what you get here

This is not a blog which opines on current events. It rather uses incidents, books (old and new), links and papers to muse about our social endeavours.
So old posts are as good as new! And lots of useful links!

The Bucegi mountains - the range I see from the front balcony of my mountain house - are almost 120 kms from Bucharest and cannot normally be seen from the capital but some extraordinary weather conditions allowed this pic to be taken from the top of the Intercontinental Hotel in late Feb 2020

Wednesday, March 12, 2025

Why do we ignore the State?

I’ve been trying in these last posts to make sense of the sudden turn of the US to …. what exactly? Fascism? (as per Snyder) Autocracy? (as per Applebaum). But we really need more attention paid to the STATE which accounts for so much of a country’s GNP but which has come under increasing attack from free-marker ideologues. I have been trying to draft a book on the subject – using some key texts to help me. This is what I’ve come up with – with an outline of the book chapters to follow.

Essential Reading

The State in Capitalist Society Ralph Miliband (1969) Still the clearest exposition – if Marxist

What does the Ruling Class Do when it Rules? Goren Therborn (1978) A good analysis from a Swede

The Great Arch – English State development as Cultural Revolution Philip Corrigan and 
Derek Sayer (1985) Very good on the slow development of the UK state

The Future of the Capitalist State Bob Jessop (2002) Jessop is not an easy read. I would suggest instead Pierson’s book

The Modern State Christopher Pierson (2nd ed 2004) All you need to know about the State

On the State – lectures at the College de France 1989-92 Pierre Bourdieu (2014)
The Origins of Political Order F Fukuyama (2011) The definitive 2 volume book
Political Order and Political DecayF Fukuyama (2014) The definitive 2 volume book

The State – past, present and future Bob Jessop (2016) Rather turgid going

Reclaiming the State – a progressive vision of sovereignty for a new-liberal world William Mitchell and Thomas Fazi (2017) An interesting take by economists

On Tyranny – 20 lessons from the 20th century Timothy Snyder (2017) A short book from 
a US political scientist
How Fascism Works – the politics of us and them Jason Stanley (2018) from a US political 
philosopher
The Return of the State – restructuring britain for the common good ed Allen et al 
(PEF 2021) A social democratic interpretation
Mission Economy Mariana Mazacatto (2021) An Italian economist makes a strong case for
the State. see also https://www.philosopheasy.com/p/the-entrepreneurial-state-unmasking
The Problem of the State Michael Mair (2021) A bit too philosophical for my tastes
The Return of the State and why it is essential for our health, wealth and happiness 
G Garrard (2022) A Canadian/British social democrat makes a strong argument
The Project State and its Rivals – a new history of the 20th and 21st Centuries 
Charles Maier (2023) An economic historian puts the discussions about the State in 
historical perspective

Autocracy – the dictators who want to run the world Anne Applebaum (2024) A Polish/American journalist dissects the beast


The Structure of the Book

is unusual for reasons I explain in this Warning

  • People do not normally read a book about administrative reform with any expectation of pleasure.

  • Such texts will normally figure as required reading in student courses, for example, in public administration reform.

  • But this is not a textbook on administrative reform….

  • It starts with my involvement, in the late 1960s, in community politics rising to a position of strategic influence in the West of Scotland local government - one held for some 20 years.

  • On the basis of the innovative strategies I helped develop in a Regional authority covering half of Scotland, I then found myself working and living for the next 20 plus years in Central Europe and Central Asia - as a consultant in “institutional development”

  • These are my musings about how and what I think I’ve learned (so far) about the process of change from my experience of attempting it in some dozen countries

  • As I’ve dared to suggest that we need to ration books, I need to explain why I’m inflicting this one on you and why I’m fed up with books which have nothing but text. So I’ve tried to liven things up a bit by the use of tables and boxes and the odd diagram

Preface

in which I recall how a radio series first aroused my interest in organisations, reflect on the book’s origins and on why I think it may be of interest

1. The state of the State - in which I encounter the deficiencies of local bureaucracy (56 years ago), forcing some of us to start rethinking the role of the State - privatisation had, in the 1980s, left us wondering how far this development could redefine its role; and the unexpected fall of the Berlin Wall and of communist regimes then had us concocting pathways to capitalism and democracy.

2. Administrative Reform in the new millenium - which captures one man’s attempt in 1999 to convey to a foreign audience his understanding of the organisational changes which had taken place in the 30 years from 1970 to the new millennium

3. Impervious Power – the eastern approaches - which reflects on the experience of western con-sultan ts in central Europe and central Asia as they wrestled with the transition to what their tiny minds assumed to be democracy and free markets.

4. Question Time

A little British book about “the attack on the state” provoked me in 2018 into exploring some questions about the huge literature on public management reform (mainly academic) which has developed since the 1990s. include the following -

- How does each particular public service (eg health, education) work?

- Where can we find the measures of the efficiency and effectiveness of public services?

- How do countries compare internationally in the performance of their public services ?

- Has privatisation lived up to its hype?

- what alternatives are there to state and private provision

- why do governments still spend mega bucks on consultants?

5. The Management Virus - The private and public sectors alike seem to have been taken over in recent decades by hordes of managers. How has this happened? How do we stop it?

6. The echoes of Praxis - As someone who has straddled the worlds of politics, academia and consultancy, I am disappointed by the sparseness of the practitioner contribution to the literature. By default we are left with academics who interview those in government and sometimes train them and with consultants – although the former are the more voluble

7.Take Back Control? - which explores the implication of the quotation which adorns the book’s cover and asks how exactly might democracy improve the operation of our public services? Is this just a question of giving local government more power, as some would argue – ie giving a greater voice to the local public through their local representatives having a stronger legal and strategic role? Or does it require a more open and participative process – as many would argue? Or does it perhaps mean a greater say by the workforce in the everyday management of public services? Or a combination of all the above?

Hilary Wainwright is amongst the very few who have taken this question seriously – although the Dutch, with the Buurtzog model, are now exploring the question

8. Theories of Change - in which I question the compartmentalisation of the subject of change into studies of psychology, technology, organisation and society.

9. Inconclusion - Back to democracy

Notes; chapter by chapter


Friday, March 7, 2025

The COUP IN THE US IS VERY REAL

There is no excuse for people failing to understand what is happening in the USA – substack offers many attempts at explanation with Mike Brock (who profiles himself very coherently in the link) and his Notes from the Circus perhaps being the best. His post “The Plot Against America” detailed the history of the right-wing writers who have railed against democracy, including forgotten names such as Curtis Yarvin, Hans-Hermann Hoppe and Willian Rees-Mog eg -

Hans-Hermann Hoppe, a student of Mises's protégé Murray Rothbard, took libertarian skepticism of the state to its extreme conclusion. His 2001 book “Democracy: The God That Failed landed like a bombshell in libertarian circles. Published at a moment when many Americans still saw democracy as the “end of history,” Hoppe argued that democracy was an inherently unstable system, one that incentivized short-term decision-making and mob rule rather than rational governance. His alternative? A return to monarchy.

The Political Quarterly is one of my favourite journals – ploughing the social democratic cause since 1930 and has recently documented Trump’s travails in Venn diagrams

I am heartened by the substack just started by Adam Przewoski - perhaps the most insightful writer still alive about democracy - who has decided to give us a weekly assessment of what is going on in the US. This is his post for the 2nd week  and the most recent.

And also by the more than 100 legal challenges which have been made by US States, unions and other bodies to Trump's actions - itemised on this tracker

Other relevant articles

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/inside-the-new-right-where-peter-thiel-is-placing-his-biggest-bets?_sp=18e4be2f-5eaa-4083-9b8c-7d5f05d2466a.1738893276242

https://medium.com/emergent-dialogue/building-my-case-for-epistemic-liberalism-and-why-the-sovereign-individual-is-epistemically-59c9201e72c6

https://www.notesfromthecircus.com/p/the-plot-against-america/comments

https://robertreich.substack.com/p/this-weeks-ten-reasons-for-modest?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=365422&post_id=158231811&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=aefb6&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Paul Krugman’s discussion with Kim Lane Scheppele https://substack.com/home/post/p-158545490

https://substack.com/home/post/p-157558457 US in FReefall

https://substack.com/@larryjdiamond

https://snyder.substack.com/p/what-to-expect-when-youre-expecting?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=310897&post_id=158714964&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=aefb6&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Friday, February 28, 2025

MORONIC INFERNO

Such was how Martin Amis saw the US in a collection of his essays he released in 2009. I have been trying this past year to put the finishing touches to a book about the State and about the efforts made over the past 50 years to “reform” it – both in Europe and the States where Trump, in his latest reincarnation, seems to have gone quite mad in his wanton destruction of state departments – assisted by teenage prodigies under the tutelage of Elon Musk who seems to be operating as a dictator. Indeed some analysts are claiming that what we are seeing in the US is little more than a COUP

Kurt Andersen is one of America’s most insightful analysts of its craziness – first plotting in Fantasy Land – how America went haywire (2017) and following up some three years later with Evil Geniuses – the unmaking of America; a recent history, situating both books thus

Whereas “Fantasyland” concerned Americans’ centuries-old weakness for the untrue and irrational, and its spontaneous and dangerous flowering since the 1960s, “Evil Geniuses” chronicles the quite deliberate reengineering of our economy and society since the 1960s by a highly rational confederacy of the rich, the right, and big business.

I’m surprised that the more people don’t talk about the groupthink which is permeating the US system – so well explained in Gillian Tett’s 2015 The Silo Effect and Matthew Syd’s Rebel Ideas – the power of diverse thinking (2019)

Further Reading

The Moronic Inferno and other visits to America Martin Amis

Discussion with Kurt Andersen https://www.globalplayer.com/podcasts/episodes/7DrpDUr/

Saturday, February 1, 2025

What is Techno-Feudalism?

Yanis Varoufakis is not only a political activist I greatly admire – he has also a superb command of the English language to which he owes not so much his time in the UK (and US) but rather to his Greek upbringing which taught him the use of myths to help the narrative along. Most of his books – even his textbooks – are a delight to read. But I struggled with his latest book “Techno-Feudalism – what killed capitalism?” (2023) and have gone back to it thanks only to the discussion Chris Hedges had with Varoufakis on Youtube recently. Efgeny Morozov has been a critic of the internet’s effect on society for more than a decade, with his most famous book being To Save Everything, click here – the folly of technological solutionism which appeared in 2013 but if you want to get a sense of what lies behind the talk of “techno-feudalism” I strongly advise you to read Morozov’s amazing overview of the subject in a recent issue of New Left Review viz Critique of Techno-feudal Reasonan extensive article which put the use of the term in an historical context.

The French writer, Cedric Durand, published How Silican Valley unleashed Techno-feudalism in 2020 although it appeared in English only in 2024 and had this reply to Morozov’s article.

One contrary view of Varoufakis' argument is here 

Other Reading/Viewing

The Digital Citizen L Ceccarini (2021)

The Rise of Technosocialism brett king and richard perry (2021)

The Coming of Neo-Feudalism – a warning to the middle class Joel Kotkin (2020)

Varoufakis - overthrow the tech tyrants! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8xSGzqdKC8

Monday, January 20, 2025

British LIES - again

We can no longer believe anything which comes from the UK Establishment. The Metropolitan police force epitomises all that is rotten in that system and has been caught in yet another lie when it reports that Jeremy Corbyn forced his way through a police cordon during protests around the BBC for its abominable coverage of the Gaza genocide. Jonathan Cook has the full story here

Monday, January 6, 2025

Ways of Seeing

Almost 3 weeks since I last posted - I just haven’t been in the mood although I did want to recognise the sad passing of Charles Handy this month – a favourite writer of mine who inspired quite a few posts and of Johan Galtung, the great peace activist and philosopher, earlier in the year.

But I have managed to edit last year’s posts which I proudly present as Ways of Seeing – the 2024 posts. Make sure you don't miss this year's collection entitled Ways of Seeing – the 2024 posts


Wednesday, December 18, 2024

Romanian Rhetoric

Romania is part of southern Europe and shares some the features we’ve come to associate with that part of the world – namely religiousity, authoritarianism and corruption. The previous post discussed the decision of its Constitutional Court to annul the Presidential elections which had taken place the previous month. 

This post will explore the cultural and linguistic aspects of that discussion 
– looking in particular at 2 recent posts from the Friendship Bridge blog – 
first that of Dumitru Bortun, a prominent academic at the National School, 
and then that of Dumitru Dobrev, a lawyer and founder of one of Romania’s 
political parties (USR). 
My immediate reaction to the first was that it was flowery and incoherent 
although I later revised my opinion to say that 
It's very difficult, if not impossible, to translate the confused rhetoric which 
seems to characterise Romanian articles into coherent English. There are some 
interesting thoughts in Bortun's article but he spoils it all with his rhetorical flourishes”. 
My immediate reaction to the second was that it was simply hysterical.
Here I have to confess that, after living in the country for a decade, I do not 
have much command of the Romanian language – I rely on google translations. 
But this post is based on careful study of some of the literature about language 
and meaning – in particular an article about Intellectual Styles produced in 
1981 by Johan Galtung, the famous Peace campaigner (who died earlier this 
year at the age of 93) which drew attention to features of the UK/US, French, 
German and Japanese styles of discourse -   

There are actually only two profiles - one shared by the Saxon and Niponic styles and one by the Teutonic and Gallic styles. Broadly speaking, it is our contention that the former style fosters and encourages debate and discourse whereas the latter tends to discourage it. Japanese discourse tends to value social relations above all

Let me try to summarize by putting down in the shortest possible form the typical question put in the four intellectual styles when somebody is faced with a proposition:

  • saxonic style: how do you operationalise it? (US version) How do you document it? (UK version)

  • teutonic style: wie koennen Sie das zuruckkehren arbeiten?

  • gallic style: (how can you trace this track/deduce it from basic principles?) peut-on dire cela en bon Franglais? (is it possible to say this in French?)

  • nipponic stvle: donatano monka dsuka? (who is your master?)

The post so far could be accused of being a tad racist – and is indeed guilty 
of cultural denigration, speaking badly, as it does, of other societies and 
their cultures.
But here is where Richard Lewis’ book “When Cultures Collide” can help. 
His section on Romania can be found between pages 324 and 329 and this is 
his helpful comment on Cultural Factors in Communication

Romanians are oratorical by nature (neighbors say “long-winded”) and are proud of their sophistication in discourse. They rarely answer questions with yes or no, so it is not advisable to ask direct questions requiring affirmative or negative answers. It is better to hint at what you want and then be prepared to read between the lines of their reply. Their answers are in any case long and complex and may to some extent reflect what you want to hear. Their delicacy is Italian in nature, as is their capacity for flexible truth when questioned aggressively. Their style of address is personal, and they seek your own opinion or support rather than that of your organization.

Later, you will find this comment -

Romanians are often comfortable with ambiguity, whereas the Westerner wants final clarity. The communist legacy has left them with a poor sense of accountability, responsibility and best routes to the bottom line.

So perhaps my judgement about the Romanian discourse being somewhat flowery 
is not so off?

Thursday, December 12, 2024

Romania is no longer a democracy

Romania has shot into the news this past week with the announcement on 6 December by its Constitutional Court that it was annulling the Presidential Election which had taken place in late November and whose results it had, the previous day, declared valid. To explain this strange turn of events, I turn to 3 analysts -

    • Tom Gallagher – who has written 3 books about the country 
      • Romania After Ceausescu: The Politics of Intolerance (1996), 
      • Theft of a Nation: Romania Since Communism (2005), 
      • Romania and the European Union: How the weak vanquished the strong  
      • (2013). 
    • Vlad Mitev – a Bulgarian journalist with a strong interest in the country
    • Thomas Fazi – a German academic
Tom Gallagher sets the scene -  
Mr. Tom Gallagher, in the 1990s, you wrote a book about nationhood and nationalism in 
Romania. From the perspective of this phenomenon, and considering the significant 
discussions today about the Neo-legionnaires and the Legionary movement in Romania, 
how do you view Călin Georgescu’s qualification for the second round of the presidential 
elections and the success of parties like AUR, SOS, and POT?
I don’t ascribe the shock result for Calin Georgescu to the strength of radical nationalism, 
ongoing or revived anti-Semitism, or nostalgia for pre-war fascists.
Perhaps there is quite a lot of residual sympathy, or nostalgia, for the Ceausescu even 
among some who clearly didn’t live through the late communist era.
Among diaspora voters, I could, instead, point to a sense of rootlessness or anomie.
A lot of ethnic Romanians have ended up sharing the sense of displacement. 
Romania is merely a platform or a lodging house which one enters or leaves without any 
drama. Being Romanian is an easy label to attach without possessing too much meaning. 
I would add a note of caution that this is not the same for emigres who have preserved 
Romanian culture, especially via the Orthodox church. But the loose identity fits those 
who have left the country poorly-educated, and with no grounds for feeling respect for 
the main symbols of the Romanian State either in terms of institutions or individuals.
Not knowing too much history, such voters are unlikely to be impressed by the argument 
that in voting for Calin Georgescu they are endorsing someone backed by Russia, the 
traditional enemy of Romanian nationality. This accusation directed at AUR has completely 
failed to impede its rise. Using the technology of manipulation available in cyberspace, in my 
view it isn’t too hard for adventurers to capture the emotions of alienated Romanians 
(many of whom previously boycotted elections) and turn them into a powerful voting 
resource. The Georgescu voters, in many cases, see him as a distant and enigmatic haiduk 
ready to drive out n rulers unworthy of being taken seriously.

What are your thoughts on the Constitutional Court’s decision to annul the presidential 
elections and the public reaction to this event?
The conduct of the Constitutional Court reflects how it has been selected on narrow 
political criteria, not (except in a few cases) on the basis of professional integrity.
If the court was filled by people careful to preserve the dignity of the highest authority 
in the state, it would have offered reasons for each of the highly significant decisions it 
took at each stage of this problematic election.
Weighing up each of these decision, I am left in little doubt that safeguarding the political 
interests of the forces that elevated them to the Court were never far from their minds. 
If there is a consistent thread running through the Court’s various interventions, it has been 
to avoid doing further harm to the PSD (and its subsidiary PNL partner) than they have 
done to themselves already.

On 6 December, the court then annulled the entire election, the President announcing that 
there had been a sophisticated attempt – involving a state actor – to rig the result through 
unregulated social media platforms.

Neither the Court nor the President seems to have pondered how much this erratic and 
opaque set of decisions would be received by the population at large.
I remain fascinated to see how the high organs of state justify allowing the parliamentary 
elections to sand when there is no lack of evidence that they were subject to the same 
cyber manipulation which led to the Presidential elections being cancelled. If a party like 
POT, the party of youth dominated by greybeards with a background in the intelligence and 
policing systems when they were both unreformed, becomes a noisy addition to the Parliament, 
it will only confirm how problematic the decision-making in elections has been. 
There has been considerable discussion about the role of intelligence services during 
President Băsescu’s terms, and even more so during Iohannis’s decade. 
Do you believe that, in Romania in 2024, there is still a legacy of the Securitate 
influencing institutional culture and the relationship between intelligence services and 
politics?
The irony is that it is the President who liked to identify as the person who best symbolises 
Romania’s opening to the democratic West who has ensured that the image of the pre-1989 
Securitate, that of a state within a state, still carries some weight one-third of a century 
later. 
The security institutions are bigger, better resourced, and wield more influence in 
politics than in practically any other EU state. While he has weakened its party and 
driven two successive Liberal leaders out, Iohannis has as surrounded himself with figures 
from the military and intelligence world. They have not been figures of particular renown, 
more like bumbling and self-important palace generals. 
There is too much evidence that the sprawling intelligence sector is too absorbed with 
protecting its own caste privileges than by meriting its high salaries in order to keep 
Romania secure from threats from various  state and non-state actors which, arguably, 
have never been greater. The fiasco that has been exposed in recent weeks should prompt 
NATO high command in Brussels to ponder how effective Romania is in guarding a key 
second of the Alliance’s Eastern flank.
How do you view the Romanian media landscape and the role of social networks? 
Has Romania become synchronised with other Western states, where there is a 
conflict between traditional media narratives and political movements that primarily 
develop through social media?
The media has fallen ever more deeply under the sway of powerful political interests. 
The evidence is all too clear, and the rot has gone deepest arguably in the world of 
television. There is no longer an authoritative and respectable television channel that 
shapes public opinion in an informed way and provides reliable coverage of events big 
and small.
There are several online news providers which are excellent despite operating on a slender 
budget and sometimes encountering difficulties from the state.
Undeserved influence is wielded by a channel like Romania TV which broadcasts despite 
its owner being a fugitive from justice.
I think the structure and composition of the media in Romania fully reflects the deeply 
unsatisfactory political evolution the country has usually known during the past 35 years 
and does not reflect any trends in the media landscape elsewhere to any significant 
extent. Its uninspiring and worrying nature makes it difficult for forces committed to 
genuine improvements in state and society to make significant headway.

Vlad Mitev runs the Friendship Bridge blog from which this interview with a 
Romanian academic is taken
 
Mr. Borțun, the first round of the presidential elections took place two weeks 
ago and surprised everyone. Then in the presidential elections the cumulative 
result of the sovereignist parties was over 30%. And a few days ago, Romania’s 
Constitutional Court intervened in the electoral process. It seems that serious 
and systemic mistakes were made.
If we have to summarize and understand what happened, how do you interpret 
all these events? What has happened in Romania in the last two weeks?
It is about the balance between the rule of law and democracy, which very few 
governments or political regimes manage to get right. The rule of law means the 
supremacy of law. And the application of the law, whatever the situation and whatever 
the person. We are all equal before the law. Democracy means respect for the will 
of the majority, made known through the authorized institutions, the main democratic 
institution being Parliament.
The moment one of these two requirements is disregarded, the scales are tipped 
and it is to everyone’s detriment. Not to the detriment of some or others. The 
Romanian Government has been unable to prevent and correct the deviation. The 
Romanian Government was created by a very strange, bizarre coalition, which people 
say would have suited President Iohannis, to ensure a quiet mandate. His second 
mandate was a mandate without political problems, without conflict, without tension. 
But the result was what I am telling you.

The current party-state, the Social Democratic Party (PSD), has infiltrated all 
public administration institutions – both central and local. Wherever you go, you find 
the PSD. More recently, after the government alliance with the Liberals (PNL), 
also the PNL, but less so. Everywhere there is this lid put over civil society, which 
is called the PSD-PNL alliance, everywhere you bump into their people, their clients, 
people who depend on them, people who vote with them and who form an oversized 
administrative class. We have an oversized state apparatus because it is in the interest 
of the party-state to increase its electorate.
VLAD MITEV If I understand correctly, there are different types of elites in 
Romania, as in many other countries in the region. There are elites formed more 
in socialist times, when education was better and it was more difficult to complete 
your education. And on the other hand, there are also new elites, who have 
graduated from “the school of transition”, so to speak. Are they better or worse?
Mr. Mitev, let’s not delude ourselves. The new elites are in the image of those who 
select and raise them. There’s not much difference. It’s like a historical curse. 
Unfortunately, we remain in a paradigm of Romanianism in which we are not dealing 
with genuine reactions. Neither in terms of democratic reaction, nor in terms of 
respect for tradition or…
Everything is a fake. That’s why people don’t trust anymore. That’s why 2 million 
people were able to vote against the system. Unfortunately they didn’t choose the 
right flag to march under. They have lined up under the banner of Călin Georgescu, 
who proposes a step back in time. A return to Romanian history.

VLAD MITEV Isn’t this moment when Mr. Trump is coming to the White House 
and when the government will soon change in Germany as well, a good time for 
Romania to renew itself. Maybe politically, maybe in other sensesMaybe even 
in terms of social or economic reforms and so on. Is it not a good time for 
renewal, i.e. change?
No, it is not. The time is right, but I don’t know who to change. Because you see, this 
is Romania’s big problem. That this balance between the elite and the people is not 
always in favor of change. The people don’t want change. The people have this kind 
of ideology, an autochthonist, sovereignist ideology, because the people are educated 
by communist propaganda, by the historical movies made by the famous Sergiu 
Nicolaescu – about Stefan the Great, Mircea the Elder, Mihai Viteazu, about the 
Dacians and Romans, movies that have built a mythology of the genesis of the Romanian 
people, a heroic ethnogenesis, all Romanians, educated or not, have seen with their 
own eyes how the Dacians defeated the Romans, then the Romans conquered Dacia 
and the wonderful Romanian people was born. This mythology is still in the minds of 
many Romanians. 
Finally, the German academic Thomas Fazi who has been a bit of a thorn in 
the flesh of the EU 

In an extraordinary and unprecedented move, Romania’s constitutional court announced 
last week the annulment of the results of the first round of the presidential elections 
held on Nov. 24, in which the independent populist candidate Călin Georgescu came 
out on top. The ruling, which restarted the entire electoral process, came just days 
before the scheduled runoff between Georgescu and the pro-EU candidate Elena 
Lasconi, which Georgescu was tipped to win by a large margin. 
It’s the first time a European court has overturned the result of an election, 
signaling a troubling escalation in the EU-NATO establishment’s increasingly open 
war on democracy. The justification for this brazen act was a report by the Romanian 
intelligence services—“declassified” and published two days before the ruling —
alleging that the country was the target of a “Russian hybrid attack” during the 
electoral campaign, involving a coordinated TikTok campaign to boost Georgescu’s 
candidacy. 
The report was the culmination of a two-week-long campaign aimed at delegitimizing 
Georgescu’s victory, which shocked Romania’s ruling elites and the Western 
establishment at large. It was the first time since the fall of the Soviet-backed 
regime in 1989 that the two parties that have come to dominate Romanian politics 
since—the Social Democratic Party and the center-right National Liberal Party, 
which are united in their commitment to the European Union and NATO—both failed 
to make it past the first round of a presidential election. 
Adding to elites’ dismay was Georgescu’s status as a political outsider. The candidate 
had consistently received negligible scores in polls throughout the campaign and 
avoided televised debates. He doesn’t even belong to a political party. Instead, he 
relied mostly on social media to get his message out, first and foremost TikTok, 
which is very popular in Romania. His campaign’s grassroots strategy starkly contrasted 
with other candidates’ reliance on mainstream media and established political 
machinery. 
The establishment’s response to Georgescu’s first-round victory was swift and 
aggressive. The first step involved launching a media blitz—both in Romania and 
abroad—to paint him as a “pro-Russian far-right extremist,” all-around crackpot, 
and agent of the Kremlin. This has become the standard reaction of liberal 
establishments to electoral outcomes that deviate from the Euro-Atlantic consensus
—especially in post-Soviet countries, as seen recently also in Georgia and Moldova. 
As in other cases, the evidence for such claims tends to be rather scant. 
The first thing that stands out is that Georgescu doesn’t have the résumé of your 
typical populist. For most of his career, Georgescu, an agronomist, has been an 
establishment insider employed in a field not known for being rife with populist 
sentiment: sustainable development. His past positions include special rapporteur 
for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, president of the European 
Research Centre for the Club of Rome, and executive director of the UN Global 
Sustainable Index Institute. His political outlook reflects, it would seem, a 
longstanding focus on the importance of economic and especially agricultural 
self-sufficiency. 
It is true that Georgescu has made some controversial claims in the past, including 
expressing support for the pro-Nazi leaders of the country during World War II, 
referring to the Covid-19 crisis as a “plandemic,” and speaking of the existence of 
a transhumanist pedophiliac cabal. But his campaign largely focused on concrete 
issues like the economy and Romania’s geopolitical position. 
Georgescu emphasizes national sovereignty and reducing Romania’s dependence on 
foreign powers and often critiques the influence of international bodies like the 
European Union and NATO on national affairs. His platform includes reducing 
Romania’s reliance on imports, supporting local farmers, and ramping up domestic 
production of food and energy. 
What really sent the establishment into a frenzy, however, was Georgescu’s stance 
on the war in Ukraine. He has criticized NATO’s role in the conflict and expressed 
a desire for Romania to engage in dialogue, rather than confrontation. He rejects 
the framing of this position as “pro-Russian,” contending that it is simply pro-
Romanian. His argument boils down to the fact that the war isn’t in Romania’s 
interest. As he put it during a talk show: Ukraine “is none of our business. We 
should worry only about Romania.” 
Georgescu has also condemned NATO’s installation of a ballistic-missile shield in 
the south of the country. He has denied claims that he aims to withdraw Romania 
from the Western Alliance or from the European Union, arguing instead that 
membership shouldn’t involve automatically signing up to those organizations’ policies. 
“The establishment’s response to Georgescu’s first-round victory was swift and 
aggressive.” “The ruling sets a terrifying precedent.”
Georgescu’s call for self-determination increasingly resonates across Europe, 
where growing numbers of people are pushing back against the erosion of national 
sovereignty by the EU-NATO establishment. As the Romanian journalist Teodora 
Munteanu observed: “Georgescu focused on the call for peace and people’s fear 
that [the other candidates] would get us into war. He also addressed grassroots 
issues, like people with toilets in their yards, low wages, real problems that everyone 
understands.” 
Astonishingly, the intelligence dossier against him provides no clear evidence of 
foreign interference or even electoral manipulation. It simply points to the existence 
of a social-media campaign supporting Georgescu that involved around 25,000 
TikTok accounts coordinated through a Telegram channel, paid influencers and 
coordinated messaging. 
It goes without saying that there is nothing out of the ordinary in using social-media 
platforms to promote a message. Indeed, this happens everywhere, and is simply the 
modern-day equivalent of old-school political ads. It’s unclear how exposing people 
to one’s message could be considered a form of electoral manipulation—except 
insofar as it obviously rewards the candidates with the greatest financial resources. 
But according to the intelligence report, Georgescu spent around $1.5 million on his 
TikTok campaign—far less than the roughly $17 million received in state subsidies by 
the two main parties. In any case, if spending money on a campaign were a guarantee of 
winning votes, Kamala Harris would have effortlessly clinched the recent US election, 
considering that the Democrats poured twice as much cash as Trump into advertising. 
The intelligence report provides no concrete evidence of foreign state involvement 
or manipulation; it simply suggests that the campaign “correlates with a state actor’s 
operating mode” and draws parallels to alleged Russian operations in Ukraine and 
Moldova. Essentially, when all the layers are peeled back, Romania’s top court 
annulled an entire presidential election based on a TikTok social-media campaign, 
which the intelligence services claimed—without providing concrete evidence—bore 
similarities to Russian tactics allegedly used elsewhere. 
It’s hard to conclude that this was anything but an “institutional coup d’état,” as 
Georgescu put it. Even the pro-EU candidate who lost to Georgescu said the 
decision “crushes the very essence of democracy, voting.” 
The ruling sets a terrifying precedent. If vague accusations of foreign interference 
can nullify election results, any future electoral outcome that threatens entrenched 
elites could similarly be overturned. 

Unfortunately, what happened in Romania isn’t an outlier. It is an escalation 
in an all-too-familiar trend now afflicting Western societies, whereby 
unpopular and delegitimized elites resort to increasingly brazen methods —
such as media manipulation, cognitive warfare, censorship, lawfare, economic 
pressure, and surveillance and intelligence operations—to influence electoral 
outcomes and suppress challenges to the status quo. 
Consider that in the United States, the security apparatus and its media allies 
spent almost the entirety of Donald Trump’s first term attempting to undo the 
outcome of the 2016 election via the #Russiagate hoax.
In other words, actual disinformation and electoral interference tactics are deployed 
by the establishment to counter alleged (and often fabricated) disinformation and 
foreign interference campaigns, usually claimed to be coming from Russia to the 
benefit of domestic populist politicians and parties. However, such tactics are 
proving powerless to manufacture consensus and are, in fact, beginning to backfire, 
which is why even the formal elements of democracy—including elections—are now 
being called into question. 
It is no coincidence that these measures are employed most aggressively in those 
countries with particular strategic value for NATO. Romania is a case in point. 
The country has been instrumental in providing military aid to Ukraine. 
Additionally, it is at Romania’s 86th Air Base where Ukrainian pilots receive training 
on F-16 fighter jets. This facility serves as a regional hub for NATO allies and 
partners. Moreover, the Mihail Kogălniceanu Air Base, on the Black Sea coast, is 
undergoing significant development to become the largest NATO base in Europe. 
This expansion aims to support NATO operations and strengthen the alliance’s 
presence in the Black Sea region and its control of Russia’s “near abroad.” 
The Western Alliance clearly can’t afford to allow mere popular sovereignty to 
jeopardize Romania’s role as a NATO garrison. 
No wonder, then, that the US State Department supported the court decision on 
the grounds that “Romanians must have confidence that their elections reflect the 
democratic will of the Romanian people.” It’s also highly unlikely that the EU-NATO 
establishment wasn’t involved in some way or another in the judicial coup against 
Georgescu. The measures employed to undermine Georgescu are indicative of a 
broader willingness to erode democratic norms in pursuit of geopolitical objectives. 
For the same reason, the same powers are attempting to foment a Ukraine-style 
violent overthrow of the government in Georgia, where the pro-peace ruling party 
recently won the elections. 
NATO’s aggressive military posture isn’t just destabilizing its official adversaries, 
but also its members, as well as those countries the alliance intends to draw into 
its sphere of influence. It’s only a matter of time before the tactics deployed 
against front-line states are turned against any core NATO country in Western 
Europe that stray from the alliance’s prescribed path. That scenario is likely just 
one “wrong” election away from becoming a reality. 
update https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2024/12/democracy-dies-in-the-eu
-romania-edition.html
https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/fractured-romania