The Right Left for Europe: In response to leftwing Brexiters, Grexiters etc.
ATHENS – The United Kingdom’s referendum on whether to leave the European Union created odd bedfellows – and some odder adversaries. As Tory turned mercilessly against Tory, the schism in the Conservative establishment received much attention. But a parallel (thankfully more civilized) split afflicted my side: the left.
Having campaigned against “Leave” for several months in England, Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland, it was inevitable that I faced criticism from left-wing supporters of “Brexit,” or “Lexit” as it came to be known. [For the rest of the article by Yanis Varoufakis click here]
DiEM25 Members about the Brexit vote
Diether Dehm
The Brexit is the writing on the wall for the EU. The EU is on the brink. With the referendum result the EU reaped what she previously sowed, because more and more people are tired of this undemocratic, non-transparent EU, which is essentially determined by German-imperialistic interests. Their “No” was mainly a no to the prevailing conditions.
But does this vote necessarily lead to a peaceful and social Europe? Does a referendum automatically bring a ‘More’ of democratic motivation and participation?
Antagonistic powers are dealing with the result of this referendum as if they look into a crystal ball – and whoever has power on the media, places his interpretation. Again from up there. With imperious snobbism they assume those voters are stupid and that they should change their mind. And their best bet would be: to ‘allow’ a second vote soon. But not before a punitive example has been made. Especially against the main culprits: old working men, who are reputed to prevent the youths’ lives.
Elitist indoctrination as usual. Completed by imperialistic fetishism on youth, saying that peace movement and unions reek of old men’s sweat. We as Leftists should hold up on our demand for an extension of referenda. No matter if there outcomes are political correct. A referendum on TTIP would trigger a more distinct result than the look into the crystal ball, which is a toss-up for interpretations by medial powers.
We fight for a Europe that really belongs to the people: This land is your land! (Woody Guthrie) – and therefore we need a democratic re-start for the European Union!
We need a Constitutional Convention for a new debate on Europe and for an EU Constitution on which all European citizens will vote. An EU constitution in which the social state principle of all post and anti-fascistic constitutions of EU member states is implemented.
Against an EU of banks and concerns!
Walter Baier
“We deplore the Leave outcome of the EU Referendum. The referendum itself came from pressure from the far right – driven by anti-immigration sentiment, fuelled by racism. Britain has decided to leave the EU but the British ruling class remains and will exacerbate its aggressive policy of austerity and demolishment of social protection and welfare systems. We believe in democracy and in the right of national self determination but neo-liberalism cannot be defeated in a single country only. The problems Britain faces result from the neo-liberal, deregulatory, anti-working class policies imposed by successive British governments, not from immigrants and refugees. These problems are European and international. They require solidarity and cooperation across national boundaries..”
“The message to Brussels is clear. The European Union will either be social or will be unusable. The EU will democratise itself or it will perish. In the light of the experience of two world wars, and still more that of today’s problems, the left can be nothing less than a protagonist of European integration. However, between today’s EU and a European integration on democratic and social foundations there is a political and institutional chasm. There are times when politics moves within the continuity of what exists and only allows of gradual changes. And there are times of breaks. It seems that we are now in just such a time. A break, not with the very idea of European Unity but with the authoritarian and technocratic way it is materialized.”
Katja Kipping
“Brexit? Now is the time for real democracy! The EU-bureaucrats and their neoliberal austerity politics lay the ground for EU-skepticism and an explosion of nationalism. Yes, Brexit does give hope to many people in Britain, especially to the poor and unemployed. It raises the hope for an end of everyday misery, badly paid jobs, deteriorating cities and rampant anxiety about the future. Many have had enough of the lies and angst ridden scenarios of the political class. “Out” also means out of this life, and towards the hoped for better one. A deceptive illusion – nationalism does not make life any better rather the poor poorer and makes refugees and immigrants scapegoats for everyday misery. That is the real political catastrophe for Europe, and a social disaster for Britain.”
“But there is also a chance within the crisis because Brexit now also irrevocably questions the status quo of the EU. It is a disruption that opens up to a historical chance to give back a voice to people all over Europe. We need a debate about a re-constituting process regarding the future of Europe; the European future should not be in the hands of national egos. We need a joint European wide reconciliation of all people in the EU. The question of democracy should not and cannot be handed over to the Right. Yes, we should decide about our future together: Do we want to live in an EU of elites and injustice, or do we chose a new European union of social guarantees and extensive civil rights and liberties? Europe is social, or it is not. There is no alternative.”
Vivienne Westwood
Others – Brexit Club
Special TV Show hosted by Julian Assange at Ecuadorian Embassy in London during the night of the Referendum with many notable guests such as Vivienne Westwood, Yanis Varoufakis, Srećko Horvat, Podemos, and many others:
On the results of the UK referendum
DiEM25 campaigned vigorously in favour of a radical IN vote.
OUT won because the EU establishment have made it impossible, through their anti-democratic reign (not to mention the asphyxiation of weaker countries like Greece), for the people of Britain to imagine a democratic EU.
Our radical IN campaign was thus defeated.
We can proudly look the powers-that-be in Brussels, Berlin, Frankfurt, Paris etc. in the eye and tell them: “We tried to save the EU from you. But you have poisoned the EU so badly by silencing the voices of democrats that, though we tried, we could not convince to people of Britain to stay.”
We, at DiEM25, are in no mood for being downcast now that Leave won, against our better efforts. As of today, a new exciting challenge begins for our pan-European democratic movement.
At DiEM25 we rejected the logic of EU disintegration implicit in the Leave campaign. But we also rejected the logic of business-as-usual for the EU peddled by David Cameron, Tony Blair, Wolfgang Schäuble, François Hollande, Jean-Claude Juncker, Hillary Clinton and all the other contributors to the loss of EU’s legitimacy, integrity and soul.
DiEM25 regrets that the British people chose to leave in the EU. But at the same time, DiEM25 welcomes the British people’s determination to tackle the diminution of democratic sovereignty caused by the gross de-politicisation of political decisions and the consequent democratic deficit in the EU.
As of today, DiEM25 will seize upon the OUT vote to promote its radical agenda of confronting the EU establishment more powerfully than before.
The EU’s disintegration is now running at full speed. The DiEM25 campaign of building bridges across Europe, bringing democrats together across borders and political parties, is what Europe needs more than ever to avoid a slide into a xenophobic, deflationary, 1930s-like abyss. In this endeavour, British progressives will be at the heart of DiEM25’s campaigns.
An open letter from Bob Biderman on the EU referendum
Bob Biderman is a British-American author and publisher, as well as a member of DiEM25. He writes the following:
I first came to Britain from the United States in 1960 as a young man having been fascinated by the stories of this island nation my father told me when I was a child. My dad had volunteered to serve in the merchant navy some years before America entered the war and was full of admiration for the spirit of the people he encountered at the other end of that dangerous North Atlantic run bringing food and supplies to the last redoubt against the fascist takeover of Europe. His stories, couched in language fitting for a small boy, told of those simple acts of courage that defined a people standing resolute against, what seemed to be impossible odds. So landing in Britain when I did was almost like a rite of passage. I came to pay homage and I wasn’t disappointed.
Travelling the length of the island, from London to Glasgow, I witnessed a country still piecing itself together from the brutalities of war. In London, large gaping holes stuffed with rubble that once was someone’s home, had yet to be cleared fifteen years after the bombings. Rationing had ended not too long before, but there were still shortages of basic supplies augmented by workers’ cafes that served cheap sausage and beans to a skint labour force. Coming from an unscathed America where most were well-off (though many still lived in abject poverty), the dignity of the British people who had suffered incredible hardships was inspiring.
I returned to Britain in 1970, this time, recently married, with my wife. Then, again, in the 1980s, when we finally decided to settle here and raise our family. For us, Britain was not only an adoptive home, but a needed antidote to an American culture becoming fatally obsessed with money and power.
Over those fifty-six years – from 1960 to the present – I have witnessed dramatic changes in the culture and attitudes here. The destruction of communities from north to south, east to west, through global shifts augmented by new technologies and intensified by misguided austerity policies, has caused or exacerbated deep social wounds. But most striking to me is the unravelling of that spirit which had once been so strong – that which my father had so admired. Nothing exemplifies this unravelling more than the toxic referendum on whether Britain will remain in or leave the European Union, fomenting a battle of questionable ideas, fought in an atmosphere of quasi-civil war.
America was built by immigrants, but so was modern Britain: the French Huguenots who became the Spitalfield Weavers, the Dutch who helped drain the East Anglian fenlands, the Italians (God bless them!) who established the first espresso cafes, the Irish who built the canals and the highways – the list is endless. After the war the British needed labourers and so shiploads of immigrants were brought in from the Caribbean, India and the African nations of the Commonwealth. They were welcomed for their labour and over the years became part of the great British melting pot – joining that vibrant genetic mix reaching back beyond the Roman conquest.
From the beginning of the 20th century to the start of WW1, America had an open door policy toward immigration. Millions of refugees from military conflict and economic hardship came in their shiploads (stuffed into filthy steerage holds by semi-legitimate people traffickers). The massive number of immigrants – mainly non-English speaking and often illiterate – caused social and political problems in the cities where they settled. But the economic growth realised by their incredible energies was massive and, despite the hostility of ‘America First’ nativist movements – the Great Depression of the 1930s happened only after America’s open door policy was essentially halted. Few people today would argue that the Italians, Irish, Eastern European Jews, Poles and people from the Balkans were problematic because they could never be assimilated into ‘American’ culture.
In the 19th century Britain also had what was essentially an open immigration policy. Throughout the 1880s and 90s, Eastern European Jews in their hundreds of thousands fled to London, Manchester, Leeds and Glasgow escaping intolerable conditions imposed on them by the Tsarist government. Reading the scurrilous literature of the time directed toward these essentially impoverished people is strikingly evocative of what now passes for ‘reasoned dialogue’ by some in the EU referendum’s Leave Campaign. Yet a generation later, those refugees had been well integrated into British life and were, in the main, considered as respectable citizens.
Throughout history, fear of ‘the other’ in the guise of migrants, transients, nomads, itinerants of any kind, whether they be on a spiritual quest like Moses, Christ, Mohammed or Buddha, victims of political persecution, refugees of social turmoil or simply people who wanted to find a better life, all became easy scapegoats for people in power to deflect systemic problems onto those who are powerless.
Britain has a proud history of accepting refugees and immigrants of many backgrounds and persuasions. I think of the marvellous Café Royal in London’s Soho where, in the 1880s, the upstairs was filled with French nobility whose ancestors escaped beheading while the downstairs was occupied by the refugees who survived the Paris Commune. There are few places on earth where you would find a scene as evocative as that! But the movement of people isn’t a one-way street. It never is. We only need consider the millions of British who emigrated to Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, North America and, yes, Germany, France, Spain, Holland, Sweden and all the other EU countries as well.
The people of Britain, who my father saw as heroic, were matched by those others, from outside Britain, like the Poles and French who took sanctuary here and gave their lives to defend it – and those anti-fascist Americans, like my father, who offered their lives to keep Britain supplied in her hour of need.
Britain at its best was not a country looking to pull up the drawbridge and isolate itself. I think, for instance, of the Welsh miners who had volunteered to fight in Spain as the front line in what was soon to become a European-wide Guernica. Two world wars and many other European conflicts centuries before, emphasised the absurdity of isolationism. The problems of who we are and what we will become won’t be solved by voting in a toxic referendum. But voting to ‘Leave’ will, I fear, give the country over to those whose interests are nothing more than the quest for personal power and who are willing to do and say anything to gain that end – even if it means Britain would lose that which my father, and many others of his time, so greatly admired.
Over 2000 Join Call To #freeAssange At Brussels’ Bozar
>> DiEM25’s volunteers participated in support of the WikiLeaks editor and DiEM25 member, Julian Assange
By Cristina Soler-Savini
BRUSSELS, BELGIUM, June 19th, 2016.- A European meeting, a global conference like no other, the #freeAssange event, which took place in Brussels’ Bozar theatre this evening was to remember those that should never be forgotten.
WikiLeaks’ founder and editor, Julian Assange, has de facto been imprisoned at the Ecuadorian embassy in London for four years. As part of a unique initiative worldwide to denounce this cruel and illegal detention, the Belgian capital was one of the more than a dozen cities to hold the “First They Came for Assange…” global event.
The evening started with a brief exchange with the audience and the opening of a signature point for DiEM25’s Transparency petition, which was organized by the movement’s local volunteers.
“Movements such as DiEM25 help redefine new ways of engagement, as they give voice to those who have previously been excluded from debates,” explained a young participant.
Over 2,000 people were present in Brussels to join the call for Assange’s “persecution to be brought to an end.” Noam Chomsky, Patti Smith, Brian Eno, PJ Harvey, Ai Weiwei, Vivienne Westwood and Michael Moore were among the DiEM25 members and friends voicing their support for the Australian publisher.
Srećko Horvat, co-founder of DiEM25 and speaker at the Bozar event, warned: “We are experiencing a critical period for whistleblowers and if political pressure is not maintained, we will see no change in the fate of Julian Assange. We meet today to talk about Julian Assange, because he spoke on behalf of us all.”
Greece’s former Finance Minister and also DiEM25 co-founder, Yanis Varoufakis, delivered a warm and strong message of support as well: “Assange is symbol of this collective effort which creates bonds of friendship between us”.
Varoufakis underlined, “Democracy is nothing without the right to free speech. It’s a bit like being on the moon and speaking of an oxygen deficit when there is no oxygen at all.”
Last February, a UN panel ruled that Assange had been “arbitrarily detained.” The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) has called upon the UK and Sweden to end Assange’s deprivation of liberty, as it concluded that the WikiLeaks editor had been “arbitrarily detained by the Governments of Sweden and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.” In addition, the UN panel sentenced that Assange “is entitled to his freedom of movement and to compensation.”
Emotions ran high during the live connection with Assange from the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
“There are some consolations to being arbitrarily detained,” Assange explained, “there is some luck in being an accused person. Luck in being spied [on] as terrorist, luck in being accused of being a sex criminal. You might think that surely it is a shock and a devastation to wake up and find one transformed into a demon, into a thing, into an unspeakable thing. A frightening thing. No, it’s wonderful, because it is not that you change, it is that others change. You stay the same, but you now have a gift. You now have a super power. The super power of the accused. This super power is to reveal the true character of others.”
As of today, Julian Assange has been deprived of his freedom for 2,022 days.
DiEM25 joins global call to #freeassange
The event marks Julian Assange’s 4th anniversary of political asylum at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.
Loach, Chomsky and Žižek among the DiEM25 members participating at the event
LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM, June 16, 2016–DiEM25, the Democracy in Europe Movement, will join the global call to end the cruel and illegal persecution of one of its founding members, Julian Assange.
Next June 19th, on the WikiLeaks founder’s 4th anniversary of political asylum at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, people from all over the world will join their voices simultaneously in Berlin, Paris, New York, Quito, Brussels, Madrid, Naples, Belgrade, and other cities. Julian Assange will connect with all of them live from London.
Yanis Varoufakis, Greece’s former finance minister and DiEM25 co-founder, explained that: “Julian Assange’s great contribution is the demonstration of how technologies used to make citizens transparent in the eyes of government and corporations can be utilised by activists to do the opposite: to throw light into the decision making processes of governments and corporations while shielding citizens from the probing eyes of the high and mighty. The establishment’s rage against Assange is testimony to his public service.”
The Croatian philosopher Srećko Horvat, and one of the organisers of the event, says: “The inspiration for the title of the event ‘First they came for Assange..’ comes from the famous Martin Niemöller poem about the cowardice of intellectuals and purging of dissidents. What we want to stress with these events is that we live in a critical time. We are gathering all around the world on the 19th of June to speak out for Julian, because he has spoken out for all of us, we are speaking out before there is no one left to speak out.”
DiEM25 will be present at various participating cities, such as Brussels (Bozar Centre for Fine Arts), where Yanis Varoufakis and Srecko Horvat will join as speakers on the importance on whistleblowers, transparency and democracy.
DiEM25, eldario.es and El Círculo de Bellas Artes are co organizers of the Madrid event, where jurist, Baltasar Garzón, whistleblower, Ana Garrido, journalist, Virginia Alonso and DiEM25 member, Luis Martín, will be the speakers.
Among the speakers at this global event is also British filmmaker and DiEM25 member Ken Loach, who won the Palme d’Or at Cannes this year. He explained that he joined the event and its long list of supporters because “our legal system is being manipulated to keep a brave man in isolation” and that “all who care about freedom of information should demand that the threats made against Julian should be lifted. He should be able to leave his place of safety without fear of deportation or being handed over to those who intend him harm.”
The official freeassangenow.org website lists all participating cities and speakers.
First they came for Assange…
Inspired by the famous Martin Niemöller poem about cowardice of German intellectuals following the Nazis’ rise to power and the subsequent purging of their chosen targets, group after group, what the event “First they came for Assange…” wants to stress that we live in a critical time in which everyone opposed to the political and financial powers might soon become a target.
It has been 4 years since a courageous South American nation granted Julian Assange asylum due to his legitimate fears of rendition to the US. After exercising a sovereign right, the UK threatened to attack the London Embassy. Since then, two EU Governments, Sweden and the United Kingdom, consistently refuse to recognise their human rights obligations and grant safe passage to Julian Assange.
In February 2016 the UN declared the detention of the Editor and journalist as illegal and demanded his urgent release and compensation. Over 500 human rights organisations, law professors, former UN office holders and Nobel Prize winners signed a letter urging the governments of Sweden and the UK to respect UN’s decision to free Assange immediately.
More than a hundred days have passed and the situation remains the same, and will remain the same, unless there is an increase in political pressure. We cannot afford inaction. First they came after Julian Assange, then they came after Chelsea Manning, then they came after Edward Snowden… who is next?
For more information about this event, please visit freeassangenow.org.
DiEM25 supports "Ne da(vi)mo Beograd"
Dear comrades,
We have been following the situation in Serbia and especially last happenings related to the project “Beograd na vodi”. We would like to express our full support to the initiative “Ne da(vi)mo Beograd”, as your activities and dedication may be significant not only for Serbian popular uprising and democratic resistance to the rule of capital and private interest in Serbia, but also for the struggle of the same kind in the whole region and Europe.
By addressing issues such as lack of transparency and absence of people’s consent regarding the project “Beograd na vodi”, you have shown the willingness to contribute to the common struggle of European peoples for the right to decide about their city by themselves. In the light of reawakening of European peoples, whose voices have illuminated the incapacity of European elites to meet the real needs of their citizens, your initiative sent a strong message of compliance with ever wider European resistance to non – democratic tendencies. Your elites, same as majority of other national and supranational administrations, elites and bureaucratic structures, have arrived ever closer to the dead-end of legitimacy by ignoring the needs of people of Belgrade and Serbia.
Concretely, the lack of transparency and already evident machinations that have been following the project of “Beograd na vodi” from the very beginning left no space for citizens to be trustful to their local and national governments. The unacceptable demolition of buildings in Savamala district that turned out to be organized by the local authorities in spite of the mayor’s initial denial of any enrollment of the local government, indeed leaves you no space for patience either. This is why, the movement for democracy in Europe, DiEM, fully supports the people of Belgrade and Serbia in its endeavors to leave no space for any alternative to democracy.
On behalf of DiEM25,
Yanis Varoufakis, Srećko Horvat, Filip Balunović
Zizek’s & Varoufakis’ ‘Dear Britain’ letters, in DiEM25’s spirit
A few weeks ago, The Guardian asked a number of authors to write an intimate letter to… Britain (Dear Britain,…) explaining why we want ‘her’ to stay in the EU. Here are two of those letters, written by two DiEM25 initiators: Slavoj Žižek and Yanis Varoufakis.
Slavoj Žižek Slovenia
Dear Britain,
When Stalin was asked in the late 1920s which is worse, the right or the left, he snapped back: “They are both worse!” And this is my first reaction to the question of whether or not to leave the EU.
I am not interested in sending love letters to the British public with the sentimental message: “Please stay in Europe!” What interests me is ultimately only one question. Europe is now caught in a vicious cycle, oscillating between the false opposites of surrender to global capitalism and surrender to anti-immigrant populism – which politics has a chance of enabling us to step out of this mad dance?
The symbols of global capitalism are secretly negotiated trade agreements such as the Trade in Services Agreement (Tisa) or Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). The social impact of TTIP is clear enough: it stands for nothing less than a brutal assault on democracy. Nowhere is this clearer than in the case of Investor-State Dispute Settlements (ISDS), which allow companies to sue governments if their policies cause a loss of profits. Simply put, this means that unelected transnational corporations can dictate the policies of democratically elected governments.
So how would Brexit fare in this context? From a leftwing standpoint, there are some good reasons to support Brexit: a strong nation state exempted from the control of Brussels technocrats can protect the welfare state and counteract austerity politics. However, I am worried about the ideological and political background of this option. From Greece to France, a new trend is arising in what remains of the “radical left”: the rediscovery of nationalism. All of a sudden, universalism is out, dismissed as a lifeless political and cultural counterpart of “rootless” global capital.
The reason for this is obvious: the rise of rightwing nationalist populism in western Europe, which is now the strongest political force advocating the protection of working class interests, and simultaneously the strongest political force able to give rise to proper political passions. So the reasoning goes: why should the left leave this field of nationalist passions to the radical right, why should it not “reclaim la patrie from the Front National”?
In this leftwing populism, the logic of Us against Them remains, however here “they” are not poor refugees or immigrants, but financial capital and technocratic state bureaucracy. This populism moves beyond the old working class anticapitalism; it tries to bring together a multiplicity of struggles from ecology to feminism, from the right to employment to free education and healthcare.
The recurrent story of the contemporary left is that of a leader or party elected with universal enthusiasm, promising a “new world” (Mandela, Lula) – but sooner or later, usually after a couple of years, they stumble upon the key dilemma: does one dare to touch the capitalist mechanisms, or does one decide to “play the game”? If one disturbs the mechanisms, one is very swiftly punished by market perturbations, economic chaos and the rest. So how can we push things further after the first enthusiastic stage is over?
I remain convinced that our only hope is to act trans-nationally – only in this way do we have a chance to constrain global capitalism. The nation-state is not the right instrument to confront the refugee crisis, global warming, and other truly pressing issues. So instead of opposing Eurocrats on behalf of national interests, let’s try to form an all-European left. And it is because of this margin of hope that I am tempted to say: vote against Brexit, but do it as a devout Christian who supports a sinner while secretly cursing him. Don’t compete with the rightwing populists, don’t allow them to define the terms of the struggle. Socialist nationalism is not the right way to fight the threat of national socialism.
• Against the Double Blackmail is published by Allen Lane.
Yanis Varoufakis Greece
Dear Britain,
Last year I tried, and failed, to convince the EU top brass to behave humanely toward my long-suffering country. Now, I am writing to you with an odd plea: that you stay in this same EU – yes, the one that crushed our Athens spring and has been behaving abominably ever since.
Some will deploy tabloid logic to explain my plea (“Varoufakis wants the UK to stay in to pay for Greece’s bailouts”). Others will accuse me of abandoning the fight for restoring democracy. Yet I trust that your Pythonesque appreciation of paradox will pierce through the seeming contradiction.
The reason I want you to stay in is that voting to leave will not get you “out”. Rather than escaping the EU, Brexit will keep you tied to a Europe that is nastier, sadder and increasingly dangerous to itself, to you, indeed to the rest of the planet.
The masters of the City will never allow a new Boris Johnson government to even think of leaving the EU’s single market, despite Michael Gove’s musings. Which means that all the gadgets sold in your shops will have to abide by standards made in Brussels, your environmental protection rules will be drawn up in Brussels, and market regulation will be (yes you guessed it) determined in Brussels.
So, even after Brexit, the majority of your laws will be written in the same dreary Brussels corridors as now, except you will have no say in their shaping. With your democracy as truncated as it is now, you will remain stuck, albeit less powerful, in a Europe whose fragmentation Brexit will accelerate.
The EU is undoubtedly bureaucratic, opaque and contemptuous of the parliamentarianism that you and I cherish. You may, therefore, conclude that speeding up the EU’s fragmentation is not such a bad idea. Think again! Will its disintegration cause progressive democrats to rise up across Europe, empower their parliaments, usher in the forces of light and hope, and foster harmonious cooperation on the continent? Not likely.
The EU’s fragmentation will divide the continent in at least two parts, the major fault line running down the Rhine and across the Alps. In the north east, deflation will rule, with millions of working poor Germans, Poles and so on becoming unemployed. In the Latin part, the order of the day will be inflation with unemployment. Only political monsters will crawl out of this fault line, spreading xenophobic misanthropy everywhere and ensuring, through competitive devaluations, that you will also be drawn into the ensuing vortex.
This is why I am pleading with you to stay in our terrible EU. Europe’s democrats need you. And you need us. Together we have a chance of reviving democratic sovereignty across Europe. It won’t be easy. But it is worth a try.
When I was student, a close friend who hated parties nevertheless never missed one just so that he would have something to bitch about the day after. Please do not be like him. Please stay in the EU with enthusiasm for our common cause: to take arms against a sea of troubles, and, by opposing, end them.
• And the Weak Suffer What They Must? is published by Vintage.
On DiEM25’s activities in Barcelona on the anniversary of Ada Colau’s and Barcelona en Comú’s victory
As Spain’s general election of 26th June approaches, DiEM25 was active last week in Barcelona, together with Mayor Ada Colau’s (a founding member of DiEM25), our Barcelona en Comú friends and comrades as well as the local DiEM25 branch. The occasion was the anniversary of Ada’s extraordinary, brave and inspiring victory in the City of Barcelona municipal elections. But it was also an opportunity for DiEM25 to participate in the Spanish pre-election campaign in a bid to encourage the people of Catalonia, and more generally Spain, to seize the opportunity of electing a government that can ignite real change in Europe.
Yanis Varoufakis, who was in Barcelona to celebrate and to agitate alongside Ada Colau, Gerardo Pisarello (Barcelona’s Deputy Mayor) and Jordi Ayalla (Barcelona’s senior financial officer), had this to say:
“Under Ada, Gerardo and Jordi, the whole of Europe is looking at the City of Barcelona as a standard-bearer of democratic politics at the level of local government and a laboratory that produces innovative ways of supporting local communities, cooperatives and businesses in practical ways. Barcelona is also the initiator of the network of rebel cities that DiEM25 believes central to the process of democratising the European Union. Ada and our other comrades asked DiEM25 to spread the word of what Barcelona has achieved to the four corners of Europe, a task that DiEM25 is embracing with enthusiasm.”
Regarding the forthcoming general election in Spain, Varoufakis said:
“On 26th June the people of Catalonia, the people of Spain, have a unique opportunity to vote in a progressive government that will save the European Union from itself and from the disaster caused by the self-defeating austerity breeding unbearable authoritarianism. The incumbent prime minister of the right-wing People’s Party behaves like a spoilt child in Brussels, begging to be allowed to violate the unenforceable rules. The next prime minister of Spain, representing a progressive government that the Spanish voters now have the opportunity to bring to power, must call forth a EU summit that discusses and draws up new, rational, enforceable rules. Only then can Spain breathe again in a Europe that re-discovers its poise, rationality and humanity. This is why the 26th of June presents a unique opportunity, one that will be realised as long as the next government refuses to commit to existing policies and to Rajoy’s and Dos Guindos’ prior commitments to the Eurogroup.”