Twenty percent of Romanians live outside the country – a total of 5 million people
In the first round of the election on 4 May, the Romanian far right obtained even higher results outside its borders than it did within – Simion came first with more than 40 per cent of the vote in Romania, but took more than 60 per cent of the vote in the diaspora.
It’s… an uphill battle, to say the least… I’m trying to discuss these things with people within my social group who are undecided or are Right-leaning, and everything is dismissed as “fear-mongering” - even (maybe especially) when presenting actual facts.
Trouble is, our educational system, while dense and robust in terms of information, does not encourage or aid the development of critical thinking. Most people don’t even understand the Hierarchy of Blame and Responsibility (as I call it), nor do they have an adequate understanding of how the economy works, which is why everyone still cheers when someone says “we’ll increase the amount of money in your pockets” while it’s a practical impossibility, or why a lot of people believed that “€35k houses” nonsense Simion spouted.
These are dangerous times, everyone’s feeling it and that feeling is correct. However, most people don’t do the work needed to understand WHY the times are dangerous and wherein the danger actually lays, and so start hanging onto anyone or anything which promises them quick solutions.
Part of me can’t blame them, as our history has never been truly comfortable, not even after the establishment of contemporary Democracy in our country. We, the average citizens, have been played and taken for fools time and time again, it’s hard to trust anyone who seems to want to maintain the Status Quo. On the other hand, I can’t believe how desperately stupid the situation has become…