Yanis Varoufakis is a Greek economist and politician who briefly served as the Greek Minister of Finance from January to July 2015 under Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras.
In a new essay, he addresses a problem socialists often meet with. Varoufakis explains,
"Over the years, I have suffered immense discomfort when people whose analyses at least partly resonated with my own suddenly revealed themselves as fascist anti-Semites, unreconstructed Stalinists, loony libertarians, or, more recently, Trumpists. Fine treatises exposing bankers' shenanigans degenerated into vile attacks on Jews. Critiques of the Gilded Age of early financialized capitalism turned into paeans for Uncle Joe. Forensic analyses of our central banks' propensity to play fast and loose with our money concluded with crackpot cryptocurrency proposals redolent of the dangerous libertarian idea of apolitical money. And, last but not least, perfectly reasonable reproaches of "liberal" imperialism, or of the liberal establishment's contempt for blue-collar workers, became calls for erecting border walls, hounding brown people, or invading Congress."
In regards to recent events in Iran, he points out,
"For years, I despaired that nothing can save the international left from the blind spots which cause progressives to lose our way time and again. Until now. The new Iranian revolution offers the international left an excellent opportunity.
The women, students, and workers rising up across Iran are adamant: They will neither submit to the fascism hidden behind the regime's pseudo-anti-imperialism nor surrender their country to the hegemony of the US or their economy to financialized capital.
They are learning the hard way how to refuse misleading binary oppositions (neoliberalism-statism, imperialism-autocracy, patriarchy-consumerism). I hope and trust that they can teach us to do likewise. It is another reason why we must support their struggle."
The full essay can be read here
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