It's unclear if he will be allowed to participate again, due to his sympathy for the Iron Guard (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Guard) which is outlawed, and some pending criminal cases for money laundering, as he reported 0 expenses in the election campaign, which is impossible.
Did tiktok convince 20% of the voters to vote for a racist, or did they trick 20% into unwittingly voting for a racist? Hopefully now that everyone is talking about him and his affection for religious fascism a lot of those voters will realize what they voted for and change their vote in the future.
His campaign messages weren't outright extremist, just your casual populism, impossible promises and a dash of dogwhistles. Once he won the first round of elections, people really started to look into his past and it's pretty insane.
They voted for him because he speaks pretty well for a politician. Also some of his messages really land - consider that Ukraine is losing (very very slowly, and can still win), so it makes sense to talk to both sides since it's unclear who will be calling shots in the region. Moldova is definitely next, right after Ukraine, and it cannot defend itself even from one mechanized brigade.
His messaging regarding Ukraine was not something that positively affected his campaign, on the contrary it ignited political opponents over his anti-NATO views.
His campaign landed better because of his palatable way of speaking and saying a lot without saying anything, as most people that voted for him were not really aware of his positions on any serious subject.
Yes, I said multiple times he was Schrodinger's candidate, he could hold multiple mutually contradictory positions at the same time. Pretty ridiculous.
Romania is a member of NATO, they don’t need to give two shits about Russia being a regional power because they will not be invaded by Russia as long as the US is part of NATO.
>Ukraine is losing (very very slowly, and can still win),
This is not remotely true, Ukraine can't retake what it's lost they have no men left. If it were true Zelensky wouldn't be contemplating ceding territory to Russia. It sucks but Ukraine lost in 2014 when the world let Crimea get annexed with no response.
Ukraine can't retake what it's lost they have no men left.
You're extremifying.
You could have said "they don't have enough people". But instead you had to dial it up to "they have no men left".
No matter what is actually happening on the ground -- you definitely won't be able to make heads or tails of it, if you keep confounding yourself with rhetoric like this.
"War does not determine who is right—only who is left."
You're right that there are men still living in Ukraine, Zelensky is still alive after all. However, the manpower situation has been pretty bleak for a while. [1] I'm in regular contact with people in theater and I'm not far off in saying 'there are no men left'. Russia is still advancing albeit slowly. We'll likely have new borders in a few months. Almost time to update your globe.
By their own goals, Russia already lost this war 2 years ago. They may end it with a little extra territory and people, but that's not a victory, again, by their own claims.
This has not happened yet, it's merely a speculation at this time, but the accusations have a solid foundation in videos of him talking about the subject and even plagiarizing speeches by famous Iron Guard members.
Romania does not have free speech like the US, we have protected speech and there are some sympathies which are simply illegal, whether you agree with it or not.
Nobody's calling him Hitler, there's a lot of very weird things the guy says though, as he's pretty heavy into religious mysticism and a bit of a nutjob, some of his hits:
- Pepsi contains nanochips that enter your body
- water isn't actually H2O
- capitalism is communism, there is no difference
- everybody accepted that Covid exists, there's no such thing, there never was
He got booted out of one of the other far right wing parties when he publicly praised Romania's 1930s-1940s fascist/nazi dictators as "heroes, who maybe did some bad things, but a lot of good". He has refused to diaavow them every time he has been asked about them.
One of his major campaign leads wears Romanian nazi symbolism (think the Romanian equivalent of a swastika). The other one often posts about those same dictators, especially in commemoration of their deaths.
He has started one of his speeches with an exact quote from one of said dictators.
This is beyond all of the insane conspiracies and religious mystic declarations, from seeing aliens to "C-sections interrupt the divine cord", "water is not just H2O, it is information, that is why they bottle it to keep this information contained", and so many more.
If you could provide these symbols (in Romain) that would be very helpful. And if it's not too much trouble, a few keywords (in Romanian) of that speech so I can look it up.
Not doubting you in the slightest, but these don't seem to be easily searchable (and I'd appreciate your take).
when they say Trump = Hitler, because he had a rally at MSG.
No, not "because he had a rally at MSG".
But because of the things he said at that rally.
Do you understand the distinction?
It's also definitely not true that most of the people saying he's a fascist are saying he's "a Nazi"; that's an overdrawn distortion. And a lot of these people with concerns about his rhetoric don't even necessarily think he's a fascist per se; though they do find a matter of concern that he seems to at least be channeling fascist rhetoric.
Whether you agree with them or not is beside the point. What seems much more significant is that you seem to have a weirdly muddled (and hyperemotionalized) view of what people actually think about Trump, and why.
Uhm, you have "sympathies which are simply illegal"? Wow. You trust the government to tell you where you can lay your personal sympathies? I sometimes run into casual statements like this that make me SO GRATEFUL I live in the United States.
I'm very grateful to live in Romania and have a lot of things about the US that I disagree with, but I understand it's a different country with a different history & culture.
