JOHN KIRIAKOU: Greek Leftists for Trump

Trying to stop the war in Ukraine, spreading fear among conservative politicians and carrying out diplomacy with North Korea, as the U.S. president did in his first term, all earn points.

U.S. President Donald Trump with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky, back to camera, at the White House on Feb. 28. Vice President J.D. Vance on right. (White House / Flickr )

By John Kiriakou
Substack

I’ve written before that, just before the November 2024 presidential election I happened to be in Greece visiting relatives, and I was struck by how excited everyone was about the prospect of Donald Trump being elected president again.  I say that I was struck because my Greek relatives have been socialists and communists for generations.  

Indeed, our ancestral island of Rhodes is known as a bastion of Eurosocialism.  And a late cousin, Paraskos Parassos, was a longtime member of the politburo of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) representing the Dodecanese Islands.  How, then, could lifelong leftists justify support for an American politician credibly accused in his own country of fascist or authoritarian tendencies?  The answer is, actually, not terribly complicated.

First, we have all heard through the years that politics makes strange bedfellows.  That’s not just in the United States.  We see it all around the world.  And Greece is no stranger to political alliances of convenience.  In the late 1980s, for example, the conservative New Democracy (ND) Party formed a political alliance with the KKE, marking the first time in the country’s history that the communists were part of a governing coalition.  And it actually worked.

Second, many leftists, not just in Greece, but around Europe, feel pushed out of the political process.  Sure, there are mini-Trumps running governments in Italy, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland, just to name a few places, but what many Americans see as right-wing populism is seen in Europe as, simply, populism.  It’s a fight for the little guy.  And the little guy wants a voice.

Third, Greeks of all political varieties are tired of wave after wave of undocumented migrants and refugees flooding into the country from Turkey.  (The European Union pays Turkey billions of euros to hold these intending migrants in camps in Turkey.  The Turks happily take the money and then, under cover of darkness, put the migrants in boats or in trucks overland to Greece.)  Greece has never had tent cities of immigrants and refugees before.  But now they seem to be everywhere.

Fourth, Greek leftists absolutely hate the war in Ukraine.  That’s not to say that they’re pro-Russian.  They aren’t.  They’re just tired of war and they hate that the Greek government has jumped into the Ukraine camp with money and materiel.  

Gaza is another issue.  Greek views on Israel and the Palestinians is complicated.  For decades the Greeks were vocal supporters of Palestine and of pan-Arabism.  Why?  Because Turkey, Greece’s mortal enemy, was historically pro-Israel.  But that changed about 20 years ago.  When Ankara under Recep Tayyip Erdogan switched sides, cut ties to Israel and announced his support for the Palestinians, the Greeks switched sides too, announcing that they would be Israel’s best friend in Europe.  That’s been good for the Greek economy, as Israeli investment has flowed in.  But it’s been terrible from a moral perspective, and the Palestinians feel betrayed.

I happen to have a cousin who is the governor of Greece’s Dodecanese Islands, including our island of Rhodes, one of Greece’s top three tourist destinations.  He’s a member of the Panhellenic Socialist Party, and he told me something last week that I found to be fascinating.  He asked me if I had seen Donald Trump’s press conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in which Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance dressed down the Ukrainian and humiliated him on global television. 

My cousin said that leftists loved the performance, even if it was likely preplanned as a setup.  But they loved it, he said, not because they necessarily hate Zelensky.  They loved it because “every conservative politician in Europe is now worried that Trump will humiliate them, too.”  They’re afraid of Trump’s unpredictability and of his harsh treatment of an ally.  They’re afraid that they could be next.  The leftists love the confusion.

I want to be clear that I’m not saying that the European left’s embrace of Trump is good or bad.  I’m just saying that it’s a thing.  The European left doesn’t care one whit about domestic American politics.  They care about American foreign policy.  And if an American president is willing to put a stop to the war in Ukraine or to carry out diplomacy with a dictator like North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, as Trump did in his first term, European leftists are excited to go along for the ride.

John Kiriakou is a former C.I.A. counterterrorism officer and a former senior investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. John became the sixth whistleblower indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act—a law designed to punish spies. He served 23 months in prison as a result of his attempts to oppose the Bush administration’s torture program.

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.