the social engineering behind the conquest of the northern part of the country by the State originally created and consolidated in southern Greece in the irst half of the 19th century. Later, in the latter half of the 20th century, the antidemocratic, anti-communist, “royalist-fascist” mechanisms constituted during this earlier period were largely integrated into the postwar State as mechanisms aimed at imposing a strategy of tension, and also as a part of a NATO’s secret armed branch, with a goal of preventing the westward expansion of communist regimes. 1/ PROTO-FASCISM: THE CONSCRIPTS’ MOVEMENT, 1916-1919 The formation of the modern Greek State was practically completed by the years from 1912 to 1922, the period that saw the two Balkan Wars (19121913), Greece’s participation in World War I in support of the Entente (19171918), and the Greco-Turkish War in Asia Minor (1919-1922). Linking these foreign conlicts was the so-called National Disunion (1914-1916), a form of civil war around the issue of whether the country would participate in the Great War. The opposing sides in the National Disunion were, on the one hand, the legitimate royalist government in Athens, which favoured neutrality; and the provisional military-political government of the “National Defence” movement under Eletherios Venizelos in Thessaloniki, which insisted on the country’s participation in the Great War in support of the Entente. The political developments in Greece during the National Disunion were made into an issue of “international civil war” from the start because of the simultaneous German-Bulgarian invasion of Macedonia and Thrace and the French occupation of Western Macedonia and Thessaloniki. In this context, the Greek royalists, exploiting their political apparatuses and the military, formed the Conscripts’ Movement, the irst type of mass political organization in modern Greek history. As Mavrogordatos has argued,7 the conscripts’ movement and the National Disunion were indispensable features of the newly formed Greek State in the 1910s, and as such let an indelible mark on the Greek 20th century. The conscripts’ movement shares the same features as other proto-fascist movements that emerged in Europe during the last phase of World War I. The conscripts’ political associations brought together ex-soldiers who shared nationalist ideas, not unlike the subsequent Italian ex-combattenti and the German Freikorps. These militias also used systematic terror against their political opponents. The social background of the movement was mostly in petit-bourgeois urban classes and small rural landholders. Geographically, the associations were based in Old Greece and were led by former military oicers and politicians. During the Greco-Turkish War of 1919 to 1922, the members of such associations were either integrated in the organizational structure of the People’s Party or established other contacts with the Venizelian opposition camp. 7. Cf. Mavrogordatos 1996. MAPPING ULTRA-RIGHT EXTREMISM, XENOPHOBIA AND RACISM WITHIN THE GREEK STATE APPARATUS | 13