Driven by division

The perpetrators of bomb attacks on members of the judiciary, on news media and on economic targets are members of small groups who believe that they have the authority to express the "resistance" of many against the "system." The attacks are a threat and a declaration of intent, proof that even as the fashion of leftist terrorism has died out in other European countries, having run itself into a dead end, in Greece there is plenty of space for self-declared "revolutionaries" and "avengers." This is not because Greece's police are incompetent, in comparison to their peers elsewhere, but because here there is a climate that not only tolerates but often encourages extreme forms of expression in the public space. And so, the phenomenon endures, the violent groups continually replenishing themselves.

Today, the political polarization that breeds such violence is intensifying....