also says Kurras was useless as a spy after Ohnesorg’s murder because he became the most infamous policeman in Germany. Spooks need to hide in the shadows and once a spotlight falls on them any future operations become difficult to conceal.
Bommi’s book, “Terror or Love” is only $14 on Amazon. If you want an illuminating look at how a 1960s revolutionary woke up and denounced all terror, you can’t do better than this book. The Western press did not even note his passing.
Late in life Bommi became a very successful businessman and real estate investor. I’d always hoped to interview him some day so I could probe some of the nuances. Sadly, that won’t be happening. RIP Bommi.
https://www.amazon.com/Terror-love-Baumanns-German-guerrilla/dp/0394507185
What exactly is "the counterculture?"
In the 1950’s anti-establishment teenagers were carefully guided toward thrill crime and mindless violence. There was little hint of spiritual enlightenment or political consciousness. Notice rock’n’roll was bolted into this meme from the beginning, so rockers and delinquents were virtually indistinguishable? This was not an accident.
But did you ever consider how useful this meme was to the powers-that-be? By sheep-dipping anti-establishment teens as violent and dangerous, it made them so much easier to control, and encouraged mindless confrontations with police, a battle teens can never win. In truth, white teenagers were falling in love with black culture through the radio and shaking off some of the programming in the process and threatening to break down some establishment barriers.
In the same way, I’ve always wondered about the radical groups from the 1960s that encouraged violence and terror as legitimate, especially the Red Army faction from Germany, the Baader-Meinhof crew and the Weather Underground.
Personally, I never bought into Marxism, Communism, or any other ism, so when I see a logo with a red star and a machine gun, it doesn’t provoke my empathy. In fact, I’d view this sort of sigil as a secret emanation of a security service. Manufacturing violence is how the system works.
Whenever you see violence projected as a legitimate lifestyle, consider the possibility you’re down a rabbit hole, deep in some intelligence operation, lost in the wilderness of mirrors sheltering the sorcerers of death.
My favorite German radical from the sixties is Bommi Baumann, who turned away from violence after realizing he’d been programmed into accepting it since birth in the slums of Eastern Berlin.
Bommi wrote a book translated in English as “Terror or Love?” and in the summer of 1981 Des McEnuff staged an incredible version at the Public Theater in Manhattan. I wonder if Des will ever bring that production back? He’s a famous Broadway director of musicals now, and this was actually his first major New York show, but it was brilliant.
Which brings me back to the point of this blog: the mainstream current sucks people into violence, while the counterculture swims upstream against violence. All the elements of the counterculture were assembled in Congo Square in New Orleans, where a merger of all cultures occurred, one that held improvisational ceremonies. Since all cultures were invited, this culture was free of bigotry by design. This culture brought about integration. They were the activists of change. And this culture made reefer popular. And it continues to evolve today because it is improvisational in nature. And this culture has long been in conflict with the powers-that-be, who prefer to isolate people in groups to make them more vulnerable. Recreational drug habits of a forbidden culture quickly become persecution campaigns. The crime of the jazz heads was not they were smoking weed but they were mixing races. Reefer was just the easiest method of persecution, especially since its odor is so pervasive and distinctive.
So being “counterculture” has nothing to do with your haircut, the amount of cannabis you consume, what religion you follow, what clothes you wear, or what concerts you attend. It simply means you reject violence as the option of first resort and prefer to follow the path of peace. Wars are orchestrated for profit and both sides can be funded by the same banks. This is the greatest hoodwink of the ages, and the assassination of JFK and the events of 9/11 are but small peep-holes into this deeper reality.
10 Non-fiction Masterpieces
Black Elk Speaks by John G. Neighardt
You have to give props to Native culture, which has always had a tremendous influence on the history of the counterculture, starting with the Tuscarora at Congo Square in New Orleans, birthplace of the improvisational culture we know today as the counterculture. Even though the Natives were much more advanced spiritually, European culture certainly did its best to destroy their vibrant and vibratory ceremonies. Black Elk was one of the most enlightened holy men to ever come down the pike in any culture and this book is a good place to start if you want some idea of how their ceremonies actually work.
The Yankee and Cowboy War by Carl Oglesby
Oglesby was the most articulate and intelligent leader to emerge from the SDS movement, and this book blew conspiracy theory wide open when it traced the links between the Kennedy assassination and Watergate very early in the game. Oglesby tried to penetrate the conflicts inside the Oligarachy that controls America. Especially groundbreaking was Olgesby’s analysis of the war between the Rockefellers and Howard Hughes that probably resulted in Hughes being neutralized. Whether they killed him and put a puppet in his place, or whether they just kidnapped and drugged him into submission is a question that may never get answered.
America’s Secret Establishment by Antony Sutton
This book got completely ignored by the mainstream, and for good reasons. Sutton was a leading economist at the Hoover Institute when he stumbled onto one of the greatest secrets in the world: The Oligarchy controlling America was involved in setting up Hitler and Communism in order to milk war for profit. Sutton detailed how a secret society at Yale University played a key role in transforming our country into a highly-centralized and heavily-controlled state. But then societies like Skull & Bones exist at every major university where the Oligarchy sends its kids to prepare them on how to run the world.
Terror or Love? by Bommi Baumann
Was the 1960s counterculture revolution intentionally led into violence in order to neutralize the hippie movement? Germany’s leading revolutionary certainly thinks so. It’s a toss-up which book will be harder to find, this one or Carl Oglesby’s. Bommi became a successful capitalist and landowner in Germany. Unfortunately, he passed away before we could meet. I would certainly have loved to meet this guy, since he remains one of the greatest unsung heroes of our time, someone who turned away from terror to embrace the core values of the spiritual revolution of the 1960s.
Wilderness of Mirrors by David C. Martin
Just how crazy are the people who run the CIA? They don’t get any crazier than James Jesus Angleton, the super paranoid king of spooks. Martin is a true insider: Yale grad, Navy vet, and Newsweek correspondent, and I spoke to him after reading this stunning book. I wanted to know if Angleton conspired with William Harvey to assassinate JFK. Martin was strenuous in denying any such connection, but now I know better: Angleton, Harvey and Johnny Rosselli were undoubtedly among the key players in that crime.
Gold Warriors by Sterling and Peggy Seagrave
For decades the hidden gold from WWII has been the CIA’s most closely guarded secret. Rather than return all the gold stolen by the Nazi’s and Japanese, certain highly-placed individuals inside the Oligarchy decided to secretly move the gold into secret funds that could be used to manipulate world events. Nixon probably ran afoul of the CIA when he returned one of these multi-billion dollar accounts back to the Japanese, which may be why the CIA decided to take him out of power through Watergate. You need to read this book to discover how the world really works.
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe
Tom Wolfe was a Yale grad sent straight from the heart of the establishment to report on the emergence of the second counterculture messiah, Ken Kesey (who was already in jail by the time the book came out). Wolfe never connected with the cosmic side of the movement, and, in fact, made fun of its spirituality, but he was a good enough journalist to get the basic story right. Today, I view Kesey as our Odysseus and the magic bus ride as a prophetic message. Perhaps we need to band into tribes and become more migratory as the earth changes set in (just like the original Sakka’s who spread cannabis across the globe). This book remains the best portrait of Kesey and his merry band, and I love the fact my copy is signed by many Pranksters, including the Great Kenmaster Kesey himself.
Living Well is the Best Revenge by Calvin Tomkins
Calvin Tomkins was one of my biggest early influences as a writer. I just love his approach to art, which concentrates on personalities instead of theories. Gerald and Sara Murphy led enlightened lives and you can learn a lot by reading about them. This book begins as a fun read but ultimately turns tragic. And at under 150 pages, it will go very, very fast.
Chronicles by Bob Dylan
As if becoming the leading poet of his generation and then leading the folk movement into rock and becoming the first counterculture messiah (and then turning that job down emphatically and going into hiding) wasn’t enough, Bob Dylan had to unveil an entire new dimension of his artistic abilities with the release of this masterpiece of counterculture literature in 2004. I especially like the encounters he had with Skull & Bones member Archibald MacLeish, who positively drips with evil vibrations as he tries (unsuccessfully) to pull Dylan into a Broadway production he’s developing. This book has a unique perspective on the sixties from the very tip of the lightning rod.
The Man Who Knew Too Much by Dick Russell
One of the most insightful books every written about the Kennedy assassination, Russell figured out there were plenty of people willing to talk about the case who had important info to share, especially the sons and daughters of CIA agents who felt their parents were somehow involved. Even more important, Russell made contact with the one undercover agent who tried very hard to blow the whistle and prevent the assassination, Richard Case Nagell. Russell is now a co-author with Jesse Ventura.
Additional shout-outs to: In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, Treason in America by Anton Chaikin, The Franklin Scandal by Nick Bryant, A Terrible Mistake by H.P. Albarelli and Octopus Conspiracy by Steven Hager (that’s me!)