On September 11, the World Trade Center was attacked
Less than a year after the fall of the Berlin Wall, I went to Europe via Frankfurt Airport and made a special trip to Berlin to admire the remnants of the "Cold War". The site of the Berlin Wall is an empty field, looking for the foundation of the wall on the cement floor, and the grass snake gray line seems to be nothing. It is hard to imagine that there was once an "Iron Curtain" between The East and the West, and although the wall has disappeared, it is still a watershed in ideology and social system. Looking around, you can still feel this thin line, it is invisible, endless, but also clear. On the west side of the line, the buildings are gorgeous, the neon flow is fading, and the prosperity is solid. On the other side, the gray is dark, the building is decadent, the dust wall old windows, a depression.
The Berlin Wall was built in 1991
On the eve of reunification, the two Germans crossed this invisible line and entered another country. Although unguarded, the West German visa was valid here, and the psychological border was bound by the pace of progress. In the dark gray of the east, several bronze statues are particularly eye-catching, with Marx in front and Engels in the back, tall, solemn, and clean, shining in the sun.
Smash the Berlin Wall
One
Beijing has just hosted the Asian Games, and the Chinese people are looking forward to going to the world and holding their breath to compete for the Olympic Games. Although there are many monuments in Berlin, the companions will visit the Berlin Olympic venues and then want to go to the Olympic Village in Munich. I was not interested in sports, but I learned about Germany's unusual Olympic experience. Germany has hosted two Olympic Games, one in Berlin in 1936 and the other in Munich in 1972. The two Olympic Games are not famous for their competitions, but they have become "strange" because of the shame of the Olympic Games. The Berlin Olympics were the most notorious, Hitler made the stadium a stage for fascist propaganda, and the silence of the national teams invisibly endorsed the obedience of the Nazis. The documentary Olympia by the royal female director Leni Riefenstahl shows the perfect physique of the Aryans and the extraordinary excellence of axis athletes with exquisite lenses. The film is full of metaphors for Nazi ideology, but technically, the film is worthy of being a masterpiece in the history of world cinema. Riefenstahl invented a number of brilliant shooting techniques, such as diving, long jump up shot, balloon hanging camera overhead shot, competitive panoramic shot, etc., which were all ingenious at the time. She set an example for sports cinema, and people still follow in the footsteps of this talented director.
1936 Berlin Olympics
Hosting the Summer Olympics in Munich for the second time, the original intention was to wash away the notoriety of the last time, and it turned out to set another record of shame. The Bavarian government, with its good intentions, showed the world a democratic, free, prosperous, optimistic new Germany, spending $615 million to erase the negative impression of 36 years ago. The opening ceremony played folk music instead of playing the national anthem, relaxing security, reducing police attendance, and creating a peaceful and relaxed atmosphere. Munich's slogan is "Die Heiteren Spiele", and the emblem is the sun shining blue, which contrasts with the red, white and black tones of the previous Nazis. It is a bit too warm, and it does not match the background of the "Cold War". In the 1970s, the two camps did not hesitate to use any means, and the propaganda war, espionage war, and arms race escalated, slandering, attacking, and attrition of each other, a "limit war" with no bottom line.
The Israeli national team at the 1972 Munich Olympics
The Israeli team was the most eye-catching at the opening ceremony. Dark blue suit, white soft hat, not many people, a stubborn face. Returning to the devastated land, the representative team of this nearly destroyed nation marched to the Munich Stadium, just six miles from the Dachau concentration camp, demonstrating with its head held high: We are back again, surviving Jews, a nation you cannot destroy! Under the flag of the "Star of David", they proudly said to reporters: "It is enough for us to show up here with the flag." The Olympics of that year were no better than they are now, not so much as sports competitions as political contests.
Israel team
The Opening of the Olympic Committee was announced in 1972
In order not to evoke the iron blood of the Germans, there are no uniforms in Munich, and the police do not wear guns and uniforms in the variety of shopping malls and crowded bars. The city is immersed in a carnival atmosphere, with no guests left behind and no brewing. Athletes from all over the world have long admired the fame of Munich beer, drunk and resting, late at night. The gate of the Dormitory in the Olympic Village is locked, and there are still cup-greedy people humming a small song to climb the iron door. At 4 a.m. on September 5, 8 Athlete-like Arabs climbed up the iron gate, followed by drunken Americans, who thought they were drinking friends, and promoted each other and said goodnight to each other. The Arabs went straight to the Israeli athletes' dormitory, smashed open The First Bedroom, and with a gunshot, wrestling coach Weinberg fell to the ground. In the third bedroom, there was another scuffle, and the weightlifter Romano fought hard and was killed.
Terrorists hijack Israeli athletes
At 7 a.m., the world media flooded the air: Black September, a branch of the Palestine Liberation Organization, kidnapped 9 Israeli athletes, shot and killed 2, and demanded that the West German and Israeli authorities release 234 political prisoners for a period of 12 noon, killing two hostages every hour after expiration.
Media reported the Munich massacre in '72
Two
In 1972, live television was a novelty, and the powerful American Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) had just tried to broadcast the Olympic Games by satellite. Previous news had audio, and video had to wait for the film or tape to be airlifted to the TV station. ABC first broadcast the Summer Olympics in Mexico City in 1968, and this time technology in Munich has matured. On the morning of the 5th, two sets of color pictures appeared on the news screen: one group of track and field competitions, the scene was warm, the audience cheered; the other group was a close-up of a small white building in the dormitory area, a masked face with two black hole eyes, probing the brain from the balcony glass door, this photo was fixed as the standard image of terrorism. The two sets of pictures each form a narrative thread, frequently cutting each other, and reinforcing the suspenseful and thrilling visual effects with parallel montages.
Terrorist standards like
After the student movement in the 1960s, the media cooperated with the left-wing movement. Extremist groups such as the Rote Armee Fraktion used media exposure to create myths of revolutionary terror. Commercial interests and political demands conspire and run in, and gradually form a set of visual grammar (viso-linguistic): exposure of secrets, sensational slogans, interstitial news, in-depth tracking, terror, scandal, violence are all compiled into news programs, peddling to a new audience who seeks different standards, the focal length of the lens and the diopter of the lens, reflecting the mirror image of violence and terror. [1] The report Munich pushes this grammar to the extreme: the Olympic Committee announces its refusal to suspend the tournament! Military police, armored vehicles, and machine guns pounced on the Olympic Village; as soon as the picture switched, the athletes were still worried about medals on the field, beating their chests, or getting carried away, crying and laughing for no reason. Rumors abounded outside the venue, reporters added more branches and leaves, commented, speculated, and broke the news, and the news degenerated to the level of a kitchen soap opera. How did the audience feel back then? As evidenced by the German newspaper Bild, the headline on the front page that day was: Spectators feast their eyes! ABC journalists Peter Jennings and Jim McKay have made a lifetime of success for covering Munich.
German Red Army faction
The negotiations also had something to watch, with official German representatives changing hands and comings and goings. First a lady walks into the overhead picture of the dormitory door, she wears a playful white beret, a blue miniskirt, flowers swaying, leaning on the door to talk. The representative of terror, alias Issa, wore black shoe polish on his face, a white top hat, shook his head and twisted his legs, and talked about Xingzheng: "Sorry Miss, we have to temporarily requisition this ideal world stage to achieve the effect that 20 years of armed resistance dare not hope." As soon as the picture turns, the Bavarian Minister of The Interior and the Munich Sheriff, with a dignified face, personally go out on horseback, and talk bitterly to Issa, persuading him to go back to his way, and the two sides indulge in "philosophical discussions". In the end, the Minister exchanged his life for hostages and offered an unlimited ransom. But Issa was stubborn, did not want money and did not care about his life, and longed for the liberation of Palestine.
Issa talks to the policewoman
The tv interjected israeli prime minister Golda Meir's speech: "If we give in, Israelis around the world will never have a peaceful day, blackmail!" The worst kind. The camera slowly swayed and turned to the isolated low wall, which was crawling with reporters, and the long and short shots were like small artillery arrays. The camera pans outward again, and there is a different scene outside the wall: on the small artificial lake, a few ducks swim quietly, the lakeside lawn athletes are sunbathing, the clouds are light and the wind is light, and the meaning is far away. These pictures are magically edited, surreal, like a good play, and the people in the play have a strong sense of performance. Terrorists played the role of uninvited guests who forced their way to the stage, German ministers mournfully sacrificed their lives to exchange hostages to show remorse, Israel reiterated that it would never compromise with the Arabs, the Olympic Committee was arrogant, people's lives were small, and the Olympic spirit was great.
Israeli Prime Minister Meyer vowed revenge
The Munich Olympics have three elements of television ratings: competition, entertainment and violence. Modern terrorism breeds in popular visual culture, and television has been expropriated by terrorist acts: without the popularity of television in developed countries, without satellites serving the media, without the excessive reliance on live broadcasting of sporting events, the Munich incident might not have happened. Once the visual media synchronizes the event, interpretation, and playback, the perpetrators and journalists consciously or unconsciously participate in the course of events. Terrorists will adjust their strategies at any time with the camera's multi-perspective, reporter comments, or audience feedback, and the two sides will conspire to convert "real time" into program time, narrate events as stories, and mass culture completes the ritual and public anxiety can be vented.
Olympic Village scene
Three
The West German government, knowing that negotiations were hopeless, secretly prepared for raids and stalled for time. The "Black September" deadline was pushed to 5 p.m., and police surrounded the dormitory building at 4:30 p.m. Dressed in sportswear and submachine guns hidden in tennis racket covers, they secretly occupied the commanding heights and had to attack the ventilation channels and balcony windows. The cameras on the roof opposite were always on, and the entire operation was broadcast live to hundreds of millions of viewers, and the terrorists in the room watched at the same time. As soon as the policeman leaned off the roof, the terrorists immediately arrived in place according to the television footage and raised their guns to aim. At 5 o'clock, the police headquarters suddenly realized that the action was equivalent to suicide, and hurriedly stopped. The audience is terrified, who said that the police film is thrilling? Which is better than news horror? Don't think that the Germans are efficient and can't keep up with the speed of live television. Many Hollywood horror films, inspired by Munich, have repeatedly interpreted this bridge section.
Police raids
The police sneak attack was broadcast live on television
Knowing that the goal would not be achieved, Black September made a new request: a long-range plane to take them to Cairo along with the hostages. West Germany, which would not allow hostages to be taken out of the country, designed to hunt terrorists at airports. Three helicopters landed in the Olympic Village, transporting the hostages to Fürstenfeldbruck Air Force Base, from where they flew from the Boeing 727 to Cairo. Countless cameras recorded the scene, and the Oscar-winning documentary "One Day in September" (1999) interviewed the audience that year, and everyone felt like watching the movie "007", fiction and reality are inseparable. An Israeli female athlete said: "They just killed two teammates, and now they are striding with their guns held high, like the Jedi heroes in the police movie, angry to death." The only surviving kidnapper, Jamal al Gashey, after nearly 30 years of hiding in Tibet, gave an exclusive interview at a secret location in Africa, recalling: "As soon as we got on the helicopter, we and the hostages sensed that this was a trap, followed by a fierce battle, and the atmosphere was solemn. Before leaving the dormitory, everyone stayed together all day, the relationship between the two parties relaxed, and the kidnappers chatted and joked with the athletes, and then realized that the last moment had arrived. Issa ordered: Prepare to die! ”
Documentary "A Day in September"
The police thought there were 5 terrorists, ambushed 5 snipers at the base, and 6 police officers pretended to be crew members on the Boeing plane. The kidnappers made a high-profile appearance, only to find that it was 8, the snipers were not enough, and the Germans, known for their accuracy, did not inform the ambush police force. The helicopter landed at the military airport, and the police on the Boeing plane panicked and abandoned the plane without asking the headquarters for instructions. Issa inspected the large plane and found that it was empty, and knew that it was a hurry to return to the helicopter, but at this time, the lights were bright and the gunfire was loud.
Ambush terrorists
Four
The reporter only saw the hostages get on the helicopter, did not know where they were, and the media was blocked. When the sound of dense gunfire came from the direction of the air base, citizens and reporters heard the wind and rushed to the road to the base, blocking the reinforced armored vehicles and listening to the fierce fighting in the distance for more than two hours. The ABC finally inserted the latest news: the Munich police declared the operation victorious, all the hostages were rescued, and all the terrorists were killed. Suddenly there was jubilation. Fencing coach Spitzer's wife, who lived in the Netherlands for a day, learned early in the morning that her husband had been robbed and kept calling the Dutch police, the Israeli embassy and the Olympic Committee, but no one had more news than on television. Just after midnight, the ambassador to the Netherlands called and asked her to open champagne to congratulate her, and the streets of Israel were carnival like a festival. At 3 a.m., ABC broadcast another major news, anchor Jim McKay said in a heavy tone: "It seems that the situation is not so optimistic, and finally the news is that all 11 hostages were killed, 3 terrorists were captured, and the rest were killed." ”
What the hell is going on at the base? Due to the absence of the media, no video recordings were left. The documentary "A Day in September" follows oral accounts and computer animations that recreate the scenes of that year. After the police officers pretending to be the crew escaped, the plan to lure the enemy out of the helicopter failed, coupled with the lack of sniper training, the sniper rifle was not professional, and the result was a random shot, only two criminals were shot, and a sniper was killed. The next confrontation between the two sides was unsuccessful. The police station was in disarray, using loudspeakers to restart negotiations, and "Black September" a shuttle of bullets answered. There was no way to mobilize armored troops, and as a result, the road was delayed for 2 hours before they arrived. The armored vehicle came and rammed, not distinguishing between the enemy and the enemy, seriously injuring two snipers. Issa looked at it coldly, the general trend had gone, and ordered the "tearing up the ticket". Submachine guns swept through the hostages, grenades ignited helicopters, and the hostages were burned beyond recognition, and none of them survived.
Interior of the Israeli athletes' dormitory
Five
A German scholar told me that he was 16 years old and had been staring at television all day at his home in Stuttgart until late at night. In the early hours of the morning, his father woke him up, and he was in tears, saying that the hostages were all dead, and he sobbed and lost his voice. This scene shook him greatly, the memory of "World War II", the Jews were once again killed, and the guilt in his heart and the powerlessness of being castrated were intertwined, making a generation of Germans forever unforgettable.
Terrorism was shrouded in Europe in the 1970s
Munich is a classic case of modern terrorism, with distinct international characteristics and a pursuit of worldwide effects. Terrorists set out from Libya and infiltrated West Germany via East Germany, where left and right militant groups actively cooperated to attack foreign targets and rescue international political prisoners. On the list of those requested for release were, in addition to the Arabs, Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof, leaders of the German Red Army, and Kozo Okamoto, a member of the Japanese Red Army. Why did the PLO rescue the Germans and the Japanese? Terrorism in the 1970s was different from the fundamentalism of Islam that followed. After the retreat of the 68 student movement, left-wing radicalism passed on the torch, and the German Red Army, the Italian Red Brigade, and the Japanese Red Army all took Marxism as the guideline, regarded their own bourgeois government as an enemy, attacked overseas bases of the US military, and supported the anti-colonial and anti-imperialist movements in the Third World. The Warsaw Pact countries also secretly received assistance to the left wing of Western Europe and the Arab national movement, which was quite a general atmosphere of unity and vertical cooperation. Badr and Mainhof often traveled back and forth between Arab and European countries, training and planning operations with local governments and secret organizations, and the Japanese Red Army also went to Israel or Europe to commit crimes, so they were comrades and helped each other.
The revolutionary situation in the 1970s was in a slump, the prospects for political struggle in Western Europe were bleak, the Arabs were defeated in the Six-Day War, and the liberation of Palestine was elusive. Badr lamented: "The revolution can neither count on political resistance, but relies on news headlines to achieve its goals." [2] As a result, the Red Army sent the media to create the image of urban guerrillas, fight the "Vietnam War" at home, expose the government with "visual terror", and create an "eyeball disaster". The terrorism of the Red Army faction has degenerated into rendering visual stimulation, pursuing exposure to compete for the right to interpret reality, and awakening the numb masses. [3] The tactics of its opponents were the same, with the right-wing conservative German newspaper Bild also portraying violence, but intimidating the public with the bloodiness of its opponents for the purpose of discrediting the left. It was an age of media culture hysteria, with forces of all kinds embracing "visual politics" and reinventing horror techniques as media technology evolved with each passing day. But when radical politics degenerates into a media scandal, political terror amounts to media crime, and the originally subversive political confrontation is hyped up as a hot topic of mass culture, and no longer intervenes in historical dialogue.
Badr and Mainhof
Six
The story is not over, more than a month later, a Boeing plane of West German Lufthansa is hijacked again, in exchange for the release of the three arrested "Black Septembers". The West German government simply did not consult with Israel and released people privately. The three kidnappers returned to Libya and were greeted triumphantly by the hero, who made a high-profile declaration to the media: "This is a great victory for the Palestinian liberation movement!" "The 5 dead were also treated with state funerals. West Germany was notorious, and Israel accused it of colluding with Black September to stage a hijacking scene. East Germany commented that the Munich incident was an inevitable consequence of the third Middle East war, that Israel was the real terrorist, and that the West German media covered up the desperate situation of Palestinian refugees. [4]
Israeli athletes killed
Meyer ordered the Mossad to hunt down the leader of black September and the kidnappers in exchange for violence. One by one, the PLO leaders were assassinated, 2 of the 3 kidnappers were purged, leaving only Jemo Al Ghahi to die, still alive and unrepentant. I don't know how many legends, novels, movies, and TV series interpret the Legend of the Mossad, and Spielberg's film "Munich" can be described as a classic. Mass culture consumes violence, espionage, tough guys and action, but the political sharpness originally contained in it has been absorbed and disinfected by post-industrial cultural production. The context of ideological confrontation has also been bleached to violent aesthetics or sensory consumption. After Munich left a legacy, West Germany established the anti-terrorist unit GSG9, and France, Britain, and the United States also set up anti-terrorist agencies. The "anti-terrorism era" that the media is talking about today has actually begun in the 70s.
The terrorists were released by the West German government and held a press conference
Why repeat the past of more than 40 years ago? There have been so many horrific incidents, why does the film and television industry have a special love for Munich? Munich can be described as the prototype of modern terrorism, and the thrilling day of this thrilling day is actually constructing a "meta-narrative". How to define modern terrorism? It has the following characteristics: it is planned in the form of transnational cross-borders, performing sensational events on the world stage, and pushing performance and drama to the extreme. After World War II, the international political pattern has become increasingly solidified, and the world order imposed by superpowers has squeezed the space for political confrontation. Traditional violence, such as the destruction of military and economic installations and the assassination of political figures, has given way to new forms of terror. Meinhof, the leader of the Red Army faction, declared: "Smashing one car is a criminal offense, and smashing a thousand cars is a political event." "Her goal is no longer to destroy itself, but to focus, to put on a show in the media spotlight." Margaret Thatcher once said: The media is the oxygen of terrorism. The culmination of this logic is 9/11, the historical reference to radicalism in the 21st century is becoming increasingly obscure, violence is reduced to hysterical catharsis, and terror is an empty signifier.
A solemn funeral
Bin Laden planned the attack on the World Trade Center, valuing it as a landmark of the Imperial Capital, a symbol of financial capital, and an attack symbol intended as a symbol. Bin Laden knows that every moment there are cameras pointed at the Petronas Twin Towers, filming, traveling souvenirs. Cheng Long almost boarded the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 7 a.m. on 9/11 to make a movie called "Nosebleed", and the plot was a conspiracy to blow up the Twin Towers! Cheng Long plays the protagonist who heroically subdues the terrorists and saves the World Trade Center. Cheng Longji has his own heavenly appearance, and he made another film in Toronto at the same time, delaying the schedule and escaping a disaster. When he learned that the World Trade Center had really collapsed, he told reporters: The afternoon of 9/11 felt like the "walking dead." The fictional story happens unexpectedly, and the film company, fearing to put salt on the wounds of New Yorkers, decides that "Nosebleed" is stillborn. But the line at the beginning of the play is intriguing: "The World Trade Center symbolizes freedom and capitalism, and everything that America stands for; to bring the Twin Towers down means to bring America to its knees." ”
9.11 World Trade Center
In fact, it is not too coincidental, Hollywood has made many films of World Trade Attacks before, and the Twin Towers have fallen many times in the virtual world. When the 9/11 news broadcast the collapse of the World Trade Center, it was like a "replay" of a disaster movie. Baudrillard asked: Why does the WTO have identical twin towers? Because they are symbols of the abolition of political confrontation and extremism in the post-political era, the twin towers reflect each other like mirror images, which is actually "simulacrum", just like the image of the abolition of differences. [5] As Marcuse puts it, the post-political era is a "one-dimensional society", social criticism is drifting away, and if the virtual political confrontation of art is missing, the differences and accidents will no longer exist, leaving only the only possibility of the real world. When the World Trade Center was attacked, the audience may not be shocked by the attack itself, but the plot of the movie is staged in the real world, and the virtual arrogance is real. Reality should be tedious and mediocre, and fiction is thrilling. The paradox of "9/11" is that reality draws energy from fiction, and the real world imitates fictional plots, which is not an imitation of art to reproduce reality. The news footage of the collapse of the Twin Towers is almost the same as the computer effects of the film Independence Day (1996), how to distinguish between the image and the real? Will people use film and television to verify life in the future? Is the virtual reality more real than reality? [6]
Today, the two worlds separated by the Berlin Wall are no longer the slightest difference, and walking on the streets of Berlin, it is difficult to imagine that there was ever an "Iron Curtain". The boundary marker of political confrontation has disappeared in the "post-political society", and the taiping and prosperous world have arrived. No, the depoliticization of pure violence is intensifying, and the "terror" that is always in the press is the product of the "post-political era." Seemingly unrelated to political disagreements, it is the mania peculiar to "mimicking" society. If war is a continuation of political struggle, then terror is a symptom of "post-political" agitation. We only know the disciplinary power of Gazing at Foucault's circular prison metaphor, and the secret surveillance under authoritarianism in "1984", but ignoring the reality of our current lives: are people afraid of being watched or ignored? In the Internet era, Weibo, WeChat, Facebook, and Twitter camps are disturbed, and if they are not paid attention to for a day, they will lose their souls. Exposure, popularity, and fan base are really hot resources.
[1] Rupert Goldsworthy, Revolt into Style: Images of the 1970s West German “Terrorists”(New York University UMI no. 3295339, 2008). P. 186.
[2] Goldsworthy, P. 138.
[3] Goldsworthy, P. 109.
[4] Terrorist attack in Munich, GDR-1, Sept. 5, 1972, Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv Babelsberg (DRAB), ID-Nr. 71207, AC12329/ DRAB/1/1
[5] Jean Baudrillard, . Simulacra and Simulation. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, P. 32
[6] Baudrillard,. The Spirit of Terrorism. Brooklyn: Verso, 2003. pp 28-9.