Democracy in Southeastern Europe is struggling as Romania becomes the EU’s only “hybrid regime” amid rising ultranationalism, controversial political figures and ongoing protests across the region, all fuelled by Moscow and Washington.
Anti-democratic forces know no nation, nationalities, races or ethnic groups … Anti-democratic forces are based in small groups of extremely wealthy people who want to control the universe and become king of the world.
It has nothing to do with nations … it has everything to do with wealth and those with wealth have no allegiance to any nation … as matter of fact, they believe that nations should have allegiance to them.
The extreme concentrations of power in fewer and fewer individuals that we see in many countries is definitely one driver of global fascism.
But russian influence operations is another big driver, as are increasing poverty and general resource-stress and anxiety brought about by climate crisis and the stasis inflicted by incompetent governments which haven’t produced meaningful, beneficial change for their people in decades.
Wait, Romania is EU’s only “hybrid regime” but Hungary isn’t?
The protests across Southeastern Europe remain in the spotlight as they try to change the deficit regimes into something better. In Romania, when Georgescu’s candidacy was once again rejected, his supporters began to break through the fences set up by the police, throwing various objects such as bottles and stones, as reported by David Leonard Bularca and Rebecca Popescu of the Romanian news platform Hotnews.
Watching live footage of the protest, I saw some of the police limping after being hit by stones. Similarly violent scenes unfolded in Greece, where the second anniversary of the Tempi train disaster sparked what the Greek newspaper Efimerida ton Syntakton described as the largest rally in the country’s history. Meanwhile in Serbia, students continue to protest, even resorting to camping out between the Serbian parliament and the presidency, according to Danas.
I don’t like the comparisons here between protesters. The ones we had in Romania, the Georgescu fans, were older and brought in via buses, organized mostly by the AUR party and likely joined by some soccer fan groups. These were anti-democratic protests, more in the spirit of the US 1/6 ones, but much smaller and less violent. The Georgescu fans were very upset that their “online collective” size wasn’t matched by the presence in real space.
Also, the Serbian “students” camping outside the presidency were brought there by the President, to act as cannon fodder against the actual student protests. It’s, to put it mildly, interesting that this outlet either doesn’t know or chooses to ignore that.
Interesting article that tries to cover way too broad territory.
Sure, there is a common denominator in most scenarios - that of Russian hybrid warfare - but each country’s specific scenario is impossible to understand in just one or two paragraphs.
