Europe's Last Red Terrorists: The Revolutionary Organization 17 November

Since the 1970s, Europe's last Marxist-Leninist terrorists the Greek Revolutionary Organization 17 November have waged a violent campaign against US and NATO personnel, Turkish diplomats and members of the Greeks military and business elite. In May 2000 they assassinated a top British diplomat in Athens in a daring daylight attack. Yet no one suspected of belonging to the organization, let alone of being involved in its terror campaign, has ever been arrested. This book deals with revolutionary terrorism in Greece. Tracing the history of 17 November, Kassimeris demonstrates how it has persevered with a one-dimensional view of a world peopled by heroes and villains, that has precluded the emergence of a coherent ideology. Combining fanatical nationalism, contempt for the existing order, and the cult of violence for its own sake, 17 November has stubbornly refused to accept that its eclectic belief system is incompatible with modern democratic principles. Unlike Italy's Red Brigades or Germany's Red Army Faction, which both assailed "the capitalist state and its agents," 17 November hopes to create an insurrectionary mood that will propel the Greeks into revolutionary political action without disrupting society as a whole. As such, 17 November's terror campaign has been an audacious protest aimed at discrediting and humiliating the Greek establishment and the US government, but one that has never sought to develop widespread revolutionary guerrilla warfare.

About the Author :
George Kassimeris is a Senior Research Fellow in Conflict and Terrorism at the University of Wolverhampton. He is the author of Europe's Last Red Terrorists (NYU Press) the first book in any language on Greece's notorious November 17th terrorist group. He writes regularly for the Wall Street Journal Europe and the International Herald Tribune and is now working on a biography of Andreas Papandreou.

Review :
"An excellent analysis, perhaps the best one available, on the still active nationalist terrorist organization." -Choice "George Kassimeris has deployed his masterly knowledge of contemporary Greek politics and ideas to explain how a violent revolutionary organization can emerge in a fragile democracy, and to analyze its impact on Greek politics. His meticulous analysis of 17N's historical antecedents, ideology, strategy and terrorist attacks, and the reactions of the Greek political parties and elites, helps us to understand better why 17N's assassination campaign has proved so durable." -Professor Paul Wilkinson, Director, Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence, University of St. Andrews