Interviewing LEFTIST ICON Yanis Varoufakis

The emise of the Soviet Union was a catastrophe for the west and for the working classes of the West and for the middle classes of the West yeah they it's it's just absurd I think I think they're digging their own hole now the German system the German regime and they don't even realize it with what lives inside Tik Tok what lives inside YouTube or Facebook or amazon.com for that matter it's a produced means of behavior Modification not of producing anything anyone who owns that cloud capital is immensely powerful what an honor ladies and gentlemen we

got Yannis varus in the building well not in the building or do you mind that I call you the Greek Freak do you know what that is the real Greek Freak the other yianis with two ends well yeah well this is uh well he's um he's a basketball player as well there's a basketball player they call The Greek Freak okay all right well I I say you're The real Greek Freak Yiannis V Fox for those of you who don't know former Finance Minister of Greece one of the founders of uh of dm25 right you're one

of the founders of DM 25 and also fun fact that many people might actually really appreciate in our community uh used to work at valve and was responsible for the valve economy I don't know if people are going to like that about you or maybe hate you for it but that is something that you uh Participated in back when um I guess valve was a co-op as well I don't know if it still is it might still be a Cooperative corporation uh not really uh valve today is very different to when I was there in

2011 2012 uh I studied the econom and I had a great deal of fun doing that uh but uh you know as it so often happens uh the best intentions often evolve into lesser outcomes more corporate outcomes so I don't recognize That place the way it was back then um yeah no I mean that's that's just uh that's the the corrosive nature of capitalism I suspect even though um even though you know we're hot and cold on gabin that's what we call him here we're hot and cold on him we're hot on him when he

uh decided to um change the prices of uh video games internationally and adjust them to uh Market rates and and uh currency fluctuations in in their respective countries Turks love him a Lot for that reason uh but then I think he's changed uh on that front as well I myself do love the steam deck I I ride for it I use it on a daily basis my daily driver I don't know if you know what that is the steam deck is a piece of Hardware that valve created I what's up can you say that again

no of course I know what it is and I have to say that Gabe Gabe because I know him personally is a super smart person and a very sensitive person and a person whether You agree with his moves or disagree with his moves um his soul does not come from the United States it's an anarchos syndicalist soul that has emerged from the black and red movement in Spain without him even knowing that but then of course you know when you're embedded in a multi-billion dollar Enterprise uh as I said the best intentions over evolve into

pretty terrible outcomes if you know what I mean um but we won't talk Too extensively on valve of course uh today uh we are unfortunately talking about uh something a little bit more serious than that uh although we can get back to that and I'll have you on as long as you want to be on I'm a big fan of yours for many many years uh I I uh often times will paraphrase some of your quotes like one of my favorite ones when you say borders are a a scar on the face of the Earth

uh I love that one I I uh I value your perspective quite a bit I Loved when you were talking about bricks Nations I'm going to try to not be as big as a fan booy here uh about you in particular even though just so this community understands you guys in the chat understand like I mean I I think that uh yeah Giannis is a is a legend uh let's talk about it you were uh you were slated to speak in Germany recently at uh in Berlin at a uh Palestinian Congress right uh it was

a conference for to speak out about the atrocities That are happening uh that Israel is is perpetrating in in Gaza and uh the police the Berlin police came in and uh quickly in a very Gusto like way uh dealt with that uh they refused entry into the country for a uh I think it was abug gasan who is a uh a British Palestinian Doctor Who was early on in the Gaza Strip operating in the Gaza Strip uh as a as a healthc care professional and and uh they refused entry into the country for him and

then They quickly and swiftly dealt with the conference what do you what do you think about what's going on in Germany spiritually holistically what the hell is happening over there to begin with um thank you so much for the kind words uh don't want fans I want comrades this is a struggle this is not lifestyle this is not show business this is a major struggle for the spirit of humanity and uh Germany is a Battleground because once again a proud Nation a proud people The German people are being dragged by their political regime not just

the government but the whole of the spectrum of the political Personnel including their media of course they're being dragged into yet another genocide in their name with their complicity uh as if the genocide of the Palestinians rivers of Palestinian blood can wash off the guilt over the Holocaust it can't and this is why uh months ago together with uh the very brave comrades in Germany of the Jewish voice for peace for a just peace uh with whom we have worked to organize the Palestine Congress uh along with Palestinian organizations uh NOS uh Progressive people who

are are not led into Silence by fear or propaganda we put together that Palestinian Congress and since we are not in a great hurry let me give you the background because I think the background is is important well before last week's uh gestapo likee German Police intervention the first time I knew that it was was there was going to be a problem with this Congress which I was going to be a speaker but I was also one of the organizers was about a month ago because I received a very weird email from my German publisher

a very good Publishing House called kman uh who have published six seven books of mine in the past been very supportive even in difficult times when I was a finance minister of Greece and I was clashing With the German government so you know decent people decent people sending me an email which was completely out of character for them essentially they were telling me telling me as my Publishers in Germany to stay away from this Palestine Congress that's a month before it happened and it was weird because as I've said it was out of character and

secondly why would they be doing this how would they know about it we had not even publicized it yet you can imagine Why because the police and the security forces had actually gotten to them and they said you if you if you want to sell janis's books in Germany you have you better persuade him to stay away from this at the time I didn't know that I was simply peeved with my Publishers and I simply discontinued my relationship with them because when I said to them hang on a second you feel confident enough to tell

me where to speak and where not to speak and they came back With a second very aggressive email saying if you if you want your new book which is coming out in September in Germany to do well you you've got to stay away from this Congress doesn't matter what the Congress is about just stay away and I just told them to f off essentially and I knew then that that Congress would not go well now at around the same time I hope I'm not boring you with that just interrup if I'm going on for too

long um British uh philosopher And filmmaker rul Martinez has made a a six-part documentary on the economic crisis on the rise of fascism on Need for internationalism and it features me I'm the center of that documentary why am I saying that because rul martinz booked the great Babylon theater in the center of Berlin to have the launch of the movie of the documentary and I was invited that was around the same time that my publisher were warning me against the Palestine Congress of last Week and to my astonishment I found found out when I arrived

in Berlin that the police had threatened threatened the proprietor of the Babylon theater that if he doesn't cancel our event uh then all sorts of horrible things will happen because yanis is an anti-semite and a lot of anti-semites are going to to gather and you know thankfully the proprietor of Babylon is a Jew and the Jew who takes no bullsh and he told the police to get you know to stuff their Their advice and their threats and we we had the reg the the the the launch of the of so I knew that something was

a foot in Germany and then there were lots of attempts to cancel our event the bank account of the Jewish voice for peace in Germany which is a German organization in German German Jews their account was frozen by the state so here is the German State confiscating the money of Jews again in the name of fighting antii yeah um around the same time you May have heard of a one wonderful woman who lives in in Berlin her name is Iris Heitz she's a psych analyst an Israeli Jew who lives in Berlin she's a comrad of

ours she staged a protest a one woman protest I don't know whether you heard about that uh it was a remarkable moment she was walking down the street on her own and she had a plat simply she had written herself and said as an Israeli and as a Jew stop the genocide in Gaza and a white arean German policeman Arrested her for anti-Semitism just like with URI right uh who who was also was I don't know if it was the same cop but it is it is the the Optics of it as well and I

know liberals care about Optics more than anything else uh the Optics of it as well were very shocking to see this like blonde Donald Trump looking German o uh arresting a Jewish man with a with a yamaka on as well and you know they just they they don't really care about it at all I guess yeah they it's It's just absurd I think I think they're digging their own hole now the German system the the German regime and they don't even realize it uh but that's another question so so me let me end the the

long story as briefly as I can so on the day of the Palestinian Congress as you said the vice Chancellor of Glasgow University who's a British Palestinian surgeon not just a British Palestinian surgeon who has spent 45 days in the trenches in the hospitals uh operating On on you know amputating people and so on but also he is the vice Chancellor president in American terms of the University of Glasgow one of the most renowned universi so he was um essentially deported back to Britain uh that day wor than death in my opinion yes and and

you know our little Congress venue was surrounded by 2 and a half thousand German police two and a half th000 German police for 500 of my colleagues uh most of them were harassed They were not allowed to get in one of the young Jewish protesters who had his own little blackard which read Jews against genocide was apprehended at that point because he is a humor full guy he said to them would it have been okay if it had Jews in favor of genocide at which point they hit him because they got annoyed with him and

he he ended up in a prison cell in the end the Congress gets uh underway at some point the police pass in they grab the microphones They tear them apart they another small but telling detail if this was a move it would have been a good scene uh they tried to get into the the room where the technicians room where where the servers were supporting the live streaming and one of our organizers was actually giving them the key to get into that room and they diffused it and they used uh Force to break down the

door instead even though we were giving them the key in other words this was a declaration That they wanted Force they wanted violence they wanted to create a climate of fear anyway that happened about 30 minutes before I was due to speak over Zoom I was in here in Greece uh and of course I couldn't because the live stream was disc continued so what I did was as I'm sitting here talking to you I recorded my speech on my computer I uploaded it on my blog and clearly the authorities were not particularly pleased by that

so the next day there Was a demonstration by our organizers and a police Constable approaches organizers and warns them against my voice being heard over the loudspeakers of the organizers because there was an order by the ministry of the Interior to ban me not only from entering the country but also from entering the country digitally or through audio files even if they were pre-recorded which you know the Mind uggles absolutely boggles since then um The the government has managed to lie to the German people to the public generally to me in writing at least three

or four times first they denied that it was a ban on me then they said it was a ban on me then they said they were going to give me in writing the reasons for the ban because I've never been presented with anything in writing explaining the ban and now today I received a letter from the German police the National Security Department which Is Eerie the moment you hear the National Security Department of the German police right this your hair stands on end even though I don't have much um and it it read that uh

yes we told you that we would give you the reasons for your ban but we're not going to because uh doing so would jeopard the capacity of the German state to coordinate with other security and intelligence services in order to prevent National Security threats to the Federal Republic of Germany so this is where we are yeah uh similar thing has occurred here in the United States of America and has occurred time and time again maybe not to the same severity as the German government because we do at least have like freedom of speech which the

way that people advocate for it is often times for opening up spaces to more reactionary thinking and more reactionary thoughts but in in some respects there's a little bit more of an Allowance for um I guess radical outside of the box thinkers under normal circumstances like criticism of Israel do not get met with in normal circumstances at least do not get met with uh criminal liability communal punishments however our universities which are supposed to be Battlegrounds for free speech and and ideas to to test their medal in the marketplace of ideas have uh seemingly shut

off one type of information from public discourse pretty Desperately an example I uh obviously would bring would like to bring up now is Columbia University I don't know if you're familiar with what's going on with the student protesters out there student um they disbanded uh a lot of the groups including Jewish voice for peace and they suspended a bunch of students including uh uh overnight taking away uh their their access into residential Halls leaving them stranded in the middle of New York and also on Top of that mass arrested a bunch of Campus uh demonstrators

there's another example from USC with a valedictorian who uh in almost U an incredibly ironic way a Val Victorian who uh minored in and this is the USC's own terminology for it resisting genocide studies cuz at the USC uh they don't it's not just called genocide studies it's called resisting genocide studies which she had minored in uh a hijabi student uh was denied her uh right to do a valid Dictorian speech as is customary uh under normal circumstances denied for security concerns similar to what the German government told you U of course this is the

very same USC campus that has uh been a hotbed of conversation about how Milo anopolis has to come on campus and and he did Ben Shapiro has come on campus in deler speeches uh with police protection mind you but of course when it's a valedictorian who is going to maybe mention Palestine well that's Too much of a security uh breach for uh the USC campus for uh I guess USC donors in general and the alumni uh that they had to cancel her speech so the the obvious hypocrisy was always uh uh pretty apparent to those

who have been paying attention to the plight of Palestinians for uh you know many many decades uh I've routinely brought this up as a Counterpoint to the likes of Barry Weiss who fancy themselves to be uh champions of free speech who have Tailored their entire rightwing uh uh commentary around even when they were at the New York Times around how they are advocates for free speech and that's why we have to allow these like super far-right speakers on campus who also uh personally would do everything in their their power and Ben Shapiro as well do

everything in their power to stop any kind of uh student activism from ever happening on college campuses even before uh this new post October 7 Environment that we're in uh going as far as collaborating with uh Canary Mission which is a doxing operation and uh you know utilizing the Deans and and utilizing uh University administrators to basically suppress any kind of uh Pro Palestinian sentiment you know the situation has been really bad for a very long time however I guess one thing I wanted to talk to you about was maybe maybe pulling ourselves out of

uh this conversation for a second and thinking About a broader picture here because things have been very different since October 8 uh now we're in we're in the seventh month of the uh seemingly endless ethnic cleansing campaign in Gaza but public sentiment has shifted dramatically uh in the direction of of recognizing Palestinians as humans and also even there I say advocating for Palestinian emancipation what do you think about all of this let to say that um the 7th of October even though it uh Triggered massive death and suffering and that includes the 1200 uh Israelis

but now we have you know 35,000 Palestinians uh whose life has been snuffed out and we have in particular you know the the thousands and thousands of of uh uh Palestinian injured children no surviving parents that idea you know of uh kids uh surviving in the rubble on their own Bing their siblings with their the rotting corpses of their parents in the vicinity that that Simply surpasses anything that the human Spirit can sustain nevertheless as somebody who has been to Gaza in previous decades who been to the West Bank who has seen the ironcloud apar

heide state in all its brutality even when nobody gets killed just watching a queue a line of people trying to cross um a checkpoint in near kidia or rala in order to go to the hospital in order to go to their work and to sustain the ritual humiliation of the Agents of the Apar heide state which is which has been established now for decades before the 7th of October let us not forget 60% of children in Gaza were malnourished that's before the 7th of October uh the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in his Jerusalem was uh

running at a very fast pace similarly in the West Bank the settlers were constantly constantly eradicating all Villages under the idf's uh supervision and Assistance the Arab states the Arab states that had sold their soul to the devil long long time ago and here I mean the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia Jordan and so on dou Western capitalist Imperials interest in the region specifically America totally they in the pockets of uh of of American Capital not even European Capital uh and you know they they were quite happy to allow the Palestinian people to be

ethnically cleansed as long as it was Peace and quiet uh you you saw that the United Arab Emirates uh established de uh diplomatic relationships with uh with Israel uh no conditions attached regarding even a discussion of the so-called two-state solution Saudi Arabia was coming next at least now the blood of so many people has given rise to exactly as you put it the change of heart especially amongst the youth in the United States and everywhere else and to allude to something you were Saying earlier to the restrictions in free speech and generally uh in in

a in a the capacity of the American people to discuss sensibly and with a modicum of um mindfulness the question of universal human rights from The River To The Sea it reminded me as you were speaking of the Great Edward Sade once commented that unless the Palestinians are liberated it is the Americans who will remain in a state of sudo democracy that's interesting um I think that I Mean I do think that America is an EST state of sudo democracy even uh outside of the the Palestinian question I think it's a it's it's very preent

the golden meire quote that I bring up quite a bit I think is uh flipped on its head do you know the one I'm talking about where she says something along the lines of like um Palestinians will never know no peace until they learn to love their children more than they hate Jews and I think that that is much like many of the Things that uh zionists uh have said time and time again about like both the Inception of the state of Israel and the defenses for why Israel must maintain an apar tide has always

been a case of pure projection like I've never seen something so perfectly devoid of of of any kind of logic and just like almost entirely flipped on its head where I think that there's truth to what goldem Meer is saying as long as you flip this script flip the narrative and and talk About how Israel will never know peace until they learn to love their own children and want to protect them more than they want to kill Arabs and Palestinians as a whole and I think that uh what you brought up as far as uh

60% of Palestinian children uh facing malnourishment uh that predates October 7 and the the subsequent siege that occurred and is still ongoing is a perfect demonstration of why October 7 happened to begin with this does not Make it right this does not make it good it is still tragedy there were still acts that uh certainly could be clarified as acts of Terror considering that you know there were civilians who were targeted and killed in the process however while it was unprecedented it was not unexpected in any uh sense of the word you cannot push people

into a corner back them jail them humiliate them for 75 years and and expect them to be servile and expect them to not want To resist it's a very normal human condition something that gets lost in this conversation I think having said that however ever um I want to move on to I guess now that we've discussed uh the the changing of the narrative especially amongst the youth um some of the ways in which our um our some of the ways in which our organs of propaganda are are reacting to that change and I do

feel like there's a sense of desperation here especially as it pertains to like The Tik Tock band the Tik Tok band has been a very pressing point of conversation they've uh they've brought it up in numerous occasions now APAC is also involved themselves in trying to get uh Tik Tok banned uh there was a leaked audio of of uh the the president ADL uh which for those of you who don't know is the Anti-Defamation League but I like to call it the apartheid Defense League um had had uh been talking warning about how Tik Tok

was Brainwashing the youth into repeating Hamas and Iranian propaganda as he said those were the words he used and now American Congress both uh for financial gain and also now as a matter of in their opinion National Security want to move the ownership of Tik Tok away from bite dance and and give it to the hands of a trusted American capitalist instead uh do you think that there's any chance that that something like this would pass I mean what does that say about American Hypocrisy as far as free speech uh what are your thoughts on

that of course there's a very strong chance it will pass I'll be surprised if it doesn't pass but H allow me I need to make a point regarding the storming of the wall of the Wall of Shame around Gaza on the 7th of October yeah because uh one of the reasons why I'm being vilified and disinvited and demonized here in Europe at least is because on the 8th of October I made a very uh staunch Separation between two separate issues one is the atrocities that were committed by members of Hamas against civilians I condemn every

single atrocity whomever the perpetrator might be or the victim but I've separated that strictly and stonly from the resistance the armed resistance to an upper height system designed as part of a slow burning inexorable ethnic cleansing program which involves creating back in 1948 the open concentration camp which Is the Gaza Strip resistance to that wall to that bed wire bringing it down armed resistance to that is not only a right of the Palestinians who are encased inside that bobbed wire it is a duty in the same way that prisoners of War according to the Geneva

Convention have not only a right but a duty to try to escape the 2.2 million gazin have a duty to themselves to resist and bring down tear down that Bloody wall that is a separate issue from the condemnation Of attacks on civilians I need to be very clear on this let's go back to Tik Tok no well you and I are both uh uh on the exact same page I I always uh make this separation that like although terrorism is a political designation for non-state actors regardless of of ideology regardless of what their cause is

whether it's moral or immoral just or unjust ultimately the way I classify our understanding of of what it means to do terrorism colloquially I classify that As targeting civilian populations regardless of uh you know devoid of political ideology I think that that is the line that must be drawn in these circumstances and uh so I do agree with you on what you said as well that was something I said something similar on October 8th as well didn't stop everybody from still pouncing and saying that uh I love decapitating babies and and that I am Hamas

saabi me also being from a Muslim background as a Turkish Person by the way sorry um I am I am Turkish I don't know if you know that but being that I appreciate that in listen you and I are post otoman that's what we are we share our post otoman identity it's true my my grandparents are uh on my father's side are from salonic and uh cre actually so although I've we are a very good example of ethnic cleansing the ethnically cleanse the Turks and the Turks ethnically cleans Cleanse the the Greeks and the result

we are both poorer for this yeah well I mean but also we do have a lot of shared history and shared culture I always joke about how like it's impossible to distinguish between Greek Villages and Turkish Villages the only major distinction is like language and religion which seemingly are big barriers for a lot of people it's a hang-up for many people even though we are obviously aligned as as uh we're Obviously aligned on class interest more so than anything else uh as you and I both understand and recognize even culturally I think Greek people and

Turkish people are very similar food similar people look the same people have similar Vibes in general we are the same we are the same and I have to tell you that that my Turkish comrades in turkey and I have a lot of them uh who are fighting for the same causes that we are fighting here in Greece you are fighting In the United States and sometimes under harsher conditions uh are the people that I admire the most and unless we manage to uh join Hands Across the agnc neither Greece nor turkey will be free yeah

agreed um but yeah going back to the Tik Tok band let's talk about that let me tell you about what I what I believe about Tik Tok and and this is something which is very close to my heart because I've recently the United States published let me plug my recent Book called techn Fidelis what killed capitalism uh in it I um I delve into what I consider to be the most interesting economic and soci so economic transformation of the last 10 years we have a new form Capital which are called Cloud Capital it's what lives

in your phone Tik Tok is one example but so is Google and so on and so forth my hypothesis Hassan is that um this is a a unique form of capital capital so far up until we had uh you know algorithmic Capital or Cloud Capital as I call it they what was Capital it was produced means of production things that you create in order to build other stuff like you know you have a tractor in order to produce corn you have a steam engine in order to produce textiles but with what lives inside Tik Tok

what lives inside YouTube or Facebook or amazon.com for that matter it's a produced means of behavior modification not of producing anything you know if Bas is not producing anything he's just produced the capital with which he has created a fdom in which he encases buyers and sellers he doesn't produce anything himself but he charges 40% rent on the product on the deals that are struck by buyers and sellers and anyone who owns that cloud capital is immensely powerful they have a remarkable new powers to extract value from others whether they are proletarians bis even small

scale oldfashioned capitalists why Am I telling you all this because if you think about it there are two locations on the planet where Cloud capital is concentrated Europe doesn't have any India doesn't have any Africa doesn't have any it's the United States and China why did Donald Trump start the Cold War the new cold war between the United States and China not Taiwan this is a very boring a very lazy exp explanation China's position in Taiwan never changed it's not that the fact That the Chinese are spying on the Americans as if the Americans are

not spying on everyone H it's not the military buildup of China until I see military Naval vessels of the Chinese uh Navy patrolling California or you know the just outside uh uh Virginia it's really unbelievable that they are worried about the Chinese military progress no it's because the Chinese have developed their own big Tech and they have an advantage over the American Pig Tech and let me tell you what my hypothesis as to the the nature of that advantage in the United States you have Silicon Valley big Tech and you have Wall Street two centers

of massive power W streate extracts huge financial rents from the rest of the world primarily of course in the United States and big Tech extracts what I call Cloud rents algorithmic rents call them if you want right the two of them though have not merged because Wall Street will Never allow Apple or Google to take over its capacity know Goldman Sachs or JB Morgan's capacity to extract Financial rents so Cloud capital and financial capital in the United States are divided and right in in a kind of rivalry in China they have merged under the Communist

Party their Cloud capital and their fin Financial system have been merged there is this app called Witch app before we go to Tik Tok which provides free banking to everyone Free Banking to everyone you can make transactions to anybody independently of where where they are banking imagine that the United States W would never allow that well wanted to do that I'm just kidding he's not Goldman Sachs will not allow him before Goldman Sachs I think his own incompetence will never allow him but that's besides the point well yes indeed even if you had the most

competent version of M W would would would murder him would find a way of Annihilating whereas in in in in in China they have merged add to that the fact that the Chinese Central Bank is is now providing did you know that it's it's providing free digital wallets to everyone wants them even you you can have one you don't have to be Chinese and with that you have free transactions in one of course now so far this is not a threat or hasn't been a threat to the preponderance of the power of the American dollar

because the Chinese Capitalist themselves want dollars and they want the dollar system they do not want the one system but the war in Ukraine by confiscating $400 billion of Russian money the United States and the European Union it has created a lot of interest in Saudi Arabia in the United Arab EMS in Indonesia amongst oligarchs Russian oligarchs of course but some Ukrainian oligarchs to too in putting their money in the Chinese system you know as a hedge in case the Americans Get pissed off with them and confiscate their money in the way they They confiscated

the Russian money so that capacity of Chinese Cloud capital and Cloud Finance to create a clear and present danger to the Monopoly of the international payment system based on the dollar theft is what you're talking about right like I mean the the financial transactions being made on the dollar yes and don't let anyone tell you that Swift is European it is formally European it's completely controlled by the United States Donald Trump switched it off like that against Iran when he he felt like it against the the the the advice and the wishes of Angel Amic

and the whole of the European Union yeah so the reason I'm saying that is because Donald Trump started a new Cold War because the people around him not himself the Donal can think strategically to save his life but the people around him and they're not all Dumb uh it's a big mistake to think that they were dumb they could see that the Chinese glomeration of cloud capital and financial Capital was presenting a clear and present danger to the Monopoly of the dollar which is the only reason why the United States can have huge deficits and

still increases hegemony around the world the American dollar and its Monopoly you could see that the Chinese were about to create a super highway digital Super Highway of payments that Was competing with the American dollar and they started what with Banning Huawei then Z remember then um these very quite large tariffs on Chinese exports and then Joe Biden comes in and turbocharges the new Cold War by Banning micro Advanced microchips from guy to China why in order to slow down the development of this super highway digital Highway of the of of Chinese financial and big

Tech Capital Tik Tok is was always going to be one you know Donald Trump has been talking about Tik Tok a long time because it's part of this attempt to bring down Chinese big Tech because as I said it is only Chinese big Tech which has a very able um competitor to Google to Facebook to Instagram to all that nobody else does so Tik Tok was always going to be Target then comes Gaza and I'm sure you have experienced that my tweets on Gaza are not seen by anyone I have 1.2 million followers almost no

one sees my tweets Because the algorithm owned by Elon Musk makes sure that when I tweet something about Gaza you know me and my dog only hear it or hear the tweeting sounds but Tik Tok is very different because they cannot control it so they already had a reason to ban or take over Americanized Tik Tok and now they have an even greater one and they never let a little crisis like Gaza go to waste when they have a long-term new cold war program for def funing Chinese big Tech but I Don't think they will

manage to do it even if they take over Tik Tok in the United States even if they ban it I think the United States establishment is on a losing streak yeah I absolutely agree I think one of the reasons for that is because and I guess I hate to admit this but like the the denus Gambit as I like to call it uh is a very successful one because um the greatest weakness that uh Western liberal capitalist democracies presents is their Actual biggest strength uh the strength of of like social Liberties civil liberties to a

certain degree of course but more importantly treats the treat economy as Matt Chrisman used to call it of troo Trap House the idea that like we love treats and that is a that has a sedating effect on all Americans all people living in the western world that like there you know government interference with our treats can uh never happen that we will get very upset Especially here in America like a big part of the covid lockdown protest originally were not on the virtue of of like oh we can't get money we can't work but it

was actually about like not being able to get a haircut not being able to go to Applebees and while it seems really silly I think that our appetite for that sort of thing was very very usefully uh weaponized I guess in some respects by the dangus government at the time and that paired up with obviously The interest of capitalists that were consistently in the face of of profit rates uh declining wanted to squeeze out as much profits as possible by Outsourcing labor to China which was going to be very cheap so that I think was

obviously very successful in in bringing about this uh incredibly prosperous Chinese development over the course of the past couple of decades and I think a very similar Dynamic exists within Tik Tok as well obviously social Media is heavily regulated internally in China Tik Tok doesn't exist in China they have Doan they have a different version of Tik Tok in China and yet uh they have a very valuable western-facing product that America only makes up I think like 10% of the market share on which or or the user base on I'm sure that like they probably

generate a lot more value from the American Market in general but um overall it's a it has been phenomenally successful because it Offers in the simplest terms what Americans want to see very good at giving you exactly what you want to see it's very good at being addictive the the lack of restriction and the lack of Regulation that is at the core of I guess like American identity American individualism is what is inevitably causing our own downfall in many respects if you were to think about Tik Tok as though it's like a is a very

successful product that does not exist In China and the the uh the very same product exists very differently in China as a matter of fact does that make sense absolutely absolutely the small meres in Western life that you describe as streets have always been uh marketized and commodified superbly by American conglomerates whether this was Coca Cola or McDonald's or hersh's or whatever we've seen this in Madmen with Don Draper doing a fantastic job at commodifying all this you know Commodifying Nostalgia commodifying the need for escapism and all that meanwhile the the deal between the United

States and China that Washington understood as the backbone for the great friendship the the lovein between Washington and Beijing beginning with Nixon in Beijing the Americans the American authorities thought of it as a straightforward oldfashioned trade thing you aluminium is produced no longer longer in the United States produced in Shanghai it's Shipped over it goes through the process of the the customs Office uh the American government can control the tariffs that can control how much aluminium goes in they can slow down the degree to you know the speed at which aluminium is going into the

into the United States in other words it's done under the terms of the United States uh the Chinese capitalists producing the aluminium depend on the dollar they keep their money in Wall Street they buy real Estate in Miami so they are controlled they they are forced essentially because they have no other alternative to buy us treasury bills essentially the Chinese profits become a fund uh a slash fund for the American government to run large deficits it's it's it's a beautiful deal for the United States and it's not just the Chinese profits though is this exists

for every uh citizen as long as they're rich capitalist like and and the reason why I mentioned that is because There's a lot of xenophobia in America and like the Chinese uh the Chinese invest ments are still I think like 17 on that long list of other nations that like buy land or other nations that buy capital in general in America they're is very heavily restricted on what they can buy by the United States they they they have to keep their money in the dollar system but they you know if if they try to buy

Google they they will not be allowed even the Japanese now are not Allowed to buy you know Ste comp yeah uh so but here is the great contrast between aluminum which I used as an example I could have used cars I could have used uh clothes textiles whatever Tik Tok is very different because Tik Tok is not produced in China Tik Tok is produced by you guys in the United States because you know the the capital that is necessary to create Tik Tok is Tiny you know of course by your standards and mine is large

all the Service and the stuff but in terms of you know the greater scheme of things this not that much yeah it was a very clever algorithm but how much did it cost a minuscule amount in comparison to how much it takes to to produce aluminium and send it over to the United States and so on right and who is the real producer of the Capital stock of Tik Tok you are every time you upload a video on Tik Tok you are adding to the cloud capital of Tik Tok and that Maddens the American authorities

because here you have a business model a Chinese business model which operates in the United States it doesn't have a produ productive base in China but it amasses monies which in a manner through a process which is not under the control of the customs Office of the IRS of uh the trade Department of the United States of the FDC of of the Federal Reserve and that to them is anathema they would love to have it in China H but they are load to allow the Chinese to have it in the United States yeah we get

you can't make our citizens your digital surfs only we get to do that is what you're saying absolutely as a surf myself cuz I I am very much a part of obviously techn feudalism uh my rent Seeker being Jeff Bezos here on Twitch because this is Amazon owned platform uh I am consistently giving a percentage fee for being able to operate on the internet in the way that I do uh Back to Twitch and by way of twitch back to Amazon back to Jeff uh Jeffrey Bezos yeah I I I see the point that you're

you're making um I agree with you I don't know if Tik Tok will be banned though because I think that like I said it is a very powerful the only tool of resistance that the Americans successfully ever deploy against uh uh centers of power is when their treats are taken away like because this entire project relies on you having Unrestricted unfeathered access to said treats including uh uh Tik Tok including but not limited to Tik Tok and once those things get taken away people get very very upset um so I I don't know that's why

bance the owner the Chinese owner of American Tik Tok be mad to divest they should uh throw the ball in the court of the United States authorities and say if you want to ban us ban us we're not selling yeah I mean that's why would they it's a very Powerful tool in general I don't think they're going to I don't think they're going to sell I I think that they're going to yeah they're going to they're going to force the American government to make a very unpopular decision that many not just like random people that

enjoy Tik Tok but also many small business owners are going to be frustrated by because the reality is that there are a ton of small business owners because it's like one of the only Viable economic forms of upward social Mobility which is basically just a forgotten dream for many Americans but that it's small business ownership in the form of uh in the digital space like selling T-shirts and whatnot this is like one of the last bastions of the of being able to realize some semblance of the American dream uh one of the last Avenues where

you can do that you're absolutely right and at the same time let's not forget what my friend Cory Doo Says about Amazon and American conglomerates in the big Tech space uh is a fantastic word I'm sure you know it the process of entific so Amazon began and Facebook begun by being nice both to users and to to sellers to Publishers for instance people like yourself or newspapers or small businesses until they became absolutely these small businesses and Publishers and users became completely uh beholden to the platform utterly dependent on it And then they started piling

on them and essentially blackmailing them uh you will not appear in the first 20 um even if people want to see you unless you pay us uh and Tik Tok hasn't done that at least not yet so I'm reinforcing your point that small businesses that have been completely exploited and they hear the word Amazon and they freak out uh if you take away Tik Tok from them uh given that it's their last resort they will be particularly paved then again the United States authorities have shown in the past a remarkable capacity to you know treat

Americans like fodder and then not to pay the price for it because the fer simply stays at home privatizes Their Fear licks their wounds and accepts their circumstances yeah uh the the thing that you're mentioning is also a byproduct of monopolization I feel like all matter of tech especially because it's like a new frontier to some or was a new frontier when uh when the the uh When Silicon Valley was expanding in I guess that they did the exact same thing that our baronss our Oil Barons and our steel baronss did and tried to very

quickly seize up as much territory expand uh vertically and horizontally and monopolize as quickly as possible and it's like it's not even really a secret it is very much the uh stated goal of every single one of these Silicon Valley unicorn companies such as Uber the entire goal is that you know We're a tech company we're going to go get we're going to get into the market we're going to bring a a valuable disruptive product and that disruption is only in the form usually of like a little bit of new technological advancements but a lot

of disruption to the uh labor regulatory process which is already very anemic here in the United States of America because like what did Uber actually do I mean it disrupted The Medallion structure it disrupted Regulations for cab drivers and uh and and it took advantage of a new class of gig economy workers that were desperately looking to make extra money uh so they could uh keep up with uh the increasing prices and and worsening living conditions and their overarch their their overall state of goal was to monopolize and once you reach Market Monopoly or at

least like you're a a valid enough oligopoly or duopoly or an oligopoly then you can get away with Slowly but surely ruining exactly what made you so disruptive and so successful in the first place by slowly but surely lowering the quality of uh of of the delivery mechanism like when we're talking about Amazon or consistently trying to uh further uh erode labor protections and consistently and and very successfully you know raising the prices of the product that you're delivering still the same product but now it's more expensive so slowly we're Surely just like moving the

dial uh year over-ear and making the the process more for the consumer and definitely way more for uh the the uh workers every step of the way that uh produce whatever the productss that we're talking about indeed and the there's a direct correspondence between the time one passes inside one of those platforms the more you stay in that platform and the more you transact in that platform the higher your switching costs your cost of Switching to another platform uh so you know if you're on Twitter and you you interact a lot you get you get

more followers like you with twitch you have more and more followers every follower that is added to your list makes it more expensive for you uh to move to another platform because you lose the capital you've built up the social capital right so as your your switching costs increase you the the degree of exploitation that you suffer from the owner of that cloud Capital is increased because he can do it or she can do it without fearing that you will switch because your switching costs have increased this is the business model this is why I

call this a fom it's these are not it's worse than monopolis you know they you know Ford Motor Company right I mean Henry Ford tried to monopolize the car business and to a large extent he succeeded with maybe competing only against General Motors and a little bit with Chrysler in The good old days uh but he was firstly he was building the bloody car that he was selling you number one right he had he had skin in the in the product so to speak secondly um he didn't sell you an oven as well he didn't

sell you a book or an electric bicycle at the same time and moreover and the that's the most important thing the capital he used to produce the Model T was not simultaneously messing with your brain because amazon.com to give an example or Uber it doesn't matter which one we take as an example the same algorithm that trains you to train it to train you to train it to put a Desir into your head sells you the [ __ ] as well and extracts 40% from the capitalist who sold it to you and it is the

same algorithm that runs like automata the workers of Amazon in the warehouses and it is the same AI algorithm exactly the same algorithm that predicts with very high probability of success in which Warehouse there is a Probability an increased probability of un unionization and then shuts that warehouse down or fires everybody that is not a monopoly this is why I say you know welcome to techn feudalism this is feudalism this not even capitalism it's not a monopoly it is something with additional uh with with so many more resources that previous overlords could not have even

imagined though the capacity to mess with your brain yeah you know hry for the best hry for could Do is come up with a good ad that would make you want to buy a Ford uh Bess of Alexa Alexa is a dream come true for the KGB if the KGB had Alexa it wouldn't need to kill people you know if the the go plan Ministry of planning in the Soviet Union had the algorithm of Amazon capable of matching individual consumers to individual producers Central planning would have been a fantastic success I was just about to

say that yes exactly but so that actually is a really Interesting point that you just brought up because don't you think that the uh don't you think that like if we magically had these exact same tools at our disposal but somehow not even through Clash struggle let's say I'm a I'm a left commom or something all of a sudden and I think that magically the contradictions uh caused capitalism to collapse and everyone is a socialist now like these obviously ridiculous but let's say that uh in in a situation such As that one where we had

the exact same tools at our disposal techn feudalism could very quickly uh or techn feudalism and all of the surveillance capabilities AI algorithms would actually make Central planning incredibly efficient and very successful it would be like u i mean isn't it isn't this like the the early uh assessment before the technology actually caught up to this idea but this wasn't this like the the attitude in uh Chile as well uh what was The the thing that they were working on the the pro Central programming C the cybernetics C yeah uh absolutely and they did a

remarkably good job even though the machines were very Antiquated yeah not particularly capable look you're absolutely right uh this is a good time to be a socialist who actually believes in in central planning but but but Progressive Central planning Central planning which is uh very capable of Homing in to individual desires not treating everybody like a gray mass of human beings as did uh a Libertarian Star Wars like communism is now possible given the AI programs that are being developed the problem is that because AI is owned by the 0.001% it is being used in

order to create something closer to Star Wars than Star Trek you know a kind of Empire striking back and and creating one war after the other both within our Communities and between our our societies so the old left vision of um grabbing the ownership of the means of production but now it's not just the means of production or distribution or exchange but it's also the means of communication what I call Cloud Capital socializing Cloud capital is the only way that the liberal individual can live again it is the only way that we can be free

you know otherwise our mind change Will Keep Us Enslaved uh uh in the interest of the Jeff bases and the mark zuberg of the world and once we have reclaimed our mind through socializing Cloud Capital we can put it to work to create a new Cloud Capital common so imagine instead of the algorithm of uber uh being used to exploit drivers and users and our data and all that imagine if it was in the service of a Cooperative which owns a cloud capital and which operates on the basis on the basis of you know one

Worker or one driver one share one vote and imagine that that was the case in every Enterprise in every sector then we would have libertarian liberal capitalism sorry communist you when you say when you say libertarian though it's important to understand the the distinction between you using the term libertarianism and what Americans understand I don't think you're using it in the American anarcho capitalist uh way you mean libertarian like the Political Theory iuse I use it in the oldfashioned anaros syndicalist fashion where you see the problem with anarcho capitalists is that there's nothing anarchic about

them yeah no it's it's built upon an unjustifiable hire obviously the class Dynamic there is like nobody can supposed hate supposedly supposedly they believe in Freedom uh but the only Freedom they truly believe in is the freedom of conglomerates to enslave everyone that's that's what the The mes of the world and the American libertarian but for me you see I I do believe in libertarian communism in the sense that it sounds like a contradiction it isn't the contradiction I mean KL Marx was clear he in in his hatred of the state he said that in

under communism the state would wither use the state in order to bring about something like a decentralized uh Commons in which Cloud capital and all other kinds of capital are utilized for The purposes of enhancing cooperation and shared Prosperity well I mean I guess we we deviate a little bit on that front because um I do believe that this state is a necessity at least in the early stages of of transitioning into socialism but don't I agree I agree with you of course we do yeah I'm talking about I'm talking I'm talking about the asymptotic

case of where we want to get that yeah so you brought up melee and I have a lot of questions uh from that I Fielded from my Discord and there are a lot of fans of yours in my community and they have actually surprisingly come up with really good questions unexpectedly so I'm going to read one of them to you um uh this person says considering your experience with the IMF an international debt negotiation I had a few questions for you regarding the current state of Argentina under Malaysia Administration by the way uh before we

get into that also if you could elaborate on your Experience with IMF for those of you who don't know that could be uh interesting as well um just briefly uh what do you think future negotiates with IMF will look like under this new government in Argentina how do you think the IMF will utilize their leverage considering this administration's willingness to cooperate with their demands what do you think a future administration's plan to tackle this debt should look like personally my experience I was elected Uh in 2015 Finance Minister of Greece at the time when Greece

was uh well still is but it it had already begun back then absolutely bankrupt we were the most bankrupt uh European country and uh I there was already uh an IMF driven program of massive massive inhuman austerity for the many and laress for the oligarchs in Greece uh and the oligarchs outside Greece so my job was to negotiate with the IMF the European Central Bank uh and I only had one Objective the my own objective was to haircut to delete a large part of the Greek debt because if you're in debt bondage then you simply

have no sovereignty and you just don't exist so that's my background M uh what's his negotiation with the IMF like well it is a negative negotiation it is the opposite of a negotiation the IMF are complaining and I have spoken to people in the IMF with whom I still have some contacts they are complaining that he is Doing too much of what they had asked for so it's a bit like you know me and you negotiating I I want to buy your house and you're asking 500,000 and I'm offering you a million that's me La

the IMF the IMF asked for a little bit of austerity he got him three times more austerity so essentially he's in a slash and burn mode uh of essentially increasing the poverty rate to 80% uh destroying all social and economic opposition to the Very few people that he serves uh and essentially turning Argentina into Haven for hedge funds for um those who will plunder the country they will dollarize the assets that they will plunder and the people will be treated like um you know Surplus to requirements uh a lot of them will have to migrate

that is that that that is that is what mle judging by his actions seems to be interested in now what should Argentina do Argentina should default on its debts and it was a Previous administration which uh or two administrations before that that had absolutely inexcusably after it was all over after the original default by Argentina had been accepted by almost everyone including hedge funds uh that cretinous government the name of the president escapes who is now supporting uh M essentially uh went to the IMF to borrow tens of billions of dollars in order to repay

creditors who had lost hope that they would get their money Back and the only reason he did that he didn't have to do that the only reason he did it was because debt is power the rich he wanted his own government to be even more indebted in order to have an excuse for imposing more austerity on his people because austerity for the many increases the bargaining power of the oligarchs won't this inevitably I mean the thing is although it is uh kept up by uh International interests Western interests in general Western Capitals in General but

like doesn't this only accelerate the demise I mean one thing that I see is that uh under I guess like neoliberal regimes all around the the world one thing that we see is that like the contradictions become as the contradictions become more apparent to those in the working class given I guess like uh almost a century of Red Scare propaganda and also concert efforts uh from the capital owners completely gutting any kind of like labor Solidarity that could have existed or any form that does exist I feel like there is no counterbalance uh in in

any of these countries with respect to class solidarity and and also uh a genuine push in the right direction where I feel like we are slowly uh decaying uh as capitalism inevitably decays we are slowly decaying alongside it and uh in Prior instances I guess given the way that the division of labor worked given the assembly line structure that uh made It more permissible to do some kind of organizing to unite alongside uh our our relations of the means of production I don't see a very positive outcome in all of this Beyond uh are at

first creeping uh walk towards Fascism and now you know bouldering towards fascism that will inevitably restore order in the Decay do you feel like I'm wrong is there a sense of is there something to hold out hope for the same we on the same page there is no guarantee whatsoever that the IM Miseration of the working class is going to create class solidarity and a rebound of progressive politics I was young when uh Margaret thater was doing her thing in the in the United Kingdom even before Ronald Reagan started imitating her in the United States

I lived in the United Kingdom we used to say I remember when an employment Rose from 700,000 to 4 and a half million in a year and a half 700,000 to 4 and a half million in a Year and a half uh leftists like myself were saying oh well you know that will teach the working class in Britain a lesson now they will have to respond no they did not respond they became more right-wing in the end you know they ended up becoming more nationalist more xenophobic uh or disenfranchised or divid or uh betrayed by

their own political Representatives the labor party in the United Kingdom the Dem the Democrats in the United States similarly Here uh our people here in 2015 was when I was Finance Minister put up a remarkable fight and I have to say that uh I'm still moved to Tears by the manner in which they embraced us when we were doing battle against the oligarchs against the IMF against the representatives of financial Capital uh 6 months into our office my comrade who was prime minister essentially betrayed them did a u-turn overthrew the people as I say and

uh signed a deal with the IMF and with the rest and I was hoping truly as I did in 1981 when I lived under thater that the Greek people betrayed Greek people who had shown such immense courage would uh overthrow him in return it didn't as I said before to use the same expression in that I used in a different context they privatized their fears they privatized their despair pure despair they were depoliticized they stopped voting and um in the end when they voted again it was Only between two evils choosing the Lesser one in

terms of who would give them a 100 bucks more a month in in the form of some kind of humiliating benefit uh that is why there is no substitute Democratic politics to organizing never accepting defeat there is no final defeat there is no final Victory there are no guant es uh we may lose forever and you know in any case we're facing a climate catastrophe but as I keep telling my friends and my Comrades I know I'm going to die that is no reason for me to wake up in the morning and not to have

you know vivacity and energy and try to make a good day of it yeah um one thing powerful words one thing that I wanted to tie this into uh was also brought up by some of the questioners in the Discord was um anti-immigration uh anti-immigration is is an issue that you and I uh aine on uh we're both internationalists uh or I guess maybe Even globalists I don't know whatever whatever people consider internationalism is different than globalism yes it's not about the extraction of of uh natural uh resources from the global South and exploiting them

for developing cheap Commodities but instead about Rising everyone up but anti-immigration is unfortunately incredibly successful even though uh I mean yeah it's just incredibly successful we saw Hillary Clinton look At even after she lost uh the election uh she shouldn't she didn't stop talking about this issue uh and and I remember her saying something along the lines of like Europe needs to cave and capitulate to the right a little bit on their xenophobic sentiment in order to stay in power now at the time that was a message that was idiotic in my opinion and still

is idiotic however uh I guess you know four five six seven now eight years later that message is that message has Been heard by neoliberals who are Center left or portray themselves as Center left but are actually center right uh Emanuel macron has pushed a lot of xenophobic sentiment very anti-islam Islam is seen as like the new villains uh in Europe even though they were I guess the old villains the sick man of Europe the Ottoman Empire and the like and um it's it's creating uh ample ground for genuinely openly ideological fascist to to say

see they agree with us That these immigrants are actually a problem and that we are the solution to that problem these guys are fake they're never going to be as cruel and as brutal as we are to the immigrants we will be however and I think that that xenophobia now is is led the Democratic party to also take a similar stance I don't know if you're familiar but Joe Biden uh has been advocating in the most idiotic ways possible for Donald Trump's own border wall a a comprehensive uh White nativist Anti-immigration legislation and trying to

use that as like a a political tool and I think that the only lesson that Americans learned who are not super tuned into what's going on is that like yeah immigration is a problem and if immigration is a problem of course the right is always going to be the ones who have the real solution because the Democrats are supposed to be a counterbalance to that uh in our in our duopoly and in what looks like a Dapo And even parliamentary systems now like with the uh labor party in the UK and and I feel like

this is creating ample ground for uh the rise of genuine fascist parties and I I do I do fear that um I don't know how we push back against this this question is how can we both push back against the notion that refugees are economically damaging while not falling into the Trap of analyzing the world in purely capitalistic economic terms um uh because to fight This talking point on Purely economic grounds is the seed ground of the capitalis that human beings must have economic value to find a place in society Hillary Clinton's advice to the

center left in Europe was not only unethical and ideologically purile but it was also stupid from an efficacy point of view because let's face it racism light can never beat full-blooded racism you will never win against racists by presenting racism light so What Joe Biden is doing now yeah you know being Trump light when it comes to the US Mexican border uh is is a sure M recipe for defeat even if you look at it cynically that's Point number one point number two is that um look Hassan I've been worried about this since the mid

2000s because as an economist I could see that the wall street collapse which happened 2008 was inevitable and that's when I got really really scared because I could see that what was going to Happen in Wall Street was another 1929 Our Generations my Generations 1929 and what would follow would be again a monetary policy that was effectively socialism for the very few for big business combined with harsh austerity for the many I could see that the left and that includes me you know so it's self-critical as well we would fail would all probably fail to

put together a program that excites people and gives them hope credible in their eyes and the Inevitable result of the discontent austerity for the many and socialism for the big big finances and the big business would create would be xenophobia just like in the mid War period I wasn't sure whether it would be the Jews or the Muslims or the Greeks or the Germans that would be the target of the new racists or all of them together sometimes you know the Greeks hate the Germans the Germans hate the Greeks um everybody has a French uh

Anti-Semitism is always on theirm hating the French yes inde I'm Jing of course right and and you know this is exactly what is happening now my third point and this is a source of great pain for me personally I've had um massive Rouse with comrades former comrades on the left who for instance uh embraced an anti-migration argument an argument in favor of walls of electrified Fen of impediments to migration I think I Know who you're talking about but I won't say let's not say let's not mention her name but it's not just one person quite

a few I I was thinking of a him but okay go on all right so let's not mention persons go on and and and and you know and sometimes they often try to couch this in Marxist terms they even quote a letter that um Marx had sent to somebody in New York deploring the fact that Irish workers coming to the United States to New Jersey in Particular and to New York City they were suppressing the wages of the local proletarian and they use this as an as a reason for creating walls or stopping migration but

they never quote an second part of the letter by KL Mars in which he is very explicit what he says is because the solution is not to stop the migrants from trying to find a place where they can make ends meat the solution is unionization of the domestic workers along with the migrants yes Right but my leftwing commer a lot of them across Europe and the United States you'll find it it's very hard to convince even members of the D DSA Community with whom I have a very uh good relationship and I think very highly

of them it's very difficult they're scared of coming out and say you mentioned before you know once when I I don't remember in in some interview I said that uh borders are a scar on the face of the Earth this very hard for Them to say that they feel that they are going to be very severely punished because they think you're not realistic when you say that that's what it is it's a it's I I think that's where it comes from it's like the fear of coming across as like an idealist and not a realist

uh and falling into that same in my opinion sorry to cut you off but falling into that same like capitalist trap of capitalist thinking of like oh well this is a part of human nature uh just like Greed is a part of human nature but also a little bit of xenophobia is also a part of human nature so like in order to gain more allies like we we need to be more pragmatic and uh and and they find themselves on ironically advocating for right-wing attitudes reactionary thinking in the throws of reactionary thinking except I don't

I think this is a very lazy form of of realism and it's not a very good and efficient form of pragmatism because as I said by being Racist light you don't win if you come from the left you just lose you lose whatever ethical uh grounds you were standing on yeah that's the more the the more calculating criticism but more generally uh we of the left have to understand that the only way we are trying to succeed in changing hearts and Minds is if we say what we believe in and believe in what we say

I have a lot of coms from me from my party met 25 here in Greece we are running now in the European Parliament elections and some of them say you know who are who believe like you and me that uh you know walls are electrified fences are are are are just an Abomination and need to come down they do believe it but they come to me seriously now in our meetings our coms meetings and so on they say butan look right not to talk about migration because this is this is our soft underbelly this is

where you know we lose points when you speak out against The fence between Greece and Turkey right there's a big electrified fence now between Greece and Turkey which didn't exist until a few years ago talk about too much and I say no I will talk about it a lot because this is how you distinguish yourself from the rest and yes even if what happened to our to to our notion of investment now what is investment it is a capacity to suffer a cost today in order to gain something tomorrow see if even if if I

lose half Of my votes because I I say what is right this is how you educate the public and this is how you invest in a future in which the public is not scared to say the right thing yeah you you show them that uh you give them uh I think uh uh the the permission to to be brave uh when you when you lead by example in that regard when you show them that you're unafraid to say these things uh many people will hear you will listen to your reason will also have that same

Shred of empathy and will be courageous enough to also speak on these matters in a similar way indeed indeed and we need to do this when we are at our lowest E when we are losing because if we don't do it whenever we're losing that is when you have to build the foundation your moral and ideological Foundation that's when you you need to show that I'm not in it for the office the salary that comes with being minister or being um secretary of state or whatever I'm here Because this is what is right now we

need to do this a lot more of this and I'm really appalled that the left has become more scared and more frightened into submission to a narrative that he doesn't believe in and people sense that you know they not they may not be able to put their finger exactly on it but they can sense it so on the one hand you have the powerful believe in what they say and they say what they believe in they say you know migrants are scum We're going to shoot them on site and they do they believe it yeah

so there is this combination of power and conviction on the right and what we have on the left kind kind of bemon where we are you know semis scared defeated not much power we're not attractive to people it's about time we stiffen our lip yeah so one thing one I I feel like you and I somewhat agree on the dynamic now in the most reductive terms being very similar the political environment being very Similar to the early rise of fascism after world War One internationally uh we talked about the rise of fascist parties the old

fascist parties as a matter of fact with the exact same ideas uh coming into power in places like Italy uh and and growing its numbers in even places like Spain and uh and obviously afd's rise the prominence in Germany the the uh reactionary right uh growing or or I guess like the factless attitude from uh the left alternative uh In the form of the labor party in the UK in that environment in the early stages of the development of fascism as we understand it I mean I feel as though and and same with France as

well I feel like there was at least a counterbalance in the form of trade unionism and militant labor activism and beyond that there was also obviously the USSR for all of its failures right and there were plenty um there was also a I guess almost and this is going to be undi not Undialectical but point to that uh that they could say like look this is happening with many of many failures certainly but there's still something different out there and and there was a state that was also even supporting armed resistance against capitalism armed resistance

against fascism uh globally and I I fear that no such counterbalance exists now or do you think that China is the counterbalance I don't personally think so I mean I don't Know uh but do you feel like there's a there's a difference here uh where there is no such alternative no such state power to facilitate or even to prove that there is a counter to the way that things have existed under capitalism in the Western World for the past 100 years entirely with you the emise of the Soviet Union was a catastrophe for the west

and for the working classes of the West and for the middle classes of the West even even if They didn't realize it because let's face it why why was there a National Health Service in Britain why was there the New Deal in the United States yeah why was there free education for children only because the Bazi the ruling class in the west was absolutely terrified that communism was coming so they these were uh acts of retreating in certain regard regards so as not to lose power and the moment you saw that the moment the N

you know the red flag uh Came down from the klin in 1991 all those were taken away suddenly there was a rush to take away whatever benefits and public goods had been made available in order to prevent communism from coming to the West so this is an interesting dialectical and a very delicious dialectical contradiction the west by the capitalist West by invading the Soviet Union its very early days it created a realm of fear and Terror inside the the Soviet Union that led to The rise of Stalin to the gulag and so on so the

West caused the the Soviet Union to become barbaric a very large extent but the Soviet Union civilize the West that's that's my way of thinking about it but let me talk about fascism here the fascism of the midw war period compared to the fashion today because there are many similarities I made the point that our 1929 2008 paved the ground for the rise of the fascists that you refer to the orans the melonis the Leens the alternative for toand the right-wing brexiteers Donald Trump uh Modi in India Golden Dawn and the new democracy here in

Greece and so on and so forth but there is a fundamental difference one you mentioned there was a strong trades union movement in the 1920s and 30s which doesn't exist today that you mention I don't I need to mention it myself but there was also something else the fascist parties because of the strong union movement and The strong leftwing Social Democratic communist parties anarchists in uh in Spain and so on uh because of that the industrial capitalists the industrialists Finance directly the fascists so musolini and H would never have gotten into Power if it was

not for the Big Business Industrial capitalists that actually saw in the fascists away a Bull workk against the left can what can I can I interject here as well uh because this is a this is a Complimentary point to the to the Testament of the strength of militant Labor uh movements that the early fascist before they completely openly subscribed to Fascism also portrayed themselves as socialists or well not real socialists but like they used the the very the very yeah the very popular agenda of of uh economic socialism I guess without actually ever subscribing to

it of course but they still use that as a as a as a means to to Galvanize Their base or to bring more people onto their base something that I think Tucker Carlson has utilized as well as a matter of fact in like in American propaganda where sometimes he'll say things where you're like you're you're confused by like he he sees the writing on the wall and will regularly use leftist thinking economic populism Donald Trump did this as well as a matter of fact um like true economic populism in order to to develop a base

of support without ever actually Giving that base the things that he promised and just uh you know only hyperfocusing on the nationalistic components as a means of control indeed indeed let's not forget that musolini started Life as a socialist and he was the first first political leader in Europe to introduce a fully fledged pension system um non-contributory pension system if you read and I had spent uh prior to writing a book what 15 years ago about Europe I had spent a Large and very painful uh part of my life reading everything that um gbls had

written between 1920 and 1933 uh it was fascinating they were all everything everything he had written was four pages everything was four pages it had a four page format the first two pages I could have written the first two pages were a critique of capitalism of financial capitalism of Bankers of you know the way the exploitation of workers uh the the Cultural aspects of commodification I could have written it I wish I had written it and then suddenly so what we do we kill the Jews right that's the second the the bottom of the second

page or into the third and the fourth one okay similarly musolini if you read his speeches especially just before he took over power what was the deal the Covenant that he was presenting the Italian people it was you have been treated like there are these rich Bastards the industrialist the bankers the this that and the other that are selling out the country and you in particular and I'm offering you the following deal you'll give me absolute power forget democracy trade unions voice representation and all that rubbish you give me absolute power and I will look

after after you and he did he looked after them he gave them pensions he tripled the minimum wages what Orban has done in Hungary you know run on time Right that's what they say yeah but more than that he actually gave money in like in the same way that Victor Orban did in Hungary he Tre trebled the minimum wage first day what what social democratic government do you know that has done that none ever ever okay so you're absolutely right but the the the trade-off is no voice no democracy no representation and then what these

fascist used to do is then take the masses that owed them for having been Looked after by them and sell them to the industrialists essentially do a deal a corporatist deal now that was then in the mid War period after the Our Generations 1929 2008 that didn't happen and it didn't happen for the reasons that you have outlined firstly we don't have the strong trade unionist we don't have a strong left the ruling class are not worried about the left so they don't have to do any of this but there is something else as well

The power has shifted away from industrial Capital the industrialist were no longer in control of capitalism after the end of Breton Woods in 1971 and by the the time Ronald Reagan had taken over under the stewardship of the Federal Reserve by um Paul vuler how had shifted from the industrial sector to the financial sector to Wall Street in the United States but also in Europe increasingly so even if I made you president or prime minister in the 1980s And '90s you couldn't do a deal between the working class and the industrialist because the industrialist didn't

have the power they didn't have the money it was the bankers that did and it's impossible to cut a deal between the financiers and the workers or today the cloud capitalist or Cloud as I call how imagine a a government sitting down Jeff Bezos on the one hand and the precariat on the other and say we'll cut a deal between it's just simply impossible phys Physically it's not possible because of the way that production exchange and distribution has been uh uh evolving due to technological change so instead the fascists put all the eggs in the

in in the basket of xenophobia okay they cannot promise you to look after you I mean Donald Trump promised it and didn't deliver and in the end the only thing that really happens Dynamic is this they whip up discontent through the language of Carson of uh Trump of meloney in Italy they win power in order supposedly to serve the people and then they deliver tax cuts to the very rich especially to the finances and then at that point they get blunted their own power so money remains in power in Italy only because she's got a

deal with the establishment essentially not to be different at all to the previous regime to the Mario drag which is really interesting because it's a bit like what happened to the government in which I Was Minister after I left my former comad that remained in government who had agreed they had effectively surrendered to the powers that be fully um they also did exactly what rightwing governments would have done only with a leftwing tinge a little bit of pink somewhere you know uh and of course at that point the system spits them out vomits them out

and I think that these fascist will also be vomited out by the system that incorporates them because There is no Industrial Capital they know trade unions and no government anymore has the capacity to cut a deal whether it is a national socialist Nazi deal or a Social Democratic deal so I think we we're done with all that now we have the radical Center we simply have kind of feudalism with the mediocracy the media autocracy and people that are fragmented fragmented precariat Cloud surf I call them Cloud PRS the precariat uh as far as China is

concerned because you Mentioned China before let me say that I think that China is a remarkable experiment uh it's a work in progress I don't think we can say China is like this whatever we say after China is is wrong because China is many things uh from some personal experience I have there are remarkable leftwing voices in the Chinese Communist Party very very astute minds and very Progressive people who with whom you you know you would find a lot in common not everything but A lot in common and they represent workers cooperatives uh prefectures and

so on but in the same Communist Party Central Committee you have representatives of big business the aluminium producers that I was taking talking about before you know the cloud capitalists the more more billionaires than any other party on the planet sitting active party members but but that's what I'm saying the class struggle in China is happening within The Central Committee of the Communist party and of course is completely behind closed doors it's totally opaque to us to know what what is going on that is a great disadvantage because opacity is never um friend of progress

but it is an interesting uh experiment let me give you another example at some point president G decided that the cloud cloud elist as I call them the owners of cloud Capal the big Tech of China became too rich and too powerful so he slapped them Down and he got rid of them he said no no no no no no we've given you the right to get rich but not that rich so Jack Ma you can be a billionaire buer off you're out of Alibaba you know this is this is interesting I wish we could

have a system where instead of the auto the autocrat who occupies the position of the General Secretary of the Communist party you know we could have a Citizens assembly or you know representatives of Workers playing that role of slapping down those who acquire too much capital and therefore too much power to extract okay that's I mean I I I agree with what you're saying maybe I also like the uh the visually I like the idea of like um the Central Committee having closed door Mau struggle sessions internally where they their humility ating the counterrevolutionary billionaires

potentially um for for engaging in counterrevolutionary sentiment um I just I we have no way of understanding what uh the Chinese government is going to look like in the next 10 years I don't think and I that's why it's so funny when people always say like oh China's a slate of the collapse like tomorrow uh not understanding that like uh it's it's that well you you scoff at this as an economist but the the sentiment of those who uh at least like care to follow China even from a negative perspective is almost always what I'm

describing to You if you go on YouTube and you search China there are a million essays if you go on foreign policy magazine even though their attitude has shifted following the party line they are following the Party Line This is the Washington consensus the Washington party line at some point the it's amazing we don't need in the United States a KGB we don't need a Communist party or a capitalist party reaction party because it operates as if there is One you don't actually do it for fre Beauty ofer is a party line suddenly they all

become anti-chinese all the analysts who were proclaiming China as the great Capital success story suddenly they are dumping on it all of them together that is not because something changed in China that's because there's a new line a new party line yeah it's it's very interesting to see that I mean that that can be talked about in every respect of even left disorganizing Something as like a even when you look at the microcosm uh of of like left disorganizing in the past we needed uh the American government needed uh coel Pro right that was a

thing that uh that the the federal government openly utilized Espionage to infiltrate leftist groups to subvert them and to cause Division and to either take over or eliminate them right and to spy on them and surveil on them and yet nowadays like I don't think there is espionage of That sort I don't think that the intelligence communities are engaging in that because people do it to themselves anyway people have adopted those Aesthetics so firmly that like uh there is genuine momentum from those who consider themselves to be like leftists who or consider themselves to be

uh socialists of of different varieties constantly infighting and and finding new methods of of sewing uh division Wrecking in the old party terminology we We are engaging in Wrecking behavior all the time without even recognizing that we're doing it we're volunteering our um views uh to the owners but at the same time I have to tell you that as somebody who has and that is official this is not my it's not hea and it's not my allegation I've got an three threo NSA t on me because of my relationship with Julian Assange that has been

established in Madrid Court in Spain um I have to say That um the National Security apparatus of the United States even though you and I are volunteering our data through Amazon through Google and so on uh they do not rely on big Tech they have their own equipment they have their own systems because they understand better than anyone that their own power within the honic space that the United States is created over the last 70 years depends on large scale Capital belonging to them they believe in state ownership Of cloud Capital with them at the

controls they understand that but they're still operating at the behest of capital owners though right like I I feel like in the most reductive terms like the Chinese government owns the corporations whereas in America and in Western Capital Nations the corporations still own the government so all the decision- making from the states usually in the western world are done to advance the interest of the capital owning class As a whole but don't don't deny agency to the agents they have some agents let me give you an example uh in the 1960s the American car industry

was in the process of being wrecked by Japanese Imports oh yeah and the United States could easily have slapped tariffs to prevent Toyotas and mazas and Hondas from coming into the country right they didn't and it that wasn't because they believed in free trade because they had a plan plan for using Japan as a proxy For United States power in East Asia and they wanted a very strong industrial pylon supporting the American dollar in East Asia and they understood that fully well I've read transcripts in the senate committee hearings and so on and so forth

and because they had failed in securing China as a vital space where the CH the Japanese cars would be sold they had to absorb them into the United States so they actually went to General Motors and they went to Ford and said Okay listen we are going to let them in that will decimate you but don't worry we will give you huge defense contracts and other ways of financializing yourself so you ended up with General Motors becoming a financial company and not a car company so that's what I mean they serve the interest of corporate

Capital but sometimes they go against what corporate Capital instructs them to do because some of the smarter people in Washington know the interests of Corporate America better than Corporate America does oh yeah no it still serves because what you just described is still obviously imperialism which I believe is a necessity under capitalism so I think that it served the interest of American imperialism even in the short term if it did not serve the interest of uh American capitalists at least in certain sectors Marx had put it beautifully in the 18th bremier when he said that

the state which is the organ of the Bui Nevertheless has to wield the damoc sword over the heads of thei in the buis interests yeah they they they do the they do the the hard stuff sometimes even if uh even if people don't see it even if they don't have the understanding of an agenda which by the way is yet another argument for the State uh operating in some way uh that's why I I think it's laughable to say that like the American state is is disorganized or rather there is no Central planning of some

sort uh after all our agricultural industry would not exist without severe subsidies and that's a deliberate uh mechanism of the state to continue pushing in certain directions whether it be our our interest in fossil fuels uh in the way that we subsidize our energy sector I believe uh up until maybe like 2016 2017 85% of subsidies were still going to fossil fuel uh providers so that's like I think that our state is still Operating at the behest of Corporations even when it doesn't seem like it in the short term and some of those I think

some of those decisions some of those gambles that we're making are shortsighted in comparison to how the Chinese State op operates as they uh very quickly seized on renewable energy as the as as a as an important sector uh and as a growing as a as a growing sector um partially they probably couldn't uh engage in the same level of Control over fossil fuel the fossil fuel sector even though they had I guess coal but they they couldn't do that for for oil so they maybe moved in a pragmatic fashion towards um working with uh

like the re the countries that are very resource dense as far as you know lithium and many of the minerals that we desperately need for both batteries and and uh and the like but I feel like they're making the right gamble uh as a state whereas the western states are Making the wrong Gamble and are maybe too far gone to recognize that does that make sense yes absolutely look if if you want to take an even you know even a quite right-wing perspective on this uh you come to the same conclusion that the Chinese Communist

party needs development of its people in order to maintain gains legitimacy the United States system doesn't need that it simply seeks the reproduction of uh the capital of the corporate sector that's All they need uh they get their U capacity to reproduce themselves politically through this fall democracy this plent democracy with periodic elections that um are designed to make sure that the Deus is never allowed into the American democracy uh and at the same time they extract uh about 70% of the rest of the world capitalist profits which is recycled through Wall Street so the

Chinese simply looked around and they Tred to imagine what the next fu is It's not going to be oil it's going to be solar and it will be wind and it will be fision and they're investing like hell on that uh so you know the Americans the only thing that keeps the United States system going is the Monopoly of the dollar system they understand that that's why they will you know this is they will nuke anyone who tries to to assume or to subvert the power of the dollar that we must remember so Speaking of

dollarization I guess I have heard uh some of the things you've said about brics Nations which I I think is is uh hailed up as a as an alliance that will inevitably destroy American currency and and the power that it holds I I don't I am not as big as a bricks believer uh as I feel like you aren't either uh especially considering that like this Allegiance is not held by any ideological underpinning these are these are countries that are even ironically At uh in conflict with one another at least the I and the C

are in conflict with one another uh with regular frequency so what do you have to say to the to the brics Defenders like what is your assessment for those of you who don't know uh in the chat about uh the development of bricks while you also answer that I'm going to run to the bathroom real quick if you don't mind go ahead I will talk to our audence go ahead yeah there's there's 25,000 people Listening to what you have say oh hello 45,000 people okay so I think that commentators establishment commentators on the right underestimate

the importance of the bricks and my left-wing comrades overestimate the importance of the bricks they have we have I mean I would like to see that happening except that I don't believe it will happen we would like to see uh an alternative poll of soci economic power and geopolitical power emerging in order To counterbalance American imperialism and you know those who still yearn after the Soviet Union who are nostalgic about the Soviet Union with all its faults as Assad said and they thought that you know quite rightly so that it was a counterbalance for the

United States power and they would like to say okay well bricks is the new USSR well it isn't and I think Hassan mentioned some of the reason why it isn't uh there is no common political Economy what is the relationship between the political economy of South Africa Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia which is now entering the bricks um Russia India and China they are just completely different uh kettles of fish they are in conflict with one another the most important aspect however of bricks is a common cause they have and that is the fear of what

I was saying before the power of the United States ISO upon it upon the the United States by the Monopoly of International payments so if you want to make international payments you're stuck with the dollar these days uh the Chinese again as I was alluding to before the Chinese have created a new super highway for international payments which Indian oligarchs Saudi Arabian oligarchs Russian oligarchs Indonesian oligarchs Malaysian oligarchs of course people from you know the shakes from the United Arab Emirates they would like to have access to just in case this is Hedging their beds

they don't want to put all their eggs into the dollar system that is what if you look at the Bricks now what is the interesting part of what the bricks do it is the bricks payment system which is an alternative to Swift it's an alternative to the dollar system H that's very interesting uh what else are they doing which is interesting they're creating uh an alternative to the IMF uh for the purposes of lending before mle was Elected in Argentina uh one of the uh the bonds that uh was maturing by Argentina and Argentina had

to pay to the IMF was paid for by a loan granted by the Chinese government to the Argentinian government in Argentinian Pesos which meant essentially that the Chinese who knew of course that the amian peso would depreciate relative to the dollar essentially they were taking the risk of the dollar of the Argentinian person in repaying part of The debt of Argentina to the IMF now why would the Chinese do that they it's not philanthropy it's an attempt to bolster this alternative payment and banking system alternative to the dollar that is what they have in common

now people say oh yanis does this mean that this is going to be a common currency no there can never be a common currency to have a common currency you need to have a capacity to tax a common capacity to borrow so for me for me the bricks is an Interesting experiment whereby the C China creates the financial system and the B the r the I the S and all the other letters representing countries that have not entered the bricks yet but are in the process of entering including Saudi araban so on will be using

that system that friends on the left must understand is not an alternative ideological block like the USSR was it has very interesting repercussions regarding the Monopoly of the dollar and Therefore the American capacity to project geopolitical power around the world uh but it is work in progress uh there are interesting aspects to it there's no guarantee that working people are going to benefit from it because let's face it all these capitalists in the bricks countries still have most of their money in the dollar system and they want to keep it in the dollar system because

if you are a producer of byd cards in the united in China one of Your investors is Warren Buffett you want to sell them to the Americans why would you sell them to the Americans because the American an have a great trade deficit so the trade deficit of the United States is like a vacuum cleaner sucking byd cars in the United States and what do you get you get dollars right so the bricks payment system and so on for you is a backup mechanism even if you're a Chinese capitalist this is what my friends that

Is yes this is what my so unless the working class of China appropriates control of the bricks payment system it's good that the bricks payment system will be created then we need the Second Step the working class of China of India of South Africans on to appropriate this bricks payment system and make it work for them not for the capitalists yeah I mean maybe with the this this there in lies the the question of of whether there is a genuine ideological Commitment to socialism presented by China where uh they would allow such a thing to

happen if there's only if there's one country that in my opinion has the capacity to do such a thing it would be China it definitely I don't think it would be India um India I feel like is depends on how the class war plays in China it will depend who wins the class War in China so yeah uh this is not necessarily an argument but it's just like something I think about a little bit uh with respect to comparing India's development to to China's development and how differently things have played out they're both in to

different uh degrees uh postcolonial countries in some respects that have been harmed by uh Western Colonial interests and yet one country seemingly is in the throws of fascism and is very much in favor uh by the Western capitalists as like as they present India not only as a Emerging Market but also as like a beacon of of I guess capitalist development I feel like they're they're definitely seen as like an ally by Western capitalists in a way that now China is not China is presented as a threat and yet when you look at the even

development in China in comparison to uh no such uh even development in India I feel like ideology plays a role there no I mean or I guess like the interest of the government plays a little bit of a role there well it does Of course it does uh look India is also a work in progress uh but you're right the fundamental difference is that it's not Incorporated in the International Recycling system a system of recycling surpluses and deficits India is um a deficit country without a huge deficit a lot of poverty uh there is industrialization

but at the same time there is so much cronyism and oligopolistic power which is unchecked by government is a weak government it's A government that only manages to to to gain such large percentages by essentially fermenting ethnic rivalries and uh oppression of one ethnic group by another ethnic group this is not how the Chinese Communist party did its uh accomplished its own management of the social economy of China already you see that before there was substantial development in India the degree to which you have cartels forming that are extracting huge quantities is of value From

the middle class in the pett Bui and taking the money out of India for instance you know buying the government of the United Kingdom as well as his industry you know Jaguar belongs to the Indians now um and diversifying around the world before not like the Chinese who created a very strong industrial Matrix with all sorts of products becoming uh uh very competitive across the world and then extending its power or spreading its wing outside of China You have few oligarchs in India who are already taking their money out of India and using the the

fascistic government of Modi in order to keep everybody under Elite so the developmental power of India which is great U is not being harnessed not yet and the political game and the way it plays out is going to be essential in determining the chances of India of the Indian working classes for u a modicum of shared Prosperity which the Chinese have Succeeded in acquiring isn't this a testament that or isn't this a lesson for Western Nations to pay attention to as far as and it's it's one that I hear being channeled by uh the European

Union as a matter of fact I uh that that um State controlled economies are impossible to combat through uh impossible to combat in the global Marketplace especially if they reach a level of development where they can compete with like uh where they I guess Can compete with American interest and and Western interest in general that it is uh virtually impossible to to go up against them because of how much control they have over their industrial output like they are not as they're not as weak uh and and susceptible to the boom and bus cycle that

uh capitalist forms of governance are um one example I'll use I guess is the like you mentioned the byd uh cars right the electric vehicles are just far too cheap for uh European uh Industry to compete with and this has become such a obvious uh this has become such an obvious issue for uh Europe possibly led by the uh German industrialist interest here uh to to put an end to the the almost invasion of of uh very cheap very affordable Chinese electric vehicles I mean I think well someone in the chat just linked this uh

uh as well uh Janet yelen talking about China's overproduction of clean energy Goods need to be Mitigated um and I think the EU said something along the lines of uh we have to do something about like subsidizing Chinese EV development because they are absolutely gutting our uh like gutting the space that we had assigned for European car manufacturers okay let me add to what you said and then take a position before 2009 2008 2009 the line across Europe the party line and to a very large extent in the United States was that China can never

be a threat because even though they are very good at copying what we do and our Technologies uh you know it's a good place to subcontract our second rate production lines because um you know they they can produce on mass older Technologies because they are a centrally planned communist Le government they can never innovate and then they innovate it and then they change their tune yeah but beyond that it's not that the Chinese innovated After the 2008 financial crash when we had in April of 2009 the Great and the good of the G7 presidents and

prime ministers and Central Bankers gathering in London under the chairmanship of Gordon Brown who was the Prime Minister of Britain then in order to to decide to agree amongst themselves the great bailout of the bankers they printed $35 trillion between 2009 2020 and they handed it over to the financiers and at the same time they practiced austerity So if let's say you are Volkswagen in Germany the phone rings and it's Deutsche Bank we just been given a few billion on the European Central Bank just that day to dispers to to lend your Volkswagen and this

your bank is giving this money away to you for free take billions billions take it now billions no interest rate why would DOA Bank give it away for no interest rate because it was getting it from the European Central Bank at negative interest rates so Deutsche Bank was making money by giving away money billions for free to Volkswagen right but the people in Volkswagen who are not stupid right they looked at people around Europe who were struck by hit by austerity and had they were impecunious they said yeah as if we're going to to you

know to invest in new EV Vehicles you equivalent of Tesla or fancy new cars products whatever these people won't be able to buy it so they took the money from Deutsche Bank Because it was free and they took it to the frankfur stock exchange and they bought Volkswagen shares that's what investment so to cut a long story short Hassan between 2009 and 2022 there was no investment in in Germany zero the the the thing that you just mentioned is a product I mean is a is a financial tool that I here in the United States

of America I'm of course very familiar with uh considering that that has been the the the entire financial transaction for Virtually every single massive American corporation since the Reagan Era the process that you described being illegal before the Reagan Era stock BuyBacks yeah that's what they did so they didn't invest meanwhile the Chinese were investing as if there is no tomorrow they boosted their gross Capital formation the actual percentage of income invested from an already outrageously High 30% to 50% they built up 22,000 miles of super fast trains you Know they invested massively in Battery

Technology right so today they can produce a remarkable car that is nicer than better than Tesla you know for $30,000 not saying sucks sorry right Volkswagen who has no access to rare Earths no access to Battery Technology they have to buy all that from China they cannot compete and then they're kicking screaming and screaming blue murder that the Chinese are are Practicing you know they're using unfair Trade Practices rubbish they haven't been investing for two decades while you were asleep at the wheel doing share by no absolutely yeah these this is very interesting to to

think about okay I I've had you here for uh two hours now two hours plus and uh thank you so much for uh all the time you gave this community uh I have a couple last questions let me think uh there was another thing I wanted to bring up here I think it was about not about investment but um [ __ ] the conversation about stock BuyBacks just like broke my brain a little bit people want me to ask you about loot boxes and what you think about there's a lot of there's a lot of

uh steam valve uh interest in this community for understandable reasons this is a you know we are this is a gaming platform that we're on primarily um Us's economic allies no that's not what it is yeah okay what what do you Think about loot boxes I don't know much about because you see I I cut my My Links since I left there uh my job let me tell you what it was my job was to study their economy uh they had no idea of how that economy worked it had spontaneously emerged they had never planned

it they never designed it it was just a perfect example of what haek referred to as spontaneous order and I went there Tred to to study the Dynamics of price formation uh of uh the Probability of bubbles uh inflating and then deflating very suddenly and creating damage to the player commun community uh how the trading rooms should work in order to minimize the costs of um subterfuge by people who were leing and going to Ebay that that you know I spent there one year that's what I learned then I moved on then I you know

then I had um to negotiate with the IMF as the failed Finance Minister of the most bankrupt European State uh okay let me ask you this is a silly questions now uh what do you have to say to those uh I personally think this is a very reactionary response to anyone and everyone that is even like remotely presenting of like Progressive causes but one thing that we see in the United States of America is this notion that socialism implies that you have to live a very aesthetic lifestyle uh that socialism and success are not aligned

uh with one another you brought up uh Something inadvertently without even probably realizing but you said what if I'm selling you a house for 500,000 you're selling me a house for $500,000 and I'm offering you 1 million dollars you probably don't know this but I am an owner of a house I'm living inside of it right now this is seen as a uh an unimaginable sin by those who have no understanding of socialism what do you think about the the notion that socialism and and being successful or Being affluent cannot uh coexist well you see

the whole point about being a soci is wanting everybody to be well off and not wanting anyone anyone to be a victim of exploitation now that in my case I have a very nice house here where I am uh my wonderful kitchen a very nice place especially if you saw the view during the day outside I am um you know my privilege is bordering on the sinful the question is are you prepared if if Needs be are you prepared to downsize to give it up so as to live under circum ances of shared prosperity and

the the answer must be yes and it is yes do I feel guilty that my income is above the median income no because I don't think socialism would be promoted if um if I fell below the median if it were to be promoted I would do it and one final point we marxists we are not against the products of capitalism of the production line we against we are against the Social relations of production which confine ownership of those machines to the 0.001% and the rest become slaves of that 0.001 I'm not going to to to

smash my phone because it you know it is an instrument for JE basus and I'm not going to smash my motorcycle particularly my motorcycle with which I'm in love uh because it was produced by Yamaha there I plugged Yamaha as well Um and one final point if I may when we fought for uh equal civil rights in the Deep South the United States we did some of us or against apide in South Africa or against what's happening now in Gaza we were privileged well you know what it takes a little bit of privilege to have

the time and the capacity to dedicate yourself to that struggle because if I were an Uber driver you know driving 15 hours a day in order to put food at the table for my children I wouldn't be able To have this conversation with you today I wouldn't be able to write books I wouldn't be able to agitate I wouldn't indeed have the power to run it for elections Okay so let's not fetishize wealth but not fetishize poverty at the same time to be rich is to be glorious in the words of dang sh no I'm

kidding um no but we have another we have another thing in common do you know what we have in common what do we have in common been speaking for two hours and Our dogs have been asleep next to us yeah well yours behind mine over there it's because it's because she I I work her out in the morning uh every morning well you're you're dog is sleeping because it's 1:00 a.m. over there but um my dog is sleeping because she ran a lot this morning and I have to do that because I stream for8 hours

every day um agitating and propagandizing to the best of my ability my dog does the same thing you know during the day after a big run In the morning a lot of zooming and a lot of sleeping by my dog next to me so I'm familiar with your circumstances yeah well Yannis thank you so much thank you so much for coming on this was phenomenal I've been a big Fanboy of yours for uh quite some time I hope I wasn't uh too annoying and uh also I want to give a shout out to uh evelt

from the Netherlands who's a big fan of mine apparently and was really keen on making this uh chat happen it was a Little bit difficult I I will admit to like uh go a little back and forth and and uh secure a time slot especially with the international time zone uh difference but uh just wanted to give them a shout out that's what dm25 uh asked in the DMS um and and I am very glad that it happened finally are you are you coming to America anytime soon are you coming to La anytime soon not

anytime soon we have European Parliament elections in June and we are running Here in Germany in Italy because we are TR internationalist we are the only people who are running in different countries at the same time uh and after that I think I'm going to collapse during the summer and head for the United States in the Autumn oh okay well maybe you know who knows maybe I'll maybe I'll be in your neck of the woods sometime uh so is there anything you want to you want to mention is there anything you want to plug before

uh we Leave two things if I may first let's all remain Vigilant about the slow murder of Julian Assange my great friend who is in the belmer prison uh for revealing the crimes our governments have performed have committed in our name behind our backs and secondly let me say that next week I'm going to go to your town in Istanbul oh wow okay speak the comms there um and I think you and I should join forces amongst other things in order to bring about about greater Greater solidarity amongst progressiv in our two countries I I

agree 100% as long as you give us bucko as long as you say Bako is Turkish is in Greek as well we have the same word oh no all right well thank you so much for coming on this is wonderful have a good one yep all right that was Giannis varus ladies and gentlemen boys girls and EMB Hassan collab tracker updated here let's uh let's look at that real quick there It is this is one of those moments where I I have to be a little lame about it but like I mean this is someone

who I've read who I've been watching for many many years and the fact that uh I have an opportunity to be able to have a conversation almost as peers as comrades as he said is really really remarkable yeah Giannis barakus is incredible and I'm really glad that he came on