ABSTRACT
To understand the macro-social context of the Greek Military Police torture, it is important to note that the colonels of the 1967 coup d'etat installed a military oligarchy similar in form and operation to those in other parts of the world, particularly Latin America (Janowitz, 1964). The junta ruled Greece for seven years. The colonels were narrow-minded men with an uncomplicated, if somewhat muddled, nationalist and anti-Communist ideology; they did not represent mass aspirations, nor even those of the armed forces (the navy and air force did not take part in the coup). It was a pseudo-fascist, diffuse paternalist dictatorship. Indeed, it had very little in common with pre-war fascist regimes, except perhaps the “clerico-military fascism” of Franco, but it lacked even Franco's political power base. But the junta was determined to rule by force and fear. They depended on United States support even more than previous regimes had.
