I am reading descriptive–historical works about government’s responses to terror attacks (and other forms of both violent and non-violent dissent) for a book manuscript I am writing, and am struck by these “Gee, doesn’t this sound familiar” passages from Peter Katzenstien’s 1990 monograph West Germany’s Internal Security Policy: State and Violence in the 1970s and 1980s.
West German Police. Source: Wikimedia commons.
[Three distinct waves of W German terrorism (1970-2, 1974-77, 1984-6)] triggered a set of political responses that shows a remarkable degree of coherence during the last two decades… Important elements of the organizational structure and operative mission of the West German police have changed from a military to a civilian model informed not by the image of fighting a civil war, but of controlling mass protest and surveying clandestine operation (p 1).
How many attacks were there? Estimates vary widely,
[b]but the most conservative… counts over 3,000…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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