The Communist Party of Greece was the subject of a viewer question in January 2026 — whether Greece had ever had a violent communist insurrection, and whether it ever had a real shot at power. John Kiriakou, whose family is Greek, answered on both counts.[1]
The civil war
His answer to the second question was no, and his answer to the first was that the war itself was very bad indeed. “The Civil War was bad. It still scars families.” From 1946 to 1949, in his description, it was absolutely just bloody.[1][2]
The ban
What followed was a sustained state suppression backed from outside. A series of Greek governments, supported by both the United States and the United Kingdom, really cracked down on communism — and the Communist Party of Greece was legally banned until 1980, when Andreas Papandreou was elected and legalised it.[2]
What remains
Kiriakou’s assessment of the present is deflationary. There are not very many communists left in Greece; the party takes between three and five per cent in each election, which is “just enough to be represented in parliament” — “but they’re not they’re not a factor.”[2][3]
He was careful to distinguish the party from the Greek left more generally. There are left-wing parties, and two socialist parties — Syriza and PASOK — one a little more purely socialist than the other, but both much more democratic socialist parties than anything else. If they must be called communist, he said, one might call them Eurocommunist. As for pure communism, Soviet-style communism, “that time has come and gone.”[3][4]
The postscript
The segment ended with Kiriakou mentioning a piece of hate mail he had received from a listener in Greece, and Rall setting out his own standing policy on such messages — that he reserves the right to publish anything hateful or threatening sent to him, which Kiriakou said he should have done himself.[4]