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Daily Stormer
June 19, 2014
All people, by their nature, love nationalism. It is what brings us together, what makes us feel that we belong.
Romania’s governing Social Democratic Party (PSD) looks set to base its presidential election campaign on conservative nationalism that mixes religious devotion and home security.
The party won the European elections in May, getting 38 percent of the vote on a campaign based around the slogan: “We will send people to Brussels who are proud of being Romanians – who will defend Romania.”
This nationalistic “defence” against an unidentified assailant was at the heart of a campaign which looks set to frame prime minister Victor Ponta’s pitch for the presidency in the November poll.
In his victory speech after the European elections, Ponta said his party would continue to focus on what he called the traditional values of Romania: “the army, church and family”.
“And we must protect these values,” he said.
He added that the core of the campaign for the presidential elections will be the party slogan: “Proud to be Romanians.”
Although politicians’ rhetoric is not always taken as a serious indication of policy direction, this shows a hardening of religious nationalist doctrine in Romania.
This is in stark contrast to the social democracy face that the party shows towards the European Union.
For example, this month the ministry of education and the Romanian Orthodox church signed an accord giving the church the power to sack religion teachers in schools – a move seen by civil society as an “alarm signal” about the interference of the church in state matters.
The PSD has its roots in the Romanian Communist Party (PCR), which pursued a nationalistic, anti-minority and anti-semitic policy after 1946, especially in the last two decades of the rule of Nicolae Ceausescu.
One political scientist who has researched the political elite in Romania and who wished to stay anonymous, argues that the PSD is captive to the same electorate the Communist party created – a poor and uneducated rank and file.
“The PSD is responsible for the stagnation of Romania,” he says. “It took over the structures and mentalities of the former PCR and there is no authentic reform to free the country from this state.”
In its electoral campaign, the PSD used folk motifs and photos of the statues of Romanian independence fighters, such as Mihai Viteazul, the first unifier of the Romanian principalities in 1600.
Vintila Mihailescu, a leading Romanian cultural anthropologist, argues that nationalistic props are an important electoral resource for all parties.
But he adds: “The PSD electorate understands this language more easily, so there is a certain continuity [from the communist period].”
Ultimately, this is clearly a ploy to keep votes away from real nationalist parties. But the fact that they are admitting that this is the message that works is a big step in the right direction.
