Stefanos Kasselakis, who is Tsipras’ highly papal successor
He was on Joe Biden's campaign committees and worked at Goldman Sachs, which he later left having seen "capitalism up close". Stefanos Kasselakis is the surprise of the race for the presidency of the Greek party Syriza, previously led by Tsipras. The italics of Teo Dalavecuras
Thirty-five years old, the first fourteen spent in Greece in a prosperity of which his father, an entrepreneur in the field of naval supplies, was deprived by unspecified "parajudicial circles", then in America a scholarship student at the same university where his dentist mother teaches, at twenty years in Joe Biden's electoral committees, then at Goldman Sachs, three years later abandoned having seen "capitalism up close" (it means "buying the hard work of others cheaply" explains the interested party in a Marxian way) to found his own successful venture in the field of transoceanic navigation which – he explains – allows him not to be "bought". Candidate for Syriza in the last general elections in Greece.
We are talking about Stefanos Kasselakis, who came to the fore the day before yesterday with an extremely professional 4.2-minute video where, in the eleventh hour, he announces his candidacy for the position of president of the main Greek opposition party, Syriza, in fact a race that already includes several authoritative aspirants to succeed Alexis Tsipras (who is following the emergence of the new leader from afar without expressing any preference because – say his men in Athens – the only aim is to "guarantee the unity of the party").
Something or someone is reminiscent of the biography of Kasselakis, who suddenly upset the games within Syriza and who presents himself as the person capable of beating Mitsotakis because he would have "made himself" and speaks better English than the prime minister. As far as personality is concerned, in the past it would have been called "presumptuous" or "arrogant", today it is called "assertive", a bit like we no longer say "programme" but "agenda": the semiotician could explain the difference and what does it mean, but Umberto Eco has been dead for a few years (and we miss him very much). Overall, it feels like a story written by the same writer who wrote Elly Schlein's.
Speaking of diary, I forgot to mention that Kasselakis is also homosexual (indeed gay, unlike Schlein who according to wikipedia would be "bisexual"), he presented himself to the public opinion in a photo with his partner, both beautiful of that beauty a bit like an advertising spot, but after all the "products" are sold with advertising. So Kasselakis wanted to point out that he "doesn't have a gay agenda but a human agenda", thus implicitly suggesting – if this adverb were still allowed – that other agendas are inhuman: another no small manifestation of "assertiveness".
As for the rest of the agenda, it is peremptory: “Enough with the privileges for the few and for the elect. Transparency everywhere. A radical break with the past in health care, education, justice, separation of Church and State and abolition of compulsory military service".
The internal logic of this political operation which could lead Kasselakis to the seat that belonged to Tsipras, and which appears to have been organized with the decisive intervention of Tsipras himself – I would be willing to bet – is, on the one hand, to focus decisively on the young public of social media where there will be no few to recognize themselves in such a "right" program, on the other on a name which, being outside all the internal games of the party, could manage not to jeopardize its unity.
Kasselakis' initiative does not appear to be an improvised initiative. Not only because you don't become a candidate on Syriza's electoral list by chance, but also because of some details. For one thing, Pavlos Polakis, Tsipras' most colorful fellow traveler, the man with the mustache and the mimicry of the Mediterranean macho who has always been entrusted with the most politically incorrect positions that no other exponent of the party could person, was the first sponsor of this candidacy that wants to appear to have fallen from the sky.
On the meaning of these pre-packaged operations for the countries concerned and for Europe, the discussion would be longer and more complicated, admitted and not granted that someone wants to do it.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/stefanos-kasselakis-chi-e-il-papabilissimo-successore-di-tsipras/ on Fri, 01 Sep 2023 09:36:48 +0000.