ID | 060838 |
Title Proper | Urban Guerrilla or revolutionary fantasist? dimitris koufodinas and the revolutionary organization 17 November |
Language | ENG |
Author | Kassimeris, George |
Publication | Jan-Feb 2005. |
Summary / Abstract (Note) | The end of Greece's Revolutionary Organization 17 November (17N) finally came on 5 September 2002 when the group's leader of operations, Dimitris Koufodinas, turned himself to the police. Unlike Alexandros Giotopoulos, the group's chief ideologue who denied any involvement in 17N, Koufodinas took responsibility for the entire 17N experience and sought to defend and justify their violent actions. Drawing on Koufodinas's court testimony this article suggests that the world of 17N was a closed, self-referential world where terrorism had become for the members a way of life from which they could not walk away. Defending the group's campaign from beginning to end, Koufodinas contended that 17N was an authentic revolutionary alternative to a barbaric, inhumane and vindictive capitalist order that was running amok. An emblematic personality of 17N terrorism, Dimitris Koufodinas embraced the view that Greece's “self-negating democracy” necessitated exactly the kind of political violence they had undertaken |
`In' analytical Note | Studies in Conflict and Terrorism Vol. 28, No.1; Jan-Feb 2005: p 21-31 |
Journal Source | Studies in Conflict and Terrorism Vol: 28 No 1 |
Key Words | Guerrilla Warfare |