Inside Greek Terrorism

Book excerpt: The long story of Greek terrorism was meant to have ended in the summer of 2002 with the collapse of the country's premier terrorist organisation and one of Europe's longest-running gangs, the notorious 17 November group (17N). However, rather than demoralising and emasculating the country's armed struggle movement, the dismantling of 17N and the imprisonment of its members led to the emergence of new urban guerrilla groups and an upsurge in and intensification of revolutionary violence. Given the sheer longevity of the 17N terrorist experience, George Kassimeris sets out to analyse the life histories of the group's imprisoned members. Their stories, told through their own words, offer us a clearer picture than we have ever had of the political and ideological environment that provided the foundations upon which revolutionary terrorism took root in the mid-1970s. This book also brings up to date the gritty story of Greek terrorism, by analysing the country's post-17N generation of urban guerrilla groups, placing their extremism and violence in a broader political and cultural perspective.