a retroperspective

   The revolutionary movement the Green Rose and its active part, the Nightravens grew out of the apathy and frustration a minority of the environmental movement felt because of the perceived lack of action from politicians and leaders in the nineties.
   For the first time environmentalists took up arms in a grand scale. Earlier urban guerilla fighters like the Weathermen (USA), Direct Action (Belgium), Red Brigades (Italy) and the Red Army Faction (Germany) had all, in major and minor ways, been communists that, like the authorities were stuck in the old ideological mire, grown out of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries’ labor struggle.
   The urban guerilla of the nineteen nineties rejected early the notion of continuing old battles. From the very start they were seen as something different, new - and dangerous. Their entire understanding of reality, their publications more than suggested they are convinced anarchists, or green anarchists, and that the implementation of their policies makes the destruction of the entire modern society necessary and desirable. They have radicalized huge parts of the so-called alternative movement beyond what any average citizen sees as decent.
   Their first, major felony was a bank robbery in Copenhagen December 1988. How much money they escaped with has never been known. The bank says one thing. Persistent rumors clearly different. It is known that the fifteen original members left Copenhagen for Las Palmas on the Canary Islands, on something that can only be described as a recreational trip.
   Little is known about the various members from the moment they left their respective homelands and until they, after a few years of wandering and time in the Danish capital began their «careers» in the Green Rose. But we know they were active, very active in the city’s radical crowds. They were seen as the radical’s radicals. We know they lived in their own squatter house in Liberty City and ran an illegal Inn there. There are still stories being told about the wild parties within those walls.
   After the much talked about bank robbery things quieted down for quite a while. During this first, critical phase they did only simple, sporadic operations, nothing approaching of the later infamous, complex, militant ones.
   There are claims that they were given military training in Iraq or Libya or followed in their predecessors’ footsteps and lived in Palestine for a while, but none of it can be verified.
   One thing is certain. When they participated in the raid on the South African Embassy some months after the bank robbery, they could handle weapons. The stage was set for another dramatic decade in Europe’s history.
   When we look at the new terrorism in Europe, its first generation, it becomes clear that these individuals made the wrong turn at a very early age. They had nothing to contribute to society, and therefore made the decision to destroy it.