“Having an enemy is important not only to define our identity but also to provide us with an obstacle against which to measure our value system and show our value in facing it. Therefore, when the enemy is not there, it is necessary to build it.” The quote belongs to Umberto Eco and is part of the essay "Inventing the Enemy". According to the author, these statements form a theory that applies to both totalitarian and democratic systems.
The template can be transposed to the existing situation in Romania where, at least in the last half a year, we have witnessed an intense propaganda offensive started from the sovereignist area and aimed at building typologies of enemies towards which to channel people’s – otherwise legitimate - anger and discontent. The technique of inventing the enemy, the recourse to visual propaganda and the themes themselves are also part of the arsenal used by Russia in its hybrid war against the West, an arsenal that the Soviets developed in the past. Such an approach is not new in Romania either, as it was specific to the extremists of the 20th century: The Legionnaires and the Communists.
Who is and how is the enemy constructed? Echoes of legionnaire and communist propaganda
Building the enemy during the electoral campaign and the two rounds of elections was a dual process: the continuation of themes and typologies specific to the extreme right and the creation of new enemies, at a theoretical level, depending on the real-time evolution of the campaign. Therefore, the "classical" tools, such as attacks on sexual, ethnic and religious minorities were accompanied by ostentatious media lynching targeting George Simion's (and by extension Călin Georgescu's) opponents.
Social networks, in particular Facebook and TikTok, abound in visual representations, both graphic and video, created with the help of artificial intelligence, either by generating material as a result of input - from a series of keywords, the application produces the desired image or video - or by mending up and graphically recomposing existing ones. In this regard, we are witnessing an unprecedented historical phenomenon: anyone with a smart phone can easily generate visual propaganda content, without any technical knowledge or artistic talent, and distribute it to the public almost instantaneously. In the past, visual propaganda required a considerable human and financial effort, which in addition to those who launched the ideas involved visual artists, printers and staff in charge of disseminating and, in some cases, explaining the work to the public. Another notable difference brought about by modern technology is that its ubiquity makes it much harder for authorities to track and exert any control over this kind of activity.
The adversary must be dehumanized and demonized, and this can be seen not only in the visual propaganda, but also by reading the comments left by various people on political posts: "the enemy of the people and the country", a concept that had an identical counterpart for the Soviet/Romanian communists back in the day, "dirty globalists", "hyenas and jackals", "jailable scum", etc. This demonization of the "enemy" was not invented by those whom we, today, call "sovereignists". It is a technique previously used by both the Nazis and the Communists, who largely defined themselves in relation to the “enemies” who had to be removed (read “eliminated”) in the name of and for the people.
The enemy is both external - to the sovereignists it’s the European Union, leaders who have expressed support for European candidates, LGBT minorities - and internal: candidates, politicians, institutions (or people closely associated with them) and minorities, especially (again) LGBT. We note that, to a large extent, the internal enemy is the same as it was for Communists or Nazis.
The external enemy: the EU steals resources and perverts the youth, Ukraine has seized other countries' territories and wants to draw them into war
Like the Legionnaires and Communists before them, sovereignists have a strong hatred of the West. The explanations behind this categorical and sometimes even violent rejection of an entire civilizational area lie in the values that this part of the world has taken on and tries to pass on, from individual freedom in all its forms to the protection of private property. All of the above are incompatible with the dictatorial beliefs of extremists for whom blind obedience is the basic condition for being accepted and included in their ranks.
Through the values it promotes, the European Union has become one of the main enemies of the sovereignist movements and, indirectly, of the Russian Federation. The propagandistic themes targeting the European Union are mainly centered on two dimensions: the resources that are stolen from Romania and the LGBTQ+ community. These two, however, have been joined, particularly in recent months, by a military-warlike component, against the background of the EU's aid to Ukraine.
All these elements are not a unique local production. A simple search on the Internet reveals that they are part of the propaganda “arsenal” of all extremist and sovereignist movements in Europe. The relative thematic uniformity tells us that it is quite possible that there is a nucleus from which all these narratives radiated and that it was not a case of “contagion”, i.e. a near-to-near takeover from group to group. It is therefore not hard to guess which state actor would have an interest in and benefit from exposing such blatant untruths.
Since the early 1990s, Ukraine has been at the forefront of the basic propaganda themes of the sovereignist movement in Romania. The Romanian far right, whatever its political identity, be it the Greater Romania Party in the past or AUR and SOS today, has developed a veritable obsession with the former Romanian territories occupied by the Soviet Union in 1940 as a result of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact. Thus, the "recovery" of Northern Bukovina and Budjak are two themes that are inseparable from the sovereignist discourse. However, the promoters of this revisionist and revanchist narrative “forget” to mention that Romania signed a Peace Treaty at the end of the Second World War (1947), a document by which, under international law, it assumed the loss of these territories to the USSR, while in return the allies recognized the nullity of the Vienna Dictates and agreed to the reincorporation of Northern Transylvania into the Kingdom of Romania. Besides blatantly aligning with the Russian narrative, sovereignists' challenge to the current European order is a real threat to the stability and even the territorial integrity of Romania (suffice it to recall the "Greater Hungary" thesis aggressively promoted by Hungarian officials from Viktor Orban's inner circle).
The war in Ukraine has been, from the spring of 2022 onwards, another major theme for the sovereignist propaganda, which capitalizes on the population's fear of war. Moreover, this theme is strongly promoted and amplified by (pro)Russian propaganda in many countries, with the obvious aim of undermining support for Ukraine. Romanians (and not only them) are being told that the country will be drawn into the war and that all men fit for military service will be mobilized and sent to the front.
The war narrative is also linked to Romania's membership in NATO, the collective defense organization, due to its Euro-Atlantic roots, being perceived by the contemporary far-right, like the Romanian communists before them, as an "instrument" of "brutal" projection of Western civilizational influence in the Central and Eastern European space.
Foreign "masters of puppets": George Soros, Maia Sandu and Emmanul Macron
Not only the European Union and Ukraine are targets for the sovereignists, but also a number of notable international figures, from the universal "boogeyman" George Soros to coordinators of international bodies and heads of state and government.
In the case of the election campaign for Romania's president, among the main targets of the propaganda offensive launched by the sovereignist camp were the presidents of the Republic of Moldova and France, Maia Sandu and Emmanuel Macron, who are both also targeted by Russian propaganda. In the sovereigntist rhetoric, the two have become synonymous with external interference in Romania's internal affairs, and the whole "diabolical" process is said to have been carried out under the coordination of the American billionaire George Soros, himself a long-standing target of Russian propaganda and attacks launched by sovereignists/iliberals/alt right.
Emanuel Macron has been attributed the role of a shadow “puppet master”, a real "colonial administrator" of Romania, with sovereigntists considering that the country has been moved from the "American sphere of influence" to the French one.
Maia Sandu has been accused - obviously without any proof - of participating in an electoral fraud designed to defeat the sovereignists. However, the sovereignist messages have ignored the reasons why the proponents of this movement are not well regarded by the Moldovan electorate : the promotion of messages similar to those of Moscow, which has been engaged in a hybrid war against Chisinau for several years, hostility towards the EU (integration is extremely important for Moldovans) and, last but not least, direct attacks against Moldova - George Simion has called for the suspension of aid to Moldova.
By fixating on these foreign targets, Romanian sovereigntists are probably also seeking to keep in tune with international trends, but too much overzealousness can sometimes lead to ridicule, as happened to George Simion when, in a live broadcast from a French TV studio, said that Macron was a dictator and France nothing less than an Iranian type of autocracy. Simion may well have thought that he would be applauded by his fellow on-air colleagues, seen as pro-Marine Le Pen, but even they were quick to mock him, and his comparison sparked a wave of negative reactions that indirectly affected Romania's international image.
The domestic enemy: The Constitutional Court, Nicușor Dan, Mugur Isărescu, the LGBTQ+ community
The enemy from the outside is, for far-right and far-left groups alike, an element that constitutes a direct threat only when it is positioned in a collaborative relationship with the enemy at home. Thus, one of the first enemies of the sovereignists was not a person, but an institution. It was Romania's Constitutional Court, which, following Russian interference in the electoral process last winter, invalidated the second round of the presidential elections. The peculiarity of this new typology introduced into the sovereignists’ “pantheon” of enemies is that although this court is made up of nine judges and therefore has clearly defined particular identities, it is nevertheless viewed and challenged as if it were a single entity. The CCR has acquired, in the propaganda rhetoric used by the sovereigntists, almost human valences that place it on the same level as “enemies” like Soros and Macron.
Due to his moderate position, centered on supporting pro-European values, Nicușor Dan has been one of the favorite "targets" of sovereignist propaganda since before he entered the presidential race. His second position and thus his qualification for the second round of voting was the trigger for an aggressive propaganda campaign aimed at altering Dan's image among the electorate. Nicușor Dan was transformed into a "puppet" guided by the Macron, Ursula and Soros group; positioned alongside Klaus Iohannis, Traian Băsescu, Ludovic Orban and Dacian Cioloș; presented as a tool of the National Liberal Party and as the one who will involve Romania in the war in Ukraine.
The current President of Romania has been paired with symbols of the LGBTQ+ community and has been transformed, through caricaturizing, parody of his name and references to certain gestures taken out of context, into an individual as repulsive as he is intellectually limited. This propaganda strategy of radically inverting the features of the "target" is not an invention of the Romanian sovereignists. It has been used for decades by the Soviet secret services to discredit certain politicians or civil society figures in Western countries.
Speaking of the LGBTQ+ community, one of the basic themes of far-right propaganda is the demonization and blaming of minorities - religious, ethnic and sexual. There were no references to ethnic or religious minorities during the election period in Romania, but there was an abundance of attacks on the LGBTQ+ community. Visual propaganda materials are loaded with slogans such as "Tricolor, not the rainbow". It should be noted that the existence of a so-called "LGBT agenda" whereby Brussels would try to "pervert" young people in EU member countries, or countries that want to integrate, has been a constant element of Kremlin propaganda for years. For Russians, the EU is "Gayropa", a space where even pedophilia has been/is about to be legalized.
Even if the sovereignists avoided direct attacks against ethnic minorities in the campaign, especially the Hungarian one, and even George Simion sought to associate his image with that of Viktor Orban, they were perceived as a danger by the community. Ethnic Hungarians voted massively for Nicușor Dan.
Finally, the "bestiary" of enemies included the governor of the National Bank of Romania, Mugur Isărescu. He drew the opprobrium of the sovereignists when he explained why the national currency depreciated against the euro between the two rounds of voting.
The moderate stance of the senior civil servant was perceived as biased by the sovereignists who did not limit themselves to labeling (in suburban language), but unleashed a whole visual propaganda campaign against him, centered around the financial element. This strategy is reminiscent of the emphasis placed on the financial element in the anti-Semitic propaganda of the Legionnaire and Nazi extreme right, an extreme right to which the sovereignist sphere is linked both in terms of the people and the ideas they take up - see, for example, Călin Georgescu and George Simion quoting from Corneliu Zelea Codreanu in the middle of the election campaign.
