How democracy died in Romania
What occurred in Romania is a harbinger of things to come elsewhere: as propaganda loses its efficacy, ruling elites are increasingly willing to to discard even the formal structures of democracy
I’ve written for Compact about the exclusion of “populist” candidate Călin Georgescu from the upcoming Romanian elections (which he was set to win) and what it means about the future of “Western liberal democracy”:
The events in Romania represent a new and fateful step for Western societies that claim to be liberal and democratic. Elites no longer limit themselves to influencing electoral outcomes through media manipulation, censorship, lawfare, economic pressure, and intelligence operations. When these fail to achieve the desired result, they are increasingly willing to discard the formal structures of democracy altogether, including elections.
Therefore, what transpired in Romania should be seen as a warning sign of what may soon unfold elsewhere. Indeed, Breton openly stated that similar actions could be taken elsewhere—he was referencing Germany—if populists were at risk of winning the elections. It’s important to realize, however, that this anti-democratic drift has been a long time in the making. Indeed, one may argue that Western liberal-democratic states have been operating in a permanent state of exception for some time. The ease with which basic freedoms and constitutional guarantees were cast aside during the pandemic provided ample evidence of this. Ruling elites are able to do this because there is little in the way of organised mass resistance to challenge them.
For a brief 30-year period following World War II, the masses succeeded in leveraging democratic institutions to wrest a measure of economic and political power from entrenched oligarchic elites, but the material conditions that made that possible—first and foremost the organized power of labor—no longer exist. In retrospect, the brief period of (relative) popular sovereignty was an exceptional, geographically limited deviation from the historical norm, sustained by unique material and political conditions. Indeed, countries like Romania never even experienced that, having gone straight from communist rule to neoliberal post-democracy. The two pillars of the transatlantic alliance—the European Union and NATO—have advanced Europe’s anti-democratic trends, leading the charge in undermining democratic processes and suppressing popular self-determination.
What we are witnessing is not “degeneration” of Western liberal democracy, an unfortunate deviation from the historical norm, but rather its logical conclusion. States that were once briefly responsive to popular demands have now returned to the function state institutions have had throughout most of capitalism’s history—preserving elite power at all costs.
Read the article here.
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Thomas Fazi
Website: thomasfazi.net
Twitter: @battleforeurope
Latest book: The Covid Consensus: The Global Assault on Democracy and the Poor—A Critique from the Left (co-authored with Toby Green)
The link isn't of much use for those of us, who I imagine constitute the large majority, who aren't subscribers to Compact.
Your takes on Romania, after yesterday's election, have proved almost entirely wrong. Georgescu lent his full support to Simion, who, as you have recently stated (also in Compact magazine), was supposedly the establishment's preferred flavor of right winger. Yet he drew almost the exact base of support - and lost in what borders on a landslide. It turns out that Georgescu's base was locked in, and that he failed to garner much more support. Finally, an independent candidate who represents a break with the establishment, Nicusor Dan, has just been elected president. Though billed as a "centrist" by the news media, we Bucharest natives know him to be a reformer and a populist who has repeatedly taken on monied interests.
Your continued inability to acquaint yourself with the facts of Georgescu's disqualification speaks multitudes. If you wish to criticize a democracy not your own, at least read its constitution and its court's decisions.