Romanian Elections - TikTok, Russia and MAGA(?)

December 4, 2024

Far Right Parties Surge in Romanian Parliamentary Elections

In last Sunday’s parliamentary elections Romanians voted and sent a resounding rebuke to the country’s traditional establishment parties. Three far right parties entered parliament, Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) 18.02%, SOS Romania (SOS) 7.36% and Party of Young People (POT) getting 6.46%. These percentages reflect the vote in the Chamber of Deputies (lower house) but votes in the Senate largely followed the same distribution.

These parties hold a variety of far-right positions including not recognizing the independence of Moldova, supporting Russia and Putin, anti-vax positions and anti-semitism. The 3 parties aren’t homogeneous but have all been eurosceptic or NATO-skeptic at various times. POT particularly seemed to come from nowhere in this election and their party leader Anamaria Gavrilă, previously of AUR, has been recognized as one of the top spreaders of disinformation targeting Ukrainian refugees in Romania.

Previously the only far right party in the Romanian parliament was AUR which got around 9% of the vote in the 2020 election.

Collectively the 4 pro-European parties that passed the electoral threshold could theoretically form a coalition to keep the far right out of power. Those parties are:

• Social Democratic Party (PSD / 21.97% / Center-Left)

• National Liberal Party (PNL / 13.20% / Center-Right)

• Save Romania Union (USR / 12.41% / Center-Right)

• Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (UDMR / 6.34% / ethnic minority representation party)

These results are still preliminary as vote tallies are approved.

Within this group there are major tensions between USR which is seen as more of an outsider and the establishment PSD and PNL parties. The ability of these parties to form a coalition, and what form it might take, will likely be heavily dependent on the outcome of this Sunday’s second round presidential elections.

Prior to the parliamentary elections Moldovan President Maia Sandu had called on Romanians “to vote for a strong, European Romania, for a free country." She noted that her grandparents were Romanians and would not miss the vote if they were still here to cast it. PAS has thrown its backing to Elena Lasconi in the second round.

Unpacking Romania’s First Round Presidential Election

Following a quicker than expected recount of the first round votes Romania’s Constitutional Court recognized no systemic failures in the vote count and certified the results. In the recount, second place Elena Lasconi had slightly increased her lead over third place Marcel Ciolacu. This sets up the second round vote for this Sunday between Elena Lasconi and Călin Georgescu.

Romanian investigative reporters have continued to show links between Russian online accounts and the elaborate social media campaign that supported Georgescu on X, Facebook, Instagram, Telegram and especially TikTok. They tracked accounts closely linked to Russia and supportive of the invasion of Ukraine with hundreds of thousands of followers. These accounts began posting constantly about Georgescu in the past few months.

Much of this analysis was made possible by the Osavul software product which can track social media trends and discussions across hundreds of thousands of accounts and analyze their origins as well as spread. This analysis showed evidence of coordination in the spread of these messages as well as repeated boosting whenever a particular message got serious traction - including translation into French, Italian and Spanish. One of Georgescu’s (many) conspiracy theories did particularly well - the idea that the UN is covering up a global cabal of pedophiles who control the world.¹

Other reports discovered chat groups on Telegram and other platforms disseminating information on how to “hack” various social media algorithms. These included step by step processes on cutting, or slightly altering, Georgescu videos in order to evade platform’s attempts to detect duplicates. At multiple levels journalists are uncovered a well coordinated, sophisticated campaign… where no official campaign existed.

The European Parliament called TikTok executives to testify about interference in Romania’s election on December 3rd. Politico characterized the resulting hearings as “hostile — and at times furious” as MEPs demanded answers from the company as to why their algorithm appeared to have promoted Georgescu at the expense of other candidates.

Georgescu Has Sudden Support… from the Trump Team

This week Romanian media announced that on December 5th Georgescu would broadcast a live interview with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., moderated by Tucker Carlson. The plan was to film in Bucharest nominally in support of RFK Jr’s book “The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health.” Mr. Georgescu wrote the forward to the Romanian language edition of the book.

RFK JR’s book on sale at a store called “Dirt Cowboy” in Texas. The store owners set up a photo of his uncle President Kennedy in order to leverage the family connection. Photo source wikipedia.

Given RFK Jr’s nomination to president-elect Trump’s cabinet this move was guaranteed to be perceived by many as an endorsement by Trump of Georgescu.²

This, predictably, caused a diplomatic incident. Romania’s Ambassador to the US, Andrei Muraru, issued a press release denying the visit and asserting that there is no official support for Georgescu by the incoming Trump administration. He said:

"There is no official support from the American side for candidate Georgescu. President Trump's team denied that any American official of the future administration would travel to Romania in the next period to participate in events with candidate Georgescu. The information is false."

Romanian G4Media report that their sources told them that Kennedy’s visit was canceled when he was informed that it would be a Hatch Act Violation which prohibits US public servants (including nominees) from engaging in certain types of political activities.³

Undeterred, the press announced that RFK Jr. would be replaced by someone not covered by the Hatch Act, former Trump 2020 Campaign Manager Brad Parscale.⁴

Brad Parscal and Donald Trump, source X

Parscale retweeted the above photo of himself and confirmed his upcoming trip writing:

It’s highly likely that Romania will be Great Again⁵ after next Sunday’s election. I’m eager to see what [at]campnucleus⁶ achieves next. For Romanian media: I served as the Digital Director in 2016, Campaign Manager in 2020, and [at]campnucleus helped power 2024.

It is unclear whether or not Tucker Carlson will still attend to moderate the event. However, he is conveniently in the neighborhood since his just finished interviewing Russian Foreign Minister Serghei Lavrov in Moscow.

EU vs Trump?

As Romania enters the home stretch of what is likely the most condensed and chaotic election month in the nation’s history both candidates are trying to get their message out. While Elena Lasconi seeks to stress both her separation from the establishment PSD and PNL parties she also pushes her support for Romania’s position in the EU and for NATO.

Mr. Georgescu has tried to walk back some of his more aggressively anti-NATO, anti-EU and pro-Russian remarks by continually falling back on a “Romania first” narrative. Interestingly, he makes one exception to that. When asked what his position on the war in Ukraine would be he stated:

“Everything President Trump does on this topic, I will categorically do that too."

Appealing to Moldova

Both candidates put out video appeals to voters in Moldova. Elena Lasconi stated (in part):

"You have shown that when you are united, you have kept your country on the pro-European path. I am asking you now to do this for your brothers as well, to keep Romania on the same path to the west, towards the EU and NATO. Together with the USR, I assure you of all the support to make the border crossings faster, so that you don't have to wait 3 hours, but only 15 minutes"

Călin Georgescu said:

"You will have our support, my personal support, for whatever you think is in your interest as a country (...). Moldovans will never be alone, I can tell you that for sure. You don't choose your family, God gives it to you, that's why we can never be separated from anyone. (…) We will support your journey towards a better life in Europe, as we also want in our turn"

In both the first round and the parliamentary elections Moldovan-Romanian dual citizens living in Moldova voted overwhelmingly for Elena Lasconi and USR. Following them, Moldovan voters supported other center-left and center-right parties with comparatively minuscule support for Georgescu or the far right.⁷

What do the Polls Say?

Frankly, after the polls completely missed Georgescu in the first round they probably aren’t worth paying attention to. For what it’s worth CURS, cited by Politico, shows respondents supporting Georgescu by 57.8% to Lasconi’s 42.2%.

Meanwhile, American pollster AltasIntel⁸ favors Lasconi with 47.5% to 45.3% (2.9% unsure and 4.4% planning to boycott).

A Rough Week for Romania

Speaking anecdotally to Moldovan friends I’ve encountered more than one person saying that their friends and relatives in Romania are aghast to experience the interference that they have read about regarding Moldova elections. After years and years of warnings from countries subject to Russian attacks, Romania has been shaken by the sudden onset of political turmoil.

But none of this is “sudden” in reality. Romanian investigative journalists have already started uncovering covert financing and propaganda efforts stretching back at least 8 years. Millions and millions of euros spent pushing narratives and discontentment that came together this month. It’s important to realize that while there is a global anti-establishment backlash, the Kremlin has been fueling that fire in targeted countries for years.

One meme circulating around Moldova pretty clearly hits the nail on the head.

Source Reddit

Others focused on a celebration of how Romanian’s living in Moldova were able to throw critical support behind pro-EU candidates in the first 2 elections.

Source Reddit

Sharing memes is not meant to make light of the situation, and while I would normally avoid them and try and keep the newsletter a bit more “serious,” the fact is that this election turned on social media content. As with other elections around the world the power of TV media and traditional newspapers is receding and people are getting their news elsewhere.

Romania was caught off guard but people still have one more round of voting to make their voice heard. Moldova looks very strong regionally right now but was also nearly overwhelmed by Russian attacks. Countries in Western Europe would do well to learn from this unfolding situation.

Russia’s most prominent fascist philosopher Alexander Dughin, often called “Putin’s Brain,”⁹ neatly tied together this geopolitical mess with the following tweet week:

“Where can the woke-ists and elite Democrats in the US run? Canada? Trudeau was recently at Mar-o-Lago. Israel? There is a war there. London, Paris, Dubai? Exactly where the Russian liberals fled. Or Moldova? This will be part of Romania soon. But Romania will be part of Russia",

So, we live in a timeline where things like this are getting written. Let’s hope that Romania is able to look beyond TikTok and realize what is as stake this weekend.

1. American readers’ ears likely perked up at this one. Keep reading… there’s more to come.

2. It’s hard to imagine another answer. The book came out in 2021 in English and 2022 in Romanian. Stepping out of a presidential transition for a book tour interview 3 days before a presidential election represents pretty clear prioritization of scheduling for both of them. Add Tucker in and all anyone over here sees is Trump’s team.

3. Almost certainly the outgoing Biden administration warned Kennedy or the Trump transition that this would be a legal violation. Also very likely they did this at the urgent request of either the US Embassy in Bucharest or the Romanian government (or both). It is not whatsoever credible that the Trump administration would worry about Hatch Act Violations themselves. This guardrail, provided by the Biden administration, will vanish in January.

4. Recognizing that many of my readers are in Europe… where should I even begin with Brad Parscale? If RFK Jr. has emerged as a major character in Trump Season 2, Parscale was an important but mostly behind the scenes character in Season 1. He joined the Trump Organization prior to Trump entering politics and managed much of the social media campaign for Trump in 2016. He later became campaign manager for Trump in 2020 before he was demoted (and resigned) after organizing the disastrous June 2020 Tulsa rally. That event was held against local COVID restrictions and was later labeled as a superspreader event which resulted in the death of former Republican Presidential Candidate Herman Cain. After Pascale left the campaign his wife called the police to report that her husband was threatening to hurt himself with a firearm. The police intervened and later seized 10 weapons from his house. They also questioned his wife about multiple cuts and bruises which she said were the result of recent domestic abuse - a claim that she later denied to the media in spite of police reports. The whole incident resulted in a viral video of a shirtless, drunk Parscale getting tackled by a SWAT team.

Brad Parscale’s season 2 debut being in Romania was not on my bingo card.

5. Emphasis mine. It is worth noting that Parscale is likely referring to MAGA here and simply recycling Trump’s slogan. It is also worth noting that candidates who say “Make Romania Great Again” (people with political leanings like Georgescu) generally refer to annexing Moldova, parts of Ukraine and maybe little bits of other countries too. This is unambiguously perceived as far-right rhetoric in Romania.

6. This refers to one of Parscale’s companies named “Campaign Nucleus.” It seems to imply that he is being invited because of the role his company played in the Georgescu campaign? only there was no campaign. And no spending. And no vendors. Hmmm….

7. There hasn’t been any good reporting done yet on why Georgescu’s social media campaigns didn’t bleed over into Moldova.

8. Nate Silver gives AtlasIntel an “A” rating in terms of their US election polling. How that transfers to Romania… who knows.

9. A title that gives him *way* more credit than he likely deserves. The Ukrainians did try pretty had to kill him early in the war but most Russia watchers do not consider him to be anywhere near Putin’s inner circle.