Yanis Varoufakis
Coined 'technofeudalism' — Big Tech as the new rentier power.
Yanis Varoufakis is a Greek economist, author, and politician who served as Greece's finance minister during the 2015 debt crisis, where he opposed EU-imposed austerity. He is the founder of the pan-European movement DiEM25 and the author of Adults in the Room and Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism (2023). As of 2026 he continues writing and organizing against austerity and big-tech 'cloud capital.'
The strongest case
Digital platforms have become rent-extracting fiefs—'technofeudalism'—whose cloud capital and data enclosures increasingly displace markets; confronting that, and the austerity politics behind Europe's crises, requires democratizing economic power rather than tweaking policy at the margins.
And against
Critics argue 'technofeudalism' is more rhetorical rebrand than rigorous category (platforms still compete and profit within capitalism), and that his 2015 tenure as finance minister showed a confrontational style that won Greece few concrete gains.
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On the record
In April 2024, Germany's Federal Ministry of the Interior issued a Betätigungsverbot (activity ban) barring Varoufakis from entering Germany and from any political activity in the country, in connection with a Palestine Congress that Berlin police shut down. He was not charged with a crime; the measure was an administrative order. [source]