When we say that the European Union sucks
and we need to fix it,
that is a very radical position.
In 2015, Yanis Varoufakis became infamous as Greece's leather-clad finance minister
who went to war with Brussels against austerity and lost.
Now he's back and going to battle with the EU establishment again,
this time as the face of a radical pro-European movement.
Five hundred billion euros every year to spend on the green transition
that is necessary to create good-quality jobs
and to save the planet.
Where do we find the €100bn that we need every year to fight poverty?
It's called the new deal for Europe, we're the only contenders in the May European parliament elections
that have specific answers to what can happen tomorrow morning across Europe.
And we are seeking your vote.
This is a pivotal moment.
You can see it in Britain with Brexit, you can see it in the United States with Trump
and the crumbling Democratic party.
These are times that 200 years from now will be debated,
like the 1920s and 30s.
With the traditional left in disarray,
Varoufakis says Europe needs saving from a broken establishment on one side,
and an emboldened ultra-right led by Italy's Matteo Salvini on the other.
His solution is DiEM25.
A movement that argues the only way to restore lost faith in the European Union
is to convince us that it can function as an effective, transparent democracy.
We joined Varoufakis and the DiEM team in the run-up to the European parliamentary elections
to see if it can deliver the revolution it's calling for.
I'm supposed to be logging us on to Skype to get to chat to him now.
Oh, there is McWilliams.
How is the campaign going?
We can all agree as progressives that we want a fair world.
We want less inequality,
that we want more green investment,
that we want a better treatment of foreigners,
newcomers in our countries.
But then, when it comes to: 'how do we do that?'
Where does the money come from
for green investments and the creation of good-quality jobs?
So this is what we did as DiEM25.
You know that, for three years now,
we've been asking anyone who cares to sit around the table with us
and discuss these issues.
And a lot of people did.
A lot of people said no.
What is your personal feeling about the election and that road ahead?
If we manage to place even just a few MEPs in the European parliament,
that work as a wedge that prizes apart this very cosy relationship
between the liberal establishment and the neo-fascists,
that is what if you want, the limit of our ambition for May 2019.
OK, excellent guys.
Brilliant.
Thank you, David.
Is that what you hope then?
That will be a new left at the end of this?
I do hope so because,
during the second world war, communists, liberals, Winston Churchill, coalesced against the Nazis.
We better coalesce to fight the good fight.
It all sounds a bit Star Wars.
I loathe Star Wars.
What?
It's boring.
It's too American.
It's the good guys, cowboys and Indians.
Whereas Star Trek, is scientific communism.
Let me show you something.
You'll see how crazy I am, let me get my phone.
There.
Look.
There is no trace of my money. How will I live?
This is the 24th century, material needs no longer exist.
Communism.
And what's the challenge?
So how does a fanatically democratic, member-funded movement
that is trying to agree one agenda for the whole of Europe work?
Well, it's complicated.
Because DiEM25 is a movement, not a political party,
if it wants to run anywhere in elections, it has to either create separate national parties in different countries,
like MeRA25 in Greece,
or partner with existing parties that have signed up to the DiEM25 agenda.
And they all sit under the broader coalition of European Spring.
DiEM is a movement, doesn't yet have the funding,
the media presence, the supporter base of Salvini or Macron.
Do you know if, like, Salvini is aware of your campaign?
I know that he's aware of our campaign.
He's not worried.
But with the resources you have,
can you take on these opponents?
This question would end any political movement before it began.
If you would have said, do we have resources to do this?
No, of course you don't.
When you begin, you begin.
DiEM25, officially, has no leader.
It has a coordinating collective.
This includes Yanis,
cultural icons Brian Eno and Noam Chomsky,
and Erik Edman.
Erik is 26 and he spent the last eight months driving across Greece
trying to organise the movement.
Which one's us?
This is us.
We went with him to Salamina,
a large Island close to Athens,
where he was leafleting with a group of activists.
I hear you're excellent at this.
Well, yes.
He said he's not interested.
If it was from Golden Dawn, maybe.
Oh!
You know the Golden Dawn, right?
Yeah, the neo-Nazi party.
Salamina is the kind of place that will either vote for MeRa or they will vote for Golden Dawn.
And I think that's something that us on the left are not very good at recognising.
That sometimes, we are speaking to the kind of voters that might go either way,
and because we also are ideological about what we do,
we cannot conceive that somebody who might potentially be our supporter,
would also consider voting for a neo-Nazi party.
So we are really trying to be the progressive alternative,
the sort of more ambitious alternative for people to vote for.
Basically an anti-establishment movement that isn't racist?
Or populist.
Which is where I think the left belongs.
Taxi driver?
Taxi, they are good.
Back in Athens, Yanis and his wife, Danae Stratou, were also out courting voters.
He didn't know about the party.
You do have a reluctance to be positioned as the leader of the party, to be the face of the party …
I mean, whenever I try to talk to you about that,
it's a bit more, 'hang on, no we are a movement, there's many of us.'
But I mean, you are probably the most recognised so far …
I mean, is it a balance for you to try …?
It’s excruciating, the cult of the leader.
This is detrimental to democratic politics.
It’s a lazy assumption that someone is going to come and save you, this is so in all walks of life.
You'll always try to find a simple … the shortcut.
But there are no shortcuts in democracy.
The Greek media and your former colleagues in Syriza often criticise you for being a narcissist,
they said that you're driven by ego.
Why do you think it is this is such a common criticism of you?
It's obvious, isn't it?
When you do something that you know is wrong,
but you have to say it's right, at some point there is this clash within your soul,
and either you stop doing it,
or you start justifying it and then you vilify those who have not turned as well as you have.
That's what they do.
There must have been a moment, when you resigned as minister,
where you could have been free from politics for ever.
When you have that kind of moral pressure,
you can't say, 'I’m just going to go and do my own thing …
So I've imagined that within the next year, it doesn't catch on,
and people say, I'm not interested.
Then I'm free.
At least I will feel that I am no longer obligated.
So in the next Greek national elections,
Yanis will run as MeRA25 candidate for prime minister.
He's also DiEM25's candidate for president of the European commission,
but rather than run as an MEP in Athens, he's decided instead to run in Berlin.
Brexit party is at 15%.
Yeah.
And Ukip 14%?
As May approaches you see, Farage is going to go through the roof.
Why are you standing for election in Germany and not in Greece?
Because we need to signify
to Greeks, to Germans, to the whole world
that the current struggle is not between Greeks and Germans,
it is between progressive, rational, humanist policies
and authoritarianism, the two faces of authoritarianism on the other hand.
Is it not because in Germany you only need 1% of the vote to get elected
rather than in Greece where you need 4%?
Not in the slightest, and proof of that is that I've already declared
that even if I am elected in Germany,
within weeks, I shall resign in order to fight the Greek national election.
Isn't there sort of a basic contract that you enter into with voters that when you say ‘vote for me’,
you then have a duty, a democratic responsibility, to then deliver for them
rather than resigning immediately?
Oh it is a social contract with voters.
I don’t quite understand the symbolism of it.
What I'm imploring German voters to do
is to cast their vote for a party that has somebody like me on their leading position
in order to signal to the rest of Europe
that a new era of transnational progressive politics is beginning
and we together as Europeans, we will symbolise
and signal to the rest of Europe that we are taking over, on behalf of the many, not the few.
Thanks very much for taking the time.
Thank you.
Yanis Varoufakis?
What was he asking?
There was a guy who thought you were a guy called Dr Walter.
I was like, do you know who he is?
He's like: 'yes, Dr Walter.'
Few people on the housing estate knew who Yanis Varoufakis was.
But in central Berlin, a crowd was gathering to hear him speak
at a pro-Europe rally.
An applause to Yanis Varoufakis.
I am standing in front of you,
as a committed European.
What we need is a green new deal for Europe
that we can implement tomorrow to create the good-quality jobs
that would be invested in the green technologies
that will defeat climate disaster tomorrow morning.
Would you vote for him after hearing him speak today?
I like that he is fighting for the EU,
but I am not sure about his policy in Greece.
So would you vote for him?
Do you think he has a chance of winning?
I don't know how much he can connect with people here.
I think he can address maybe just a small group of people,
also the elite and not so much the broader…
Is that because of the language barrier?
Also maybe because of his ideas, I don't know.
While Yanis is on course to get elected in Berlin,
a win isn't guaranteed and if his election is an assured thing,
what hope do DiEM25's lesser-known candidates have?
Good morning DiEM-ers!
We joined the movement one last time for their manifesto launch in Brussels
to see if the revolution was on course.
Good morning DiEM-ers!
25 March, tonight's a big event here in Brussels,
the weather is suitably gloomy.
Because Europe is gloomy and this is why we need a European spring.
Carpe diem.
What would be the group of people you'd represent?
Are you like, going to read from a script?
You need to focus.
I had five minutes to prepare my speech.
No, this is it.
Great speech.
The blonde suffragettes.
OK.
Let's have some fun.
No.
Yes, yes, yes, yes.
This idea of an anti-politics political movement,
led by a reluctant outsider,
called to politics for the greater good,
was sounding pretty familiar.
Are you not a progressive populist?
Not in the slightest, because populism is all about cultivating the anger and the fear
among those who have been held behind by the establishment.
Using that anger to win government and then turning against the people.
Think Mussolini.
Think Hitler.
Think Salvini.
So I very much dispute the very term, the coherence of the term progressive populism.
Can you actually win against those kind of forces while also rejecting populist messaging?
And populism in general?
I've no idea.
We are not in the business of predictions.
We are in the business of doing that which must be done.
Have you ever shared a stage with Pamela Anderson before?
No. No, never.
Are you impressed to be sharing a stage with Pamela Anderson?
No, not at all.
You just care about hope?
I care about lots of things, come on!
So do you think you’re going to get elected?
No, of course not.
That was not my goal when I started.
No one seems to think they are going to get elected.
What's the point?
The point is just to get our message out there.
To show people that our programme exists.
Do you think the message is going to land with people, do you think it’s going to resonate?
I think at the moment, DiEM and European Spring, as much as I hate to admit it,
it gathers a lot of intellectuals, philosophers, all these kind of people
who are really good with coming up with interesting ideas, but they’re maybe not good at addressing people.
You need a simple language
to address people in this day and age.
I don’t think we will reach our goals and get this programme enacted in the coming few years,
we won’t do it in one to three because that would be populism in my opinion.
With just a few weeks to go until the election,
DiEM25 is polling under 4% in all of the seven countries it is running.
Its two big adversaries,
the centre bloc Varoufakis calls the establishment
and the ultra-right he calls fascists,
look set to share around 70% of the total vote.
Varoufakis seems to know DiEM25 can’t deliver its vision at this election.
But given what he says is at stake,
is a revolution inevitable?
And if he’s not leading it, who will?