Membership of NATO is no guarantee of democracy
It was early September in 1971. My mother had taken me in a taxi to a boutique hotel in a leafy northern Athenian suburb to visit my favourite uncle, her beloved brother. Before we got out the car, she put her arm around me and whispered words of courage in my ear. You see, Hotel Pefkakia had been commandeered by the ESA, the Greek military regime’s version of the Gestapo, which had turned it into a holding cell for VIP dissidents. What I saw inside, including my uncle’s tortured face, ensured that, from the age of 10, I understood what it meant to live in a brutish dictatorship.
By Yanis Varoufakis | 03/01/2024