The Red Plague

by Daniel Dragomirescu

Once again, Romania is captive in the vicious circle of a political force of communist and dictatorial extraction, which in fact, after Ceaușescu's downfall, did not lose power for one single day. The political regimes that declared themselves to be "right-wing" (CDR and DA) fell into the trap of the same backward left that had come from the Pitești experiment and the Death Channel: thus, although they had the majority in the Parliament, the government and the President, the Services, they did not make any efforts to establish a powerful, irreversible democracy. The post-Ceaușescu Romanian society was successively administered lies and repression, charades and terror. Political parties are fakes, governments are just groups of stooges, the mass media are one huge machinery for playing with the minds of the people, in order to hide the truth from them, not to reveal it. Cynicism, arrogance, boorishness and barbarism have a place of honor in this profoundly troubled and confused society, that has been repeatedly lied to and manipulated. The 2007 condemnation of communism was simply a soap bubble, without any consequences for the society: Traian Băsescu, as he himself declared, was/is a communist. Before him, Emil Constantinescu, Iliescu's strawman, had blocked from the start the enforcement of the 8th Point from the proclamation of Timișoara, by declaring it obsolete only a few years after the fall of the communist regime (which was not accompanied, however, by a change in the overall mentality or the actual control of society).

Those that always compare Dragnea's and Erdogan's regimes are either unaware of what they say, out of naivety, or they have a veiled interest in distracting the public attention from what is currently happening in Romania these days. Erdogan is an authoritarian Turkish leader, inclined towards dictatorship, yet he has nothing in common with a totalitarian communist regime, which did not exist in Turkey, a country which had feudal sultans, dictator-generals, and not too democratic party leaders. Erdogan is not under Moscow's control, the puppet of the neostalinist Putin, he is just temporarily in an alliance with him, because of some of his interests. He does not use a double language, either, like the old Eastern communist dictators, but openly states what his plans for Turkey are, that he wants to impose an authoritarian, anti-Western regime, and not a democracy. While the regime in Bucharest is turning, from one day to the next, into a new form of communist dictatorship (without Marx, without any ideology), obedient to Putin. While they talk about citizen rights and human liberties, in reality they are limiting them and even breaking them. When they talk about freeing corrupt politicians from jail, they are preparing the prisons for journalists, political adversaries, fighters for democracy and freedom, people from all the strata of society.

The Romania of the PSD-ALDE regime is the Romania of a communist camp which is being re-built, after having benefited for thirty years from the technological progress of the Western countries, a period in which the former communist nomenklatura managed to accumulate huge fortunes. This is the direction that Dragnea and his acolytes have in mind for the country. This is more than saving a few of the greatly corrupt people from prison, more than changing the laws of justice. The Red Plague will destroy Romania again, if the Romanian society is not strong and firm enough to stop it.

Traducere de Roxana Doncu

Notes

CDR – Convenţia Democră Română (Romanian Democratic Convention) was an electoral alliance of several centre-right political parties (National Peasant’s Party, National Liberal Party, Social Democratic Party of Romania) active from 1991 until 2000.

DA – Alianţa Dreptate şi Adevăr (Justice and Truth Alliance) was a political alliance comprising two political parties in Romania (centre right National Liberal Party and centre left Democratic Party) active from 2004 until 2007.

Experimentul Piteşti (The Piteşti Experience or Phenomenon) was a so-called re-education project active between 1949 – 1951 focused on the students arrested by the communist regime. About this, Metapedia notes: “Between 1949 and 1951, the destruction of society's (...) was almost complete (...) It now remained to annihilate the unpredictable social force of youth (...) For the latter, the Pitesti experiment was invented (termed "re-education" by the Securitate). A re-educated person turned in fact into a zombie, who worked ruthlessly in interest of his masters.” In his book The Piteşti Phenomenon the Romanian-French writer Virgil Lerunca wrote: “..."The most barbarous methods of psychological torture were applied to "recalcitrant" young prisoners, with the object of making them reciprocally humiliate each other, physically abuse each other and mentally torture each other. Victims were transformed into executioners; prisoners were tortured by their own friends, by their fellows in suffering.” The well-known Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn (Nobel Prize, 1970) refers to the Pitesti experiment as the "most terrible act of barbarism in the contemporary world".

Canalul Dunăre – Marea Neagră / Canalul Morţii (Danube – Black Sea Channel / The Death Channel) is a channel in Romania, which runs from Cernavodă, on the Danube, to Constanţa (southern arm, as main branch), on the Black Sea. It was notorious as the site of labor camps in early 1950s Communist Romania, when, at any given time, up to 20,000 political prisoners worked on its excavation. The total number of people used as a workforce for the entire period is unknown, with the total number of deaths estimated at several thousand.

Traian Băsescu was the president of Romania between 2004 – 2012 as a founder and exponent of The Justice and Truth Alliance (DA).

Emil Constantinescu, president of Romania between 1996 – 2000, as one of founders and an exponent of The Romanian Democratic Convention (CDR).

8th Point from the proclamation of Timișoara. Proclamaţia de la Timişoara / The Proclamation of Timișoara was a thirteen-point written document, drafted on March 11, 1990 by the Timişoara participants in Romania’s 1989 Revolution. Organized as the Timișoara Society and other bodies of students and workers, the signers expressed liberal-democratic goals, which they saw as representing the revolutionary legacy. The best-known requirement formed the document's 8th Point, calling for all former Romanian Communist Party nomenklatura and Securitate cadres to be banned from holding public office for a period of 10 years (or three consecutive legislatures), with an emphasis on the office of President (see Lustration).