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[00:01:04] Hello, welcome back to 100% guaranteed. Our guests
[00:01:08] tonight are experienced sociologists with
[00:01:11] doctorates from Rome and Toronto,
[00:01:14] respectively, specialists who have published books and articles here and
[00:01:17] abroad, both researchers at the Institute for Research on
[00:01:21] Quality of Life of the Romanian
[00:01:23] Academy. Good evening, thank you very much for coming.
[00:01:26] You are the authors of a
[00:01:30] fascinating research, for
[00:01:32] which
[00:01:34] I find it hard to restrain my desire to
[00:01:38] praise, because the subject
[00:01:40] is of great interest to any citizen
[00:01:44] of this country. You are the authors of this
[00:01:48] research together with Ionuț Marian Anghel,
[00:01:52] why couldn't he be present here? He's out of
[00:01:55] town today, we represent him, but I want to
[00:01:58] insist that he has an equal contribution to ours.
[00:02:02] Well, then let's greet him from here in the public television studio, let's say we
[00:02:06] thank him too for this extremely
[00:02:09] important work. The research is called "Sovereignism in
[00:02:12] Romania, why do people vote for extremist
[00:02:15] politicians?"
[00:02:19] It's a fascinating read, from beginning
[00:02:22] to end. Some of us might not
[00:02:26] necessarily find ourselves in this research because they already have some
[00:02:30] formed opinions, I think it would do them a lot of good to
[00:02:33] read this research, because
[00:02:37] it's good to sometimes
[00:02:40] ask ourselves a few things about our
[00:02:44] convictions, you do this splendidly here,
[00:02:47] with the balance of the researcher and trying to
[00:02:51] approach the topic as little emotionally as possible, thank you very much, you
[00:02:54] promised, you promised not to praise us and I already feel
[00:02:58] that I can't hold back. because it's such an important topic
[00:03:02] and you say something, you say something essential at the beginning
[00:03:06] of the study, you say we are convinced that beyond the failure
[00:03:09] of opinion polls to prefigure a predictable hierarchy
[00:03:12] of presidential candidates, such a revanchist,
[00:03:16] anti-system vote could have been partially anticipated
[00:03:19] if public institutions with a role in funding
[00:03:23] research in Romania had consistently allocated resources
[00:03:26] for Romania's participation in sociological research of
[00:03:30] prestige and you give some examples, there was a lot of talk
[00:03:33] about the immense surprise, the
[00:03:36] sovereignist shock, the coming in under
[00:03:39] the radar, but if some research had been done and if the
[00:03:43] study had been paid for, would this
[00:03:46] coming in under the radar have existed, right? Yes, and we are
[00:03:49] convinced of that, the results of the elections on November 24,
[00:03:53] 2024 surprised us too, we were
[00:03:56] also in shock, at least for a period, I think shorter than
[00:04:00] in other cases and we wanted, that was our goal,
[00:04:03] to see what was there, why people voted the way they
[00:04:07] did and how accidental that vote was
[00:04:10] on November 24, 2024,
[00:04:14] after about three weeks, as
[00:04:17] we ourselves found out that more and more people seemed captivated
[00:04:21] by this sovereignist discourse, then
[00:04:24] Călin Georgescu, AUR to some extent,
[00:04:28] the other parties that entered parliament, we started to wonder if
[00:04:32] maybe it wasn't an accident after all and that support
[00:04:35] for such parties and politicians is likely
[00:04:38] to grow, that they are
[00:04:41] the authorities at on a wave and then we went and looked at the causes or rather we tried
[00:04:44] to identify some causes that research is not being done,
[00:04:46] for example, our institute, I was talking
[00:04:50] to Filip a few days ago, in the past
[00:04:53] when it was founded, it benefited from constant public funding, every two
[00:04:57] years, they were done, they were done.
[00:05:08] Now no one commissions them anymore, the government no longer pays, it pays the salaries of the
[00:05:12] researchers, quite little, and we
[00:05:16] are in a continuous race to obtain funding from
[00:05:19] internal and European
[00:05:23] projects, let's say some private funding,
[00:05:27] but you're constantly in a race to to do a project and
[00:05:31] finish it, without there being continuity in
[00:05:34] this direction of long-term sociological
[00:05:38] research, Filip, didn't you feel a sense of
[00:05:41] frustration? But a question addressed to both of you, how did you
[00:05:45] encounter the results of these elections? From this point of view
[00:05:48] it was indeed a shock, although we should have been prepared, I work quite a lot with researchers from other
[00:05:52] countries, from Hungary, from Czech Republic, from Slovakia and
[00:05:56] there these populist currents and
[00:05:59] populist leaders are much more visible, some have also held public office, somehow
[00:06:03] I was expecting it and I was saying look, it hasn't happened yet here, but it was a "not yet happened"
[00:06:07] with the implication that it could erupt
[00:06:10] at any moment. But still when it
[00:06:13] happened so seriously, such a
[00:06:16] fabulous rise of Călin Georgescu, yes, it still left us,
[00:06:20] it left us surprised and
[00:06:23] well, somehow we tried to convert this tension
[00:06:26] into something constructive, let's understand, let's understand what happened, because we had
[00:06:30] some, some, how to say, intuitions, well, even, so there were
[00:06:34] on the one hand research from other countries that showed us that this wave is growing and Romania
[00:06:37] was in a strange case not to grow, after all there are the same social structures in
[00:06:41] all European societies. You expect that what happens in one will happen in
[00:06:45] some form and to some extent or at some point in another. You
[00:06:48] say, you refer to a moment, often, not just a given moment, to
[00:06:52] the roots that lead to this whole very
[00:06:56] complicated story, in which many of us have become deeply
[00:06:59] emotionally involved, friendships of decades have broken,
[00:07:03] families have split, there are people who no longer speak to each other. There is a terrible
[00:07:07] polarization from this point of view and more than that,
[00:07:11] a special nervousness
[00:07:13] related to this topic reigns
[00:07:17] in our society, and a I will use a very
[00:07:20] common word in Romanian, a grudge,
[00:07:23] about which we talk little, in general there is a bombardment
[00:07:26] between several camps, very few
[00:07:30] attempts at dialogue and few explanations and you say
[00:07:33] this: we look at the influence of roots on voting in this
[00:07:37] sense, when earning a living cannot
[00:07:40] be achieved in what are considered normal terms in a
[00:07:44] society, through work, through access to education and healthcare,
[00:07:47] through credible development prospects, a feeling of injustice
[00:07:51] appears, then manifested through the revanchist,
[00:07:54] anti-system vote. In our public
[00:07:56] space, to use an impersonal
[00:07:59] reply, a discourse referring to
[00:08:03] conspiracy theories,
[00:08:06] foreign interventions, manipulation
[00:08:09] through social networks and so on, was preferred. You
[00:08:12] come with another point of view, you don't say those things don't
[00:08:15] exist, but you talk about some roots, what are
[00:08:19] these roots, Alina? Uh, first of all I want to say that
[00:08:22] roots are, can be a saving concept precisely to give up the
[00:08:26] polarization that exists, because explanations like
[00:08:30] manipulation, foreign influence only amplify the polarization even
[00:08:33] more, some deny it, some accept it
[00:08:36] uncritically, not that they wouldn't have existed, probably not that they wouldn't have
[00:08:40] existed, but looking at the roots. at those
[00:08:43] socio-economic conditions that produced a certain
[00:08:47] dissatisfaction among a
[00:08:50] quite large percentage of the
[00:08:53] population, after all, we want to
[00:08:57] understand the causes that produced this phenomenon and I think it can be
[00:09:00] unifying in the sense that if we all look carefully
[00:09:03] at what are the causes of this socioeconomic phenomenon, then
[00:09:07] maybe we won't argue anymore, then maybe the polarization in society
[00:09:11] will decrease. maybe we will find a, a, somehow
[00:09:15] somehow a common element, for us these are
[00:09:17] the roots, those conditions that we must
[00:09:21] look at very carefully, but also critically and
[00:09:24] recognize them, because roots are something that
[00:09:27] escapes immediate view, they
[00:09:30] are, in fact, based on them the
[00:09:33] social structure was formed, it's very interesting that you come with
[00:09:37] some possible solutions, possible answers with
[00:09:40] the results of a research.
[00:09:43] meanwhile so much time has passed, and
[00:09:46] the public space in Romania is almost completely
[00:09:50] devoid of a response from
[00:09:54] the highest level, who have been promising
[00:09:57] us for a very long time the results of some
[00:10:00] investigations, these results have not appeared even at
[00:10:03] this hour, it's deeply frustrating for
[00:10:06] any taxpayer in this country,
[00:10:10] regardless of which side of the barricade.
[00:10:20] and a form of disregard, it seems at some point a form of contempt, if not indifference.
[00:10:23] I'd prefer it to be indifference. You know what,
[00:10:27] you know what's even more frustrating for us, that we proposed an
[00:10:30] explanation that has nothing to do with, I don't know,
[00:10:33] external influences, manipulation, because it wasn't our field, and
[00:10:37] yet, our expertise doesn't seem, I don't know,
[00:10:41] taken into account by political decision-makers. Now, it's true that we didn't
[00:10:45] go to their anterooms to
[00:10:48] present the book, well it's not convenient at all from their point of view, we've talked quite a
[00:10:52] lot publicly about it until now. And
[00:10:55] yet I feel that many tend to say, not
[00:10:59] what you say, you have a professional
[00:11:02] bias, to see, for example, in unequal development
[00:11:06] the cause of all evils, which we show that that's
[00:11:09] what happens, well, for one thing explanations of the type
[00:11:12] foreign intervention, manipulation, mass media,
[00:11:16] social network are profoundly delayed with
[00:11:19] explanations, you come with an explanation, with concrete
[00:11:23] explanations, they can be read in the book. What are these roots,
[00:11:27] Filip? The essence of this, of these roots is a
[00:11:31] bifurcation of development opportunities. Practically,
[00:11:34] Romania, some accept to a greater or lesser degree
[00:11:38] that it has developed socially and economically, practically there is a
[00:11:41] very simple indicator that we also discuss in the book, convergence with the European average,
[00:11:45] that is, GDP per capita, gross domestic product per capita,
[00:11:48] the wealth produced by a country was
[00:11:52] 44% at the time. approximately at
[00:11:56] the time of entry into the European Union, now it is 80% of the European average,
[00:11:59] meaning there was a convergence, we got very close to the European
[00:12:02] average, something that we have, this growth not felt, this
[00:12:06] very reasonable income not equally distributed among the citizens of this country, yes, so they were
[00:12:10] distributed very differently,
[00:12:13] not only, how can I say, we don't ask that everyone should be paid
[00:12:17] equally or be rewarded equally, but opportunities are
[00:12:20] very different, meaning big cities, especially those where
[00:12:24] the vote, well, this sovereignist vote was also the lowest,
[00:12:28] have concentrated a lot of
[00:12:31] resources, cultural, economic, educational,
[00:12:34] political, to be born in Bucharest and for your parents to be able to give you an
[00:12:38] apartment is already a very big
[00:12:40] advantage, immense compared to, and if your parents were also intellectuals and you go to
[00:12:44] university, how can I say, automatically it's not even a question, they also
[00:12:48] have the resources, they also have the knowledge, yes, what is
[00:12:51] called cultural capital in sociology,
[00:12:53] necessary to ensure that those,
[00:12:57] that their descendants will continue on an upward
[00:13:00] trajectory. On the other hand, you also have this
[00:13:04] fact that in less developed areas,
[00:13:08] well, resources are fewer, opportunities are
[00:13:11] fewer, distances to an educational
[00:13:14] or medical center are much
[00:13:17] greater, if you're in a commune in let's say
[00:13:20] in southern Muntenia, at the same time,
[00:13:24] however, the success of those in the city is also very visible,
[00:13:28] yes, there are also social networks of socialization, they also had this
[00:13:31] effect, the fact that, no, my child is in
[00:13:33] London, yes, well, okay, yes, and mine might have been, maybe it wouldn't have been
[00:13:37] bad, but no, I had many obstacles and couldn't
[00:13:41] make it, that's how two people with different social conditions could
[00:13:45] judge,
[00:13:48] unfortunately these development policies have gone on accelerating urban
[00:13:51] engines and less on redistribution, now it's not by chance.
[00:13:55] That is, cities have been profoundly favored, at the
[00:13:59] expense, no, to the detriment
[00:14:02] of immense areas, with a very, very large
[00:14:05] population, yes, now and certain cities and certain regions of the country, that is,
[00:14:09] there are very large development differences that have deepened
[00:14:12] with increased development, this is a paradox, economic development
[00:14:16] has produced, no one denies it, but it has deepened
[00:14:20] the development differences between the regions,
[00:14:22] the development regions of Romania. Can
[00:14:25] political power, can administrative
[00:14:28] power regulate social inequality
[00:14:31] in any way, because someone will say: well,
[00:14:35] do you want communism, dear compatriots, then
[00:14:39] everyone received, in quotation marks,
[00:14:42] equality, which is no longer the case now, how can the mechanism
[00:14:46] be regulated, it's not healthy, first of all we were just talking about
[00:14:50] the need to get over polarization, it's not healthy to
[00:14:53] talk only in black and white. Uh, and about radical solutions,
[00:14:57] yes, it means that of course it can and must, after all,
[00:15:00] political power and the administration of a country, that's their role, who else
[00:15:04] are you going to expect to regulate things that have gotten
[00:15:07] out of balance, including with
[00:15:10] the approval of political decision-makers, we are
[00:15:14] indeed facing phenomena related to
[00:15:16] the globalized economy, to things that happen
[00:15:19] perhaps independently of the will or influence of a single
[00:15:23] factor, but political decision-makers in Romania have endorsed the way
[00:15:27] resources have been distributed and including this discourse that
[00:15:31] likens any measure,
[00:15:34] any measure even of
[00:15:37] regulation and reduction of disparities, if it is
[00:15:41] labeled even by politicians, I'm sorry to say it bluntly, as a return
[00:15:45] to communism, that's already a
[00:15:47] failure, meaning you put a label on it and
[00:15:51] somehow, somehow you cast a stigma on social
[00:15:55] measures, what is the role of politicians after all? Well, some will say:
[00:15:58] "You wanted capitalism, you were unleashed,
[00:16:02] express yourselves." Here I'll let Filip speak, because someone else will say: "We
[00:16:06] are expressing ourselves, but we don't start from equal chances in this
[00:16:09] expression." Yes. European funds are also cohesion funds. So
[00:16:13] the European Union, European decision-makers, and if we always
[00:16:16] refer to European values and to, well, a kind of European development
[00:16:19] model, a European-type state and
[00:16:23] economy, capitalist European-type, still.
[00:16:27] Then we see that this problem was, must be explicitly
[00:16:30] stated. What is cohesion? To redistribute
[00:16:33] wealth created in common, social wealth is always created in
[00:16:37] common. common, yes, there are always some, even in
[00:16:40] a factory, sure, directors can say or engineers or
[00:16:44] the creators of a company can say that they had the idea and the others implement it, but this
[00:16:48] is often, how to say, a partial
[00:16:50] truth,
[00:16:52] we also noticed this, now coming back a bit to the topic of our research,
[00:16:56] that many are frustrated that they work in cities, they leave
[00:17:00] their workforce there and those companies benefit from them, because they don't fire
[00:17:03] them and they often pay them, how to...
[00:17:07] little and economic theory shows us that in this way companies benefit and grow
[00:17:11] their profit and report substantial profits and income from
[00:17:15] salaries, income tax from salaries remains in the administrative-territorial unit
[00:17:19] in which the company operates, when they return
[00:17:22] to their hometown, to a village or commune 50,
[00:17:25] 60, 70 km away, they see that the road is only partially
[00:17:29] paved, that there is no money for the local park which is overgrown,
[00:17:33] full of weeds, and they say, well, why
[00:17:36] is it like that? and no, no, it's normal and
[00:17:39] then a candidate who comes and says: "Yes, we will do justice, we will
[00:17:42] fix these things." Well, it draws attention, of course, in the first
[00:17:46] instance, it doesn't mean it gives any guarantee. On the other hand, with Europe,
[00:17:50] I just wanted to give another example, we had a small, a small research project with colleagues
[00:17:54] from Czech Republic about mining areas in
[00:17:57] Germany, former East Germany, in Poland and in and in Czech Republic
[00:18:01] and, the German state invested huge
[00:18:05] money, tens of billions in former mining areas that are being
[00:18:08] closed down, because you realize that you cannot create a black hole, that is,
[00:18:12] an implosion zone, after all those zones are called sacrifice
[00:18:15] zones, they produced them, they supported the German economy
[00:18:19] for a long time and now you say, yes, we're sorry the coal is finished,
[00:18:23] close the door and go well downwards, no, it cannot
[00:18:27] do that, I think we need to put our finger on the
[00:18:30] wound a bit and refer to something you say very clearly
[00:18:34] here, you say this: the image of
[00:18:39] Călin Georgescu's voters and of sovereignists in general, which has started to
[00:18:42] become clearer and clearer in mass media and on social
[00:18:45] networks, is stereotypical and
[00:18:48] stigmatizing. And you say this: It shows
[00:18:51] them as uneducated individuals or even lacking in
[00:18:55] intelligence, frustrated, conspiracy theorists,
[00:18:58] violent, eager for verbal and physical
[00:19:01] revenge, and most often undeserving of
[00:19:05] pity or understanding. We conducted
[00:19:07] an analysis of public discourse, we
[00:19:11] followed certain pages, certain reactions
[00:19:14] of known people. The first interviews we did were with
[00:19:18] middle-class people, there weren't many, they were people from
[00:19:22] Bucharest who shared with us how
[00:19:25] they managed finding out the news of the elections and they, in turn,
[00:19:29] had this stereotypical image, maybe not in such broad strokes
[00:19:32] as, I don't know, in those circulated in the space, but often the image
[00:19:36] was "we'll pack up and leave", yes, yes, yes, clearly,
[00:19:39] many, many told us that, I think everyone we talked to among those in
[00:19:43] the middle class thought of a scenario where they would leave, excuse me, this had for us
[00:19:47] a signal value, to pack your bags and
[00:19:50] leave, assumes you have substantial resources, meaning you
[00:19:54] can't just leave like that, no, first you have no bags to pack and say, "I left
[00:19:58] Romania", yes, yes, "I left Romania", so you had some resources, you had a
[00:20:01] surplus, something had to be protected and
[00:20:04] going on, we understood more and more that there are people who have
[00:20:08] nothing to protect because they have no accumulations of any
[00:20:11] kind, neither material, nor financial, nor
[00:20:14] educational or cultural. And they try
[00:20:18] to fight this somewhat unequal battle from an unfavorable
[00:20:21] position and yes. On the other hand, there are people who would simply leave
[00:20:24] with, as it is said in Romanian so correctly, "I'm leaving with
[00:20:28] what I have on me", because many
[00:20:30] are looking
[00:20:32] in essence for a form of dignity, a form of respect for the dignity
[00:20:36] of being. No. these ideas are not so complicated, it's not
[00:20:39] so complicated to understand that people suffer profoundly
[00:20:42] from a terrible lack of
[00:20:46] elementary dignity. There have been waves of
[00:20:50] massive migration in Romania, the first immediately after '89,
[00:20:53] '90, when perhaps all those who wanted to leave before '89 didn't
[00:20:57] succeed, they left, after which, at
[00:21:01] the beginning of the 2000s there was again a wave of massive
[00:21:04] departure abroad and after the crisis of 2008,
[00:21:07] 2010 which manifested itself later here, we again had a
[00:21:11] massive wave of emigration and any such
[00:21:15] turmoil, any unrest, political instability
[00:21:17] which has repercussions later
[00:21:21] in people's pockets also produces waves,
[00:21:25] larger or smaller. It is clear that in Romanian society, in the public space,
[00:21:29] there has been talk about sovereignist voters,
[00:21:32] pointing fingers, with a contemptuous tone.
[00:21:35] We must mention the fact that there is also
[00:21:39] another side of the coin, there are also
[00:21:42] public instances of expression in Romania that
[00:21:45] refer to other voters
[00:21:49] in a similar
[00:21:52] tone and with similar vocabulary, it's
[00:21:55] true that, how can I say, yes, the vocabulary is similar
[00:21:59] because we speak the same language, but some are
[00:22:02] looked down upon, others are looked upon with profound enmity,
[00:22:05] it's extremely complicated what's happening there and as I said, everyone
[00:22:09] knows this, things seem irreconcilable,
[00:22:11] on the other hand, you
[00:22:15] demonstrate, you don't affirm, you demonstrate, you
[00:22:18] demonstrate that when it's said that people with
[00:22:22] profoundly precarious
[00:22:24] education, the most precarious education,
[00:22:27] vote for Călin Georgescu, you demonstrate that this statement is in
[00:22:31] fact false. Lack of education or precarious
[00:22:35] education is not the cause in itself, it's not, it's not
[00:22:38] the root, it's an effect, perhaps, but it's not
[00:22:42] mandatory, meaning among Georgescu's voters there were also people with higher
[00:22:46] education, what we wanted to show in fact and what
[00:22:49] we have shown, we managed to show in this research, is that we cannot
[00:22:53] individualize the vote, we cannot or it's not
[00:22:56] healthy to analyze the individual who votes in his isolation,
[00:23:00] because that individual lives in a community, in a larger
[00:23:04] or smaller locality, more developed, closer to a
[00:23:07] city or more distant and that this
[00:23:10] largely explains why more and more people, beyond,
[00:23:13] let's say, the accidental phenomenon,
[00:23:16] the vote of November 2024,
[00:23:20] the appetite for the sovereignist vote has grown and we showed in
[00:23:23] this research and we theorized a concept
[00:23:26] of sovereignization which we analyze neutrally
[00:23:30] we show how it practically expanded territorially and more and
[00:23:33] more I think 89% of 89% of
[00:23:37] the administrative-territorial units in Romania
[00:23:40] the percentage of votes for Simion increased
[00:23:42] yes, yes, we called them localities
[00:23:46] in the research, it increased, so in almost 9
[00:23:50] this: of Romanian localities the vote
[00:23:53] for Simion increased compared to what the vote had been for
[00:23:56] Simion and Georgescu together, you say
[00:23:58] perhaps few would have expected it, but Georgescu was also voted by
[00:24:02] young people, with secondary or higher education, including
[00:24:05] skilled workers, employees with secondary or higher education,
[00:24:09] students, but also employers. The
[00:24:12] results of the Exit Poll analyzed by sociologist Cătălin Stoica indicate
[00:24:16] exactly this: The sovereignist leader whose voters
[00:24:19] form indeed images formed in public
[00:24:22] opinion, is George Simion. Yes, in the first
[00:24:26] phase these are the Exit Poll results from November and I think also
[00:24:29] December from the parliamentary elections, which he analyzed
[00:24:32] very well in his book. the second round which
[00:24:35] was Cătălin Stoica.
[00:24:39] There, indeed, you can see, what is usually seen in
[00:24:42] a survey, no matter how representative it may be, not everyone
[00:24:46] votes in the same way and that there is a dominant
[00:24:49] profile. of the voter, we showed instead that there is
[00:24:53] a dominant profile of the localities from which these
[00:24:55] votes mainly come and we went and did, after
[00:24:59] the quantitative analysis in which we superimposed the results
[00:25:03] of the vote on each locality with some social and
[00:25:06] economic indicators that characterize that locality, meaning we superimposed
[00:25:10] the results of the vote on how there, on how there
[00:25:12] exactly the development yes, how developed
[00:25:16] the locality is, in which development group it falls according to a
[00:25:19] development indicator. local human development produced by
[00:25:22] the sociologist Dumitru Sandu, so we
[00:25:26] showed what these profiles are, after which, because we are
[00:25:29] both qualitative researchers and have done many projects
[00:25:32] together in which we went to disadvantaged communities, we talked
[00:25:36] to people, we like it, we believe that besides quantitative
[00:25:40] data, some interviews and participatory
[00:25:43] observations and looking at the context are very
[00:25:46] useful, we went to three communes,
[00:25:50] we went there to talk to people who voted
[00:25:53] or who were going to vote, because some, for example, didn't even know about Georgescu in
[00:25:57] us, at length the dialogues with these people,
[00:26:00] the discussions with these compatriots. But you say,
[00:26:03] you insist and say that the silver bullet
[00:26:07] theory doesn't really work the way things
[00:26:10] happened in Romania. Can we explain a bit what the
[00:26:13] silver bullet theory is? Yes, that is, social networks,
[00:26:17] manipulation on TikTok. It was believed in America in the 1930s
[00:26:20] and 40s that once a message is transmitted
[00:26:24] by radio, in that case, it reaches the individual and
[00:26:28] influences him to do something, meaning it tells him to buy soap and he goes and buys soap
[00:26:31] immediately, well, or at the next opportunity this proved over
[00:26:35] time that it's not a realistic model, that people don't act like that, and indeed
[00:26:39] in our interviews they didn't say yes, I saw Georgescu
[00:26:42] on TikTok and that's it, I voted for him, I don't know,
[00:26:46] maybe one or two would have said that, I don't even know, there were
[00:26:50] various situations, how can I say, that in
[00:26:54] many cases the social network was not even invoked,
[00:26:57] a neighbor had told him, someone else had told him something else or they didn't mention it at all,
[00:27:01] in other cases they had heard that there were there were
[00:27:04] locals who had voted for another candidate and who had
[00:27:08] discovered Georgescu later and then got enthusiastic
[00:27:12] learning about the discourse and the interest that was given to him
[00:27:14] later.
[00:27:16] It was important for us that this discourse of the people
[00:27:20] we talked to was very rational, it was
[00:27:23] calm, it wasn't, so TikTok mattered,
[00:27:27] social networks mattered, but they were not decisive in
[00:27:31] this story because underneath "it's a world a bit more complicated and older
[00:27:34] than the social network phenomenon, it's clear that
[00:27:38] Georgescu's psychological effect, the fact that
[00:27:42] he spoke and gave you attention and seemed
[00:27:45] emotionally to enter into communication with you, I even met a 40-year-old
[00:27:49] man who told us that he would cry when Georgescu spoke, it didn't
[00:27:53] matter that much, yes, he was a day laborer, had
[00:27:56] a very fluctuating work regime, poor, five grades,
[00:27:59] seriously ill child, yes, so he..." had, how can I say, all the downsides that
[00:28:02] well, a city dweller
[00:28:06] doesn't have in the same way and someone seemed to finally
[00:28:10] understand him, but I understand you, my dears, it brings tears to your eyes, he didn't talk about
[00:28:13] the benchmark, about the cohesion fund or about how it works or that Romania could
[00:28:17] be downgraded to junk, about God, about
[00:28:21] ancestors, yes, about how it could be and that he sees it and that he
[00:28:24] understands it and that it could be better and that we can still and
[00:28:28] others should not tell us, well, of course I'm oversimplifying and in an
[00:28:31] atmosphere where a good part of the intellectual elite in Romania
[00:28:35] looks with a certain disdain, often discreet,
[00:28:38] but which you can feel, in an atmosphere like
[00:28:41] this, when someone comes and tells you:
[00:28:44] my dears, you no longer need to think with your mind, you need to think with
[00:28:48] your heart, something fundamentally changes in those
[00:28:51] people, these are people who react to someone
[00:28:55] who paid attention to them, purely and simply, we need to
[00:28:58] nuance a bit here, it's not about the ability of a leader to put
[00:29:02] because probably he trained, Mr. Georgescu, he certainly
[00:29:06] trained to give some speeches, all politicians do that in the
[00:29:09] end, it's legitimate to do
[00:29:13] that, the populist discourse, let's put it under the broad
[00:29:16] umbrella of populism, it has this
[00:29:20] characteristic, it simplifies things very much, it addresses
[00:29:24] emotions rather than reason, and
[00:29:27] dichotomizes,
[00:29:29] polarizes, sorry, thanks,
[00:29:33] we are good, you, we, the people are good, the elites
[00:29:36] are bad, now all, all, all
[00:29:40] this, let's say, this
[00:29:43] type of discourse must be understood in the context in which we are in Romania
[00:29:47] or were in Romania in 2024, we
[00:29:50] don't have time now to go through all
[00:29:53] the scandals, crises, uncertainties, but we know very
[00:29:57] well that we are already in the sixth
[00:30:00] crisis, let's say, it started with the pandemic, people in Romania and not
[00:30:04] only in Romania, but also in the rest of Europe and in the rest of the world
[00:30:07] have had to face situations with
[00:30:10] which they had not encountered before, and
[00:30:13] then for example, the depreciation
[00:30:16] of money, inflation,
[00:30:19] the rising cost of living, all these were felt and
[00:30:23] the uncertainty with which about what will follow,
[00:30:26] plus a political class that is very
[00:30:30] disappointing, let's say, for him.
[00:30:44] he spoke, I don't know how, that he spoke of God,
[00:30:47] that I don't know what, Simion has a different type of discourse than Georgescu and he succeeded, behold, more than Georgescu, I would give too much
[00:30:51] credit or too much importance,