Gianluca Costantini illustrates his journey with DiEM25
The Italian activist and artist has long fought political battles through thought-provoking drawings and has now produced a stunning e-book for DiEM25, whose activities he has accompanied since 2016
It’s not easy to retrace my path in DiEM25. I think it all started in 2015 during the Greek economic crisis, when I started drawing what was going on in the country, thanks to the knowledge of my wife Elettra Stamboulis, and we made a short comic entitled “Who’s who” in which the characters of this tragic comedy were depicted.
The character that stuck with me the most was Yanis Varoufakis, and even after he left the Syriza government, I continued to follow what he said and did on social media. I first came across DiEM25 in 2016 and was fascinated by how it merged politics and culture. Some people I had followed and admired had joined this new movement, like Julian Assange – about whom I published a graphic novel in 2011 – Ai Weiwei with whom I had been collaborating for a few years, Brian Eno, Ken Loach and many others.
I decided I wanted to be part of it. I started, on my own initiative, to make portraits of the main exponents of the movement, and came into contact with Italian DiEMers Lorenzo Marsili and Berardo Carboni, whom I convinced to use drawing as a tool of political communication, and with Judith Meyer and Srećko Horvat from the Coordinating Collective. On 25 March 2017, “The Time of Courage” was organised, for which I did all the communication. Afterwards, for many years, I continued as a volunteer in communication in Italy and occasionally also in other countries, especially Germany and Belgium.
It’s difficult for an artist to join a political movement – “taking a side” doesn’t really suit the romantic vision of the artist. But, after all, even my spiritual guide Joseph Beuys was among the founders of the Green Party in Germany. Moreover, my work as an online artist, especially on Twitter, is entirely political and social. For those who are not familiar with my work, I have been working assiduously for more than twenty years creating messages that draw attention to what is going on in the world, focusing on human rights in the past few years.
I love the idea of the European Union, but I would like it to be different, fairer, without patriotism and borders. So that what happened to Greece can never happen again. I also share DiEM25’s position on the war in Ukraine and hope for the creation of a movement of non-aligned states – being a convinced pacifist I am completely against the use of weapons as a tool to create a new war and new borders.
Gianluca’s DiEM25 e-book
In this small collection I’ve tried to put everything I have done for DiEM25 in chronological order, which I hope serves as a short illustrated history of our movement.
Italy desperately needs a radical political alternative
Over the past few years, Italian politics has been polarised between extreme right-wing populists and technocrats. The first group ranges from the pretend-outsiders of M5S to the fascists of Fratelli d’Italia. The other is formed by professional politicians, bankers and managers who are supposed to be impartial implementers of political reforms, often parachuting into office unelected.
With each election, technocrats promote more and more unequal reforms and restrictions to labour rights in order to supposedly stabilise the economy, but in reality only serve the big interests that got them the job in the first place. Meanwhile, right-wing parties become ever more racist, sexist and conspiracy-friendly, threatening even the most fundamental achievements of social movements.
We got to this point thanks to Italian oligarchs and political elites, who are becoming increasingly desperate to cling onto power as people get more and more fed up. It’s thanks to them that we continue to postpone the actions needed to address the climate crisis, increasing inequalities and the pandemic. People in Italy are facing huge economic hardship, heat waves, drought, restrictions to their rights, and they cannot wait anymore. We need to help build the comet that will make Italian oligarchs and political dinosaurs extinct.
We are going to face the most rapid and brutal election campaign of recent years. We expect little, but already feel let down as the ‘new’ parliament will practically be composed of the same old faces. We must put all of our effort into building a bottom-up alternative, starting from social movements and all people that resist the emptiness of the current public debate. We will build a realistic and radical political alternative – Italy and Europe need it.
This will be the last election in which Italian voters are left without a meaningful alternative.
Your NHS Needs You comedy night raises vital funds
July 12 saw a host of top British comedians gather in London to rally behind the Your NHS Needs You campaign, in an event organised by DiEM25 and UNITE.
The campaign has counted on the support of DiEM25 and UNITE since its inception, and is fighting against the ever-increasing privatisation of the institution.
The big comedy night sought to raise awareness of a serious topic in a light-hearted manner, with stars like Jen Brister (MC), Frankie Boyle, Jo Brand, Marcus Brigstocke, Kerry Godliman, Markus Birdman, Rosie Jones, Malinda Mukuma and Michael Rosen coming together for a fun night of entertainment.
With a total of 1,210 people in attendance, the event proved to be a resounding success, with laughter being shared and a healthy sum of money raised for this crucial cause.
What is the ‘Your NHS Needs You’ campaign?
While generations of us have been lovingly patched up by our NHS, and proud to fund it with our taxes, successive UK governments have been quietly privatising this cherished institution. Decades of academic research, and the brave campaigning of doctors and nurses, has exposed how this privatisation plot smuggled in private providers and US corporations while selling off NHS land and buildings.
Now, public health experts are sounding the alarm that the current Health and Care Bill is likely to be the nail in the coffin for our public health service. They are warning that the Bill will pave the way for the English NHS to be replaced by the profit-driven American system, in which private health providers are incentivised to cut and deny care to increase profits.
Belgians are in a state of political apathy
Just around every corner, there seems to be a major social or political talking point that should be troubling the Belgian people giving the direct or indirect impact on them, yet the public seems stuck in a state of apathy as the problems continue to heap with little reaction.
Are Belgians simply apathetic? That’s what you might think at the moment. For starters, the war in Ukraine that has sent shockwaves around the world doesn’t stir up much of a response. NATO‘s point of view, relayed by almost all the media outlets, seems to be passively absorbed by a rather indifferent public. Pacifists are struggling to summon up the slightest bit of critical thinking.
When it comes to refugees, a number of generous people have welcomed Ukrainians into their homes or helped them in some other way. But the question as to why there are ‘good’ refugees that we welcome, and ‘bad’ refugees who we leave to drown in the Mediterranean is not addressed.
Another uncomfortable subject is the boycott of Russian fossil fuels – decided by the USA and taken by the EU – which is making oil and gas more scarce and expensive. Even the price of food has risen sharply. This worries the people that there will be a new round of austerity. The big trade union demonstration on June 20 brought 80,000 people to the streets of Brussels for the misnamed “defence of purchasing power”. Misnamed, because it means defining people as consumers. And, for example, the demonstrators overwhelmingly disapproved the increase in military spending, preferring instead for this money to have gone towards financing public services.
Although Brussels has thousands of homeless people, the housing problem is less acute in Belgium than in other countries. This is because 72% of the inhabitants own their own home, and the legislation is rather accommodating for tenants. The role of activists working on the ground is mainly to explain to people what their rights are, and to help the most precarious not to end up on the street.
There is apathy from the public, their parliamentary representatives and the minister towards the surveillance mechanisms which the pandemic has boosted. The European Commission, which is not a model of democracy, nabbed an unelected, unknown but all-powerful civil servant who had ended up concentrating all the citizens’ data in his hands, even going so far as to sit on the very board that was supposed to be monitoring him! It took an ultimatum from the European Commission for him to resign, and it is the whistleblowers who have just been fired.
Only the press played a positive role in this affair. It regularly denounces tax evasion (traditionally a national sport in Belgium), and it has just released a report on how Uber used all kinds of dirty tricks to establish itself in Belgium (as elsewhere).
Yet apathy is still apparent, despite the exposure of these scandals: people continue to ride with Uber and fly with Ryanair, because they see themselves as consumers and don’t care that they are contributing to the destruction of workers’ rights. And yet Ryanair staff are on strike against the unbearable working conditions imposed on them by the company.
The political landscape
The liberals of the MR (Reformist Movement) and the Open VLD defend the interests of the ruling class, while accepting progressive approaches when it does not commit them to anything social, just as we saw recently when prime minister Alexander De Croo and the government made amends for Belgium‘s role in the assassination of former Democratic Republic of the Congo prime minister Patrice Lumumba in 1961.
The social democrats of PS and Vooruit are waging a rearguard action to defend labour rights: “Without us, it would be worse”, they say. This is true, but not a programme.
the Greens are losing all credibility by disowning themselves to support the prolongation of the war in Ukraine.
The two Flemish nationalist parties, one of which is far right-wing, have wind in their sails in the current climate of rising identity claims.
Apathy? Perhaps not. There is however a dull discontent. People don’t feel listened to and don’t feel they are participating in political life. Or even, too often, in social life. The dirtiness of public spaces is a sad proof of this.
That is why Belgium needs DiEM25 in the country, together with a real Green New Deal and ideas to build a living democracy in favour of the many rather than the wealthy few.
Greek actors demand justice after child rapist theatre director is released
Dimitris Lignadis was initially sentenced to 12 years in prison for raping two minors, before inexplicably being freed, causing outrage and disgust across Greece
The former director of the National Theatre of Greece, Dimitris Lignadis, was found guilty of two counts of rape against two underage boys in 2019, before shockingly being released from prison last week.
The case has sparked outrage across the country. Among those leading the calls for justice is the Union of Greek Actors which released a statement outlining its disgust at the decision:
On July 13, 2022 Dimitris Lignadis, former teacher and director of the National Theatre of Greece, was found guilty of two counts of rape against minors. He was sentenced in the first instance to 12 years in prison without recognition of mitigating circumstances. Although he remained in pre-trial detention for a year and a half because he had initially been sentenced, with detailed reasoning, to be dangerous and while he had not yet been tried, three hours after his conviction he was deemed to no longer be dangerous and was, therefore, released.
Court decisions are issued in the name of the Greek people. Therefore, they must be aligned with the public sense of justice. The specific court, presided over by Mrs. Panagiota Yioupi, not only failed to put the guilty child rapist in prison, not only did it not give justice to an entire social movement demanding dignity and freedom, but for months tolerated the slandering of the victims, their attendants, the witnesses, the journalists and the entire intellectual world of artists as average, professional homosexuals, scoundrels and laypeople. If all this happens in a courtroom with all the lights turned on, we shudder to think what happens with the lights off.
We actors, musicians, technicians, the people who work here tonight for all of you, since July 13, are vulnerable. We are unprotected because our country tolerates such decisions and violates our self-evident right to truth, to justice, to our bodies and our right to common sense.
From July 13 and for every day Dimitris Lignadis walks free, not only us, but the entire Greek society is imprisoned. As people of culture, citizens of Greece, fathers and mothers of children growing up here, we request the immediate lifting of the suspension of the conviction.
We want the victims of Lignadis, those who have found the courage to speak and those who are still looking for it, to continue living among us without fear and shame. We want the supreme good of our democracy and freedom to be deprived from the one who unrepentantly rapes children. We want the brave decision of sentencing the guilty party to 12 years in prison to be upheld. We want to live in a place where justice will shine in proportion to its beauty.
We stand with the victims
Dimitris Lignadis, guilty of raping two children, should remain in prison
Union of Greek Actors
Italy: A country left in ruins by a political circus
As the country lies in a heap of problems, none of Italy’s leading political actors seem to be able to rise to the occasion and cater to the needs of a hurting nation
The current period that Italians are living through is certainly not the smoothest, to put it mildly: financial crises, followed by two years of a pandemic, a war in the heart of Europe, an increasingly devastating climate crisis and an economic crisis that has yet to reach its peak in terms of inflation and wages.
Yet in Italy, the only thing that seems to matter to our ruling classes is this pathetic little theatre played out by mediocre, short-sighted figures with little ability to lead our country out of an increasingly devastating situation.
On the one hand, the tame Five Star Movement (Movimento 5 Stelle), which after a phase of incredibly unprofitable pragmatism that led them to sign the blank cheque of support for the Mario Draghi government just a few months from the end of the legislature, seemingly rediscover dignity and values to reposition themselves in opposition, frightened perhaps more by DiMaio’s split and desperately looking for an excuse to not have to vote as active partners in this wretched coalition.
It is hard to understand what they expected from a government in which their delegation was – to put it mildly – of no weight and the biggest and most trumpeted ‘victory’ was supposed to be that of the establishment of a Ministry for Ecological Transition, then cunningly assigned to Roberto Cingolani, who has reached positions bordering on climate denialism and in constant battle with ‘ideological ecologism’. As well as the (unsuccessful) defence of those previously enacted measures of merit that have remained unceasingly under attack from all sides, both inside and outside the government, until they were almost definitively cancelled.
Faced with a continuous split that has seen its elected members end up in almost every group in Parliament, the outcome of a political project that was supposed to embody social anger and ended up taming it and rendering it inoffensive, cannot be seen as anything other than negative.
It was supposed to be a government of national unity but no one had too much trouble in leaving Fratelli d’Italia out of it (evidently bringing Giorgia Meloni over 23% is not such bad news for many). It is understandable that those who, like Draghi, were preparing to retrace the footsteps of his technical predecessor Mario Monti, took care not to repeat the same mistakes by fuelling a movement that, precisely in opposing that executive, is exposed on the national scene. Evidently controlling and ferrying the Five Star Movement to their political end was and remains such an important objective that it was worth sacrificing his own government and putting Italy’s National Recovery and Resilience Plan at risk, as Minister Federico D’Incà pointed out.
The others are minor players, but no less interested in the electoral gains of this theatre. Fratelli d’Italia declares the legislature over in an attempt to capitalise on polls favourable to them, the ‘moderate’ parties are pushing for Draghi’s continuation supported only by certified neo-liberal governors, the next components of a centre coalition. Lega is split between these two, between the desire to go back to labelling the government as thieves for fear of being totally consumed by the extreme right and those who would like to continue ‘administering’ the immense amount of money deriving from the emergency measures.
The country is in ruins due to this sad little theatre, metaphorically and literally.
Not one of the aforementioned actors seems to have the slightest care for the needs of a country that is going through a painful period.
Increasing inequalities in the world of work linked to gender and age, pensions destined to be reduced, the devastating impact of the pandemic and war in Ukraine, an increase in poverty, coupled with drought, a state of continuing climate emergency.
Finally, the Partito Democratico is anything but free of responsibility, as its senator Tommaso Cerno recalls. It is half afraid of losing the reins on the Movement that allowed it a tight control over the competition on the left and make them co-responsible and co-rulers of the dissolution of the same policies that they had implemented, and half anxious and trembling to strike the final blow to the many hated ‘populists’ who reminded us daily how serious was their betrayal of the workers and the environment of which they made themselves the flag bearers a few years ago.
After the migrant crisis, the pandemic and the war, our newspapers have found a new topic to fill the front pages and talk about something else while the daily problems of Italians remain unresolved.
Day after day, the loopholes in this system are opening wider and wider to swallow up more and more citizens, both Italian and European, while no political representative even dares to question its ideological foundations, which day after day are becoming more and more evident and blatantly wrong.
For this reason, discontent and despair in society is growing more and more into a state of necessary agitation, with an ever-increasing distrust of current policy. The people are ready to return to the struggle in search of a worthy and legitimate representation that could allow a real change of course.
This is the only and last chance to avoid ending up definitively in the abyss, while those at the helm of this country continue to turn a blind eye.
The true vision of Nelson Mandela
The revolutionary legacy of Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela – and those of his African National Congress (ANC) comrades Walter Sisulu, Joe Slovo, Ahmad Katharada, Oliver Tambo, Chris Hani and numerous others – burns brightly despite attempts to decontextualise their struggle and resurrect Mandela and co. as titans only of aid.
Instead of seeking charitable reforms, their fierce opposition against the Apartheid regime involved constant mass mobilisation of all those opposed to colonialism and imperialism.
This included forming a broad anti-Apartheid political coalition with the Communist Party of South Africa, the South African Indian Congress, the South African Congress of Trade Unions, the Coloured People’s Congress and the South African Congress of Democrats among others, creating the Congress of the People and issuing the Freedom Charter that set out the fundamental restructuring of South African society.
In other words, they did not seek reform and accommodation within existing structures but called forth a revolution that included rule by the people, nationalisation of its economic behemoths and reorientation of trade and industry towards the well-being of the people.
While today we celebrate Mandela as the beacon of humanity, we should recall his decades spent in active organisation against oppression – and guard against transforming his struggle into charitable acts.
Our focus must remain on the root causes of our conditions and, as our Manifesto states, to continue organising against the oligarchy that continues to prevent the democratisation of Europe and beyond.
Government and police side with fascists in Montenegro
July 13 is a Montenegrin national holiday which commemorates the country’s Statehood Day. It’s being celebrated for two reasons: firstly, it is the date on which Montenegro was recognised as a sovereign state in the Berlin congress of 1878 and, secondly, the day when antifascists began uprising against the occupying forces in 1941. The uprising was organised by communists and it was one of the biggest rebellions in occupied Europe.
Three days ago, to mark the date, there was a peaceful celebration of antifascists on the holiday in Nikšić, with elderly people, kids, women, men and everyone else singing partisan and Montenegrin songs.
At the same time, there was a counter-protest by fascists, that decided to demonstrate against “communist-invented nation of Montenegrins, Montenegrins Ustasha (Croatian fascists), and Nazis”. It was organised by a group that has strong ties with the Serbian Orthodox church, pro-Russian extremists and right-wing Democratic Front (DF) followers, with a lot of them wearing ‘Z’ t-shirts and/or Chetnik’s (Serbian fascists) emblems. They were glorifying Russia, fascist collaborator Draža Mihailović, Serbian post-World War One occupation of Montenegro and yelling many other things that go hand in hand with this ideology. These people are not, at least in the vast majority, from Serbia. They are identifying as Serbs with claims that Montenegrins don’t exist, as it is preached by their political and religious leaders.
Statue of partisan hero Ljubo Čupić near the cloud of a tear gas. Ljubo Čupić was shot and murdered by chetniks, and his famous smile became a symbol of resistance in Montenegro.
The police was letting counter-protesters come close to antifascists while escorting them during songs about murdering Muslims, as you can see in this video.
We came closer to chant against this monstrosity, but the police were turned with their backs towards fascists and with faces and shields towards antifascists. After tensions, the police directed tear gas guns towards antifascists and let the bombs drop.
People were running around, but the streets were in majority closed by police cordons, so we had to hide in bars and coffee places. After the initial police attack, we came again to the police to protest and ask why they attacked the peaceful protesters that were celebrating the national holiday and uprising while defending the fascists. But the police, completely unprovoked, shot tear gas bombs at us again. Then it all escalated. Police brutality was responded to by throwing lighters and bottles.
I was at the spot and one of the tear gas bombs exploded right at my feet, during the peaceful part of demonstration. I threw up, ‘cried’ and even got burned by the explosion of the tear gas. More importantly, my girlfriend experienced the same symptoms. All of that while we were covered with anarcho-syndicalist and Montenegrin flags.
Meanwhile, the mayor of Nikšić is a self-proclaimed Chetnik (picture below) and, when he got elected, Serbian president Aleksandar Vučić donated two million euros to that municipality, to further spread influence. Also, Aleksandar Vulin, minister of internal affairs gave a speech, just a few days before the holiday, that all Serbians should live inside one country, addressing his already expressed dream of “Great Serbia”.
Marko Kovačević, major of Nikšić, posing with Chetniks emblem
All of this is being watched by the ruling ‘green’ party URA for some reason. Investigating journalists implied this is due to the corruption ties between the prime minister of Montenegro, Dritan Abazović, and the ruling circles from Belgrade. And just like Donald Trump did after the Charlottesville shooting, our prime minister blamed “both sides”, while focusing much more on the antifascists for the incidents on July 13. In fact, four days ago, Dritan was walking on the edge of relativisation of the Srebrenica genocide in the middle of its memorial. It’s hard to believe that a holder of a PhD in Political Science did this unintentionally.
Just like the past government of neoliberal DPS was hiding its corruption with national narratives, now URA is doing the opposite – hiding nationalistic tensions with fight against the corruption. Unfortunately, both of the parties were doing this poorly. DPS was having close ties with the Serbian Orthodox church and they were on the same side during the war in Yugoslavia, while URA didn’t really do anything to free the justice institutions to tackle nepotism, organised crime and corruption.
It’s important to note that pro-government media was releasing hate speech articles towards Montenegrins and antifascists by labelling us as Nazis days before, and it all seemed as a very well-prepared set-up. As leftist historian Miloš Vukanović wrote: “There is no difference between attempts to demonise Montenegrins in defence efforts against Serbian nationalism, with all the positive and negative aspects, and the violent perception that Putin has been building towards Ukrainians.”
Montenegro, just like many countries, replaced corrupt neoliberals with right-wing populists that are affiliated with the church. However, when that happens in the Balkans, with the recent history of wars, imperialism and nationalism, it’s a completely different story. Especially because the government was elected on the wave of clerical-nationalism energy and even agreed upon in a monastery of a previously mentioned church* that was accused of hiding war criminals, pushing the narrative of ‘Great Serbia’, and pushing the Russian influence, as recognised even by a European Commission report.
(*We managed to ‘strip naked‘ and overthrow that government. But, the regime pretty much stayed the same, as the discourse never changed. The most important common denominator is Abazović, who was first a deputy prime minister, and now the head of the state.)
Dritan Abazović, prime minister of Montenegro, and Porfirije, head of the Serbian Orthodox church.
Just like a vast number of Montenegrins are against those politicians that hid their corruption behind a Montenegrin flag, a lot of Serbians (both from Montenegro and Serbia) are against the current government in both countries. People are not the problem, but the elites and ideologies are.
Constitutionally, multi-ethnic Montenegro is sliding towards disintegration into imperialist ‘big state’ projects, mainly through the Open Balkans initiative and internal problems with rising clericalication. One more sad thing lies in the fact that the war mongering organisation that is NATO is seen as the only opposition. But, as you can see, that’s not the case – NATO is not going to save you or guarantee you security if that doesn’t guarantee them selling weapons for profit. Once again, Montenegrins, Bosnians, Serbians, Albanians, Croatians, non-national people and others are victims of big political games and demagogy.
However, DiEM25 is not going to look away. We will try to shine more light on the situation in Montenegro and other Western Balkan countries.
Varoufakis presses Mitsotakis over illegal pushbacks
Forensic Architecture’s investigation published on Friday reveals in shocking detail the abysmal crime of illegal pushbacks by the Greek government carried out between March 2020 and March 2022 – an inhumane policy that prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’ government is clearly practicing, while at the same time boasting about its results.
In the wake of the revelations on illegal migrant pushbacks, which involve over 27,000 migrants within the two year period, the Secretary General of MeRA25 in Greece, Yanis Varoufakis, has tabled an offical question to Mitsotakis. Read it in full below:
Will the Prime Minister continue to deny that his government is engaging in deadly illegal pushbacks in the Aegean today when a new, indisputable report by Forensic Architecture documents in chilling detail not one, not two, but 1,018 cases of illegal pushbacks for the period 3/20 to 3/22 alone – including cases with human victims that can only be described as criminal? Or is it time to stop vilifying the country by apologising to the international community?
Prime Minister,
Today’s Forensic Architecture report reveals, in shocking detail, the illegal pushbacks in the Aegean: 1,018 in the period March 2020-March 2022 alone, with 27,464 victims of our fellow human beings whose rights, clearly guaranteed by International Law, were violated by the Greek Coast Guard and FRONTEX at the behest of your government and the EU respectively. Among other chilling facts, this report demonstrates:
- 26 recorded incidents where the Greek Coast Guard threw people overboard, two of them handcuffed!
- Testimonies of beatings, confiscation of their few belongings, and forcibly putting them on board boats without engines that were pushed towards the Turkish coast without the slightest guarantee that they would not sink in the middle of the sea.
- A specific case where 11 people drowned and four others are missing
- Three cases where the pushbacks were carried out under the watchful eye of the crew of the German warship FGS Berlin.
I ask you:
- How do you respond to Amnesty International and in particular to Ms Milena Marin (head of the international organisation’s Citizen Evidence Lab) who stated that “the systematic and widespread nature of the deadly practice of pushbacks is now beyond dispute”?
- Will you once again resort to a denial that in the eyes of international public opinion will be interpreted as a confirmation, resulting in the continued vilification of the country and the loss of respect from citizens of the world who are inspired by the principles of Humanism?