Rev Left Radio - 17N: Marxist Guerrilla Warfare in Greece

Episode Date: October 28, 2019

Gabriel Radic, a writer and organizer with the Marxist Center, joins Breht to discuss the Marxist urban guerrilla warfare organization 17N (Revolutionary Organization 17 November), which operated in Greece from 1975 to 2002.  Outro Music: "Revolution" by Derek Minor Support his music here: www.derekminor.com  ------- LEARN MORE ABOUT REV LEFT RADIO: https://www.revolutionaryleftradio.com/ SUPPORT REV LEFT RADIO: www.patreon.com/revleftradio Our logo was made by BARB, a communist graphic design collective: @Barbaradical Intro music by DJ Captain Planet. --------------- This podcast is affiliated with: The Nebraska Left Coalition, Omaha Tenants United, Socialist Rifle Association (SRA), Feed The People - Omaha, and the Marxist Center.

My name is Gabriel Palsik, and I'm a local political organizer, a Stone Mason, boxer, and writer. I've been into radical political organizing for about four years now. main organizer behind the last Marxist Center conference in Colorado Springs of December last year and I have a lot of interest in terrorism related studies as a political science major well awesome is it's very awesome to have you back on the show you were on a previous episode so it's good to have you back so let's just go ahead and dive into the questions I want to make sure that we cover as much as we can it's a lot of history as always so it's always a problem to try to condense this stuff so just a basic first question what initially got you

interested in left-wing terrorism or guerrilla warfare broadly, and what about 17N specifically interests you? Yeah, so in regards to 17-N, I wanted to see, first of all, if it was effective, or I guess more broadly, if left-wing terrorism was at any point in history effective? Because as far as I know, you know, it's never succeeded in its ultimate goal, which is to see state power. And so I wanted to see to what degree they accomplished any sort of change in their society. 17 and specifically interest me because they were one of the most sophisticated organizations

of the 20th century, if not the most sophisticated organization. Their targets were very high-profile individuals in the CIA, the Navy, the Greek intelligence community, and the heads of riot police squads, big capitalists, and they were really, I don't know, they were difficult to capture. not a single number was like injured or or died even you know during their 27-year campaigns so I wanted to just explore more and see if 17N was really as legendary as people had told me and as some of these articles I read were saying they were yeah well yeah we recently did a whole episode on the Red Army faction in West Germany and so I'm sure there's

going to be some interesting parallels here but I do agree that it's important to cover this history because it's absolutely a part of proletarian history and we should learn from their successes and failure so we should cover this stuff and learn about this stuff so let's just go ahead and start with the basics what was the revolutionary organization of november 17th aka 17n and who were some of its maybe key members or leaders yeah absolutely um so a little background uh based on the current age of the convicted members most of the founding members were either teenagers or in their early 20s when they began their attacks, which I thought was interesting. They're described as one of the most protracted and intransigent of all the ideological terrorist

campaigns in Western Europe. They're often referred to as the Organocci Fantasma or Phantom Organization. They were a Marxist organization of urban guerrillas, around two dozen, we think, who existed between 1975 and 2002. They were never infiltrated despite astronomical rewards for their capture. Again, no members were ever injured to capture throughout their group's existence until the very end, of course. They were founded in 1975, which started off its 27-year history with their first attack

actually against the CIA Station Chief, or the head of CIA in that country, which was an assassination against him in front of his wife and driver who had their heads covered and so operation was executed flawlessly and so this began, you know, the start of this high profile group

with a very high profile target. Some of their leaders were, and I apologize in advance if I maybe butcher some of these grief names, but Alexandros Geotopoulos, who was the leading theorist of the group, He would have been about 31 when the group first began.

He was an economist and a professor, a son of a renowned Trotskyist, who fought in Spanish Civil War. He was involved in radical organizing in France in the 1960s, which explains why 17 in elected to send some of their earlier communiques to French papers through the offices of John Paul Sart, actually. He traveled to Cuba with other students during his youth to participate. participate in a training camp for resistance fighters there actually. And fellow travelers would later recall him as being highly serious at all times and completely focused.

He's currently serving 17 life terms in a Greek maximum security prison. The second in command or, you know, deputy in command is Dmitri Kofidonis, and he mainly oversell the logistics of the operations. He was an amateur beekeeper, actually, throughout the whole existence of 17-end. That was his, like, surface, you know, cover. He was known as Poison Hand for the precision of his aim. He's serving 11 life terms currently and was involved in just about every single, you know, assassination in the last 25 years of the group's existence.

He was released from prison, actually, for the first time, it's interesting note, in 2017, on condition that he report to police twice a day. He wrote two books in prison, and in 2018, he was actually moved to a farm prison with lighter restrictions. He'll be released in 2020, apparently, and he went on a 21-day hunger strike this last summer until he couldn't move to get furloughs, which are leaves of absence from prison, which succeeded. And some anarchists from Spain actually splashed red paint and set off smoke bombs outside, the Hellenic Parliament building in solidarity during his hunger strike. So I'm kind of giving you like the backgrounds and the current, you know, state of some of these leaders because I think it's important to give like a broad overview of their existence. The third one who is worth mentioning, there's about 19 members that we know of,

but the third one who's worth mentioning is Christodoulos Zeros, and he's serving six life terms currently. He is someone who actually in 2013 was given multiple leaves of absence from prison and absconded on January of 2014, was on the run for a year, released a video threatening Angela Merkel, the World Bank, the Greek government, which at the time was Sirza, and assembled a large arsenal of weapons and explosives in a safe house just outside of Athens,

and then plans were later found for an assault in January 2015 on the top security prison to free his fellow 17-in comrades. And those are three of the main leaders there. All of these people were involved, in the high-level assassination attempts and attacks and some of the more sophisticated bombings and other things like that. But like I said, there were about another 15 that we know of and probably five or six more that we don't know of.

Those are the main leaders. Organizational, like, if you want to talk about the organizational structure of the group, they're similar to Action Direct in France or the Red Army faction in Germany. They had small multi-celled, or it was a small multi-celled organization. with the core of about six or seven leaders who would discuss with each other targets, logistics, funding, what have you. And what few new recruits joined

during 17's existence were integrated into small cells under the auspices of one of these main leaders. Typically, you know, we're meeting the two main leaders, which are Gennar Zeros and Kofodonis. And the purpose of this type of structure, just to make a note of it, is if his cell was compromised, it wouldn't take down the entire

group. And unlike most anarchist terrorist groups that practice horizontalist structures like the conspiracy of fire nuclei which is currently operating in Greece right now actually there was still hierarchy in this group the main six to seven leaders would come to a decision about the target of the attack and the operational dimensions and then recruits would carry it out alongside and under the lead of senior members 17 in was in my studies and what I've seen from academic writings about the group, the most operationally sophisticated and just all around professional terrorist group in the world up until that time.

You know, 17N went on a 27-year campaign of high-level assassinations and high-level attacks using really advanced technologies and extraordinarily, like, meticulous planning. They would use remote-operated IEDs and RPGs. They would occasionally use grenades. They never use sniper rifles, which is interesting because, you know, they focus so much on assassinations. And they were also extraordinarily careful about not harming passerbys or having collateral victims. I don't know. There's some of the few people on the earth to whom I would describe the titles of professional revolutionaries.

And in the academic literature about them, you know, they're often talked about as professionals as well, actually. So it's not just like an admiration or something. It's like they're described in the literature as. as the most professional, like, terrorist people in the 20th century. I think had their actions coincided with the general uprising, they probably would have played some pretty essential roles. But that aside, you know, the members that talked about as intellectuals, again, in the academic literature about them,

the communiques weren't particularly well written, actually, in my opinion, but nonetheless, the intelligence communities and academic analysts alike recognize that the members of this organization were extremely intelligent and therefore elusive. But, yeah, I don't know. That's just a general overview of some of the members and some of the organizational structures of the group. But that's just touching the surface of it, of course.

Yeah, of course. And that's fascinating. It's just incredible. The degree of specialization specifically, I mean, that obviously makes for good organizing, right? Organizations and cadres, people have different talents. And if leadership can find the right talents

and put it to the right projects, it really makes the group stronger overall. That's just incredibly interesting. I was hoping that you could talk a little bit more about the ideology of the group, maybe talk about their enemies and also what their ultimate goals were. Yeah, absolutely. So they're nominally Marxist-Leninist, but there's not a whole lot of evidence in their theoretical works

or communicates to support that assertion. Their emphasis on anti-imperialism only hence at it, but again, you know, that's a core principle of revolutionary Marxism as a whole, not specifically Marxism and Leninism. Other than that, though, other than being like broadly Marxist, they started to become a little more nationalistic towards the latter half of their existence. But again, you know, we have to make sure not to ascribe to that Eurocentric notions of what we think of as nationalism.

Like in your Assyrian episode, for example, they talked about how Assyrian nationalism was something that was meant to remove them from the yoke of an imperialist power. And they saw Greek nationalism in the same way, but in this case, you know, freeing the Greek nation from the yoke of the U.S. and NATO, actually. Their enemies were quite a few capitalism broadly, the Greek state, banks, corporations, the highest echelons of corporate leadership in Greece, U.S. military stations, NATO as a whole, the EU as a whole, Turkey, France, Britain. Their goals broadly were somewhat vague, honestly.

And that's kind of a continuous feature of far-left terrorist organizations. Their goal ultimately is, of course, to overthrow capitalism in their country and then worldwide. But I don't know. I can quote them a bit here. They said that they were in favor of socialism with processes of direct democracy at the grassroots level, where management will be elected, called back, held accountable to those who elect them, which, of course, harkens back the comments that Karl Marx made about, like, the Paris Commune is that model of socialism. They also said that as long as there's no mass armed mobilization, there's not going to be any change.

So they were hinting there that they wanted to kind of provoke an armed mass mobilization. But their lack of a comprehensive strategy of how to achieve their stated revolutionary goals was, I think, a major setback and really distilling their ideology to the masses. And, you know, based on their manifesters and trial testimonies, their goal was to, again, broadly, create an atmosphere of rebellion and insurrection that would basically inspire people to launch an armed revolution to overthrow the ruling class. but unfortunately it's clandestine cell structure kind of precluded a dynamic organizational structure that could uh should a revolution arise bring in large swaths of the population which again is like a prevailing you know just kind of shitty paradox for for far left terrorist organizations they want to reach out to the people but at the same time they can't be public otherwise they would be infiltrated and caught you know before the day is over would you say quickly that that problem has

somewhat been solved by organizations like the Black Panther Party or the IRA which meld an underground organization with an above ground active participatory organizations? Yeah, yeah. I would say those are good examples there actually. Yeah, I mean, most of these

so-called left-wing terrorist organizations, which I'll just briefly say, I think, is a misdomer. I would call them urban guerrillas, as they call themselves. I think without, you know, a legal representative body to kind of create stronger links with the working class, you know, lacking that, they kind of struggle to

really achieve their goals. So, yeah, I would say like in that way, you know, the community service programs that the Black Panther parties had, feed the people and all that, were great, you know, ways of overcoming that problem. But unfortunately, 17-N never got to that point. Some more of their goals were the full withdrawal of Greece from NATO and into the presence of the U.S. military in Greece, the return of Cyprus to Greece from Turkey. They were anti-imperialist, anti-capitalists. Some were inspired by Chez's focus theory, actually, which states that the preconditions for a revolution can be created by an armed avant-garde, which then would provoke state, you know, state, like, for example, the Greek state, into a vicious and disproportionate

response that would lead the Greek people to revolt again in this situation. So they kind of followed that theory. Unlike the Italian Red Brigades or Germany's RAF though, which both assailed the capitalist state and its age. And 17 in kind of hoped to create an insurrectionary mood that would propel the Greeks into revolutionary political action without disrupting society as a whole, which the Red Brigades and RAF obviously did. As such, November 17's terror campaign has been a really, you know, audacious protest, at discrediting and humiliating the Greek establishment in the U.S. government, but one that never

really wanted to develop widespread revolutionary guerrilla warfare. But again, broadly, you know, they just wanted to raise the consciousness of the masses, typically by hitting targets related to the immediate concerns of the population. So their goals were multifaceted and that's sometimes contradicted. But, you know, they're pretty clearly similar to the ones. of other left-wing terrorist organizations operating in Europe during this time. Well, can you talk about, like, the broader historical context out of which 17 en arose and even, like, specifically the event after which they were named?

So, yeah, in order to understand the historical context, out of which 17 arose, as you asked, you kind of have to go back to World War II, and I'll bring us quickly up to the present. So Greece was liberated from the Nazis and the Italian fascist in 19, 1944, Churchill soon after ordered an intervention during the Greek Civil War, which was, you know, which occurred immediately after that liberation and between the communists and the old regime, which, you know, were just conservative nationalists. In 1947, the Truman Doctrine, you know, was authored to try to stop communist forces from seizing state power. and it actually focused heavily on Greece, along with Turkey and Iran. In 1949, the Civil War ended in favor of the conservative nationalist Old Guard. The Communist Party, or the K-K-E, as the acronym says, is outlawed.

The CIA and Greek government worked closely together soon after that. In 1952, Greece-drawn NATO and, you know, capitalism reigned for, you know, a better part of a decade. Skip forward to 1965, and you have this guy named King Constantine II, who was trying to gain more control over the country than the Constitution allowed. This triggered a constitutional crisis. A few years later, in 1967, fears grew that in the coming elections, the Conservative Party wouldn't win a parliamentary. majority and actually be forced into a coalition with the left-wing opposition party, and that it had been undermined by communist-intriists. The king coordinated with the military to use this possibility as a pretext for a coup, actually.

And weeks before the election, in the spring of 1967, a coup was launched by the military officers. Tanks were placed in strategic position around Athens, and over 10,000 people were arrested. in a single night, including all the leading politicians, all the prominent left-wing dissidents, anyone who might possibly pose a threat to what would become known as the regime of the colonels. Andreas Papandrew, the leader of the opposition, had his house raided in the middle of the night. This was like a very prominent left-wing figure, and he escaped to the roof of his house with his son, where he was forced to surrender after the fascist held a gun to his young son's head. a high-ranking CIA officer was there actually

overseeing the operation and advised the fascist to quote, shoot the motherfucker because he's going to come back to haunt you In quote, leading senators in the U.S. criticized the coup actually and the CIA's central role in it, which was proved you know, after the Cold War and some of these FOI requests were released and they stated that they had installed a regime of Nazi sympathizers. There's some graphic language here, but I really want to emphasize, you know, the CIA's position in all this.

But one of the senators said that it constituted a rape of democracy, to which the leading CIA station chief in Athens responded, how can you rape a whore? For seven years from 1967 to 1974, Greece existed under the iron fist of, again, the regime of the colonels. Thousands of leftists were tortured, many were killed. There was no freedom of press, no civil rights, and the freedom of assembly. The defining characteristic of this regime, though, was its anti-communism,

which is why they ceased power and why they got a ton of funding from the CIA and a ton of guidance from the CIA. And the reason this is important is because the CIA would become an object of hatred and, you know, attacks from 17-N throughout 17-N's whole existence. And it was out of, you know, these historical circumstances, this dictatorship that lasted for about seven or eight years that 17N was reacting and also the lack of justice

that was executed upon those responsible for this fascist regime 17N felt it was their job to execute justice where it hadn't been executed and I mean that literally and figuratively like they executed justice so yeah it's also important

to kind of show why 17N became stanchly anti-US and why they would, you know, go on to assassinate CIA officers and collaborators from 1975 onward. This kind of brings us up to 17th of November 1973, which is the event after which 17 November's is named. The intelligentsia, whose main exponents were student radicals, actually, were really dissatisfied with the multiple feigned attempts at liberalization. And basically one of the colonels said he would transfer power to a democratic republic, but he would put himself in the position of president, which he created and stole and was basically a one-man dictatorship is what this guy was proposing, but under, you know, the auspices of a democratic republic. And everyone saw through the bullshit, obviously. And so anyway, these National Technical University of Athens students protested, this and other things that were happening.

at the time, and this protest kind of created a movement, and it started gaining momentum. By 17th of November, 1973, they had basically seized control of their university, demanding freedom from the regime, you know, democratic governance, freedom of press, you know, just basically like liberal reforms. And the response of the regime of the colonels was to send in tanks onto the campus. They ran over the metal gate. Over 20 students were actually murdered in this event, killed some of them crushed by the tank that ran over the fence.

And it's just a really, really bloody mess. And that created a catalyst for further resistance. A variety of other internal problems were plaguing Greece in this time period. There were, like, multiple abortive coups by the Navy in 1973 and other, you know, other military dictator guys who were kind of sharing power, were turning against each other. There was a lot of infighting. There were mass protests, and these events led to a gradual democratization over time.

But the junta infighting at the highest echelons of the government bears the main responsibility for their own downfall. That is, they kind of collapsed under their own hubris. And so anyway, after coups and counter coups, after Turkey invaded Cyprus, because there was a coup there, too, that was completely separate than the coups going on in Greece, it was a fucking mess. There were fears that were gaining of an imminent war with Turkey, and senior military officials started losing their faith in the regime of the colonels, and basically pressure led to the first democratic elections in a decade in 1974, in the summer of 1974. And the physical collapse of the whole regime came from the crisis in Cyprus, and the ideological came by technical cooperation that happened, you know, again on 17th of November.

and together these were both catalyst exposing the many internal contradictions of that regime. Anyway, the dictatorship falls in 1974 trials began immediately thereafter. There are three main trials and the leaders of the regime of the colonels, these fascist military guys, have their sentences commuted to life imprisonment, where they would enjoy all these just ridiculous, like, ostentatious privileges, like these accommodations were ordered by the post-hanta justice ministry. So under, like, the capitalist Greece, you know, the free quote-unquote Greece, the justice ministry was allowing these guys to live lavish lifestyles.

It got so bad to the point of prisoners actually would riot over the elevated treatment of these fascists. And anyway, there was a trial of the tortures, which equally failed to deliver justice. All of the files regarding the torture were destroyed by the police shortly before. the trials. Only five torturers were ever convicted. They had their sentences commuted to a few years in prison. The presiding judge

was positioned by the fascist coup leaders into his seat as judge. He was put there by the colonels. He forbade any discussion of the CIA during these trials. One of the leading colonels, you know,

was released early. He enjoyed a good 26 years of freedom until he died at the age of 103. So, of course, you know, these fascists left to live to be really old, which, you know, just if God exists, he's probably a fascist because for some reason he loves to give long age of these bastards. For real. Anyway, these lack punishments.

What I'm getting at here, and the reason I'm emphasizing, like, this lack of justice that was executed during these trials is that the lax punishments would incentivize the creation of 17N, actually, initially, who would, you know, take it upon themselves, to carry out revolutionary justice, where bourgeois jurisprudence had so predictably failed. Yeah, anyway, there was just a total arc of justice and a lot of just really bad shit going on. Another really just quick note here, Operation Gladiow, which was a stay-behind network during Cold War. It was basically this, you know, you would have underground selves of right-wing, like,

basically like fascist resistance fighters who would create organizational structures during peacetime so that if communists were to ever cease power, they could carry out an underground campaign against that government. This stay behind network in Greece, you know, was really strong, actually. And it had existed since the CIA began leading and training the LOK, which were the Greek special forces in 1952. And the LOK were absolutely critical in the coup of 1967. and so that just proved further that the CIA was behind it all, and, you know, another fascist state, you know, was then between 1967 and 1974, created as a bulwark against communism. The stay-behind network was called Red Sheepskin and was discovered, actually, by Andreas Poppandrew, that left-wing figure who I spoke about earlier, when he formed the first so-called socialist government in 1981, and it was described as a secret NATO army.

And again, the point that I'm making here, the reason I'm bringing this up is that one of 17N's main targets was NATO. One of the main goals was to exonerate Greece from the yoke of NATO. And so that's just a little background on like the intelligence community shenanigans that were going on internationally at the time, just to kind of supplement, you know, your listener's understanding of why 17N chose the targets it did later on in its existence and the history, the very dark history that lied behind all of this. Yeah. Yeah, that's incredibly fascinating. And if it leaves us with anything, we certainly should remember that the CIA is organized crime on behalf of the U.S. ruling class and that there's nobody that has propped up more fascist governments and fascist states than the CIA and the U.S. government. And this is yet another set of examples that shows just how nefarious and far right the U.S. ruling class and their criminal wing, the CIA, actually are. But catching us up after that. historical context, which was fascinating, Gabe, thank you so much. Can you just talk a little bit more about the exact sort of actions or attacks that 17N conducted and who they targeted while

they were at sort of the peak of their performance? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So first of all, they mainly operated by themselves. They didn't really have any collaboration with like the Red Army faction or other leftist military groups at the time, at least no direct communication or, you know, overlap in their attacks occurred so far as we know. So, like I said, you know, they had a 27-year-long existence. They existed from 1975 to 2002. In this time period, they carried out 106 attacks, all of which are either robberies, assassinations, or bombings of some sort.

During this time, they issued 84 proclamation, and during this time, they killed 23 people. That's just some base statistics to kind of, you know, set us out. They were often, they're often reactive to their events, like elections, legislation that was being passed, international issues, such as austerity or military. They carried out 16 assassinations, eight attempted assassinations. They had three warnings, actually, where they shot people in the military. legs several times, one of which actually died. Two of these guys were actually prosecutors who, let's see here, they were trying to acquit to conservative businessman charged with financial fraud in the early 1980s. And so instead of killing these prosecutors, 17 and

decided to just wound them seriously to kind of, you know, say, hey, you guys are going to serve justice or else we're going to serve justice upon you. And they would sometimes use intimidation tactics like that. And again, to what degree they were effective is another question. But I don't know, it's actually interesting to note that another Marxist organization, or urban guerrilla organization, I should say, assassinated a Supreme Court official about a week after these attacks took place. Anyway, they never kidnapped, like that Red Army faction and the Redberg

brigades did. Their bank robberies were very successful. They netted tens of millions of euros throughout their existence, most of which still hasn't been found, by the way. They used a 1911, Colt 45, and almost a dozen assassinations. That was their signature weapon for close-range assassination. In 1989, they robbed a military base, and soon after that, a World War II museum of two bazookas and went on to launch about 50 rocket attacks in the years following this,

often through remote control. They were highly critical of this other Marxist terrorist organization in Greece, which was called Revolutionary People's Struggle, or ETA, which was an anti-capitalist guerrilla organization that was actually larger than 17 in, but far less sophisticated in terms of the precision by which they executed their attacks

in other ways as well and anyway to give you like a timetable between 1975 and 1985 they carried out nine attacks all of which were assassinations that's about one per year between 1985 and 1995 they carried out 63 attacks

these are mainly bomb explosions mini rocket attacks some assassinations and robberies and then between 1995 and 2000 2000 was their last attack even though they weren't formally caught until 2002. They carried out 14 attacks.

And all of their targets were meant to symbolize, like, larger societal problems. They went, what they would do is they would go after, like, the worst offenders within a field, whether it be, like, health care or industry or military or government, and they would seriously wound or assassinate or attempt to assassinate these figures, and then they would issue communicators afterwards warning others who are involved in imperialism, corruption and extreme labor exploitation to not commit the same mistakes that this person who either died or was seriously wounded committed or else there would be serious consequences. So they were trying to serve justice where justice was not being served and acting almost as

like a checking mechanism or like a regulator on society and their morals as a whole. So like I said earlier, they were extremely sophisticated and I just wanted to go through a few of their higher profile actions and kind of give you a glimpse of just what these guys were capable of. So in 1975, that was their first attack. They assassinated Richard Welch, the five 17-in comrades who carried out the assassination there, you know, restrained the driver and the wife while shooting the CIA officer at close range with the Colt 45 point blank.

At the time, this was the highest-ranking U.S. intelligence officer to be a target of an assassination attempt, actually, or I guess a successful assassination. And it's kind of interesting because the first 17-ends claim of responsibility was ignored, actually, until the next year. And another side note, actually, this assassination of Richard Welch in 1975 led to the passing of what's called the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, which makes it a crime to expose or, identify overt U.S. intelligence community operatives. Another major attack that they took on was in 1980. There was this guy, Pantilus Petru, who was the deputy director of the riot police or second in command of the riot police by three assailants using a couple of 45-millimeter pistols.

And a few days later, his driver would actually succumb from the wounds inflicted on this attack. and again, of course, you know, an object of hatred among the left and among all those who realize what a riot police officer's role is in society, which is, you know, to terrorize that society and oppress that society. So this is a very symbolic act, again. Fast forward five years, you're in 1985, 17N has been operating for a decade at this point, and they're getting pretty advanced. Their guys are obviously training and doing research on how to make more sophisticated bombs on how to carry out higher profile attacks, and it really begins to show. They set off a

car bomb explosion next to a Greek riot police bus in Athens. This kills one officer and injures 14 others. The proclamation that they sent actually afterwards to a newspaper stated that the attack was made to avenge the death of a 15-year-old during clashes at the day of the rally commemorating the public uprising that led to the fall of the Greek military hunter. And so this was a retaliatory attack, as are most of their attacks, against perceived injustices. In this case, you know, the cold-blooded murder of a 15-year-old boy. Anyway, that happened, and it was very popular with the public because they, you know, this had gotten widespread media attention. of this 15-year-old. And it was a widely popular attack, like people generally supported it. In 1988, so we're going four and three million years, they planted a bomb in a parked car,

and they detonated it, you know, remotely. Their target was the U.S. Navy attach. His name was Captain William Norting. And this was two-day the most advanced bomb that 17N had made. This bomb, once set off, launched this captain, you know, this U.S. Navy captain's armored-plated sedan, 30 feet across the street, while the target, you know, Captain William Nourdeen was actually decapitated from the explosion. Windows over 300 feet away were shattered from the blast. Telephone and power lines were just shredded. And again, the bomb was extremely sophisticated, and not just that, but the placement of it was. was very sophisticated, too, because what they did is they placed bags of cement against one side of the bomb to focus the explosive energy against that car that was passing by. After this happened, the U.S. actually offered a half a million dollar bounty for the capture

of the suspects, which was the highest one ever issued four terrorists at that time. So they're, you know, renown, I guess, internationally among, like, anti-terrorism and intelligence communities is very, very high at this point. And they continue to prove their capabilities. Later that year, they raid a police department. They hold four cops hostage temporarily while they got away with high-grade weapons, ammunition, tactical supplies. They then, after that, raid a military base on Christmas Day, actually. acquiring grenades, and, like, over 50 anti-tank rockets, which they would go on to launch using bazookas that they would steal later on from a World War II museum.

Oh, damn. So, yeah. And then after they stole these two bazookas, they analyzed and engineered new ones based on the design of the ones that they had stolen. And they had to do this because most rocket attacks that they did were remote-controlled, meaning that they left the launchers behind. and so, you know, they obviously needed quite a few launchers because, like I think I'd mentioned previously, they carried out about 50 rocket attacks during this next decade and a half that I'm about to describe.

Most of these rockets, it's interesting, you know, were set up actually on construction sites adjacent from their targets, and the way they would hide them, because, again, they were remote-controlled, you know, they would put up fake billboards that they would place on these construction sites and then put the RPG or the bazooka behind these billboards to cover it. Anyway, going on to 1989, there was this guy, Pavlos Bakrionis, he was the spokesman of the leading political party at the time, New Democracy. He shot and killed in the hallway of his office in downtown Athens, which is a really audacious assassination,

because they actually went inside the parliamentary building and took this guy out. not even using silencers or anything. And this is widely seen in retrospect as a mistake because this was a very popular figure. And the public really did not approve of this attack. At this point, you see in their communicators, actually, their publications, a bit of self-critique and what they're doing.

Up until that point, it had just been, you know, very provocative and audacious statements towards the Greek state. But here you see them kind of step, back for a second and actively criticizing themselves based off of public perceptions that they had construed, which again

actually is a parallel to the Red Army faction, as your previous guest had noted, you know, the RAF when they killed that U.S. military rank and file guy, they started to have to self-crit afterwards. So a similar thing happened here with the assassination of

this guy. And just to give, you know, the American audience perspective. When I'm talking about this person, this is kind of like the leader of, or I'm sorry, the speaker of the House of Representatives, like Nancy Pelosi or something. That's how high profile this person was. And they just walked into basically what was the equivalent of the White House and killed this person and left and got away with it. Moving on, you know, we're in the 90s now. They try to assassinate this shipping luminary, Vardis, something. I'm not even going to attempt to pronounce his last name.

This was a particularly spectacular attack, and that they launched by hand three RPGs at a moving target, which was, you know, this armored limousine. This guy, unfortunately, survived because the RPGs failed to pierce his armored limousine. But this was just, you know, one of those mega-capitalists, like billionaire people who were just mistreating their workers, putting them in extreme harm and danger constantly for the sake of profit. it, and this, you know, RPG attack was meant to, again, symbolize a wider problem, which is that of exploitation.

They would go on, you know, in the coming years, to attack a lot of U.S. corporations, such as Procter & Gamble, Citibank, Chase Manhattan Bank, General Motors, let's see here, I think McDonald's, too, or something we got. You know, just all the symbols of corporate American corporatism. um 1991 they launched a rocket attack against a riot police bus like through the windshield of a traveling riot police bus on the way to a protest they launch an RPG through this thing it kills one guy and injures the other 14 uh 1991 incidentally is is kind of the peak of uh of 17 in they uh carry out 22 attacks in this in this year and a lot of them involve RPGs which again they had stolen from a literal military base in Greece. So, you know, they're really high profile at this point. I mean, no one can even get, like, a signature on their pulse.

Like, no one knows who they are, where they're at. The state has just no idea, even though they're getting considerable funding and, you know, tactical and logistical support from the CIA and from UK intelligence, too, actually. The next year in 1992, they went after the... this Greek finance minister, and he narrowly escapes assassination when they launched a RPG round at his armored limousine in broad daylight. But the attack, unfortunately, and this is why it's significant, killed a bystander and injured five other people. And I don't know, this is like their greatest mistake, which we'll get to later, like what mistakes did they make, but this is the only bystander that was ever killed, the only innocent person that was ever killed.

in their 27-year-long history. And it was a really sloppy attack, and they actually didn't carry out any attacks for a little while after this, because they're kind of recouping and, I don't know, probably reorganizing some things. But anyway, a few more attacks. I'll just go over these briefly.

In 1994, they set up an RPG that was going to launch at the control center of a British aircraft carrier, but they had to abort the attack for security, purposes. We assume we actually don't know why, but it was found, and I think they later stated a proclamation on this, but these guys were getting ready to attack an aircraft carrier, less than two dozen revolutionaries. Anyway, to fast forward to the last one, it's 2000, it's the turn of the century, and this is going to be their last attack. At early, I don't know,

It was early in the morning, and this guy named Stephen Saunders, who is a British military attache, he's driving down central Athens in the heat of traffic, and all of a sudden two men ride up on a powerful enduro motorcycle, and they open fire with a 45-magnum or something, a powerful gun, and drive off really rapidly. this guy falls out of his car screaming for help just completely bloodied and dies at the scene like I'm sure within minutes for massive blood loss this was one of their first assassinations in a very long time and it got widespread attention because this was one of the first British targets to like high profile British targets to be attacked by 17 N

it's interesting to note that they actually fucked this one up Their actual target was supposed to be this guy named John Kariaku, which some of our American listeners might have heard of before. John Kariakou was the second in command of the CIA in Greece at this time. And what 17 failed to consider is that there were multiple license plates, styles of license plates, I guess, to demarcate, you know, U.S. and British foreign embassy workers from, say, Greek state workers, much less from Greek civilians. And so because of this license plate mishap, they actually got the wrong guy. They meant to attack and kill this guy, John Kariaku. And this is where it gets even more interesting.

John Kariaku would go on in the early 2010s to release information regarding waterboarding. He was the one who was responsible for letting the public know that people were, you know, the U.S. intelligence community and the Army and stuff were utilized. waterboarding as a method of torture in Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere, you know, like the black sites that we have in Chicago and stuff were our government torture citizens with

impunity. And he went to prison for four years for that. And I actually interviewed him over the phone the week after he got out of prison and asked him about this incident because he knew this guy, Stephen Saunders, really well. And he

he, you know, was the target of the attack and the reason he was in Greece was to try to catch 17 in and so it was it was interesting to talk about the perceived incompetences of you know the u.s. and greek intelligence communities and their inability to really crack down on 17 in to hear his you know perspective on the whole matter he's actually kind of turned around and now he like supports like syriza and bernie sanders and it's like kind of a moderate left like Socton or something. Interesting.

He's got a few interesting interviews on Democracy now, if any of your listeners want to check him up. But anyway, this was going to be 17-N's last attack because two years later in 2002, a bomb went off in the hands of one of the operatives. And this would go on to dismantle the entire organization, which I think might relate to your next question. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

The bomb going off in the hands of the person, and trying to make it is interesting because if there's a connection to the weather underground there, that's what happened to them, although they were nowhere near as successful as 17N in any of their endeavors.

But I just really, before I go to the next question, I want to quickly just restate what I said in our Red Army faction episode, which is this difference between, you know, if you accept the term terrorism, right, we talked about urban guerrilla warfare, et cetera, but just using the term terrorism

on its own terms, right-wing terrorism versus left-wing terrorism is fundamentally different in that the right consistent and always like the cowards they fucking are go after innocent people even here in mass shootings in the united states you they go after elderly people in church mothers shopping with their children for the first day of school truly cowardly fucking fascist shit on the left there is a concerted effort to target only those deemed responsible for truly disastrous policies and people

with real actual wealth and power and when there's a mistake when an innocent human being is murdered, any left organization, ostensibly terrorist organization, immediately recoils from its activity and tries to regroup and tries to figure out a way to not make that happen. And it's not always perfect. There are certainly left-wing factions that have failed at that and have not been as self-reflective as they should be about that. But on the whole, that fundamental difference between the far right and the far left is fucking fundamental, I think, to understanding the motivations that go into each ideology.

But yeah, let's go ahead and talk about the end of 17N, right? So how and why did 17N eventually get dismantled? And can you talk about the arrests and the trial that led to their dissolution as an organization? Yeah, I'd like to just, I don't know, jump on what you just said there real quick. And they're like four main types of terrorism, right? One of which is state terrorism. So it's really difficult to describe what constitutes terrorism when a body that is, enacting that terrorism is hegemonic or not.

You know, it's largely wielded by, you know, powerful and reigning institutions to decry opponents or potential opponents and dismiss them wholesale, which is why I actually brought up a definition that 17 NUs during their trials to describe what terrorism really is, which is, you know, kind of hinting on what you just said here about the right-wing violence that we've been experiencing in our country, unfortunately. And they say that terrorism is the use of violence in such a way that primarily aims at terrorizing the wider social classes. And, yeah, that's, you know, that's something that the left just is fundamentally not interested in. If you look at the terrorist attacks of the last, I think, eight years or nine years in this country, not a single fucking one has been committed by the far left.

They've all led the far right, and they're getting worse. So, you know, that really speaks to our situation here and to 17 end more broadly, because, something I haven't really mentioned or emphasized as much as I'd like to is that 17-N went incredibly far out of their way to ensure that side casualties never occurred. They never wanted to harm innocent people. They never wanted to even injure anyone or like, you know, they don't want to fuck up any working-class people's lives, right? When I mentioned that failed rocket attack on the finance minister that killed their one

side casualty, they had actually set up and deconstructed. that RPG 20 times in the month prior to that attack because every time there was either someone walking by that armored limousine or an innocent bystander who was getting too close to it that, you know, had they launched a rocket, would have put that person's life in danger. And that even undermined their own security standards. They put themselves at risk just to ensure that they didn't scratch, put a scratch on like anyone. And of course, unfortunately, it did happen in that incident.

but it's also interesting to note real quick that six bombs were actually set off in central Athens we don't know to this day by whom but it's broadly believed to be the CIA that harmed and killed many passers by and was then falsely attributed to 17 in by the Greek and international press even if we're not committing acts of terrorism and violence

you know the far left then the state will find a way to try to describe this bullshit to us unfortunately crazy yeah that's just another sign know. But yeah, sorry to get back to your question. So their dismantment happened very rapidly. It happened in 2002. One of the senior members, Salvas Zeros, he planted a bomb at the Minoan Flying Dolphins Ferry Company, which was going to act, I believe, as some sort of symbolic gesture against corporatism because this company had been fucking over their workers for a very long time now, and they're going to be made an example of, as many corporations

had before them. While this guy, Savas Zeros, is placing the bomb, it explodes prematurely in his hands. Apparently what happened is a new recruit had actually purchased the clock from China instead of Germany, and the cheap inner workings of this clock destabilize the ignition mechanism. This guy, Zeros, lost three of his fingers. He lost an eye. It collapsed one of his lungs. It burst one of his eardrums, and he got trapped in all in the chest and face area. He's escorted by, like, a literal armada of police vehicles to the hospital because they immediately put two and two together and realized that, oh, shit, this is 17 ends doing.

One of the authors of the book, of one of the books that I'll recommend it in here actually witnessed it firsthand and said that they're, There was a motorcade of like 20 to 25 different police vehicles, motorcycles, and even a helicopter that escorted the ambulance to the hospital because of how high-profile this target was. Anyway, this guy, Savas Zeros, he's unconscious for four days. He would actually spend over two months in the hospital recovering. And when he finally woke up, he was immediately given psychotropic drugs upon awakening to extract information from him under duress and would later return. recamped the statements that he gave to the police upon his awakening. During that, you know, drug-induced, extremely, like, injured state that he was in, he revealed the location of two safe houses, which would then reveal the number, or the locations,

actually, of six different members who were immediately arrested. And this is where their organizational structure actually backfired on them. It was so small that it was elusive and, you know, maybe almost impossible for law enforcement agencies to really penetrate. But because its members were so few and so tightly knit, once it had just been cracked, you know, it crumbled with, so all are arrested within, you know, about a year. Most of them within a few months or a few weeks, actually. It happened really quickly. it's found out that these people who composed this terrorist organization actually lived really mundane lifestyles.

One was a Greek icon painter, one was a mechanic, another was a beekeeper, one made musical instruments, another was a professor. Anyway, after the splash bomb planting that led to the demise of 17N, Alexandros Jatopoulos attempts to flee to Turkey from his home on the island of Lipsy and again this is like the kind of theoretical leader of the group like he's he's the one who has been around since day one and he's really the one that people go to for guidance and and ideas and what have you he's about in his late 60s mid 60s at this time um anyway while he's trying to flee to turkey he is stopped while he's on the boat by a force of 700 which is

more than the population of this island, 700, like, military and police people who are in Navy gunboats, army commandos and helicopters, they're counterterrorism and spec-off units everywhere, and just hundreds and hundreds of police. They invaded this island with a force of 700 military people to capture one guy. That's how high-profile this group was. Within a week of the 2017, or I'm sorry, 2003 arrest, an anonymous communication. from 17N actually claimed that the group was still active, and the letter demanded the release of 17N members. The letter claimed, at least, that the remaining members would initiate hostage-taking if, you know, they weren't released. And though that never occurred, the U.S. State Department to this day actually speculates that the remaining members of 17N have either been absorbed into a new group called Revolutionary Struggle, which based off of my research seems very unlikely, or otherwise have gone underground and are kind of keeping of themselves.

Anyway, regardless, the trial begins very quickly. It's all over, you know, state and international media. The trial is held inside a maximum security prison, again, just like Red Army faction. 19 defendants are there and being prosecuted for the crimes, you know, quote-unquote of 17 in, 15 of whom will eventually become or be convicted, four of whom will become acquitted. During the six-hour reading, the chief prosecutor became. two horse actually to keep reading them aloud and I mean

finished for him so that's that was like day one of the trial basically reading off the convictions anyway it was revealed during this trial that there was meticulous record keeping of finances which proved to the public that these you know so-called terrorists

these urban guerrillas did not use the tens of millions of euros that they had stolen from their multiple bank robberies for personal enrichment and, in fact, live very austere lifestyles. He says in an opening statement, quote, our own ethics do not accept any logic of cooperation and betrayal.

I'm not going to discuss my role in the operations of the organization. I'm not going to try and convince you in which operations I did not participate. I'm not going to talk about my co-defendants. This is my position, and I'm not going to change no matter the personal cost, which is really just invoking this concept, this Italian concept of Omercia, where there's total non-reliance and non-communication with the state in its apparatus. Another defendant emphasized that the goal of 17N was to, quote, set off the revolutionary atmosphere and that they would not, quote, substitute the actions of the people.

So although they saw themselves as a vanguard group, they, you know, stayed in line with the Marxist conception of vanguardism, which is that vanguardism is not a replacement for mass revolutionary politics. but a way of catalyzing it, a way of organizing it when it does occur, and helping it to occur quickly or faster than otherwise would. Anyway, the trials last many, many months, of course, if you watch the video, they're literally just rushed in and out to and from these arms. There was so much fear an attack was going to occur during these trials,

so we'd try to release the prisoners, that the state had just beefed up its security beyond any measure imaginable. I mean, thousands of security forces within miles in every direction of this maximum security prison to guard these court proceedings. But anyway, 17 were convicted. Only five of them are actually in prison today. But anyway, of the five people who remain in prison, one actually escaped for a whole year. it's interesting the circumstances surrounding his escape because the leader Alexandros Geotopoulos he says that in one of his interviews or one of his publications that this other comrade who was temporarily released to visit home outside for a few days

this other guy had six cars like containing counterterrorism officers monitoring the residence that he was staying in, and none were actually dispatched to shadow or observe Zeros, the guy who escaped for a year. And so he really raises a lot of suspicions that there maybe was some sort of order from the higher ups to let this guy escape or something. I don't know. It's just speculation, but it's interesting to kind of read the back and forth that some of these members have while they're in prison with each other. And to bring it up to the modern day even more, you know, it's widely agreed that 17N is a defunct terrorist organization. The U.S. State Department took them off of their designated list of terrorist organizations

a few years ago. But in 2017, something like 50 or 60,000 euros were stolen from an ATM by three guys. And these same guys actually tried to rob two other ATMs. And during their last attempt, they fired against the cops who were chasing them. They were at a lot. They were eventually arrested and the DNA of one of the suspects was actually found in one of 17 ends hideouts. So this is resurrecting speculation over whether or not they were maybe trying to attain funds for like a resurrected campaign of 17N and how many 17N members are still at large today. But yeah, it's widely believed to be defunct even though many of the members have been released from prison. They're highly monitored and the main five leaders are all in prison

still and I don't know that's that's basically that brings us up to the current day here yeah that's incredibly incredibly interesting thank you so much for going over all of that so much history was packed into to this discussion tonight I'm going to combine the last two questions for for time's sake you can take this question wherever you want the general question is what is the legacy of 17 and in Greece what are their biggest failures and accomplishments and then what can left us learn from them today in your opinion so the legacy of 17 n in Greece today um it's it's largely based off of uh you know their activity of course throughout their 27 year period of operations but also from the trials that occurred after

they're falling apart on during the trials it was revealed that there was really no corruption in the organization they didn't spend money on themselves there was hardly any infighting there was no incompetence at all. I mean, they really maintained their, you know, the people's perspective of them as a professional revolutionary organization. They're highly regarded by the far left today in Greece. Whenever they've been released from prison, like on furlough or, you know, to see family or whatever, they've been welcomed by huge crowds of supporters.

It's, you know, a lot of people realize, too, like, how ubiquitous, like, the Greek police system is. that still gives them like an even more legendary status. I mean, Greece has the third highest Coptist citizen ratio in the world. And so that makes it even more incredible that they weren't caught. And really, they're still somewhat enigmatic. Even though so much information came out during the trial,

so many things are still unknown because of their refusal to cooperate during the investigation and due to the fact that they definitely didn't catch everyone. So there's still a bit of, you know, I don't know how to say it, kind of mystification of the organization. But I don't know. The criticisms, you know, like I said earlier,

they're faced with the same paradox that all clandestine groups are faced with, which is being underground while trying to create stronger ties to the working class. So there's an inherent inability to grow in size without major risk to the group. They have no legal representative body, which honestly I think was a mistake.

on their part. I think they should have tried to maybe make ties with the Greek Communist Party or maybe some of their sympathizers who were actually operating in legal parliamentary bodies. But that's, you know, an outsider's perspective. I can't speak to the conditions they were facing at any one point. So I think their killing of lower level people was another mistake. Like they would kill the bodyguards and drivers of a lot of their targets, simply because they didn't want to leave any witnesses. And this was condemned. by a lot of the people in Greece as well. I think it's why they somewhat fell out of favor, actually, with the Greek population during the latter half of their existence.

They obviously failed to assassinate a few people. So I guess you could call that a failure. You know, that Greek finance minister, from what I've read, kind of deserved to die. So what a shame they didn't get all of them, I guess. But, you know, they got a lot of them. Obviously, the bomb going off in 2002 in the guy's hands, that was their biggest failure because it led to their dissolution.

The assassination of that parliamentary member, you know, which prompted a public outrage, including among Greek communists and socialists who really respected the guy as a courageous anti-hunter journalist. That was one of their biggest mistakes. I think that's when public opinion really, really turned on them. That was kind of a watershed moment for them when, you know, up until that time, for the first 14 years, they had really achieved and enjoyed widespread popular support for what they were doing, among the left especially, but that was a really alienating gesture. So I think they, and that's something they self-critiqued about, you know, later on in their

communiquees. But other than that, you know, that's, those are probably their biggest mistakes. In terms of achievements, I mean, they ran a successful terrorist campaign against the U.S. and Western imperialism. generally for over a quarter of a century, that's no easy feat. They carried out revolutionary justice to the extent that we might say that that even exists by killing literal Nazis and tortures from the years of the regime of the colonels. At 1.20% of the Greek population described them as a revolutionary group, not a terrorist group. So I guess at certain points in their existence, they did achieve population.

support, and that alone is an achievement. And I don't know, many intelligence analysts and terrorism experts note that that Greece, you know, in Greece there was widespread sympathy for 17 and in their actions because of the lived experiences with the military junta of the 60s and 70s that so many people had experienced, and the group really managed to give voice to those discontents by carrying out these extraordinary campaigns of of violence against the bourgeoisie. And I think those are all achievements.

Absolutely. Well, Gabe, thank you so much for coming on and tackling this complex history. I had no idea about this organization before you and I started talking about this interview. And now I walk away, as my listeners do as well, with a lot more information. And especially when you pair that up

with our understanding of the Red Army faction in Germany, you start to see a certain pattern arise with how left-wing, quote-unquote, terrorism but more precisely urban guerrilla warfare plays out and how it's organized and how it's structured which i think is important for us all to understand so thank you so much before i let you go where can listeners learn more about 17 and specifically where can listeners find you and your work online yeah yeah thanks for having me on again um again sorry it went on for so long uh in terms of resources uh there there's a lot of old articles you can look up um unfortunately many of them

have not been translated into English. And so you'll have to rely heavily on books, which is always a good thing, I guess. So one of them is 17-N's philosophy of terror by Iona K. Lechia. Again, I'm butchering these names. People I'm doing as best I can. I'm sorry. It really focuses on the morality and justice

and responsibility aspects of the organization. Chapter 4 is basically useless. I would just skip over it. Just a heads up. who actually buys it. Dangerous Citizens by Nani Panorjia. Only a short section of that book talks about 17 in, but it's a good book for a wider historical context. That's actually the author who saw the guy being rushed to the hospital firsthand, and she gives a very interesting account of how that happened. I'd say the best book about them is Europe's

last red terrorist by George Casimiris. This is a great overview of the organization. Of course, it comes from this, you know, terrorism expert guy who's extremely, like, right-wing and conservative, so you also read between the lines when it comes to his jargon and his dismissiveness. But that's really the best book out there for them. I guess another one, it's kind of outdated, is Europe's Red Terrorists, which is by Johann Alexander and this guy Dennis Pluchinsky. It's from 1992, but, you know, it talks about, like, Gravier.

in the Red Brigades, the Red Army Faction, and 17N, and that's all right. Another one's inside Greek terrorism by George Casimiris. That brings the situation of Greek terrorism up to date. And that's really all that are out there that really discuss 17N to any degree considerable. Another good resource is the Europol reports, the European police reports. For the last 11 years, they've been publishing annual articles about terrorism in Europe. I think they title anarchist and left-wing terrorism, generally. And that's a great resource to understand what's happening right now in Europe in terms of left-wing terrorism.

Spoiler, there are no Marxist terrorist organizations in Europe operating right now. They're all anarchists. So anyway, when it comes to my work, you can find a few of my articles on Regeneration, which, of course, is the main publication of Marxist Center. There's an economic piece and a historic piece on there that have an article on Cosmonaut. Breitbart docs me a few years ago, if you want to read about me. I'm currently working on a book actually that'll be hopefully coming out the next year and a half, two years.

It'll be an exposition on Revolutionary Theory and I'm hoping to get that published through Haymarket, but that has yet to be finalized. So anyway, that's where you can find my work and the work of people who have discussed 17N. And yeah, thank you so much for having me on, Brett. Yeah, awesome. If that book gets published, we'll have you back on.

And also thanks for your work with Regeneration and Marxist Center. and thanks so much for coming on again to enlighten me and my audience about this very important little formation in proletarian history so yeah solidarity and keep up the great work comrade yeah you too man who uh who's been touched welcome so glad you can finally make it and who that's all gonna see just for you welcome to the revolution welcome to the revolution they've been

I'm looking for the blueprint, you can get it here exclusive. Welcome to the revolution. They've been looking for the blueprint. You can get it exclusive. I am nothing like you rap guys. You should never get it confused. I don't far for them cornball moves. You should work on your kung fu.

Sense high kick game, even if they don't listen. Say your soul to them if you want to, your career be missing. And so the coach and vote your own G like Kostromi. We family murder everything. Off a GOD. Off a GOD. Learn from my lois Start to amplify

Now we're fin to make everybody boasts Y'all should be cautious If your checkers like check your contract, don't look at me Because that's sell your dreams Inbound back with your royalties Worry's me

Went from Robin Hood I cannot complain because y'all's good Even when they try to overlook I can't complain because y'all's good Welcome to the Revolution Welcome to the revolution They've been looking for the blueprint You can get in here

Exclusives to the revolution they've been looking for the blueprint you can get in here exclusive hey shouts out jimmy oh hey kelly g said it sound like i've been rapping from my gut on these records hey what up doc weezy that's my day one so we're gonna turn up on these boy real quick you know what i'm saying i've been trying hard not to look down on people i look down on people i looked up to. I'm just trying to thrive and be a king like I'm supposed to. I've been cast out by people that called me brother. Now I murder everything you put me on like I'm killmonger. Whatever, I got my things together. I don't sweat it even in hell with three sweaters.

The flow frozen on a new level. I could build a snowman on the head of a devil. Look what the game than did to me. I watch you get fat while I starved out with my team. But it taught us to hunt our aim is pristine eating venison and all the fixings with my regime glory to god he give grace he said before you get up finish your plate so I tell the whole world I'm a sinner and Christ saves I tell the whole world I'm a sinner in Christ saves still talking that talk this is my lane you know old dogs new tricks I can't change that I had you looking like you lost your brain everybody confused but my mission still the same.

Get my family out the hood before I enter my grade. Hill, mind, body, and soul. My faith is in the name. Jesus. I can't say I'm a little sweet. I don't know. I don't know.