Georgescu and the Arrogance of the West
I enjoy reading the views of pundits and people. I like knowing what they think, and why they think it. But sometimes I look at what commentators are saying and where conversations are leading and I despair.
How often do we here on the left do the right’s job for them? How frequently must we wade into a topic with our estimated talking points while using the right’s own rhetoric and logic on their behalf?
Wondering if every left wing content creator is actually a psyop paves the road to madness, and I think the old “never explain by maliciousness what can be explained by ignorance” argument can be put to good use here; after all, we’re all sitting here commenting from our perspectives, in our own democracies under threat from the right too. Surely we know what we’re talking about?
According to some non-Romanians, this is anti-democratic.
How can the safeguarding of democracy be undemocratic? Well, if you twist this situation to make it sound like the courts are interfering in the election process unduly, then you can create a convincing symphony serenading the public with the information that Georgescu’s win is being invalidated because he won.
I don’t know why you would make this argument; frankly, it sounds like you’re doing the right’s work for them. I haven’t seen anyone making this argument cite Romanian pundits or news sources; this very much seems to be a bunch of western reckons.
I imagine an applicable equivalent would be if the world suddenly tuned into New Zealand politics and started spitting out right-wing talking points about how the Waitangi Tribunal is a threat to democracy because they keep deciding law for us, like we charged them with doing. Sure, you can present it as a threat to democracy. But someone is already doing that quite ingenuinely and it is in fact the whole issue with this election interference in the first place.
If I was going to illegally influence an election, I know I’d want everyone talking about how the courts are corrupt and undemocratic.
We are, of course, only shooting our own feet; the rhetoric that spreads online about the Romanian election becomes blurred, mistranslated — as people discuss the issue through their ignorant, western viewpoint, they will subconsciously or consciously apply this political information to their own situation. Rigged elections and an overreaching judiciary? That sounds like us!
But is the judiciary overreaching?
They invalidated the results, but that is all they have done. They have not banned Georgescu from running or punished him for the Russian interference that benefited him, nor for the bribery that was much more closely tied to him. They have ordered it to be redone, meaning all the people that voted for Georgescu the first time can, and likely will, vote for him again.
And they’re more likely to do so if they feel the court decision was wrong, or worse, an insult.
Even as pundits call it undemocratic, they observe that Georgescu’s popularity could benefit from this, and that he could attract an even greater share of the vote. This will almost definitely be the outcome if Romanian’s feel that the judicial decision was handed down to stifle a far-right candidate instead to re-run a national election in a fair and just manner.
The threat the right poses isn’t just when they’re in power, it’s the damage they do to the political institutions along the way. And the problem with fascism is you don’t need to be in power to be doing damage; in fact, it usually requires quite a damaged political system to allow fascists to take power in the first place. Much of Hitler’s legal structure was put in place by his predecessors, and he too tried to utilise democratic checks to prevent the Nazi rise to power. Most of these attempts were either entirely ineffective or backfired spectacularly.
Romania’s constitutional checks and balances that prevent this from happening to them are kicking in, as they are designed to do, and we in all our wisdom have taken it upon ourselves to sit our pedestals call that un-democratic.
I don’t think the Romanian judiciary are the anti-democratic ones around here.