While everyone is focused on solutions to get us out of this budgetary mess, another specter is haunting the corridors of Western politics and geopolitics (and I am proud to include Romania among Western societies):
the “maga-ization” of societies, with the broad support of the global and local left, in the sense of distorting facts and their meanings to the point of infesting the social consciousness with a confusion that fuels radicalization.
“Maga” comes from MAGA (Make America Great Again – Donald Trump’s slogan in both his first and second terms), and I used quotation marks because it is dangerously misused. The phenomenon is very dangerous – and we will give very concrete examples below from Western countries and Romania – for two reasons:
it creates insidious pressure on conservative voters (even those who are not at all extremist), insulting their intelligence, radicalizing their political expression, and increasing their numbers by pushing some of them, through exasperation, beyond the extreme, combined with the left’s evasion of explaining its current failure – from social democracy to progressive woke extremism – which refuses to see reality and continues the policies that have radicalized the right.
Who and why turned MAGA into “maga” and what are the damages that this phenomenon is causing with the same tenacity as Russia’s hybrid war against the West and Romania?
MAGA – Make America Great Again – Donald Trump’s slogan in both his first and second terms – has geopolitical connotations and pursues a set of policies that, in simple terms, are designed to achieve three things:
– maintaining the US as a world leader at a time when competition with China has become unbearable and China, together with Russia and Iran, has the declared goal of fighting against the Western democratic system;
– the serious macroeconomic imbalances that globalization, as it has been for the past 40 years, has caused the US;
– bringing the production of goods “back home” so that, with the development of the productive economy, the US can also escape some dependencies on the West’s systemic enemies.
MAGA, therefore, can ONLY refer to the US, as the leading economy, military power, and global influence, which is about to lose this status to the so-called “revisionist forces” listed above, and which must act to prevent this from happening, and very quickly, because China has already armed itself in the Indo-Pacific.
It is clear, therefore, that you cannot say “Make Mizil Great Again,” not even “Make Romania Great Again,” or even “Make Belgium/the Netherlands/Spain Great Again,” etc.
The only ones who could theoretically claim such a slogan are Great Britain and the Commonwealth—100 years ago, Great Britain was the largest empire ever from east to west—but even “Make Great Britain Great Again” no longer fits today, because we no longer judge things in terms of empire.
Romanian “maga” and political deception – why it is dangerous and treacherous for Romania
Both Călin Georgescu and his lab twin George Simion sold the story that they were supporters of MAGA (the real one) for two reasons:
1. Tariff tensions between the US and the EU were misrepresented as geopolitical tensions: the US and the EU are therefore adversaries, “we (i.e. Georgescu-Simion & co) are with the US,” not with Brussels.
2, The European Union rejected them just as it rejected Viktor Orban of Hungary (but did NOT reject Georgia Meloni or the Polish PiS), not for their conservatism, but for their pro-Russian sympathies, actions, and narratives. And while rejected by the EU, what other Western fetish could they have than the US with its MAGA? Especially since it sounded so good – “Make Țăndărei Great Again” – the path to the Great Firefly.
They added two more labels to “maga”: ”sovereignists” and ”anti-globalists.”
In reality, Georgescu-Simion & co. have none of these characteristics, for at least three reasons that place them at the opposite extreme.
1, They are NOT pursuing Romania’s sovereignty, but QUITE THE OPPOSITE: they want to bring Romania under Russia’s influence, as part of Russia’s attempt to regain the states that freed themselves from communism in 1989.
However, if you listen to the narratives and speeches and follow the events and claims of the last 3-4 years, ABSOLUTELY everything feeds into and aligns with Russia’s narratives, actions, and interests in Romania and the region.
2. It is NOT American MAGA—with a strong private economy and unparalleled economic freedom—that the two are seeking to establish in Romania, but rather “nationalization of companies.” When it comes to reinstating a low-level communism, Ceaușescu was more lenient: he hated Russia from his guts because he knew what Russia meant to us in history and he knew how Russia treated its vassals.
3. MAGA is against the revisionist China-Russia-Iran triangle, even if the discussion takes place in the rarefied air of diplomacy between a few major geo-players, where not Călin Georgescu’s aliens are those who give orders to the terrestrial political giants.
4. As for this “anti-globalism”, crafted at the officers mess in Vienna, what can we say…
The first “maga” was Liviu Dragnea
I have no doubt what our “maga” would have done with the American MAGA once it had come to power – Liviu Dragnea, Călin Georgescu, and even George Simion tell us so.
First of all, let’s analyze a deception: Trump’s US did NOT support George Simion or Victor Ponta, despite the photo and video festivals broadcast “from the scene” and from Mar-a-Lago: in the US, lobbying is “sacrosanct,” a 10-minute PR chat worth millions of dollars is part of the game, especially since NO commitments are made—Trump Jr. was very discreet with both Ponta and Simion during his visit to Bulgaria and Romania.
Do we still remember the famous photo of Liviu Dragnea, visiting Washington during Trump’s first term, leaning between two waiters with his hand outstretched to the American president? Dragnea was the first “maga,” he too needed to cling to the “sovereignty” of the firefly, even though at home he was doing pretty much what Georgescu & Simion were saying at the time: no Deveselu, no “foreign troops” on Romanian territory, decisions taken in favor of Russia (by promoting offshore legislation he simply drove EXXON away, claiming that the additional royalties would earn us $10 billion in a decade (roughly what is stolen in Romania in a month) and we cannot help but wonder what the war in the Black Sea would look like now if the belligerents had to protect the American oil giant’s facilities.
Only one questionable episode that George Simion could have invoked in support was Vance’s statement at the NATO meeting, where he raised the issue of Romanian democracy, given that the elections had to be canceled. But JD Vance’s message was not addressed to Romania – but to the entire European Union: in the 80 years of the EU’s existence, has anyone ever canceled elections?
The only support – and a rather amusing one – came from Elon Musk, whom George Simion’s electorate has heard of as much as Betty Lou has heard of Mahabharatha. And Elon Musk does not represent the US or the Trump administration – he is a man with psychological disorders that he acknowledges, he has an interest in selling Starlink here before the Europeans make their own, and he snorts cocaine, which he also acknowledges.
The danger: the world’s anti-maga folks and the anti-maga folks in Romania
I mentioned earlier that the fraudulent association of the MAGA concept with all right-wing movements in the West is based on perfidy and stupidity, and that it’s dangerous. The perfidy is ideological:
Without questioning the concept, the international left is trying to link the radicalization of the West to Donald Trump’s policies, precisely to cover up its own excesses and extremism:
– Will the German left say that the rise of the AfD is due to uncontrolled migration combined with green policies that are destroying Germany’s major economic players?
– Will the left in Sweden and Finland – which has been swept away after 99 years in power – say that the right has been brought to power by rising crime as a result of uncontrolled migration?
– Will the Dutch left say that the radical right was brought to power by the balance added by the new party of farmers desperate to cut 30% of their livestock because they are polluting the planet?
Will the Canadian left, faced with the spectacular rise of the right, say that we are dealing with the wokification of cities, to the point of requiring schools to fly the LGBT flag and start painting pedestrian crossings in rainbow colors? Will the Canadian left say that it won the election by a whisker, precisely because of Trump’s statements that he would attach the Canadian economy?
– and so on
All these social truths had to be covered up with a hastily concocted ideological argument, and so we had – through the global media, or even through the global academic world radicalized to the left – the transition from MAGA to “maga,” with the next step, which is rather small and unsatisfactory: Trumpism and anti-Trumpism.
As for Romania, our maga is messed up:
Here, the ideological perfidy is perpetrated only by a few islands in a sea of stupidity and superficiality – which is a great danger: a danger because it legitimizes belonging to MAGA and, beyond MAGA, to European sovereignists, of the pan-Orthodox and pro-Russian Romanian nationalism, embodied by AUR, Georgescu, Simion & co., given that they are not targeting sovereignty, but the freedom to drink from the “Russian wisdom” fountain. And instead of fighting against the pro-Russianism of Georgescu-Simion & co, the Romanian “anti-maga” is actually playing into their hands.
Ideologically, Romanian “anti-maga” goes, as far as it does, for ‘projects’ (American or European) for the “preservation of democracy” – and if these reach the “independent press” (the issue of the independent press is a separate topic) and all kinds of influences, it’s for the better.
But on the stupidity and superficiality front, confusion reigns supreme: last night on TV – the presenter (on a quality channel, not EtnoTV) mentioned: “George Simion’s links with the extreme right-wing PiS party in Poland,” “the pro-Russian PiS party” – and so the battle rages on. The guests on the set—educated people in their right mind —tried, somewhat half-heartedly, to point out that there is no question of extremism among Polish nationalists. But the presenter kept hammering away, about the pro-Russian PiS party – and none of the guests got angry enough to say to him emphatically, “Sir, it’s your business if you’re stupid or if you’re playing into Simion’s hands out of superficiality, but you’re sitting here with me, we’re live on air and people might not be able to tell which one of us is stupid.”
In reality, PiS was founded and has governed Poland on the basis of pragmatic economic nationalism, at a time when Donald Trump could not even imagine that he would become president and come up with MAGA. PiS is anti-Russian and has a pool of leaders of a caliber that many European states would not even dare to dream of.
You may disagree with PiS’s ideology, but you cannot fail to see that it is anti-AUR in its policies, that George Simion’s electoral meetings are circumstantial, based on the fact that AUR brings some votes to the PiS political group in the European Parliament.
Or: a few months ago, another wacko from a very pro-American (but “anti-Trump”) publication latched onto a statement made by Trump and wrote an article with a headline claiming that America “has become Romania’s enemy.”
After about half an hour—when his pulse returned to normal and the substances in his brain responsible for good judgement had time to do their job—he removed the word “enemy” from the headline, perhaps remembering that he could lose an “ass to kiss,” as Băsescu contemptuously referred to him. The change did not go unnoticed – a screenshot of the two headlines side by side sparked laughter on the internet.
That’s pretty much it with the Romanian “maga,” from the “sovereignists” to their enemies: such sovereignists for such enemies.
Why doesn’t the European Union conceptualize the problems that have brought it to the brink of a right-wing radicalization of societies? Or at least the European left – why doesn’t it review its once powerful social democracy and stop pouring itself into the extremes of woke progressivism, which is sending its electorate into the arms of populists of all ideologies, and even beyond any ideology?
And if the parties have been emptied of authentic leadership, why doesn’t the left-wing press at least synthesize, from within societies, the problems that people—citizens of all beliefs, those who sustain the economies and prosperity of these countries—desperately reject at the ballot box?
Why, to the benefit of the true far right, is everyone trying to sell a painted “maga” as a parakeet – that is, continuing to play with fire?
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