Wishes for 2024 in the midst of a genocide – a message on behalf of DiEM25

This is Yanis Varoufakis with an end of year message to you all on behalf of DiEM25 – our paneuropean democracy in Europe movement.

This year’s festivities come at a time of a genocide that will stigmatise our generation. Yes, we must look after our loved ones, celebrate their achievements, take care of the ones in need of our attention. But, we cannot celebrate freely when thousands of children are being slaughtered in the ‘Holy Land’ with the full complicity of ‘our’ European Union.

Our leaders, from Mrs von Der Leyen to Olaf Scholz, Emmanuel Macron, even the European Party of the Left, are being criminally complicit – and we – to the extent that we let them, are guilty by association.

Ever since the 7^th of October, when Hamas broke out from the Gaza prison camp – as every Palestinian had a duty to but with acts of atrocious violence against civilians that nothing can justify – the entire European political class has behaved as if morally superior to the Palestinians and to the Israelis – when, in truth, it was Europe that is responsible for centuries of antisemitism, for the holocaust and, since the 1920s, for the Nakba – the steady ethnic cleansing of Palestinians which, today, unfolds as a fully-fledged genocide.

By not intervening to stop the slaughter in Palestine (also in Yemen, in Ukraine, in Nagorno Karabah, in Syria, in Kashmir) Europe is proving that human rights are to us Europeans what the Bible was to the Spanish Inquisition: A cover. A veneer of ethicality to cover up our European settler societies’ brutality.

We, Europeans, have lost sight of a terrible fact: Human rights are 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 neighbourhoods in the Americas, in Britain, in continental Europe. The whole Western litany about human rights is a sham – it is only an excuse to bomb, to kill and to violate those who desperately need human rights – and to do this to them while pretending that we are morally superior.

What is happening today in Gaza, in Ukraine, in Yemen, in Kashmir, in Syria will determine our own capacity to live freely as Europeans in Europe – to live without the fear of oppression or indignity here in Germany, in France, in Greece, in Portugal, in Spain, in Britain.

As Julian Assange continues to rot in Britain’s Guantanamo, because he dared expose to us war crimes committed by our governments in our name, our right to know is shattered.

While the European Central Bank and our governments continue to fund the few who have more money than they know what to do with, while starving the many and denying the planet the necessary investment in the green transition, our own societies are poisoned spiritually and our species’ survival becomes less likely.

With the toxification of our politics and our planet proceeding ever so speedily, 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 and activism, that a democratic, compassionate, and radically progressive Europe is not just possible—that it is here. In DiEM25. In our MERA25 parties in Germany, in Greece, in Italy—soon in other European countries too.

Next June, Europe will be staging another sham European Parliament election. We, DiEM25 and MeRA25, will 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, to expose our rulers’ lies and hypocrisy –  to resonate in there as a first step to liberate your voices out there so that they, your voices, become a surge of reason and humanism that reclaims our continent, our countries, our towns and cities from the oligarchy that feasts on humanity and nature while exporting war and weapons to its former colonies.

In this struggle, to raise hell on behalf of heaven inside the European Parliament, and thus to save our soul, our species and our planet, we need your help.

Your support has been vital in keeping DiEM25’s spirit of democracy and solidarity alive. DiEM25 is fueled by uncommon people, people like yourself, people who demand a different, peace-building Europe where prosperity is common and divorced from the logic of profit. Our resolve and your commitment must walk hand in hand.

Only so will we turn the bogus June 2024 European elections into a useful campaign. Our political parties, MERA25, are geared to do just that.

This holiday season, we ask you to stand with us once again. Your contribution can make a world of difference. Together we can bring DiEM25’s message, your voice, to the floor of the European Parliament. It won’t change Europe by itself. But it will give Europeans a chance, a shot, at reclaiming the right to know, the ability to speak and be heard, and the opportunity to empower the many, not the few.

In the process, as DiEM25 proves at every one of our get-togethers, it will be fun trying. JOIN US! Carpe DiEM25.