Can I stop Romania from falling into fascism?
Don't let history repeat itself, please
Earlier this year, a Romanian friend and I went to a small, experimental Romanian theater play that was showing at Berlin’s Volksbühne. The play, created by a young theater group, was interactive, continuously engaging the members of the audience, who were a mix of Romanians, Germans, one American here, one French there. I know the demographics because upon entering the salon, the actors greeted all individual spectators, asking them whereabouts are they from, what languages do they prefer, etc.
The play largely focused on ideas of home, heimat, stretching between the nostalgia of the Romanian diaspora to the longing of the adopted main character for the motherly love he never experienced.
At one point, they project a photo album to the wall: the photographs were iconic snapshots of communist Romania, starting with Nicolae Ceaușescu, Romania’s nationalist dictator. The actors look through the crowd and ask a woman in her late 50s, who we learn was Romanian, and had been living in Germany since 1990, “What is this photograph of?”
Obviously, the photograph’s of Ceaușescu, evident to all Romanians in the crowd and to anyone remotely informed about the looks of 21st century dictators. But we were not ready for what followed.
“He’s our beloved leader,” the woman confidently answers.
I get instant goosebumps. The actors are stunned, they start stuttering, and a heavy silence engulfs the venue. Shook, my friend and I turn to each other, with our faces dropped, mouthing, WHAT THE…!? We were seated front row, and I turn my head back slowly, probably compelled by some sadistic desire to see the person talking. I see all the other faces too: Romanians, equally shocked, ill at ease, looking straight ahead, nervously shifting in their chairs.
I still get goosebumps remembering this moment. The woman went on to talk about how much better her life was during communism (so good that she decided to leave to Germany as soon as it was possible.)
The actors politely, but swiftly, moved on to the next photo. My friend and I left the play and the first thing we blurted out once we had reached a reasonable distance from the theater was along the lines of, “WHAT WAS THAT?! WHO WAS THAT PERSON?? WHO BELIEVES THAT A DICTATOR IS BELOVED?!” We were shocked, but we also laughed it off. My friend mentioned that she knows plenty of people in her small town that might still feel this way. “WILD!” we shouted one last time, as we waved our goodbyes.
***
Fast forward to the first round of Romanian presidential elections in November, and it seems like the joke was on us.
Călin Georgescu, an ultranationalist candidate that was not registered by pollsters, running independently, that neither I nor any of my friends and family ever heard of before (this election round there were 14 candidates in the run-up), wins the first round of presidential elections, with 22.9% of votes.
I noticed Georgescu’s name the night of the elections, fourth in line. “Who’s that guy?” I ask my friend. She had only seen his name once in some comments on Romanian TikTok algos. We focus our energy, instead, on stressing that the candidate of the rising right-wing party AUR remains put in the third place, so that he won’t be running in the second round of elections.
But then we wake up to shocking news. Overnight, after counting all diaspora votes as well, the mysterious Călin Georgescu is first place, followed by center-right candidate, Elena Lasconi.
Mysterious to us, but an “avenger sent by God to serve Romanians” (his words) to many Romanians abroad, domestic, and on TikTok algos. We look him up, and realize, oh, it’s bad. My theater-going friend and I, my other like-minded Romanian friends, our families and friends of friends — we all live in a bubble.
***
The misinformation Georgescu and his thousands of TikTok accounts (official investigation from the Romanian intelligence Services claim there were over 25,000 accounts, activated two weeks before the first round of presidential ballot) spread are both the classic anti-EU, anti-NATO, ultranationalist, Russian propaganda as well as mystic, imaginative conspiracy theories, such as: the Romanian language does not originate in Latin, but the other way around; there is only one science, and that is the science of Jesus Christ; fizzy drinks like Pepsi and Fanta contain nanochips which control those who drink them; supporting Ukraine in the war means supporting the West’s plan to destroy and take over the riches of Russia — the madness is endless.
His mystical touch comes as an add-on to the ultra right-wing parties’ anti-EU and (stupidly-called) sovereign discourses (mostly embraced by those willing to surrender their countries’ sovereignty to Russia) that go along the lines of: “Romanians everywhere are slaving away for Western corporations”, “The EU did nothing but take from us Romanians”, “The EU destroyed our economy and intends to keep Romania underdeveloped.” Most imaginative one was that the EU forces us, Romanians, to eat insect flour — which would actually be amazing, by the way? Wellness fanatics would actually kill for this luxury. Insect (read: cricket) flour is incredibly rich in protein, a luxury afforded by the few.
Georgescu’s strategy was on point. His campaign targeted discontented and dispirited Romanians, abroad and domestically. He tells them he will offer them money, 2000EUR monthly, to be more precise.
This struck a chord. Most diaspora votes came from the Romanians living in Great Britain, Italy, Germany, and Spain, with overwhelming preference for the ultra-ring wing candidates. For the first round of the presidential elections, 57.81% voted for far-right wing Georgescu in Germany; in the UK, 49.5%, in Italy, 48.86% and in Spain, 47.04%.
After the shocking news of the first round of elections, a record number of Romanians world over activated themselves to vote in the ensuing parliamentary elections — many in a desperate move to push away right-wing parties from holding seats in the Parliament. To little avail — ultra right wing, anti-EU parties now hold over 30% of seats in the Parliament, making the subsequent potential election of an ultranationalist candidate an even more tragic outcome. In the diaspora, 55,5% Romanians chose right wing parties.
None of the smaller progressive parties made the 5% cut necessary to gain seats in the Parliament.
Here’s the real “WILD” catch, conveniently overlooked by us all, certainly by the corrupt leading political parties that eroded Romania post 1989. The most recent survey carried out by INSCOP, a Romanian statistics research platform, reveals that 46.4% of Romanians believe that life was better during the four decades of communism than today. A relative percentage of former-authoritarian-regime-nostalgics is not unusual for societies transitioning from authoritarian regimes and struggling to find their footing in a new setup (also the case of the former GDR, by the way). The percentage in Romania is, however, painfully high, revealing how deep the sense of instability, discontentment and disorientation runs, spilling over to the next generation of post-1989 Romanians.
There’s a lot of investigation currently channeled into Kremlin’s involvement in the elections and TikTok’s wrongful promoting of misinformation on their platform. Both certainly have had a major impact — but both were also preaching to the converted, clearly. It’s wrong to continue to be blind at the realities of the masses of dejected, disappointed, and traditionalist Romanians, living both in and abroad.
***
In a tragic way, history repeats itself. World over, for sure, but Romania’s historical cycles are so incredibly telling about its complicated, contradictory relationship with Occidental values versus nationalist, traditionalist values.
For instance, Romanians glorified interwar Romania as the golden years of the country: while it’s true that interwar Romania saw the development of a European-facing elite (that was not free from the era’s specific nationalistic and antisemitic prejudices, by the way) and the formation of modern cultural institutions, the same was true of the high percentage of underdeveloped rural Romania that was ranking first in infant death in Europe and saw half of its population illiterate. This was the perfect breeding ground for mass manipulation and exploitation, allowing for authoritarian deviations.
First, the antisemite Legionari, a fascist military and mystic movement organized around the extremist party The Iron Guard (Garda de Fier) — of which Georgescu is an outspoken fan — that terrorised and murdered whoever begged to differ. Then, after WWII, the first round of soviet communism in Romania sweeped in, and wrecked havoc. The foundations of the “traditional Romanian values“ based society were dismantled, the existing elite left to rot in prisons, and the rural and farmer class — at that point in time considered the fundamental class in Romania — dismembered. The fast industrialisation filled the urban spaces with uprooted, and easily manipulable masses. This round saw the literal re-writing of Romanian history.
Badabing, badabong, and next thing you know, semi-illiterate Nicolae Ceausescu, comes into power preaching “humane communism” (comunismul de omenie), a cruel irony for the harsh dictatorship years that ensued.
Romania is a low trust society. Distrust and suspicion, fear of deception and exploitation, are not unexpected after-effects of a society that lived in fear for decades. But Romanians at large have always been profoundly susceptile to anti-Western ideologies. Sociologists and historians talk about the Kosovo Effect, for instance — which sharply divided Romanians between pro-Slobodan Milošević and pro-NATO, revealing that for every pro-Western, pro-democratic values Romanian, there is another Romanian ready to defend traditionalist, Christian, nationalist and, utlimately, authoritarian values. Or, we can speculate on a third type of Romanian, which might reflect best what’s happening today: the Romanian that embraces the idea of the West, with its consumerism, freedom to travel and freedom to work, yet somehow cannot find the alignment between that idea and the reality of profoundly traditionalist, conservative and nationalist personal values.
“This is happening everywhere,” my Western friends tell me, pointing at the alarming growth in support for the far right everywhere else in Europe. It’s true. But I believe, and correct me if I’m wrong, that the immediate impact is incredibly destructive in a situation like Romania’s, with Russia’s encroaching presence like a Nazaré huge wave, ready to crash unto Romania. Romania not only is set to be the location for NATO’s largest military base in Europe, but it also plays a critical role in the West’s strategy on defending Ukraine — one factor also being that it also borders Ukraine. A pro-Russian president, with a divided parliament, means disaster in military spending decisions and foreign policy, and disaster for those Romanians hoping for a better life back in their heimat. Moreover, as a famous historian once said with regards to Romanian resistance, “In Romania, we have no Solzhenitsyn, and we have no Havel.” (Lucian Boia)
* * *
At the end of the play at Volksbühne, the actors ask the spectators to imagine that we’re transported 30 years into the future and Romania’s one of the best countries in the world; all of us Romanians living abroad therefore decide to return. They ask us, “What is it specifically that made us return?” This was touching, and heartbreaking alike. The Romanians in the audience answer:
“Romania’s got one of the most efficient, safe, patient-centered, effective healthcare systems in the world!”
“Romania has one of the best educational systems in the world. Its universities attract the best professors from the world-over, and the best talents.”
“I had an incredible career opportunity in Romania that I would have never had anywhere else!”
“I returned because Romania has one of the most equitable systems. I want to bring my children up in a fair society.”
“Romania is one of the most open-minded societies today. As a queer person, I feel safe and accepted.”
I leave you with that.