Essays
My Berlin speech on Palestine that German police entered the venue to ban – and whose publication here led to my being banned from Germany!
, 13/04/2024
Watch/read the speech that I could not deliver because German police burst into our Berlin venue to disband our Palestine Congress (1930s style) before I could address the meeting. Today, because I dared publish this speech here, the Ministry of Interior issued a “Betätigungsverbot” against me, a ban on any political activity. Not just a […]
NEW YORKER magazine: Has Capitalism Been Replaced by “Technofeudalism”?
, 01/04/2024
“I never planned to be a politician. Never. Not in my wildest nightmares,” the economist and former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis said the other day. He was fighting his way toward the exit at Columbia University’s Alfred Lerner Hall, where he’d just spoken at a conference on sustainable development. A man blocked his path: […]
Greece, EU elections, Palestine & the International Order – JACOBIN interview with David Broder
, 01/04/2024
Yanis Varoufakis’s new film series explains how elites used the financial crisis to terrorize Europe’s populations into submission. In this interview, he tells Jacobin why the anti-austerity movement failed and why the center is converging with the far right. Debt is to capitalism what hell is to Christianity: unpleasant, and essential.” Speaking in his new documentary […]
Economics is Irredeemably Sexist – Project Syndicate
, 01/04/2024
One reason women avoid the field of economics is the male chauvinist pig standing at its center, masquerading as the model of rationality. No sensible woman recognizes herself in Homo economicus, who always gets what he likes and likes what he gets. ATHENS – Economics has an intractable “women problem.” High-school girls avoid it. Female undergraduates abandon it. And […]
“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, […]
Does Australia know what it is getting into viz. the US-China New Cold War? GUARDIAN AUSTRALIA podcast
, 01/04/2024
Does Australia really want to become entangled in a war (Cold or Hot) between the US and China motivated by the clash of the world’s two super cloud fiefs?
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 […]
Our Present Moment in History: a wide-ranging discussion with Aaron Bastani in a packed EarthH Theatre – 14th FEB 2024
, 02/03/2024
On 14th February 2024, I had the great privilege of a live discussion with Aaron Bastani in front of a marvellous audience at EartH in Hackney, North-East London. We talked about, of course, Israel-Palestine, but also about China and, in particular, the New Cold War being waged for control of what I call cloud capital. […]
Novara interview on almost everything (e.g. Crisis, Democracy, Syria, Israel-Palestine, Journalism at gunpoint)
, 22/02/2024
Ash speaks to Yanis Varoufakis and film director Raoul Martinez about their new film Eye Of The Storm: The Political Odyssey of Yanis Varoufakis, what the left got wrong after 2008 and the West’s complicity in the genocide happening in Gaza. You can buy ‘In The Eye of the Storm: The Political Odyssey of Yanis […]
PoliticsJOE interview on capitalism, technofeudalism, the Labour Party, Western Hegemony and Gaza
, 22/02/2024
Sat down to discuss the downfall of capitalism and Western hegemony, the Labour Party’s shunt to the right, and the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Also, we discussed Raoul Martinez’s documentary In The Eye of the Storm: The Political Odyssey of Yanis Varoufakis
The Guilty Feminist Culture Club: In the Eye of the Storm with Yanis Varoufakis and Raoul Martinez
, 22/02/2024
Interviewed by by Deborah Frances-White in Brian Eno’s Studio, on the occasion of the launch of Raoul Martinez’s IN THE EYE OF THE STORM: Yanis Varoufakis’ Political Odyssey Recorded 15 February in London. Released 21 February 2024. For THE GUILTY FEMINIST side, click here.
The roots of European farmers’ anger were baked into the EU – UNHERD
, 22/02/2024
Manos, a sixth-generation farmer from Thessaly, put it to me bluntly when I asked him to explain why he was prepared to drive his tractor 400km to Athens to camp outside Parliament: “If I don’t, my farm will soon follow our village school, co-op, post office and bank branch into oblivion.” His story is neither […]
The Politics & Letters Podcast – a (joyous) discussion on my TECHNOFEUDALISM
, 22/02/2024
What isn’t ending? What isn’t on the verge of extinction? It’s a short list of exemptions these days, and we, us human beings, aren’t on it. Neither are bees, bipartisanship, butterflies, coastlines, childhood, civility, coral reefs, democracy, elephants, empire, facts, families, frogs, gender, glaciers, God, higher education, humanities, love, male supremacy, manatees, manhood, men, morality, […]
Jacobin Magazine’s David Moscrop reviews my TECHNOFEUDALISM
, 22/02/2024
The idea that we are entering an era of techno-feudalism that will be worse than capitalism is chilling and controversial. We asked former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis to elucidate this idea, explain how we got here, and map out some alternatives. The controversial concept of techno-feudalism suggests we have transitioned from capitalism to something even […]
FORTUNE Magazine’s Nick Lichtenberg reviews my TECHNOFEUDALISM
, 22/02/2024
When I admit to my fandom as we sit down for a zoom interview, he immediately tells me off. (This is exactly what I wanted.) “I don’t want fans in life, you know,” he says. “Ever since I entered politics, I acquired two things that I never wanted to have: enemies and fans.” You see, […]
Why is Labour still using the self-defeating, discredited ‘maxed out credit card’ analogy? The GUARDIAN
, 22/02/2024
It is one thing to U-turn on a modest green transition programme. It is another to do so using mendacious Tory economic paradigms. Rarely has a lacklustre policy been abandoned for a reason so bad that it threatens to inflict long-term damage on a society. Independently of whether the £28bn green investment programme was the […]
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 […]
Europe’s Bad China Bluff – Project Syndicate op-ed
, 24/12/2023
Against the backdrop of the new cold war between the United States and China, the European Union’s top brass seems to be adding to the pressure on China by issuing credible threats in response to four grievances. Alas, the Chinese authorities are probably more amused than alarmed. ATHENS – On the December 7, the presidents […]
Why Europe is not free to relate to China – China Daily op-ed
, 11/12/2023
As the 24th EU-China Summit concluded on Thursday, it is natural to want to look behind the declarations and official speeches to identify the deeper forces shaping the European Union’s relationship with China and its policies toward China. But to understand the nature of these forces, it is crucial to go back to the very […]
By continuing the persecution of Julian Assange, Biden jetissons the 1st Amendment – The Nation
, 11/12/2023
In early 2024, a new, grim chapter may be written in the annals of journalistic history. Julian Assange, the publisher of Wikileaks, could board a plane for extradition to the United States, where he faces up to 175 years in prison on espionage charges for the crime of publishing newsworthy information. The persecution of Assange is […]
On the causes and nature of Populism’s Surge – interviewed on BBC Radio 4’s The World This Weekend
, 11/12/2023
Discussing the surge of ultra-rightist populism, where I argued it all started with the West’s response to the 2008 crash – just like after 1929. When $35 trillion was printed on behalf of financiers (between 2009 and 2022), while most people were subjected to some variant of austerity, and given the Left’s failure to defend […]
Europe’s 15-Year Slump – Project Syndicate op-ed
, 22/11/2023
The European Union’s supporters celebrate the survival of the euro, the fact that public debt is no longer the threat it was, and, crucially, that their mercantilist business model remains intact. But it has come at a steep price: Europe’s permanent stagnation and continuing fragmentation. ATHENS – Europe is languishing in a long-term economic slump whose origins […]
Questions I am frequently asked on Israel-Palestine
, 19/11/2023
The Israeli-Palestinian Question could not be more complex, urgent and emotionally charged. Those of us who take a position on it have a duty to a full disclosure of the thoughts, assumptions and beliefs that motivate our commentary. To this effect, I collected a number of questions I am frequently asked by friends and critics […]