Kasselakis is a populist in the footsteps of Tsipras

It came from the space of rampant capitalism, but its gluttony is subject to the rules of square logic – its own logic. One would expect him, indoctrinated by the tyrannical norms of the multinationals in which he was raised, to bring an air of rationality to the political scene. Leftist rationalism, but rationalism.

In the end, Stefanos Kasselakis in his first political interventions, when he finished with the gyms, his parents’ reactions to his love choice, Tyler and the other family member, Farley, turns out to be a noisy, empty political cymbal.

It’s not that he declared “I hate the overexposure of my personal life. I’m sick of her and me and Tyler…”, while it was an overexposure that he himself caused and favored!

It is that, beyond the acceptance of his choice of husband, as the reactions were smaller than expected (a surprising fact that shows that Greek society has become much more tolerant), he has not offered anything new and positive. He is following in the footsteps taught by the now populist wing of the party.

Of course, they supported him, he knows them, he trusts them. But a leader who, in conditions of party subsidence and disintegration, does not open his own paths of recovery, who follows the tactics of lion populism, which cost repeated defeats, is not destined to see a bright future.

While he was supposed to be one of the young wolves of capitalism (if his claims that he became financially independent at 35 are true), as a leader he behaves like a directionless teenager. His immeasurable ambition, expressed from childhood (since, as he says, on the door of his childhood room was the inscription “Knock on the door of the Prime Minister”), led him to lead an unknown and foreign party, which in order to survive removes itself of.

Because what else was the cancellation of his speech at SEB, which had said that SYRIZA “does not demonize the word capital, but sees it as a tool for prosperity, reducing huge inequalities through strong growth”?

In the BSE he had delivered a speech of moderate social democracy, as in the times of globalized capital the raid on the winter palaces and the expropriation of the means of production, looks like a fantasy of resurrected comrades of Pouliopoulos when he went around with a trajaska (Secretary of the KKE 1924-26 and founder of Trotskyism in Greece ).

He was so horrified by the internal party backlash that in his next speech to the Economist he swerved to silence the accusing comrades. He argued that it is not capital but labor that is the productive force. The self-evident, that it is both, he did not dare to blurt it out.

At the same time, he downgraded the investment level achieved by the country, because it happened, he says, “with the society impoverished”. Psalto vex question. He did, however, offer listeners a cheerful note, saying he aspires to be the country’s next prime minister.

I was surprised that he suffered from the reactions to his speech at the BSE where he was himself, it disparaged him. Instead of taking the path he believes in steadfastly and throwing down the gauntlet – “whoever wants to come after me” – he began to untangle the old recipes that accumulated defeats in SYRIZA.

For the tax measures of the government, for example, which were indeed not the best, but there are no others (you want another state and another people. That is why all kinds of presumptions were established 45 years ago and with variations continue), the president of SYRIZA objected. He invested in the resentment by arguing that honest freelancers are labeled tax evaders. A day before he had declared that with this prime minister the tax free will be 10,000!

This in a country where – indicatively – 84% of those who have a bar declare under 10 thousand, lawyers by 50% the same, while one in three dentists under 6 thousand, as well as 70% of various construction professions (oil painters, plumbers, electricians, etc.). Likewise the majority of taxi drivers and other likeable professions.

Everyone is honest as people, it is not personal to dispute. It’s just that the structures of the state have allowed them to evade taxes for decades. Could Stefanos, with so much of his financial experience from the Mecca of capitalism, suggest something more substantial. The most important thing he proposed is to raise the tax-free amount to 10,000. For everyone to avoid taxes!