Parakratos: Narratives of Political and Military Conspiracies in Modern Greek Historiography

This book analyzes the conspiratorial concept of parakratos (translated as “deep state” or “parastate”) as a Cold War parallel power mechanism that exerted a profound influence on the political landscape in post-civil war Greece (1949–1967). A well-known phenomenon to the Greek domestic public, the far right parakratos became the usual suspect for political murders, election rigging, and terrorism during this period. Despite its notoriety for numerous outrageous incidents, including the assassination of the left-wing politician Grigoris Lambrakis in Thessaloniki in 1963, the structure of the parakratos has eluded a comprehensive understanding, primarily due to the paucity of reliable sources and the absence of a scholarly consensus regarding its nature.