Berniefakis vs. Bannovini: Progressives unite to take down establishment, fend off Bannon & Co
Former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis said he and US Senator Bernie Sanders will in a month formally launch a left-wing counterpart to the nationalist movement being forged by Steve Bannon.
A Sanders-Varoufakis team-up was suggested in an recent op-ed by the Greek economist published by the Guardian. The formal creation of Progressives International is to happen in Sanders’ home state of Vemont on November 30, Varoufakis announced during a press conference in Rome on Friday.
Bernie Sanders will team up with former Greek finance minister yanis Varoufakis to form a “progressives international” later this month, Varoufakis announces from Rome. pic.twitter.com/LbDMJuSos0
— J. Lester Feder (@jlfeder) October 26, 2018
Varoufakis, who led tough negotiation with European lenders in 2015 before resigning after Athens agreed to EU’s austerity terms, says the world today is facing a crisis of leadership similar to what Europe saw in the 1930s. With the establishment failing the common people, populist nationalist forces are rising to power, offering quick and simple solutions to problems like social inequality, loss of jobs to countries with cheaper labor and mass migration. Steven Bannon, the former strategist for the Donald Trump 2016 campaign, is currently trying to unite such right-wing forces in various nations into a global movement.
Our Progressive International movement will fight, at once, two authoritarianisms: The National International and the Financialised Globalists who paved the ground for them – Yanis Varoufakis & Bernie Sanders in THE GUARDIAN (13th September 2018) https://t.co/17wa3uNSf4
— Yanis Varoufakis (@yanisvaroufakis) September 14, 2018
For Varoufakis figures like Bannon, Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini, Hungarian President Viktor Orban and others pose a threat similar to the fascist movements of the 1930s, according to his Guardian op-ed. He and potential allies like Sanders or UK’s Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn can offer an alternative way out of the crisis, he believes. But if they are to succeed in a struggle for power against both the globalist establishment and the nationalists, they need to unite across borders.
“The financiers are internationalists. The fascists, the nationalists, the racists – like Trump, Bannon, [German Interior Minister Horst] Seehofer, Salvini — they are internationalists,” Varoufakis told BuzzFeed News. “They bind together. The only people who are failing are progressives.”
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