Make Romania ESCU again

The first linguistic coup in history

I was in Romania last week. My return flight happened to fall on what should have been the second round of Romania’s presidential election. That vote, however, was cancelled. I discovered this the day before my departure flight when I walked to the Parliament building, curious to visit the largest administrative building in the world after the Pentagon, only to find that the gates were locked.

I Traveled to the Palace of Parliament and All I Got Was This Lousy Picture

A pair of cops stationed outside Parliament told me it was closed “due to an emergency.” This “emergency,” I soon discovered, was that Romania’s High Court had annulled the first-round election results. Why? Romania’s intelligence authorities released a report alleging Russian interference through TikTok.

Sound familiar? The same allegations were made in 2016 after Donald Trump won. Hilary Clinton and her media allies told us that his win was due to Russian interference through social media bots. Trump was Putin’s unwitting stooge. Worse, he was Putin’s puppet. Worst, he was fatally compromised because Putin had footage of him playing water sports with prostitutes in Moscow hotels. This story went on and on,¹ despite it being Trump who armed Ukraine in 2018, reversing Obama’s policy of refusing lethal aid to Ukraine, and who withdrew from the INF missile treaty with Russia.

I’m no Trump cheerleader, but these are facts. And having spent most of my life leapfrogging between fact and fiction, I have a nose for it when others do too. You can’t defend democracy by subverting it. And, forget TikTok, if we intend to descry election interference, one need look no further than U.S. foreign policy, with its soft coups and hard coups and Voice of America coos. We’d have to cancel half the world’s electoral results since World War II.

After Poland, Romania has seen the largest influx of Ukrainian refugees, which may help explain why Calin Georgescu, a skeptic over Romania’s involvement with NATO, outperformed in the election. Even so, he was expected to come in fourth at best, so his first-round victory was a shock (“Ultranationalist leads first round of Romania’s Presidential Election,” “Romania in shock after far-right populist enters presidential election’s runoff,” etc). But it’s not such a shock if you look at the recent results of its neighbors. The nationalist, anti-establishment vote has been the norm in European elections since Brexit.

Of course, in Romania, the memory of the Soviet occupation is strong, and the Romanians I spoke with viewed Russia as a major threat. At the same time, however, all were cleareyed in recognizing that U.S. involvement in the Ukraine war had nothing to do with a desire to promote democracy, resist autocracy, or any other such saccharine legacy media myths.

So did Russia interfere with the Romanian election through TikTok vids? Maybe. Maybe not. Work is now underway to make Romania’s NATO Black Sea base the largest NATO military base in Europe, so Russia clearly has a stake in the election results. It will obviously support the candidate in its perceived interest.

Interference or not, what I do know is that cancelling elections is not a great precedent. As with suppressing speech, it’s a double-edged sword. It might work in the short term for skewering your opponents – to use a cherished tactic of Romania’s most notorious leader, Vlad the Impaler – but in the long term, like Vlad, you may get your head cut off.

I have a different theory as to why Georgescu won the first round and why the results were then nullified. It has nothing to do with Russian interference. The great bear to the west is, I will argue, a red herring.

Here goes:

Look closely at the surname of the first round winner: Georgescu. Note his suffix: “escu.” Now look at the string of the following Romanian heads of state since 1967 (excluding the two brief interim presidents): Ceausescu (1967-1989), Iliescu (1989-1996), Constantinescu (the best-named of the “escus” in my unbiased opinion, 1996-2000), Iliescu (yes, him again, a bit Trumpy, really, 2000-2004), Băsescu (2004-2014), Klaus Iohannis (2014 – present).

As you can see, in the last roughly six decades, only the current head of state, Klaus Iohannis has lacked the escu suffix. Iohannis is an aberration among a long line of escus. This is a clear and illiberal violation of Romanian linguistic norms. Some might call it treachery. Beware Romanians bearing Greek surnames.

Emile Constantinescu, former Romanian President and leader of the Make Goatees Great Again Movement

With this 60-year history of leadership in mind, now consider the results of last month’s first round of voting, which as mentioned was annulled. From 1^st to 7^th, they were:

1. Georgescu

2. Lasconi

3. Ciolacu

4. Simion

5. Ciucă

6. Geoană

7. Kelemen

Notice anything? Look again.

That’s right, the only escu in these top seven was the winner, Calin Georgescu. Voi​là! Romania’s shock election results had nothing to do with Russian interference or NATO expansion. It was a nationalist linguistic movement seeking to re-establish the great escu suffix for Romanian heads of state. The public, simply put, voted escu, or “son of.” Georgescu may mean “son of George,” but as with all escus, the subtext is Son of Romania. So what seems to be happening here is that the Non-Escu-Suffixed Establishment of Iohannis and his cadre are trying to pull a linguistic coup and irrevocably alter the makeup of Romanian sovereignty for their globalist linguistic agenda. They eschew the escu.

There you have it, the first case of election interference on etymological grounds. I say, for better or worse, if the public votes escu, let them have escu.

I leave you with this catchy Romanian classic “Made in Romania,” which promotes a welcoming albeit controversial message of unity—that all Romanians are Romanian, no matter their suffix.

Yours in linguistic self-determination,

Trăiască România!

-Consantine(escu)

1. This was a thrilling time for American liberalism. It was a spy novel unfolding in the halls of power, a real-life hybrid of The Americans and House of Cards. MSNBC leaned into it and made a killing. The Russians! The Russians! The RUSSIANS!