Yanis Varoufakis: Thoughts for the Post-2008 World

Closing speech at the inaugural International Social Forum

“We have to talk to people in a way that combines addressing these [economic] anxieties with the issues of the environment. Unless we manage to do that, we will fail.” Kate Aronoff  Summer 2019Yanis Varoufakis celebrating the anniversary of the Carnation Revolution in Portugal in 2018 (Pedro Ribeiro Simões/Flickr)The last few years have been a bit of a rollercoaster for the European left. Riding up front has...

[embedded content] On Sunday 14th July, the Labour Party and DiEM25 leadership teams agreed to embark upon a common agenda for Europe and beyond. Later that day, the collaboration was announced at the closing plenary of the International Social Forum convened by the Labour Party at SOAS, London and opened by Jeremy Corbyn, Leader of the Labour Party. Introduced by John McDonnell, Labour’s...

Μικρά δράματα συχνά αντανακλούν μεγάλα προβλήματα. Χτες το απόγευμα, ένα τέτοιο μικρό δράμα διαδραματίστηκε στο αεροδρόμιο του Παρισιού καθώς έβγαινα από το αεροπλάνο της Aegean. Το μικρό αυτό δράμα από μόνο του ήταν άνευ σημασίας. Δυστυχώς όμως λέει πολλά για το μέγα δράμα μιας Ευρώπης που αποδομείται και, έτσι, αφήνεται όλο και περισσότερο σ’ έναν αυταρχισμό χωρίς ειρμό, χωρίς λογική. Γάλλος αστυνομικός, αφού...

Small incidents can pack hefty messages. Yesterday afternoon, a tiny drama unfolded at Paris airport, as I was disembarking the airplane that had brought me over from Athens. It speaks volumes about the state of our European Union and the drift toward inane authoritarianism. A French policeman, for no obvious reason, took it to himself to be hostile and to manhandle me after having checked and returned my...

The left-wing party’s embrace of austerity created the conditions for a parasitic and cruel oligarchy to return The Greek right is back: greedier, uglier and more focused than ever. The incoming New Democracy government is determined to reclaim full control of the state on behalf of the most parasitic segment of Greece’s oligarchy and, of course, of our country’s ruthless creditors. Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the new...

Greece’s Tories, the New Democracy party and its leader, Mr Kyriakos Mitsotakis, today are the victors in our general election. However, their victory that was set in motion on the night of the referendum (5th July 2015) by Mr Tsipras, the outgoing Prime Minister. Lest we forget, it was immediately after the Greek people’s magnificent NO vote that Mr Tsipras invited the leaders of New Democracy and pro-austerity...

[embedded content] Όπως επιβάλει ο πολιτικός πολιτισμός την ημέρα των εκλογών, συγχαίρουμε τον κ. Μητσοτάκη και την ΝΔ για την νίκη τους. Μια νίκη που δρομολογήθηκε το βράδυ του Δημοψηφίσματος όταν, μετά το μεγαλειώδες ΟΧΙ του ελληνικού λαού, το οποίο έστελνε Νέα Δημοκρατία και λοιπές Μνημονιακές δυνάμεις στο χρονοντούλαπο της Ιστορίας, ο κ. Τσίπρας τους ανέσυρε συγκαλώντας Συμβούλιο...

The results are in! MeRA25, DiEM25's political party in Greece, has got in to Greece's national parliament with at least nine MPs, according to the latest official vote count as of 23:40 CET. Yanis Varoufakis, newly elected Greek MP and MeRA25 leader, described the party's result as "an amazing feat". We're here, Yanis said, "to implement in practice our constructive disobedience, our European internationalism. We have a remarkable opportunity to break down this wall of silence, the...