Journalist Talks | Adina Marincea (Bucharest) | Neo-fascism in Romanian Politics and the Role of Social Media

Călin Georgescu’s success in the first round of the presidential elections in Romania in 2024 took many by surprise. A candidate with little notoriety in mainstream media, not included in the political surveys, with (neo)fascist affinities and an anti-science, conspiracist worldview, often reiterating Kremlin’s narratives, managed to win the votes of over two million Romanians. However, Călin Georgescu was not a new entry on the political scene, and his radical far-right views are the expression of a larger phenomenon: the resurgence of fascist thinking, that started as soon as the ‘90s and had its roots even deeper, in national-communism. This talk will provide an overview of the post-’89 build-up of a neo-fascist mindset and infrastructure that set the stage for its breakthrough into mainstream politics in the 2020 elections, when the populist right-wing party with neo-fascist overtones AUR gained seats in parliament. This moment marked the mainstreamization of far-right discourse, which was weaponized by Călin Georgescu in his 2024 electoral success. Social media such as Facebook and TikTok also played a role in boosting far right and neo-fascist parties and candidates, showing how the democratizing potential of such platforms can be weaponized to subvert democracy.

Adina Marincea is a journalist and researcher at the “Elie Wiesel” National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania.

Journalist Talks Series is a part of the seeFField project of the University Regensburg in cooperation with the Volkshochschule Regensburg and the Leibniz ScienceCampus.