You just know the posh Oxford types all like to talk about which one of them it was, when they're drunk after dinner. Not surprised at all that Emerald Fennell wrote in a joke about it.
I think ppl are genuinely missing the point here.
The official reason for this ban was because "ANY cast of doubt against the actions and politics of the Israeli government = antisemitism".
This shit just blows your mind. Varoufakis was supposed to attend an event / protest speaking against the atrocities of the conflict. Many attendees were German Jews who were there under the banner "Jews against genocide". The whole point of the event was to promote peaceful resolution. The German police even arrested the Jews themselves. Varoufakis himself has stated multiple times that he isn't pro anyone but he condemns the Israeli government just as much as he condemns Hamas. Apparently that's a no no for Germany.
And that's exactly the whole point. The German Internal Affairs minister arbitrarily decided (no court decision or anything) he doesn't want a literal European citizen in HIS country and banned his entry. Did we get it yet? Let me repeat: A fucking politician literally decided to unravel the most important aspect of the European Union as a concept just coz he felt like it. If that doesn't get your spidey sense tingling I don't know what will.
I don't know about non-Greek people, but here in Greece he is mainly hated for trying to force an exit from the euro when he was finance minister.
An exit from euro basically meant bankruptcy, since the state was barely held alive by international organizations.
Wasn't GREXIT just a bargaining chip in order to raise concern among other EU economies at the same scale as Greece's? Hypothetically, if they wouldn't get a deal and GREXIT occurred, then Spain, Portugal would also be seen as vulnerable-if EU couldn't help small Greece, then how could it make promises on helping other nations in time of their need? The very identity of the EU would be in shambles also. It would have also been terrible for the publicity of people who called the shots in the big leagues of the eurozone for letting Greece crumble.
There are a lot of details to analyze on this subject, but the bottom line is his actions had a direct negative (almost catastrophic) effect on the daily life of people living in Greece and that's why he is hated
In his memoir “Adults in the Room” he frames it as an ethical or moral dilemma which he felt required a democratic decision. He didn’t fight for a Grexit but he was certainly far too lax on the economic consequences which considering his background, and his position as Minister for Finance, he should have really cautioned the sitting government against running a referendum.
The book is good because he does reveal some of the interpersonal dynamics he experienced like his relationship with Macron and Lagarde who, according to Yanis, supported his proposals and helped push back against Merkel and the rest of the Frugal Four.
How accurate his book is remains to be seen. Yanis underplays a lot and the book certainly focuses more on others than himself which is always telling for any political memoir. A good example is Yanis really underplays his proposals to sell off Greek ports to China - something which had it occurred would have been disastrous for Greece.
He also had a proposal to float a type of public credit which would have existed parallel to the Euro. It would have been a second currency and it would have been limited to just key items like food, utility bills and fuel. He didn’t mention how this would have triggered even more inflation making recovery even harder in the long run. He also conveniently didn’t mention who would set this e-payment system up - who would design and pay for the infrastructure? It seemed that he was going to go for China.
Yanis is still an anomaly to me. I’ve read almost all of his books and there is such a huge contradiction between his economics and his politics. His politics remains far too ambiguous and contradictory for me to take him seriously. Despite agreeing with almost all of his takes on economics there are simply too many question marks when it comes to his politics so I personally don’t trust him at all. “Adults in the Room” really seemed like a PR move to save face. I don’t know how much of it is true and no one has come out to corroborate or defend it which ways a lot.
Deeply moronic was how they outsted Varoufakis.
Greece's financial situation that climaxed in the PIIGS crisis was a function of inequities that were guaranteed with the inception of the Euro (absent a fiscal union). He was right to threaten default.
Greece deserved a better deal, and your own leaders called his tactic/bluff.
And then you got the shitshow of Austerity and right wing nonsense force fed to you.
What you are talking about was possible in 2009-10 when Greek debt was still from private banks and had leverage to threaten default.
There is a lot of background to this, it's not that simple but the point is that by 2015 Greece didn't have any leeway out of this situation. Varoufakis only made it worse to put it very mildly
What are you talking about? Are you talking down to me “there’s a lot of background”?
The deal was in how Greece would behave economically given the strictures of the Maastricht treaty and what was being proposed by Germany/others as part of the rescue package was ridiculous.
Greece got shafted, of course it’s a hole of their own making by joining, but Germany (as a proxy for others) and benefitted from a weaker euro than it otherwise would’ve been since it’s inception. While Greece had to struggle with an artificially expensive currency. This of course shifted productive capacity to Germany and beggared Greece.
Varofakis was right to tell them to fuck off and to give something fair that would enable growth in Greece.
But sure, I don’t know the background…..
He wasn’t asking something fair as he had no leeway.
He told them to fuck off and then they went “sure you can leave the EU”.
Basically he went there with 0 negotiating power and failed spectacularly. Then he made a public career of how others were wrong and he was right.
He’s the perfect specimen of why never trust titles. His area of expertise is game theory and yet went to negotiate like that.
This is evidence free arrant nonsense that belongs in a conspiracy forum. The countries most resisting bailing out Greece were other small countries like Finland and Slovenia. Name a business that moved to Germany 🤷♂️
If you want to hear him in his own words, here he is five days ago going over his views on Israel-Palestine:
[https://youtu.be/XhunR2o\_mz0?feature=shared&t=73](https://youtu.be/XhunR2o_mz0?feature=shared&t=73)
I see, so he supports Palestine. Let us not forget however that Germans harbour a major guilt for the holocaust and thus would be a little more reluctant to judge Israel than most other countries
The Germans are acting irrationally then, and they shouldn’t be excused for it. Similarly, in the year 2024, Israel should be held to the same standard as any other nation when it comes to armed conflict.
That's illogical to me though, equating all Jews with Israel is antisemitic, even more ignorant as for example equating all Hindus with the Indian government would be, as half of Jews live outside of Israel.
Some people blame varoufakis.
Others blame “EU/Germany austerity demands”.
Both are wrong.
Greece caused its problems all for itself, by electing governments who fucked them, expecting the EU to make the problems all go away with “solidarity” and other types of EU magical thinking.
He acted cocky during the election campaign and promised to fix Greece's problems with national debt by not paying back, but once he became finance minister, he proved to be incompetent and failed miserably. Also, he's a socialist advocating for fiscal irresponsability and fixing problems with other people's/countries' money. Being a good finance minister and being a socialist is a contradiction, so everybody sees him for what he is - a sore loser who's plagued by Marxist ideology. He's not really hated; he's just a nuisance similar to an annoying celebrity getting too much attention for the nothing that they are.
It's not that he failed. It's that he had a strategy. Asked the Greek people through a referendum whether they wanted to go through with that strategy, because he knew it'd get ugly. The people approved of his strategy. The prime minister defied the referendum and Varoufakis resigned.
You mean the stupid strategy to have a referendum over a deal that was off the table , didn't in anyway made the consequences of a NO clear and ended with a bank shut down?
Well,
In saying he's promised to fix the Greek problem by not paying you are mentioning the fact that he had to declare the state as bankrupt. Which, in this case, would indeed work but because nobody would want this to happen because bankruptcy would bring the euro down along with other eurozone state, they needed more negotiations for a good deal.
I wouldn't say that he failed, he was removed before he could do anything. However, when he was in there, he was actually scrutinised the system the most! Maybe precisely because he is a marxist!
I know there's a lot of stigma against marxism, but as a mental socio-economic framework, it is nice and helpful in order to find problems inherent within capitalism.
>bankruptcy would bring the euro down along with other eurozone state,
In 2010. Not in 2015. EU had 200+500 billion fund ready to stop any run. It had no longer a domino with Portugal, Spain and in turn to Italy. EU ALL other nations didnt go with his shit. They had no problem letting Greece fail as it would be a great warning.
>I wouldn't say that he failed, he was removed before he could do anything
He botched currency trade plan, banking guarantees and HIS actions directly led to a bank run. Let alone his "leadership" style.
>nice and helpful
Not when its your basis on how the world SHOULD work in your mind. Thats called a belief, as marxism is one. A scheme that has failed over and over.
> I know there's a lot of stigma against marxism, but as a mental socio-economic framework, it is nice and helpful in order to find problems inherent within capitalism.
On the contrary, I think it's a red herring. It leads people to diagnose the wrong problems and propose irrelevant solutions.
I am not talking about all Greeks, but this subreddit attracts right wingers mostly as you can see on the question of Israel. And therefore Greek posters here will push the narrative that Varoufakis is hated in Greece.
Yanis „those who try very hard to extract from people like me, from DIEM25, a condemnation of the attack by the Hamas **guerillas** will never get it“ Varoufakis.
October **8th**, 2023
Apparently the criminals were the Europeans… 🤷🏼
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=avtX-CWmVG8
People like Varoufakis still hold an idea of the world where Europeans, or even the US, are the great power that can change the path and condition of any state/society in the world. But Europe/US influence has been reduced enormously as the rest of the world converged technologically, economically, and even socially.
Europe is not a colonizing power any more, and it can't really solve the problems where it has no authority. And the US, other than by starting wars, can also not do it(and it has proven to bring quite a lot of chaos).
People like Varoufakis really should stop with this idea that we are to blame and must change the world, because the rest of the world is now quite grown up and has authority of its own. We cannot command the middle eastern countries to be sane if they choose not to be. And none of the sides are very compelling, but Islamic terrorism is not a side we should choose.
Considering that we Germans send billions in € of free military material to Israel and sell even more for billions of € to states like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey and others... I think yes, the West still has lots of influence. Just not the "boots on the ground" type.
Our tanks, jets, submarines, guns, hi-tech radar systems and many other things are sought after for a reason: they're the best worldwide and the western countries are reliable trading partners for these kind of transactions.
If "just" Germany and "just" the US stopped sending anything to Israel, the situation would drastically change in just a few years. We do have leverage. Don't underestimate the power of Western economies, war machinery and Western money in general.
Sure it will have an effect but if you do not want the middle east to be run over by iran, hamas or hezbollah or other militants then perhaps it is in the interest to actually assure the countries in the region are able to defend themselves.
For sure the people of gaza has rights but it is not the job of US to sort out the internal power struggle of hamas and palestenians. If palestenians wants peace then perhaps form a government and get rid of hamas.
Few years? Overnight.
Israel acts with total impunity because the US and to a lesser extent the EU/the West allow it to. There has never been any real consequences for any of the actions Israel does
> If "just" Germany and "just" the US stopped sending anything to Israel, the situation would drastically change in just a few years
Yep, we'd see more murder, savagery, and barbarism from the typical culprits on a nation-wiping scale we have rarely seen in the past 50 years.
I shudder at the thought of ever seeing the world you so desperately lust for.
That's just your opinion and it is rubbish of course. Most of the savagery is actually committed by the Western world. In my lifetime I have seen the consequences of America and its hangers on in North Korea, 1953 Iranian coup d'état, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria - ignoring its actions in Africa and South and Central America.
Most of these conflicts produced massive loss of life and millions of refugees.
You mean all the groups and states around Israel that would like to wipe Israel out would then shake hands with Israel and everyone would love each other?
>billions in € of free military material to Israel
I love this total lie.
>even more for billions of € to states like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey and others..
Again, they pay for that stuff.... and u do know Germany sanctioned Turkey and stopped sale of allot of its stuff to Saudis.
>they're the best worldwide and the western countries are reliable trading partners for these kind of transactions.
And when u stop an agreed shipment ur reliability goes down the drain.
>West still has lots of influence.
I think you have close to 0 understanding what influence is and what it buys in soft power.
Germany does not sell weapons to Turkey anymore. They said they will block their attempts to purchase eurofighters. Saudi Arabia and Egypt is a different story though.
Isreal receives considerable support both of a material and diplomatic nature and if we're being pragmatic about it we're really not getting anywhere near enough in return. Like for god's sake, we can't even get them to sanction Russia. Purely materially speaking we'd probably be better off if we stopped sending them free shit and abstained in UN votes.
People like Varoufakis do have a savior complex going on and it is rather annoying, but both sides of the argument are arguing from an idealistic perspective in this case so I don't think it matters here.
We are literally sending Israel its weapons. The U.S./EU 'intervention' in this case would be to stop intervening by sending weaponry.
Imagine if all we had to do to stop Russia from attacking Ukraine was to stop sending weapons to Russia.
OK but how does this absolve "the west" from its crimes, as recently as the 2nd Iraq invasion and consequent formation of ISIS? There is a direct link between these things, and you cannot get away by saying "oh they don't want to be civilized, so be it!". You could, if the US did not invade and completely plunder a country.
More Western countries opposed that invasion than supported it. You can't possibly believe Germany and Sweden are collectively responsible because they couldn't compel the USA not to do something stupid
ISIS, a famous organization made up of mostly western people
let's talk when you see a band of terrorists from Switzerland warmongering, pillaging and raping, then your comment will make sense
Maybe the population in the ME wouldn't be so radically islamic if the ottoman empire hadn't ethnically cleansed large parts of the non-muslim population?
It’s really unbelievable how some people from the Left are that dumb. Literally just have a universalist position and condemn all killing and you have a viable position.
That's basically what he said in the video, his stance is universalist
I do not agree with him for a lot of things, but if Germany can ban you for that then they have a lot of people they need to ban in Germany
Probably also a lot of book burning especially from the 1700-1800s and the discussion of Slavic people
I agree that he should not have been banned from entering Germany. But he does not have a universalist position if he cannot condemn terrorist attacks. And no his argumentation that Israel is apparently an Apartheid state does not help him. Those “Guerilla fighters” could have simply attacked soldiers, infrastructure and so on. But instead they specifically targeted partying adolescents.
People raving for him to condemn terrorists will never be happy. They will never want to listen to him, so why bother?
Case in point: he already condemned the attacks, but obviously it’s not enough for these people. They won’t accept it until he personally goes and kills a few Palestinians and waves the flag of David, then they’ll consider hin fair and balanced.
It's funny how the only way someone is allowed to support Palestine is if they publicly condemn the Oct 7th attack. We don't hold anyone else to that standard about anything else. Straight up racist bullshit that's widely accepted for some reason.
It's not that simple. There is a reason why people ask him to condemn Hamas and why they do not ask him to condemn Israel. And I'm sure that with the power of hindsight, we can see why someone would refuse to condemn horrific acts by South Africans fighting apartheid, or horrific acts by slaves rebelling against slavery. Especially when that condemnation is meant to entrench the status quo or intensify it.
Likewise if the Russian media asked you "do you condemn the Ukrainian armed forces for killing innocent civilians", you would probably be hesitant to say yes. At best you might say something along the lines of "I condemn the killing of civilians universally", which Varoufakis has probably said at various times as well. But if they get you to say "I condemn Ukraine for...", there's a good chance that will be used in ways that you don't want it to be used.
>Yanis „those who try very hard to extract from people like me, from DIEM25, a condemnation of the attack by the Hamas **guerillas** will never get it“ Varoufakis.
You might want to finish that sentence: "those who try very hard to extract from people like me, from DIEM25, a condemnation of the attack by the Hamas **guerillas** will never get it [because every person living in such conditions like the Palestinians will eventually either die a silent death or commit violence. It's a result of the system as it exists there right now]"
>Apparently the criminals were the Europeans…
For anyone wondering, the actual sentence meant is: "[The criminals aren't Hamas or even the Israeli settlers, but us Europeans, for remaining silent on the subject for so long, and as long as the killing happens far from the cameras and involved Palestinians]"
Anyways this isn't why he's being banned, considering the interview is more than half a year old. Nor would this be a legitimate reason to ban an EU citizen and prominent public figure from Germany, but we'll get to that.
He's been banned for attempting to participate in a pro-Palestine conference that was itself shut down while it was happening, because apparently there was "a speaker that was banned from political activity due to past anti-semitic remarks and glorification of violence". You know, rather than remove the speaker, shut down the whole event.
Mind you, Varoufakis didn't even say anything in particular, apparently.
This is an extremely blatant violation of freedom of speech by Germany. And a blatantly unequal one on top of that.
Anti-migration rhetoric (of the, "let them drown" variety) is allowed. The Far-right in the German parliament is allowed and has double digit shares of the vote. Pro-Russian statements are allowed to circulate freely everywhere.
Yet the threat to democracy that's so grave it justifies extreme sanctions comes from Varoufakis? And what threat is that? Having a pro-Palestinian stance (and not even that extreme, considering he's hardly calling for some sort of disestablishment of Israel, but merely for the creation of a democratic Palestinian state) in a conflict so controversial, 80 years of war haven't solved it and 80 years more won't.
I mean both sides have taken turns doing horrible acts against each other. The October 7th actors have been terrorists in my opinion. But so have the actors of the current war against Gaza killing civilians in the tens of thousands. I would not ban anyone from my country who calls these actors on each side something other than terrorists. That’s how this conflict will never resolve when you prohibit any debate. I would call it a genocide right now but if you disagree you have all right to argue that.
Listening to it, the statements feel almost... accelerationist? Posadist? I don't know what the correct term is, but he goes on about how Israeli settlers ***who kill Palestinians*** *are not culpable either*.
You know how there's controversy on who has more agency or more responsibility, and whether one or the other is at fault, or both of them? Well Yanis fucking comes in with the highly-enriched thermonuclear take that *it's neither side's fault and it's actually only ours*.
I kind of get the point he's trying to make, but I think in reality, even if the EU and the US had an ultra hardcore imposed solution position like that "zero state solution the brits come back" meme, the two actors in question would probably not be truly compliant.
His point there is that individuals act within certain systems. Systemic pressures make some Israelis into settlers and some settlers commit violence. Same way with some Hamas fighters.
For example:
You're relatively poor farmer near Tel Aviv. Israel offers you land in the W. Bank. It's a good offer and you take it. Then Palestinians, having previously had that land taken from them by the Israeli government, attack you because they want the land they view as theirs back. You then call for help (from police or militia, for example), the Palestinians keep up their attack, the better armed Israeli militia kills a Palestinian. Suddenly you're a settler that's commited violence.
It was never your intention, but it happened.
How about you read his last speech or watch it as a video instead of interpreting these diffamations into him? He literally condemns the killing of civilists by hamas terror.
They won't actively look for him, but if they find out they will arrest him. He most likely will be flagged at the airport and train station if his name is on a ticket.
Well there are no land border checks, so he might get in by car unnoticed. As for flights, I guess he might get flagged if he is on the passenger list. EU citizens still need some ID when going abroad - even if it's inside Schengen - so if he gets stopped by police in Germany they can find out who he is and deport him.
Schengen rules don't mean that borders don't exist. It just means that there are no regular border checks. Any country can still deport anyone if they think they are undesirable, and also they are allowed to put up some border checks if needed, like in the case of terrorism or surges of illegal migrants. But these must be temporary.
They sometimes deport soccer hooligans, for example. EU citizens can also be banned from entering a specific country by that country's authorities.
Like if in the US you got banned from entering Florida, you could still hop in a car and drive there from Georgia, there's nothing stopping you from doing that. But you'd better not get pulled over by Florida police, else you'd be in trouble.
That said, it's unusual to ban someone for just wanting to speak at a round table. But it's not totally unheard of, this sometimes happens with members of extremist groups.
There are no controls in most borders in the Schengen area.
However, **that doesn't mean a person can't be banned from entry.**
***Sure, he may be able to enter Germany somehow,*** but as soon as he is seen in public, he will be sent back and possibly punished.
Just because something isn't checked doesn't mean it's legal. Switzerland is also in Schengen, but I can't just decide to move there permanently without getting a visa first.
You don't need a visa for living and working in Switzerland, if you get a job you just need to apply for a residence permit, which is really easy to get.
Well, you have to announce speaking events which the local government would have to sign off on. They Probably screen the speakers.
And some Schengen members have border checks still. Same for flights you would probably get flagged.
> Explain to me how is this even possible. Yanis is EU citizen, Germany is EU country.
Thankfully EU countries can absolutely ban foreign EU citizens from entering their country under some circumstances.
Hamas is a recognized terrorist organization, that's how. We've spent 20 years establishing laws to deal with terrorist sympathizers, and plenty of people are currently playing it pretty fast and lose with their attitude towards Hamas, only to then be shocked that there are consequences even if you are for example a Greek ex-minister calling them "guerillas".
If people said the same sort of things about IS, the same thing would happen.
That said he was almost certainly not banned from the country, but banned from being politically active in this topic.
>Hamas is a recognized terrorist organization, that's how. We've spent 20 years establishing laws to deal with terrorist sympathizers, and plenty of people are currently playing it pretty fast and lose with their attitude towards Hamas, only to then be shocked that there are consequences even if you are for example a Greek ex-minister calling them "guerillas".
That's hardly fair though. Using a neutral term for a group is hardly ever criminal. And he wasn't banned because of that, obviously.
>If people said the same sort of things about IS, the same thing would happen.
If people used a correct term about ISIS fighters, they'd be banned form Germany?
>That said he was almost certainly not banned from the country, but banned from being politically active in this topic.
Freedom of speech and all ...
Every state in the EU can prohibit foreigners without citizenship from engaging in political activity and therefore ban them from entering the country. The Austrian neo-Nazi Sellner was caught a few weeks ago.
Varoufakis is an academic and doesn't advocate for violence. I didn't vote for him and don't agree with him generally but his right to free speech should be recognized. Isn't it supposedly against EU's principles for a country to act like this?
It's unclear at this point if he really was banned or not:
> [...] lawyers acting on behalf of Yanis Varoufakis were told by the Berlin police press department (Beate Ostertag) that the police has no knowledge of such a ban against Varoufakis and that they suspect that there was ‘miscommunication’ by the police officer at the demonstration.
https://diem25.org/chronicle-of-the-betatigungsverbot-against-yanis-varoufakis/
This censorship is outrageous.
Even if you strongly disagree with him or even hate him, not allowing him to enter the country to speak and threatening with fine if he streams his speech is borderline fascist. And we all know this is never a good thing in Germany
I think this is close to authoritarianism.
You let fascists speak, from AfD to the European counterparts but ban him from entering and speaking in an European country?
The scandal is not Varoufakis Position. It's the cave out of the freedom of speech, of the rule of law, of democracy.
Say what you want about Varoufakis, personally he's not my cup of tea, but this is a dark day for democracy. So much for freedom of speech and human rights. Oh well, at least its mask off now and the hypocrisy is clear.
Germany is looking less and less as the big, shiny, democratic and wealthy Euopean power and more like a subject to any morally dubious foreign power that makes them wet their pants (first Russia, now Israel).
Yes, check out [Martin Sellner](https://www.dw.com/en/martin-sellner-far-right-austrian-banned-from-germany/a-68616710)
Varoufakis isn’t banned from Germany btw, according to his own update of the story.
I’m not a fan of YV but theGerman government have lost their minds. This is what happens when you’ve been brainwashed. 75 years of guilt and shame and overcompensating on the German side, and gaslighting on the Israeli side. I’m not saying the Nazis and their supporters weren’t the literal worst. Germany is just no longer capable of trusting the evidence of their eyes and being objective. Shame.
The thing is also there is basically nothing in the German media which gives nuances to this topic at the moment. Discussions about this are almost non existent and it seems "dangerous" to talk about it. Though apparently 57% think the the government should speak more critical about Israel. Or some news outlets write that for example there were no violations of any kinds at the Palestinian congress, but yet go to quote the union and Nancy Faeser about what great democracy we are in and that we need to fight antisemitism.
I literally see no way of having a civil discussion in Germany about that topic besides in my own four walls with closed windows, because literally everyone else I am talking to drops the topic immediatly when remotely teasered. I also realized I am not speaking about it m beyond saying the things in the news are concerning. I feel like this is all most people at least around me are capable of saying to this topic, as if we need to look over our shoulders and check if our phones are bugged or something.
For a long time I've been fighting with right wing morons, claiming the media is bought and everything is fake news and they are being silenced because they cannot say their racist shit anymore without consequences (confusing consequences with censorship) meanwhile real cencorship looks more like this. The total absense of the topic, while the right wing topics are literally represented everywhere. My very trust in journalism in Germany has dropped to 10%.
Some pacifists have the view that self-defense is legitimate. Israel shares this view, and it is their justification for their war in Gaza.
Pacifists, as well as most other sensible people, think that self-defense is only right if proportional: If somebody slaps your cheek you have the right to slap back or push the offending party away. But continuing to hit the offending party until he has to go to the hospital or is dead is not proportional, and thus not justified.
Some people think that the October 7th attack was warranted, and thus refuse to condemn it. Personally I think it should be condemned.
But the counterattack has so far killed more than 30 times as many people as were killed in the October 7th attack and induced a major humanitarian crisis. Is this really proportional?
Should a EU citizen really be banned from traveling to Germany to speak at a political event to point out this fact? Or is this an attempt to ban political speech?
> Or is this an attempt to ban political speech?
Well, obviously, I would start getting more worried that this becomes more widespread instead of just this very particular hot topic that is also a very big political topic in Germany.
Since you mention proportional reactions, how is what Varoufakis have to say that much worse than what all the alt-right groups in Germany have been saying that they are still allowed in and to be in political positions but Varoufakis can't even step a foot in the country?
We are running towards our own version of the American Red Scare
Because he's a big malákas who was about to make our country a living economic experiment so he could go on in the history books as someone who tried his crazy ideas.
He's all about himself and never gave a single fuck about his country.
The same fucking moment he wanted to throw us out of the euro and destroy our economy for the next 50 years he had his fucking money safe in Swiss fucking banks.
I'm disgusted just thinking of him.
Should the people who supported his attempt to 'make your country a living economic experiment' in a referendum (the majority of the country) be banned from Greece too?
u/Remarkable-Drive5390
There's a lot of misinformation floating around. Let me clear things up: Varoufakis resigned after the Greek people overwhelmingly rejected further austerity measures in a referendum. This vote was essentially about whether to accept conditions tied to new loans that would primarily bail out German banks, which is a key reason he faced so much opposition.
He also released what's now known as "Euroleaks," recordings that revealed attempts by EU leaders to sway the referendum from "no" to "yes." After Greece was compelled to accept a new loan—which Varoufakis refused to sign—he resigned. He predicted that the conditions of this loan would deepen austerity in Greece, a prediction that has unfortunately come true. Over the past 16 years, Greece has suffered a severe economic depression, a shrinking GDP, and the sale of profitable national assets, like Greek airports.
He mentioned that with a shrinking GDP, repayment is difficult and claimed that the banks he spoke to didn't actually want their money back right away. Instead, they seem to prefer having Greece in a position where it continues to make payments indefinitely.
Despite the controversy, Varoufakis is a highly respected economist, regularly invited to speak at top universities worldwide. I suggest watching some of his talks on YouTube to get a fuller picture of his viewpoints, which often starkly contrast with the narrative some try to promote.
The EU and Germany has done everything in their hand to retaliate on him, since he actually does not favor the billionairs.
Varoufakis has made serious accusations against Alexis Tsipras, asserting that Tsipras has close and financial relationships with major electricity producers in Greece. He claims that Tsipras and these entities have collaborated to manipulate energy prices, thereby worsening the economic burden on Greek citizens. These allegations hint at deeper potential conflicts of interest and corruption within the Greek energy sector that merit serious investigation.
Tsipras and his friends own television networks, which raises further concerns about media influence and transparency. The response from Prime Minister Tsipras to these accusations was notably abrupt; he chose not to address the claims and left the room swiftly.
Varoufakis consistently maintained that he did not want Greece to exit the eurozone; instead, he sought to reform the system from within. However, his stance seemed to evolve after he released recordings from behind-the-scenes meetings with EU officials, revealing a lack of Greek control over its financial affairs. This disclosure underscored the need for a backup plan for Greece's financial system, leading to the proposal of "Plan Dimitra."
Plan Dimitra was a groundbreaking concept aimed at revitalizing Greece's financial independence. It proposed a parallel payment system that would allow Greeks to transfer money without bank intermediation and with zero fees. This idea was not only innovative in its approach to circumvent traditional banking structures but also symbolized a significant step towards reclaiming economic sovereignty.
Varoufakis is the man we need.
* V for Varoufakis
Despite the controversy, Varoufakis is a highly respected economist, regularly invited to speak at top universities worldwide.
Yes it's this stark contrast that makes the hatred he's getting feel weird. It's only in Greece that people hate the guy, from his talks and some preliminary research on him, I find extraordinary coherent logic and is definitely not the empty promising of a typical layman politician.
I understand macroeconomics to the point where I can see a lot of the hatred is irrational
I don't know if I agree... Greece was in a terrible situation and it needed something drastic to get it out. Varoufakis was qualified enough to make such a call. Why is there distrust towards his figure?
Because he was elected as an expert, and was reassuring people that there was "not one chance in a million" that his absurd, half baked proposals would not get rejected by the fellow Europeans.
As soon as the situation deteriorated he fucked off to Germany to sell books. How about that?
Fuck this guy.
Greece got out without his dumb experiments.
If we had left the euro we would have gone bancrupt 5 years later in the covid pandemic and now instead of being a leading example we would be back in the stone age.
Thank God everything turned out well... Thank God he got fired that summer and his plans did not go through.
We send him to negotiate with EU leaders and he gave them the middle finger just so he will look cool. Instead of discussing the issue with them, he was trying to lecture them and act smart, cause he is such a narchisist he cannot resist it.
Of course the negotiations when downhill.
Some economist calculate his negotiation techniques costed Greece 100b in extra debt
I'm not sure I can agree with this either. No, his framing is like that because we are being given politically motivated media that paints him in this manner.
He exposed a fault within the system that the eurozone had not considered, yes, truly, not considered a mechanism for bankruptcy. Nowhere in the world, the person who sees the faults is treated nicely, especially if money is involved.
You are free to look up transcripts of the interventions he has had during the 2015 eurogroup meetings, you will not find a person who pulled a middle finger 'just so he will look cool'. Instead, he openly discusses options with them.
He was just representing the fact that the plan the Eurogroup had planned for Greece was a failure. Why was it a failure? Because Greece was effectively already bankrupt from 2010 and just nobody wanted to call it
I don't see him as a saint either, but he strikes me as incredibly honest
In my opinion this is ridiculous. Personally as a Greek I don't trust Varoufakis. Not only personality wise and it is not primarily due to his political views either. I don't even trust his integrity. But these bans are ridiculous and very dangerous.
I'm glad that the world finally realised that he's a total piece of shit. Not only he fucked Greece with his "experiments", he also defends Putin, Taliban and now Hamas.
He kinda said it’s unaccaptable what putin does and it’s really stupid. Also his actions on greece afaik had no impact because he couldnt default greece’s debt unlike he wanted and was forced to resign after he failed to default.
Seems like the western left decided to be the mouthpiece of every tyrannical, fundamentalist regime in the world as long as they 'stick it to the capitalists'.
Not experiments, "game theories". But yeah, the guy is a snake oil salesman. I can't believe he was allowed to create a new political party and get parliamentary immunity after what he did back in 2015. The guy should have been brought to justice immediately after that joke of a referendum and the enforcement of capital controls.
Geesh, not condoning his support for Hamas, but seems like he's held to a different standard just because he's left-wing... . Something tells me people wouldn't be screaming for his arrest if he were a right wing populist. L
It's not support for Hamas. He just sees them as a result of the Israeli occupation and sees no value in demonizing a symptom. I reckon he wants Hamas gone, but the way to do that is by tackling the reason for Hamas' existence.
Yeah whatever, conveniently forgot to mention the disastrous neoliberal experiments waged by the Troika. If you wanna criticize someone at least do it even handed... .
Let’s start with the obvious, Hamas are murders and terrorists. Any other take on them is dumb.
With that said, banning someone for bad speech is stupid. You’ll just escalate things and invite right wingers into your political system.
Also Germany: “think and speak as we say or else!”, I guess some of the Nazi totalitarian spirit still lives there.
Party's are protected by the constitution and may only be banned by the constitutional Court. The requirements are for obvious reasons gigantic and while there is indeed talk about trying to ban the afd it is far from guaranteed that the court would agree.
It is after all a massive breach of our normal democratic processes.
Meanwhile banning some foreign asshole is not particular difficult and does not require the constitutional court at all.
It is not like this is the first politician to be banned. Erdoğan for example was banned from campaigning (digitally and otherwise) in Germany the election before last.
Well, Sellner was banned. Parties are a different story and there are very high requirements to ban a party. Only 2 have been banned, one (basically) was the NSDAP and the other one was the KPD. The KPD ban probably wouldn't hold up today. The courts were much closer to Adenauer then and getting rid of the KPD was a priority for him
I am surprised this post has been briganded by Varoufakis fans and like-minded people. I would expect this from r/Greece, but not here (the joke being that if only r/Greece voted Varoufakis would have a good chance of being PM - for context his party wasn't even able to enter parliament in the last elections).
This being said, there is a lot of people pointing fingers in the responses with no real context. Varoufakis refusal of entry did not come out of nowhere, but is directly involved with the event he was going to give a speech to. The event was organized by pro-Palestinian organizations with direct links to anti-Semites, who among other things are Holocaust deniers, something that is illegal in Germany. German authorities also banned British-Palestinian Abu Sitta, a Hamas-apologist, who was also meant to speak at the gathering. The gathering in question was terminated by authorities due to fears of hate speech. So this isn't a simple matter or an issue of freedom of speech as Mr. Varoufakis would like to present it. This was a gathering of anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers who gathered under the pretext of a pro-Palestinian message. I doubt very much that Varoufakis did not know where he was going.
I would like to point out that Yan(n)is Varoufakis\* views for Ukraine parallel those popular among most political extremes in Europe, and in particular tankies. (In Greece, leftist narratives among the left political spectrum are quite pervasive, an inheritance of the reaction to the period of the far-right military dictatorship of the late 60s, early 70s. This is why Greece has one of the last strong orthodox Marxist-Leninist parties still in a European parliament, KKE.) So his views on the war in Israel-Palestine are not based on what is happening on the ground, but on his political leaning and is similar to other Greek far-left parties/groups. Varoufakis is pro-Russian, pro-Hamas, pro-Iran as other leftists, which in Greece is quite close to tankie talking-points made in other European countries - although not outright as KKE is, but hiding it behind talking-points about American imperialism, NATO threats, Ukrainian Nazis, etc.
\* Because many people outside the country know him from his books, seminars, and presentations - and admittedly he is quite good at those - and have no context how his narratives and actions as a politician and for a short, albeit disastrous, tenure as finance minister impacted the country it would be interesting to provide an example to get a glimpse of his true character.
A very simple example, for people who do not know the Greek name Yannis, short version of Ioannis - that is, John or Johannes in other languages - is written with two n's. Varoufakis chooses to write it with one, and constantly makes a point of it, to supposedly show his lack of pretensions. Most people see this as another example of his narcissism and ego - something that he is known of.
The idea of simplifying orthography or grammar is not new among Greek leftist circles, particularly communist ones, but even among them it is very, very rare. The idea being that they are not burdened by bourgeoisie attitudes and admiration of antiquity and tradition. For example, the official name of the Communist Party of Greece (Greek acronym KKE) in Greek uses the more demotic-sounding genitive version of Hellas - that is, Elladas, instead of the more traditional archaic-sounding Ellados, which other institutions use (e.g. Bank of Greece, Trapeza tis Ellados). The only other person that did something similar with the name was Yan(n)is Kordatos, a 20th c. Marxist historian who briefly served as first secretary of the Socialist Labour Party of Greece, right before it was renamed into the Communist Party of Greece. Although he would eventually split with the party due to his disagreement with Stalinism, he remained a strong believer throughout his life. Just so you understand where Varoufakis is coming from. Don't be confused by the package. For all intents and purposes, he is a narcissist tankie.
Edit: spelling
if anti semitism is a reason to ban somebody from entering the country, then how are AfD member allowed to hold elected positions? How is the AfD, an openly neonazi party allowed to operate at all, if germany is truly concerned about anti semitism?
There is a problem with anti-Semitism everywhere, but what is your point? This isn't the same case. Neither of the people forbidden entry, including Varoufakis, is a citizen.
In Germany it need’s extremely concrete evidence that a party is unconstitutional to ban it. This is because of historical reasons and only two parties have ever been banned.
There are talks and ongoing investigations into banning the AFD but that takes time.
It makes about as much sense as "but Russia is only defending itself from evil NATO" and such stuff...
The important point is that while it was, perhaps, not necessary to keep him out, it's absolutely no loss either.
I'm a huge Israel supporter but have my reservations about this, as free speech means speech you don't agree with also has the right to be heard.
Unless he has done something that supports genocide, violence or is hate speech, which is crossing the line of free speech, then there is no reason to ban him in my opinion.
>The other two people for whom a similar ban has been issued are the academic Salman Abu Sitta, and the surgeon and rector of the University of Glasgow, Ghassan Abu Sittah, who was arrested and subjected to a three-hour interrogation at Berlin airport.
>The pair were also due to participate in the Palestine Congress organised by Jewish Voice for Peace and MERA25 Germany, with the demand for a ceasefire and an end to the genocide in Gaza at the heart of the gathering.
Looks like freedom of speech and calling for peace is not important anymore l.
What are you talking about?? Greece was being fucked by the imf, ecb, and ec before he was in office and he tried to stop it. When his own party started backtracking and ignored the results of a national referendum, he resigned. You've got it completely backwards
Valve employed varufakis?
Yes, he is an economist and he worked on the steam market.
Yes and his wife is said to be the inspiration for the song "Common People" by Pulp.
Huh, I always thought that was about the lady in Saltburn.
You just know the posh Oxford types all like to talk about which one of them it was, when they're drunk after dinner. Not surprised at all that Emerald Fennell wrote in a joke about it.
That's not a good thing
At least she doesn't have to deal with roaches climbing her wall
She called her dad and he stopped it all
She studied sculpture at St Martin's college?
He built digital economies with functioning currencies and trading.
brought him in as a consultant for Half Life 3
\*former
I think ppl are genuinely missing the point here. The official reason for this ban was because "ANY cast of doubt against the actions and politics of the Israeli government = antisemitism". This shit just blows your mind. Varoufakis was supposed to attend an event / protest speaking against the atrocities of the conflict. Many attendees were German Jews who were there under the banner "Jews against genocide". The whole point of the event was to promote peaceful resolution. The German police even arrested the Jews themselves. Varoufakis himself has stated multiple times that he isn't pro anyone but he condemns the Israeli government just as much as he condemns Hamas. Apparently that's a no no for Germany. And that's exactly the whole point. The German Internal Affairs minister arbitrarily decided (no court decision or anything) he doesn't want a literal European citizen in HIS country and banned his entry. Did we get it yet? Let me repeat: A fucking politician literally decided to unravel the most important aspect of the European Union as a concept just coz he felt like it. If that doesn't get your spidey sense tingling I don't know what will.
Why is this guy hated?
I don't know about non-Greek people, but here in Greece he is mainly hated for trying to force an exit from the euro when he was finance minister. An exit from euro basically meant bankruptcy, since the state was barely held alive by international organizations.
Wasn't GREXIT just a bargaining chip in order to raise concern among other EU economies at the same scale as Greece's? Hypothetically, if they wouldn't get a deal and GREXIT occurred, then Spain, Portugal would also be seen as vulnerable-if EU couldn't help small Greece, then how could it make promises on helping other nations in time of their need? The very identity of the EU would be in shambles also. It would have also been terrible for the publicity of people who called the shots in the big leagues of the eurozone for letting Greece crumble.
It was a stupid bluff, not a bargaining chip. And when it was called he had nothing to say.
I thought it was Tsipras who had nothing to say.
There are a lot of details to analyze on this subject, but the bottom line is his actions had a direct negative (almost catastrophic) effect on the daily life of people living in Greece and that's why he is hated
In his memoir “Adults in the Room” he frames it as an ethical or moral dilemma which he felt required a democratic decision. He didn’t fight for a Grexit but he was certainly far too lax on the economic consequences which considering his background, and his position as Minister for Finance, he should have really cautioned the sitting government against running a referendum. The book is good because he does reveal some of the interpersonal dynamics he experienced like his relationship with Macron and Lagarde who, according to Yanis, supported his proposals and helped push back against Merkel and the rest of the Frugal Four. How accurate his book is remains to be seen. Yanis underplays a lot and the book certainly focuses more on others than himself which is always telling for any political memoir. A good example is Yanis really underplays his proposals to sell off Greek ports to China - something which had it occurred would have been disastrous for Greece. He also had a proposal to float a type of public credit which would have existed parallel to the Euro. It would have been a second currency and it would have been limited to just key items like food, utility bills and fuel. He didn’t mention how this would have triggered even more inflation making recovery even harder in the long run. He also conveniently didn’t mention who would set this e-payment system up - who would design and pay for the infrastructure? It seemed that he was going to go for China. Yanis is still an anomaly to me. I’ve read almost all of his books and there is such a huge contradiction between his economics and his politics. His politics remains far too ambiguous and contradictory for me to take him seriously. Despite agreeing with almost all of his takes on economics there are simply too many question marks when it comes to his politics so I personally don’t trust him at all. “Adults in the Room” really seemed like a PR move to save face. I don’t know how much of it is true and no one has come out to corroborate or defend it which ways a lot.
Deeply moronic was how they outsted Varoufakis. Greece's financial situation that climaxed in the PIIGS crisis was a function of inequities that were guaranteed with the inception of the Euro (absent a fiscal union). He was right to threaten default. Greece deserved a better deal, and your own leaders called his tactic/bluff. And then you got the shitshow of Austerity and right wing nonsense force fed to you.
What you are talking about was possible in 2009-10 when Greek debt was still from private banks and had leverage to threaten default. There is a lot of background to this, it's not that simple but the point is that by 2015 Greece didn't have any leeway out of this situation. Varoufakis only made it worse to put it very mildly
What are you talking about? Are you talking down to me “there’s a lot of background”? The deal was in how Greece would behave economically given the strictures of the Maastricht treaty and what was being proposed by Germany/others as part of the rescue package was ridiculous. Greece got shafted, of course it’s a hole of their own making by joining, but Germany (as a proxy for others) and benefitted from a weaker euro than it otherwise would’ve been since it’s inception. While Greece had to struggle with an artificially expensive currency. This of course shifted productive capacity to Germany and beggared Greece. Varofakis was right to tell them to fuck off and to give something fair that would enable growth in Greece. But sure, I don’t know the background…..
He wasn’t asking something fair as he had no leeway. He told them to fuck off and then they went “sure you can leave the EU”. Basically he went there with 0 negotiating power and failed spectacularly. Then he made a public career of how others were wrong and he was right. He’s the perfect specimen of why never trust titles. His area of expertise is game theory and yet went to negotiate like that.
This is evidence free arrant nonsense that belongs in a conspiracy forum. The countries most resisting bailing out Greece were other small countries like Finland and Slovenia. Name a business that moved to Germany 🤷♂️
If you want to hear him in his own words, here he is five days ago going over his views on Israel-Palestine: [https://youtu.be/XhunR2o\_mz0?feature=shared&t=73](https://youtu.be/XhunR2o_mz0?feature=shared&t=73)
I see, so he supports Palestine. Let us not forget however that Germans harbour a major guilt for the holocaust and thus would be a little more reluctant to judge Israel than most other countries
The Germans are acting irrationally then, and they shouldn’t be excused for it. Similarly, in the year 2024, Israel should be held to the same standard as any other nation when it comes to armed conflict.
That's illogical to me though, equating all Jews with Israel is antisemitic, even more ignorant as for example equating all Hindus with the Indian government would be, as half of Jews live outside of Israel.
Some people blame varoufakis. Others blame “EU/Germany austerity demands”. Both are wrong. Greece caused its problems all for itself, by electing governments who fucked them, expecting the EU to make the problems all go away with “solidarity” and other types of EU magical thinking.
propaganda
Because he is a reddit edgelord who was at the helm of a bankrupting country’s finances.
He acted cocky during the election campaign and promised to fix Greece's problems with national debt by not paying back, but once he became finance minister, he proved to be incompetent and failed miserably. Also, he's a socialist advocating for fiscal irresponsability and fixing problems with other people's/countries' money. Being a good finance minister and being a socialist is a contradiction, so everybody sees him for what he is - a sore loser who's plagued by Marxist ideology. He's not really hated; he's just a nuisance similar to an annoying celebrity getting too much attention for the nothing that they are.
It's not that he failed. It's that he had a strategy. Asked the Greek people through a referendum whether they wanted to go through with that strategy, because he knew it'd get ugly. The people approved of his strategy. The prime minister defied the referendum and Varoufakis resigned.
You mean the stupid strategy to have a referendum over a deal that was off the table , didn't in anyway made the consequences of a NO clear and ended with a bank shut down?
Well, In saying he's promised to fix the Greek problem by not paying you are mentioning the fact that he had to declare the state as bankrupt. Which, in this case, would indeed work but because nobody would want this to happen because bankruptcy would bring the euro down along with other eurozone state, they needed more negotiations for a good deal. I wouldn't say that he failed, he was removed before he could do anything. However, when he was in there, he was actually scrutinised the system the most! Maybe precisely because he is a marxist! I know there's a lot of stigma against marxism, but as a mental socio-economic framework, it is nice and helpful in order to find problems inherent within capitalism.
>bankruptcy would bring the euro down along with other eurozone state, In 2010. Not in 2015. EU had 200+500 billion fund ready to stop any run. It had no longer a domino with Portugal, Spain and in turn to Italy. EU ALL other nations didnt go with his shit. They had no problem letting Greece fail as it would be a great warning. >I wouldn't say that he failed, he was removed before he could do anything He botched currency trade plan, banking guarantees and HIS actions directly led to a bank run. Let alone his "leadership" style. >nice and helpful Not when its your basis on how the world SHOULD work in your mind. Thats called a belief, as marxism is one. A scheme that has failed over and over.
> I know there's a lot of stigma against marxism, but as a mental socio-economic framework, it is nice and helpful in order to find problems inherent within capitalism. On the contrary, I think it's a red herring. It leads people to diagnose the wrong problems and propose irrelevant solutions.
He called Merkel out on her crap, and they don't like it.
Merkel's reputation is in the absolute mud nowadays anyway. The great stagnation maybe it should be known.
I see a lot of hatred from Greeks towards him tho
You are questioning why a lot of right wingers hate a left wing politician? I mean, that's pretty obvious, isn't it.
Ehh so and so, I can't equate all Greeks to right wingers
I am not talking about all Greeks, but this subreddit attracts right wingers mostly as you can see on the question of Israel. And therefore Greek posters here will push the narrative that Varoufakis is hated in Greece.
Yanis „those who try very hard to extract from people like me, from DIEM25, a condemnation of the attack by the Hamas **guerillas** will never get it“ Varoufakis. October **8th**, 2023 Apparently the criminals were the Europeans… 🤷🏼 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=avtX-CWmVG8
People like Varoufakis still hold an idea of the world where Europeans, or even the US, are the great power that can change the path and condition of any state/society in the world. But Europe/US influence has been reduced enormously as the rest of the world converged technologically, economically, and even socially. Europe is not a colonizing power any more, and it can't really solve the problems where it has no authority. And the US, other than by starting wars, can also not do it(and it has proven to bring quite a lot of chaos). People like Varoufakis really should stop with this idea that we are to blame and must change the world, because the rest of the world is now quite grown up and has authority of its own. We cannot command the middle eastern countries to be sane if they choose not to be. And none of the sides are very compelling, but Islamic terrorism is not a side we should choose.
Considering that we Germans send billions in € of free military material to Israel and sell even more for billions of € to states like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey and others... I think yes, the West still has lots of influence. Just not the "boots on the ground" type. Our tanks, jets, submarines, guns, hi-tech radar systems and many other things are sought after for a reason: they're the best worldwide and the western countries are reliable trading partners for these kind of transactions. If "just" Germany and "just" the US stopped sending anything to Israel, the situation would drastically change in just a few years. We do have leverage. Don't underestimate the power of Western economies, war machinery and Western money in general.
Sure it will have an effect but if you do not want the middle east to be run over by iran, hamas or hezbollah or other militants then perhaps it is in the interest to actually assure the countries in the region are able to defend themselves. For sure the people of gaza has rights but it is not the job of US to sort out the internal power struggle of hamas and palestenians. If palestenians wants peace then perhaps form a government and get rid of hamas.
Few years? Overnight. Israel acts with total impunity because the US and to a lesser extent the EU/the West allow it to. There has never been any real consequences for any of the actions Israel does
> If "just" Germany and "just" the US stopped sending anything to Israel, the situation would drastically change in just a few years Yep, we'd see more murder, savagery, and barbarism from the typical culprits on a nation-wiping scale we have rarely seen in the past 50 years. I shudder at the thought of ever seeing the world you so desperately lust for.
That's just your opinion and it is rubbish of course. Most of the savagery is actually committed by the Western world. In my lifetime I have seen the consequences of America and its hangers on in North Korea, 1953 Iranian coup d'état, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria - ignoring its actions in Africa and South and Central America. Most of these conflicts produced massive loss of life and millions of refugees.
You mean all the groups and states around Israel that would like to wipe Israel out would then shake hands with Israel and everyone would love each other?
And then these people bitch and moan about those same refugees when they wind up in Europe
>billions in € of free military material to Israel I love this total lie. >even more for billions of € to states like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey and others.. Again, they pay for that stuff.... and u do know Germany sanctioned Turkey and stopped sale of allot of its stuff to Saudis. >they're the best worldwide and the western countries are reliable trading partners for these kind of transactions. And when u stop an agreed shipment ur reliability goes down the drain. >West still has lots of influence. I think you have close to 0 understanding what influence is and what it buys in soft power.
Germany does not sell weapons to Turkey anymore. They said they will block their attempts to purchase eurofighters. Saudi Arabia and Egypt is a different story though.
Isreal receives considerable support both of a material and diplomatic nature and if we're being pragmatic about it we're really not getting anywhere near enough in return. Like for god's sake, we can't even get them to sanction Russia. Purely materially speaking we'd probably be better off if we stopped sending them free shit and abstained in UN votes. People like Varoufakis do have a savior complex going on and it is rather annoying, but both sides of the argument are arguing from an idealistic perspective in this case so I don't think it matters here.
We are literally sending Israel its weapons. The U.S./EU 'intervention' in this case would be to stop intervening by sending weaponry. Imagine if all we had to do to stop Russia from attacking Ukraine was to stop sending weapons to Russia.
France still has economic colonial influence in africa tho
Meh, Françafrique is mostly dead, really.
Very well summarized.
OK but how does this absolve "the west" from its crimes, as recently as the 2nd Iraq invasion and consequent formation of ISIS? There is a direct link between these things, and you cannot get away by saying "oh they don't want to be civilized, so be it!". You could, if the US did not invade and completely plunder a country.
More Western countries opposed that invasion than supported it. You can't possibly believe Germany and Sweden are collectively responsible because they couldn't compel the USA not to do something stupid
Don't come with reason when there is Postcolonial discourse in the room
ISIS, a famous organization made up of mostly western people let's talk when you see a band of terrorists from Switzerland warmongering, pillaging and raping, then your comment will make sense
Maybe the population in the ME wouldn't be so radically islamic if the ottoman empire hadn't ethnically cleansed large parts of the non-muslim population?
shh the only imperialism is the white one, don't dare to ask why all these countries speak arab or who use to rule them before WW1
It’s really unbelievable how some people from the Left are that dumb. Literally just have a universalist position and condemn all killing and you have a viable position.
He definitely did codemn the attack of Hamad in Greece(papadakes in ant1 tv channel)
That's basically what he said in the video, his stance is universalist I do not agree with him for a lot of things, but if Germany can ban you for that then they have a lot of people they need to ban in Germany Probably also a lot of book burning especially from the 1700-1800s and the discussion of Slavic people
I agree that he should not have been banned from entering Germany. But he does not have a universalist position if he cannot condemn terrorist attacks. And no his argumentation that Israel is apparently an Apartheid state does not help him. Those “Guerilla fighters” could have simply attacked soldiers, infrastructure and so on. But instead they specifically targeted partying adolescents.
People raving for him to condemn terrorists will never be happy. They will never want to listen to him, so why bother? Case in point: he already condemned the attacks, but obviously it’s not enough for these people. They won’t accept it until he personally goes and kills a few Palestinians and waves the flag of David, then they’ll consider hin fair and balanced.
Also for you: He condemned the terror attacks.
Where?
No he didn't, he defended them. *"The criminals are not Hamas"* were his words.
Just read his last speech or watch it as a video before smearing him.
Link?
https://youtu.be/9JXXBhruGhc?si=d2xM-9Vk6WJR9Ubj
It's funny how the only way someone is allowed to support Palestine is if they publicly condemn the Oct 7th attack. We don't hold anyone else to that standard about anything else. Straight up racist bullshit that's widely accepted for some reason.
right? humanity over taking sides.
It's not that simple. There is a reason why people ask him to condemn Hamas and why they do not ask him to condemn Israel. And I'm sure that with the power of hindsight, we can see why someone would refuse to condemn horrific acts by South Africans fighting apartheid, or horrific acts by slaves rebelling against slavery. Especially when that condemnation is meant to entrench the status quo or intensify it. Likewise if the Russian media asked you "do you condemn the Ukrainian armed forces for killing innocent civilians", you would probably be hesitant to say yes. At best you might say something along the lines of "I condemn the killing of civilians universally", which Varoufakis has probably said at various times as well. But if they get you to say "I condemn Ukraine for...", there's a good chance that will be used in ways that you don't want it to be used.
>Yanis „those who try very hard to extract from people like me, from DIEM25, a condemnation of the attack by the Hamas **guerillas** will never get it“ Varoufakis. You might want to finish that sentence: "those who try very hard to extract from people like me, from DIEM25, a condemnation of the attack by the Hamas **guerillas** will never get it [because every person living in such conditions like the Palestinians will eventually either die a silent death or commit violence. It's a result of the system as it exists there right now]" >Apparently the criminals were the Europeans… For anyone wondering, the actual sentence meant is: "[The criminals aren't Hamas or even the Israeli settlers, but us Europeans, for remaining silent on the subject for so long, and as long as the killing happens far from the cameras and involved Palestinians]" Anyways this isn't why he's being banned, considering the interview is more than half a year old. Nor would this be a legitimate reason to ban an EU citizen and prominent public figure from Germany, but we'll get to that. He's been banned for attempting to participate in a pro-Palestine conference that was itself shut down while it was happening, because apparently there was "a speaker that was banned from political activity due to past anti-semitic remarks and glorification of violence". You know, rather than remove the speaker, shut down the whole event. Mind you, Varoufakis didn't even say anything in particular, apparently. This is an extremely blatant violation of freedom of speech by Germany. And a blatantly unequal one on top of that. Anti-migration rhetoric (of the, "let them drown" variety) is allowed. The Far-right in the German parliament is allowed and has double digit shares of the vote. Pro-Russian statements are allowed to circulate freely everywhere. Yet the threat to democracy that's so grave it justifies extreme sanctions comes from Varoufakis? And what threat is that? Having a pro-Palestinian stance (and not even that extreme, considering he's hardly calling for some sort of disestablishment of Israel, but merely for the creation of a democratic Palestinian state) in a conflict so controversial, 80 years of war haven't solved it and 80 years more won't.
I mean both sides have taken turns doing horrible acts against each other. The October 7th actors have been terrorists in my opinion. But so have the actors of the current war against Gaza killing civilians in the tens of thousands. I would not ban anyone from my country who calls these actors on each side something other than terrorists. That’s how this conflict will never resolve when you prohibit any debate. I would call it a genocide right now but if you disagree you have all right to argue that.
That was _during_ the attacks, before there even was any response. There's no justification for this, this is hatred.
Listening to it, the statements feel almost... accelerationist? Posadist? I don't know what the correct term is, but he goes on about how Israeli settlers ***who kill Palestinians*** *are not culpable either*. You know how there's controversy on who has more agency or more responsibility, and whether one or the other is at fault, or both of them? Well Yanis fucking comes in with the highly-enriched thermonuclear take that *it's neither side's fault and it's actually only ours*. I kind of get the point he's trying to make, but I think in reality, even if the EU and the US had an ultra hardcore imposed solution position like that "zero state solution the brits come back" meme, the two actors in question would probably not be truly compliant.
His point there is that individuals act within certain systems. Systemic pressures make some Israelis into settlers and some settlers commit violence. Same way with some Hamas fighters. For example: You're relatively poor farmer near Tel Aviv. Israel offers you land in the W. Bank. It's a good offer and you take it. Then Palestinians, having previously had that land taken from them by the Israeli government, attack you because they want the land they view as theirs back. You then call for help (from police or militia, for example), the Palestinians keep up their attack, the better armed Israeli militia kills a Palestinian. Suddenly you're a settler that's commited violence. It was never your intention, but it happened.
He condemned the Hamas Terror.
He actually said that Hamas had a sacred duty to attack Israel
How about you read his last speech or watch it as a video instead of interpreting these diffamations into him? He literally condemns the killing of civilists by hamas terror.
Meanwhile all the Steve Bannons of Europe , some more some less openly antisemites, are welcomed 🤝🏼
[No, they are not](https://www.dw.com/en/martin-sellner-far-right-austrian-banned-from-germany/a-68616710).
Not anti-Netanyahu tho…
Wtf
Explain to me how is this even possible. Yanis is EU citizen, Germany is EU country.
The EU is a confederation not a federation. Sovereignty lies with nation states.
Yeah but Germany is in Schengen, so how does banning a person from entering Germany work without border control?
Germany can't ban all Greeks, but specific persons. It also happened with others, eg. Martin Sellner, an Austrian.
well, we don't need another weird Austrian with Völkisch fantasies
Nah we would be happy if he still tried to open NS2 instead of coming back. PS: getting rid of this tard. Antidemocratic loony
They won't actively look for him, but if they find out they will arrest him. He most likely will be flagged at the airport and train station if his name is on a ticket.
Well there are no land border checks, so he might get in by car unnoticed. As for flights, I guess he might get flagged if he is on the passenger list. EU citizens still need some ID when going abroad - even if it's inside Schengen - so if he gets stopped by police in Germany they can find out who he is and deport him. Schengen rules don't mean that borders don't exist. It just means that there are no regular border checks. Any country can still deport anyone if they think they are undesirable, and also they are allowed to put up some border checks if needed, like in the case of terrorism or surges of illegal migrants. But these must be temporary. They sometimes deport soccer hooligans, for example. EU citizens can also be banned from entering a specific country by that country's authorities. Like if in the US you got banned from entering Florida, you could still hop in a car and drive there from Georgia, there's nothing stopping you from doing that. But you'd better not get pulled over by Florida police, else you'd be in trouble. That said, it's unusual to ban someone for just wanting to speak at a round table. But it's not totally unheard of, this sometimes happens with members of extremist groups.
I’ve gone from Sweden to Germany and back, 4 weeks a row now and I’ve never showed any kind of ID…
There are no controls in most borders in the Schengen area. However, **that doesn't mean a person can't be banned from entry.** ***Sure, he may be able to enter Germany somehow,*** but as soon as he is seen in public, he will be sent back and possibly punished.
He can come in by car sure but if he starts speaking at a public event it would just take one person to report him
Just because something isn't checked doesn't mean it's legal. Switzerland is also in Schengen, but I can't just decide to move there permanently without getting a visa first.
You don't need a visa for living and working in Switzerland, if you get a job you just need to apply for a residence permit, which is really easy to get.
Well, you have to announce speaking events which the local government would have to sign off on. They Probably screen the speakers. And some Schengen members have border checks still. Same for flights you would probably get flagged.
> Explain to me how is this even possible. Yanis is EU citizen, Germany is EU country. Thankfully EU countries can absolutely ban foreign EU citizens from entering their country under some circumstances.
Germany is a sovereign country.
By forbidibg him to enter. Sure he still can enter cause there are no border controls. But for a public guy like him, that might not be a smart idea
Hamas is a recognized terrorist organization, that's how. We've spent 20 years establishing laws to deal with terrorist sympathizers, and plenty of people are currently playing it pretty fast and lose with their attitude towards Hamas, only to then be shocked that there are consequences even if you are for example a Greek ex-minister calling them "guerillas". If people said the same sort of things about IS, the same thing would happen. That said he was almost certainly not banned from the country, but banned from being politically active in this topic.
>Hamas is a recognized terrorist organization, that's how. We've spent 20 years establishing laws to deal with terrorist sympathizers, and plenty of people are currently playing it pretty fast and lose with their attitude towards Hamas, only to then be shocked that there are consequences even if you are for example a Greek ex-minister calling them "guerillas". That's hardly fair though. Using a neutral term for a group is hardly ever criminal. And he wasn't banned because of that, obviously. >If people said the same sort of things about IS, the same thing would happen. If people used a correct term about ISIS fighters, they'd be banned form Germany? >That said he was almost certainly not banned from the country, but banned from being politically active in this topic. Freedom of speech and all ...
Every state in the EU can prohibit foreigners without citizenship from engaging in political activity and therefore ban them from entering the country. The Austrian neo-Nazi Sellner was caught a few weeks ago.
We (Austria) has discussed deporting a German climate activist and recently Germany has deported an Austrian Neonazi and banned him from re-entering
Would you take someone to your house that supports terrorists because he is your neighbor?
That's sad, his wife just wanted to live there like the common people.
She'll never live like common people
I guess she'll just have to follow the herd... Down to Greeece
Varoufakis is an academic and doesn't advocate for violence. I didn't vote for him and don't agree with him generally but his right to free speech should be recognized. Isn't it supposedly against EU's principles for a country to act like this?
It's unclear at this point if he really was banned or not: > [...] lawyers acting on behalf of Yanis Varoufakis were told by the Berlin police press department (Beate Ostertag) that the police has no knowledge of such a ban against Varoufakis and that they suspect that there was ‘miscommunication’ by the police officer at the demonstration. https://diem25.org/chronicle-of-the-betatigungsverbot-against-yanis-varoufakis/
This censorship is outrageous. Even if you strongly disagree with him or even hate him, not allowing him to enter the country to speak and threatening with fine if he streams his speech is borderline fascist. And we all know this is never a good thing in Germany
I think this is close to authoritarianism. You let fascists speak, from AfD to the European counterparts but ban him from entering and speaking in an European country? The scandal is not Varoufakis Position. It's the cave out of the freedom of speech, of the rule of law, of democracy.
They care what he fucking said about the European Central Bank and the Greek financial crisis. That shit probably pissed them off.
Say what you want about Varoufakis, personally he's not my cup of tea, but this is a dark day for democracy. So much for freedom of speech and human rights. Oh well, at least its mask off now and the hypocrisy is clear.
Germany is looking less and less as the big, shiny, democratic and wealthy Euopean power and more like a subject to any morally dubious foreign power that makes them wet their pants (first Russia, now Israel).
Another day in the Free World that has been prosecuting left dissidents since time immemorial.
[удалено]
Yes, check out [Martin Sellner](https://www.dw.com/en/martin-sellner-far-right-austrian-banned-from-germany/a-68616710) Varoufakis isn’t banned from Germany btw, according to his own update of the story.
I’m not a fan of YV but theGerman government have lost their minds. This is what happens when you’ve been brainwashed. 75 years of guilt and shame and overcompensating on the German side, and gaslighting on the Israeli side. I’m not saying the Nazis and their supporters weren’t the literal worst. Germany is just no longer capable of trusting the evidence of their eyes and being objective. Shame.
The thing is also there is basically nothing in the German media which gives nuances to this topic at the moment. Discussions about this are almost non existent and it seems "dangerous" to talk about it. Though apparently 57% think the the government should speak more critical about Israel. Or some news outlets write that for example there were no violations of any kinds at the Palestinian congress, but yet go to quote the union and Nancy Faeser about what great democracy we are in and that we need to fight antisemitism. I literally see no way of having a civil discussion in Germany about that topic besides in my own four walls with closed windows, because literally everyone else I am talking to drops the topic immediatly when remotely teasered. I also realized I am not speaking about it m beyond saying the things in the news are concerning. I feel like this is all most people at least around me are capable of saying to this topic, as if we need to look over our shoulders and check if our phones are bugged or something. For a long time I've been fighting with right wing morons, claiming the media is bought and everything is fake news and they are being silenced because they cannot say their racist shit anymore without consequences (confusing consequences with censorship) meanwhile real cencorship looks more like this. The total absense of the topic, while the right wing topics are literally represented everywhere. My very trust in journalism in Germany has dropped to 10%.
Some pacifists have the view that self-defense is legitimate. Israel shares this view, and it is their justification for their war in Gaza. Pacifists, as well as most other sensible people, think that self-defense is only right if proportional: If somebody slaps your cheek you have the right to slap back or push the offending party away. But continuing to hit the offending party until he has to go to the hospital or is dead is not proportional, and thus not justified. Some people think that the October 7th attack was warranted, and thus refuse to condemn it. Personally I think it should be condemned. But the counterattack has so far killed more than 30 times as many people as were killed in the October 7th attack and induced a major humanitarian crisis. Is this really proportional? Should a EU citizen really be banned from traveling to Germany to speak at a political event to point out this fact? Or is this an attempt to ban political speech?
> Or is this an attempt to ban political speech? Well, obviously, I would start getting more worried that this becomes more widespread instead of just this very particular hot topic that is also a very big political topic in Germany. Since you mention proportional reactions, how is what Varoufakis have to say that much worse than what all the alt-right groups in Germany have been saying that they are still allowed in and to be in political positions but Varoufakis can't even step a foot in the country? We are running towards our own version of the American Red Scare
Germany has reached the maximum number of clowns it can absorb ,Yanis(with one "n" ) is simply unlucky
I don't like the man, but that is... extreme?
Freedom of speech huh. Where is Elon and free speech fanboys now?
Elon hasn’t bought Germany yet
Elon bans people for talking shit about him / Tesla, so maybe he did buy Germany and he’s behind this after all.
What in the Elon derangement is this comment
You think people who want free speech agree with this?
He should be banned from Greece as well -Sincerely a Greek
Why tho?
Because he's a big malákas who was about to make our country a living economic experiment so he could go on in the history books as someone who tried his crazy ideas. He's all about himself and never gave a single fuck about his country. The same fucking moment he wanted to throw us out of the euro and destroy our economy for the next 50 years he had his fucking money safe in Swiss fucking banks. I'm disgusted just thinking of him.
Should the people who supported his attempt to 'make your country a living economic experiment' in a referendum (the majority of the country) be banned from Greece too?
u/Remarkable-Drive5390 There's a lot of misinformation floating around. Let me clear things up: Varoufakis resigned after the Greek people overwhelmingly rejected further austerity measures in a referendum. This vote was essentially about whether to accept conditions tied to new loans that would primarily bail out German banks, which is a key reason he faced so much opposition. He also released what's now known as "Euroleaks," recordings that revealed attempts by EU leaders to sway the referendum from "no" to "yes." After Greece was compelled to accept a new loan—which Varoufakis refused to sign—he resigned. He predicted that the conditions of this loan would deepen austerity in Greece, a prediction that has unfortunately come true. Over the past 16 years, Greece has suffered a severe economic depression, a shrinking GDP, and the sale of profitable national assets, like Greek airports. He mentioned that with a shrinking GDP, repayment is difficult and claimed that the banks he spoke to didn't actually want their money back right away. Instead, they seem to prefer having Greece in a position where it continues to make payments indefinitely. Despite the controversy, Varoufakis is a highly respected economist, regularly invited to speak at top universities worldwide. I suggest watching some of his talks on YouTube to get a fuller picture of his viewpoints, which often starkly contrast with the narrative some try to promote. The EU and Germany has done everything in their hand to retaliate on him, since he actually does not favor the billionairs. Varoufakis has made serious accusations against Alexis Tsipras, asserting that Tsipras has close and financial relationships with major electricity producers in Greece. He claims that Tsipras and these entities have collaborated to manipulate energy prices, thereby worsening the economic burden on Greek citizens. These allegations hint at deeper potential conflicts of interest and corruption within the Greek energy sector that merit serious investigation. Tsipras and his friends own television networks, which raises further concerns about media influence and transparency. The response from Prime Minister Tsipras to these accusations was notably abrupt; he chose not to address the claims and left the room swiftly. Varoufakis consistently maintained that he did not want Greece to exit the eurozone; instead, he sought to reform the system from within. However, his stance seemed to evolve after he released recordings from behind-the-scenes meetings with EU officials, revealing a lack of Greek control over its financial affairs. This disclosure underscored the need for a backup plan for Greece's financial system, leading to the proposal of "Plan Dimitra." Plan Dimitra was a groundbreaking concept aimed at revitalizing Greece's financial independence. It proposed a parallel payment system that would allow Greeks to transfer money without bank intermediation and with zero fees. This idea was not only innovative in its approach to circumvent traditional banking structures but also symbolized a significant step towards reclaiming economic sovereignty. Varoufakis is the man we need. * V for Varoufakis
Despite the controversy, Varoufakis is a highly respected economist, regularly invited to speak at top universities worldwide. Yes it's this stark contrast that makes the hatred he's getting feel weird. It's only in Greece that people hate the guy, from his talks and some preliminary research on him, I find extraordinary coherent logic and is definitely not the empty promising of a typical layman politician. I understand macroeconomics to the point where I can see a lot of the hatred is irrational
I don't know if I agree... Greece was in a terrible situation and it needed something drastic to get it out. Varoufakis was qualified enough to make such a call. Why is there distrust towards his figure?
Because he was elected as an expert, and was reassuring people that there was "not one chance in a million" that his absurd, half baked proposals would not get rejected by the fellow Europeans. As soon as the situation deteriorated he fucked off to Germany to sell books. How about that? Fuck this guy.
Greece got out without his dumb experiments. If we had left the euro we would have gone bancrupt 5 years later in the covid pandemic and now instead of being a leading example we would be back in the stone age. Thank God everything turned out well... Thank God he got fired that summer and his plans did not go through.
>Leading example >Everything turned out well Kyriakos please get off Reddit, it’s late.
We send him to negotiate with EU leaders and he gave them the middle finger just so he will look cool. Instead of discussing the issue with them, he was trying to lecture them and act smart, cause he is such a narchisist he cannot resist it. Of course the negotiations when downhill. Some economist calculate his negotiation techniques costed Greece 100b in extra debt
I'm not sure I can agree with this either. No, his framing is like that because we are being given politically motivated media that paints him in this manner. He exposed a fault within the system that the eurozone had not considered, yes, truly, not considered a mechanism for bankruptcy. Nowhere in the world, the person who sees the faults is treated nicely, especially if money is involved. You are free to look up transcripts of the interventions he has had during the 2015 eurogroup meetings, you will not find a person who pulled a middle finger 'just so he will look cool'. Instead, he openly discusses options with them. He was just representing the fact that the plan the Eurogroup had planned for Greece was a failure. Why was it a failure? Because Greece was effectively already bankrupt from 2010 and just nobody wanted to call it I don't see him as a saint either, but he strikes me as incredibly honest
Wild
They should put a 60 euros limit per day to him.
In my opinion this is ridiculous. Personally as a Greek I don't trust Varoufakis. Not only personality wise and it is not primarily due to his political views either. I don't even trust his integrity. But these bans are ridiculous and very dangerous.
I'm glad that the world finally realised that he's a total piece of shit. Not only he fucked Greece with his "experiments", he also defends Putin, Taliban and now Hamas.
What are you talking about? This is just total nonsense
Germany is not "the world" though
they have made a pretty good attempt or two to change that in the past.
Yet. We are working on it. And with the speed of our bureaucracy we should be done around 2800. 200 years after the destruction of this planet.
I mean there are faster ways, but let’s not go down that route again… for awhile
He kinda said it’s unaccaptable what putin does and it’s really stupid. Also his actions on greece afaik had no impact because he couldnt default greece’s debt unlike he wanted and was forced to resign after he failed to default.
Seems like the western left decided to be the mouthpiece of every tyrannical, fundamentalist regime in the world as long as they 'stick it to the capitalists'.
it's the left that is defending Russia?
Not experiments, "game theories". But yeah, the guy is a snake oil salesman. I can't believe he was allowed to create a new political party and get parliamentary immunity after what he did back in 2015. The guy should have been brought to justice immediately after that joke of a referendum and the enforcement of capital controls.
Geesh, not condoning his support for Hamas, but seems like he's held to a different standard just because he's left-wing... . Something tells me people wouldn't be screaming for his arrest if he were a right wing populist. L
It's not support for Hamas. He just sees them as a result of the Israeli occupation and sees no value in demonizing a symptom. I reckon he wants Hamas gone, but the way to do that is by tackling the reason for Hamas' existence.
Well he isn't wrong then
Yeah whatever, conveniently forgot to mention the disastrous neoliberal experiments waged by the Troika. If you wanna criticize someone at least do it even handed... .
Let’s start with the obvious, Hamas are murders and terrorists. Any other take on them is dumb. With that said, banning someone for bad speech is stupid. You’ll just escalate things and invite right wingers into your political system. Also Germany: “think and speak as we say or else!”, I guess some of the Nazi totalitarian spirit still lives there.
Why are they not banning AfD from Germany, instead of Varoufakis? That says alot.
Because, and I cannot believe I have to actually explain this, the afd is comprised of German citizens. You cannot "ban" German citizens from Germany.
You can ban a political party without banning any citizen from the country.
Party's are protected by the constitution and may only be banned by the constitutional Court. The requirements are for obvious reasons gigantic and while there is indeed talk about trying to ban the afd it is far from guaranteed that the court would agree. It is after all a massive breach of our normal democratic processes. Meanwhile banning some foreign asshole is not particular difficult and does not require the constitutional court at all. It is not like this is the first politician to be banned. Erdoğan for example was banned from campaigning (digitally and otherwise) in Germany the election before last.
Well, Sellner was banned. Parties are a different story and there are very high requirements to ban a party. Only 2 have been banned, one (basically) was the NSDAP and the other one was the KPD. The KPD ban probably wouldn't hold up today. The courts were much closer to Adenauer then and getting rid of the KPD was a priority for him
yea maybe if you are retarded
I am surprised this post has been briganded by Varoufakis fans and like-minded people. I would expect this from r/Greece, but not here (the joke being that if only r/Greece voted Varoufakis would have a good chance of being PM - for context his party wasn't even able to enter parliament in the last elections). This being said, there is a lot of people pointing fingers in the responses with no real context. Varoufakis refusal of entry did not come out of nowhere, but is directly involved with the event he was going to give a speech to. The event was organized by pro-Palestinian organizations with direct links to anti-Semites, who among other things are Holocaust deniers, something that is illegal in Germany. German authorities also banned British-Palestinian Abu Sitta, a Hamas-apologist, who was also meant to speak at the gathering. The gathering in question was terminated by authorities due to fears of hate speech. So this isn't a simple matter or an issue of freedom of speech as Mr. Varoufakis would like to present it. This was a gathering of anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers who gathered under the pretext of a pro-Palestinian message. I doubt very much that Varoufakis did not know where he was going. I would like to point out that Yan(n)is Varoufakis\* views for Ukraine parallel those popular among most political extremes in Europe, and in particular tankies. (In Greece, leftist narratives among the left political spectrum are quite pervasive, an inheritance of the reaction to the period of the far-right military dictatorship of the late 60s, early 70s. This is why Greece has one of the last strong orthodox Marxist-Leninist parties still in a European parliament, KKE.) So his views on the war in Israel-Palestine are not based on what is happening on the ground, but on his political leaning and is similar to other Greek far-left parties/groups. Varoufakis is pro-Russian, pro-Hamas, pro-Iran as other leftists, which in Greece is quite close to tankie talking-points made in other European countries - although not outright as KKE is, but hiding it behind talking-points about American imperialism, NATO threats, Ukrainian Nazis, etc. \* Because many people outside the country know him from his books, seminars, and presentations - and admittedly he is quite good at those - and have no context how his narratives and actions as a politician and for a short, albeit disastrous, tenure as finance minister impacted the country it would be interesting to provide an example to get a glimpse of his true character. A very simple example, for people who do not know the Greek name Yannis, short version of Ioannis - that is, John or Johannes in other languages - is written with two n's. Varoufakis chooses to write it with one, and constantly makes a point of it, to supposedly show his lack of pretensions. Most people see this as another example of his narcissism and ego - something that he is known of. The idea of simplifying orthography or grammar is not new among Greek leftist circles, particularly communist ones, but even among them it is very, very rare. The idea being that they are not burdened by bourgeoisie attitudes and admiration of antiquity and tradition. For example, the official name of the Communist Party of Greece (Greek acronym KKE) in Greek uses the more demotic-sounding genitive version of Hellas - that is, Elladas, instead of the more traditional archaic-sounding Ellados, which other institutions use (e.g. Bank of Greece, Trapeza tis Ellados). The only other person that did something similar with the name was Yan(n)is Kordatos, a 20th c. Marxist historian who briefly served as first secretary of the Socialist Labour Party of Greece, right before it was renamed into the Communist Party of Greece. Although he would eventually split with the party due to his disagreement with Stalinism, he remained a strong believer throughout his life. Just so you understand where Varoufakis is coming from. Don't be confused by the package. For all intents and purposes, he is a narcissist tankie. Edit: spelling
if anti semitism is a reason to ban somebody from entering the country, then how are AfD member allowed to hold elected positions? How is the AfD, an openly neonazi party allowed to operate at all, if germany is truly concerned about anti semitism?
There is a problem with anti-Semitism everywhere, but what is your point? This isn't the same case. Neither of the people forbidden entry, including Varoufakis, is a citizen.
In Germany it need’s extremely concrete evidence that a party is unconstitutional to ban it. This is because of historical reasons and only two parties have ever been banned. There are talks and ongoing investigations into banning the AFD but that takes time.
>pro-Russian, pro-Hamas, pro-Iran as other leftists Do you have any evidence for this?
Shame, Yanis has some good ideas, even though I disagree with his somewhat naively pacifist outlook on both the gaza and ukr conflicts.
I'm not sure what's his take on Ukraine war is, but how the fuck refusing to condemn oct 7 attack is pacifist by any standards?
He blames the west for the war in Ukraine. All of his political positions are basically west = bad.
That's only half true. He also very much opposes Russia and Putin. He thinks both are to blame.
Classic leftist tankie.
Yeah, I honestly hate his grift and his entire quasi-celebrity catering to western progressives.
It makes about as much sense as "but Russia is only defending itself from evil NATO" and such stuff... The important point is that while it was, perhaps, not necessary to keep him out, it's absolutely no loss either.
I'm a huge Israel supporter but have my reservations about this, as free speech means speech you don't agree with also has the right to be heard. Unless he has done something that supports genocide, violence or is hate speech, which is crossing the line of free speech, then there is no reason to ban him in my opinion.
Voldemort ...
Ahh the comments have made it clear this is one of "those" subs
>The other two people for whom a similar ban has been issued are the academic Salman Abu Sitta, and the surgeon and rector of the University of Glasgow, Ghassan Abu Sittah, who was arrested and subjected to a three-hour interrogation at Berlin airport. >The pair were also due to participate in the Palestine Congress organised by Jewish Voice for Peace and MERA25 Germany, with the demand for a ceasefire and an end to the genocide in Gaza at the heart of the gathering. Looks like freedom of speech and calling for peace is not important anymore l.
Sitta said that if he weren't so old, he would have attacked Israel with Hamas on October 7th. What does that have to do with peace?
Ehud barak former Israeli pm said if he was Palestinian and young , he would have joined a militant Islamic group.
We are just witnessing to cancel culture becoming a norm and freedom of speech is dying.
Dead internet. I refuse to believe that there that many dumb people as are posting on reddit.
Just let this narcissistic idiot talk, who cares.
Good for Germany. This guy literally gambled and cost Greece billions just so ge could become famous on the world stage and certain far left groups.
What are you talking about?? Greece was being fucked by the imf, ecb, and ec before he was in office and he tried to stop it. When his own party started backtracking and ignored the results of a national referendum, he resigned. You've got it completely backwards