Challenging perceptions about Yanis Varoufakis

Comments from Alexander Mercouris:

Two points to make:

1. Andrew Korybko is absolutely right. There is nothing remotely pro-Russian about Varoufakis. On the contrary all Varoufakis's connections are with the US and with the Anglophone world where he has studied and taught. I would add that nothing Varoufakis said or did during the time he was Greece's Finance Minister in any way suggested that he was pro-Russian or a friend of Russia. On the contrary his entire focus was on Europe and the US. To the extent that there ever was a pro-Russian slant to Syriza's policy in the first months that Syriza was in power it had nothing to do with Varoufakis. Rather it was the work of Prime Minister Tsipras and - much more purposefully - of Energy Minister Lafazanis who has now left Syriza after being sacked by Tsipras. My own opinion of that policy is that on Tsipras's part it was never intended seriously anyway and was a purely tactical ploy to extract concessions from the Europeans. Essentially that is the same point Andrew Korybko is making.

2. In my opinion far too many people became confused because Varoufakis has referred to himself as a "Marxist" economist. To the extent that that is true it is purely a function of academic Marxism - ie. Marxism as a tool of economic analysis - once very common in some economics schools in Britain and the US - and has absolutely nothing to do with political Marxism. In reality Varoufakis is a fairly mainstream pro-European liberal leftist, which almost by definition sets him against Putin and today's Russia.

3. I discussed my total disagreement with Varoufakis's whole approach as Finance Minister at very considerable length in extensive commentary I wrote over the course of 2015 during the negotiations here on FB in 2015. I recently re-published in The Duran my final view of Varoufakis written on FB in July 2015.

http://theduran.com/one-year-since-the-bailout-how-syriza-…/

4. In fairness I should say that I do consider Varoufakis a genuinely brilliant academic economist. He was however absolutely the wrong person to make Greece's Finance Minister. His conduct of the negotiations with Schauble and his failure to prepare for Grexit (for which Tsipras however bears most of the blame) was in my opinion nothing short of disastrous

VAROUFAKIS: THE ANTI-RUSSIAN TROJAN HORSE EXPOSED

Andrew Korybko

Katehon,

2 August, 2016

Yanis Varoufakis became something of an alternative media "rock star" when he ditched Syriza after the bailout referendum and let Tsipras take the full blame for betraying the people's will. Prior to this, the force of his personality and his earlier work in exposing the US' international financial games as the "Global Minotaur" earned him much respect in many activist circles, yet suspicion still lingered around the man who some wisely thought was "too good to be true". 

One of those few voices of reason was F. William Engdahl, who raised serious questions about this politician's personal background and shady associations in a July 2015 article for Journal NEO. "What Stinks about Varoufakis and the Whole Greek Mess?" boldly challenged the prevailing narrative in the alternative media, causing some to ponder whether Varoufakis was truly some sort of a "hero" or just a Trojan Horse in waiting. 

It took a year to find out whether he was ultimately right or not, but Engdahl's position was vindicated when Varoufakis went on Soros' "Project Syndicate" webpage to advocate for the creation of a "Progressive International" in order to defeat the likes of Hillary Clinton...and President Putin. In a proto-manifesto startlingly similar to the author's own earlier warnings about the rise of Secular Wahhabis, the Greek (anti-)"hero" came out sharply against the Russian leader and his alleged "Trump, Le Pen, (and) Britain’s right-wing Brexiteers" allies for being part of "a nationalist international – a classic creature of a deflationary period – united by contempt for liberal democracy and the ability to mobilize those who would crush." 

It's worthwhile to call attention to the fact that Varoufakis had previously appeared on the most prominent publicly funded media platform of this supposed "nationalist international", RT, though he apparently didn't have a big enough problem with Moscow back then to refrain from doing so. With hindsight being 20/20, there's now a very strong probability that he was actually a "sleeper agent" all along and was choreographing his rise to power in such a way as to masterfully appeal to multipolar supporters in preparation for sabotaging the emergent system from within. 

When the Greek people soundly rejected the bailout measures, Varoufakis didn't want to have his reputation smeared by remaining in the same Greek administration that he already knew in advance would accept Germany's demands anyway, so he ditched the party and let his former political "partner in crime" - Tsipras - become the much-hated patsy instead.

With his reputation preserved and even somewhat mythologized in the minds of many as a "man of morals", Varoufakis and his backers were now free to plan for his inevitable comeback. This agent was originally intended to operate from within the system and take it down the path of ruin due to his internal sabotage, but after the referendum, a fallback plan was improvised into making him the leader of a "grassroots resistance movement" against the EuroCautionaries (the author's more neutral coinage of what the media slams as "Euroskeptics"). In other words, Varoufakis was tasked with leading a 21st-century COINTELPRO operation. 

None of this is mere conjecture either, since the "Greek Judas'" choice of publishing his declaration on the "Project Syndicate" site was a damning confirmation of his very close ties to George Soros. Not only does the billionaire Color Revolution financier directly fund this said portal (The Open Society Foundation gave it a $350,000 grant in 2014), but he even regularly uses it as his preferred platform for publishing his articles. Proverbially speaking, this is the closest that anyone can come to the "belly of the beast" in cyberspace, yet Varoufakis has no shame at all in publicly advertising his elite connections to the notoriously Russophobic regime change mastermind. 

It can reasonably be inferred that Soros is backing Varoufakis' Trojan Horse scheme of developing a "Progressive International" of Secular Wahhabis, and might even have been behind the "Minotaur slayer" this whole time. At this moment, it's clear that Varoufakis is one of Soros' many "political bastards" entrusted with creating unipolar-controlled "protest" fronts for orchestrating Color Revolutions. 

In this particular context, it is one which will likely clothe itself in the trendy and "self-righteous" regalia of fighting "Russian-led" "fascism" in Europe, thus capitalizing off of the Secular Wahhabi movement to the fullest and organizing a publicly presentable and "legitimate" front for their militancy. Varoufakis' famed "cult of personality" will kick into overdrive with favorable media coverage in faux-multipolar left-wing media outlets, which will seek to capitalize off of the zombie-like "ideological consistency" of their readership in reprogramming genuinely anti-systemic individuals into misguided anti-Russian provocateurs.

It's expected that the Secular Wahhabis that Soros and Varoufakis organize under the "Progressive International" banner will then be deployed against Trump, the EuroCautionary governments of Poland and Hungary, and supporters of the Brexit and LePen movements -- all of which were mentioned alongside President Putin as part of the "nationalist international" - in order to provoke violent conflict and destabilize the most pragmatic Western forces towards Russia. There is no other way to describe this process other than it being yet another phase of the ever-expanding Hybrid War against multipolarity. 

The Trojan Horse is now poised to take this geopolitical drama in the direction of a Greek tragedy, with the "Minotaur slayer" transforming into the same mythical beast that made him famous, though with the ultimately irony being that this monster is now consuming misguided left-wing activists instead of surplus capital and belching out a stream of Russophobic vomit afterwards.