romanian here , that Piedone guy wasn't accused of burning down a club as in mafia style but was accused of allowing businesses to operate in unsafe conditions for bribes, he's not accused of burning down the club for insurance money but of neglect and bribery to such an extent that it endangered human life , any restaurant owner , business owner , builder or something like that could get anything approved weather or not they conformed to safety regulations.
excellent. I love videos like this that break down the political make up of countries. Too often we think "oh, all Germans are social democrats, all French are socialist, all poles are catholic nationalist, etc. But obviously that isn't the case, and sometimes there's really interesting historical and regional differences.
At least corrupt politicians in Romania sometimes land in jail. This is more than happens in Bulgaria and Hungary. But I hope the fight against corruption will continue in good faith, and not turn into ways to hit opponents.
Some thoughts while watching this video, sorry in advance for the wall of text. 1. The reason parliamentary elections use lists instead of individual candidates is because we have proportional representation, so there's at least theoretically a better reflection of the ideological makeup of the country. We tested for a short time a mixed member-proportional system, where you would vote for individual candidates, and the ones who got 50%+ of the votes were elected directly into the parliament, then counting the share of the party votes at a national level and distributing seats to ensure that proportionality. However what this led to was a massive number of overhang seats, which raised the number of MPs from 400-something to 588. It was decided that this bloat wasn't worth it, and the system scrapped. 2. The National Peasants' Party (PNȚ) is one of the oldest parties in Romania, and during the interwar period was a left-wing oriented party with agrarian interests in mind, and the main opposition to the National Liberal Party. The present day Christian Democratic National Peasants' Party (PNȚCD) tries to trace its heritage to this historical party. 3. I don't think PMP is particularly monarchist. If there's a present day party with a monarchist reputation, it's PNȚCD. 4. On Orthodoxy: the Orthodox Church is a single one, all of the Russian, Greek, Romanian and so on Orthodox Churches are autocephalous, sure (going on a pre-Schism tangent, we can see the differences in mindset between east and west, where the western Christian world viewed the Pope seat as being authoritative over the entirety of Christianity, while Christians in the east viewed the Pope - or Patriarch of Rome if you wish - as first among equals, with the other four Patriarchates at the time holding equal weight), but they're all part of the same Church. They're not different at a dogmatic level, so having a Romanian party, no matter how pro-Russian, be interested in the Russian Orthodox Church specifically would have been nonsensical. 5. A small note to avoid potential viewer confusion: Piedone did not burn the club down himself or anything like that, but as a mayor he was held responsible for not ensuring public safety, given the club lacked all the necessary authorisations and yet was still functioning. 6. There's a lot to write on AUR, so I'll split this into further points. a) Annexation is an inappropriate word to use in my opinion, because it implies using forceful means. It would be similar to calling the reunification of West and East Germany in 1990 an annexation of East Germany by West Germany, which paints the wrong picture. Union would be the more fitting term. Anyway, some historical context here (first I'll start with a side note: the English language refers to the historical principality as Moldavia and the modern state as Moldova; this distinction does not exist in Romanian, where the word Moldova is used to describe all of them: the principality, the present day region in Romania with the name, and the present day country, usually referred to as Republica Moldova to avoid confusion). The present day Republic of Moldova roughly comprises the eastern half of the historical principality of Moldavia. This eastern half was annexed by the Russian Empire in 1812 (and came to be known as Bessarabia), while the remaining principality of Moldavia went on to unite with Wallachia in 1859, in the aftermath of the Crimean War, to form the United Romanian Principalities, and later Romania. In 1917, in the chaos of WW1 and the October Revolution, Bessarabia proclaimed the creation of the Moldavian Democratic Republic, then after requesting Romanian military assistance to protect them from Bolsheviks, declared independence in 1918, and later voted for the union with Romania while imposing some conditions for it. In 1940 the Soviet Union annexed Bessarabia again, and after WW2 the Moldovan SSR gained the shape it has today. Moldova declared independence from USSR in 1991, but various factors prevented the reunification with Romania at the time, whether we're talking about the Transnistria War or the inaction of Romanian leaders. Either way, the perfect timing was lost, but the unionist sentiment remained high both in Romania and in Moldova. In time, Moldovans became more apathetic towards a possible union however, although there's been a resurgence in the past years, possibly also as a reaction to some currents of Moldovan nationalism (or Moldovenism) strongly promoted by pro-Russian propagandists. Either way, to get back to the main point, unionists on both sides of the Prut river want the union to happen through referendums in both countries, and not through any kind of coercion or forceful means. In this regard AUR is the same. b) On antisemitism: there are party members who have Legionary sympathies, but I'm not aware of antisemitic policies or actions that the party is in favour of other than some historical revisionism that is tied in with the aforementioned sympathies. Ironically enough, far right Romanians accuse AUR of philosemitism and of being a "subverted" party, because of episodes like the party leader's interactions with Israeli diplomats. c) Some closing thoughts: the party publicly claims not to be pro-Russian but they support policies like ending military support for Ukraine and there seem to exist some financial ties with some Russians, so if they really aren't pro-Russia, they are doing a bad job at it. Which is also counterproductive given the party is supposedly unionist, or a Russian victory in Ukraine would greatly endanger Moldova. 7. USR is definitely a progressive party, it's their most defining feature when compared to all other major parties, and the main reason it can't become more popular than it currently is in spite of running on an anti-corruption and anti-establishment platform. This progressivism is incompatible with the social conservatism of many Romanians. 8. PNL wasn't very relevant in the '90s, the main centre-right party during that period was PNȚCD. It was only in 2004 when PNL started being somewhat important, when they allied with the Democrat Party (PD, which interestingly traces its origins to the same National Salvation Front that PSD comes from) and gave the prime minister. Later on a group splintered from the party and fused with PD, forming PDL (the Democrat Liberal Party, which became one of the staples of Romanian corruption and cronyism while they were in power). In 2012 PNL and PSD formed a coalition government together, and this combined with them absorbing PDL in 2014 are what cemented their status as a major player in Romanian politics. 9. The main reason behind the current alliance of PSD and PNL is that they view USR as too progressive and AUR as too populist, combined with the need of political stability in the context of the COVID pandemic that was relevant at the time and the Ukraine War.
Yes on PSD and PNL. They would of course seek political stability, and that makes sense from the point of view of those with a good economic base behind them to want to keep order and establishment level stability in economic and cultural matters.
@@BenLlywelyn Most of his comment is fake, PSD and PNL first co-ruled (USL, social-liberal union, if one can hold its contents after reading something like this) way before the pandemic in order to bring down the PDL which was not progressive. PDL evaporated into PMP, at first endorsed by an ex president from PDL. The rest just so happen to end up in PSD, PNL like tey always do after a few cycles. Most of the 1 seat parties new or old are just proxies for the 2 main actors, being ran, disbanded or detoured by mainstream party members. Since you quoted PRO Romania several times with the infamous Victor Ponta (mikey mouse), look into his visits to the boycotted Soci olympics among never ending present controversy and his support for AUR and then judge the value of the paper the political orientation is written on. P.S. fun fact, AUR's main backers are the pentecostal church and other minorities on the religious front, so judge the value of the paper those party values are written. SOS is/was backed by hard line orthodox mobsters. The guy you made dark jokes about is backed also by hard line orthodox folk and a certain minority populist vote based solely on ethnicity, like I sometimes read about the British Isles as well.
So this is what you‘ve been told 🤣🤣🤣 in reality this guys sucked to whatever other party/coalition had majority in order to be in the govt and steal national funds for themselves… if you go to szekelyland those people are one of the poorest in the region and not bcs the govt didnt gave them money UDMR or RDMSZ how u call it was always there in the govt 🤣🤣 the szekelys are slowly starting to see that
Two things to clarify. 1. The AUR leader is banned in Moldova and Ukraine for his connections with Russia and meetings with Russian spies. As a curiosity, the SOS leader was an important figure in AUR. 2. The PUSL leader did not set fire to the night club. He was mayor when the fire took place and he was found guilty because that club was operating without authorization and it was his competence to prevent that tragedy.
To my knowledge, none of the current Moldovan or Ukrainian authorities have clearly stated the reason for Simion's ban, the prime minister of Moldova referred to him as a "destabilizing factor" but didn't elaborate. The accusations came from an ex-minister but have not been proven, as of now. So I wouldn't give those that much importance.
@@rixorobert handling national security problems are state secrets everywhere. When you have russian troops inside your country, you probably don't want to anger them even more by publicly revealing for example that he was in contact with a Russian agent to organize protests to destabilize the country, to destroy the gov. Desecretization occurs years later and this was just an example, I pulled it out of my ass.
Thanks for your work again. I was a bit worried about your intention to approach this subject. But, as sometimes, people of one country can be “too close to the trees thus not able to see the entire forest”, the opinion of someone coming from a different culture and historical background cannot be more useful and is more than welcome. I think it’s inevitable to face challenges in understanding some historical events related to the development of modern Romania and its party system. However, your analysis is indeed accurate in many ways. You argued from your own perspective, which is normal, while relying on facts and logic. The result is amazing! Romania is not an easy subject so, your efforts are greatly appreciated.
Very good video, but keep in mind the fact that if one party has a number of mayors in the country does not really mean that party has done good in that said city. Usually in Romania, people vote for the name of the candidate and not with the party he belongs to.
A.U.R and their stance on Jews is complicated. On one hand they are against renaming institutions like high-schools that are named after people with an antisemitic past on the the other hand the leader of the party meet with the Israeli ambasador in Romania, Jewish organizations criticided that move but embassy double-down and called it an fruitful dialogue. The party leader also supports Jewish settlements in the West Bank
''The party leader also supports Jewish settlements in the West Bank''' you say that like its a good thing , its just one far right leader supporting another out of mutual interest , the Christian far right in romania tend to be an apocalyptic cult with all the weird beliefs that implies meaning they see the reestablishment of Israel as the first sign of the beginning of the end and want to support it , its just like the fundamentalists in America
You are wrong about Forța Dreptei. PNL was a historical party, that was banned by communists (like any other Party) and in 90s was resurrected. Who was at the forefront of that? Ludovic Orban. Then the internal coup led by Johannis ousted Orban and the core of true liberals from the party. Johannis came from FDGR (Forumul Democrat German din România), and was nowhere near PNL when Orban was doing all the heavy lifting. So he is entitled to keep whatever PNL is using now, because he came up with it all. Obviously Orban and the PNL core that was outsed created this new party, who is seen as the real liberal party in Romania, while PNL is shifting towards PSDR. By the pay, PNL absorbed a splinter group of PSDR (PDSR was called then), named PD. These guys were younger, had less to do with communism. These people now ousted the liberal core and shifted what was left of PNL towards PSDR. So it was like a poison pill.
Ben, you committed the cardinal sin of making a video on 'eastern Europe' political spectrum. (Europe is from the tip of Iberia, all the way to the Urals. You cut the cheese. 🧀 As Romania is concerned, throw out everything you know west of the Iron Curtain, as there is no political ideology, take my word for your own mental sanity. Political parties are opportunistic, the oldest ones just wanting to be in charge, at the helm, and change direction easier than the wind. The difference is in varying degrees on how close some want to work with the EU, rely on both internal and eternal loans, close and far far away... , who claims 'Romania first' gibberish and who wants to work with Russia and China after the serbian model. I am writing this before watching for that extra spicy taste as I highly doubt you of all people can nail it when most romanians can't tell 'left' from 'right' and where is up or down. P.S., in case you did hard research, PSD is the grandson of the communist party (PCR), PNL is parading as interwar PNL when the original's post communist surviviors have been dealt with by PSD's father in the late 90's (defamation, stinky socialist style 'eg. those that did not eat soy salami like the rest of us'), and the rest have yet to shake the landscape to its core given it's not a german rainbow yet :)
A lot of interesting parties there, but I'd probably plump for one of two parties, which are outside Parliament at the moment. The National peasant Alliance (ANT) or the Christian democratic national peasants party (PNTCD). Both of which seem to be pretty close to distributist.
Romania never had its own authority. We are ruled by the authority from the east for 50 years, then we revolt, we accept the authority from the west for 50 years, then we revolt again and choose the authority from the east, and so on. This is the strategy that has kept us here for thousands of years, we don't let any foreign authority take root here so as not to lose our language, culture and country. The history is very clear, the Ottomans came and stayed for 50 years, we allied with the Austro-Hungarians. They stayed here for about 50 years, then we allied with the Russians. They also stayed here for about 50 years, we allied with the UE. They will rule here for another 10 years and we will ally with the Russians again because we already feel that we are losing our identity and culture. It's about generations, if we stay under one rule for more than 2 generations, we lose our language, culture, religion, history.
USR? We voted them into power and they flopped hugely. Never seen a bunch of greater idiots, behind their fancy words they had absolutely no administrative skills.
A few things/fun facts I would like to address as a Romanian national: - on paper Romania bans all forms of totalitarian ideologies be it far left or far right since 2002 after a far right conspiracy nut ran against the communist coup-loving Iliescu (we had a rocky start to say the least) - while the Social Democrats started from the ashes of socialism, they are nowhere near socialists in their current iteration. Iliescu was their only shot at "resurrecting communism", but he thankfully failed to do a power grab in the 90s. Today, the Social Democrats are nothing more than the party of "Hey let's raise the minimum wage a tiny bit...and let's make sure we don't address the corruption scandals.". Communism is also, thankfully, banned in Romania and is astonishingly unpopular. - Both social democrats and national liberals are pro-NATO and pro-EU. The biggest NATO proponent is to this day a Social Democrat as both parties see national sovereignty as vital, especially after we saw what Russia did to Moldova. USR and REPER especially likewise - there is a lot of reason to be skeptical of USR (/ADU). At first, they had a noble goal and were a bit more center-left, but as the years went by and they had to consolidate, it was overrun by establishment collaborators, which prompted the former leader Ciolos to form REPER, which might have doomed any type of anti-corruption movement from outside the establishment. USR received a shameful 8% in the EU parliament votes this year and had a bad fall from grace in my opinion - the leader of S.O.S. split from AUR after some petty disagreements. She also takes Christian nationalism to a whole extreme, generally making a fool of herself wherever she goes and saying outlandish things like "I talked with Lukashenko to protect Prigozhin.". Why would she want to protect a former leader of the biggest nazi militia group of Russia is anyone's guess really. Also, unlike the leader of AUR, she is much more tapped into the "culture war" side of things, often borrowing talking points from the American right word for word - Neamtu, the leader of AUR, by contrast is more of a "traditional ultra-nationalist", sprinkling vague gestures and symbolism reminiscent of the legionary movement, from his speeches to the fights he used to get himself into to his own wedding. AUR was also fairly anti-NATO and pro-Putin; though those elements might have been more the S.O.S. influence it is still cause for concern Neamtu also advocates for reunification with Moldova, but in an ironic twist of fate he is banned from the country because of his extremist beliefs. - last but not least, I alluded to this earlier but both AUR and USR have a lot of ties with the establishment up to the presidency itself. They are not immune from corruption, they are part of it. Seeing as USR is on its last leg and REPER didn't even pass the 5% threshold to have one EU representative, my opinion is that anti-corruption sentiment is going to spring from inside the establishment rather than from the outside. Credit where it's due, the younger politicians are a lot less corrupt and it is likely that only the passage of time will fix our country. Things are slowly moving in the right direction, and things are finally being done to ensure higher standards of living.
Multumesc pentru cá. A lot to chew there and taken it. I hope you are right that S.O.S. is a joke party that will not gain any big following in the future due to dummy statements. One thing that I valued about USR was their protecting older buildings in Bucharest, which is something I have fought for in Caerdydd (Cardiff) here in Wales, so that is something I appreciate from them and take on board. AUR sounds like a loose cannon that could explode in a very bad direction if they get out of control. Thanks again.
@@BenLlywelynSOS is a joke party some even say it was formed with the help of the secret services, probably to harm AUR, Sosoaca is acting like a clown and is openly pro-Russian, it is just a fringe party. AUR is dangerous, even more because Simeon has been accused of ties with Russian secret services (well, those accusations come from people from the Republic of Moldova, I would take things with a grain of salt, not all their politicians are trustworthy, they play both sides). It seems to me AUR voters would like an Orban style policy. In my opinion, PSD will take first place, second place up for grabs between PNL and AUR. An alliance PSD PNL will bring stability, but it will also continue to weaken PNL.
@@rixorobert Oh, nice catch, you're right. No idea why I wrote Neamtu instead of Simion twice. I kept thinking I should have him as an "honourable mention" with his initial criticisms of Simion and f'ed up. My bad. If Neamtu was the leader, his party would collapse by the next election.
@@mimisor66 Let's not forget that the founder of the AUR, Marius Dorin Lulea has a construction firm and was tasked with the restoration of the building that belongs to the FSB. The only building owned by Russia and tolerated by FSN (PSD/PNL).
Good video as always Ben, especially for an outsider looking in. I would however like to add a bit of context, and why Romanian parties are actually devoid of consistent ideology. Historically Romanian politics have always been dominated by a few "cartels", or political interest groups. The commies replaced this with a one-party system where everyone was part of the same cartel - the commie party. Ceaușescu got away with doing so much because he was the cartel boss. Fast forward to the 90s, and you have a group of neo-commie oligarchs, who via their connections to the rebelious commies running the show, get rich through dodgy deals with the govt, and whose interests then diverge (except embezzling as much as they can). They push their agendas through intelligence services, and these "parties" and "politicians". Every party in Romania is a reflection of this bleak reality at their core, each representing a different cartel's interest. Their scope and power varies across parties, but for the sake of brevity, these guys dictate "ideology" (their interests), hence the mish-mash of seemingly contradictory policies (like the PSD, although "central left", actually leans most heavily towards social conservativism and the powerful Church). AUR, USR, and reper are political experiments for oligarchs (securisti as they're called) to try to outmaneuver one another, like hyenas wrestling over scraps). Welcome to Eastern Europe I guess, where instead of having mil-industrial, and generational elites, you have ex commies buying up land for two dimes an acre. Hope this makes sense.
Communism was always a mafia crime syndicat, and if they were not deradicalised or had their wealth purged then what you say makes sense - they would start over in a new tactic.
@@BenLlywelynGoing off on a tangent, but back in the day Judaism and Jews were also very much in the spotlight, mostly negatively unfortunately. Ceausescu sold the country's Jews to Israel like he did the Volksdeutsch. So clearly still nasty but not Iron Guard nasty. You might be interested in the roots of Bundism in 1930s Romania, and the Jewish political parties of the interwar period. Many early communist activities in ROU were also Jewish, before getting purged, and the first post 1989 PM and President were half Jewish 😉. Not that it really meant much for the 30k Jews still living there...
How is USR an ex-Securitate experiment ? Pretty much all the ex-commies have their eyes on them and spew propaganda aimed at USR. Also, the myth that Iliescu has Jewish roots is just neo-nazis propaganda. Also heard the version where he's actually roma, so that's that...just propaganda.
Romanians value Christianity greatly. That's why every political party is tied to Christianity. I don't mind this as a Romanian, but I have to say that the parties that want to force Christianity down your throat are annoying. I personally dislike religious zealots trying to impose their idea of Christian values onto me. For this reason, I dislike the right wing in Romania. I find myself aligning more with left leaning parties, even though in western countries I would consider myself a conservative. While the idea of a greater Romania (having Moldova reunite with Romania) is still in my wishes, it's not my top priority. I do, however, want Moldova in the EU and NATO. I also consider any party that aligns itself with Russian interests, fundamentally anti-Romanian. That's why I dislike AUR and the other radical right wing parties. Also, anyone who still honors the legionaries and the iron guard are basically neo-Nazis, so those are a write-off for me.
She lost, sadly. And now on the first place is an unknown super right winger, unexpected. It will be between right wingers and PSD which is the most hated party.
An update, she got on second round with the right winger that was thriwn out of AUR because he was too extremist. We will have the most extremist president, pro Putin, that wants to invade Ukraine and Moldova, NATO, out of Romania if they dont do like us and EUrosceptic. Church should run the country he says, no lgbt, no migrants, hungarians better hide (here i agree) and mandatory military back. Just like Antonescu
Starting with the small parties was definitely a bad idea. You lost me at SOS Romania. By that time, you basically repeated all the tropes and silly factoids in the media and came to some silly conclusions too. I;'ve seen some of your previous clips. They were good. This one is not. Moreover, it;s unjustly painting Romania to be a politically schizophrenic country... Romanians watching this already have their points of view, but others will probably come out of it thinking (thanks to you), that we're a bunch of idiots
@@BenLlywelyn I guess that's because Romanians generally look up to foreigners. However, you did a poor job on this one. SOS is not to the right of AfD, PNCR is not anti-vax, and PMP being branded as a pro-monarchy party is simply ridiculous. I was to afraid to watch what labels you stuck to the big parties so I didn;t watch till the end..
@@alopam Then stop crying and move on, I am a legionary and clearly do not agree with the creator politically but it is still an entertaining watch and a great video. Also SOS is to the right of AfD and this has been made clearly regularly, PNCR were anti-vax for a period of time, and PMP have a lot of pro monarchist politicians inside their party and while they are not technically a monarchist party they still have a lot of politicians that support the monarchy and would want to see a return. @BenLlywelyn made a great video, if you are so hurt next time dont comment on someone more educated on this topic than you are
@@dvg9232 Sorry I hurt your feelings, Mr. botfarm9232 :) PMP only brought up the monarchy once, as vote bait in the 2019 election. Hasn;t spoken a word about it since. Monarchy is not among their stated objectives. Not a word about monarchy in their statute. Ergo, making out monarchy to be the defining feature of this party is nonsensical. And certainly not proof of being "educated on the subject" :)) I know this may be hard for you to grasp, but real people have real opinions and - as much as you;d like to send them to the gulag for expressing them - they also like to do that. Grow up. :)
@@alopam From my understanding the creator is on the left and I am a legionary so though I do not agree with him politically he made a great video and I respect his opinions. As for the PMP topic while the party has not brought it up since they are not a monarchist party specifically, they have multiple politicians within the party that are pro-monarchist. While it is not an official party policy there are more sympathisers in PMP than most parties so it is understandable to see why he thought it was an official policy.
At least you finally found a word in romanian and welsh thats identical, aur. Aur is very important for the celts. I do not wear aur but i search for it, in aur ore, and from garbage electronics. Thats because i need aur for my art where i use it as a colourant for pinks and purples and also in the metallic form. The aur party thogh would be a disaster for Romania.
@@BenLlywelyn Thx. I will vote for you that lady from USR in the first round.From your part as if you could vote in the romanian elections. So that you didnt made this video for nothing and learned all these boring things about romanian politics. But she has no chance.
@@BenLlywelyn and an important adviser to the ex prime minister PSD Adrian Nastase (known as the great corrupt, when press freedom was at its lowest since the revolution). He spends his time nowadays talking praise to Alexandr Dughin together with one of the now independent candidates for presidency, at one time honorary president of early AUR.
@@BenLlywelyn Yep, George Simion was basically a football hooligan in his youth...his highest achievement and the mother of Diana Iovanovici Sosoaca is part of the Freemason organization in Romania, like a Masonic lodge or something. While he constantly screams in her streams how the Illuminati/Masons/Jews want to take over the country and she's the only true Romanian politician to fight back...also, I heard some rumors she's of Serbian or Aromanian heritage...while she promotes xenophobia...She's the most hypocrite of them all, but also useful for the older establishment parties so they can appear more rational and competent.
@@BenLlywelynNow you understand why many people hate SOS. "The daughter of a Russian spy :))". She is with God and she is against the rules that restrict freedom. Yes, she was the biggest promoter against the vaccine by force. Many got vaccinated because they had no choice, they had to, otherwise they would lose their job or other benefits.
25:50 First of all, PNL wasn't the main political party on the right after '89. First it was PNTCD, then it was PDL and only somewhere around 2012 they started to gain some success. Second, PNL is the biggest plague on Romania's economy. No, they are pro-globalist, in the sense that they are pro-banks, pro-corporations but they are also pro-employers who want to pay the minimum wage at every turn and for that minimum wage to be as small as possible. They are nationalist, my ass, they used to be but Iohannis made them submissive to the EU, in so far as that Brussels basically leads us and we are their good bois. 27:35 Iliescu was one of the very few people who spoke against Ceausescu, him and Constantin Pirvulescu. He paid the price for it, got marginalized but at least he had guts to speak against him. Which 99% of the Romanians didn't, even if today all of them claim they did. He built Romanian democracy and he built it solidly, bar the Mineriads. He also gave almost free housing in the 90s, there is a reason why Romanians are the top spot at home ownership in Europe and that reason is called Iliescu, who is now being hated by those very same people. That tells you a bit about Romanian gratitude lol. And yes, PSD is strongly pro-Christian and it used to also be strongly pro-unification with Moldova but now it has abandoned that in favor of the "pro-EU integration" for Moldova which is a scam since the EU won't enlarge itself any time soon. Also, I wouldn't quote Euractiv, they are literally Brussels shills who spout crap and propaganda for their overlords. You don't see articles on Euractiv about how Ursula von der Leyen literally stole millions of Euros with her husband during Covid but they are eager to write stories about petty Romanian thieves lol. 30:54 Actually, no, they are still the main parties here even separated. AUR got 15-20% at the last election, USR (USR is in a downward spiral) got 8% at the last election. What the media won't tell you is that this alliance was formed by the Americans who wanted stability here in the context of the Russo-Ukrainian war. Before the war PNL and USR were in that disastruous coalition I talked about and there was infighting literally every day. As soon as Lloyd Austin landed here PNL basically provoked USR to break apart with them, USR being USR literally did that and soon PNL and PSD joined the coalition. This happened a few months before Putin invaded, when the Americans already had gathered enough evidence to know he'll attack Ukraine. They wanted stability in Romania so Russian propaganda wouldn't gain ground and what better stability to have than with the main political parties which have more than 50% together? So no, it's not about smaller parties gaining ground, it's about America's need for stability in the region. Of course, you won't see this in the media because it would make Romanian democracy seem feeble. 32:08 Couldn't agree more with everything you said here, it's so sad to see the fall of the West, I am rooting for you guys but you don't seem to root for yourselves. You talked about liberal conservatism in opposition to Romanian communism. Yeah, that's not true. Ceausescu implemented National Communism in Romania which was more conservative than your Reagan and Thatcher conservatives. This is where the left-wing social conservatism comes from.
The prime minister is from my city Buzau. I heard he is the prime minister after 6 months after he got the job. Thats how much im interested in politics. He is,, im not moldovan and please dont offend me,, man 😂. As if being from Moldova is an offence. I suspect he copies a local priest wisdom. Be kind and understand everybody type of thing but from time to time a funny,Buzau barbarian visigoth, sentence gets out and shocks people😂.
You can assume that every political party in Romania that doesn't openly declare its support for Zionism is low key antisemitic. There's a lot of antisemitism in Romania, albeit usually not violent or openly aggressive. Much more worrying things are connections to Russia and other dictatorial regimes. What is a red flag for me personally is the lack of actual social libertarian parties, everything is religious and conservative in one way or another. That makes for a really lopsided political landscape, that's not good moving on.
@@BenLlywelyn he is failing his degree in eastern politics, there is no antisemitism. During Ceausescu, Romania did cultivate good relation with the arab states and very good with Syria. House of cards crumbled over the decades everywhere, a chunk of romanians got caught up in events and it is cringe what is going on in the middle east but that is all that is. It would be best if everybody there just stops the insanity. You see orthodox christian everywhere other than USR because most areas are underdeveloped and the folk mostly listen to the local priests. USR started in the capital and knows it has no chance against PSD in the villages and focuses in the urban areas that are not ruled by 'barons', as they are called. You noticed the bag of $$ example.
A decent analysis on our current political situation. However, things are far deeper and complicated than that. PNL isn't the same party as the historical one during the monarchy as it has the same people that were or had connections with Ceausescu's PCR. PSD is formed mostly by the people that were in the Secret Police (Securitate) that chose to betray Ceausescu and transition the country in a more Gorbachev style of system in the early 90s. The problem with those two establishment parties is that many people in the early 90s pointed out those things and got marginalized by their propaganda and sycophants (see Corneliu Coposu's case). Today, they use similar practices as they did in the late 90s. During the 2000 election, Iliescu propped a ex-Ceausescu sympathizer turned ultra-right wing extremist (Corneliu Vadim Tudor) in order to force people to vote Iliescu as the lesser evil. Similar to how AUR and SOS is now, secretly funded by the two main parties so the real anti-corruption and pro-EU/NATO platforms like USR/REPER won't ever win something significant and keep the same 90s style of corruption. Regarding the family values thing. I think you bought too much of the conservative and Russian propaganda. The "family values" the conservative parties promote are the same "family values" trumpists propose and don't have anything to do with something sustainable within a family system. Also, regarding LGBTQ rights. Contrary to conservative propaganda, those people have don't even have the right to inheritance from their partner if they die or even hospital visits. The struggle with those people isn't something minor like in a more liberal Western country, we are talking about real human rights here.
@@BenLlywelyn Yes, and the Russian propaganda paints us pro-EU/NATO people as some brainwashed idiots that can't think for themselves. In fact, most of use have no problem pointing out problems within EU and NATO and to make them even better and effective in combating oligarchical states, specially those within them as Hungary and NATO.
romanian here , that Piedone guy wasn't accused of burning down a club as in mafia style but was accused of allowing businesses to operate in unsafe conditions for bribes, he's not accused of burning down the club for insurance money but of neglect and bribery to such an extent that it endangered human life , any restaurant owner , business owner , builder or something like that could get anything approved weather or not they conformed to safety regulations.
excellent. I love videos like this that break down the political make up of countries. Too often we think "oh, all Germans are social democrats, all French are socialist, all poles are catholic nationalist, etc. But obviously that isn't the case, and sometimes there's really interesting historical and regional differences.
What can I say.... Thank you for your great work.
Mad, mad world outhere
Much appreciated good fellow.
At least corrupt politicians in Romania sometimes land in jail. This is more than happens in Bulgaria and Hungary. But I hope the fight against corruption will continue in good faith, and not turn into ways to hit opponents.
@@mimisor66 Good optimism.
Amazing work!
Thank you.
Very interesting, professional, useful and sparkling presentation! Thank you!
Glad you enjoyed it. Diolch / Multumesc!
Some thoughts while watching this video, sorry in advance for the wall of text.
1. The reason parliamentary elections use lists instead of individual candidates is because we have proportional representation, so there's at least theoretically a better reflection of the ideological makeup of the country. We tested for a short time a mixed member-proportional system, where you would vote for individual candidates, and the ones who got 50%+ of the votes were elected directly into the parliament, then counting the share of the party votes at a national level and distributing seats to ensure that proportionality. However what this led to was a massive number of overhang seats, which raised the number of MPs from 400-something to 588. It was decided that this bloat wasn't worth it, and the system scrapped.
2. The National Peasants' Party (PNȚ) is one of the oldest parties in Romania, and during the interwar period was a left-wing oriented party with agrarian interests in mind, and the main opposition to the National Liberal Party. The present day Christian Democratic National Peasants' Party (PNȚCD) tries to trace its heritage to this historical party.
3. I don't think PMP is particularly monarchist. If there's a present day party with a monarchist reputation, it's PNȚCD.
4. On Orthodoxy: the Orthodox Church is a single one, all of the Russian, Greek, Romanian and so on Orthodox Churches are autocephalous, sure (going on a pre-Schism tangent, we can see the differences in mindset between east and west, where the western Christian world viewed the Pope seat as being authoritative over the entirety of Christianity, while Christians in the east viewed the Pope - or Patriarch of Rome if you wish - as first among equals, with the other four Patriarchates at the time holding equal weight), but they're all part of the same Church. They're not different at a dogmatic level, so having a Romanian party, no matter how pro-Russian, be interested in the Russian Orthodox Church specifically would have been nonsensical.
5. A small note to avoid potential viewer confusion: Piedone did not burn the club down himself or anything like that, but as a mayor he was held responsible for not ensuring public safety, given the club lacked all the necessary authorisations and yet was still functioning.
6. There's a lot to write on AUR, so I'll split this into further points.
a) Annexation is an inappropriate word to use in my opinion, because it implies using forceful means. It would be similar to calling the reunification of West and East Germany in 1990 an annexation of East Germany by West Germany, which paints the wrong picture. Union would be the more fitting term. Anyway, some historical context here (first I'll start with a side note: the English language refers to the historical principality as Moldavia and the modern state as Moldova; this distinction does not exist in Romanian, where the word Moldova is used to describe all of them: the principality, the present day region in Romania with the name, and the present day country, usually referred to as Republica Moldova to avoid confusion). The present day Republic of Moldova roughly comprises the eastern half of the historical principality of Moldavia. This eastern half was annexed by the Russian Empire in 1812 (and came to be known as Bessarabia), while the remaining principality of Moldavia went on to unite with Wallachia in 1859, in the aftermath of the Crimean War, to form the United Romanian Principalities, and later Romania. In 1917, in the chaos of WW1 and the October Revolution, Bessarabia proclaimed the creation of the Moldavian Democratic Republic, then after requesting Romanian military assistance to protect them from Bolsheviks, declared independence in 1918, and later voted for the union with Romania while imposing some conditions for it. In 1940 the Soviet Union annexed Bessarabia again, and after WW2 the Moldovan SSR gained the shape it has today. Moldova declared independence from USSR in 1991, but various factors prevented the reunification with Romania at the time, whether we're talking about the Transnistria War or the inaction of Romanian leaders. Either way, the perfect timing was lost, but the unionist sentiment remained high both in Romania and in Moldova. In time, Moldovans became more apathetic towards a possible union however, although there's been a resurgence in the past years, possibly also as a reaction to some currents of Moldovan nationalism (or Moldovenism) strongly promoted by pro-Russian propagandists. Either way, to get back to the main point, unionists on both sides of the Prut river want the union to happen through referendums in both countries, and not through any kind of coercion or forceful means. In this regard AUR is the same.
b) On antisemitism: there are party members who have Legionary sympathies, but I'm not aware of antisemitic policies or actions that the party is in favour of other than some historical revisionism that is tied in with the aforementioned sympathies. Ironically enough, far right Romanians accuse AUR of philosemitism and of being a "subverted" party, because of episodes like the party leader's interactions with Israeli diplomats.
c) Some closing thoughts: the party publicly claims not to be pro-Russian but they support policies like ending military support for Ukraine and there seem to exist some financial ties with some Russians, so if they really aren't pro-Russia, they are doing a bad job at it. Which is also counterproductive given the party is supposedly unionist, or a Russian victory in Ukraine would greatly endanger Moldova.
7. USR is definitely a progressive party, it's their most defining feature when compared to all other major parties, and the main reason it can't become more popular than it currently is in spite of running on an anti-corruption and anti-establishment platform. This progressivism is incompatible with the social conservatism of many Romanians.
8. PNL wasn't very relevant in the '90s, the main centre-right party during that period was PNȚCD. It was only in 2004 when PNL started being somewhat important, when they allied with the Democrat Party (PD, which interestingly traces its origins to the same National Salvation Front that PSD comes from) and gave the prime minister. Later on a group splintered from the party and fused with PD, forming PDL (the Democrat Liberal Party, which became one of the staples of Romanian corruption and cronyism while they were in power). In 2012 PNL and PSD formed a coalition government together, and this combined with them absorbing PDL in 2014 are what cemented their status as a major player in Romanian politics.
9. The main reason behind the current alliance of PSD and PNL is that they view USR as too progressive and AUR as too populist, combined with the need of political stability in the context of the COVID pandemic that was relevant at the time and the Ukraine War.
Yes on PSD and PNL. They would of course seek political stability, and that makes sense from the point of view of those with a good economic base behind them to want to keep order and establishment level stability in economic and cultural matters.
@@BenLlywelyn Most of his comment is fake, PSD and PNL first co-ruled (USL, social-liberal union, if one can hold its contents after reading something like this) way before the pandemic in order to bring down the PDL which was not progressive. PDL evaporated into PMP, at first endorsed by an ex president from PDL. The rest just so happen to end up in PSD, PNL like tey always do after a few cycles. Most of the 1 seat parties new or old are just proxies for the 2 main actors, being ran, disbanded or detoured by mainstream party members. Since you quoted PRO Romania several times with the infamous Victor Ponta (mikey mouse), look into his visits to the boycotted Soci olympics among never ending present controversy and his support for AUR and then judge the value of the paper the political orientation is written on.
P.S. fun fact, AUR's main backers are the pentecostal church and other minorities on the religious front, so judge the value of the paper those party values are written. SOS is/was backed by hard line orthodox mobsters.
The guy you made dark jokes about is backed also by hard line orthodox folk and a certain minority populist vote based solely on ethnicity, like I sometimes read about the British Isles as well.
RMDSZ is the Hungarian party. They were part of almost every government since the revolution. This is done to keep social and ethnical peace.
The election of a German President hit them hard, especially in their rhetoric that Romanians were too nationalistic.
Peace when possible is of the utmost importance to keep.
Some of their members were found out to be racist, which was funny.
Hungarian party financed by Moscov
So this is what you‘ve been told 🤣🤣🤣 in reality this guys sucked to whatever other party/coalition had majority in order to be in the govt and steal national funds for themselves… if you go to szekelyland those people are one of the poorest in the region and not bcs the govt didnt gave them money UDMR or RDMSZ how u call it was always there in the govt 🤣🤣 the szekelys are slowly starting to see that
Wow. Keep up the good work. Very informative
Thank you.
Two things to clarify.
1. The AUR leader is banned in Moldova and Ukraine for his connections with Russia and meetings with Russian spies. As a curiosity, the SOS leader was an important figure in AUR.
2. The PUSL leader did not set fire to the night club. He was mayor when the fire took place and he was found guilty because that club was operating without authorization and it was his competence to prevent that tragedy.
Good, and I could have worded it differently about the night club. I hope he gets that if he ever sees this.
To my knowledge, none of the current Moldovan or Ukrainian authorities have clearly stated the reason for Simion's ban, the prime minister of Moldova referred to him as a "destabilizing factor" but didn't elaborate. The accusations came from an ex-minister but have not been proven, as of now. So I wouldn't give those that much importance.
@@rixorobert handling national security problems are state secrets everywhere. When you have russian troops inside your country, you probably don't want to anger them even more by publicly revealing for example that he was in contact with a Russian agent to organize protests to destabilize the country, to destroy the gov. Desecretization occurs years later and this was just an example, I pulled it out of my ass.
I wounder what is your "obesssion" with Romania in special?
No obsession.
I love your videos, mr. Ben! Coming from somebody living in the north-west of Romania😊
Thank you very much.
The "Pol Pot" and Chch photo, December 1978. "Heart of Glass", the number 1 song in the world..or would be so within weeks.
USR /Save Romania Union - the best option for sure, a lot of great and honest people in this party
Thanks for your work again. I was a bit worried about your intention to approach this subject. But, as sometimes, people of one country can be “too close to the trees thus not able to see the entire forest”, the opinion of someone coming from a different culture and historical background cannot be more useful and is more than welcome. I think it’s inevitable to face challenges in understanding some historical events related to the development of modern Romania and its party system. However, your analysis is indeed accurate in many ways. You argued from your own perspective, which is normal, while relying on facts and logic. The result is amazing! Romania is not an easy subject so, your efforts are greatly appreciated.
A very kind comment. Thank you.
Hvala!💗👍🌺👋
Dobro došli.
Very good video, but keep in mind the fact that if one party has a number of mayors in the country does not really mean that party has done good in that said city. Usually in Romania, people vote for the name of the candidate and not with the party he belongs to.
A.U.R and their stance on Jews is complicated. On one hand they are against renaming institutions like high-schools that are named after people with an antisemitic past on the the other hand the leader of the party meet with the Israeli ambasador in Romania, Jewish organizations criticided that move but embassy double-down and called it an fruitful dialogue. The party leader also supports Jewish settlements in the West Bank
That does sound complicated. Thank you for sharing.
''The party leader also supports Jewish settlements in the West Bank''' you say that like its a good thing , its just one far right leader supporting another out of mutual interest , the Christian far right in romania tend to be an apocalyptic cult with all the weird beliefs that implies meaning they see the reestablishment of Israel as the first sign of the beginning of the end and want to support it , its just like the fundamentalists in America
Ludovic Orban is not hungariwn . He does not speak hungarian . There areother names in UDMR .
Yes, he is Romanian.
Gotta say, You hit the nail right on the head with your analysis!
Thank you kindly.
There are also new parties that seem promising like the progressive SENS party.
Hopefully the Romanian people will choose a path that makes their grandchildren better off.
Romanian people prefer orthodox Romania is a orthodox country we prefer being called orthodox ❤
This is an interesting video, but it lacks a lot of depth in information and nuances unfortunately, especially on the dangerous AUR.
Did not know about half these parties tho very insightful 😭😭😭
Thank you.
New 🇷🇴 video!
You are wrong about Forța Dreptei. PNL was a historical party, that was banned by communists (like any other Party) and in 90s was resurrected. Who was at the forefront of that? Ludovic Orban. Then the internal coup led by Johannis ousted Orban and the core of true liberals from the party. Johannis came from FDGR (Forumul Democrat German din România), and was nowhere near PNL when Orban was doing all the heavy lifting. So he is entitled to keep whatever PNL is using now, because he came up with it all. Obviously Orban and the PNL core that was outsed created this new party, who is seen as the real liberal party in Romania, while PNL is shifting towards PSDR. By the pay, PNL absorbed a splinter group of PSDR (PDSR was called then), named PD. These guys were younger, had less to do with communism. These people now ousted the liberal core and shifted what was left of PNL towards PSDR. So it was like a poison pill.
I hope you are right about Forța Dreptai.
"G.S. help me find my proper place"..a J Cale reference but he hd left "the velvets" as he calls them, by then.
G.S. coming out of this person's mouth....th-cam.com/video/oxo92I-akL0/w-d-xo.htmlsi=VCVxcl_bJVWhJXPO
RMDS and GS...? Bilingual hungarian and romanian..gs is a near native esperanto speaker, you may know.
this feels very much like germany, two big parties but they're crumbling by a lot of smaller parties rising
Across the West.
Ben, you committed the cardinal sin of making a video on 'eastern Europe' political spectrum. (Europe is from the tip of Iberia, all the way to the Urals. You cut the cheese. 🧀
As Romania is concerned, throw out everything you know west of the Iron Curtain, as there is no political ideology, take my word for your own mental sanity. Political parties are opportunistic, the oldest ones just wanting to be in charge, at the helm, and change direction easier than the wind. The difference is in varying degrees on how close some want to work with the EU, rely on both internal and eternal loans, close and far far away... , who claims 'Romania first' gibberish and who wants to work with Russia and China after the serbian model.
I am writing this before watching for that extra spicy taste as I highly doubt you of all people can nail it when most romanians can't tell 'left' from 'right' and where is up or down.
P.S., in case you did hard research, PSD is the grandson of the communist party (PCR), PNL is parading as interwar PNL when the original's post communist surviviors have been dealt with by PSD's father in the late 90's (defamation, stinky socialist style 'eg. those that did not eat soy salami like the rest of us'), and the rest have yet to shake the landscape to its core given it's not a german rainbow yet :)
A lot of interesting parties there, but I'd probably plump for one of two parties, which are outside Parliament at the moment.
The National peasant Alliance (ANT) or the Christian democratic national peasants party (PNTCD).
Both of which seem to be pretty close to distributist.
Yes, there are many, many more parties. But sadly, it went over 40 minutes as it was. Thank you for watching.
Romania never had its own authority. We are ruled by the authority from the east for 50 years, then we revolt, we accept the authority from the west for 50 years, then we revolt again and choose the authority from the east, and so on. This is the strategy that has kept us here for thousands of years, we don't let any foreign authority take root here so as not to lose our language, culture and country. The history is very clear, the Ottomans came and stayed for 50 years, we allied with the Austro-Hungarians. They stayed here for about 50 years, then we allied with the Russians. They also stayed here for about 50 years, we allied with the UE. They will rule here for another 10 years and we will ally with the Russians again because we already feel that we are losing our identity and culture. It's about generations, if we stay under one rule for more than 2 generations, we lose our language, culture, religion, history.
AUR pro Nato 😂😂😂.... AUR, SOS and others are parties financed directly from Moscov!
Great choice btw! Respect for that! You have a healthy mentality!
A healthy mind is a wealthy find.
Save Romanian Union is the right choice. I wish more romanians will conside voting it.
Multumesc!
USR? We voted them into power and they flopped hugely. Never seen a bunch of greater idiots, behind their fancy words they had absolutely no administrative skills.
I will never vote with a party called PUSL instead of PULS. They seem to have no imagination whatsoever.
Ceausescu's nickname was Ceasca , which means teacup.
Funny name.
A few things/fun facts I would like to address as a Romanian national:
- on paper Romania bans all forms of totalitarian ideologies be it far left or far right since 2002 after a far right conspiracy nut ran against the communist coup-loving Iliescu (we had a rocky start to say the least)
- while the Social Democrats started from the ashes of socialism, they are nowhere near socialists in their current iteration. Iliescu was their only shot at "resurrecting communism", but he thankfully failed to do a power grab in the 90s. Today, the Social Democrats are nothing more than the party of "Hey let's raise the minimum wage a tiny bit...and let's make sure we don't address the corruption scandals.". Communism is also, thankfully, banned in Romania and is astonishingly unpopular.
- Both social democrats and national liberals are pro-NATO and pro-EU. The biggest NATO proponent is to this day a Social Democrat as both parties see national sovereignty as vital, especially after we saw what Russia did to Moldova. USR and REPER especially likewise
- there is a lot of reason to be skeptical of USR (/ADU). At first, they had a noble goal and were a bit more center-left, but as the years went by and they had to consolidate, it was overrun by establishment collaborators, which prompted the former leader Ciolos to form REPER, which might have doomed any type of anti-corruption movement from outside the establishment. USR received a shameful 8% in the EU parliament votes this year and had a bad fall from grace in my opinion
- the leader of S.O.S. split from AUR after some petty disagreements. She also takes Christian nationalism to a whole extreme, generally making a fool of herself wherever she goes and saying outlandish things like "I talked with Lukashenko to protect Prigozhin.". Why would she want to protect a former leader of the biggest nazi militia group of Russia is anyone's guess really. Also, unlike the leader of AUR, she is much more tapped into the "culture war" side of things, often borrowing talking points from the American right word for word
- Neamtu, the leader of AUR, by contrast is more of a "traditional ultra-nationalist", sprinkling vague gestures and symbolism reminiscent of the legionary movement, from his speeches to the fights he used to get himself into to his own wedding. AUR was also fairly anti-NATO and pro-Putin; though those elements might have been more the S.O.S. influence it is still cause for concern
Neamtu also advocates for reunification with Moldova, but in an ironic twist of fate he is banned from the country because of his extremist beliefs.
- last but not least, I alluded to this earlier but both AUR and USR have a lot of ties with the establishment up to the presidency itself. They are not immune from corruption, they are part of it.
Seeing as USR is on its last leg and REPER didn't even pass the 5% threshold to have one EU representative, my opinion is that anti-corruption sentiment is going to spring from inside the establishment rather than from the outside. Credit where it's due, the younger politicians are a lot less corrupt and it is likely that only the passage of time will fix our country. Things are slowly moving in the right direction, and things are finally being done to ensure higher standards of living.
Multumesc pentru cá. A lot to chew there and taken it. I hope you are right that S.O.S. is a joke party that will not gain any big following in the future due to dummy statements. One thing that I valued about USR was their protecting older buildings in Bucharest, which is something I have fought for in Caerdydd (Cardiff) here in Wales, so that is something I appreciate from them and take on board. AUR sounds like a loose cannon that could explode in a very bad direction if they get out of control. Thanks again.
@@BenLlywelynSOS is a joke party some even say it was formed with the help of the secret services, probably to harm AUR, Sosoaca is acting like a clown and is openly pro-Russian, it is just a fringe party. AUR is dangerous, even more because Simeon has been accused of ties with Russian secret services (well, those accusations come from people from the Republic of Moldova, I would take things with a grain of salt, not all their politicians are trustworthy, they play both sides). It seems to me AUR voters would like an Orban style policy. In my opinion, PSD will take first place, second place up for grabs between PNL and AUR. An alliance PSD PNL will bring stability, but it will also continue to weaken PNL.
Neamtu is NOT the leader of AUR 💀
@@rixorobert Oh, nice catch, you're right. No idea why I wrote Neamtu instead of Simion twice. I kept thinking I should have him as an "honourable mention" with his initial criticisms of Simion and f'ed up. My bad. If Neamtu was the leader, his party would collapse by the next election.
@@mimisor66 Let's not forget that the founder of the AUR, Marius Dorin Lulea has a construction firm and was tasked with the restoration of the building that belongs to the FSB. The only building owned by Russia and tolerated by FSN (PSD/PNL).
Good video as always Ben, especially for an outsider looking in. I would however like to add a bit of context, and why Romanian parties are actually devoid of consistent ideology. Historically Romanian politics have always been dominated by a few "cartels", or political interest groups. The commies replaced this with a one-party system where everyone was part of the same cartel - the commie party. Ceaușescu got away with doing so much because he was the cartel boss. Fast forward to the 90s, and you have a group of neo-commie oligarchs, who via their connections to the rebelious commies running the show, get rich through dodgy deals with the govt, and whose interests then diverge (except embezzling as much as they can). They push their agendas through intelligence services, and these "parties" and "politicians". Every party in Romania is a reflection of this bleak reality at their core, each representing a different cartel's interest. Their scope and power varies across parties, but for the sake of brevity, these guys dictate "ideology" (their interests), hence the mish-mash of seemingly contradictory policies (like the PSD, although "central left", actually leans most heavily towards social conservativism and the powerful Church). AUR, USR, and reper are political experiments for oligarchs (securisti as they're called) to try to outmaneuver one another, like hyenas wrestling over scraps). Welcome to Eastern Europe I guess, where instead of having mil-industrial, and generational elites, you have ex commies buying up land for two dimes an acre. Hope this makes sense.
Communism was always a mafia crime syndicat, and if they were not deradicalised or had their wealth purged then what you say makes sense - they would start over in a new tactic.
@@BenLlywelynGoing off on a tangent, but back in the day Judaism and Jews were also very much in the spotlight, mostly negatively unfortunately. Ceausescu sold the country's Jews to Israel like he did the Volksdeutsch. So clearly still nasty but not Iron Guard nasty. You might be interested in the roots of Bundism in 1930s Romania, and the Jewish political parties of the interwar period. Many early communist activities in ROU were also Jewish, before getting purged, and the first post 1989 PM and President were half Jewish 😉. Not that it really meant much for the 30k Jews still living there...
How is USR an ex-Securitate experiment ? Pretty much all the ex-commies have their eyes on them and spew propaganda aimed at USR.
Also, the myth that Iliescu has Jewish roots is just neo-nazis propaganda. Also heard the version where he's actually roma, so that's that...just propaganda.
Romanians value Christianity greatly. That's why every political party is tied to Christianity. I don't mind this as a Romanian, but I have to say that the parties that want to force Christianity down your throat are annoying. I personally dislike religious zealots trying to impose their idea of Christian values onto me. For this reason, I dislike the right wing in Romania. I find myself aligning more with left leaning parties, even though in western countries I would consider myself a conservative. While the idea of a greater Romania (having Moldova reunite with Romania) is still in my wishes, it's not my top priority. I do, however, want Moldova in the EU and NATO. I also consider any party that aligns itself with Russian interests, fundamentally anti-Romanian. That's why I dislike AUR and the other radical right wing parties. Also, anyone who still honors the legionaries and the iron guard are basically neo-Nazis, so those are a write-off for me.
You and I would agree on a lot, I think.
Just voted the progressive woman, as i promised.
She lost, sadly. And now on the first place is an unknown super right winger, unexpected.
It will be between right wingers and PSD which is the most hated party.
An update, she got on second round with the right winger that was thriwn out of AUR because he was too extremist.
We will have the most extremist president, pro Putin, that wants to invade Ukraine and Moldova, NATO, out of Romania if they dont do like us and EUrosceptic.
Church should run the country he says, no lgbt, no migrants, hungarians better hide (here i agree) and mandatory military back.
Just like Antonescu
Romania will be like this.
And the youth from TikTok voted him. th-cam.com/video/H7VHzGWccj8/w-d-xo.htmlsi=P66XzgsmAthVQeIT
Starting with the small parties was definitely a bad idea. You lost me at SOS Romania. By that time, you basically repeated all the tropes and silly factoids in the media and came to some silly conclusions too. I;'ve seen some of your previous clips. They were good. This one is not. Moreover, it;s unjustly painting Romania to be a politically schizophrenic country... Romanians watching this already have their points of view, but others will probably come out of it thinking (thanks to you), that we're a bunch of idiots
Not many negative comments here really. Thanks for watching.
@@BenLlywelyn I guess that's because Romanians generally look up to foreigners.
However, you did a poor job on this one. SOS is not to the right of AfD, PNCR is not anti-vax, and PMP being branded as a pro-monarchy party is simply ridiculous.
I was to afraid to watch what labels you stuck to the big parties so I didn;t watch till the end..
@@alopam Then stop crying and move on, I am a legionary and clearly do not agree with the creator politically but it is still an entertaining watch and a great video. Also SOS is to the right of AfD and this has been made clearly regularly, PNCR were anti-vax for a period of time, and PMP have a lot of pro monarchist politicians inside their party and while they are not technically a monarchist party they still have a lot of politicians that support the monarchy and would want to see a return. @BenLlywelyn made a great video, if you are so hurt next time dont comment on someone more educated on this topic than you are
@@dvg9232 Sorry I hurt your feelings, Mr. botfarm9232 :) PMP only brought up the monarchy once, as vote bait in the 2019 election. Hasn;t spoken a word about it since. Monarchy is not among their stated objectives. Not a word about monarchy in their statute. Ergo, making out monarchy to be the defining feature of this party is nonsensical. And certainly not proof of being "educated on the subject" :))
I know this may be hard for you to grasp, but real people have real opinions and - as much as you;d like to send them to the gulag for expressing them - they also like to do that.
Grow up. :)
@@alopam From my understanding the creator is on the left and I am a legionary so though I do not agree with him politically he made a great video and I respect his opinions. As for the PMP topic while the party has not brought it up since they are not a monarchist party specifically, they have multiple politicians within the party that are pro-monarchist. While it is not an official party policy there are more sympathisers in PMP than most parties so it is understandable to see why he thought it was an official policy.
At least you finally found a word in romanian and welsh thats identical, aur.
Aur is very important for the celts. I do not wear aur but i search for it, in aur ore, and from garbage electronics.
Thats because i need aur for my art where i use it as a colourant for pinks and purples and also in the metallic form.
The aur party thogh would be a disaster for Romania.
Good luck with your art!
@@BenLlywelyn Thx.
I will vote for you that lady from USR in the first round.From your part as if you could vote in the romanian elections. So that you didnt made this video for nothing and learned all these boring things about romanian politics.
But she has no chance.
S.O.S and AUR are the crazy parties. The first is lead by the daughter of a Russian spy and the second by an old football club gallery boss.
The daughter of a Russian spy leading a Romanian party? That sounds like a film.
@@BenLlywelyn She tried to hide her identity for so long but it came out and she became a hypocrite.
@@BenLlywelyn and an important adviser to the ex prime minister PSD Adrian Nastase (known as the great corrupt, when press freedom was at its lowest since the revolution). He spends his time nowadays talking praise to Alexandr Dughin together with one of the now independent candidates for presidency, at one time honorary president of early AUR.
@@BenLlywelyn Yep, George Simion was basically a football hooligan in his youth...his highest achievement and the mother of Diana Iovanovici Sosoaca is part of the Freemason organization in Romania, like a Masonic lodge or something. While he constantly screams in her streams how the Illuminati/Masons/Jews want to take over the country and she's the only true Romanian politician to fight back...also, I heard some rumors she's of Serbian or Aromanian heritage...while she promotes xenophobia...She's the most hypocrite of them all, but also useful for the older establishment parties so they can appear more rational and competent.
@@BenLlywelynNow you understand why many people hate SOS. "The daughter of a Russian spy :))". She is with God and she is against the rules that restrict freedom. Yes, she was the biggest promoter against the vaccine by force. Many got vaccinated because they had no choice, they had to, otherwise they would lose their job or other benefits.
25:50 First of all, PNL wasn't the main political party on the right after '89. First it was PNTCD, then it was PDL and only somewhere around 2012 they started to gain some success. Second, PNL is the biggest plague on Romania's economy. No, they are pro-globalist, in the sense that they are pro-banks, pro-corporations but they are also pro-employers who want to pay the minimum wage at every turn and for that minimum wage to be as small as possible. They are nationalist, my ass, they used to be but Iohannis made them submissive to the EU, in so far as that Brussels basically leads us and we are their good bois.
27:35 Iliescu was one of the very few people who spoke against Ceausescu, him and Constantin Pirvulescu. He paid the price for it, got marginalized but at least he had guts to speak against him. Which 99% of the Romanians didn't, even if today all of them claim they did. He built Romanian democracy and he built it solidly, bar the Mineriads. He also gave almost free housing in the 90s, there is a reason why Romanians are the top spot at home ownership in Europe and that reason is called Iliescu, who is now being hated by those very same people. That tells you a bit about Romanian gratitude lol. And yes, PSD is strongly pro-Christian and it used to also be strongly pro-unification with Moldova but now it has abandoned that in favor of the "pro-EU integration" for Moldova which is a scam since the EU won't enlarge itself any time soon. Also, I wouldn't quote Euractiv, they are literally Brussels shills who spout crap and propaganda for their overlords. You don't see articles on Euractiv about how Ursula von der Leyen literally stole millions of Euros with her husband during Covid but they are eager to write stories about petty Romanian thieves lol.
30:54 Actually, no, they are still the main parties here even separated. AUR got 15-20% at the last election, USR (USR is in a downward spiral) got 8% at the last election. What the media won't tell you is that this alliance was formed by the Americans who wanted stability here in the context of the Russo-Ukrainian war. Before the war PNL and USR were in that disastruous coalition I talked about and there was infighting literally every day. As soon as Lloyd Austin landed here PNL basically provoked USR to break apart with them, USR being USR literally did that and soon PNL and PSD joined the coalition. This happened a few months before Putin invaded, when the Americans already had gathered enough evidence to know he'll attack Ukraine. They wanted stability in Romania so Russian propaganda wouldn't gain ground and what better stability to have than with the main political parties which have more than 50% together? So no, it's not about smaller parties gaining ground, it's about America's need for stability in the region. Of course, you won't see this in the media because it would make Romanian democracy seem feeble.
32:08 Couldn't agree more with everything you said here, it's so sad to see the fall of the West, I am rooting for you guys but you don't seem to root for yourselves.
You talked about liberal conservatism in opposition to Romanian communism. Yeah, that's not true. Ceausescu implemented National Communism in Romania which was more conservative than your Reagan and Thatcher conservatives. This is where the left-wing social conservatism comes from.
The prime minister is from my city Buzau.
I heard he is the prime minister after 6 months after he got the job. Thats how much im interested in politics.
He is,, im not moldovan and please dont offend me,, man 😂. As if being from Moldova is an offence.
I suspect he copies a local priest wisdom. Be kind and understand everybody type of thing but from time to time a funny,Buzau barbarian visigoth, sentence gets out and shocks people😂.
Buzau is a country of Muntenia (old wallachia). Other Muntenians make fun of them by calling them Moldovans.
USR is our hope! Hello and multumesc from Romania!
We don't like the listvoting system either but most of romania is politically illiterate(and kept that way by whomever is in power)
You can assume that every political party in Romania that doesn't openly declare its support for Zionism is low key antisemitic. There's a lot of antisemitism in Romania, albeit usually not violent or openly aggressive. Much more worrying things are connections to Russia and other dictatorial regimes. What is a red flag for me personally is the lack of actual social libertarian parties, everything is religious and conservative in one way or another. That makes for a really lopsided political landscape, that's not good moving on.
I hope they are not anti-semitic.
@@BenLlywelyn he is failing his degree in eastern politics, there is no antisemitism. During Ceausescu, Romania did cultivate good relation with the arab states and very good with Syria. House of cards crumbled over the decades everywhere, a chunk of romanians got caught up in events and it is cringe what is going on in the middle east but that is all that is. It would be best if everybody there just stops the insanity.
You see orthodox christian everywhere other than USR because most areas are underdeveloped and the folk mostly listen to the local priests. USR started in the capital and knows it has no chance against PSD in the villages and focuses in the urban areas that are not ruled by 'barons', as they are called. You noticed the bag of $$ example.
A decent analysis on our current political situation. However, things are far deeper and complicated than that.
PNL isn't the same party as the historical one during the monarchy as it has the same people that were or had connections with Ceausescu's PCR.
PSD is formed mostly by the people that were in the Secret Police (Securitate) that chose to betray Ceausescu and transition the country in a more Gorbachev style of system in the early 90s.
The problem with those two establishment parties is that many people in the early 90s pointed out those things and got marginalized by their propaganda and sycophants (see Corneliu Coposu's case).
Today, they use similar practices as they did in the late 90s. During the 2000 election, Iliescu propped a ex-Ceausescu sympathizer turned ultra-right wing extremist (Corneliu Vadim Tudor) in order to force people to vote Iliescu as the lesser evil.
Similar to how AUR and SOS is now, secretly funded by the two main parties so the real anti-corruption and pro-EU/NATO platforms like USR/REPER won't ever win something significant and keep the same 90s style of corruption.
Regarding the family values thing. I think you bought too much of the conservative and Russian propaganda. The "family values" the conservative parties promote are the same "family values" trumpists propose and don't have anything to do with something sustainable within a family system.
Also, regarding LGBTQ rights. Contrary to conservative propaganda, those people have don't even have the right to inheritance from their partner if they die or even hospital visits. The struggle with those people isn't something minor like in a more liberal Western country, we are talking about real human rights here.
Thank you. As much as I could get looking in from the outside. Pro-Kremlin parties worry me as I am pro-NATO.
@@BenLlywelyn Yes, and the Russian propaganda paints us pro-EU/NATO people as some brainwashed idiots that can't think for themselves.
In fact, most of use have no problem pointing out problems within EU and NATO and to make them even better and effective in combating oligarchical states, specially those within them as Hungary and NATO.