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The school of tankies screaming endlessly about Western colonialism but silent on modern day Russia being an entirely imperialist, colonist construct. The country of Moscow and St Petersburg invading every one of its neighbours over the centuries until many escaped when the Soviet Union collapsed.

Their academic home is SOAS - read lots of their stuff when doing a late MSc in international development. Search their site in vain for any mention of the Holodomor. 3-5 million Ukrainians starved to death by Russia matters not to these people. Still trotting out Stalinist propaganda decades later

I remember having high hopes, then this guy decided to play chicken with greek economy and lose and emerged with chip on his shoulder against EU. Or maybe the existing chip has just grown bigger. None of his ideas afterward were any better.

What upsets me, over again, is how none of these people ever go to Ukraine or speak to any Ukrainian (beyond, you know, the one Ukrainian who agrees with them). They have never spoken to a mother whose daughter was murdered, or a babushka who lived through occupation or a miner who lost his house

Yeah, also no one is inviting them to snort cocaine off a $12,000 an hour sex worker on the dancefloor in Bucha while praising them for being the only rational, fair and unideologically motivated westerner who truly understands the deeply poetic Russian soul.

They are anti-Western Westerners despite the West no longer existing. They switch from Ukraine to Gaza to Taiwan with no detailed local knowledge at all. Other countries are not real. They are just tools in their opinion affirming tool box.

What upsets me is that they always suggest that Putin would accept something, which Ukraine or Europe or whoever wouldn’t give to Putin, but there is nothing that suggests that Putin will accept any such thing Neither Ukraine nor Georgia is in NATO, they would like to join the EU though

Thank you for writing this. After reading your thread I had to go & read the original, reasoning that "there must be something else there". But no, just a piece of apologism & appeasement that can't be described as anything other than obscene & treasonous to any normal conception of liberty & safety

It’s almost like you don’t know about the brutal war that was fought there for years against an overstretched empire with a long history of atrocities that had just “won” a Pyrrhic victory in the Great War leaving it cracking at the foundations. Google “Amritsar” too, ffs! Plonk!

And for balance I will list below, the many criticisms Yanis makes about Russia's part in the war. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Omigosh, thank you SO much for dismantling this screed in such detail. I chortled over many of your points. You've nailed it with this thread, and I hope writing about it prevented the aneurysm you suspected would occur.

I briefly subscribed to unherd a few years back, figuring that reading a bit of longform would be informative. Yet about half the articles were just like this one. Wordy, contrarian sophistry, stupid beyond belief. So the subscription didn’t last long.

I think the original sin here is to brand your publication as having a contrarian edge. Sure, truth can sometimes be contrarian. But contrarianism, by itself, is just a soap box for tin foil hats speaking, however eloquently, to an audience of tin foil hats.

Everybody gets their shot of “I’m so clever” dopamine, and the speaker gets some money on top. And everyone will leave a little bit dumber.

Brave of you to read this screed! Honestly, I find Varoufakis so enraging he's not stupid, he's just wilfully intellectually dishonest. I can't tell if that's just a grift or he's genuinely deluded himself into an alternate geopolitical reality that doesn't exist in the actual world.

If he's making money, it's likely a grift. If he's doing it despite losing money, it's more likely delusion. These people are often spectacularly wrong but keep falling upwards (see also Daniel Hannan whose Brexit delusion won him a peerage). I think "wilfully intellectually dishonest" nails it.

You can go on YouTube every day and listen to supposed expert geopolitical analysts say similar things - usually along the lines of 'NATO made Putin invade' or 'Russian has already won'. All based on zero facts whatsoever. They clearly never listen to what Putin actually says internally.

Sorry for double posting, but there's smth else abt YV I'd like to point out. Ever since his first media appearances as a Greek minister, I've been fascinated by the guy's ego and the almost childish naïveté he expresses it with. It's on display here...

..."The Russians are receptive to me bcs I was thinking outside the box from the start"; "I surrendered, surrendered to the festive mood which my message had created"; "and this, ladies and gentlemen, is how you create ties and spread peace"

2/ Starting strong by positioning ending the war as a choice for Europe to make. Putin just wanted a 'sensible security pact', that's why he enshrined Russian ownership of four regions of Ukraine into the Russian constitution and tried to take Kyiv. Just a smol, sensible bean.

Russia alread had a sensible peace and security pact with all of Europe, the US, Canada, and all the former Soviet Republics. It is called the Helsinki Final Act, which Russia authored and signed in 1975 and then reaffirmed in 1990, 1995, 1997, and 2003 (under PUTIN). Art. 1, HFA:

I may be old-fashioned, but isn't saying stupid things on the Internet supposed to be shameful? How did he come to the conclusion Europe has only two solutions? Does he honestly think no one will notice this premise, which is as convenient as it is ridiculous?

3/ So much to unpack here. First, the 'forever war' in this case is entirely Putin's choice. He could declare 'victory' or 'mission accomplished' or nothing at all and just withdraw to Russia's borders at literally any time. Macron isn't dragooning Russian troops into attacks on Kherson.

Also interesting that he compares Europe to Trump and Russia to Iran when it was Putin who assumed his war would be finished in a few days, and it's still going, like Trump assumed Iran would roll over.

4/ The sanctions bit of this is also very dumb. It assumes Europeans thought sanctions would, for pretty much the first time in human history, topple a regime. Not signal opposition (which they did) Not slow down Russia's economy (which they did) Not starve Russia's warmachine (which they did).

5/ Yeah dude, Russia's economy is going great guns. They're crushing it. This is the kind of economic inisght and analysis that made Yanis such an invaluable asset to Greece. Is monthly inflation of 6% and a 15% interest rate good, Yanis? Military Keynsianism lmao.

Well, to be fair, the sanctions were sold to Europeans in part as a way to force Putin to capitulate or face a potential coup. There were a lot of sceptical voices, too. In any case, it diminishes Russia's ability to wage war.

You have to hand it to the guy - Trump attacking Iran is like sanctions - NOT like Putin attacking Ukraine. It takes a special kind of ethical and intellectual bankruptcy to nail that one.

This part is especially wrong. Regime change in Russia, while desirable, wasn't the aim. No one expected a popular uprising against Putin. After a brief period in which post-USSR Russia looked like it might become a real democracy, the policy has reverted to one of containment, not overthrow.

Since the invasion of Poland, Europe has had only two options regarding its stance toward Nazi Germany: forever war or offering Nazi Germany a sensible peace and security pact.

Having studied a lot of radicalism in my time as a history undergraduate graduate and since one of the things you notice is those involved in movements start from a position of genuine authenticism often recognising the condition of those around them and a valid critique of the existing structures

But over time to sustain their radicalism they become more extreme and often the radical loses track of the actual radicalism they started with. Detached from the actual source they are instead drawn into simply being radically opposed to anything. For example during/around the English civil war

Many of the most radical parliamentarians ended up as royalists (when parliament won) - chartists who moved from fighting for working people to ever more extreme and violent rhetoric which just didn’t match the more simple demands of working people. Etc etc

Can’t believe there are people still doing this. The offline ones I know have long since moved on to preventively justifying China’s invasion of Taiwan.

Yes, it is infuriating. If Ukrain concedes territory, then Russia will continue to invade and grab, till its heart's content. Namely: never. Nauseating, really. Trusting Russia is like trusting Trump, suicidal.

Varoufakis occasionally pops up with sensible stuff but the rest (ie most) of the time - and this is a very good example of it - it’s just 🤦🏻.

I don’t see why people are surprised. It’s classic Yanis. No consistency, just vibes-based narratives. Funny how Germany being forced to hold the line so accession countries aren’t forced to bail out Greece is evil meddling in a country’s sovereignty but actual war makes him side with the aggressor.

Must have been terrifying for Yanis when he actually got to be in charge of Greek finances. Suddenly found himself applying his theories instead of shouting from the sidelines. And yet he still finds an audience for his nonsense. If Ukraine caves there will be no more Ukraine and Europe should worry

You always notice when someone grew up sheltered, because they don't understand that appeasing a bully makes them take bullying you for granted. And I've never understood the lefts's fetishism with Russia 🤷‍♂️ It's like they are historically challenged.

He represents the pro-fascist left of Europe (It should be an oxymoron but all kinds of exceptions are made for Russia)

Or Unherd publishes very left wing voices that are useful to undermine confidence in democratic governments of the West. They were very anti-Covid control measures for example. The horseshoe magazine for horseshit.

Varoufakis has never been right about anything ever. He has no credibility at all. He is a total irrelevance. He makes a modest living on the media spouting rubbish about subjects he knows absolutely nothing about.

And a hypocrite — just learned in this thread that he used to be Valve’s in-house economist and helped them develop loot boxes —so much for hating Western capitalism!

Varoufakis has always been a dilettante and a dishonest piece of shit. Even when he was Greek minister of finance for a week or two, he just made a huge mess of things a-la Elon Musk with DOGE and then left the Hellenic Republic holding the bag.