"Who Really Rules this Country?" Collusion between State and Deep State in Post-Civil War Greece and the Murder of Independent MP Grigorios Lambrakis, 1958-1963

The destruction of Greek democracy did not happen suddenly on 21 April 1967 with tanks rolling down the streets of Athens. Its undermining had been underway from at least 1958 after the electoral revival of the Left spread panic throughout the conservative establishment, and the State and Deep State entered into a tacit alliance to counter its presumed threat. Two important milestones in this process were the elections of "violence and fraud" of October 1961 and the assassination of MP Grigorios Lambrakis in May 1963. This analysis illustrates how the imperative to fight the Cold War put a brake on the punishment of Greek collaborators and encouraged a phenomenon of para-militarism thoroughly incompatible with normal definitions of Western legality and democracy.