In a forest outside Bucharest, a woman cradled her infant in one arm while raising the other in a Nazi salute. She was one of about 70 people who gathered on Nov. 30 last year to commemorate the anniversary of the death of Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, a leader of Romania’s interwar fascist Legionary Movement and head of its paramilitary wing, the Iron Guard.
Codreanu and his ally, Ion Antonescu — Romania’s virulently anti-Semitic wartime dictator — were central figures in the country’s Holocaust history. Codreanu was assassinated in 1938 and Antonescu was executed as a war criminal in 1946.
Yet, in today’s Romania, their legacy is being posthumously resurrected as part of the same nationalist pride movement that has driven the meteoric rise of far-right pro-Russia candidate Calin Georgescu.
Illustration: Constance Chou
Georgescu came from obscurity to win the first round of presidential elections last November, prompting the courts to annul the ballot on suspicion of outside interference. On Sunday, Georgescu was barred by the country’s election authority from standing in the rerun in May, on the basis that he had violated the constitutional obligation to defend democracy.
The former agronomist was investigated in 2022 for remarks that praised Codreanu and Antonescu as patriotic heroes and “martyrs.” The case was later dropped, but last month he made what looked like a Nazi salute in public after he was questioned by prosecutors.
He enjoys the vocal support of Euroskeptic US Vice President J.D. Vance and another apparent fan of the sieg heil salute, Elon Musk.
Nazi salutes, like the commemoration in Tancabesti forest, are illegal under Romanian law, which prohibits the glorification of fascist figures. However, such gestures and symbols have attracted new attention after November’s election turmoil.
The constitutional court annulled the vote after declassified intelligence documents alleged Russian interference, including via a TikTok disinformation campaign.
No evidence of Russian campaign financing has been uncovered so far, but prosecutors last month indicted Georgescu on six counts, including illegal campaign financing, affiliation to anti-Semitic organizations and promotion of fascist symbols. He has denied wrongdoing.
Even though he has been barred from standing for office, Georgescu’s emergence has amplified a culture of incendiary revisionism. Steeped in religious conservatism and ultranationalism, his rhetoric has tapped into a potent mix of discontent and nostalgia. This has resurfaced deep undercurrents of xenophobia, racism and anti-Semitism that many thought had been consigned to history, even though Romania’s diverse population — including significant Hungarian and Roma minorities — has long been a flashpoint for tensions.
Romania’s reckoning with its fascist past has always been tenuous. After the fall of communism, which had vilified interwar fascists as enemies of the state, people such as Codreanu and Antonescu were reframed as nationalist heroes by far-right figures. This narrative found fertile ground in a country grappling with the legacy of a brutal dictatorship and the chaos of transition.
Tensions were ratcheted up a notch in 2020 when the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) party, the first far-right group to enter parliament, began normalizing rhetoric that minimized the Holocaust and rehabilitated the Legionaries, according to Adina Marincea, a researcher at the Elie Wiesel National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania.
However, unlike the more subtle dog-whistling preferred by the AUR, Georgescu’s messaging is overt and explicit. He stood as an independent in the aborted presidential election. His support comes from groups across a broad spectrum: young people, rural dwellers, intellectuals, priests, police, military personnel and media figures. Many refer to Georgescu as “the captain” — a title once reserved for Codreanu. More than 40 organizations with affinities to the Legionary Movement, with anti-abortion and ultranationalist views, signed a letter of support for him after he won the first round.
“The expression of extreme attitudes came to a peak,” Marincea said about the weeks after the first round of cancelled elections. “We saw a wave of threats and radical rhetoric from those who believed they were on the winning side.”
Intimidation of minorities increased at the same time. A Roma rights group, Volunteers for Roma for Democracy, said its members received death threats, photos of guns and Nazi symbols, accompanied by messages warning that “Jews and Roma must be eliminated.”
“The threats wouldn’t have been possible if they weren’t encouraged by Georgescu, who is also emboldened by the extreme-right parties,” the head of the organization, Alin Banu, said. LGBTQ+ rights associations were also threatened.
Investigative journalist Victor Ilie researched alleged Russian financial connections that might have bolstered conspiracy theories for years before Georgescu’s campaign. He has also received death threats.
Romania’s law enforcement agencies have conducted raids on the homes of people suspected of having commemorated the fascist leaders or of displaying fascist symbols. However, these actions are reactive and insufficient.
The tide of hate has already spilled over into public life, with civil society reporting increased threats, which Marincea said could turn into physical violence, especially against LGBTQ+ groups. If criminal investigations lead to no arrests, extremist groups would be further emboldened and far-right targeting of the media is likely to worsen.
Two ultranationalist parties entered parliament for the first time last year, creating a political environment where hate speech is not just tolerated, but celebrated. The leader of one of these parties streamed live images of herself commemorating fascist leader Codreanu.
Georgescu recently declared his support for ethnic minorities and guaranteed them safety. Marincea believes it was a “performative” social media post and “part of a strategic calculus to wash his image.”
Many more people have been radicalized by the canceling of the election results and what they see as a campaign against a messianic figure whose mission is to save the people from the establishment. Many are now calling the rejection of his candidacy in the rerun a coup d’etat.
Georgescu’s success is symptomatic of a broader trend supported by foreign actors including Russia: The resurgence of ultranationalist, anti-democratic movements that exploit economic uncertainty, societal divisions and distrust of mainstream institutions.
In Romania, with three far-right parties holding sway in parliament, this trajectory has a uniquely dangerous edge. It is likely to increase polarization and social divisions, and reshape policy on Romania’s relationship with the EU and its support for Ukraine, as it reawakens the ghosts of a fascist past that many hoped had been exorcized.
Andrei Popoviciu is a Romanian investigative journalist.
On May 7, 1971, Henry Kissinger planned his first, ultra-secret mission to China and pondered whether it would be better to meet his Chinese interlocutors “in Pakistan where the Pakistanis would tape the meeting — or in China where the Chinese would do the taping.” After a flicker of thought, he decided to have the Chinese do all the tape recording, translating and transcribing. Fortuitously, historians have several thousand pages of verbatim texts of Dr. Kissinger’s negotiations with his Chinese counterparts. Paradoxically, behind the scenes, Chinese stenographers prepared verbatim English language typescripts faster than they could translate and type them
More than 30 years ago when I immigrated to the US, applied for citizenship and took the 100-question civics test, the one part of the naturalization process that left the deepest impression on me was one question on the N-400 form, which asked: “Have you ever been a member of, involved in or in any way associated with any communist or totalitarian party anywhere in the world?” Answering “yes” could lead to the rejection of your application. Some people might try their luck and lie, but if exposed, the consequences could be much worse — a person could be fined,
Xiaomi Corp founder Lei Jun (雷軍) on May 22 made a high-profile announcement, giving online viewers a sneak peek at the company’s first 3-nanometer mobile processor — the Xring O1 chip — and saying it is a breakthrough in China’s chip design history. Although Xiaomi might be capable of designing chips, it lacks the ability to manufacture them. No matter how beautifully planned the blueprints are, if they cannot be mass-produced, they are nothing more than drawings on paper. The truth is that China’s chipmaking efforts are still heavily reliant on the free world — particularly on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing
Keelung Mayor George Hsieh (謝國樑) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) on Tuesday last week apologized over allegations that the former director of the city’s Civil Affairs Department had illegally accessed citizens’ data to assist the KMT in its campaign to recall Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) councilors. Given the public discontent with opposition lawmakers’ disruptive behavior in the legislature, passage of unconstitutional legislation and slashing of the central government’s budget, civic groups have launched a massive campaign to recall KMT lawmakers. The KMT has tried to fight back by initiating campaigns to recall DPP lawmakers, but the petition documents they
RSS