Hello.
This is Yanis Varoufakis with an end of the year message
on behalf of everyone at DiEM25,
our pan European Democracy in Europe Movement,
to all of you.
This year's festivities come in the midst
of a genocide that will stigmatise a
whole generation.
Yes.
At this time of year, like throughout
the year, we must look after our loved ones,
celebrate their achievements,
take care of our nearest and dearest who
need our attention.
But we can't celebrate freely while thousands
of children are being slaughtered in the
Holy Land with the full complicity of
our European Union.
Our leaders from Von der Leyen to Olaf Scholz
and Manuel Macron, even the European Party of the Left,
are being criminally complicit.
And, by the way, so are we by associatio,
to the extent that we let them.
Ever since the seventh of October, when Hamas
broke out of the Gaza prison camp, as every
Palestinian has a duty to, but with acts of
atrocious violence that can never be justified.
Since then, the entire European political class
has behaved as morally superior to
both Palestinians and Israelis,
when in truth,
it was Europe that has been responsible
for centuries long antisemitism,
for the holocaust.
And since the 1920’s, the Nakba,
the steady, systematic ethnic cleansing of
Palestinians, an ethnic cleansing, which today
unfolds as a fully fledged genocide.
By not intervening to stop the slaughter in Gaza,
in the West Bank, but also in Yemen, in Ukraine,
in Syria, in Kashmir,
Europe is proving that human rights are to us
that which the Bible was to the Spanish inquisition,
a cover, a veneer of ethicality
with which to cover up our European settler
imperialist society's utter brutality.
We, Europeans, have lost sight of
a terrible fact.
Human rights are precisely that which
Europe and the United States never intended
to grant the oppressed.
To those who needed them,
in the Middle East, in Africa, in Asia,
but also in our depressed working class areas
in Europe, in Britain, in the United States,
in the West.
The whole Western litany about human rights is a sham.
It is only an excuse to bomb, to shoot,
and to violate those who actually
need human rights.
And to do this to them while pretending
that we're somehow morally superior.
What is happening today in Gaza, in Kashmir,
in Yemen, in Syria, in Nagorno Karabakh, will
determine our capacity as Europeans to live
freely in our own countries in Europe.
To live without fear of oppression or indignity
here in Greece, in Germany, in France,
in Spain, in Portugal, in Britain, in Ireland.
As Julian Assange continues to rot away
in solitary in Britain's Guantanamo for having
dared to expose to us the crimes of our
governments committed in our name against our
interest, our right to know has been shattered.
While the European Union continues to fund the
few who have more money than they know what to do with,
while starving the many and refusing
to fund the green transition without which
there will be no future.
Our own societies are being poisoned
spiritually, and our species' survival
becomes less likely.
With the toxification of our politics and
our planet proceeding so swiftly, it is
easy to lose hope, to give up, no longer
to look up, but this is not inevitable.
DiEM25 proves, by our very
existence, our activism that a democratic,
compassionate, and radically progressive
Europe is not just possible, but that it
is here in DiEM25, in our political parties, MERA25,
here in Greece, in Germany, in Italy,
soon in other countries.
Next June, Europe is going to be staging
another sham European parliament election.
We, DiEM25 and MERA25, our political parties,
are going to be running, not because the European Parliament
can change anything in itself,
but because your voice must resonate in its chamber.
It must be amplified in there so that it can
be heard loud and clear out there across Europe.
So that our voices, your voices, can expose
our rulers' lies and hypocrisy.
To resonate in there as a first step towards liberating
your voices so that they can together become
a surge of reason and humanism, a surge that
reclaims our continent, our countries, our
cities, our villages, our neighborhoods.
From whom?
From the oligarchy, who feast on humanity and
nature in the interest of profit and, of course,
from exporting arms, weapons to
their former colonies.
In this struggle to raise hell in the
European Parliament on behalf of heaven
and, therefore, to save our souls, our
species, our planet.
We need your help.
Your support has been central, essential
in keeping DiEM25 alive in terms of our
operations, the spirit of our democracy,
our mission, our campaign.
DiEM25 has been, for years now, fueled
by uncommon people like your good self,
people who demand a different peace loving Europe.
A Europe whose prosperity is common
and divorced from the logic of profit.
For that, our resolve and our commitment
must walk hand in hand.
Only so will we turn this bogus sham of
an election for the European Parliament
into a useful campaign.
Our political parties, MERA25, are geared
to do exactly that.
So on this holiday season, we ask you to
stand with us again.
Your contribution can make all the difference.
Together, we can bring DiEM25's message, voice,
to the floor of the European Parliament.
That won't change Europe by itself, but it will
give Europeans a chance, a shot at reclaiming
the right to know and to be heard, an important
opportunity to empower the many, not the few.
In the process, and since this is the
festive season, let me add that as DiEM25
has proven in all our get togethers,
we can do this.
We can do what is right by Europeans
and by the world and by the planet while
having fun as well.
So a happy holiday season for everyone.
Carpe diem.