The Vexler Law will erase the identity and history of Romanians, banning geniuses like Eminescu and Kogălniceanu, sovereignist propaganda claims, rehashing a number of anti-Semitic, denialist and conspiracist theses on this occasion. In fact, the law merely combats Nazi-style and neo-Legionary extremism.
NEWS: [...] Romanians learned from social media that on Christmas Eve, the official erasure of their real national identity and history was decreed, just like 80 years ago during the invasion and occupation of Romania by Bolshevik hordes. Total censorship. Annihilation of the national spirit by banning major classics of Romanian culture, including the “anti-Semites” Nicolae Iorga and Mihai Eminescu.
[...] The so-called “Vexler Law” (in fact, the Law of Romania's and Romanians' enemies and the annihilation of any form of opposition and free expression) took effect in secret, right on Christmas Eve, representing an occult, diabolical “gift” to the Romanian people, just like the ritualistic satanic assassination of the couple Elena and Nicolae Ceaușescu exactly 36 years ago.
Of course, History will take note of all this, and the responsibility falls on everyone's shoulders. As General Ion Antonescu, one of the architects of the Great Union, said at Alba Iulia on December 1, 1940:
“Never forget that history will not forget the guilty, and we are all guilty: some for having remained silent; others for having erred; all of us, for having endured”.
In 1953, the CIA reported that a massive operation was underway in Romania to burn books from libraries and bookstores, including works by “the most prominent Romanian authors”, such as Liviu Rebreanu, Octavian Goga and Brătescu-Voinești. Also, among many other titles banned for nearly half a century were Eminescu's Political Works and the poem “Doina”. Today, even carols are added to the list!...
Communists and Nazis, just like their USR successors today, knew that, when burned to the stake, Truth is tantamount to Freedom, which is exactly what you will find in every book by the Great Romanians, like those whom Wexler tore apart in the Romanian Parliament plenary with the approval of 173 MPs from PSD, PNL, USR, UDRM and the group of national minorities who voted in favor of his “law”: Eminescu, Alecsandri, Eliade, Goga, Hașdeu, Iorga, Kogălniceanu, Paulescu, Slavici, Xenopol, Vulcănescu—just a few of Romania's geniuses who are set to be “erased” from Romania's public space. [...]
NARRATIVES: 1. The Vexler Law erases the national identity of Romanians. 2. The law introduces censorship and self-censorship.
The Vexler Law has nothing to do with national identity or censorship. Its sole purpose is combating extremism and propaganda in favor of a criminal regime
WHY THE NARRATIVES ARE FALSE: The bill in question does not mention the word “identity” even once, while the term “national” appears only once, associated with hatred (“national hatred”, in Art. 1 - p. 2). Therefore, the document does not target the notion of Romanian national identity (which is not even mentioned once), but strictly refers to tightening penalties for offenses that were first criminalized over 20 years ago. Moreover, the law seeks to punish exclusively the promotion and amplification of certain phenomena and a criminal regime that caused tens of millions of victims worldwide, including the victims of the war unleashed by Hitler's Nazi Germany.
Fascism, Nazism, and the Legionary Movement consolidated and supported criminal regimes that killed out of racial, religious hatred or cultural and ideological reasons, and today they reach alarmingly high levels in several EU states, including Germany, the USA and Russia.
Regarding the so-called “censorship”, the law exempts artistic, cultural, debate or scientific acts from penalties, so this law cannot introduce censorship in the sense understood in an authoritarian regime.
The Vexler Law is not even the first to sanction Legionary and anti-Semitic propaganda. It merely increases penalties for such offenses banned since 2002. The Vexler Law amends Emergency Decree 31/2002 and Law 157/2018, which had already prohibited xenophobic propaganda, but Romanian authorities enforced those laws very rarely and only in isolated cases, while judges dismissed most of the cases brought to court.
Despite existing legislation, for years the Romanian state ignored and/or tolerated expressions of anti-Semitism
BACKGROUND: The only known conviction for anti-Semitism in the last 20 years (except for the last two years, when authorities started enforcing the law, after pro-Russian neo-legionary Călin Georgescu reached the second round of the presidential election on November 24, 2025) is that of former Romanian Intelligence Service colonel Vasile Zărnescu.
Zărnescu, who publicly denied the existence of the Holocaust, that no gas chambers were ever found at Auschwitz, and that they were built after the war (these are not the only toxic false narratives promoted by the former colonel - for instance, he also denies Ukraine's very right to existence), was sentenced by the Bucharest Tribunal in 2021 to 13 months in prison with a suspended sentence for Holocaust denial. However, in 2022, the Court of Appeal reduced his sentence to a warning. This is the most high-profile case of combating anti-Semitic propaganda in the last two decades in Romania.
After the conviction, Zărnescu reoffended with a 30-minute recording where he talks about the Birkenau camp which, he claims, “was a field hospital where people were healed”, and only “the kikes” called it a death camp. He also discusses how there are no traces of gassing on the camp walls, or how Jews provide no evidence that Hitler or the Nazi government ordered “kikes to be killed just because they were kikes”. The recording went viral on social media, one of the propagation vectors being the account (currently deactivated) AURMania2 on X.
In fact, over 6 million Jews were exterminated in Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime, and Romania is among the countries that contributed to the Holocaust during the military dictatorship of Marshal Ion Antonescu. Official figures show that the Romanian state killed between 280,000 and 380,000 Jews just because they were Jews during World War II.
Nor has Legionary propaganda and the cult of war criminals been adequately punished from 2002 onwards, but rather tolerated. One example is the November 30 pilgrimages to Tâncăbești, the symbolic site of Corneliu Zelea Codreanu's assassination, the founder of the criminal Legionary movement in Romania, which coldly murdered Jews, political and cultural figures, as well as acting prime ministers.
Other examples of ignoring the legislation in force for two decades are streets, squares, educational institutions and other public buildings bearing the names of war criminals convicted for war crimes at the end of the 1940s, but for whom post-Revolution (and thus democratic) courts upheld convictions for war crimes: Ion Antonescu, Mircea Vulcănescu, Radu Gyr and others.
The law already prohibited public spaces and institutions from bearing the names of war criminals, but authorities took no measures in this regard; on the contrary, during this time they named streets in new neighborhoods or other spaces after them.
We have repeatedly signaled the need for changing the names of public buildings bearing the names of war criminals, but very seldom did the published articles have an effect: in Constanța, Costinești, and Bucharest District 4. In Districts 1, 2 and in Cluj-Napoca, for example, there are still busts of Mircea Vulcănescu and Radu Gyr, who continue to feature on street names, under the erroneous pretext in the latter's case that he was sentenced to death just for a poem.
Thus, the legislation was there but was not properly enforced, and the Vexler Law merely tightened certain provisions, while new provisions extend the scope of punishing extremist propaganda.
