On February 15, as world leaders convened at the Munich Security Conference, thousands gathered in the streets to voice their opposition to militarism and endless war.

The Action Alliance Against the NATO Security Conference organised a powerful peace march and rally, bringing together activists, academics, and concerned citizens to call for a different vision of security – one based on justice, diplomacy, and solidarity.

Among the speakers was DiEM25 co-founder Yanis Varoufakis who addressed the crowd with a forceful critique of Europe’s increasing militarisation and the political elites who fuel it. He denounced the prioritisation of arms deals over peace efforts and warned against the erosion of international law. The rally served as a defiant reminder that another path is possible – one that rejects war as inevitable and demands a future built on cooperation rather than conflict.

Here is Yanis Varoufakis’ speech in full

Friends, Germans, citizens from all over, sisters and brothers,

We once had a dream. It was the dream of what Europe could have been: More than a strategic alliance. More than a single market. More than a common budget. More than common money in our wallets. It was the dream of Europe as a Peace and Justice Project. That dream has gone, evaporated, forgotten in the cold hard light in which we have woken up to.

Fifteen years ago, the economic crisis led to austerity for the majority across Europe and massive state support for Big Finance and Big Business. It was the End of Justice and the beginning of Europe’s long winter, of Germany’s long winter – the winter of deindustrialisation, stagnation, of a vicious class war waged by very few ultra-rich people against the many in every country on our continent.

And then, once the dream of Justice and Solidarity had vanished, the inevitable happened. New dark war clouds began to amass, as they always do when Fear and Discontent dissolve the dream of Peace and Justice.

Europe then became ripe for a grim harvest. Sandwiched between two authoritarianisms, the authoritarianism of Mr Putin, who until then was the West’s best friend, and the authoritarianism of the American military-industrial complex, a Europe that was no longer able to dream of Peace with Justice, Europe was easy meat in that authoritarian sandwich.

As war spread its dark wings, the injustice grew and the weak many suffered more and more. To stop their victims from questioning them, the ruling class terrorise the people. You heard Herr Pistorius, your defence minister, say that Putin is the new Hitler; you heard them portray us, peace activists, as Putin’s appeasers – presenting us as Putin’s useful idiots. I ask Mr Pistorius, Mrs von der Leyen, Herr Mertz:

“If you truly think that Putin is no different to Hitler (which, by the way, Nazis love to hear you say because it truly exonerates Hitler)… If you truly believe that, why are you not sending German, French, Italian, Spanish, British, American, Australian, Canadian and Greek soldiers immediately to take Moscow and drag Putin through a New Nuremberg Trial or at least force him to commit suicide in a Moscow bunker? Do you not see how cowardly it is to send weapons to Ukraine and to expect exhausted Ukrainians to take Moscow, or even the Crimea?”

The truth is that our rulers do not really think Putin is the new Hitler. After all, they did excellent business with him for decades. No, they are in the business of a never-ending, extremely lucrative war. That’s what they want. Having failed to invest in green technologies, in electric vehicles, in AI and Big Tech, Europe’s ruling class is banking on guns and bombs, on drones and iron domes, on missiles and imbecilic arguments. And they want to spend your money on them. And if this means endless deaths in the killing fields of Ukraine, they don’t care.

Friends, Germans, demonstrators from all over, comrades,

Since we were here last year, there have been two major developments: The International Criminal Court has acknowldeged the genocide of Palestinians and issued arrest warrants for the Israeli PM and his former Defence Minister. And Donald Trump has returned to the White House openly advocating the completion of the Palestinians’ genocide.

Why am I talking about Palestine again here in Munich again? Why this fixation with Palestine? First, because if this were 1938 and it was the morning after Kristallnacht, we would have only one duty: to defend the Jewish people from Nazi pogroms. Today we have a similar duty to defend the Palestinian people from genocide. But there is also a more self-interested reason:

What started in Gaza will not stay in Gaza! The utter brutality cannot be contained, especially when our leaders gave the green light to the strong to do as they pleased to the weak – guaranteeing it was only a matter of time before the same might-is-right mentality spreads like a deadly virus to our countries, to our societies, to our neighbourhoods.

The moment Europe provided the colonial supremacists the green light to commit genocide, with our weapons and their flag projected on our Parliaments, the ideology of white, patriarchal supremacism was reinforced here in Germany, in the Netherlands, in Greece, in Spain, in Italy. You can see this in the polls and I fear you will see it on election night soon, here in Germany.

Eighty years after defeating the Nazis…

Eighty years after instituting international law to outlaw ethnic cleansing, to ban targeting civilian populations for whatever reason, to prohibit forced population movements…

Eighty years since the peoples’ representatives gathered in the United Nations to proclaim NEVER AGAIN.

it is happening AGAIN! With our governments’ blessing…

By allowing international law to die in Palestine, they killed international law everywhere, including here in Germany. For international law either applies to everyone or it applies to no one.

Today, Scholtz and Merz, Baerbock, von der Leyen and Kalas, Macron, Rutte and Stoltenberg have opened the gates of Europe to the barbarism of might-is-right, to the bastard of bankrupt pseudo-liberalism also known as fascism.

 This is why we are here in Munich today.

To say once more: NEVER AGAIN! ANYWHERE!

To tell the fools in government

• who behave as if the despicable crimes of the Holocaust can be washed clean in rivers of Palestinian blood
  
• who think that the authoritarianism of Putin will be stemmed by the dead bodies of more and more Ukrainians

Tell them that they shall not pass – that we are here to stop them – that we are here to seize the day, today, so that, tomorrow, we can dream a new dream of Peace with Justice.

Carpe DiEM!

Do you want to be informed of DiEM25's actions? Sign up here