Romania's Russiagate Hoax
Citing Alleged Russia Threat, Romanian Authorities Cancel Democratic Election
Didn’t intend to write over the weekend, but I want to let you know about an extraordinary situation happening in Romania. Not sure how much coverage it’s getting in US media, but it’s a very big story, and it could be changing rapidly.
The story so far: this weekend was supposed to be the second round of voting for the Romanian presidency. The winner was almost certainly going to be Calin Georgescu, the populist candidate, who stunned Romania when he came from nowhere to make it into the runoff after the first vote last month.
Romania’s top constitutional court on Friday dramatically cancelled high-stakes presidential elections after security services warned Russia was mounting “aggressive” hybrid attacks against the Eastern European country.
The court decision plunged the strategically important EU and NATO member state into political chaos, inflaming divisions that opened up after a far-right outsider came from nowhere to win the first round in the presidential contest two weeks ago.
Ultranationalist Călin Georgescu benefited from a TikTok campaign that was similar to influence operations run by the Kremlin in Ukraine and Moldova, according to declassified Romanian intelligence documents. The files said Moscow was targeting Romania as an enemy state, using “aggressive hybrid action,” a view backed by the United States.
“Backed by the United States.” Mmm-hmm. My Romanian sources say it is widely believed that the Russian influence line is a cover story by the Romanian state and its Washington allies to justify their de facto coup. Georgescu came from nowhere, running a populist, pro-sovereignty campaign based solely on social media, especially TikTok. He benefited from widespread disgust by Romanian voters with the country’s political elites. Now, in a desperate bid to forestall reckoning for their bad government, the elites are trying to override democracy to hold on to power — with, of course, the backing of Washington.
Many of you will remember this story, but I tell it again here, because it matters. Three years ago, when I went to Romania for the publication of Live Not By Lies in translation, Covid was still in swing, so we could only have one event for the book, and it had to be outside, in the back garden of a Bucharest church. My publisher had warned me that we would do well to get a hundred people, and if we were lucky, we would sell 50 books. In the end, 500 people showed up, and we sold 400 books — the most books I have ever sold in a single event anywhere, ever!
At the dinner after the shock event, the stunned publishers said that people had come from all over Romania to hear me talk, spurred on by social media. The reason? My book was the first time anyone had said to them that they should not be ashamed of their faith and their traditions, and should resist attempts by elites to grind them down over it. And the fact that an American (!) had said it blew their minds. They had all been conditioned to believe that they were backwards, and that if they wanted to be like Americans, they needed to become more secular, modern, and pro-LGBT.
I asked my hosts, who were all conservatives, who represents people like this in parliament. Why not the conservative party? They told me that the Romanian right-wing party is basically pro-business, pro-Brussels and socially liberal. The people who came to hear me talk about my book are voiceless in parliament. (Or were then; things may have changed on that front since that 2021 conversation.)
Today, though? They found their man, it seems: Calin Georgescu, who, it seems to me from the descriptions I’ve read, is about 20 percent RFK Jr. (he’s a health nut), and 80 percent Javier Milei.
From what I hear, Georgescu has the support of the Romanian Orthodox Church. He represents the deep resentment most Romanians have at the West for pushing (in part through compliant Romanian politicians) LGBT ideology onto the conservative country. I’m telling you, readers, because you won’t read this in the US or UK papers: here in Central and Eastern Europe, ordinary people resent the hell out of this culture war offensive from the US, Brussels, and Western NGOs. Since Obama’s first term, promoting LGBT rights has been a fundamental part of US foreign policy — and it has deeply alienated peoples in allied nations of Eastern Europe. They quite rightly see it as a form of cultural colonialism.
I understand from Romanian friends that another source of Georgescu’s popularity is general anger over Romania’s participation as a NATO ally in the Ukraine war. Romania has done everything it was asked to do by NATO/Washington, but the result is economic problems in the region, worsening conditions in Ukraine, and a Russia — never loved by Romanians — that is perhaps even more of a threat than before. Romanian voters now wonder what they’re getting out of their leaders doing whatever Washington says regarding Ukraine.
Today Romanians woke up to a country in which their top court, on a pretext (“Russiagate”) that nobody believes, is trying to save the establishment’s ass by annuling democracy, just as the populist Georgescu was set to win in a landslide on Sunday. And — note well, my fellow Americans — Washington has publicly endorsed this move. State Department statement:
I’m sorry, but I’m picking myself up off the ground from laughing at the US Government, the font of Nulandist color revolutions, saying that no foreign country has the right to interfere with Romanian elections.
Here is a link to an X post featuring a short address by Georgescu to the nation. It is subtitled in English.
Bear in mind that I’m not on the ground in Romania; I’m just repeating to you what my friends and contacts there are telling me about all this — things I’m not seeing in the Western media, and probably will not. A couple of weeks ago, the great Romanian pundit Titus Techera, who now lives in Budapest, was explaining to me the appeal of Georgescu. It was really, really interesting. What I recall mostly from that conversation was his saying that Georgescu really is deeply in touch with the mainstream of Romanian society — a very conservative culture whose members, like the faithful Orthodox who came to hear me speak that afternoon in Bucharest, have been told for years by the political establishment to shut up and be ashamed of themselves, and let the pro-Brussels, pro-Washington elites run things, because everyone will be better off.
The Romanian people don’t buy it anymore. Their governing elites might be ashamed to be Romanian, and to stand for Romanian interests, but most voters no longer are. That’s why they voted Georgescu in the first round. And that’s why he was set to win a landslide this weekend, until the Deep State intervened.
Remember, in Europe, democracy is when people vote the way Brussels wants them to. And as we learned with our own Russiagate pseudo-scandal, always look to the butthurt establishment to cite supposed threats from Russia as a reason to negate or otherwise discredit the outcome of a democratic election.
UPDATE: Just saw that Titus Techera posted to Twitter about events in his home country. You should follow him. Excerpt:
Ursula’s Europe is going to keep getting more interesting. Pretty much across the board the citizenry just isn’t buying it anymore. This recent “We’re cancelling democracy to protect democracy” looks soooo threadbare. And similar moves are coming in other states, no doubt. Cf. Germany.
I personally know a couple of Romanians who voted for Georgescu in the first round. They are neither TikTok users nor Russian dupes. They simply do not want their country used as a battleground for a NATO-Russian war.