In The Eye Of The Storm

IN PRAISE OF FRANCESCA ALBANESE There is a question that visits me in the small hours, when sleep will not come and the mind turns over old stones. The question is this: “What would I have done in the 1930s, on the morning after Kristallnacht?" Not what I say I would have done. Not what I hope I would have done. But what would I actually have done—when the trains began to run, when the neighbours grew quiet, when the cost of decency became the loss of everything? Most of us, I think, would have done little. Not from malice. From fear. From the soft, creeping conviction that someone else will speak, that the situation is complex, that we must be 'reasonable'. Lest we forget, the ordinary is the extraordinary's alibi. And how we have clung to that alibi! How we still cling to it! And then, every once in a terrible while, someone appears who does not cling. Someone who steps forward when others step back. Someone who speaks the name of the thing when everyone else is busy naming something else. Francesca Albanese is that someone. She stands before the world—alone, unarmed, armed only with law and language and a rare courage—and she says what the centrists will not say, what the foreign ministries will not say, what the editorial boards will not say. She says: "This is a genocide. And we are watching it happen." Do not tell me that is hyperbole. Do not tell me the term is contested. She has not used it lightly. She has used it as a physician arrives scientifically at a diagnosis—not to wound, but to warn. Not to inflame, but to name. And for that, they have come for her. Oh, how they have come for her. Smears. Investigations. Vicious editorials. Frozen bank accounts. Dispossession of the only apartment she had ever owned. The machinery of the respectable turned to crush her. Because the respectable cannot abide what she represents: a mirror held up to their complicity. Let us, once again, travel back to the 1930s. Back to the few who stood up when the trains began to run laden with Jewish people. There was Aristides de Sousa Mendes, a Portuguese consul in Bordeaux. He defied his own government. He signed thousands of visas, by hand, for hours, until his fingers bled. He saved more lives than Schindler. And he died penniless, disgraced, erased. There was a German officer in Warsaw named Wilm Hosenfeld. He hid a Jewish pianist in the rubble. He did not save thousands. He saved one. But that one—Władysław Szpilman—carried the memory. And memory is "the only haven from which we cannot be expelled." There was Raoul Wallenberg. There were the villagers of Le Chambon. There were the anonymous, the quiet, the furious few who said: “Not on my watch.” Francesca Albanese is their heir. Not because she carries a gun. Not because she hides refugees in her basement. But because she does something equally dangerous in a world that has perfected the art of not seeing. She sees. And she speaks. She does not speak as a diplomat. Thank Goodness she doesn't! Diplomats have given us the language of "there are arguments on both sides" and "restraint" and "proportionality." Diplomatic language is the perfumed grave of moral clarity. No, she speaks as a jurist. As a human being. As a woman who has looked into the abyss and refused to call it a "complex geopolitical landscape". Edna O'Brien once described a character who "had the recklessness of those who have already lost everything worth losing." Francesca Albanese has not lost everything. She has her dignity, her office, her voice, her family. But she has calculated the cost of speaking truth to power. And she has decided that that cost is infinitely less than the cost of silence. What is that cost? Let us name it. She has been called antisemitic—she, who stands on the ground of international law forged in the ashes of Auschwitz and the fires of Nuremberg. She has been called a conspiracy theorist—she, who cites every source, every footnote, every UN resolution. She has been called naive—she, who understands better than most the machinery of realpolitik. These accusations are not arguments. They are the spittle of the threatened. Because Francesca Albanese threatens something very precious to the powerful: the right to commit atrocity without being named. Friends, the 1930s did not arrive with jackboots and pogroms on day one. They arrived in small increments. With "reasonable" restrictions. With "proportional" measures. With the silence of the respectable. We tell ourselves that we would have been different. That we would have been Sousa Mendes. That we would have been Wallenberg. But most of us, I fear, would have been the neighbours who later said, "I didn't know." Francesca Albanese knows. And she refuses to pretend otherwise. So let us praise her. Not with statues or awards she does not seek. But with something harder: with our own refusal to look away. With our own voices, raised in places that are safe for us but dangerous for her. With our own bodies, if it comes to that. A brave woman, who was injured while demonstrating outside a US nuclear military base in 1982, the infamous Greenham Common, had told me that "the heart is a hunter for what it cannot have." But I say the heart is a hunter for what it will not lose. And what we will not lose is the memory of those who stood up when standing up cost everything. Francesca Albanese is standing up now. In our time. In our name. Under our indifferent sky. Let us stand with her. Not tomorrow. Not when it is safe. Now. [Extract from a speech in Athens on Sunday 3rd May 2026]

People ask me: “How can they indict you for saying you took an ecstasy pill 36yrs ago in Australia? Are they mad?” No, folks, they are not mad. This has nothing to do with drugs, with the law, with anything related to my actual interview. It is a reflection of what has been happening to politics across the West, with Greek characteristics. Unlike in most other European countries, where new ultra-rightist parties emerged to undermine the traditional centre-right party (e.g., the AfD in Germany, Reform in the UK, Meloni’s Brothers in Italy or Le Pen in France), in Greece the mainstream Tory-equivalent party (New Democracy) remains dominant in the polls and in public discourse. The reason behind their success is that they kept the neofascists in their midst. Indeed, Mitsotakis, the PM, gave them top ministerial posts (e.g., Health, Migration) to keep them sweet. Keen to ensure that things stay this way, and that the neofascists do not form their own party, the PM has cut a deal with them: The PM and his neoliberal mainstream faction monopolise financial deals with the local and global corporate oligarchy, economic policy more generally. In exchange, the PM has handed over to the neofascists the ministries engaged in rightist culture wars (migration, family law, health, the phoney war on drugs etc.). The latter then use their authority to appeal to their electoral base by ensuring that the Greek Coast Guard causes migrants to drown in the Aegean, that the police shield the fascists, and that people like myself are harassed and dragged through the courts. In short, my ridiculous prosecution must be seen within the wider, West-wide, surge of an insidious new form of fascism. In this context, I am honoured by their determination to persecute me – as it grants me the privilege of calling upon people of good conscience, from around the world, to stand together, to oppose them. nytimes.com/2026/02/25/world…

POWER, CAPITALISM AND THE RISE OF FASCISM. The explosive 6-part docuseries, 'In The Eye Of The Storm: A Political Odyssey' is available now! "Compulsive viewing" KEN LOACH 10% off on Vimeo with code: storm2025 eyeofthestorm.info/

Israeli propaganda hides behind the specious argument that the flotilla "chooses to enter a war zone, to violate prohibited security zones." The Israeli gvt spokesperson said that "the military will take necessary steps to block its entry to the combat zone and enforce the lawful naval blockade. They lie shamelessly, as usual. The flotilla's ships are not entering a war zone or prohibited security zones. Last night, they were sailing in international waters south of Crete, where they were subjected to criminal harassment, with explosives and chemicals, by swarms of Israeli drones – attacks that fall under the legal definition of piracy. As for their final destination, they are heading towards a site of genocide on land (Gaza) that Israel is illegally occupying – and which the International Court of Justice, in June 2024, ordered Israel to evacuate. jns.org/israel-accuses-gaza-…

'In the Eye of the Storm — A Political Odyssey' is now available to watch at: eyeofthestorm.info Opening with a whistleblowing account of his epic battle with the European Union, economist turned politician Yanis Varoufakis weaves a gripping narrative about the fate of our civilisation in this groundbreaking six-part series, joining the dots between the spectre of fascism, the crisis of capitalism, and the historic climate challenge. "Insanely watchable. A work of art!” SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK "Profound... A wonderful documentary. So powerful!" NAOMI KLEIN " A masterclass in economics and oratory - essential viewing." HOT DOCS "A beacon of light and truth telling . . .Illuminating." GABOR MATÉ “Absolutely brilliant - totally compelling and hugely urgent. I hope everyone watches this!” CAROLINE LUCAS MP “If Europe is to survive, it will need to pay more attention to democrats and idealists like Varoufakis.” WASHINGTON POST

Ten years after the majestic, globally significant, yet betrayed NO Referendum of the Greek people – a personal message: On 5th of July 2015 the Greek people voted overwhelmingly in a referendum to say a big, beautiful NO to the Big Business and Big Finance who, through their centre right and centre left political representatives, were demanding of the Greek people that they shoulder the costs of the banking crisis which Big Business and Big Finance had caused, with the result that hundreds of millions of people in Europe and America were crushed under mountain ranges of banking losses which governments then turned into public debt, before shifting it to the shoulders of the weakest of citizens through universal austerity – the working classes, the poor, the elderly, the young, the women, people who lacked the power to defend themselves from the powerful plucking the very moneytree whose existence they denied. Churchill once said of the battle of El Alamein that, before it, the Allies had never won but that, after it, they never lost again. I could say something similar about that splendid and, at once, tragic day, of the Greek NO Referendum ten years ago today – the day when 62% of Greek voters ignored the financial terrorism of the European Central Bank (which had shut down the Greek banks to blackmail voters to accept the terms of surrender they were dictating to the Greek people). That same day when my former comrade, the PM I was serving as finance minister on behalf of the Greeks who were resisting, trashed their verdict and defected to the Big Finance and the Big Business in the name of the left. Before that day, before the magnificent NO Referendum outcome of 5th July 2015, and during the months and years leading to it, we could not imagine losing in the long run our fights against the Big Finance and the Big Business that blew up our social economies in 2008. But after it, since the PM I was serving under overturned our people and betrayed their referendum verdict, we cannot imagine winning ever again, at least not in our lifetimes, against the Big Finance and the Big Business whom the betrayal of the NO Referendum helped recover. It was THAT significant a day. It was THAT significant a defection. Now, I know it is not the done thing to sully the spirit of one’s fellow travellers, one’s comrades, to say things like that - to surrender in public to the admission not only of the size of our defeat but also of the possibility that we may not win again for the foreseeable future. Alas, now is the time for honesty – for without honesty amongst rebels no rebellion worth its salt can be staged. Indulge me friends, fellow travellers, comrades. My point is not to bring you down. My point is to acknowledge where we are not just in Greece, in Germany, in Britain, in Europe but globally. To take stock properly of our situation globally not to mourn nor for some perverted sense of inverted glory, certainly not for gain, but for the simple, stubborn hope of rising again. Somewhere to the North of where I am talking you from, the killing fields of Ukraine are devouring lives with a ruthless, mechanical precision. Where is the Peace Movement to stop this? Nowhere really. Instead Europe is sinking fast into Military Keynesianism, with large majorities in our parliaments voting for unspeakable amounts of new debt to go to weapons of mass destruction we neither need nor can afford – and certainly weapons that people with the slightest of sense left in their hearts and minds should not want. Meanwhile, needless to say, from my southeast, from the scorched land of Palestine, the acrid stench of genocide drifts on the wind. Yes, we have staged magnificent marches on our streets. Yes, our people have marched to Gaza, other comrades risked life and limb to sail to that coastal war crime scene. Yes we have made it possible to speak of the genocide without being treated as buffoons. Yes, we have shifted public opinion. But, nothing is changing on the ground where Palestinian life is eradicated at a steady, at an unbearable rate, or in the corridors of power. Where are the sanctions on Israel? Where is the UN Peacekeeping force that should have been parachuted in to stop the genocide in its tracks? Nowhere. The only people that are hounded are people like the UN’s Special Rapporteur, my friend Francesca Albanese, for daring to report on the political economy of genocide. Why has Brazil, Spain or Ireland, countries whose governments have been supportive of the Palestinians not joined the Hague Group that our Progressive International has brought together to isolate Israel? What are they waiting for? Friends, fellow-travellers, comrades, at the risk of saddening, maybe even angering you, I shall say it again: Since that NO referendum was overturned ten years ago, today, by the left’s own leadership, we are losing at every front. Who is winning? Not the liberal authoritarian establishment – Emmanuel Macron, Keir Starmer, Friedrich Merz. No the pro-genocide radical centre they sensationally unpopular. Even if they are clinging onto power for the time being, they are thoroughly discredited, despised even. No, the winners nest elsewhere in even uglier echelons of the political spectrum. Have you not smelled its smell? Can’t you smell the fascism in the air? Can’t you feel its sour, metallic taste clinging to the back of your throat? What happened to our great hopes? Remember Woman-Life-Freedom? The whispered three-word promise Kurdish heroines carried like a fragile beacon in their hands, a promise that until recently seemed to shimmer just within reach? Well, take a look at the triumphant Donald Trump on the one hand – yes, he is winning on every front – and the pathetic Kamala Harris, or the even more pathetic Hillary Clinton, on the other. Between them, willingly in Trump’s case, they created the manosphere’s unyielding juggernaut, which trampled upon Woman-Life-Freedom, as if these precious little words, had never been spoken at all. Authoritarianism, that most insidious of plagues, has crept into every sinew of life. Along with the smell of pollution in the air, microplastics in our oceans, the insidious power of cloud capital hardwired into our brains, delivering our minds to the whims of our new techlords – this New Global Ecocidal Hyper-Exploitative Ruling Class is entrenching itself as the new order, its cold grip tightening with each passing day. I don’t know about you but, speaking personally, on this, the 10th anniversary of our Great Victory which was turned overnight into the Great Betrayal, it is ever so easy to surrender to the feeling, the sensation, that my political struggles, fuelled by a fierce and unyielding hope, are taking me from one defeat to the next, making me feel like a character in some twisted simulation, doomed to repeat the same futile actions over and over. BUT, I shall not surrender. And nor will you! Acknowledging our defeats, the overwhelming strength of the monsters in power, and the magnitude of the task, needs to be done so that we ground our disobedience, our activism, our sacred campaigns for Humanity and for Nature, on solid ground. So that we learn from the past, from what happened to the brave Greek people 10 years ago to this day, focussing with laser sharp precision not only on the economics and the politics of what needs to be done but, much more so, on the greatest solvent, the ugliest enemy, of solidarity: The tendency of our own side, our own comrades, to be lured by power into defecting to the other side – to the oligarchs who are ever so eager to co-opt us, to co-opt our leading figures especially. So, on behalf of DiEM25, today, the 5th of July 2025, exactly 10 years after the Greek people’s majestic, betrayed, but inspiringly courageous NO – that ethereal revolutionary little word – a word redolent of the only Freedom that matters, the freedom to turn down exploitative, extractive deals. On this day, I bid you farewell. Battle well, and let us all, grounded on facts, work joyously to devise acts that make the fascists, the radical centre, the genocide practitioners and the purveyors of all types of exploitation lose their sleep at night so that the many can dream again.

It seems that our rulers, here in the 'liberal' West, have homed in on a new way of turning a person into a non-person. Here is a man, Hüseyin Doğru, a German journalist (of Turkish origins, but not a dual citizen) whom the EU authorities have found a novel, immensely cruel, way of punishing for his coverage of, and views on, Palestine. The German authorities learned a lesson from my case. Not wishing to be answerable in court for any ban on pro-Palestinian voices (similar to the court case I am dragging them through currently), they found another way: A direct sanction by the EU utilising some hitherto unused directive, one introduced at the beginning of the Ukraine war, that allows Brussels to sanction any citizen of the EU it deems to be working for Russian interests. Clinging to the argument that Hüseyin’s website/podcast used to be shown also on Ruptly (among other platforms), they are using this directive aimed at an ‘anti-Russian asset’ to destroy a journalist who dared oppose the Palestinian genocide. In practice, this means that Hüseyin’s bank account is frozen; that if you or I were to give him cash to buy groceries or make rent then we would be considered his accomplices and subject to similar sanctions; it also means that if he were a civil servant, he would be fired; if he were a student he would be expelled from his university; if he received a pension it would be suspended; if he received any social benefit it would be frozen. It also, astonishingly, means that he cannot leave Germany! Last, but definitely not least, it means that Hüseyin cannot sue his government for turning him into a non-person but only challenge the European Commission in Brussels – where he is not even allowed to go! Need I say more? Is it not abundantly clear that we live, today, in a nominally liberal Europe where, in a jiffy, your political and human rights can be rescinded, including your right to challenge your government in a court of law? youtube.com/watch?v=MZ0l78jI…

Nothing impresses more than the current European leadership's inexhaustible capacity to humiliate themselves so as to retain the right to be Trump's vassal... ft.com/content/ce9eb7e4-7989…

Chuffed that 'Raise Your Soul' is coming out. At the heart of this new book are five women who resisted authoritarianism, fought fascism and taught me how to confront the male chauvinist within. Their stories begin in 1923 in Egypt and in Greece but then meander across Britain and America all the way to today. If I chose to tell the story of Eleni (my mother), Anna (my dad’s mother), Trisevgeni (my mother’s mother), Georgia (my daughter’s great grandmother) and Danae (my partner in everything), it is because writing their intimate history raised my soul during a time when resurgent authoritarians promise to make us great again if only we submit to their hideous authority, not to mention a time sullied by war, genocide and the manosphere. I hope that reading about these five women will also raise your soul, at least a little.