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The colonization of Romania, the destruction of Christianity (Orthodoxy in particular), the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, conspiracy theories regarding the “health dictatorship” and climate change continued to generate most of the disinformation narratives and fake news that were circulated in Romania in 2024. In some cases, the sources of the false narratives were Romanian, but in most cases, these took over and/or adapted other narratives to the local specificity. These narratives have as their source external actors, especially Russia, certain political currents in the West (Alt-right, the radical left) or conspiracy circles.
The controversy surrounding the annulment of the December presidential election was the perfect opportunity for extremist groups to further consolidate their presence, invoking the establishment of a dictatorship through a coup d’état and even threatening politicians, judges and journalists with imprisonment or physical violence.
False narratives were circulated in Romania on/by various media channels, such as Activenews, Solidnews, Național, Ortodoxinfo, etc., and via TV and radio stations (Realitatea TV, România TV, Gold FM, etc.). The Internet and social media were used both to amplify false narratives and, more often than not, as direct sources. The list of individuals who have launched/taken over/amplified such false narratives includes a series of generally controversial characters, who work as or claim to be journalists (Ion Cristoiu, Iosefina Pascal, Sorin Roşca Stănescu, Cozmin Guşă, Petrişor Peiu, etc.). Some are or have been involved in politics (Diana Șoșoacă, George Simion, Gheorghe Piperea, Adrian Severin, Mihai Lască) and finally, others are part of a vaguely defined category of influencers – Dan Diaconu, tiktoker Makaveli, etc.
Top 5 narratives
Romania is a Western colony and any decision concerning our country is taken exclusively in Brussels and Washington, which seek to destroy the country both physically and morally. This narrative, which has been circulating in the local media since the 1990s, is rooted in anti-capitalist propaganda pre-dating the 1989 Revolution and is used by supporters of sovereigntist movements or by communist nostalgics. It is also fueled by Russian propaganda or speeches by other regional sovereigntists, such as the Hungarian and Slovak Prime Ministers, Viktor Orban and Robert Fico, respectively. Planning to undermine confidence in organizations such as the EU or NATO, the narrative is used mainly for electoral purposes, but also to justify Russia's brutal actions in Eastern Europe, in states such as the Republic of Moldova or Georgia, which it tries to protect against “Western aggression”.
A plan to destroy Orthodoxy, which is in full swing, is designed to keep Romanian children away from Church and from the right faith. The narrative is one of the main themes of the propaganda war waged by Moscow against the EU and NATO, which states that the West is “morally degenerate and has strayed from Christian values”, a space at odds with that of the traditional, Christian, Orthodox values, which Russia allegedly represents. At the same time, ultra-religious media points the finger at “LGBTQ+ propaganda” to which students in Romania are allegedly exposed and the pressure exerted by the European Union for the adoption of gender identity in schools, which reportedly lead to the sexual mutilation of Romanian children.
Ukrainians are aggressive and ready to sell their own country to the West. This type of narrative falls into a broader category of theses aimed at undermining support for Ukraine – by exaggerating Russia’s military power, discrediting the Ukrainian leadership and Ukrainians as a people (take, for instance, the campaign against refugees), instilling fears that Romania will be dragged into the war, bringing into question the violation of the rights of ethnic Romanians in Ukraine, promoting the thesis regarding the artificial nature of Ukrainian statehood, etc. The same narratives have been promoted in countless other countries in the region, but also directly through Russian propaganda.
The conflict in the Middle East between the Israeli army, on the one hand, and the terrorist organizations Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthi, as well as the recent regime change in Syria, occasioned a resurge of legionary anti-Semitism in Romanian media, in addition to false narratives related to Jews, who also (!!) seek to achieve world domination and destroy Christianity. The plan has been already set in motion with the colonization of Romania and attacks on Orthodoxy.
The global cabal continues to try to implement its plan to enslave the global population. This meta-narrative recurs, in particular, in two major categories of fake news / disinformation narratives.
The first category includes fake news about the creation of a so-called health dictatorship, either through vaccination or by triggering a new pandemic, aiming to inoculate the population with control and manipulation devices, capable of triggering a series of serious diseases and even mental disorders in the human body. Conspiracy theories related to the health system and vaccination are circulated and spread on a large scale, being linked to almost any medical procedure, instilling the idea that the plan will be put into practice with the help of new technologies based on artificial intelligence, but also medical procedures that, in the hands of the World Health Organization, are used as biological weapons. Almost any medical intervention is designed to make the global population sick, conspiracy theorists argue, but also to inoculate human bodies with nanodevices, in order to exercise control over the thoughts and movements of those affected.
The second category of fake news that includes the meta-narrative about enslaving the population of the globe is related to the challenge of climate change. Thus, actions taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are described as instruments by means of which humanity will be imprisoned in large-scale camps, without the possibility of traveling further than a few kilometers from home. At the same time, failure to comply with the norms imposed by globalist elites will lead to the gradual restriction of individual rights, up to and including physical suppression.
Top 5 FAKE NEWS
After all of Romania’s underground resources and successful companies were stolen by Western colonizers, it was the turn of the reservoirs to be handed over to foreigners. Despite the claims of Romanian sovereigntists, the draft emergency decree on the concession of the reservoirs did not aim to alienate them to companies outside the country, but only provided a legal framework for the development of Romania’s energy storage capacities, by creating pumped storage hydroelectric power plants on lakes with hydroelectric potential.
Being a Christian is a punishable crime in Romania, after the authorities fined a group of young people who expressed their religious beliefs peacefully. In fact, the young people were protesting against a march organized by the LGBTQ+ community, held in Cluj-Napoca, in an obvious attempt to provoke participants in the march, a fact highlighted even in the report drawn up by the riot police officers who sanctioned the five individuals.
In 2024, several Russian-language Facebook accounts, taken over by local pro-Moscow propaganda, claimed that 17 million hectares of Ukrainian farmland had been bought by international corporations. The false claim is part of a series of fake news according to which Ukraine is now controlled by foreign forces (in 2022, for example, the Rothschild was rumored to have bought Kyiv foreign debt). However, Ukrainian legislation prohibits the purchase of land by companies or citizens from other countries.
Under a law that criminalizes the promotion of the Gospel and the spread of the word of Jesus Christ, the Israeli government wants to ban Christianity. In fact, the 1948 Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel guarantees religious freedom, regardless of denomination. The bill, which was criticized as ultra-religious propaganda, was spearheaded by two religious extremist MPs, and was rejected in committees in March 2023 and never made it to the full Israeli parliament. The Israeli Penal Code does indeed prohibit proselytizing to minors without their parents’ consent, as well as religious conversion in exchange for material benefits, but this has been the case since 1977. The ban, however, applies to all religions, not just Christianity in particular.
The World Health Organization is forcing countries to report new cases of monkeypox in order to declare a new pandemic. In fact, the WHO has urged all countries to report cases of monkeypox in order to create a more accurate picture of the extent to which the disease has spread and to focus efforts on specifically affected areas. Even with the increasing number of reported cases of monkeypox, it is difficult to draw conclusions from recent trends. As a result, the organization asked states to announce even if they have not reported any cases, which contradicts the narrative that the WHO is pursuing an artificial increase in cases in order to declare a new pandemic.
Top 5 DISINFORMATION NARRATIVES
Europeans' freedom of movement will be restricted in the name of combating climate change, an MP from the far-right AUR party claims. The measures stipulated the introduction of a “carbon passport”. In fact, this is a thesis advanced by an Australian travel agency, which proposes the introduction of so-called “carbon passports”, which would force people to rationalize their carbon emissions. The concept is in no way related to the European Union and is nowhere on the agenda of community governments. Deliberate or not, the confusion seems to stem from similarity with the “Digital Product Passport” (DPP), a document regulated since 2022, which is meant to provide information on the sustainability of products.
The only time in history when Russia invaded Romanian territory was in 1944, says Ion Cristoiu, a well-known promoter of Russian narratives. Basically, Cristoiu argues, Russia invaded Romania only once, when in fact, history records no less than 12 invasions of Russian armies onto the territories of present-day Romania, starting with the 18th century and ending with the one in 1944, which led Moscow to station troops in our country until August 1958.
US President Joe Biden declared Catholic Easter as Transgender Day of Visibility, according to a disinformation narrative also picked up in Romania. In fact, this is a mere coincidence. Transgender Day of Visibility is an annual event that takes place on March 31 and is devoted to celebrating transgender people and raising awareness about the discrimination they face around the world. Coincidentally, this year, Catholic Easter was also celebrated on March 31.
Private banks are making money off the backs of Romanians, whom they refuse to help by providing them loans, according to a publication affiliated to the far-right AUR party. In fact, the narrative is a biased interpretation of a study carried out by a financial publication, which explains how commercial banks prefer to place surplus liquidity in deposits with the National Bank of Romania, for which they collect interest. In fact, it is not the banks' refusal that is preventing Romanians from taking out loans, but the high interest rates generated by macroeconomic uncertainty. According to specialists, a key factor behind this phenomenon is also the growing popularity of extremist sovereigntist movements.
Thousands of French Foreign Legion soldiers are already fighting on the Ukrainian front, the former Securitate informer Sorin Roșca Stănescu claims, accusing NATO troops of being directly involved in the war with Russia. In fact, NATO has repeatedly stated that it does not want to get involved in the war in Ukraine, being careful to avoid any possible incident with Russian forces. Like other similar narratives, this one was based exclusively on the statements of pro-Kremlin political leaders or “experts”. In turn, in support of his allegedly truthful statements, Sorin Roșca Stănescu provided absolutely no evidence that any NATO state, not just France, had deployed soldiers to Ukraine after the Russian invasion.
Top 3 most outlandish narratives
The extremely serious floods that affected eastern Romania this fall were caused by Jews, who wanted to settle in this region, replacing the Romanian population. In fact, the year 2024 was marked by severe floods across the entire European continent, from Russia and Kazakhstan to Spain, Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland and Austria, including Romania. The theory that the extreme level of rainfall is of artificial origin is absurd, just as the one that claims that earthquakes can be caused with the help of the HAARP system or other secret technologies. Moreover, the claim that the disasters targeted just Romania is complete bogus, lacking no absolutely any rational foundation, a fact demonstrated by the very magnitude of the extreme weather phenomena and their geographical scale.
The World Economic Forum in Davos is forcing European states to legalize human-animal marriages, according to a false narrative also picked up in Romania. The theory of human-animal marriages was also circulated in Romania in 2018, when, in the context of debates related to the organization of a constitutional referendum to modify the definition of family, Liviu Dragnea, the then president of PSD and Chamber of Deputies Speaker, said that “people are scared that there are countries where marriage between a human and an animal has been legalized”, without presenting any evidence to support the statement. This time, the “source” of the narrative was a legislative project approved by the Spanish Parliament last spring, which redefined and increased the penalties for abuse against pets. The narrative used an ambiguous reformulation of an article in the Spanish Criminal Code, which labeled criminal offenses only those “acts of a sexual nature” against animals that involve treatment from a veterinarian. Thus, conspiracy theorists claim, sexual abuse of animals without serious consequences would have been decriminalized by the new Spanish legislation, legalizing zoophilia. In fact, sexual acts against animals will continue to be considered a crime in Spain, but those that do not seriously affect the physical integrity of animals will only be punished as misdemeanors, with a fine, a fact indeed criticized by many organizations that militate for animal rights.
Kyiv is selling its land to Poland, stated the pro-Russian blogger Dan Diaconu in a short video, which mistakenly picked up on a fake news that had circulated in 2023 in ex-Soviet space. The description of the footage showed that it had been distributed in a hurry, especially since it stated that the action is set in Kharkov, when in fact the film itself specified very clearly that it was about “Obwód chersoński”, that is, the “Kherson region”. Obviously, it is hard to believe that, in a region half occupied by the Russian army and constantly subjected to bombings and airstrikes from Moscow's forces, some Polish truck drivers were waiting their turn to load earth, which they would then transport over 1,000 kilometers away, crossing a country at war. Moreover, costs linked to transportation, fixing the soil in the ground, moving the pre-existing soil, etc. would be infinitely higher than those of fertilizers, compost for agriculture or other organic methods of increasing the quality of the soil. At the same time, moving soils on a large scale can also have extremely harmful consequences. When the soil is moved, its structure is broken and protective vegetation disappears, making it extremely sensitive to the erosive forces of wind and water.
BONUS: Călin Georgescu and the Moon Landing
The surprising winner of the (annulled) first round of the Romanian presidential election, Călin Georgescu, has made headlines not just for his sovereigntist ideas and connections to far-right individuals, but also for promoting some outlandish theories. One of these is the even older conspiracy theory regarding the moon landing, which Veridica wrote about in September. It was the second installment in a series that will continue in 2025, debunking various conspiracy theories circulating today.
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