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‘Democracy under fire’: My remarks at the London Press Conference on the Vanishing Right to Protest (11-4-2025) alongside Juliet Stevenson, Holocaust survivor Stephen Kapos, Jeremy Corbyn, Chris Nineham and Ben Jamal
, 13/04/2025
We are here today because democracy is on death row, because the treasured right to dissent is at gunpoint, because your capacity to do journalism is under fire. I remember when I came to Britain as a student in 1978 how overjoyed I was to be in a country where I felt safe from the […]
Will the Trump Shock prove as momentous as the Nixon Shock? UNHERD op-ed & on BBC tv
, 03/04/2025
“My philosophy, Mr President, is that all foreigners are out to screw us and it’s our job to screw them first.” With these words, the US Treasury Secretary convinced the President to deliver a colossal shock to the global economy. In the words of one of the President’s men, the objective was to trigger “a […]
Stand with South Africa against Trump’s wrath – Globe&Mail op-ed
, 18/03/2025
When the powerful punish the principled, we glimpse the unmasked face of empire. Donald Trump’s vindictive executive order denying aid to South Africa — punishment for its support of Palestine and pursuit of land reform — offers precisely such a moment of clarity. The contours of our new global struggle are now etched with brutal […]
Ukraine, Europe, China and Technofeudalism – in conversation with Cyrus Janssen
, 01/03/2025
Donald Trump has upended the narrative on the Ukraine War. But what does it mean for the future of Europe? Plus a lot more on NATO, China, the US dollar, technofeudalism and our duty to stop the Palestinian genocide while fighting antisemitism. 0:00 – Intro to Yanis Varoufakis 2:26 – Did Ukraine Lose the War? […]
The sordid paradox that was the 2025 German federal election – Euronews
, 24/02/2025
This German federal election is a paradox: Simultaneously irrelevant – in the sense that it will result into another variant of the same, quasi permanent, coalition of Christian & Social Democrats, perhaps with a splattering of the pseudo-Greens – the same coalition that put Germany on the road to a secular slump, will continue to […]
Europe in the Post-Atlanticist Era – The Guardian
, 21/02/2025
JD Vance, the US Vice President, told Europeans that their values are no longer America’s values. Pete Hegseth, the US Defence Secretary, added that Europeans “can’t make an assumption that America’s presence will last forever.” Keith Kellog, Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, confirmed that Europe will not have a seat at the table […]
Star Trek: A humanist communist manifesto for our times – UNHERD
, 04/01/2025
On 9 February 1967, hours after the US Air Force had levelled the Port of Haiphong and several Vietnamese airfields, NBC aired a Star Trek episode featuring a concept that clashed mercilessly with what had just happened in Vietnam: the Prime Directive – a general ban on its Starship captains from using superior technology (military […]
Yanis and Slavoj in London, celebrating Zizek at 75! – How to Academy
, 15/11/2024
On 15th November, I interviewed Slavoj Zizek, live on stage, on the occasion of his 75th birthday. Judge for yourself whether we had fun (and maybe had something of interest to say…) To watch the rest click below: Part 2 – Trump is a fetish Part 3 “Israel Needed War” Part 4 Optimism or […]
“It’s hard to read this book and deny its power” – WASHINGTON POST review of TECHNOFEUDALISM
, 01/04/2024
In the not-too-distant past, many Marxist philosophers were weighed down by a shared despair. Capitalism, they feared, had become so totalizing, so all-consuming, that there was no longer any possibility of overthrowing it. “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it,” Karl Marx famously wrote in 1845, […]
Reversing Europe’s and Australia’s slide into irrelevance & insecurity – National Press Club of Australia speech
, 14/03/2024
“Europe and Australia are facing a common existential threat: a creeping irrelevance caused, on the one hand, by our failure properly to invest and, on the other hand, by our ill-considered slide from a strategic dependence on the United States to a non-strategic, self-defeating servility to Washington’s policy agenda.” Yanis Varoufakis’s address at the National […]
The Two Faces of the Euro: Jacques Delors and Wolfgang Schäuble – Project Syndicate Long Read
, 03/02/2024
Of all European politicians who never led their countries, Jacques Delors and Wolfgang Schäuble had the greatest impact on Europe. Between them, the two men, who passed away within a day of each other in December, shaped today’s European Union, warts and all. ATHENS – Of all European politicians who never led their countries, Jacques Delors and Wolfgang […]
NATO from the perspective of having grown up under US-sponsored neofascism – UNHERD
, 12/01/2024
It was early September in 1971. My mother had taken me in a taxi to a boutique hotel in a leafy northern Athenian suburb to visit my favourite uncle, her beloved brother. Before we got out the car, she put her arm around me and whispered words of courage in my ear. You see, Hotel […]
How should we tax wealth & multinationals globally? Speech at UNDP, New York 14th NOV 2023
, 18/11/2023
Ms Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations, Esteemed colleagues, Ladies and Gentlemen, before I address the question of taxing serious wealth seriously, I you forgive my inability to proceed without an acknowledgement of the human tragedy in the Middle East. As Secretary General Goutières correctly put it, nothing happens in a vacuum, nothing is […]
Alexis Tsipras resigns: lessons for progressives
, 02/07/2023
Following Greece’s latest election, after which Alexis Tsipras announced his resignation, a journalist asked me: “What conclusion do you draw from this situation?” Here is my answer: The crucial conclusion to be drawn is that radicals are never welcomed for long into the club of the powerful, even if they are willing to betray their […]
La Stampa interview (English version) on Greek gvt refugee policy, Greece’s economy, MeRA25′ electoral setback, the euro, Italy’s PD and… Angela Merkel
, 29/05/2023
In this post you will find my original answers (in English) to La Stampa‘s varied questions (27/5/2023); from the Greek government’s shameful policy on refugees and MeRA25’s electoral setback, to the future of the Eurozone, my friend Elly Schlein’s leadership of Italy’s main opposition party, the PD and, yes, Angela Merkel! Almost all parties, on […]
Europe’s latest illiberal democracy: Greece! – New Statesman
, 24/03/2023
“Like lambs to the slaughter” was how an elderly neighbour described the deaths of youngsters travelling on Intercity 62 which, on the night of 28 February, crashed head-on with a freight train in Greece killing 57 people. Many of the dead were students returning after a long weekend from Athens to their universities in Thessaloniki. […]
On the shameful deal Osborne-Mitsotakis are hammering out over the Parthenon antiquities – UNHERD
, 24/03/2023
From the very beginning, Elgin’s removal of the Parthenon’s statues and friezes caused something of a discursive British civil war. On one side were humanists, like Lord Byron; on the other were Empire apologists, who defend Elgin’s actions and support the British Museum’s inalienable property rights to the artefacts it, eventually, purchased from him. Over […]
Comradely disagreements between progressives over Ukraine & the New Cold War – Reply to Anthony Barnett
, 12/10/2022
Anthony Burnett, a friend, comrade and collaborator, just published an article in openDemocracy, a splendid and much loved source of progressive ideas and material, to which he alerted me in a mail reading: “Dear Yanis, we disagree but in solidarity!” Since Anthony’s article mentions me, along with Jeremy Corbyn, in its subtitle, here I am, […]
Trickle-down Truss is carrying on the dirty work of Thatcher, Blair and Osborne – THE GUARDIAN
, 01/10/2022
If Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget survives the storm it triggered, a banker on a million-pound annual salary stands to receive £50,000 of income tax relief – on top of the extra bonuses the bank can throw in, now that the Liz Truss government has removed the cap on them. Meanwhile, a Deliveroo rider gets a pep […]
Here is what Central Banks could do to stem inflation without crushing the poor or killing off the Green Transition – The Guardian
, 16/04/2022
Inflation is a disease that disproportionately afflicts the poor. Even before Vladimir Putin unleashed his brutal war on Ukraine, whose byproducts include soaring energy and food prices, inflation was already over 7.5% in the US and above 5% in Europe and the UK. Calls for its taming are, therefore, fully justified – and the interest rate rise in the US, […]
On Brexit and the task of confronting technofeudalism – Interview in The Morning Star
, 03/01/2022
ONE YEAR since the final deal for Brexit was announced, it remains one of the most divisive political subjects for a generation. Perhaps unknown to most, the incendiary B-word had its genesis in the term “Grexit” — coined during tumultuous years after the 2008 credit crunch when a Greek exit from the EU was speculated, […]
Explaining to friend & comrade Slavoj Zizek that which why I didn’t get a chance to tell my father: why I think capitalism has evolved into technofeudalism
, 06/11/2021
I must have been no older than five or six when my dad introduced me to the idea that technological progress forces the pace of history. I remember him explaining how written records coincided with humanity’s ability to smelt copper tools. Of how history accelerated when ancient smiths progressed from copper to forging iron tools […]
Merkel’s tenure condemned Germany to wealth-fuelled decline & the EU to debt-fuelled stagnation – JACOBIN
, 28/09/2021
Angela Merkel’s tenure will be remembered as Germany’s, and Europe’s, cruelest paradox. On the one hand, she dominated the continent’s politics like no other peacetime leader — and is leaving the German chancellery considerably more powerful than she had found it. But the way she built up this power condemned Germany to secular decline and […]
Revisiting the causes & effects of Brexit – New Statesman video interview
, 24/06/2021
Here I am conversing with New Statesman’s George Eaton, reflecting on five years since the EU referendum, Scottish independence, a UK progressive alliance, and whether the EU can stay relevant post Brexit. Lest I be misunderstood, viz the New Statesman’s title: Given the EU’s post-2008 trajectory, & its behaviour more recently, if I were a […]