Pacification or Liberation? Palestine with Kleo Alexopoulou
Pacification or Liberation?
What does liberation mean when humanitarianism collides with systems of domination?
In this episode, we’re joined by Kleo Alexopoulou — historian, researcher, and member of the Global Sumud Flotilla — to explore how solidarity, resistance, and international law intersect in the struggle for Palestinian self-determination.
We move from decolonial theory to lived experience: from the politics of recognition and the limits of “acceptable interlocutors,” to Kleo’s own detention after the Gaza flotilla mission. She reflects on what it means to hear bombs
some miles from the coast, how humanitarian initiatives become rights-based movements, and why even inside a prison, songs, drawings, and messages hidden in walls become a quiet archive of hope.
The conversation challenges the vocabulary of peace, the global structures that normalize impunity, and the emotional toll carried by those who refuse to look away. Above all, it reminds us that justice isn’t an abstract future — it’s the daily work of communities insisting on their dignity.
🎙️ Produced by Georgios Karagiorgos for European Youth Press and Pulse-Z
What Is Vox Civica?
Vox Civica-Where Democracy has a Voice is a podcast about how democracy is lived, tested, and reinvented in the modern world. It brings listeners inside the conversations and conflicts that define civic life today — from the streets where protests begin to the institutions where policies take shape. Each episode features voices from across journalism, activism, academia, and digital-rights movements, exploring how people confront power, defend freedoms, and adapt democratic values to an age of surveillance, misinformation, and rapid technological change. In short, it’s a space where critical thinking meets civic imagination — tracing the struggles, ideas, and collaborations that keep democracy alive in the 21st century.
About the guest:
Kleoniki Alexopoulou is an economic and social historian specializing in the Global South. She is currently a Visiting Professor at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and, over the past year, has been a Postdoctoral Scholar at the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies. Her research explores colonial state formation, fiscal regimes, labour, and welfare development in peripheral contexts. Her work has been presented at international conferences and published in peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes, drawing on extensive field research across multiple regions in Africa. In parallel, she serves on the steering committee of the Global Sumud Flotilla.
- Academic Research
- activism
- civil society
- Cleo Alexopoulou
- Colonial Legacies
- Decolonial Theory
- Detention
- Gaza Flotilla
- Global Justice
- Global South
- Global Sumud Flotilla
- Human rights
- Humanitarian Missions
- international law
- Liberation Movements
- Mediterranean Politics
- Middle East Politics
- Occupation
- Palestine
- Political Recognition
- Resistance
- Self-Determination
- social movements
- Solidarity Movements
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