Yanis Varoufakis’ full speech at DiEM25’s event in Brussels titled ‘WTF Happened to Europe?’, on the perils the continent is facing, from the rise of the far-right to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza

On March 7, DiEM25 hosted a powerful evening of truth-telling, resistance, and hope in Brussels titled ‘WTF Happened to Europe?‘, a fierce and honest discussion about the major challenges that the continent is currently facing.

Our co-founder, Yanis Varoufakis, was the first to step up to the podium and share his thoughts on the current state of the European Union, including the rise of the far-right, war-mongering politicians, technofeudalism and much more. Here is his speech in full.

Yanis Varoufakis’ full speech in Brussels

Europe is crumbling — neglecting its people, cancelling elections, fuelling wars and xenophobia, empowering a new alliance of ultra-rightists, conservatives, centrists and ‘greens’, leaving the door open to the sirens of Trump and Musk.

Friends, fellow-travellers, comrades, good evening. Good evening Brussels!

We once had a dream. It was a dream of what Europe could have been. A Europe of shared prosperity, dignity, freedom – a Europe of Peace and Hope. That dream is now dead, lost, gone, kaput. Why? What the hell happened to Europe?

We know what happened to Europe!

We know why politicians from all over are descending on Brussels today like manic drones intent on bombarding to smithereens what is left of Europe as a Peace Project – determined to turn the flailing European Union into a War Union.

We know what happened to Europe because we foretold it. When DiEM25 was inaugurated nine years ago at the Volksbühne Theatre in Berlin, we had said it loud and clear: “Europe will be democratised. Or it will disintegrate!” Well, Europe did not democratise and so it is disintegrating – it is degenerating into a Totalitarian War Union.

Austerity for the many and money printing for the few begat stagnation mixed with mind-numbing inequality.

Every time capitalism stagnates and inequality surges, while the official Left joins the centre in a futile attempt to prop up a Bankrupt Liberal establishment, fascism and war are never too far. Just like in the 1930s, two varieties of totalitarianism began to tussle for power.

• On the one side, the Radicalised Neofascist Right promises to make us great again not through ending austerity or exploitation but through a moral reckoning – a cultural cleansing that targets the impure foreign bodies within the pure body of the Nation or of an Ethno-White-Christian-Patriarchal Europe: foreigners, trans, lesbians, Muslims and Jews, especially those who oppose the cleansing benefits of genocide are the enemy within.
• On the other side, the Radicalised Totalitarian Centrists succeeded in retaining their relevance as the only bulwark against the fascists, deepening the crisis that fuels fascism and thus their claim to be our last defence against the fascism that they reinforce – a Perfect Vicious Cycle turbocharging totalitarianism.

Like Tweedledum and Tweedledee, the Radicalised Totalitarian Centrists clash with the Radicalised Neofascist Right, sucking the air out of democratic politics, making totalitarianism great again. Lest we forget:

• We did not have to wait for the fascists to win government before our magnificent July 2015 referendum in Greece was overturned.
• We did not have to wait for the fascists to win government before they fired Melanie Schweizer from her civil service job in Germany for not supporting genocide.
• We did not have to wait for the fascists to win government before they banned me from entering Germany even via Zoom!
• We did not have to wait for the fascists to win government before the Romanian presidential elections were banned because the Radicalised Totalitarian Centrists did not like the result.

The only substantive difference of our times and the 1930s is that Tweedledum (the Radicalised Totalitarian Centrists) and Tweedledee (the Radicalised Neofascist Right) have traded places when it comes to war: Today, somewhat confusingly, it is Tweedledum (the Radicalised Totalitarian Centrists) who are weaponising Military Keynesianism and demand more war and it is Tweedledee (the Radicalised Neofascist Right) who proclaim Peace – a chilling, totalitarian Peace.

Why did we, DiEM25, fail?

Yes, we had foretold all this back in 2015. But that did not stop us from failing to stop it, a cruel reminder that being right is not enough. Why did we fail? Why did we miss the popular wave that favoured our side in 2015, allowing the fascists to exploit the revived thirst for radicalism?

Yes, yes, it is true, we were ruthlessly squeezed between Tweedledum (the Radicalised Totalitarian Centrists) and Tweedledee (the Radicalised Neofascist Right). BUT, we also made some unforced errors:

• We invested too much in Green Keynesianism, forgetting the timeless lesson that, even when it adopts Keynesianism as a last resort, the ruling class will always ditch it once their bottom line recovers – well before the many taste its fruits. Our Green New Deal was never even adopted, except partially in name. Is it any wonder that, In the mind of the struggling many, ‘green’ became synonymous with even lower living standards?
• We also proved unable to liberate people from exploitation, giving them only the freedom to choose their pronouns on our web site – which of course would be fine had it not been so pathetically inadequate in the larger scheme of things. Instead of organising the precariat and auto-workers we ended up organising signifiers, appearing as a self-styled intellectual vanguard enjoying the subversive thrill of an imagined revolution with all the comforts and trappings of a ruling class soiree.
• And last but not least: We thought we could mobilise existing Left and Green parties across Europe, only to discover they were not interested.

What must we now do?

And now? What must we now do? Let’s begin by acknowledging that we are at the end of a forty-year vicious austerity-driven class war and at the beginning of a new cycle of military Keynesianism, weaponised xenophobia, totalitarianism within and technofeudalism all around.

So: It’s time to be bold. Time to be clear on seven crucial issues:

On Peace with Security, and how to end the carnage on the killing fields of Ukraine were lives are devoured with a ruthless, mechanical precision, let us:

• Reject outright Trump’s predatory seizure of Ukraine’s natural resources.
• Campaign to get the whole of Europe out of NATO, immediately!
• Plot a course to a non-aligned, but never neutral, Europe.
• Offering to relax sanctions and return Russia’s $300 billion in frozen assets, commence negotiations with the Kremlin and Beijing on a comprehensive strategic arrangement within which Ukraine becomes what Austria was during the Cold War: sovereign, neutral, and as integrated with Europe as its citizens desire.

On Green Prosperity: Oppose fiercely Military Keynesianism, replacing it with a vast Green Investment Program that combines Development with Degrowth.

On Dignity, campaign for a new Monetary Commons that sidelines private banks, offers a trust fund to all, and guarantees a universal dividend – a basic income – to each.

On Migration, turn the accusation of us being soft on foreigners into a virtue. Shout it from the rooftops that Europe without mass migration will die – that we want migrants not out of solidarity but out of self-interest.

On Combating Technofeudalism, sanction immediately the Cloudalist Tech Lords, restrict Amazon, Uber, Google, Meta, Airbnb, tax them to extinction, impose interoperability, end the ban on European tech companies, like ASML, to export to China, and, above all, develop our own, socialised cloud capital – the stirrings of a magnificent Technosocialism.

On Freedom: Dismantle totalitarianism now. Fight for everyone’s freedom to vote, for the freedom of expression of our enemies too – unlike JD Vance who rightly spoke out against Europe’s descend into censoriousness but never defended Julian Assange’s right to journalism or the free speech of opponents to the Palestinians’ genocide.

Speaking of Palestine and free speech, it is clear now (is it not?) that what started in Gaza does not stay in Gaza! Such brutality couldn’t be contained. To keep it from our media, the streets, our cultural institutions, they had to dissolve basic liberties in the US, in Germany, in France, across the West. That’s why our final, our seventh, campaign must be: Stop the genocide. Get the whole of Europe to Boycott, Divest and Sanction the last Apartheid state – just we did against South Africa.

Friends, fellow-travellers, comrades, we have much to do. The European dream is dead. Long live the new dream we are beginning to dream tonight. Together!

Remember those politicians who, for decades, steadfastly refused to borrow to invest in life – in green energy, education and health – accusing us and our Green New Deal of fiscal irresponsibility? Today, the same politicians shamelessly borrow mountain ranges of money to buy weapons we neither need nor can afford. We have a duty to expose their lamentable hypocrisy.

Remember the rivers of crocodile tears shed over the suffering Ukrainians by politicians who send troops to fight side by side with them? Today, the same politicians are desperate to send more weapons to the exhausted Ukrainians to die, on their own, in some muddy ditch, in an unwinnable war that enriches the likes of Rheinmetall, Leonardo, Thales and British Aerospace. We have a duty to expose them and their lamentable delusions.

We have a duty to make the indisputable case to our people out there against rearming Europe – to help them see that Military Keynesianism is the New Austerity for the many and the new money spinner for the few – that it is madness to think Putin or Trump will be deterred by our new guns and our new bombs whose manufacture will only make life in Europe less safe, nastier, poorer and shorter.

Remember the politicians who waxed lyrical about International Law? We have a duty to take them to the International Criminal Court for normalising genocide in Palestine.

But above all else, we have a duty to inspire our peoples to recognise how utterly feasible it is to democratise the workplace, to socialise housing, money, cloud capital – to re-green our environment, to blow up the phoney electricity markets, to reap out exploitation from society’s engine bay and replace it with cooperation.

At Berlin’s Volksbühne Theatre, on 9^th February 2016, the evening DiEM25 was born, Julian Assange talked to us live from the Ecuadorian Embassy where he was a prisoner. Let me quote verbatim what he said:

“There was a dream. A dream of what Europe could have been. More than a strategic reality, more than an economic reality. And that is the dream that Europe has lost. That collapse in the dream of Europe is something we cannot permit. We must fight against its collapse because, otherwise, winter is coming. War is coming. Seize the day and reverse Europe’s from the course it is on. Or else we are going to have to suffer through a very harsh night.”

Friends, fellow-travellers, comrades, war is here.

We are already suffering that very harsh night.

We have much to do to stop Europe from going gently into this harsh night.

I suggest we start here. Tonight. CARPE DIEM!

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