We mourn the passing of Susan George, a towering figure in progressive political thought and activism, and a cherished founding member of DiEM25. Susan passed away on 14 February 2026 at the age of 91, leaving behind a legacy of intellectual rigour, moral clarity and unwavering commitment to justice that inspired generations across continents.
An American-French political scientist, writer and activist, Susan devoted her life to exposing the structural injustices embedded in global capitalism. Her landmark book How the Other Half Dies: The Real Reasons for World Hunger reshaped international debates on poverty and hunger, demonstrating how political and economic power – not scarcity – determines who lives in abundance and who suffers deprivation. Across seventeen books and countless essays, she challenged dominant orthodoxies on debt, trade, financialisation and corporate power.
Susan was long associated with the Transnational Institute, serving as its president and later honorary president, and played a foundational role in ATTAC France, advocating for democratic oversight of financial markets. Throughout her work, she insisted that scholarship must serve the public good and stand firmly with those facing injustice.
As a founding member of DiEM25, and on our Advisory Panel, Susan brought wisdom, experience and principled courage to our movement. Her belief that democracy must confront concentrated wealth and power resonates deeply with DiEM25’s mission to democratise Europe and the global economy.
Her voice was one of solidarity with the disadvantaged and underrepresented. As she once wrote, the job of a responsible social scientist is “to uncover forces of wealth, power and control… and to take an advocacy position in favour of the disadvantaged, the underdogs, the victims of injustice.”
We extend our heartfelt condolences to her family, friends and comrades worldwide. Her voice will be profoundly missed, but her ideas, her example and her spirit of resistance will continue to guide our struggle for democracy, dignity and ecological justice.
She will be profoundly missed.
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