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A week has passed since the first round of the presidential elections and, while thousands of young people are protesting all over the country and chanting "Information, not manipulation", "We want the EU, not the KGB" or "Young people are asking you in one voice, don't vote for a dictator! ", on social media, influencers and well-known people in Romania continue to support Georgescu's campaign. Some of those who promoted him or voted for him in the first round have apologized publicly and talked about how they fell into this trap. But others say they are new supporters or continue to support him, repeating the discourse from the first round and denying that the endorsement videos used then had been paid by or particularly made for this candidate.
These days I have been keeping my eyes on the Romanian influencers and stars with hundreds of thousands of followers.
"Romania, a western colony", "the LGBT agenda" and other Russian narratives used in the campaign for Georgescu
A few days before the elections, streamer Silviu Faiar posted on YouTube a video about Călin Georgescu speaking about influencers making Tik Tok videos with a similar script and listing the qualities of an ideal president being allegedly paid by Călin Georgescu through the Fame Up platform (used by micro-influencers to access campaigns). After the elections, it didn’t take long for influencers to show up online to confirm that they had been paid for those videos. Some of them urged people to make informed voting decisions , while others kept campaigning for Călin Georgescu. As part of this campaign, they have promoted Russian narratives wrapped in Romanian packaging.
Ana Țepuș (140 thousand subscribers on TikTok, 188 thousand on Instagram), an influencer who became known by creating educational content about historical buildings in Bucharest, started posting, in the week between the elections, all kinds of hints that she was a supporter of Călin Georgescu. On a clip in which she recommends her followers what gifts to buy for Christmas, she also inserted a comment unrelated to the topic, stating that we need "a person who represents us and who has the skills to lead the country to an economically more prosperous area, not to enslave the poor Romanians who go to work abroad and send home millions every year". In another video, Țepuș says that Romania should take care of its hospitals, not help those from other countries, hinting at Ukraine ( refugees receive money from the EU anyway) . The two clips resume false narratives of Russian origin that have been promoted, in recent years, by different actors in Romania as well.
The story about Romanians slaving abroad is related to the older Russian narrative that the EU member states are colonies governed from Brussels, which in Romania has been transformed into all sorts of stories - that the country "was accepted into the EU for the labor force , cheap raw materials and to be turned into a market for the EU; in order to be accepted into the EU, it had to sell cheap its resources and properties to Western corporations. Since accession, Romanians’ live have become worse."
The hint at the Ukrainian refugees is related to the intense disinformation campaign that targeted them in countries throughout Europe but also in Romania.
Ana Maria Prodan (466 thousand subscribers on TikTok, 2.2 million on Instagram), at the office, surrounded by icons, announced - the same live in which she advertised some sneakers - that she supported Călin Georgescu, a president who "comes from a country, Switzerland, where he made a career". A candidate, she says, who speaks six foreign languages fluently, is a martial arts champion and "manages with some really smart guys around him to win everything, and nobody can do anything about that".
Such a characterization (just like the reference made by Ana Țepuş to "the ability to lead the country") resembles the narrative about the strong/providential leader, intensively promoted by Russia, where not only has Putin cultivated a macho image (he is an officer, judoka, pilot, motorcyclist, bare-chested rider, diver, military leader, president loved by the people and feared/respected outside, etc., etc., etc.), but the state has also encouraged the cult of authoritarian leaders like Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great or Stalin. They are presented in antithesis with so-called weak leaders, such as Nicholas II or Yeltsin, who were manipulated by the West and plunged Russia into chaos.
The narrative of the powerful leader has been circulating for several years in Romania, where it has been adapted to the local specificities, including through an intense promotion on Tik Tok of criminals like Ion Antonescu, Zelea Codreanu and Nicolae Ceaușescu.
All week, Georgescu's supporters have flooded social media with the argument that if he doesn't win the election, then men will hold hands and dress in skirts. Some even said that they would rather live in Ceaușescu's time than see rainbows on the street, that they would rather learn Russian than have their boy come home hand in hand with another boy, or that they would rather go to the front than find they have a gay child.
Football agent Ana Maria Prodan also felt the need to speak out on this topic: "Don't destroy the children. Călin Georgescu is right!!! If your child came to you and told you he’s a cat, what would you do? Would you try to connect with the cat in him or would you take him to a psychiatrist?".
This type of discourse belongs to another anti-European narrative promoted by Russia and adopted by sovereignist or far-right movements in many European countries: that there is a so-called LGBT agenda that involves the destruction of the traditional family by legalizing marriages between people of the same sex, the perversion of children and the undermining of Christian (and, in the case of Romania, implicitly Orthodox) values.
Georgescu-branded pseudo-science and conspiracy, promoted by influencers
The day after the live on TikTok, Ana Maria Prodan switched to Instagram, where she is followed by 2.2 million people. She posted a series of stories in which she turns into a fact-checker for Călin Georgescu. She is trying to justify his statements about various things, from sodas to c-sections, by showing screenshots taken out of context or defending his anti-LGBT stance. All these stories were obviously tagged to Călin Georgescu's Instagram account.
The series began with a reference to the hoax about how carbonated drinks contain nanochips ("everything that means nanochip and enters you like a laptop"), as claimed by Călin Georgescu on a TV show . Ana Maria Prodan takes a screenshot of an abstract from a study on fluorescent nanoparticles in carbonated soft drinks and says that Georgescu was right. The truth is, however, that nanoparticles and nanochips are two different things. Nanochips are miniaturized electronic devices that operate on the nanometer scale and are designed to process information, store data, or control various processes. While nanoparticles are extremely small particles, with dimensions of the order of nanometers (1-100 nm), which do not have any intrinsic electronic functionality and can be formed from different materials (metal, ceramic, polymers, etc.) and are used due to their unique physical and chemical properties.
A story also followed about caesarean birth, which Georgescu said breaks the divine thread. Prodan defended the statement saying that both in America and in England, caesarean sections are performed only if absolutely necessary, otherwise the doctor may lose their medical license. However, in America, cesarean delivery on demand is legal, because a woman has the right to participate in the choice of medical treatments, including the method of delivery. Besides, no serious study has shown an increase in maternal mortality with the use of cesarean section on demand. A doctor's license can only be suspended if a patient wins a lawsuit in which it is proven that the doctor performed a caesarean section though it was not needed and without her consent.
In England, according to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, women seeking a caesarean section for non-medical reasons must be supported to make an informed decision and given information about the risks and benefits of vaginal delivery versus caesarean section. If, after counseling and information, the patient still opts for a caesarean section and her obstetrician is unwilling to perform the procedure, the patient will be referred to another physician.
Why so much censorship and hate?
"Why so much censorship and hate?" asked another public figure, singer Connect-R, (800k subscribers on TikTok, 527k on Instagram) in a video on TikTok after being told by the organizers of a charity concert that their values did not align with those he promoted on social media. This reaction came shortly after, in several clips, the artist made sovereignist statements such as: "Romanians have now remembered that they are sovereign in their country", which also hints at the idea that Romania is a Western colony (but Georgescu will save it).
On this occasion, I noticed how these days, Georgescu’s supporters have come forward with a speech in which the emphasis falls on the fact that those who do not agree with them and draw their attention that a dictatorship does not sound good for Romania, in fact are censoring them. The same thing was done in one form or another by Ana Maria Prodan and Ana Țepuş, but also other smaller influencers who lined up in support of Georgescu. A sort of thieves crying “stop the thief”.
