The young businessman, unknown to the general public a few weeks earlier and who did not even reside in Greece at the start of 2023, became, at the end of September, following a fantastic communications campaign, the new leader of Syriza, first left-wing political force in the country.
It’s a meteoric rise that no one saw coming in Greece. That of a political UFO: Stefanos Kasselakis. The new leader of Syriza went from shadow to opposition leader in the space of a few weeks. Still unknown to the general public in August, he won the election for the presidency of the country’s leading left-wing party at the end of September thanks to obvious charisma, a blitzkrieg communications campaign on social networks and public fascination. and the media for this “golden boy” with a confusing journey.
Of the American dream…
The story of Stefanos Kasselakis was written for a long time far from Greece. The 35-year-old businessman was born in Maroussi, a town of 70,000 inhabitants located north of Athens, but at the age of 14, he obtained a scholarship to continue his studies in the United States. A graduate of a University of Pennsylvania, he was hired at the age of 21 by the American investment bank Goldman Sachs. A five-year trading experience which inevitably surprised Syrisa voters, but which allowed Kasselakis, according to his own words, to “see what capital is: buying the labor of others at a lower cost” and measure “the arrogance that money brings“.
…to the “Greek dream”
Boss of a company in the merchant navy, Stefanos Kasselakis is a novice in politics. Although he was a volunteer in Joe Biden’s campaign team in 2008, he had never run for any mandate until the Greek legislative elections in May 2023. He then ran for Greeks abroad under the Syriza label. But with 18% of the vote, the left-wing party is experiencing a real debacle which pushes the man who has led it for 15 years, Alexis Tsipras, to resign. The departure of the former Prime Minister (2015-2019) opens the door to a new project for Syriza. Stefanos Kasselakis will rush in, to everyone’s surprise.
Express campaign and Instagram
Through careful videos, the thirty-year-old proved that he perfectly mastered the codes of communication on social networks. “Now is the time to build the Greek dream we desperately need“, he proclaims, at the end of August, in the video announcing, at the last minute, his candidacy for the presidency of Syriza. He also presents his American husband, an emergency nurse, with whom he has since appeared regularly before the media. Stefanos Kasselakis is the first openly gay politician to head a political party in Greece, a country where same-sex marriage does not exist.
A camp on the verge of a split
If the political freshness of Stefanos Kasselakis fascinates the Greek television channels – who follow him in all his movements, from the morning coffee to the gym – and has seduced the activists of Syriza (56% of the votes against the former minister of Work Effie Achtsioglou), she also irritates a number of political figures within her own camp. “We don’t need a messiah or political figures from the Instagram generation“, had notably launched Nikos Filis, former minister and tenor of Syriza, during the campaign.
His detractors criticize him for his inexperience, his lack of knowledge of Greece – he still lived in Miami until the beginning of the year – and his populist style coupled with a political program that is currently quite vague. Kasselakis, who intends to embody progressivism, vaguely promises changes in “health, education, work, justice“, and intends to bring about the separation of Church and State, abolish compulsory military service, invest more in the preservation of the environment and open marriage to same-sex couples. The former trader, who plans already on a possible future duel against the conservative Prime Minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, will first have to bring together his camp, which emerges deeply divided from this spectacular election.