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April 16, 2024 - 3:00pm
Shutting down this year’s National Conservative conference in Brussels is a symptom of Europe’s slide into farcical authoritarianism, Yanis Varoufakis has claimed.
“It is an attempt to ban a conference simply because the authorities didn’t like what was being said in it,” the former Greek finance minister told UnHerd. “My view is that Europe is sliding ever so fast towards a quagmire of farcical authoritarianism. It may be a farce when history repeats itself but it can be just as atrocious, evil and misanthropic as the first time.”
This morning, police in Brussels reportedly shut down the NatCon event, which featured a litany of Right-wing populists such as Nigel Farage, Viktor Orbán and Éric Zemmour, after the city’s mayor instructed authorities to stop the conference. The police entered while Farage was delivering a keynote speech, with the former Ukip leader telling the audience: “I understand the police are very keen to shut this down. Well, in that case they can do it while I’m still on stage.”
“I’m no political friend of Nigel Farage but I would hate it if anyone like Nigel was prevented from speaking merely because he may say things that may annoy, among other people, myself,” said Varoufakis. “Unless we return to basic liberal values and stop wanting to be triggered by the arguments of our opponents, we stand no chance of navigating a decent course through the various landmines of authoritarianism.”
Varoufakis’s exclusive comments to UnHerd come as the DiEM25 co-founder faces a ban of his own. Earlier this month, the German Ministry of the Interior issued a ban against the 63-year-old after the police shut down the Palestine Congress that was set to take place in Berlin on 12 April. It entails not only a ban on entry into Germany, but also a prohibition on any form of online participation and activity at political events in the country. Varoufakis published his speech in full on X shortly after.
“This ban means that there must be a complete cessation of all political activity,” Varoufakis claimed, “which is not just a ban on my entry into Germany but also a prohibition to send a video message there”.
The politician tied his ban with ongoing events in Brussels, arguing that the attempts to censor free speech were a sign of an increasingly authoritarian EU. Weeks after his own conference was shut down, NatCon organisers faced a similar challenge when its chosen venue pulled out after anti-fascist groups threatened to protest.
“I think we’re past the point of no return of the European Union,” warned Varoufakis. “I am throwing my arms up, but not surrendering […] Whether Left or Right, those who believe in some basic human decency and political liberties should resist.”
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Subscribe“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
George Orwell
The far right. You can’t see them, you can’t hear them, there’s no tangible evidence that they exist at all.
Yet every day we see more evidence of how much our society has been taken over by the far left.
We are all far right now. https://youtu.be/LsbRrTULpgA?si=17KzoOYlVE6hNQYI
Try telling that to the majority of Muslims in the UK. How old was the prophet’s last wife ?
Give it a rest! Plenty of European monarchs married while either they or the wife were underage. Standard procedure for rulers. If you want to complain about ‘the prophet’, try hitting on what he said, not on his dynastic marriages.
Why? Do you think words are more important than actions?
9 year’s old ?
Wrong.
As a random example, (from Juliet Barker’s “Agincourt”) around 1414 Catherine, daughter of the duke of Burgundy, was married to Louis, son of the Duke of Anjou, when she was ten years old and he was even younger. ‘Dynastic marriages’, as I said.
Do not confuse the king with the prophet!
He wasn’t a monarch, just a very naughty boy.
Umm, Maymuna bint al-Harith was in her late 30s when she married him.
Ayesha was ten years old, approximately, when she married The Prophet, who was in his 50s.
There were no ostensible dynastic nor political reasons for their marriage.
Aisha wasn’t the Prophet’s last wife.
Read what Mike said.
Cf. Voltaire.
That’s why young people don’t like liberty.
Holy holy crap!!! Europe is truly descending into authoritarianism. If this type of action is not condemned by everyone of every political stripe, I truly fear for the future of democracy.
Rishi Sunak and Lord Cameron have plenty to say about Israel, which is nothing to do with them, but will have nothing to say about a near neighbour shutting down a peaceful conference involving senior mainstream British politicians, including the woman Sunak made Home Secretary. Truly, the lights are going out on democracy all over Europe.
‘The UK PM’s spokeswoman called reports of police action “extremely disturbing”.
She said that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was a “strong supporter and advocator for free speech” and that he was “very clear that cancelling events or preventing attendance and no-platforming speakers is damaging to free speech and to democracy as a result”.’
He’s not wrong. When inconvenient voices are being shut down by govt, it’s hard to take official talk about “democracy” seriously. One of the anomalies of our time is the number of people who claim to value freedom but are willing to curtail it for certain groups.
It’s “our” Democracy, not yours.
I voted Brexit because, it seemed at the time that the EU was grossly anti-democratic; ignoring referenda and being very remote from the people it governed. Now, since we left, the British Government has truly disappointed me; COVID authoritarianism, hate speech, cronyism in the House of Lords.
They haven’t yet gone this far.
This is undoubtedly extreme totalitarianism. It is absurd that peaceful conferences by individuals posing no threat of violence are shut down while the authorities are all too complacent about violent and disruptive demonstrations that are tolerated provided they meet some woke approval criterion.
We all remember the sequence: first they came for the Communists but as I wasn’t a Communist I didn’t say anything, then they came for the Jews but as I wasn’t a Jew.. etc ending with my arrest and there was no one to speak up for me.
Hit-ler tried socialism of the right, Stalin tried socialism of the left. Both ended as totalitarians overseeing brutality and blood. Both, on reflection, were very, very, bad ideas.
Now it appears that, not having learn’t anything from history, recent and well documented though it might be, that socialism of the centre wants to have a go.
Early signs of an improvement on the first two do not seem very auspicious.
I’d say both were totalitarians from the start, and couldn’t have done what they did without being totalitarian. If the EU is starting on a totalitarian path then that is the worrying aspect.
As an anti-democratic, unaccountable bureaucracy whose primary aim is to expand its own power, the EU was doomed from the start to totalitarianism.
Poor old Varis; after Brexit he said he thought the EU could still be reformed for the better; then, after the Northern Ireland vaccine fiasco from Auntie Ursula, he changed position; later he changed back and now he has adopted the other position again.
What’s it to be next week, for the leather-clad denizen of the left ?
You know, these “far right” ideas they are trying to shut down seem to be becoming more mainstream everyday.
The Cass Report vindicated “far right” opinion that thought you shouldn’t pump confused young kids full of hormones to fix some non-existent problem.
Us “far-righters” who think people can’t change sex and who want to keep women’s sports, prisons and refuges man-free seem to be winning the argument.
The idea that it is mass immigration that is driving up house prices and rents and over-stretching public services and infrastructure was dismissed as a myth a year ago. Now it is a commonplace.
Ditto the idea that importing lots of foreigners brings the old prejudices and hatreds of their natives lands to the streets of Britain, which is now widely held.
Everybody suddenly seems to now agree with the once “far right” view that locking down society is not the best way to cope with a virus that is only dangerous to 80 year olds.
Or that it is acceptable to force people to take experimental vaccines against their will.
I suspect pretty soon the “far right” view that the British Empire did more good than harm will soon be normal. “Far right” admiration for things like the industrial revolution, the Scottish Enlightenment, the spreading of Anglicanism, parliamentary democracy and Shakespeare, defeating Napoleon and the Kaiser and Hitler and ending the slave trade may become centrist once again.
We are even starting to see the “far right” view that cheap, stable and plentiful energy supplies are more important than “de-carbonisation” move to the centre ground. Who knows? Soon “far right” Nobel Laureates might be able to question the global warming data without being compared to holocaust deniers.
Or indeed ‘far right’ sitting MPs may be able to raise concerns about vaccine harms without being called holocaust deniers and expelled from their (rapidly sinking without trace) party.
Given, as the Belgian PM has said, that freedom of assembly and freedom of speech is protected under Belgian law, my assumption is a massive judicial review will take place in the near future over this one local mayor’s decision. I hope he has the paper trail to be able to explain to a court how he justified the decision.
Be careful not to conflate an idiotic, self defeating decision by a local Mayor as broader Policy. Hopefully the publicity generated will result in better protections. Not heard a senior UK or European politician defend this stupidity.
Of course it was also idiotic as it gave the Nat Cs a story when the whole thing was otherwise a big bore. When questioned of course Nige struggled with whether he’d also have had a word with Victor Orban about his interference in the media and free speech.
Sohrab Ahmadi pointed out that there was a large anti-Orban demonstration in Budapest last week and there was no police interference whatsoever. Go to Rod Dreher’s Substack and scroll down to find it. Typical anti-Orban lies.
https://roddreher.substack.com/p/between-caliphate-and-dictatorship
Perhaps more a sign of an increasingly desperate EU? Trying to hold ‘the centre’ together and keep the gravy train on the rails, despite all the contrary influences undermining the Project?
How old-fashioned he sounds – a leftie who defends freedom of expression! He’ll cut no ice with the young ones, with their totalitarian drive to impose the reign of correctness.
I don’t often agree with Varoufakis’s solutions, but I can’t fault his analyses. I heard him at Adelaide Writers Week, where he was as incisive and entertaining as usual on the subject of Technofeudalism.
I voted Remain, but what would I do if a push to rejoin came up by an upcoming Labour Government?
I see some French Uni banned Melenchon’s pro-Palestinian event. Left and right unite and fight!