Recalling his own ban from Germany, Yanis Varoufakis examines how dissenting voices are increasingly shut out rather than challenged

Last year, my friend Hasan Piker addressed the Oxford Union. He spoke cogently on the rise of anti-Semitism, fascism and the dangerous conflation between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.

This coming Friday, The Econoclasts (that is, Wolfgang Munchau and I) were to host him at a live event at the Kings Cross Town Hall.

Alas, the Keir Starmer government decided to ban Hasan from entering the UK. Why? Without even saying so explicitly, they hinted at Hasan’s… anti-Semitism!

Join the club Hasan – your ban brings back memories of two years ago when I was banned from entering Germany for the hideous crime of organising, alongside German Jews, a conference on the ultra-subversive topic of the ‘A Just Peace in the Middle East’.

These days, it seems, you are banned as an anti-Semite if you oppose the Palestinian genocide and the ideology that drives it.

And, as Freddie tweeted just now, your being silenced leaves those who purport to value free speech above all else utterly unperturbed.

Such are the ‘interesting’ times we are enduring…

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