Far-right AUR party’s government program: a collection of monstrosities from the ashes of Bolshevism, Legionarism and Communism

The government program presented on Thursday by the AUR leaders at the Romanian Chamber of Commerce and Industry is more intelligently written than the primitive forms presented in the past by populists like Vadim Tudor (Romania Mare) or Dan Diaconescu, but just as toxic for democracy, anti-Western and dangerous for the rule of law. In essence, it looks like a collection of monstrosities culled from the ashes of Bolshevism, Legionnaireism and Communism, a synthesis of the political evil that has haunted Romania in recent decades, combined with ultra-populist measures and economic pseudo-solutions that have proved bankrupt.

Dan Diaconescu was dangling 20 thousand euros for every Romanian in 2012 if elected. Simion has realized that no one is going for pies in the sky anymore, so he comes up with something apparently more realistic: a gradual increase in the minimum wage over the next four years from 3000 lei to 5000 lei.

For voters who are disillusioned, frustrated, or disillusioned with the traditional parties, such ultra-populist, messianic, misleading offers have the capacity to seduce in times of great social unrest (economic crisis, health crisis, war at the border). When everything goes wrong, people throw themselves into extremes. It is the time of populists, impostors, and demagogues, fishing in troubled waters. It is the time of Simion, of the reservists, and of the puppet masters around him.

When electricity, diesel, and gasoline have become so expensive, how can you not find customers to whom you can sell the illusion that nationalizing Petrom and the energy companies is the right solution, especially since Simion is promising Romanians that he will make them shareholders in the new companies? The ground has already been prepared by the rally in Bucharest, where more than 10,000 AUR supporters marched through the streets under the 1990s secessionist slogan „We are not selling our country”.

Later, the AUR protest at the Palace of Parliament, where at least two MPs claimed to have been assaulted, spat on, and cursed at by protesters, was once again reminiscent of communist uprisings or legionary violence. Add to all this the symbolism of the gesture of an AUR activist trying to enter the Parliament with a few bullets. Let’s not forget the neo-legionary affiliation of the AUR through the party’s intellectuals, Sorin Lavric and Claudiu Târziu. The Legionaries addressed the working class through the extremely powerful Workers’ Organisation and attacked capitalism.

Simion is just starting out, for now he is just barging into public institutions for Facebook Likes and his shouting protests look cartoonishly aggressive as they are. He hasn’t yet reached the miners’ march on Bucharest, the attempted fascist-style coup organized by Vadim Tudor and Miron Cozma in 1999, when they tried to overthrow the rule of law by force of the club. But amid growing social discontent, AUR will pour gasoline on the fire and encourage violent demonstrations.

The basis of these actions is, as with the communists and legionaries, a foundation of lies and manipulation. See the proven fake news about „stealing Romania’s children”, a huge misrepresentation of a common sense law under debate in Parliament. Lies, manipulation, and propaganda are at the heart of all totalitarian regimes, which extract power by cynically exploiting popular resentment.

From the communist and Bolshevik ethos, AUR has not only recovered nationalization but also people’s tribunals, collective trials (possibly on the stadiums), and the class struggle. What else could the proposal to organize „courts with juries made up of Romanian citizens of full age and full capacity to exercise their rights, to settle serious criminal cases and collective or class trials” mean? In the 1950s there were also public trials judged by so-called popular assessors, people taken directly from the street without any legal training.

Here is how the law of 1952 sounded when, in the full Stalinism, Romania sent to prison the „enemies of the people”, tried summarily from ad hoc courts: „A popular assessor can be any person who is a Romanian citizen, is 23 years old, has not suffered any criminal conviction and has the use and exercise of all political and civil rights. (…) Popular assessors are elected for a term of 4 years at the proposal of labor organizations: organizations of the Romanian Workers’ Party, trade unions, cooperatives, youth organizations, and cultural associations, as well as other public organizations.”

At this point, it becomes almost pointless to analyze the government program – a bunch of economic nonsense and monstrosities collected from the dustbins of history and melted in the name of sovereignty into a kind of government program.

Any party that puts such a thing on the table in the European Union must be immediately denounced as extremist and treated as such: a huge danger to democracy. Proposals such as the one launched by PNL Senator Alexandru Muraru, to outlaw AUR, are a mistake and risk generating the opposite effect: victimizing an extremist party, making it ‘illegal’ would only give it more legitimacy in the eyes of its followers, develop strong loyalties and increase sympathy for its leaders.

Nor does the media boycott practiced by the major TV channels on the day of the launch of the AUR party’s government program solve much and is also a mistake. Having given George Simion and the AUR leaders a platform, the same TV channels now don’t know how to stop the out-of-control monster. In the age of social media, Simion is helped by the TV boycott, not hindered too much. This gives him an unhoped-for chance to present himself as more important than he is: here, they don’t know how to stop me, they fear me, they tremble for fear of AUR.

Like any undemocratic movement, AUR instruments fear, and extreme emotions in general. Simion&co’s messages are not addressed to reason, but to emotions. AUR wants to generate fear in society and project force. That’s how the Legionaries, Nazis, Bolsheviks, and Communists acted. This party, which could very well be called the Alliance of Romanians’ Hate, assembled from scraps, borrows a little from everyone.

I still think the danger is real, but it is not as great as it seems at first sight. Yes, AUR has risen a lot in the polls and has become the second-largest party in Romania. Yes, it has spilled over from its pool, from the lower and less educated strata of society, managing to attract somewhat better but politically confused people. Yes, there are numerous true believers around the AUR, in addition to opportunists, traitors, and dubious people. But, no, its leader George Simion, is not autonomous. He is not free.

He’s just a tool, an opportunist, an arrow sent knocking on many doors until he builds his own party. He can always be unplugged by the Romanian state exactly as it has activated him whenever it needed him. A laboratory creation, used in Moldova to promote the unionist project, probably gotten out of hand at one point, recovered and reused in politics, Simion was and is part of the system despite his anti-system discourse.

And AUR is without George Simion like PRM without Vadim Tudor or the People’s Party without Dan Diaconescu. Vadim Tudor and Dan Diaconescu were also artificial creations, taken out of circulation when they were no longer needed.

But for now, AUR will not be unplugged, except temporarily, when it gets too much momentum. Both the far-right party and its cellphone-obsessed leader still have a use for next year’s elections. The major parties in power use the danger of extremism to stir up even with external partners to reinforce, by antithesis, the current political construction between the PNL and the PSD.

The hidden dream of the PSD’ists, I repeat, is that Marcel Ciolacu or whoever their presidential candidate will be will enter the second round with the AUR candidate. In this scenario, Romania will once again be forced to choose, as in 2000 when Ion Iliescu entered the final with Vadim Tudor, the „lesser evil”.

Translated