"[T]he Baader-Meinhof Gang managed to perturb West German political institutions because the state was not what the Baader-Meinhof Gang claimed it to be. One of the RAF's ploys was to provoke the state "into showing its cunningly hidden and well-camouflaged 'true fascist face.'" Once the members of the Gang had been incarcerated, the German state seemed at first to oblige: it unnecessarily subjected them to harsh penal conditions--isolation, sound deprivation, white furniture, perpetually lit rooms. Still, these tactics, for all the physical and mental distress they may have caused, represent not unabashed use of force but muted alternatives, weaker substitutes. West Germany was, as Aust says, "a reasonably well-functioning constitutional state." If the state had had a "true fascist face" to reveal, matters would have been very different. We might not even know about the RAF, since freedom of the press would have been curtailed and secret executions would have replaced trials. By contrast, thanks to intense media coverage, the Gang's terror effect was multiplied and broadcast far and wide." - Thomas Brox Røst from Bookmarklet