Yanis Varoufakis, the leftwing firebrand who briefly served as Greece’s finance minister, has criticised his “ridiculous prosecution” for allegedly promoting the use of recreational drugs after his public admission that he once took an ecstasy pill almost 40 years ago.
The 64-year-old, who reminisced about the experience on a podcast, was charged on Wednesday with “inciting others in the illegal use of narcotics”. If convicted he faces a prison term of at least six months and up to €50,000 (£44,000) in fines. A court hearing has been scheduled for December.
On Friday, Varoufakis described the indictment as indicative of the far-right turn in politics across the west.
It’s not like there’s an international cabal of human traffickers and pedophiles run by billionaires to go after.
I’m surprised any of them have the guts to throw rocks over drugs.
i guess they think more they accuse others, more it shifts the suspicion from them.
If the rage hard enough, their nose vessels will burst again
Should have talked about snorting cocaine off of Epstein’s toilet seats. Right wingers love that shit.
I’m not a leftie by any means but this is indeed very stupid and evil. Even if he had taken the ecstacy yesterday.
We really need to see that it is in our own interests to eradicate US lobbying. This also means that all EU politicians who have allowed themselves to be bribed must be removed from office.
In my opinion, this includes the majority of politicians from established parties who have been in government in EU countries in the last 10 years.
It is simply necessary to hold them accountable, as voters have rightly lost confidence in them. If there are no consequences, parties such as the AfD in Germany will prevail, which has “Alternative” in its name but absurdly tries to conceal the fact that it is nothing more than MAGA with that: a neo-Nazi party that propagates fascism and is controlled by the same billionaire financiers who helped Nazi ideology succeed in the US - for the same reasons: the realization of the omnipotence trauma of fascist billionaires.
Tells you that his criticism has merits.
If you think it shouldn’t be a crime to do what you did, why didn’t you push to make that change while in power?
Politicians love to keep anti-drug laws around to punish the poors with, but if they are held to the same standard, it’s “ridiculous”.
He was minister of finance for 6 months during the peak of the Greek financial crisis.
I’m guessing he had more urgent things to do.
The ridiculous part is being prosecuted for saying he took 40 years ago some ecstasy and it felt good.
But his quote also says the week after sucked and he never did it again. Sounds like he’s encouraging people against it
I bet there are many things he wanted to do but couldn’t as finance minister
The country’s drug abuse expert does not believe this constitutes condoning drug use. Common sense also suggests this isn’t condoning drug use, given that it’s literally what they teach you in anti-drug programs: it seems fun, but has negative consequences that outweigh the benefits, and you don’t find out until later.
Even if this were condoning drug use, what do you think a finance minister could do to repeal that law within a six month term?
