[HN Gopher] Romanian court annuls result of presidential electio...
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Romanian court annuls result of presidential election first round
Author : vinni2
Score : 504 points
Date : 2024-12-06 13:55 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.com)
| OkayBuddy44 wrote:
| So annoying when the proles don't vote the way they're told
| mariusor wrote:
| I mean, the proles _did_ vote the way they were told. The
| problem is that they didn 't vote the way "the party" wanted
| them to.
| bamboozled wrote:
| They voted for a candidate who broke established Romanian law
| ?
| throwaway655368 wrote:
| The next logical step should be to jail these pesky bad voters.
| If they supported the candidate, whose crime was to campaign on
| TikTok, then they are clearly complicit in that crime and put
| the democracy in danger. May be they even use TikTok
| themselves!
|
| I'm sure all this can be convincingly justified using the
| "paradox of tolerance" phrase.
| tim333 wrote:
| The problem is they were told which way to vote by the
| Kremlin's proxies. And in a sneaky way. There's some history
| there:
|
| >During the Soviet occupation of Romania, the communist-
| dominated government called for new elections in 1946, which
| they fraudulently won, with a fabricated 70% majority of the
| vote.
|
| and then they were stuck with an iffy Russian backed
| dictatorship until:
|
| >Ceausescu greatly extended the authority of the Securitate
| secret police and imposed a severe cult of personality, which
| led to a dramatic decrease in the dictator's popularity and
| culminated in his overthrow in the violent Romanian Revolution
| of December 1989 in which thousands were killed or injured.
|
| After that they probably thought enough with Russia rigging
| elections and imposing dictators already.
| anon291 wrote:
| The article presents no evidence that the election was
| fraudulent.
| piva00 wrote:
| You can go read the CCR decision yourself:
| https://www.ccr.ro/comunicat-de-presa-6-decembrie-2024/
|
| Please do some research before the knee-jerk reactionary take,
| it's more conducive to any discussion than inviting the mouth-
| frothers to fester about something you and they have no idea
| about.
| anon291 wrote:
| I cannot read Romanian. Given the language barrier one would
| expect the BBC to at least do a bit of translation for its
| English speaking audience.
| simion314 wrote:
| There should be links to other artciles on BBC, like TicTok
| admitting the bots farms used, a big one from Ruzzia.
|
| We here in Romania are following this for weeks so we know
| all this details, hard to find now english links, but
| imagine some candiate having the guts to declare zero
| spending in campaign, like how is this possible?
|
| I will try to find the tTic Tok admitting the issue, maybe
| then the skeptics can accept it or maybe they will claim
| Romanian gov controls Tc Tok
|
| Edit
|
| https://www.politico.eu/article/tiktok-
| removed-3-influence-c...
|
| https://www.dw.com/en/eu-probes-tiktok-after-surprise-win-
| in...
|
| I am sure there is more but Tic Tok found this "by
| mistake", they also did nothing about electoral content not
| being labeled correctly.
| anon291 wrote:
| I mean, even if his campaign finances are declared wrong,
| it's still shocking that this leads to an election being
| overturned.
|
| Using my own experience in America, misdeclaring finances
| (which has been done by Clinton, Trump, Biden, Harris,
| etc) leads to fines from the FEC, not an election being
| overturned.
| simion314 wrote:
| The point with the fraud is to make it clear the guy
| character, what character or personality trait someone
| has if the declares ZERO money spent but in fact he spent
| a lot ? Would such a person accept help from his friends
| in Kremlin? Would he screw Romanians over ?
|
| Keeping in mind this and the fact Ruzzian troll networks
| were involved this makes it so our country president
| would be decided in Kremlin, this is not democratic.
|
| I know in USA you elected a criminal but I would prefer
| we do not have a criminal and Ruzzian puppet
| anon291 wrote:
| In a democracy, the people are allowed to elect a
| criminal into office.
|
| Not allowing that simply allows one administration to
| weaponize justice to keep their opponents out of office.
|
| This adherence to 'norms' that many democratic states
| insist on today is the reason why so many of them end up
| falling to dictatorships and America just keeps chugging
| along.
|
| > The point with the fraud is to make it clear the guy
| character, what character or personality trait someone
| has if the declares ZERO money spent but in fact he spent
| a lot ? Would such a person accept help from his friends
| in Kremlin? Would he screw Romanians over ?
|
| Once again, I'll reiterate my point that you seem to be
| confused as to what democracy is. You're allowed to be a
| shitty person _and_ to be elected if that 's what your
| country's people want. The time to make these arguments
| was before the election. And the people to make them to
| was your fellow countrymen, not random foreigners online.
| If there was some confusion regarding that, maybe you'll
| have better luck next time.
| simion314 wrote:
| >Once again, I'll reiterate my point that you seem to be
| confused as to what democracy is. You're allowed to be a
| shitty person and to be elected if that's what your
| country's people want. The time to make these arguments
| was before the election. And the people to make them to
| was your fellow countrymen, not random foreigners online.
| If there was some confusion regarding that, maybe you'll
| have better luck next time.
|
| There is no confussion, it is legal to ask the courts to
| declare an election void because illegal stuff happened
| like fraud, or the candidate did not followed the
| electoral laws. It is a shame that the fraud or Ruzzian
| influence evidence did not appeared before the campaign
| started but they were clever about this, the guy was less
| then 1% in oppinions polls and nobody know who he is.
|
| Theadministration does not order the Constitutional Court
| around and the vote was in unanimity. I suggest you keep
| an eye on this and what new evidence will appear, sorry
| that our system does not allow a criminal to be president
| if he managed to trick some people.
|
| Also probably you are not aware, the presidential
| elections were in two tours, so the fascist guy gained
| 25% votes , he did not win 51% votes and the elections
| were cancelled , the final tour was cancelled because of
| the interference.
| not_your_vase wrote:
| To be fair, your link lacks this info also.
|
| Firefox's translation (also, apparently FF can now translate
| from Romanian, nice!): > The arguments
| retained in the reasoning of the solution given by the Plenum
| of the Constitutional Court will be presented in the
| decision, which will be published in the Official Gazette of
| Romania, Part I.
|
| Basically "we'll tell you later"
| mionhe wrote:
| Simpler translation would be that the entire decision,
| including all of the arguments that led to it, will be
| published in said gazette.
|
| Still "we'll tell you later", but a little easier to parse
| than the ML.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Did you read it? It's a complete joke.
|
| PRESS RELEASE, December 6, 2024 In the meeting of December 6,
| 2024, the Constitutional Court, in order to ensure the
| correctness and legality of the electoral process, exercised
| its attribution provided by art. 146 letter f) of the
| Constitution and, with unanimity of votes, decided the
| following: 1. Pursuant to art. 146 letter f) of the
| Constitution, annuls the entire electoral process regarding
| the election of the President of Romania, carried out on the
| basis of Government Decision no. 756/2024 regarding the
| establishment of the date of the elections for the President
| of Romania in 2024 and Government Decision no. .1061/2024
| regarding the approval of the Calendar Program for carrying
| out the necessary actions for the election of the President
| of Romania in the year 2024. 2. The electoral process for the
| election of the President of Romania will be resumed in its
| entirety, with the Government going to set a new date for the
| election of the President of Romania, as well as a new
| calendar program for carrying out the necessary actions. 3.
| This decision is final and generally binding, it is published
| in the Official Gazette of Romania, Part I, and is brought to
| public knowledge. * The arguments retained in justifying the
| solution pronounced by the Plenary of the Constitutional
| Court will be presented in the content of the decision, which
| will be published in the Official Gazette of Romania, Part I.
| The Department of External Relations, Press Relations and
| Protocol of the Constitutional Court
| braincat31415 wrote:
| Mind pointing out where is the evidence at the link you
| provided? Maybe you should take your own suggestion.
| kadabra9 wrote:
| I don't know a lot about this specific situation, but this seems
| to set a dangerous precedent where governments can just claim
| "election interference" or "misinformation" any time their
| candidate loses to get a do-over.
| tokai wrote:
| Its not the government doing it. Its the constitutional court
| on the basis of some kind of evidence. That's how its supposed
| to work. It would be way more dangerous to let other states
| meddle in your elections. If the results was true the first
| time around it'll be the same next time. So in many ways there
| is no good reason to not have a redo if there is anykind of
| evidence of foul play.
| anon291 wrote:
| The court is the government.
|
| > If the results was true the first time around it'll be the
| same next time.
|
| Not necessarily. Given that the opposition party now knows
| what the people seem to want, they can do all sorts of
| things, especially given the knowledge that the court will
| strike it down should the election not go in their favor.
| simion314 wrote:
| >Not necessarily. Given that the opposition party now knows
| what the people seem to want, they can do all sorts of
| things, especially given the knowledge that the court will
| strike it down should the election not go in their favor.
|
| Like what? they will make the opponents praise Putin and
| make China and Ruzzia send them funds to cancel the
| election again?
| anon291 wrote:
| A country is actually allowed to vote for a pro-Putin
| politician.
|
| You may not _like_ it, but that 's not what this is
| about.
|
| Also, it's actually _okay_ to be against democracy. You
| should just say it instead of dancing around it though.
| ImHereToVote wrote:
| People are simply lacking in empathy. Imagine you living
| so close to a proxy war. Imagine you have children. Which
| way would you vote?
| sfjailbird wrote:
| I think it's the _" some kind of evidence"_ that's the
| important part.
| idunnoman1222 wrote:
| The right wing party literally made TikTok's that the
| governing part(ies?) didn't like, but which apparently
| resonated with the people they labelled them as
| misinformation. Have you heard that one before?
| tzs wrote:
| What do you mean by "the" right wing party? Romania has
| several right wing parties, none of which supported
| Georgescu. He ran as an independent.
| IceHegel wrote:
| Looking like that was the correct choice.
| IceHegel wrote:
| Under your theory, could the Supreme Court have canceled the
| 2016 election result because of Russian interference?
| dataflow wrote:
| What does the US constitution say about the court's role in
| elections? What does the Romanian constitution say?
|
| (Though to be honest they could still make whatever ruling
| they want in the US. It's probably cause chaos as people
| try to figure out if they're bound by it.)
| piva00 wrote:
| You can read about it, the decision just came out and it's
| public. Georgescu declared spending _zero_ euros in funding
| while investigations found about 50mEUR spent.
|
| The Constitutional Court has determined election interference
| based on what they got, it's better to do a do-over rather than
| allow Russia interference in the democratic process.
|
| You can claim the slippery slope fallacy but given the
| potential catastrophe of allowing Russian interference I'll
| side with the CCR on this case.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| But we are wary of giving up fundamental democratic
| protections of our votes for the boogeyman of Russia. There
| will always be a Boogeyman. There won't always be free and
| fair elections.
|
| Campaign finance violations are serious. Why is the vote
| allowed to continue if they happen? Why is this not probed
| well before the election?
| mariusor wrote:
| In fairness he can't declare funds that haven't passed
| directly through his campaign accounts. It's a transparent
| loop hole, but it needs to be patched, not used as post-
| factum evidence supporting wrong doing.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| That would have been a good argument sometime while the
| campaign was still in progress. Once the votes were cast, any
| court would recognize this is a fait accompli. It's crazy to
| annull elections (a procedure which no law whatsoever, nor
| the Constitution, even mentions, it was invented wholesale by
| the CCR during their meeting today) based on campaign finance
| violations, even ones involving outside interference.
|
| What would have happened if the interference were discovered
| only next year? Would you have been ok with annuling the
| elections after the new president was already in office? This
| is no different whatsoever, after the first round was
| finished.
|
| I hated and feared CG as much as anyone, but this court
| decision is obviously crazy and undemocratic (as pointed out
| by the other candidate in the second round as well).
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| The supposed campaign on tiktok ran days before the
| election. It is remarkable for state organs to be able to
| act within a week or so. Annulling the election in this
| situation seems the right thing to do. A similar
| cancellation of results happened in Austria in 2016. A year
| later it indeed would have been too late.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| No, the supposed campaign started one month before the
| elections. It ramped up maybe in the last few days before
| the election. But you don't convince 2 million people to
| vote for a crazed maniac like CG in two days of
| manipulation.
| gred wrote:
| Agreed. You do your best to counter and mitigate this type of
| foreign influence, but once people have voted, they have voted.
| Once you start to rationalize "but they only voted this way
| because X", it will be tempting to expand X in a way that
| disenfranchises and disempowers citizens.
| simion314 wrote:
| >Agreed. You do your best to counter and mitigate this type
| of foreign influence, but once people have voted, they have
| voted. Once you start to rationalize "but they only voted
| this way because X", it will be tempting to expand X in a way
| that disenfranchises and disempowers citizens.
|
| And you ignore the laws? You discover that the candidate do
| illegal stuff?
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| Is there a law that calls for election annulment if a
| candidate does illegal stuff? I doubt. In fact, usually
| there are specifically no such laws to avoid initiatives
| for political prosecution.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Over in Japan, the newly re-elected Hyogo Prefecture
| Governor is being sued for violating electoral laws
| concerning his use of social media, with the penalties
| including voiding of the election and the stripping of
| his electoral rights.
|
| Incidentally, the Governor was re-elected in an upset
| victory after being ousted by the Hyogo Prefecture
| Legislature over alleged power harrassment scandals. Yes,
| the Japanese establishment _hates_ him and are doing
| anything possible to get rid of him.
| rbanffy wrote:
| > and are doing anything possible to get rid of him.
|
| As long as it's legal, there is nothing very wrong with
| it. If he committed crimes that influenced the election,
| then the election is void and he should be banned from
| politics.
| gred wrote:
| No, I'm taking a step back and saying that if the law
| provides for nullifying the election, it's a bad law. It's
| an even worse law if no due process is involved (i.e.
| "nothing has been proven against this candidate in court as
| of yet, but we're going to go ahead and nullify the
| election because he benefited from foreign interference, as
| far as we can tell based on what our intelligence services
| are telling us").
|
| For what it's worth, it sounds like the runner-up candidate
| agrees:
|
| > Lasconi condemned the court's ruling as "illegal" and
| "immoral", saying "today is the moment when the Romanian
| state has trampled on democracy".
| simion314 wrote:
| >No, I'm taking a step back and saying that if the law
| provides for nullifying the election, it's a bad law.
| It's an even worse law if no due process is involved
| (i.e. "nothing has been proven against this candidate in
| court as of yet, but we're going to go ahead and nullify
| the election because he benefited from foreign
| interference, as far as we can tell based on what our
| intelligence services are telling us").
|
| Sorry, this is the constitution, it does not allow for
| years of appeals and dragging your feat. Are you really
| believing that the guy used zero funds and you need a
| court and 3 appeals to prove to you that he used more
| then ZERO funds ?
| gred wrote:
| I'm not familiar with the Romanian constitution, but due
| process is fundamental to the US constitution:
|
| > No person shall ... be deprived of life, liberty, or
| property, without due process of law.
|
| The US constitution does not just "allow" for years of
| appeals, it _guarantees_ your right to defend yourself
| through that process.
| simion314 wrote:
| >The US constitution does not just "allow" for years of
| appeals, it guarantees your right to defend yourself
| through that process.
|
| Don't worry, the pro Ruzzian traitor will have his
| appeals and lawyers to defend him from fraud and the
| other accusations, the elections were cancelled and will
| be repeated so we do not let Ruzzia influence them.
|
| What does the US constitution say if it is discovered
| that there is credible evidence for :
|
| 1 a foreign power was involved in election and it
| affected the results (illegal in Romania)
|
| 2 the candidate that commuted fraud by not declaring the
| money he used (this is illegal in Romania)
|
| 3 the guy was unknown for the media and public before
| election so nobody checked him, now that Tic Tok made him
| popular it was also discovered a lot of bullshit he done,
| one of them is glorifying Iron Guard a fascist party in
| Romania's past (it is illegal to do that here)
|
| In USA you let Ruzzia to chose your president because you
| are only 99% sure? Then won't the president pardon
| himself? Create some civil war?
|
| As I said the constitutional Court decided to repeat the
| election, they did not decided to jail the guy, or
| execute him, or even block him to run in Ruzzia.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| No, you prosecute and send for trial the people that
| committed the illegal acts. If that means deposing the
| acting president, the you do that - but you do it when you
| have the proof and a legitimate trial. Not the
| Constitutional Court inventing a power for itself that it
| doesn't have, based on vague wording in the Constitution
| (specifically, they based this decision on an article of
| the Romanian Constitution that says that "[the
| Constitutional Court] ensures that the procedures for the
| election of the Romanian President are followed, and
| confirms the results of the vote", with no further
| stipulations - article 146, paragraph f).
| dataflow wrote:
| > Not the Constitutional Court inventing a power for
| itself that it doesn't have, based on vague wording in
| the Constitution (specifically, they based this decision
| on an article of the Romanian Constitution that says that
| "[the Constitutional Court] ensures that the procedures
| for the election of the Romanian President are followed,
| and confirms the results of the vote", with no further
| stipulations - article 146, paragraph f).
|
| What powers do you believe this grants, that would make
| logical sense in a situation like this?
| tsimionescu wrote:
| None essentially. It just enables other specific laws
| that organize the functioning of the court in this area,
| and perhaps it enables the court to settle questions on
| whether electoral processes have been followed.
|
| For example, there is a specific law that specifies how
| the CCR can verify the results of the election (that
| certain institutions send the vote counts to it, in some
| specific format, within X days etc). The same law also
| specified what happens if the CCR finds that the vote
| counts are suspect - who can raise such concerns, within
| what dates, and most importantly, what happens next, when
| the elections are re-done and by whose decisions. This is
| how the court is supposed to function.
|
| In contrast, the court has trampled on its own
| jurisprudence, where it only yesterday night (local time)
| declared that it can't hear any new claims about the
| elections until the end of the next round.
| dataflow wrote:
| > None essentially. It just enables other specific laws
| that organize the functioning of the court in this area
|
| > [the Constitutional Court] ensures that the procedures
| for the election of the Romanian President are followed
|
| I have no context on this beyond what you're writing, so
| I'm taking everything you're saying at face value. But
| even when I do that... don't you feel "the legislature
| shall have the power to organize the functioning of the
| court regarding elections" is a manifestly different
| sentence from "the court ensures that the procedures for
| the election of the Romanian President are followed, and
| confirms the results of the vote"?
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Our constitution [0] uses this verbiage a lot. For
| example, here is what it says about the President:
|
| > (2) The President of Romania shall guard the observance
| of the Constitution and the proper functioning of the
| public authorities. To this effect, he shall act as a
| mediator between the Powers in the State, as well as
| between the State and society.
|
| The official English wording of the role of the court is:
|
| > f) to guard the observance of the procedure for the
| election of the President of Romania and to confirm the
| ballot returns;
|
| Note the similarity of the verbiage. I don't think the
| first one can be read to mean that the president can
| interfere with any authority they think might not
| properly be respecting the Constitution. I don't believe
| this is the intended reading, and definitely no one
| recognizes such a power for the President of Romania. So,
| I don't think the equivalent verbiage in the article on
| the power of the CCR should be read to give them the
| power to decide anything they want on the electoral
| process.
|
| Of course, I'm not a lawyer, just a citizen of this
| country. But to me it doesn't seem proper that a Court
| can devise procedures that are not specified in any law.
|
| [0] https://www.presidency.ro/en/the-constitution-of-
| romania
| simion314 wrote:
| So who has the power to decide that the elections were
| influenced by Ruzzia?
| tsimionescu wrote:
| My belief is that no one has the right, or the legal and
| constitutional power, to annul the elections based on
| campaign influence. The law only specifies a right to
| annul one election (a specific day, not the whole process
| as was done here), and then only if the voting process
| itself is corrupted (miscounting votes, stopping people
| from voting, physically coercing people to vote, etc).
|
| The regular court system can pursue individuals who
| conspired with Russia (including, likely, Calin Georgescu
| himself!), prosecute and try them for treason.
|
| Intelligence services and electoral authorities have the
| power to stop the interference while it is in progress,
| by forcing people and sites to take it down, banning
| entire domains if they don't comply, arresting people who
| are coordinating with foreign nationals, etc.
| simion314 wrote:
| And you do not see any weakness in this?
|
| The election will be done again, and people can vote
| their favorite person again, this time with the full
| knowledge of who is behind them.
|
| It sucks that authorities did nothing before the
| elections, but I suspect that disqualifying the fascist
| guy because of fraud and interference would have produced
| the exact same complains from his fans and the Ruzzian
| trolls.
|
| Right? You would claim that he should be allowed to
| continue until the courts will decide it was fraud, and
| until the appeals are done and until the complains to the
| EU court are also complete.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| I have long since come to the conclusion that democracy as a
| power system is merely an excuse for the Powers That Be to
| obtain and maintain power, it just has better plausible
| deniability than other means like monarchies, dictatorships,
| etc. at the cost of not having fine-grained control.
|
| Occasionally there are aberrations like Trump, which
| subsequently lead to the Powers That Be doing everything they
| can to make sure the vote is made "right".
| avmich wrote:
| How this theory would explain the changeability of Powers
| That Be, the fact that they regularly also lose the power?
| Dalewyn wrote:
| They're all just different heads of the same hydra.
| "Uniparty" might be a term you're familiar with. All the
| political catfighting is just kabuki theatre to give the
| notion power is changing hands.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that the Powers That Be didn't want the
| Fair Labor Act, or the Clean Air Act, or the Pure Food
| and Drug Act, or a number of other things. They may not
| care who is president, but on issues that they do care
| about, they still take some losses.
| bombcar wrote:
| Large companies _always_ fight against laws regulating
| them that didn 't exist before; but once they exist they
| always fight _for_ extending them so that new competitors
| can 't arise.
|
| "Democracy doesn't effect _much_ " is not the same as "it
| does nothing at all".
| oneshtein wrote:
| > They're all just different heads of the same hydra.
|
| s/hydra/nation/
| pphysch wrote:
| > they regularly also lose the power?
|
| TPTB aren't limited to one political party.
| kranke155 wrote:
| Trump was not outside the Powers that Be, he was just a
| different faction that won.
| kranke155 wrote:
| He took aid from Russia which is against Romanian law.
| mariusor wrote:
| There's quite a large difference between us all knowing
| something and it being proven to a degree to make a
| national level decision on it.
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| They had to make a quick call, in my book they acted
| boldly, the risks of the alternative were greater.
| Everyone has time to cool down and think about it, and
| the candidate can win if he is good. In the last few days
| all new information has pointed in the opposite
| direction.
| mariusor wrote:
| > quick call
|
| They sat on this info for almost three weeks. Doing it
| now discards so much money and effort invested by people
| working the election stations, the people in other
| countries that already voted, etc. Not to mention that it
| communicates to the everyone that their vote doesn't
| count if it's not for the right candidate. A vote made
| under wrong assumptions is still a vote cast
| democratically. In my opinion this late decision makes a
| mocking of a real democratic process.
|
| It's also very likely to have the side-effect of
| destroying Mrs. Lasconi's chances at the presidency. Who
| do you think that the Georgescu voters will vote for now?
| Not her for sure. I bet there will be a Simion vs.
| Ciolacu battle next time, and there we'll go again with
| choosing the "lesser of the two evils".
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| On the second point I completely agree with you. She
| appears to be collateral damage at this point. Perhaps
| that will raise sympathy and she can get into the second
| round again.
| kranke155 wrote:
| Theres been a lot of kurfuffle about it and apparently
| even the other politicians think this court decision was
| too much.
|
| Im not sure why and how this works, just saying that
| having Russia create 10 million fake accounts (that we
| know of) in a country of 19 million is clearly foreign
| interference.
| 4bpp wrote:
| Funny enough, the EU is currently calling the election
| results in Georgia illegitimate because they passed a
| similar sort of law (https://www.cfr.org/in-brief/what-
| georgias-foreign-agent-law...). This is not doing a good
| job of dispelling the accusation that the media now uses
| "democracy" as code for outcomes that are desirable for US
| globalists and their allies.
| oneshtein wrote:
| Russians did the same in Georgia. :-/
| kranke155 wrote:
| From what I heard, just from (statistical?) analysis from
| the OSINT folks on Twitter, the conclusion was that the
| Georgian election was stolen.
|
| This is a whole different animal.
| goneri wrote:
| The Russian foreign agent law is used to attack the
| public personalities and NGOs, and have nothing in common
| with the Romanian Electoral Laws. Georgians are
| absolutely right to be scared.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_foreign_agent_law
| properpopper wrote:
| US has its Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA),
| multiple countries have this kind of law, I have no
| issues with it.
|
| Why Georgians should be scared?
| braincat31415 wrote:
| Have _you_ seen the proof, or are you repeating what was
| written by someone else? There is a big difference. I bet
| this is the usual "credible information from anonymous
| government sources".
| kranke155 wrote:
| Im repeating the information that was shared. I dont have
| the expertise to discern whether that's really what
| happened. Those are the accusations.
| randunel wrote:
| No proof he did that, but here's proof he didn't:
| https://the5star.github.io/cgarad/messages.html
| Dah00n wrote:
| >He took aid from Russia which is against Romanian law.
|
| Funny that you know this, but the actual court decision
| that should show proof of this has yet to be released.
| Either you are spewing hearsay, are in the intelligence
| community and are sharing secret information or... you are
| lying.
|
| Please, do link the so-far _unreleased information_ that
| the court based its decision on. I 'll wait.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| First it's not the government its the supreme court
|
| second a democracy needs to follow laws. If the candidate broke
| a law, then that can, if the law stipulates, invalidate an
| election result.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| Why was the election allowed to proceed if one candidate declared
| $0 in campaign funding and that's apparently impossible and
| obviously a lie?
|
| Annulling an election is never a good look, rarely ever instills
| confidence in the citizenry or those abroad, so it needs to be
| done in absolutely necessary circumstances.
|
| I don't want pro-Russian candidates to win anywhere after their
| invasion of a sovereign nation, bombing of hospitals and schools,
| and other brazen acts of destruction as well as the warrant from
| the ICC for the arrest of their head of state. At the same time,
| I don't want democracies to backslide to avoid election of
| candidates I don't like, and I'm seeing a lot of democratic
| backsliding these days in various countries.
| idunnoman1222 wrote:
| Wait so one party filled out a form wrong? I thought this was
| about russian TikTok accounts?
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| The candidate ran a large campaign just days before the
| election without declaring a campaign budget. It took the
| services and the constitutional court a few days to figure out
| what happened and take this decision. Give them some credit,
| this is not an easy problem to navigate.
| randunel wrote:
| $0 isn't impossible if other people do things for you, see
| https://the5star.github.io/cgarad/messages.html
| jumping_frog wrote:
| Courts can sometimes be used by Deep State actors to bring about
| political change.
|
| https://www.voanews.com/a/timeline-of-events-leading-to-the-...
|
| Here is a timeline of events leading up to the prime minister's
| resignation.
|
| July 2: Demonstrations take place in Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka,
| to demand the cancellation of a quota system in civil service
| recruitment, which reserves 56% of jobs for people from various
| categories. Students say this is discriminatory.
|
| The demonstrations started after the * _High Court reinstated the
| quota system in June, overturning a 2018 government decision to
| abolish it*_. While the government appealed the decision to the
| Supreme Court, students refused to wait for the outcome and
| demanded a new executive order canceling the quotas.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| Hasina of Bangladesh was not ousted by deep state actors
| though...
|
| Maybe your point is that courts can play a significant role in
| changing the leadership?
| jumping_frog wrote:
| I can point to videos which provide more receipts. This
| sequence of events was predicted by people 9 months before it
| happened. US was taking a keen interest in Bangladesh
| elections which it never did before. US said, "ensure free
| and fair elections to officials or else your Visa to US will
| be cancelled and other penalties." These things are all
| documented.
|
| I think this is right place to use the metaphor of Rupert's
| Drop. Deep State knows the weak tail point and applies
| pressure to shatter whole nations, societies. It takes time
| to see Deep State in action. But once you do, you can't unsee
| it.
| jbirer wrote:
| Romanian here. Discussions of cancelling the election happened
| way before the cyberattack. AFAIK for the first time in a very
| long time the largest two parties did not win and they started
| panicking and scrambling to re-do the vote count.
| willvarfar wrote:
| Do you think the protest candidate will do better or worse in
| the rerun?
| idunnoman1222 wrote:
| He's going to be arrested his TikTok's were too good
| cbg0 wrote:
| It's unclear if he will be allowed to participate again, due
| to his sympathy for the Iron Guard
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Guard) which is outlawed,
| and some pending criminal cases for money laundering, as he
| reported 0 expenses in the election campaign, which is
| impossible.
| autoexec wrote:
| Did tiktok convince 20% of the voters to vote for a racist,
| or did they trick 20% into unwittingly voting for a racist?
| Hopefully now that everyone is talking about him and his
| affection for religious fascism a lot of those voters will
| realize what they voted for and change their vote in the
| future.
| H8crilA wrote:
| They voted for him because he speaks pretty well for a
| politician. Also some of his messages really land -
| consider that Ukraine is losing (very very slowly, and
| can still win), so it makes sense to talk to both sides
| since it's unclear who will be calling shots in the
| region. Moldova is definitely next, right after Ukraine,
| and it cannot defend itself even from one mechanized
| brigade.
| AustinDev wrote:
| >Ukraine is losing (very very slowly, and can still win),
|
| This is not remotely true, Ukraine can't retake what it's
| lost they have no men left. If it were true Zelensky
| wouldn't be contemplating ceding territory to Russia. It
| sucks but Ukraine lost in 2014 when the world let Crimea
| get annexed with no response.
|
| https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/zelensky-says-for-
| first-...
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| Just depends on how you define "winning". Right now both
| Russia and Ukraine are losing a lot compared to before
| 2022.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| By their own goals, Russia already lost this war 2 years
| ago. They may end it with a little extra territory and
| people, but that's not a victory, again, by their own
| claims.
| aguaviva wrote:
| _Ukraine can 't retake what it's lost they have no men
| left._
|
| You're extremifying.
|
| You could have said "they don't have enough people". But
| instead you had to dial it up to "they have no men left".
|
| No matter what is actually happening on the ground -- you
| definitely won't be able to make heads or tails of it, if
| you keep confounding yourself with rhetoric like this.
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| _> You could have said "they don't have enough people".
| But instead you had to dial it up to "they have no men
| left"._
|
| The realities of war are not LGBTQ-friendly.
|
| My male cousin has not been allowed to leave the country
| for almost 3 years. His wife is in Germany.
| aguaviva wrote:
| I'm sorry you got triggered, but that was absolutely in
| no way what I was getting at.
|
| That line had nothing whatsoever to do with this
| "people"/"men" nonsense. I was referring simply to the
| quantifier.
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| Thanks for the explanation.
|
| What's the difference between those two?
| aguaviva wrote:
| Subtracting the "people" vs "men" noise, I was trying to
| draw the distinction between the phrasings "they don't
| have enough people" and "they have no people left" (in
| both cases to meaning available to fight).
|
| The former suggests a situation which is quite dire, and
| that is certainly accurate in regard to Ukraine's current
| situation. The latter (if taken at face value) is
| essentially totalistic, and objectively misleading. That
| doesn't mean that that was their intent, of course. But
| to my ears it comes across as an overly emotionalized and
| in any case muddled characterization of the situation.
|
| Kind of like when, say, a startup is going through rough
| times and someone says "everyone's leaving" when really
| it was just their friend and a couple other people who
| have left.
|
| There's a word for this expressive style, btw:
| "histrionics".
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| Thank you for this in-depth clarification. Much
| appreciated.
|
| I'd argue the situation _is_ quite dire and the, arguably
| fatalistic, phrasing is not incorrect here.
|
| Men are _not_ allowed to exit the country, and I know
| personally quite a few cases where males, who were in no
| real fighting age or condition, were _literally_ picked
| up on the street and sent to the front. With handcuffs
| and aggressive force. In my former hometown.
|
| So, staying in your analogy, "everyone's leaving" is
| rather correct, with the modifier "...who has enough
| money or sheer luck". "But they're still there" feels
| like nitpicking for the sake of nitpicking.
| aguaviva wrote:
| Well, we disagree about the language issue then. Which in
| any case means essentially nothing compared with what
| these people are going through.
|
| In that sense I appreciate your clarification as well.
| pinkmuffinere wrote:
| You're missing the forest for the trees. You claim "they
| have no men left". This is false, and reduces trust in
| everything else you say. You might be right about your
| main point, but the argument you provide is not
| convincing.
|
| As one datapoint I'd love to hear a convincing argument,
| and really don't have a strong opinion on who will win.
| If you make a more trustworthy argument for why Ukraine
| will lose, I promise I'll read it
|
| Edit: truthfully, this is the most convincing argument
| I've seen so far
| https://manifold.markets/chrisjbillington/will-ukraine-
| win-t...
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| Are you sure you've replied to the right person?
| pinkmuffinere wrote:
| Oh lol I'm sorry, you're absolutely right, this isn't the
| comment I was trying to reply to
|
| Edit: wow, somehow I wasn't even close, I'm like three
| generations off
| treyfitty wrote:
| What? Why are you shoehorning LGBTQ into this... the
| intent of "...no men left" is well understood, and the
| vast majority of soldiers in Ukraine are male. The
| colloquialism is the same as your username rrr_oh_man.
| Man, and men is used are used in the same vain.
|
| And what does this have to do with your male cousin?
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| Please re-read the thread, you might have misunderstood.
|
| GP's comment was:
|
| _> You could have said "they don't have enough people".
| But instead you had to dial it up to "they have no men
| left"_
|
| which I, _mistakenly_ , as GP pointed out here
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42349533, assumed to
| be a play on "there are also women on the front". Which
| there are, but in vastly fewer numbers.
| treyfitty wrote:
| No, I understood clearly.
| AustinDev wrote:
| "War does not determine who is right--only who is left."
|
| You're right that there are men still living in Ukraine,
| Zelensky is still alive after all. However, the manpower
| situation has been pretty bleak for a while. [1] I'm in
| regular contact with people in theater and I'm not far
| off in saying 'there are no men left'. Russia is still
| advancing albeit slowly. We'll likely have new borders in
| a few months. Almost time to update your globe.
|
| [1] https://www.stripes.com/theaters/europe/2024-03-16/uk
| raine-v...
| aguaviva wrote:
| We're broadly on the same page it seems. I just found
| that the original choice of wording tiltied more into the
| territory of spin than a sober assessment of the state of
| things. That is all. Unfortunately, this kind of blurring
| has permeated the general discourse.
|
| Best to luck to whomever in your in contact with.
|
| I won't be changing my globe for anyone, however.
| AustinDev wrote:
| People do put a lot of spin on this topic. Your initial
| reaction is completely understandable.
|
| Thanks, hopefully they'll be home soon. I've been mowing
| his grass for nearly 3 years, hardly a commensurate
| sacrifice I must admit.
| aguaviva wrote:
| We each do our part. Every bit helps.
| arandomusername wrote:
| > Russia is still advancing albeit slowly
|
| Isn't their rate of advancement a lot faster than a year
| ago?
| aguaviva wrote:
| Yes, but it also seems to have plateaued, and has held
| steady for the past 9 months or so.
| cbg0 wrote:
| His messaging regarding Ukraine was not something that
| positively affected his campaign, on the contrary it
| ignited political opponents over his anti-NATO views.
|
| His campaign landed better because of his palatable way
| of speaking and saying a lot without saying anything, as
| most people that voted for him were not really aware of
| his positions on any serious subject.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| Yes, I said multiple times he was Schrodinger's
| candidate, he could hold multiple mutually contradictory
| positions at the same time. Pretty ridiculous.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| Romania is a member of NATO, they don't need to give two
| shits about Russia being a regional power because they
| will not be invaded by Russia as long as the US is part
| of NATO.
| poloniculmov wrote:
| His campaign messages weren't outright extremist, just
| your casual populism, impossible promises and a dash of
| dogwhistles. Once he won the first round of elections,
| people really started to look into his past and it's
| pretty insane.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| I think he is legitimately insane. He fits schizotypal
| personality disorder to a T. Multiple psychologists told
| me he fits.
| wyager wrote:
| Our Democracy(tm) is when elected candidates are judicially
| removed due to accusations of having unfavorable
| "sympathies"
| cbg0 wrote:
| This has not happened yet, it's merely a speculation at
| this time, but the accusations have a solid foundation in
| videos of him talking about the subject and even
| plagiarizing speeches by famous Iron Guard members.
|
| Romania does not have free speech like the US, we have
| protected speech and there are some sympathies which are
| simply illegal, whether you agree with it or not.
| serial_dev wrote:
| I know nothing about this situation, but I bet it's like
| when they say Trump = Hitler, because he had a rally at
| MSG.
| cbg0 wrote:
| Nobody's calling him Hitler, there's a lot of very weird
| things the guy says though, as he's pretty heavy into
| religious mysticism and a bit of a nutjob, some of his
| hits:
|
| - Pepsi contains nanochips that enter your body
|
| - water isn't actually H2O
|
| - capitalism is communism, there is no difference
|
| - everybody accepted that Covid exists, there's no such
| thing, there never was
| tsimionescu wrote:
| No, it's way beyond that.
|
| He got booted out of one of the other far right wing
| parties when he publicly praised Romania's 1930s-1940s
| fascist/nazi dictators as "heroes, who maybe did some bad
| things, but a lot of good". He has refused to diaavow
| them every time he has been asked about them.
|
| One of his major campaign leads wears Romanian nazi
| symbolism (think the Romanian equivalent of a swastika).
| The other one often posts about those same dictators,
| especially in commemoration of their deaths.
|
| He has started one of his speeches with an exact quote
| from one of said dictators.
|
| This is beyond all of the insane conspiracies and
| religious mystic declarations, from seeing aliens to
| "C-sections interrupt the divine cord", "water is not
| just H2O, it is information, that is why _they_ bottle it
| to keep this information contained ", and so many more.
| aguaviva wrote:
| _One of his major campaign leads wears Romanian nazi
| symbolism (think the Romanian equivalent of a swastika)._
|
| One of these, perhaps?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Romanian_fascist_symbo
| ls....
|
| If you could provide these symbols (in Romain) that would
| be very helpful. And if it's not too much trouble, a few
| keywords (in Romanian) of that speech so I can look it
| up.
|
| Not doubting you in the slightest, but these don't seem
| to be easily searchable (and I'd appreciate your take).
| aguaviva wrote:
| _when they say Trump = Hitler, because he had a rally at
| MSG._
|
| No, not "because he had a rally at MSG".
|
| But because of _the things he said at that rally_.
|
| Do you understand the distinction?
|
| It's also definitely not true that most of the people
| saying he's a fascist are saying he's "a Nazi"; that's an
| overdrawn distortion. And a lot of these people with
| concerns about his rhetoric don't even necessarily think
| he's a fascist per se; though they do find a matter of
| concern that he seems to at least be channeling fascist
| rhetoric.
|
| Whether you agree with them or not is beside the point.
| What seems much more significant is that you seem to have
| a weirdly muddled (and hyperemotionalized) view of what
| people actually think about Trump, and why.
| hcurtiss wrote:
| Uhm, you have "sympathies which are simply illegal"? Wow.
| You trust the government to tell you where you can lay
| your personal sympathies? I sometimes run into casual
| statements like this that make me SO GRATEFUL I live in
| the United States.
| cbg0 wrote:
| I don't trust the government, but I do trust history on
| this. If you're curious about the movement:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Guard
|
| I'm very grateful to live in Romania and have a lot of
| things about the US that I disagree with, but I
| understand it's a different country with a different
| history & culture.
| hiccuphippo wrote:
| At least they have more than 2 candidates (and less than 14).
| logicchains wrote:
| That sounds pretty anti-democratic, that the election can be
| cancelled because the incumbents disapprove of where the people
| who voted against them got their information from.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| The court members are politically appointed by exactly these
| people. This is a corrupt system, has nothing to do with
| democracy. The Constitution was rigged from the day it was
| created by former Communist regime people.
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| No, there are clear laws that candidates have to mark their
| campaign ads as such and that they have to declare their
| campaign finances. One candidate did not do this.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Who is considered the establishment in Romania?
|
| As far as I can see, modern Romania appears to be ruled mostly
| by the Social Democrats whose candidate came 3rd and was
| disqualified from the second round. They also appeared to have
| roots in the Communist era, is that right?
|
| Can we say that this move was to save the Social Democrats? Who
| were supposed run agains't the liberals and win I guess, but
| this pro-Russia candidate came from nowhere and the 2nd round
| turned into pro-Russia vs pro-West, right?
| cbg0 wrote:
| PNL & PSD are establishment parties in Romania. We are a
| young democracy, since the end of 1989 when we ended
| communism with people rising up to fight in the streets for a
| better tomorrow, so the aforementioned parties do have roots
| in communism, but they are by no means communist parties.
|
| The Social Democrats haven't won the presidency in decades
| and their current candidate sunk them in this election
| process even though he was sure to win, but some missteps he
| took associating himself with people connected to a huge real
| estate scam sunk his campaign.
|
| Whether this move helps Social Democrats (PSD) is unlikely,
| as their current candidate is still just as unpopular and
| would most likely not win.
|
| You are correct that because of this Russophile candidate the
| runoff turned into a pro-EU vs pro-Russia fight.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Why the Romanian diaspora is so much pro-Russian? I have
| some idea from the Bulgarian diaspora but I don't know how
| much it aligns with the Romanian.
| cbg0 wrote:
| Not as much pro-Russian as they are anti-establishment
| and also surprisingly anti-EU, even though they live in
| EU outside of Romania. Many of them are working minimum
| paid jobs in tough working conditions, plus they have
| trouble integrating there, so they dislike their current
| situation and find the blame in EU & the country they're
| living in.
|
| There's also tremendous amounts of anti-EU propaganda on
| social media which they're subjected to and most people
| in today's age don't bother fact checking anything so
| they just trust whatever's showing up on their screen.
| zsombor wrote:
| I think it is more about urban vs rural voters. Latter
| group is more likely to vote with CG, even after
| emigrating. It takes more time for them to pick up
| western values simply because they are economically
| disadvantaged at home and to a lesser degree abroad as
| well.
| mebcitto wrote:
| Georgescu's voters don't see themselves as pro-Russian.
| They think of themselves as "patriots", anti-LGBT, and
| anti-establishment. They also think that we are helping
| Ukraine too much, at the expense of domestic issues.
|
| These are the messages that were used on TikTok, an open
| pro-Russia message would have been buried quickly.
| sincerecook wrote:
| Romanian culture is pretty conservative by modern Western
| standards. All the gay stuff is completely foreign and
| anathema to someone who grew up in it (most Romanians are
| orthodox Christians) and the political
| correctness/liberal propaganda is a return to the
| communist system but as applied to culture rather than
| economics. Russia is seen as the last bastion in Europe
| willing to stand up for traditional values.
| alephnerd wrote:
| What is his stance on Moldova? Doesn't pan-Romanian nationalism
| have a strong undercurrent in Romanian politics? And how does
| that play in with Romanian-Russian relations?
| cbg0 wrote:
| Every politician in Romania has a "pro Moldova" attitude and
| even a pro-union attitude (there's no legal mechanism to make
| this happen, so it's very shallow).
|
| In Moldova, where lots of people have Romanian citizenship as
| well, Lasconi received 56.5% of the vote, while Georgescu
| received 3.11% of the vote.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Makes sense. I'm very curious as to why Romania was caught
| so off guard in comparison to Moldova despite a very
| similar disinfo campaign barely a few weeks ago against
| Sandu (heck, I'd assume this disinfo campaign used the
| exact same personnel).
|
| On which note, was there any reuse found in comparison to
| the campaign in Moldova?
|
| I'm predicating this on Georgescu's anti-NATO stance (that
| said, I don't really follow EE politics that closely).
| cbg0 wrote:
| We don't have all the answers yet and there's a bunch of
| speculation that the intelligence services were a bit
| incompetent or even supported him in hopes of taking
| votes away from other candidates, but things may have
| gotten a bit out of control and they underestimated his
| popularity.
|
| Georgescu's stance wasn't super well known to most of his
| supporters and it's not what was being pushed, he's
| mostly flag-waiving, talking about sovereignty and God,
| not really saying much of substance, but he's palatable
| if you don't know his views and he was something fresh
| compared to the other candidates that were more known,
| thus giving him a boost among anti-establishment types.
|
| He's not completely new to the scene as he was touted as
| potential PM by a minority political party at some point,
| but they also distanced themselves from him to clean up
| their own anti-EU image.
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| To be honest, I think this guy just had more charisma. He
| really feels like a very natural salesman, with a smooth
| voice, gray hair, catchy turns of phrases, etc. While I
| think what he said was ultimately shallow, I see why many
| felt hypnotized by him. You can check out his video
| swimming in an icy lake, talking about your immune system
| just being an extension of your freedom as an individual,
| etc. He is definitely talented as a cult leader.
| simion314 wrote:
| Romanian here too, anyone with a bit of a brain and not biassed
| would tell you that this unknown guy growing in 2 weeks was not
| normal.
|
| Any person in any country with a bit of inteligence could also
| tell you that this guy did not used ZERO funds in his campaign
| as he declared , so if you are his fan go pray he will not go
| to jail for fraud or treason, but probably politicians already
| have their jail cells upgraded for their fat asses, he will
| write some book and get out a bit faster.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| > AFAIK for the first time in a very long time the largest two
| parties did not win and they started panicking and scrambling
| to re-do the vote count.
|
| This is what it sounds like. Everyone's talking about
| "democracy vs Russian interference" but I think it's
| realpolitik.
|
| The top two candidates who were to compete in the final
| election were Georgescu (a lunatic) and Lasconi (SRU, a
| moderate outsider). Lasconi was second only by a small margin
| to Ciolacu (SPD, current president).
|
| Immediately after the first election, the court (mostly
| consisting of SPD) ordered (EDIT: one) controversial recount
| they blocked almost everyone from seeing. Some suspect the plan
| was to declare a miscount and get Ciolacu into second place.
| Then the first election would not be rerun and the final
| election would be Georgescu vs Ciolacu.
|
| Except if it came down to them there's a good chance Georgescu
| would've won, since people would know SPD corrupted the
| results. And Georgescu really is a lunatic, so perhaps SPD
| decided they'd rather have Lasconi then him.
|
| _Except_ now it seems SPD hasn 't fully decided this. This
| election seemingly gives them one more (albeit small) chance,
| while still ensuring Georgescu won't win (unless he out-votes
| even someone like Lasconi, but I can only hope not. Georgescu
| makes Trump look like Abraham Lincoln).
| cbg0 wrote:
| > Immediately after the first election, the court (mostly
| consisting of SPD) ordered a recount.
|
| The recount was ordered after two complaints were lodged, one
| which was rejected and the one that was accepted was from
| another contender in the first round of elections. Only one
| recount was performed. Only 4 of the 9 members of the court
| were proposed by PSD (SPD), 4 were proposed by PNL and
| another by UDMR.
|
| > Except now it seems SPD hasn't fully decided this. This
| election seemingly gives them one more chance
|
| While they do have another chance, the fact that they were at
| the wheel while this happened, and the fact that their
| candidate was in 3rd place even after the recount will not
| help them in a new election.
| nottorp wrote:
| > Only 4 of the 9 members of the court were proposed by PSD
| (SPD), 4 were proposed by PNL and another by UDMR.
|
| You forget to mention that PSD/SPD and PNL are running the
| government together now, and UDMR (minority hungarian
| party) will ally with anyone who gives them a few
| government positions. Usually with SPD.
| r00fus wrote:
| You know if this ever happened in another European country
| where the main parties were asleep at the wheel and a newcomer
| takes the stage - this sounds like a trial balloon to see how
| Europe likes cancelling democracy when it doesn't suit the
| ruling players.
|
| France is another case where the main ruling parties (PS, LR
| and even ENS) have lost legitimacy but they paint the newcomers
| in ascendancy (RN, LFI) as both "useful idiots of the Russians"
| and "antisemitic". Then the President decides to break norms
| and not follow the will of the people in his choice of PM
| (typically should go to the party with most votes in assembly)
| - and faces no reprimand from the institutions.
|
| Both of these are tests what needs to happens so Europe remains
| tied to NATO and the US. But these are both symptoms of a
| decaying order.
| jowea wrote:
| Meh, IMHO the actually important rule is that parliament has
| to consent to the PM. He appointed someone else that had a
| majority tolerating him, and then parliament changed its mind
| and now Macron has to pick someone else. The left only has a
| plurality not a majority. Why should that guarantee they get
| to pick a PM?
|
| If the results were 30% centrists, 30% leftists, 40% RN would
| you be calling for a RN PM?
| r00fus wrote:
| Macron chose someone from the lowest-vote party (LR) to
| spit in the faces of the voters. The largest bloc was
| leftists, so they should have gotten an opportunity to form
| a government. But even if he decided his future was with
| the extreme right, choosing an RN PM would have made sense.
|
| But no, he chose a personal ally who nobody liked.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Russia and China rigged Romanian Elections using 10M fake
| TikTok accounts_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42334325
| Leary wrote:
| Are they going to cancel the parlamentary elections, which were
| held one week after the Presidential election?
| cbg0 wrote:
| Doesn't look like it at the moment.
| bhk wrote:
| They'll have to see who is winning first?
| cbg0 wrote:
| The parliamentary elections have been over for a week and
| we know the establishment parties took most of the vote,
| though considerably less than they did 4 years ago.
| Eumenes wrote:
| Russians paid tiktokers, let's nullify the election - Democracy
| ROCKS
| abraxas wrote:
| There have been breaches of vote counting systems.
| postepowanieadm wrote:
| So recount should take place, not another vote.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| Recount does not exist in the relevant Romanian law. And
| recount was done, with no change of the outcome, so they
| cancelled it completely.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| No, that is not what happened. Not at all.
| randunel wrote:
| The money trail leads to Romanians paying for stuff out of
| pocket, not Russians. All bank accounts in here are Romanian
| https://the5star.github.io/cgarad/messages.html
| codedokode wrote:
| Shouldn't election be organized such that it cannot be disrupted
| by Internet attacks from abroad? At least not so easily.
|
| Also, I tried opening the PDF [1] with so called "declassified
| report" and while I cannot read Romanian, the first header
| contains "TikTok" and I am left wondering how can one hack an
| election system using Tiktok? Did they count the votes using
| TikTok videos? And what about Telegram (mentioned nearby)? It
| doesn't even have a newsfeed. Oh those powerful hackers!
|
| Judging by "distribuite numeroase imagini" and "blockarea
| accessului visual" (which almost sounds English), TikTok hacked
| their elections by simply refusing to block a video (or by
| blocking it?).
|
| > Access credentials for election websites were stolen by threat
| actors and leaked on a Russian hacker forum
|
| What a sad state of European cybersecurity. But this threat seems
| to be real, unlike the TikTok attack.
|
| [1]
| https://www.presidency.ro/files/userfiles/Documente%20CSAT/D...
| evilfred wrote:
| if you can't read Romanian then your insights into a Romanian
| report aren't very useful.
| stefanv wrote:
| There are two separate issues: (1) TikTok favoring one
| candidate even after the campaign was over, and (2) an IT
| systems breach.
| logicchains wrote:
| >TikTok favoring one candidate even after the campaign was
| over
|
| This shouldn't be an issue because, the mainstream candidates
| where heavily favoured by the conventional media. If TikTok
| isn't allowed to publish media supportive of one candidate
| then the mainstream media shouldn't be either.
| cbg0 wrote:
| That's not how the law works in Romania. As a political
| candidate, your paid ads have to marked accordingly with a
| number that can be traced back and all donations and
| spending must be reported to a government authority.
|
| One of the issues with this TikTok business was that many
| ads for Georgescu were not marked correctly, and thus in
| violation of electoral law.
| aguaviva wrote:
| _And while I cannot read Romanian,_
|
| If you can use a mouse, and you know how to cut-and-paste --
| you can read Romanian.
|
| If you can't be bothered to do that, then I doubt anyone will
| be interested in your complaints about content of report, or
| your inferences as to its broader implications.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| There is no hacking. There was a massive campaign on TikTok for
| a candidate, that campaign was surprisingly effective, putting
| someone that most people never heard of, in the first place.
| That is now hacking, that is trolling grandmaster level.
| bigtomkom wrote:
| I believe a direct attack on elections should be treated with the
| seriousness of an act of war. However, I guess that proving with
| absolute certainty that it was Russia's doing could be
| challenging.
| knowitnone wrote:
| "The election will be re-run, likely with closer oversight over
| systems and social media" Except the opinions have already been
| formed based on whatever false information they have been fed. So
| without providing "true" facts, the new votes won't change much.
| margalabargala wrote:
| This assumes that the earlier votes were legitimate, and it's
| the people whose opinions were affected.
|
| If the voting systems themselves reported different vote counts
| than the population actually cast, then the new election would
| be radically different.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| They weren't, the vote systems (which are manual, and were
| counted by ~150,000 people, representatives of the political
| parties, independent observers, and others) were verified and
| a successful recount was already carried out. If anything is
| clear, it is that the people's votes were correctly counted.
| brabel wrote:
| People are always going to be influenced, that's the whole
| point of political campaigns, to influence you to vote for
| them. If they claim Russia tried to influence the Romanian
| people, and that they did it successfully enough to have
| their chosen candidate win, I think that shows more a
| failure of the other candidates than anything. You can't
| just tell every country in the world: please don't
| interfere with our opinions!!! We want our people to only
| be influenced by ourselves!!! I would love to see exactly
| what they claim Russia did to influence so many people to
| affect the result of the elections. Last time they claimed
| this in the USA, it has been shown that the influence was
| actually widely blown out of proportion. The 2024 results
| seem to show that people would've voted the way they did
| anyway, and maybe even in larger numbers. There's very
| little evidence to the contrary.
| sebastianz wrote:
| > You can't just tell every country in the world: please
| don't interfere with our opinions!!! We want our people
| to only be influenced by ourselves!!!
|
| You can indeed, and countries do indeed have laws
| governing this, as does Romania[1]. The sources of
| spending for electoral ads have to be very transparent,
| and adhere to various regulations, such as that foreign
| governments, institutions and companies cannot finance
| local elections.
|
| [1]:
| https://legislatie.just.ro/Public/DetaliiDocument/73672
| linuxftw wrote:
| The people in power passed laws to keep themselves in
| power? Tell me more.
| bar000n wrote:
| International law always sanctioned a state's
| intervention in another state's affairs. In addition to
| this very well known fact by jurists, there is also
| recent works in the field contradicting your position.
|
| "International law prohibits states from intervening in
| the internal and external affairs of other states [...]
| as coercion-as-control, an action materially depriving
| the victim state of its ability to control its sovereign
| choices. This may be done even through acts like cyber
| operations that the victim state is entirely unaware of."
| [1]
|
| [1]: https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-
| cambridge-core/c...
| margalabargala wrote:
| > If anything is clear, it is that the people's votes were
| correctly counted.
|
| No, that's not clear at all. There were numerous other
| cyberattacks on Romanian voting infrastructure, per other
| articles about this event [0][1]
|
| From Reuters:
|
| > The intelligence service also said login data for
| official Romanian election websites was published on
| Russian cybercrime platforms. It added that it had
| identified more than 85,000 cyberattacks that aimed to
| exploit system vulnerabilities.
|
| It sounds like this is about a lot more than tiktok
| preferentially showing one candidate. There were also
| denial-of-service attacks that would have suppressed
| certain votes, unauthorized access to the voting systems,
| and more.
|
| Perhaps the votes reported were all cast, i.e. not literal
| fabricated numbers, but that doesn't mean that they were
| cast by the person they were supposed to be cast by, or
| that votes for other candidates were all counted.
|
| [0] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/thousands-attend-
| pro-eu...
|
| [1] https://www.rferl.org/a/lasconi-georgescu-runoff-
| romania/332...
| tsimionescu wrote:
| First of all, the main way Romanian elections work are
| based on manual counting of ballots, in the presence of
| representatives from all political parties and outside
| observers, filled in on paper forms signed by all who
| observed the count. Then all those paper forms are
| centralized at the district (judet) level, and then to
| the central electoral bureau. This is all done on hand,
| with paper forms, with numerous observers all along the
| process. There is a digital process based on scanning
| these paper forms, but that is only done to report
| partial results faster to the public (and the count only
| happens after the vote has ended everywhere in the
| country, so false information in the partial results
| can't influence other voters).
|
| So, even if the digital systems had been entirely
| compromised and under Russian control, that wouldn't have
| mattered one iota for the final results. And even after
| all this, a full hand recount was carried out last week
| which found the same results, with very little difference
| and no doubt whatsoever that CG won more votes than any
| other candidate).
|
| And even the news stories you shared, which are anyway
| irrelevant to the final paper results, have misunderstood
| what our authorities are saying. The part of the our
| secret services which handles the cybernetic parts of the
| election (named the STS, Special Tellecomunications
| Service) has been very explicit, both in public
| declarations and in the classified briefing they gave to
| the President, that there were no risks to the core
| infrastructure, and that checks have been made before,
| during, and after the elections to confirm this.
| margalabargala wrote:
| Interesting. I appreciate you taking the time to lay this
| out; as all I have to go off of is global news articles,
| if those misunderstand Romanian authorities, then I'm not
| getting good information.
|
| So the annulation is indeed based purely on the social
| media algorithmic skew, then?
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Edit: the motivation was just published [0], here is a
| translation of the most relevant part:
|
| > In the present case, the Court notes that, according to
| the aforementioned "Information Notes", the main aspects
| imputed to the electoral process regarding the election
| of the President of Romania in 2024 are those regarding
| the manipulation of the vote of voters and the distortion
| of equal opportunities for electoral competitors, through
| the non-transparent use and in violation of electoral
| legislation of digital technologies and artificial
| intelligence in the conduct of the electoral campaign, as
| well as through the financing of the electoral campaign
| from undeclared sources, including online.
|
| The court has not yet published the motivation of its
| decision (its expected to be published tonight), so we're
| not sure yet.
|
| Still, given that the same court unanimously decided on
| Dec 2nd, after receiving the results of a full recount,
| that the vote was fair and that the first round was
| valid, it seems extremely unlikely that they would cast
| any doubt on the vote count today.
|
| Also, all of the discussions in the local press are about
| Russian influence on the campaign process. This includes
| allegations of algorithmic skew by Tik Tok, allegations
| that Tik Tok ignored Romanian campaign laws that require
| electoral clips to proeminently show some registration
| numbers, of illegal contributions to CG's campaign
| (including foreign, probably Russian, financing), of
| foreign nationals (again, probably Russians) coordinating
| to spread his campaign on Tik Tok and other social media,
| etc. The Supreme Council for National Defense (CSAT)
| papers that were declassified that triggered this late
| decision by the court were mostly about this.
|
| To my mind, all of these might well have been
| disqualifying before the election, but give that the
| people have voted for him fairly, even if manipulated
| through social media, it's absurd to cancel the entire
| process and restart it. Especially considering that this
| will move the elections to at least February or March,
| months past the regular end of the current President's
| term. Consider also the huge costs for redoing this whole
| election, which we as taxpayers will cover.
|
| I will note that the campaign financing fraud allegation
| is almost self-evidently true itself - CG has filed in
| official papers that his campaign was run for 0 RON. The
| fact that the authorities who received these filings
| months ago were unable or unwilling to do anything about
| it is absurd. I still don't believe that canceling the
| entire process when it was two days away from finishing
| is an acceptable moment to right this.
|
| [0] https://hotnews.ro/wp-
| content/uploads/2024/12/HCC-32-2024.PD... - PDF by a news
| source, couldn't find it yet on the official site
| culi wrote:
| There is nobody that is alleging the vote counts were
| illegitimate. Not the voters, not the courts, not the
| politicians. That allegation isn't even relevant to this
| discussion
| margalabargala wrote:
| As I mentioned in a different comment, there are other news
| articles about this event that imply illegitimate vote
| counts. Those are what I based my comment on. Another
| commenter pointed out that those are misleading.
|
| Without reading news in Romanian it's difficult to get
| accurate information.
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| The facts were emerging faster than people could follow. Now at
| least people have a few weeks to cool down and think about it.
| ImHereToVote wrote:
| How would you vote if there was a chance your country was to
| become a Ukraine situation? Would having children influence
| that vote. Would that sort of thinking invalidate the votes. I
| dunno personally.
| 77pt77 wrote:
| Facts don't sway opinions.
|
| Persuasion does.
|
| And once one has been duped, good luck convincing them they
| were...
| tensor wrote:
| But they have been provided with true facts: that the candidate
| is actually backed by Russia, and that the supposedly "true"
| facts that they were provided were in fact not true facts.
|
| The election has still been influenced for sure, but it's a
| false statement to say that voters have no new information.
| blub wrote:
| Do you have a reliable source for those facts? Because
| there's a lot of newspaper articles and allegedly some report
| from the Romanian spooks and I wouldn't call any of those
| facts.
|
| If they have a trial and if they prove corruption then that's
| fair and square. Right now we're in the "journalists and
| rival politicians accuse" phase.
| kioku wrote:
| The frontrunner was an independent candidate who claimed to have
| spent nothing on his campaign, asserting that it was entirely run
| by "volunteers."
|
| Romanian secret services, under the directive of the current
| president, released reports concluding that both state and non-
| state actors had been involved in manipulating public opinion.
|
| The candidate holds extreme right-wing views aligned with
| Romanian neo-Nazi groups. He has repeatedly referred to Romanian
| Nazi leaders as heroes and has expressed admiration for Putin,
| calling him a hero as well. His speeches often included mystical
| elements and rejected modern medical science, denying the
| existence of viruses and questioning the effectiveness of
| chemotherapy for cancer. While he has made other controversial
| statements, I will leave it at that.
| 4ad wrote:
| The candidate seems to be more of a communist than anything[1],
| he wants 51% state control of all large corporations operating
| in Romania. Labelling him as right-wing is asinine. Actual
| communist parties are supporting him.
|
| Perhaps if people wouldn't demonise any anti-globalist public
| figure as "far right" we wouldn't have ended with this clown of
| a candidate. People haven't voted for him as a person, he was
| totally unknown as of a couple of weeks ago, they've voted
| against the status quo, and more importantly they voted against
| the establishment that regulates what constitutes acceptable
| opinion.
|
| [1] https://calingeorgescu.ro/program
| kioku wrote:
| In the page that you linked, it states that he wants to
| implement a measure that enforces minimum 51% participation
| by the state in all natural resource exploitation activities
| on Romanian territory.
|
| While this can be viewed as a left-wing policy, it can also
| be a form of economic nationalism.
|
| As far as I understand, he gets classified as far right [1],
| because of his ultranationalist and ultraconservative views.
|
| The parties that declared support for him [2][3][4], after
| the first election round, have similar views.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far-right_politics
|
| [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AUR_Alliance
|
| [3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_of_Young_People
|
| [4] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.O.S._Romania
| randunel wrote:
| His "spent nothing" claim is plausible, people did these things
| themselves https://the5star.github.io/cgarad/messages.html
| StefanBatory wrote:
| I think they only pushed away the issue.
|
| In the end according to polls he was _leading_ them in second
| turn. You can 't come back as a society from this. :|
|
| If this was Norway or any country where people have some trust in
| govt, it'd be one thing. But Romanian society has (mostly
| rightly) reasons to not trust PSD and other major parties. And
| what does this tell them? That they were right. :(
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| No, they had to take a decision quickly and they took it. They
| knew that one side will cry foul, but the alternative would
| have been worse. Before you start mocking those ignorant low-
| trust eastern europeans, notice that a similar thing happened
| in Austria in 2016 where an election outcome was cancelled on
| illegal campaign financing grounds.
| StefanBatory wrote:
| i am myself Eastern European too, I'm Polish :<
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| Yes, one of the common pastimes of eastern europeans is
| being very critical of themselves and their countries,
| sometimes missing that others have largely the same
| problems, but with better press.
| cedws wrote:
| It feels like Europe is asleep at the wheel. We are in a cold war
| with Russia, right now. Why is there barely any resistance to
| blatant attempts to undermine democracy?
| n1b0m wrote:
| A Cold War? I don't think it feels very cold to the Ukrainians
| tombert wrote:
| I mean, the US cold war had several "real" wars as a result
| of it. Korea and Vietnam were actual wars with humans
| shooting at each other, but they're considered part of the
| "Cold War" because both of them were sort of indirect, since
| the real enemy was the USSR.
| boredhedgehog wrote:
| But Ukrainians aren't part of any "We", from my perspective.
| We prudently formed no alliances with them.
| jowea wrote:
| Just a proxy conflict. Just need to figure out if Russia is
| the main power or the Chinese (or NK) proxy.
| oneshtein wrote:
| If so, then Russia is the proxy of China, while Ukraine is
| proxy of Canada, Germany, Poland, Australia, etc.
| fridder wrote:
| Money and nukes. The worst thing Europe did was get addicted to
| cheap Russian gas. It was a trojan horse that encouraged
| governments to look the other way.
| AustinDev wrote:
| Just 5 years ago Europeans were laughing in derision when
| this was pointed out.
| monkeyfun wrote:
| Which is sadly how it goes -- you have to be willing to
| take a stand against people without capital-V Vision
| sometimes. They'll only ever perceive what's right in front
| of their eyes, and only ever believe that what's possible
| is what's already recently happened (and nothing more).
|
| Totally unrelated but now I wanna jab my elbow at Ariane 6
| (rocket)...
| bboozzoo wrote:
| Not all of Europe. The immediate neighbors were always wary
| of Russia's game, but attempts to bring that up only got
| them labeled as rusophobic.
| krhaf wrote:
| The immediate neighbors collected transit fees for
| Russian gas and oil. Ukraine itself collected transit
| fees for gas deliveries to Austria until very recently.
|
| The Drushba pipeline through Poland was open at the same
| time that Sikorski congratulated the U.S. for blowing up
| Nord Stream. It remained open long after that. Both
| France and the U.S. were buying uranium from Russia until
| 2024. No complaints from Sikorski about that.
|
| Nordstream was owned by Russia, Germany, _France_ , and
| _The Netherlands_. There was a pipeline from the German
| terminal to Britain.
|
| There are many hypocrites of the first order in the
| oil/gas game. In the context of this submission, it is
| appropriate to note that so called "far right" or "far
| left" parties are the only ones who point out facts like
| the above in public.
|
| Voters notice this and blaming Russian interference is a
| very weak game that endangers the democracies in the EU.
| wiseowise wrote:
| > The immediate neighbors collected transit fees for
| Russian gas and oil. Ukraine itself collected transit
| fees for gas deliveries to Austria until very recently.
|
| What else were they supposed to do? Block transit
| altogether and alienate their partners?
| Viliam1234 wrote:
| Yeah, it was so frustrating.
|
| Some guy from Eastern Europe: "You don't know Russians.
| Let me tell you about my experience with them..."
|
| Some guy from Western Europe: "LOL, I see you believe
| American propaganda completely uncritically."
|
| The guy from EE: "What? No, I was telling you what
| happened to my family..."
|
| The guy from WE: "Let's talk about how America sucks
| instead."
|
| Seems to me that for many people Russia wasn't even a
| real country, just some boogeyman that American
| propaganda made up. Then they suddenly woke up, and now
| they are like "oh no, we must not escalate!". Guys, you
| don't even know that making concessions to Russia is the
| fastest way to escalate. (You didn't expect North Korean
| soldiers attacking a European country, did you? That's
| what you get for your non-escalation. There will be
| more.)
| KaiserPro wrote:
| None of us were laughing in derision. If we were laughing
| its because we knew we were fucked.
| schmorptron wrote:
| Imma be honest, I was pretty convinced by the "if we have
| strong trade relations where it's almost codependent, they
| will not try stuff". That was probably wrong, but we were
| also way more dependent on them than the other way
| around...
| ossobuco wrote:
| > The worst thing Europe did was get addicted to cheap
| Russian gas.
|
| True, it was really bad for us to be able build a decent
| industry and export all over the world. Much better to be
| addicted to expensive USA gas and let our industry and
| economies crumble.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| Actually much better to leave perfectly functional nuclear
| power plants online so you don't have to pick one vs the
| other.
| ossobuco wrote:
| And who's Europe largest and closest supplier of Uranium?
|
| You can't change geography, Europe doesn't have raw
| resources, Russia has tons of them. We're destined to
| have a close commercial relationship.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| > closest supplier of Uranium
|
| Dp you understand how energy-dense Uranium is? You can
| power a 1GW nuclear reactor for a week with a carry-on
| suitcase full of pellets. The proximity is utterly
| irrelevant.
|
| It's also not even necessary! Uranium was discovered on
| the Czechia / Germany border and there are still many
| reserves there! Europe only stopped mining it in 2016!
| ossobuco wrote:
| And yet, even the USA imported 27% of its uranium from
| Russia until last year.
| ANewFormation wrote:
| The entire world is based on cooperation even with nations
| one may not like. China, for instance, is the manufacturing
| backbone of the world - to say nothing of being the primary
| source of many critical elements, such as those used in
| electric batteries, solar, and so on.
|
| And war between the US and China will also happen as soon as
| China moves to reintegrate Taiwan, and the EU will again be
| expected to work as a tool of the US, to its own detriment.
|
| Will you then say that the EU should have done away with
| cheap Chinese manufacturing and resources earlier? And claim
| it was some sort of a Trojan Horse? Or will at some point the
| EU consider putting EU interests first?
| empiricus wrote:
| I think Merkel thought that if pay Putin fairly, he will
| learn it is better to cooperate, everybody wins. EU addicted
| to gas, but make Putin addicted to money. It seems that Putin
| was not this kind of rational.
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| This news shows exactly that the constitutional court was not
| asleep. They took a bold decision.
| cedws wrote:
| But as comments have said, even acknowledging interference
| after the fact and rejecting the result _is_ a failure in
| democracy, because it 's ripe for abuse. Thus, the Russian
| interference has still succeeded.
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| This is a bit like a football referee looking at the videos
| after a goal and deciding that it was a handball, thus
| invalidating the goal. It is not an easy decision to make
| but better to do it quickly.
| creer wrote:
| We'll have to see the replacement election to decide that.
| Will the population change their vote in response or not.
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| At least everyone has some time to cool down and think
| and absorb all the information that came out in the last
| few days.
| ossobuco wrote:
| Wait, you voted the wrong way! Here, take a few days to
| think about it, and then let's try again, ok?
| tomp wrote:
| Unlikely. The leading candidate is already being
| investigated by the police.
|
| Chances are he'll be jailed or otherwise prevented from
| running.
| creer wrote:
| I did not mean to imply that the population should vote
| again for the same candidate to demonstrate their
| independence. New evidence was presented to and by a high
| court and it's fair to expect it to be considered (for
| example for how convincing it is, and for what all the
| candidates have to say about it, and even for who
| presented it and for what reason).
|
| If the evidence was serious it also would not make sense
| to let the election continue.
|
| Finally I don't know about Romania, but in a few other
| countries in Europe, no matter what happens to that
| sullied candidate, these votes are not too likely to
| shift to the incumbent party. See for example the
| circumstances that enabled Macron to be elected the first
| time in France.
| tremon wrote:
| _acknowledging interference after the fact and rejecting
| the result is a failure in democracy_
|
| Citation very much needed. It seems you're desperately
| arguing towards a pre-determined conclusion. Especially if
| you're then equating this with a foreign government
| successfully installing a puppet regime.
| ocschwar wrote:
| Okay, so the interference has succeeded. So what?
|
| If the success is limited to repeating the first round of
| voting, that's a lot of Ukrainians who will still be alive
| next year.
| cedws wrote:
| It damages confidence in democracy itself.
| ocschwar wrote:
| What damages it more? The court playing "calvinball" or a
| Putin puppet wrecking Romania?
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Far from some bold decision in defense of democracy, this is
| almost a coup by our constitutional court.
|
| First, there is no process or even mention in any Romanian
| law about annuling an election. The Constitutional Court of
| Romania has two specified roles in an election: it validates
| candidates (or rejects them, as it did with another far right
| candidate in this very election), and it validates the
| election results (or invalidates them if there is a
| significant suspicion of fraud in the vote counts, after a
| recount). They issued a recount order for this same election
| as well, and then decided based on the results that the first
| round was valid. If they had decided it wasn't valid, there
| are laws for when it would have been repeated. However, they
| later came back to this decision, and quoting a vague article
| in the Constitution that says that they assure the electoral
| procedures are followed, they invented this concept of
| annuling the entire electoral process, from the very
| beginning (so even the candidate registrations have to be re-
| done).
|
| Secondly, they did this based on evidence that was public
| knowledge for two weeks, including the last few times they
| met and validated the counts.
|
| Thirdly, the evidence in question is vague accusations of
| Russian interference with no specifics. There are no names,
| no identified groups, no sums of money except for one lump
| payment by a businessman. The only clear accusation is
| campaign finance violations (which the authorities had
| already blatantly ignored, as the candidate in question had
| registered his campaign costing 0 RON, which was known to the
| relevant authorities since last month and to the public for
| two weeks).
| nottorp wrote:
| The two ruling parties that are governing in a coalition
| right now aren't known for either competence or honesty
| either.
|
| Incidentally, their presidential candidates did not make it
| to the second round of elections.
|
| So one can legitimately ask if this is because of the
| russian interference, or because they want another chance
| at the presidency?
| sebastianz wrote:
| OK, but what could they have done instead?
|
| There is a very surprising, out-of-nowhere win by an
| independent, that declared he spent 0eur on his campaign,
| as a result of what looks to be a large scale (presumably
| expensive to run) campaign on TikTok, that nobody knows who
| financed, which will await trial, commissions and
| investigations to figure out.
|
| What could the court have said when they were prompted?
| Ignore this? I'm not really a 'Constitutional Court'
| apologist :). I am genuinely curious... what would have
| been the alternative here?
| tsimionescu wrote:
| The court had already validated the first round of
| elections. This was a fait accompli. They could have let
| it stand, noting that people had voted and their votes
| were correctly counted, and that matters more than any
| other manipulation.
|
| Consider we don't have any decision by any court (before
| this one) that confirms that any illegal action of any
| kind has taken place. It's only isinuations and beliefs,
| but nothing proven to the extent required by law.
|
| The elections should have been allowed to continue. If
| needed, some special prosecutor whose independence from
| the next president, even if CG won, could be guaranteed
| could be appointed to continue investigating the facts of
| this campaign. Then, CG could be tried based on the
| findings, could be suspended by Parliament while this was
| going on, and he could be deposed if he indeed was found
| guilty, and new elections held at that time (in Romania,
| if the president's mandate ends suddenly for any reason,
| there is a temporary presidency, but only until snap
| elections are called).
|
| Let's not forget that he might not even have won - the
| race was tight, but not unwinnable. So in that case, he
| could easily be investigated as a private citizen.
| sebastianz wrote:
| But if you believe it is highly likely this would happen
| (which presumably the CCR do believe, along with various
| state-defense relevant institutions), how is this whole
| process you described better than just cancelling them
| now?
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Because it's legal. And what they did now is not legal.
|
| They don't even have may proof that anything that
| happened in the first round campaign was illegal. The CCR
| is not even qualified to rule on the facts, on the
| legality of anything that happened.
|
| So if nothing illegal is proven by any court to have
| happened, if there isn't even enough evidence to get a
| tmeporary arrest warrant in his name in a regular court
| of law, how can we annul the whole electoral process? The
| costs alone should require a much higher level of
| justification.
|
| The court has not even ruled that he is not allowed to
| participate in the re-made elections.
|
| I was mortified that he might win, don't get me wrong. My
| entire family was going to vote for Lasconi, even those
| that didn't really like her, just to make sure this idiot
| madman didn't win. But that doesn't make this decision be
| any closer to the rule of law.
| sebastianz wrote:
| > Because it's legal. And what they did now is not legal.
|
| I am not an expert on this, so I'm _not_ saying you are
| wrong, but why would they not have the prerogative to do
| this? Do you have any sources for that?
|
| I know at least that there is precedent in the EU -
| Austria cancelled a round of elections in 2016, also for
| some electoral law incongruities / technicalities (that
| at least superficially by my knowledge were less serious
| than this scandal), done also by their constitutional
| court.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Romanian law also has provisions for ca celling the
| results of an election. The CCR followed the process,
| heard challenges to the validity of these results for the
| first round of elections, ordered a recount, and found
| based on the recount that all was well, and it certified
| the results.
|
| What they found afterwards, on their own without any case
| brought before them, is that the campaign that preceded
| the first round of elections (which lasted for one month
| before the first round two weeks ago now) _may_ have been
| influenced by outside forces, that a candidate _may_ have
| flaunted campaign finance laws, and similar matters, and
| that because of this, the _entire_ electoral process is
| invalid and annulled. The government has to restart this
| process from scratch, with anyone who wants to
| participate registering their candidacy again from
| scratch.
|
| There is no procedure or standard in any law or in the
| Construction to specify such a process. The Court
| invented it from whole cloth, based only on a vague/broad
| power to oversee the election.
| sebastianz wrote:
| I still do not understand how it can be illegal for them
| to do this, if they do have the prerogative to cancel an
| election result. (In the sense that you can disagree with
| a judge's decision, he might even make an objectively
| wrong decision, but it does not make him taking that
| decision illegal, just perhaps wrong.)
|
| I am curious to read more about this in the coming days.
| I do remember previous scandals related to the CCR and
| their (often said too close) relationship to the parties
| in power. But I guess in this case I just don't see why
| their decision would be illegal, and when compared to the
| alternatives I don't see why it would be wrong.
|
| To also clarify, despite thinking this might be the
| correct decision, I actually think politically there is a
| higher probability now of yielding a worse president,
| since Ciolacu & Simion will probably end up in the
| secondary, the latter having chances, instead of Lasconi.
| Not that I think she's the greatest candidate either, but
| again... compared to the alternatives...
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > I still do not understand how it can be illegal for
| them to do this, if they do have the prerogative to
| cancel an election result.
|
| It is precisely because of how that power works that what
| they did yesterday is illegal, in my opinion.
|
| The Court is not basing its decision on whether to
| validate or invalidate an election result on the
| Constitution directly, in regular elections. The
| constitution is too broad and vague for this kind of
| power. Instead, based on the constition, specific laws
| that govern how elections are run and at what parts of
| the process the Court is involved in them were
| elaborated, and those laws were validated by the Court
| itself. Specifically, this law is 370/2004 [0].
|
| If the Court can just convene itself by fiat, analyze any
| evidence it wants, and decide what effect that can have
| on the election, then why did we need a specific law with
| specific articles on how election results are validated
| in the first place?
|
| [0] https://www.roaep.ro/legislatie/wp-
| content/uploads/2019/08/L...
| Aloisius wrote:
| How is annulling an election any different from their power
| to invalidate results?
|
| The power cited to ensure election procedure doesn't seem
| vague. It appears to be quite broad:
|
| > The Constitutional Court shall have the following powers:
| ... (f) to guard the observance of the procedure for the
| election of the President of Romania and to confirm the
| ballot returns;
| tsimionescu wrote:
| For the ballot returns, there is a whole law that details
| how that process works, what documents are to be sent to
| the court, who and how and when can contest the results,
| what happens if the results are annulled and so on. The
| court can't make up its own rules, there is a whole
| legislative cadre that specifies their powers,
| responsibilities, and their interaction with other
| institutions.
|
| They trampled over all of these with this new decision:
| they didn't observe any time limits (they gave this
| decision out of the blue, while the voting for the second
| round had already started; could they have decided this
| same annulment two months from now? Nothing in this
| decision or motivation says they couldn't). They met to
| decide on this matter with no request from everyone, they
| brought this matter before themselves by their own power,
| which no court has the power to. They had no legal
| framework to demand this from any other institution.
|
| Worse of all, they have specified no limits to this broad
| power they have found they have, nor any legal standards
| for what type of allegations are grave enough to
| objectively determine this annulment. What if next time a
| candidate that won 1% of the vote had a suspicious
| campaign, will that lead to annulment? What is the
| standard of evidence to be evaluated for this decision?
| The documents they based this decision on wouldn't even
| have constituted admissible evidence in a court of law,
| they are hearsay by institutions which aren't even making
| them under pain of perjury.
|
| And related to that article of the Constitution, there is
| no reason to interpret it as a broad, decisional power.
| It is clearly meant to guide law makers to create
| specific laws for determining the CCR's specific role in
| the electoral process. There are many similar articles in
| the constitution about other institutions that don't
| grant them any direct powers in this way. For example,
| article 80, title 2 says:
|
| > (2) The President of Romania shall guard the observance
| of the Constitution and the proper functioning of the
| public authorities. To this effect, he shall act as a
| mediator between the Powers in the State, as well as
| between the State and society.
|
| If the President took the same approach as the court, it
| stands to reason that he could go into any public
| authority in Romania and block their decisions based on
| finding that they are not properly observing the
| Constitution, right?
| Aloisius wrote:
| _> If the President took the same approach as the court,
| it stands to reason that he could go into any public
| authority in Romania and block their decisions based on
| finding that they are not properly observing the
| Constitution, right?_
|
| No. Article 80 you're quoting does not grant the
| President power. Instead it describes the role of
| President.
|
| This is rather unlike Article 146 that _explicitly_
| grants the Constitutional Court power or the other
| articles that explicitly grant the President power.
| cbg0 wrote:
| > First, there is no process or even mention in any
| Romanian law about annuling an election.
|
| This is false. Law 370 20/09/2004:
|
| Article 52
|
| (1) The Constitutional Court shall annul an election if the
| voting and the determination of the results have taken
| place by fraud of such a nature as to alter the allocation
| of the mandate or, as the case may be, the order of the
| candidates eligible to participate in the second round of
| voting. In such a case, the Court shall order that the
| second ballot be held on the second Sunday after the date
| on which the elections are annulled.
|
| (2) An application to annul the elections may be filed by
| political parties, political alliances, electoral
| alliances, organizations of citizens belonging to national
| minorities represented in the Council of National
| Minorities and candidates who participated in the
| elections, within 3 days after the close of the voting at
| the latest; the application must be substantiated and
| accompanied by the evidence on which it is based.
|
| (3) The Constitutional Court shall decide on the
| application by the date stipulated by law for the public
| announcement of the election results.
|
| Article 53
|
| (1) The Constitutional Court shall validate the result of
| each ballot, ensure the publication of the election result
| in the mass media and in the Official Gazette of Romania,
| Part I, for each ballot and validate the election result
| for the elected President.
|
| (2) The Validation Act shall be drawn up in three copies,
| one of which shall remain with the Constitutional Court,
| one of which shall be submitted to Parliament for the
| taking of the oath provided for in Article 82 para. (2) of
| the Constitution of Romania, republished, and the third
| shall be submitted to the elected candidate.
|
| Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
| tsimionescu wrote:
| The articles from 370/2004 that you quoted contradict
| your thesis. They give the CCR specific power to decide
| to annul the specific election, and only if they find
| evidence of vote fraud " if the voting and the
| determination of the results have taken place by fraud of
| such a nature as to alter the allocation of the mandate
| or, as the case may be, the order of the candidates
| eligible to participate in the second round of voting".
| The court has already ruled in Tuesday based on this law,
| and they have explicitly found that no such fraud has
| taken place, and they have validated the results. And
| again, this only refers specifically to annuling one
| election, re-doing it the following Sunday, and only if
| _vote fraud_ is identified.
|
| The court yesterday decided to annull the entire
| electoral process, and not because of voter fraud, but
| strictly because of campaign finance violations. There is
| no such provision in that law or any other. The court did
| not "order that the second ballot be held on the second
| Sunday after the date on which the elections are
| annulled." - they ordered that the Government shall
| choose a new date, that candidates shall register a new
| etc. The next election will be, at the earliest, held in
| late February.
|
| Also, article 2 was not followed in any way *. The
| current decision from the court was not based on any
| application to annul by any party whatsoever, the court
| convened of its own volition, based only on the
| declassified documents that appeared in the public
| sphere.
|
| None of the other articles you quote give any such power.
| In fact, you'll see that the word "campaign" is not
| present anywhere in those articles. And yet the Court's
| decision is _entirely_ based on problems they find
| related to said campaign.
|
| * there was an application by two candidates to annull
| the first round of elections, those were investigated on
| Thursday and then Monday last week, and they were
| rejected. This new decision by the court is unrelated to
| that.
| cbg0 wrote:
| I'm not looking to get into a legal debate about this, as
| I'm not a legal scholar. You stated something factually
| wrong and I pointed you to the paragraph of the law.
|
| The court is the single highest authority on
| constitutional matters and can pretty much decide what
| they want to on these matters, as well as how they
| interpret the law, but this is the case with every high
| court everywhere and it boils down to "who watches the
| watchers?".
| blub wrote:
| Yes, the CCR can probably get away with what they've
| done, but when we've finished processing this there's
| good chances that the decision will be proven to have
| been made outside of the court's strict mandate.
|
| And even if they have a good excuse, the optics are very
| bad and potentially fatal for whatever is left of the
| trust in Romanian institutions.
| cbg0 wrote:
| Who will decide that the court has acted outside its own
| mandate? They are the only authority on constitutional
| matters. If you're referring to "the people" - based on
| what I've seen there's no street protesting going on over
| this.
|
| > And even if they have a good excuse, the optics are
| very bad and potentially fatal for whatever is left of
| the trust in Romanian institutions.
|
| Completely agree.
| blub wrote:
| I don't know. Probably the posterity :)
|
| Given political support (with the exception of Lasconi)
| for the annulment, I expect that nothing will happen in
| the near future.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| What I stated was not fa tally wrong, you are
| misinterpreting the law or my assertions. I have stated,
| and showed several times in different comments, that the
| law did not have an _explicit_ power granted anywhere in
| the law to annul the entire electoral process.
|
| While the CCR is indeed preeminent in its interpretation
| of the law, it's every citizen's right to evaluate the
| law on their own and decide with their own mind if the
| courts are fair in their interpretations of the law. If
| the CCR came tomorrow and said that X will be the next
| president for the next five years because they are the
| best suited to do Y, I wouldn't have to accept their view
| as a fair reading of the law/Constitution. It's not like
| I'm claiming I have some right to block the Court's
| decision, I'm just saying that by my own mind they are in
| blatant disregard of the legal framework.
| blub wrote:
| Regarding Article 52, paragraph one, there is no proof of
| fraud. In fact, if I'm not mistaken a vote recount was
| done and the court accepted the results as valid.
|
| There is an allegation of foreign influence which has not
| been proven in a court of law.
|
| IMO the court has acted beyond its mandate and only made
| things worse.
|
| By the way, where is the report from SRI? The internet is
| full of newspapers which quote it, but don't link to the
| original document. From those articles, there is no
| smoking gun against the candidate themselves. Just some
| guy which paid people on Tiktok, with no statement on
| that guy's connection to the candidate.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Here are links to the SRI reports [0][1], taken from this
| news site [2] (where you can also find SIE and MAI
| reports).
|
| [0] https://s.iw.ro/gateway/g/ZmlsZVNvdXJjZT1odHRwJTNBJTJ
| GJTJG/c...
|
| [1] https://s.iw.ro/gateway/g/ZmlsZVNvdXJjZT1odHRwJTNBJTJ
| GJTJG/c...
|
| [2] https://m.digi24.ro/stiri/actualitate/politica/klaus-
| iohanni...
| cbg0 wrote:
| We're getting in murky waters about legally debating what
| constitutes as "proof" to a court that is the sole
| authority on the constitution and whether they need
| something to be proven in a different court to act. The
| vote recount you mention was a different court decision,
| not connected to this one, which stemmed from a new
| complaint.
|
| While there is no smoking gun against the candidate, the
| declassified documents show that intelligence agencies
| believe a foreign state actor to have been involved in
| the candidate's TikTok campaign.
| cowpig wrote:
| Europe?
| ValentinA23 wrote:
| "The truth is that the Americans will eventually make
| themselves hated by everyone, even by their most unconditional
| allies. All the manipulations the Americans imagine are
| contradicted by events."
|
| -- Charles de Gaulle
| coliveira wrote:
| And now you know why they need to spend so much money to buy
| and influence media outlets all over the world. Tip: it is
| not because media is such a profitable industry...
| HideousKojima wrote:
| France under de Gaulle is hardly a bastion of freedom and
| liberal democracy, I have a hard time taking anything he said
| or did post-WW2 seriously
| georgeecollins wrote:
| By "France under de Gaulle" do you mean the French Fifth
| Republic which was proposed by de Gaulle?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Fifth_Republic
|
| Hint: That's the current government of France to this day.
| To me, that is a liberal democracy.
|
| I would recommend reading "When France Fell" for more
| context on de Gaulle. You are talking about a complicated
| figure. I also would point out that he faced attempts on
| his life for getting France out of the former colony of
| Algeria.
| stracer wrote:
| > All the manipulations the Americans imagine are
| contradicted by events.
|
| What does this mean?
| ValentinA23 wrote:
| WMD in Iraq is an instance of this.
| rs999gti wrote:
| > Americans will eventually make themselves hated by everyone
|
| Who's everyone?
| Aloisius wrote:
| Your quote is _way_ out of context.
|
| "See, even in NATO, which the Americans built with their own
| hands, which is their thing, have you seen that? The NATO
| parliamentarians declare that the Multilateral Force is
| nothing but a big joke. The truth is that the Americans will
| end up being hated by everyone. Even by their most
| unconditional allies. The Multilateral Force would be one
| more trick. All the tricks that the Americans imagine are
| denied by events. It is more and more true. Look at their so-
| called detente."
|
| -- Charles de Gaulle, November 6, 1963,
| mrtksn wrote:
| Europe is just getting adjusted to the new reality and the
| reality is not black-and-white.
|
| Russians didn't discover magic words that they use to hypnotise
| people and make them vote for pro-Russia candidate. In fact,
| everywhere in the world the incumbent politics are losing
| ground because the system is in crisis and people are looking
| for a change everywhere and Russia appears to be able to propel
| politicians who are closer to the their politics simply because
| the incumbent ones screwed up.
|
| Is America different? Just a month ago in the American election
| - those who are anti-establishment and pro-Russian won.
|
| US and Europe will go through a soul searching and hopefully
| will come out of this in a better shape. It has to go through
| this because the ideology collapsed, economy doesn't perform
| and the hypocrisy is unbearable anymore.
|
| For example, can you tell me if EU is about saving the
| environment and stopping climate change? If so why they are
| blocking the Chinese electric cars? Can't stand others making
| the world better place better than they do?
|
| Can you tell me if US is about freedom and respect of the
| international law, borders and trande? If so why they support
| Ukraine against Russian invasion and then support Israel who
| occupies Palestinian territories since many years?
|
| Can you tell me why people should drink from paper straws when
| the rich fly private jets?
|
| Can you tell me why the capital can go anywhere but people
| should be stopped at the borders?
|
| Can you tell me how the economy is s great when so many people
| suffer?
|
| The west is in crisis, the ideology doesn't hold and the
| economy doesn't provide and all the Russians have to do is to
| point it out. They don't use spell, they just tell what
| everyone sees. This needs to get fixed, let's hope that the
| damage wouldn't be too big.
| cowpig wrote:
| Technology has changed the landscape of possibility very
| quickly, and our institutions are not keeping up.
|
| The world will need to figure out ways to deal with the new
| reality. Social media have made it far more lucrative to make
| up whatever than to report on facts. Meanwhile it's harder
| than ever to run a sustainable business in journalism.
|
| Meanwhile autocrats have noticed that it's cheaper than ever
| to run massive campaigns of propaganda and misinformation
| abroad, because they don't have to involve anywhere near the
| number of local accomplices.
|
| LLMs are accelerating the trend.
|
| You're right that the US democracy is in crisis as well.
| stracer wrote:
| > the ideology collapsed, economy doesn't perform
|
| Economy doesn't perform, but ideology has collapsed only in
| minds of ordinary people. Politicians, stakeholders and
| various media outlets are very much invested, and still push
| that the current course is the only correct way and the
| bright green future as designed is unstoppable. Reminds me of
| the arrogance of the ruling party slogans from before 90s.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| In Moldova the magic words were bribery. Thankfully they
| didn't work.
| myrmidon wrote:
| I'll bite.
|
| > For example, can you tell me if EU is about saving the
| environment and stopping climate change? If so why they are
| blocking the Chinese electric cars? Can't stand others making
| the world better place better than they do?
|
| Because the EU is a bunch of democracies, and a few of the
| biggest ones do not want to accelerate electrification bad
| enough to threaten parts of their industry/economy right now.
| This tracks with the electorate; support for green policies
| is rather low across the board, almost every nation has
| different primary issues.
|
| > Can you tell me if US is about freedom and respect of the
| international law, borders and trande? If so why they support
| Ukraine against Russian invasion and then support Israel who
| occupies Palestinian territories since many years?
|
| The Ukraine war is the most clear-cut aggressor/victim
| situation in a long time, even compared to setups like the
| Vietnam war: There is not even a puppet government with any
| legitimacy that the Russians could be claiming to act in
| support of, and there is no credible casus belli either. It's
| just blatant expansionism at the cost of a sovereign nation.
|
| Israel/palestine is a complicated mess-- it is basically a
| civil war of sorts, and the Americans DO support people in
| Gaza/Westbank a ton (humanitarian aid).
|
| > Can you tell me why people should drink from paper straws
| when the rich fly private jets?
|
| Note: The non-private jets are a much bigger problem
| actually, but since there's not enough popular support to
| curtail air travel significantly, the easy pro-environmental
| actions happen first.
|
| > Can you tell me why the capital can go anywhere but people
| should be stopped at the borders?
|
| Because the people inside those borders don't want other
| people with no capital wandering in. The capital alone (or
| its owners) they don't really mind as much.
|
| > Can you tell me how the economy is s great when so many
| people suffer?
|
| Can you be more specific on this? I'd say the economy is not
| great, not terrible, and its about the same for the people
| (talking about central Europe here).
| mrtksn wrote:
| > few of the biggest ones do not want to accelerate
| electrification bad enough to threaten parts of their
| industry/economy right now
|
| Do you see the problem? Those in control screw up and they
| expect to get bailed out by forcing people to buy their
| inferior and expensive products.
|
| > The Ukraine war is the most clear-cut aggressor/victim
| situation
|
| It's actually not that clear cut and if you apply the same
| filters for both of the countries you will see it. Try
| testing for internationally recognized borders and the
| situation is same for the Israeli invasion and Russian
| invasion. Test for separatist movements and you will find
| very similar things, test for minorities getting attacked
| and you will see that its quite similar. Not the same but
| when you pick something like "Russia must respect the
| internationally recognized borders" and you don't apply the
| same for Israel then you are a hypocrite, you are not doing
| it from standpoint of a principle but due to your own
| interest and if you are doing it out of your own interest
| people start asking why I'm paying for it? Where's my cut
| if this thing pans out?
|
| > The non-private jets are a much bigger problem actually
|
| I don't know if that's true or not but you ask people to
| sacrifice their comfort for a common cause, then everyone
| should do it.
|
| > Because the people inside those borders don't want other
| people with no capital wandering
|
| But then people start noticing that it's not the poor
| immigrants who want to work who buys al the properties.
| Some people want the poor stopped at the border and the
| rich welcomed. Others want different things, a lot of
| people don't want oligarchs buying all that property and
| leave it empty.
|
| > I'd say the economy is not great, not terrible
|
| In the case of the US elections, there were many opinion
| polls showing that people are not satisfied with the
| economy. They are also not satisfied with many other things
| related to the economy. Just yesterday someone killed an
| insurance CEO at a filthy rich location and so many people
| were cheering for the killer.
| ponector wrote:
| > It's actually not that clear cut and if you apply the
| same filters for both of the countries you will see it.
|
| Pretty much clear. Unless you watch Russia Today
| everyday. If you throw away tons of Russian lies it is
| clear expansion invasion.
|
| Russians did this many times. Annexation of Poland,
| Finland, Baltic states and more recent annexation of
| Ichkeria and occupation of Georgia.
| mrtksn wrote:
| >Pretty much clear. Unless you watch Russia Today
| everyday. If you throw away tons of Russian lies it is
| clear expansion invasion.
|
| You are misrepresenting my argument. I don't say that
| Russian are innocent, I say that Israel is just as
| guilty.
| nopurpose wrote:
| How is it "expansion invasion" if peace terms offered by
| Russia, which are now public knowledge with recent
| documents leak, shortly after invastion didn't include
| any new territories for Russia? Ukraine walked away from
| that offer.
| ponector wrote:
| It was a bluff to make a weaker Ukraine.
|
| Just a reminder to that moment:
|
| 1.Russia sponsored separatist movement in Donbass with
| money, weapons and agents. 2. Russia directly occupied
| Crimea while lying they do not. 3. Russia signed a
| Budapest memorandum to respect Ukrainian independence and
| sovereignty in the existing borders and restrain to use
| force against it. 4. Russia signed a series of Minsk
| peace treaties.
|
| Why you think that they really offered a peace in a good
| faith? History of modern Russia, USSR and empire show any
| peace treaty or other international documents with
| nothing, just a waste of the paper.
|
| Russians always lie. That's putty western world are blind
| because Russian bribes are too good to miss.
| flerchin wrote:
| What is this?
| myrmidon wrote:
| Those peace terms included Russia getting to annex
| Crimea, stationing troops in Donbas (eastern Ukraine),
| Ukraine retreating all of their troops, Ukraine being
| neutral (permanently non-allied).
|
| In return, Ukraine would have gotten some guarantor
| states safekeeping its newly drawn borders (but Russia
| would have been able to veto any action of those
| guarantor states in case someone, possibly Russia,
| attacked the Ukraine again).
|
| This seems a bit of a complete joke to me? Can you
| explain, why, exactly, Ukraine should have taken that
| offer? This is basically "I give you everything we are
| currently fighting over, in return I get an absolutely
| worthless promise from a serial liar". No deal.
| aguaviva wrote:
| Which leak are you referring to?
| myrmidon wrote:
| > Try testing for internationally recognized borders and
| the situation is same for the Israeli invasion and
| Russian invasion.
|
| I do not understand your point. Ukraine has borders that
| were recognized by Russia itself (Budapest Memorandum).
| They violated those borders when they annexed Crimea--
| their excuse: those people want to be part of our
| empire-- ok.
|
| 8 years later they marched on Kyiv-- whats even the
| excuse for that? Do you think the people in Kyiv want to
| be liberated from their president, and governed by some
| Russian oligarch?
|
| If Russia is in a similar situation than Israel, then
| were are the massive acts of terrorism against Russian
| citizens comparable to October 7th? Where are the
| missiles fired towards Moscow, before 2014?
| mrtksn wrote:
| I don't know why you interpret my comment like that, I
| don't support Russia, I say that Israel is just like
| Russia from that standpoint.
|
| Are you by any chance assuming that Israel is absolutely
| innocent, therefore I must be claiming that Russia must
| be also innocent? It's the other way around, they are
| both aggressor and invaders. Anyone claiming that
| countries shouldn't invade other countries and respect
| the internationally recognized borders then should
| support Ukraine and Palestine.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| The new puppet government was ethnic cleansing the local
| Russian populatin. So It's not so clear cut. The fact
| that's it a puppet government is easy to confirm. Just
| ask yourself where Zelensky came from and why he stashes
| his generational wealth in the states. Why ban elections
| if the Ukrainian people are still really behind them.
| Also Ukraine is not getting helped for free. More like
| they've mortgage their land and resources to the likes of
| Blackrock and other banking interests. That will keep the
| future generations in indebted servitude, while they rob
| them of their resources. This is just Western
| colonialism. Ask any Indian how fond they are of British
| colonialism.
| myrmidon wrote:
| > The new puppet government was ethnic cleansing the
| local Russian populatin
|
| Yes, this is what Russian state media insinuated.
|
| If Russias utmost effort was to protect the minorities in
| Ukraines east, spearheading a peace-keeping effort would
| have made a lot of sense (even stationing army there,
| possibly).
|
| But this is not what happened, Russia fanned the flames
| in that region instead, aiding the separatists with
| undercover soldiers and materiel `(this is very well
| documented because they shot down a civilian airliner by
| mistake, which pissed of the dutch victims and their
| government to no end, investigating the whole clusterfuck
| in excruciating detail).
|
| > The fact that's it a puppet government is easy to
| confirm.
|
| Insisting on Zelensky being a non-democratic puppet
| government is a bit rich after Putin had his last
| political opponent poisoned, but ok...
|
| > Why ban elections if the Ukrainian people are still
| really behind them
|
| Because they are at war.
|
| > Also Ukraine is not getting helped for free. More like
| they've mortgage their land and resources to the likes of
| Blackrock and other banking interests. That will keep the
| future generations in indebted servitude, while they rob
| them of their resources.
|
| So Russia trying to annex the Ukraine is actually a plot
| by western colonialists? Why is Russia helping those
| colonialists in your opinion? Who exactly are those
| colonialists? Germany? UK? France?
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| Navalny went through a trail (Russian legal process), was
| found guilty of corruption and died in prison of a blood
| clot. Please provide proof of poisoning ...
|
| Alexei Navalny's popularity within Russia was always a
| western media fabrication, and at best a whole lot of
| wishful thinking. Navalny was a fringe candidate, with
| about the same amount of popularity as Chris Christi, and
| pushed and financed be the same neocons. To what degree
| Russia is democratic can be disputed, but the fact is
| that Putin still has the backing of a vast, vast majority
| of Russian people.
|
| There are J6 political opponents still rotting in jail on
| decade long sentences over protesting a highly suspicious
| election. Some have been kept in solitarily confinement
| (torture) and some have also died in prison. So Jailing
| political opposition is done in the states at this point
| too. Trump survived two assassination attempts. Biden a
| less popular candidate (as proven by this election) had
| his justice department attempt to jail him for hundreds
| of years.
|
| >So Russia trying to annex the Ukraine is actually a plot
| by western colonialists?
|
| Russia voluntarily let Ukraine secede from the USSR under
| certain conditions, which they have not kept. If
| Ukrainians have a right to self determination. Clearly
| under the same principle that Russian majority that lives
| in eastern part of Ukraine does as well.
| mopsi wrote:
| > If Ukrainians have a right to self determination.
| Clearly under the same principle that Russian majority
| that lives in eastern part of Ukraine does as well.
|
| Russians were not a majority in eastern Ukraine. The
| split was roughly 55% Ukrainian, 40% Russian, 5% other in
| Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts, and much less in other
| oblasts Russia has officially annexed - Kherson was 82%
| Ukrainian and 14% Russian.
|
| The right to self-determination applies to distinct
| "peoples". It's not very well defined, but generally
| understood as a globally distinct ethnicity living on
| their historic territories. Native American tribes could
| exercise this. They are a distinct people living on their
| historic land and without their own established state
| anywhere else in the world.
|
| This right does not extend to ethnic minorities living in
| other countries. Russians have already exercised the
| right and have a country, they don't get to claim any
| piece of land on the planet that has Russians living
| there. Russians have about as strong claim to eastern
| Ukraine than Israel has to Brooklyn (22% Jewish). I think
| it would be pretty insane to argue that Brooklyn "should
| belong to Israel" purely on this, and start a major war
| that drives away millions as refugees, kills hundreds of
| thousands, and razes many East Coast towns to ground.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| The exact percentage of Russian ethnicity is is a little
| hard to determine, and varies through out that region.
| The fact is that the Eastern region of Ukraine
| historically voted for pro Russian candidates. And after
| being annexed, again voted to be part of Russia.
| Presumably the people that live there, hedged their bets
| on who would treat them best going forward, and came up
| with Russia multiple times.
|
| We have a similar situation in Canada where the Province
| of Quebec has a large percentage of francophone speakers
| (French Heritage). If one day, Canada were to try to join
| the US, a large percentage of the Quebec region would
| either decide to form their own country, or link up with
| France in some way. Even more so likely if the Anglophone
| Canadians would start ethnically cleansing Quebecers.
|
| If you believe in the principals of democracy, then you
| should support the will of the local population to self
| determination under such circumstances.
|
| All this talk of democracy, but Zelensky's party will not
| hold new elections, because they've lost the support of
| the majority of Ukrainians. So if not the interests of
| the majority, who's interest does this party represent
| going forward?
| mopsi wrote:
| > The fact is that the Eastern region of Ukraine
| historically voted for pro Russian candidates. And after
| being annexed, again voted to be part of Russia.
| Presumably the people that live there, hedged their bets
| on who would treat them best going forward, and came up
| with Russia multiple times.
|
| That's simply not true. Pre-war surveys showed 1% support
| for joining Russian Federation in Kherson and up to 13%
| in areas with the largest number of Russians. So it was a
| fringe idea even among ethnic Russians. Leaked surveys
| conducted by Russian military admin after the invasion
| showed similar low levels. They got 99% support in their
| fake referendums only through extreme intimidation:
| Moscow-backed forces are going door-to-door armed with
| machine guns forcing Ukrainians to vote in "sham"
| referendums that will annex newly occupied areas to
| Russia, sources have told the Telegraph. Voting began on
| Friday morning and is expected to continue until Tuesday,
| with polling stations featuring see-through ballot boxes
| and armed guards set up across Russian-controlled parts
| of the Kherson, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk
| regions, as well as Russia itself. Ukrainians
| living in territory that Moscow has taken since the start
| of the war have been told their families will be
| massacred if they refuse to take part, with soldiers
| sometimes even leaning over their shoulders and watching
| them as they vote. "We are forced to go under the pretext
| of being shot. If we didn't go, they said that they would
| shoot or massacre the whole family," said a resident in
| Severodonetsk, Luhansk Oblast, who wished to remain
| anonymous due to fears of reprisals. "We're scared. At
| the referendum, turnout is required or arrest or worse.
| Many are being forced with a threat to life."
|
| https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/09/23/gunmen-
| goi...
|
| If you care about the free self-determination of local
| population, then this is the polar opposite - plain
| coercion by foreign invaders.
| aguaviva wrote:
| _The exact percentage of Russian ethnicity is is a little
| hard to determine, and varies through out that region_
|
| But the comparative proportions identifying as
| "Ukrainian" or "Russian" in the last pre-war census is
| not, and in fact, in this wonderful utopian future we now
| live in. And even starting from scratch, you can easily
| zero in on a reliable answer to this question within
| minutes:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_Ukrainian_census#Natio
| nal...
|
| I invite you to look at the numbers for the 5 regions
| which Putin is currently intending to grab (and which the
| Trump administration apparently intend to just hand over
| to him, with an order of fries on the side), and tell us
| what you find there.
|
| _Even more so likely if the Anglophone Canadians would
| start ethnically cleansing Quebecers._
|
| The thing is, under normal circumstances they most
| definitely would not. And if you were to go up there
| today, and tell them that 10 years from now they'd all be
| at each other's throats, with one side insisting it just
| had to ethnically cleanse the other and they no longer
| had any real choice about the matter -- they'd look at
| you like you were crazy.
|
| And that was pretty much the situation in Ukraine, until
| very shortly before 2014. What changed that was (to some
| extent) various political events. But what pushed these
| changes of sentiment into _violence_ was -- a tide
| relentless propaganda and disinformation.
|
| Of exactly the type you are echoing, above.
| aguaviva wrote:
| _Russia voluntarily let Ukraine secede from the USSR
| under certain conditions, which they have not kept_
|
| Please identify the specific treaty/protocol you are
| referring to, and which clauses you believe Ukraine has
| violated.
|
| _Clearly under the same principle that Russian majority
| that lives in eastern part of Ukraine_
|
| There was no such majority before Russia's invasion of
| 2014 (as explained in the other comment). It seems you
| may be confused by the fact that there were higher
| numbers voting for pro-Russia parties, or who spoke
| Russian/Surgyk. But that's not the same as being, or
| identifying as "Russian" -- any more the fact that
| English is the dominant language in Ireland means
| everyone living there must be "English".
|
| This is one of the most important things to understand
| about Ukraine.
| data_maan wrote:
| > Not the same but when you pick something like "Russia
| must respect the internationally recognized borders" and
| you don't apply the same for Israel then you are a
| hypocrite
|
| Ahem... You're suggesting that Ukraine killed over a
| thousand Russians and took them hostage, and thereby
| provoked a war? That would actually be the correct
| analogy. No, Russia simply invaded because it felt it
| could. The situation is very different to Israel and Gaza
| and you're deliberately leaving out the fine details that
| make the difference.
| dunekid wrote:
| >Ahem... You're suggesting that Ukraine killed over a
| thousand Russians and took them hostage, and thereby
| provoked a war?
|
| Maybe, just maybe you could have a look at what Gaza was
| like before the said event. It was blockaded by Sea, Air
| and Land. It was oppressed and occupied, not to mention
| the settler terrorism in West Bank. It is a myopic view
| to hold that it was peace before the Oct 7 incident.
| rbanffy wrote:
| > and the Americans DO support people in Gaza/Westbank a
| ton (humanitarian aid).
|
| Humanitarian aid doesn't help preventing bombs kindly
| donated by the US from falling. The large difference in
| casualties (what is it? 40 Palestinians for every Israeli?)
| tells me it's not a civil war, but an extermination.
|
| Israel settling occupied territories doesn't earn them much
| sympathy either. If you want a buffer to feel safe, annex
| and protect the people who live there while fully
| demilitarising the land.
| Aunche wrote:
| The only country that has ever granted Palestinians
| concessions without deaths is the US (e.g. the
| desettlement of Gaza), and that is only possible because
| we have leverage over military aid.
| Dah00n wrote:
| >Americans DO support people in Gaza/Westbank
|
| Americans !== America.
| MikeTheGreat wrote:
| > For example, can you tell me if EU is about saving the
| environment and stopping climate change? If so why they are
| blocking the Chinese electric cars? Can't stand others making
| the world better place better than they do?
|
| Personally, I think that the goal of a vibrant, thriving
| democracy is to allow and encourage participation from many
| groups of citizens. This will result in the government
| pursuing multiple objectives at the same time.
|
| This necessarily means that you're going to have to make
| trade offs. Is it more important to have cheap EVs or is it
| more important to keep good jobs in country?
|
| Maybe in this case we'll decide on good jobs in our country,
| and then look at other ways that climate change can be
| addressed. Maybe we won't.
|
| Asking why an entire country doesn't do 100% of the things it
| could to address a single issue seems almost intentionally
| naive.
| newspaper1 wrote:
| Maybe it's the idea of a "country" that's flawed? Certainly
| it is, we live on a planet and are all impacted by the
| environment. Previous social structures are no longer
| applicable and are causing damage. It's only a matter of
| time before they're rethought.
| etangent wrote:
| > For example, can you tell me if EU is about saving the
| environment and stopping climate change? If so why they are
| blocking the Chinese electric cars?
|
| This is a very strange criticism. Why is it wrong to try to
| make impact on the environment without fully destroying the
| domestic industry? Let's follow up on this a bit further. If
| the EU counties did in fact become hardliners on the
| environment to the point of fully destroying their own
| industries, then you would no longer attack the perceived
| "hypocrisy" but would instead attack their policy of
| deindustrialization. So you don't seem to have problems with
| hypocrisy, you instead seem to have a problem with
| environmental movement/policies as such or at least insofar
| as they are implemented by the EU block.
|
| If the EU countries completely abandoned their environmental
| slogans, and went on an ultra-industrial path, would you
| still be a critic? Given your other comments (why can capital
| travel but people cannot?), something tells me that yes, you
| would. It is difficult for me to perceive your criticism as
| anything other than coming from a supporter of an _ipso
| facto_ enemy economic block. You are not interested at
| constructively helping EU countries anymore, you are looking
| for a hammer to destroy your chosen target with.
|
| One thing about social media is that it allows anyone to have
| a voice. The problem of "anyone" is that it ignores the fact
| that we do not live in a post-human utopia, we live in a real
| world where the concept of an "enemy" is real. There are real
| people out there who seek our destruction. This is not a
| pleasant thing to speak about but it is something that seems
| to be unfortunately the case. Because English is such a
| popular language, chances are the enemy speaks English and is
| on social media. What content do you think he posts?
| mrtksn wrote:
| This is a fallacy. People are not buying Chinese instead of
| European because they want destruction, they buy it because
| the European industry failed in making better or cheaper
| products.
|
| If we are bailing out an industry, this can't be on the
| shoulders of the public who doesn't have anything to do
| with the failure. If we are going to save it, make sure
| those responsible for the failure are paying too. You are
| asking for Europeans to pay almost half a year of their
| salaries to save these industries, then at least take away
| the properties of those involved in the failure. Maybe it
| wouldn't change much but are in this together or not?
| layer8 wrote:
| They are bailing out industries when a lot of local jobs
| are bound to it, so it's not correct that the public
| doesn't have anything to do with it.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Tell me again why 400M people should pay a half a year
| worth of salary as extra to buy an inferior car to save
| the jobs of those who failed to make a good product? Let
| them fail, pay them unemployment to prevent social issues
| then go get the cheap good cars and pay a bit more tax
| for social security. Cut out the shareholders and
| executives.
| layer8 wrote:
| If you do that often enough, at some point the state
| won't have enough money to pay the unemployed any more.
| Also, there are reasons why the same product can be
| manufactured more cheaply in China than (say) in Germany,
| that have to do with different standards for labor
| rights, safety standards, and so on, not with anyone
| failing to make a good product. And it's not like China
| doesn't subsidize its automotive industry as well.
| chupy wrote:
| A lot of the things that we buy in Europe are already
| manufactured cheaply in China with different standards
| etc. We are moving a lot of manufacturing back to Europe,
| mostly in the eastern part of it. That part is still
| 'cheap' aka they can put the made in eu logo on the box,
| pay employees eastern Europe prices and ask buyers
| western Europe prices.
|
| The same thing with the eu car companies... they even
| took the money from the states where they had factories
| (Germany, Belgium, France) which greatly subsidized them,
| increased their profits and margins then moved to the
| next EU state and beyond.
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| At a certain point, if you don't approve of another
| regions labor policies, you have to buy less of their
| exports, otherwise you won't be able to produce your own
| goods.
| Ringz wrote:
| Better? That needs a proof and I bet you won't be able to
| find a peer reviewed example.
|
| Cheaper? You raise an easy target here if you ignore the
| massive subsidies, completely different financial systems
| and politics. China ignores international trade rules and
| Europe, USA etc. can't ignore this if they want to save
| their industry and - at the end - democracy.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Peer review for cars? Interesting mental gymnastics. Just
| let people buy whatever they want.
|
| > you ignore the massive subsidies, completely different
| financial systems and politics
|
| Cool, China subsidizing EU's fight against climate
| change. Get the free money, save the climate and spend
| the money you saved on something that you want instead of
| forced.
| Ringz wrote:
| Thank you for acknowledging that it's not possible to
| prove that Chinese cars are better. After all, you've
| already retracted your initial claim.
|
| > Cool, China subsidizing EU's fight against climate
| change. Get the free money, save the climate and spend
| the money you saved on something that you want instead of
| forced.
|
| Your mental gymnastics needs some training if you think
| that importing cheap cars instead of selling and
| exporting your own cars and therefore protecting your own
| industry and jobs is a better deal or mechanic for EUs
| fight against climate change.
|
| Maybe you are unaware of ,,The WTO Agreement on Subsidies
| and Countervailing Measures disciplines the use of
| subsidies, and it regulates the actions countries can
| take to counter the effects of subsidies."?
|
| https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/scm_e/scm_e.htm
| rdm_blackhole wrote:
| > if you ignore the massive subsidies
|
| The EU subsides their car makers just the same. Part of
| Renault belonged to the French government for the longest
| time and all the governments are providing incentives to
| drive the sales of new cars.
|
| See the cash for clunkers program that was running for
| years after the 2008 crisis.
|
| Using tax payer money to artificially reduce the cost of
| a new car, If that is not a subsidy, then what is it?
| ossobuco wrote:
| It's always the same: rules for thee, not for me. Most of
| the accusations western countries make are just
| projections in reality.
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| > Russians didn't discover magic words that they use to
| hypnotise people and make them vote for pro-Russia candidate
|
| Well, someone else discovered not the magic words but the
| magic timing of when to tell them and how to surround people
| with the right words: i.e. the social media algorithms.
| newspaper1 wrote:
| Don't shoot the messenger. The actual problems being
| pointed out are the root cause.
| rbanffy wrote:
| People were unhappy before and nothing like this happened
| because of it. International interference was always very
| difficult.
| newspaper1 wrote:
| More transparency is a good thing, even if that comes
| from "international interference". The problems exist,
| try to hide them at your own political risk.
| rbanffy wrote:
| The point is foreign election interference is no longer
| difficult, dangerous, or expensive, and is incredibly
| effective.
| newspaper1 wrote:
| It's not "dangerous" to expose the truth, even
| selectively. More information is better, especially when
| it pertains to things our government is keeping from us.
| aatarax wrote:
| The world sucks for most people. The world is better than its
| ever been for most people. The world can be improved a lot
| for most people. Those three things can and are all
| simultaneously true.
|
| Unfortunately, improving the world requires engaging deeply
| with issues and many people now prefer to speak in terms of
| grand historical narratives and emotional arguments that
| stitch sparse data points into a large story far vaster than
| the data can support.
| jltsiren wrote:
| Incumbents losing elections is what is supposed to happen.
| It's a sign of normal times, not of a crisis.
|
| One of the key principles of a republic - both ancient and
| modern - is that personal power is bad for the society.
| Leaders are a necessary evil that must be tolerated (if only
| barely), but they also must be changed regularly.
| simion314 wrote:
| >One of the key principles of a republic - both ancient and
| modern - is that personal power is bad for the society.
| Leaders are a necessary evil that must be tolerated (if
| only barely), but they also must be changed regularly.
|
| In Romania not only we change them regularly but we also
| have PMs and ministers in jail for crimes they commuted, we
| are not like other countries where same president or prime
| Minister was in power for 30 years.
| close04 wrote:
| Incumbents losing elections can be fair. But only if the
| winner played by the rules at least loosely and the win
| wasn't orchestrated by a foreign party, especially an
| adversary.
|
| Unless you are Russian or Chinese you shouldn't have a
| president 'chosen' by them. So props to the Romanian
| authorities for taking action and not allowing a president
| beholden to Russian interests.
| mike_hearn wrote:
| Nobody is claiming the candidate didn't play by the
| rules. Rather, some agency has asserted there was "a mass
| influence operation" in his favor - apparently they're
| not even asserting an organized conspiracy.
|
| There's a big problem with that claim. Intelligence
| agencies have a long history of making this claim of
| Russian control over elections all over the world, and
| it's always been lies and nonsense. What even _is_ a
| "mass influence" operation? Sounds like the same thing as
| a political campaign to me? If it's really on a mass
| scale it should be pretty easy to prove and work out how
| to stop it next time, shouldn't it?
|
| Such claims are never proven because they aren't true.
| Back in 2016 when Trump and Brexit were still fresh, the
| sort of people who didn't like those things were trying
| to explain their loss. The Clinton campaign came up with
| the Steele dossier and the American press ran with it.
| This was the origin of the "Russian influence" claim and
| back then it was usually described as being done through
| social media bots. Academics flooded the literature with
| papers that claimed to prove the existence of such
| Russian bots. I used to work in bot detection so was
| interested to read some of these papers, and found they
| were all based on academic fraud:
|
| https://blog.plan99.net/did-russian-bots-impact-brexit-
| ad66f...
|
| https://blog.plan99.net/fake-science-part-ii-bots-that-
| are-n...
|
| Given the long history of this type of claim, a rational
| person will have to assume that it's a plot by Romanian
| intelligence to overturn an election and treat it
| accordingly.
| close04 wrote:
| I'll bite although this really feels as unlikely as
| trying to change the mind of a Russian troll. A few
| things really sunk your boat there.
|
| First, you started on a wrong foot. He is literally
| accused of breaking the law by not declaring his assets.
| This is trivially proven by the fact that... he didn't
| declare his assets. In my reasonable person circle that's
| called "not playing by the rules". Very Russian.
|
| Second, at best you can say only "claims can't be proven
| true" but you still went one step further to make
| multiple strong claims you yourself cannot prove (e.g.
| "because they aren't true" or "intelligence plot").
| "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence", or
| "teapot calling the kettle black", also good topics for
| your blog spam.
|
| Third, you denounce people claiming conspiracies to get
| their way by claiming a conspiracy to get your way, like
| any "reasonable" person would. Romanian intelligence and
| constitutional court got together to overturn the
| people's will to vote pro-Russia. Perhaps, to use your
| own words, your claims cannot be proven because they're
| not true.
|
| Lastly, going back to the Romanian elections and using
| very reasonable logic like the very reasonable people we
| are. Is it often the case that a pro-Russian extremist
| candidate nobody knows of, who polls close to 0, and
| basically campaigns only on TikTok, soars ahead in top
| position in any EU country that was historically and
| consistently pro-West for a long time? All without any
| outside interference?
| mike_hearn wrote:
| My claims are all correct to the best of my knowledge. If
| you disagree with any, state which ones and why. You've
| engaged in a lot of handwaving and assertions that I must
| be wrong, but no refutations.
|
| _> Is it often the case that a pro-Russian extremist
| candidate nobody knows of, who polls close to 0, and
| basically campaigns only on TikTok, soars ahead in top
| position in any EU country ... without any outside
| interference_
|
| Yes. This has been happening across the world, and in
| every case it results in the same kinds of attempts to
| void democracy by the incumbents. Other countries where
| this has happened: Germany (AfD), France (RN), the UK
| (Reform), the USA (Trump), and so on. All accused of
| being popular only due to shadowy, unspecified
| manipulation by Russia, all with zero evidence. In most
| cases the claims don't even make logical sense to begin
| with.
|
| So there's nothing unique about Romania in this regard.
| Incumbents collaborate with journalists to force through
| unpopular policies without allowing any coordination
| against them, social media takes up the slack. It's just
| a really good way to spread messages outside the control
| of local governments. Of course politicians use it.
|
| _> He is literally accused of breaking the law by not
| declaring his assets_
|
| We're talking about the BBC story which covers annulment,
| and it says: _" The court's decision comes after
| intelligence documents were declassified, suggesting
| Georgescu benefitted from a mass influence operation -
| conducted from abroad - to interfere with the result of
| the vote."_ Nothing here about tax or assets. Maybe he
| has broken the law, maybe he hasn't. Given the rate at
| which bogus show trials are deployed against political
| outsiders these days, I'd reserve judgement on that.
| petre wrote:
| > Russia appears to be able to propel politicians who are
| closer to the their politics
|
| Not really, they propel useful idiots. In the US that would
| have been Robert Kennedy Jr. In Germany it's whatever clows
| AfD has, in Austria it's the FPO leader Herbert Kickl.
| Basically anyone that would either auto sabotage that
| country, the EU, like Viktor Orban or be pro-Russia, like the
| Georgian Dream.
|
| In Romania it's a RFK Jr. like nutcake figure with new age,
| peace and love, vaccines bad, water has memory, nazis are
| patriots, etc beliefs and with a discourse that sounds all
| right at the surface but practicaly says absolutely nothing
| except that it's littered with trigger narratives, just as if
| it were the Heaven's Gate website. His campaign was pumped by
| Russia on Tiktok using dormant accounts two weeks or so
| before the election. Also on other US based social networks
| and on Telegram to a lesser extent. 2M people voted for him
| out of 9M, some because they hate the current establishment,
| others saw him as an outsider, when in fact he's actually
| part of an old boys network, others actually believe his
| mumbo jumbo. It turns out he's also linked and promoted by
| fascist groups, some of which are actual former French
| Foreign Legion soldiers, run a mercenary group in the DRC and
| _survival_ training workshops in the mountains. These are
| also linked to a rather controversial Eastern Orthodox bishop
| who is known to be pro Russian, so this candidate also got
| promoted through church networks. His campaign was in part
| financed by a crypto entreprenour with dual Romanian and
| South African citizenship who currently resides in ZA. The
| candidate declared zero political advertising expenses.
|
| Anyway, I hope Tiktok gets massively screwed by the EU after
| this. Because this is in the Comission's hands now. The
| candidate's fascist friends might be soon visited by a SWAT
| team and they'll probably find firearms. The candidate, I
| dunno, he's probably going to flee to another country if he
| ever gets indicted.
| rbanffy wrote:
| > In the US that would have been Robert Kennedy Jr
|
| We should not forget about the orange elephant in the room.
| zjalnxb wrote:
| In Austria, Haider took over the FPO in 1986. In 1999, when
| Russia was completely weak and had other priorities, the
| FPO already had 26% nationally.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_Party_of_Austria
|
| In Germany the AfD rose to around 10% after Merkel let in
| millions of refugees in 2015. It had nothing to do with
| Russia at all. It is currently polling around 18% because
| the economy is bad and people are tired of U.S.
| subservience and want Germany to make its own decisions.
|
| The concept that right wing parties are somehow beneficial
| to Russia in the long run is absurd to the extreme.
|
| In Ukraine, literally the Bandera supporters are the best
| fighters and the most anti-Russian. When in history has it
| ever been beneficial for a country to support nationalism
| in an enemy country. It does not make any sense.
|
| This whole thing is just a narrative of the forces who want
| to keep down "EU-first" movements.
| petre wrote:
| > This whole thing is just a narrative of the forces who
| want to keep down "EU-first" movements.
|
| Sure. There is documented evidence of both FPo and AfD
| ties to Russia. Maybe it was different in the '90s but
| now Russia promotes a similar conservative agenda and
| it's in most cases financing the European far-right.
| There is no easier way to destabilize a country than to
| make it implode by polarizing its society, as seen in
| Syria, Georgia.
|
| https://www.dw.com/en/austrias-far-right-fp%C3%B6-party-
| unde...
|
| https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/afd-
| spionageaff...
| simion314 wrote:
| I disagree with your defense of Ruzzia
|
| 1 there is well known that social media and itnernet
| companies can target content for each person
|
| 2 we known from Cambridge analitica and similar that if
| social media company wants he can make a user depressed, sad
| etc
|
| 3 we also observer that irelevant bullshit is pushed very
| hard in social media, as an example transgender stuff, it is
| pushed so hard that my family thinks that Romania is in
| danger because of EU and their transgender agenda, children
| will be manipulated to change their gender, You can see how
| fake stuff about thois topic is pushed on social media, my
| family never had contact with transgender people, maybe they
| know one gay person in their entire live but LGBTQ is such an
| important topic in election that they might decide whot o
| vote based on this Ruzzian bullshit
|
| 4 we also seen same shit with COVID , yes the virus exists
| even if the pro Ruzzian candidates do not belives it or
| thinks God send him the naturalistic cure, based on how hard
| this conpiracies were pushed in last years you have
| conspirationist vote conspirationists, so if you want their
| vote you either lower yourselves to that level or try to
| fight Ruzzia and china to bring a bit of intelligence back.
|
| 5 anti emigration is a big push on social media, and fascists
| in Europe really push on this, but tell my, will italians or
| Spanish people in the city that studied at the university go
| and work in the farms, in the hot summer instead of the poor
| immigrants? Did you also seen how crimes are immediately
| blamed on the immigrants by the internet trolls before the
| identity of the criminals is known, and sometimes the
| criminal is a native, but the trolls pushed so hard on the
| fake news that it was immigrants that sometimes the
| immigrants were attacked based on fake news started by
| Ruzzians and belived by right wing less inteligent people.
|
| So in Romania the people that voted for the Kremlin guy ,
| voted him because they want a strong man that is anti
| transexuals and LGBTQ, anti minorities, that belives in the
| same conpirations and hate same groups as they hate all
| because Ruzzia trained them to hate those groups of people
| and believe those conspiracies.
|
| They did not vote because of economical policies the fascist
| guy proposed.
| mrtksn wrote:
| I did not defend Russia. Let's stop pretending that
| everything is perfect but the adversary found magic words
| that can show to people and sway their opinions.
| Influencing people is indeed possible and Russia definitely
| doing it but this tale about showing social media posts and
| making them vote the way they like is just a caricature.
|
| They are able to do it only because of the failure of the
| others to address the concerns of the electorate. Sure,
| they lie but they all lie. The Russian propaganda is very
| well crafted and does address the concerns that others
| don't want to touch. It's not a spell, it's not magic
| words, its not hypnosis.
| simion314 wrote:
| You are under the impression that the Ruzzian influencisg
| started a few weeks ago.
|
| Since you are so smart and see the reality I am to blind
| to see, show me with facts the damages the transexualss
| done to Romania sto make a large part of population to
| vote an anti LGBTQ person. There should be some examples
| you can find since this is a major thing this traditional
| voters are talking about and is important on who they
| vote.
| catlikesshrimp wrote:
| >>For example, can you tell me if EU is about saving the
| environment and stopping climate change? If so why they are
| blocking the Chinese electric cars? Can't stand others making
| the world better place better than they do?
|
| Because China Gives Two Shits about the environment. Them and
| their "developing country" tag. They will burn the coal until
| there is no more, along with India.
|
| Because China Gives No Shit about democracy, or human rights.
|
| China isn't shy to show force. The "west" is already at war
| with China but hasn't realized it. Heck, they still don't
| accept war with Rusia started over a decade ago
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| " For example, can you tell me if EU is about saving the
| environment and stopping climate change? If so why they are
| blocking the Chinese electric cars?"
|
| This is talked about in many treasury departments. China
| supports some businesses an order of magnitude beyond the
| competition because they are a state/corp hybrid model and
| this allows those businesses to sell below material costs.
| This eventually destroys competition for future price raises
| and is a good long term strategy that only authoritarian
| countries can afford.
|
| Other Countries like in the EU are hesitant to let China
| destroy war machine production capability so they apply
| tariffs to right-size the actual cost.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| Each of these are a result of neo-*ism constituencies
| failing. Dialectically, we've reached the point where the
| contradictions are so great they have become impossible to
| maintain. Each of these crises are a direct product of those
| contradictions. The only viable path forward is addressing
| these contradictions head on. Any attempt at doubling down on
| existing ideology will inflame the contradictions further.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > The west is in crisis, the ideology doesn't hold and the
| economy doesn't provide
|
| So democracy (the ideology) doesn't hold? And the US economy
| is currently the envy of the world - yes there's a big
| housing problem that needs addressing, but if anything the
| losing party was the one that put up some kind of plan to
| deal with it, I don't see the winning party reducing
| housing/rental costs as they're from the landlord class.
|
| > Can you tell me if US is about freedom and respect of the
| international law, borders and trande? If so why they support
| Ukraine against Russian invasion
|
| Because Ukraine was invaded by Russia thus impacting
| Ukrainian freedom and borders? It seems pretty obvious.
| ossobuco wrote:
| Isn't it democracy when a candidate gets more votes than the
| rest? The only way to undermine democracy is to reject the
| results of the elections.
|
| If propaganda from the "enemy" really is that effective, then
| either it's rooted in truth and resonates with the electors, or
| we have to admit that the general public is so easily
| influenceable that allowing them to vote is a danger for
| democracy, which means democracy isn't really worth much in the
| first place.
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| No, this is about common rules for everyone. Campaign
| material had to be marked as such and campaign finances had
| to be declared. One candidate blatantly failed to do so and
| won the first round. The court took a bold decision.
| jdasdf wrote:
| Can you show me where the EU disclose its compaign
| financing for the romanian presidential election? They've
| certainly been putting the finger down in the scales far
| more than the russians
| Almondsetat wrote:
| The Romanian court had evidence of Russia putting the
| finger down and breaking the rules. You, on the other
| hand, are just accusing.
| jdasdf wrote:
| Oh? Is there some dispute that did EU called Tik Tok
| about these elections?
| https://apnews.com/article/romania-tiktok-elections-
| european...
|
| If Russia had called them in for not blocking or
| censoring pro-EU candidates would you not have called
| that election interference?
| cbg0 wrote:
| The EU don't have to disclose something like that, as
| Romania has a central authority that handles this stuff,
| as per the law:
|
| > The collection of electoral contributions and the
| payment of electoral expenses may be made only through
| bank accounts notified in advance to the Permanent
| Electoral Authority.
|
| The EU is not involved in directly financing candidates
| or political parties in Romania, they've already given us
| tens of billions of dollars to develop our country.
| jdasdf wrote:
| >The EU is not involved in directly financing candidates
| or political parties in Romania, they've already given us
| tens of billions of dollars to develop our country.
|
| Wow, seems like they're spent tens of billions of dollars
| in long term election interference campaigns. Are we
| going to see the politicians elected going to jail over
| it?
| cbg0 wrote:
| Your facetious comment doesn't really add anything to the
| conversation, this isn't Reddit.
| avianlyric wrote:
| Tens of billions of dollars of development funding, which
| Romania obviously wanted, given they went through the
| trouble of joining the EU, and then went through the
| trouble of getting hold of the EU cash and spending it.
|
| Not quite the same as external party spending huge
| amounts of cash running political campaigns, while
| ignoring all the local rules about campaigning. After all
| Romania didn't have to accept the EU cash, or spent it.
| The EU doesn't force countries to join, just so they can
| give them billions of euros in the hopes of interfering
| in a political process years later. A political process
| that's only important, because of the development
| funding. Much easier and cheaper to simpler not get
| involved, and allow those countries to struggle alone.
| jahewson wrote:
| That implies campaign material and finances are capable of
| swinging an election, surely that affirms the statement
| you're replying to? Namely:
|
| > the general public is so easily influenceable that
| allowing them to vote is a danger for democracy
|
| I hate to admit it but he's got a point. My counter would
| be that the recent US election was not won by the biggest
| spender.
| ben_w wrote:
| If campaign material was not capable of changing the
| minds of the electorate, nobody would waste time effort
| and money on it.
|
| Free speech is valuable and worth defending specifically
| because it has the potential to change minds, not just
| because people like the sounds of their own voices.
|
| (For the recent US election, people also point to Musk
| buying Twitter and getting his president of choice and
| saying this demonstrates why Musk is smart and $44bn was
| worth it, so are you sure it wasn't won by the biggest
| spenders?)
| kadabra9 wrote:
| Democracy is when the candidate the globalists want gets the
| most votes.
|
| If they dont, then you can claim "election interference" and
| misinformation and then call for a do over.
| cbg0 wrote:
| Who are these "globalists" and what does that word really
| mean for you? Because the wikipedia article is a doozy.
| ConspiracyFact wrote:
| The term doesn't have to be a dog whistle. The financial
| and corporate elite want open borders in order to
| maximize rent-seeking and depress wages.
| cbg0 wrote:
| But we already have open borders in the EU. If you're
| referring to allowing in migrants freely, that's deeply
| unpopular in Romania and no candidate is in support of
| it.
| nozzlegear wrote:
| > The financial and corporate elite want open borders in
| order to maximize rent-seeking and depress wages.
|
| I want open borders so we can put a taco truck on every
| corner. Immigration is good.
| theultdev wrote:
| Open borders means open to illegal immigration.
|
| No one is arguing that immigration isn't good.
|
| You can have taco trucks with legal immigration.
| nozzlegear wrote:
| > Open borders means open to illegal immigration.
|
| I know what it means ;)
|
| > No one is arguing that immigration isn't good.
|
| You'd be surprised how many people argue exactly that.
| But I digress, I was just making a poorly-timed joke.
| bdangubic wrote:
| CAN you have taco trucks with legal immigration?
|
| Say you live with your family in Juarez right now - what
| do you think statistically your chance of legal
| immigrating to the United States is (and lets up the
| ante, say you have legit proof that every mafia boss in
| Mexico is hunting you and every member of your
| family)...?
|
| I'll give you a ballpark - your chance of legal
| immigrating is similar to me marrying Gisele... there is
| a chance, I am very good looking but you know...
|
| Majority of people arguing "illegal" vs. "legal"
| immigration simply fail to look at statistic to see that
| "legal" immigration is vaporware - just a term to use to
| try to prove some point which cannot be proven with that
| argument...
| Nasrudith wrote:
| > Open borders means open to illegal immigration. No,
| open borders mean that the immigrants are legal by
| default. It doesn't mean the borders aren't secure enough
| for your paranoid xenophobic liking.
| theultdev wrote:
| > No, open borders mean that the immigrants are legal by
| default.
|
| I suppose that's one definition of it, a more extreme
| version. No country on Earth has this kind of immigration
| policy. It would be unsustainable.
|
| > It doesn't mean the borders aren't secure enough for
| your paranoid xenophobic liking.
|
| Ad-hominem attacks are not necessary. My wife is second
| generation immigrant. Her father is first generation,
| they do not support illegal immigration either. He came
| here legally and the people that come here illegally take
| away resources from those who want to come here legally
| the right way.
| vasac wrote:
| No biggie, they'll have another chance to pick a correct one.
| And another if they don't choose wisely
| ben_w wrote:
| That is almost the definition of democracy -- when they
| stop getting additional chances, that's when it stops being
| a democracy.
| vasac wrote:
| "Almost" is doing heavy lifting there.
|
| Why would they need additional chances when they have
| already expressed what they want? Oh, they dared to vote
| for a candidate that doesn't suit the powers that be, so
| they'll vote again and again until they choose the
| preselected candidate.
| Eumenes wrote:
| The cold war communist boogie man hasn't gone away. Russia is
| apparently all power and has infinite reach into global
| elections, but at the same time, getting destroyed on the
| battlefield and about to lose the Ukraine conflict any moment
| now.
| ben_w wrote:
| Russia is well balanced against the aid everyone else is
| giving to Ukraine; it's a war of attrition, where both
| Ukraine and Russia are being worn down and nobody's quite
| sure which side will collapse first.
|
| Other than just being cheapskates, the west has a fear that
| {if Putin fears his regime may collapse, he may personally
| order the use of nukes}, and also that even if he doesn't
| and Russia does collapse then rogue actors may steal some
| of the nukes.
| Svoka wrote:
| building military is much much more expensive than paying
| influencers.
|
| Russian propaganda machine is incredibly strong, because
| it was perfected on their own citizens for basically
| century now. They spend billions on pure propaganda.
|
| While with military - they relied on propaganda as well.
| They projected power while not picking conflicts with
| anyone who can punch back.
|
| Ukraine appeared too big to swallow this time and
| everyone can see, that king is naked. Russian military is
| a sham compared to US. Like, incomparable to be honest.
| But problem is that propaganda is much stronger than
| military. So west made a mistake dismissing russia
| because of their weak corrupt military while being
| invaded by propaganda.
|
| West has nothing against russian propaganda machine and
| this is what thrtuthly terrifying to be honest.
| layer8 wrote:
| Many people _are_ easily influenceable, which is why there
| are rules around campaign funding and transparency. It
| doesn't mean that we have to give up on democracy (what would
| be the alternative?), it means that the rules have to be
| enforced.
| ossobuco wrote:
| I don't buy it. People aren't that easily influenceable;
| they are just extremely tired from decades of failed
| liberal policies and out of alternatives. The populist
| right-wing wins we're seeing all over the world are the
| expression of the immense frustration people have with the
| system.
|
| You want democracy to work? Give people real choices, not
| the usual binary bad or more bad. Make them feel like their
| vote matters for once.
| layer8 wrote:
| I observe for myself that I am rather quickly influenced
| by the information I take in. Since I'm aware of that,
| I'm diligent in the information I seek out, and can
| therefore compensate for some amount of misinformation.
| Other people aren't necessarily aware or diligent in that
| way.
|
| I'm not satisfied with the voting choices either, but I
| do have some understanding of why they are the way they
| are. It is a nontrivial systemic issue, and voting
| populist does not improve that situation.
|
| You seem to see a dichotomy between the politicians that
| provide voting choices and the rest of the population
| that votes. I don't see it that way. The politicians are
| part of the population, they represent the population. I
| won't tell you to go into politics to try to change
| things, but if you did, then maybe you'll realize why
| it's hard, and that how things are is a function of human
| nature, of the particular country's specific political
| system, and of the world being more complicated than many
| people recognize.
| hagbarth wrote:
| > The only way to undermine democracy is to reject the
| results of the elections.
|
| Do you actually believe this? Voter suppression and
| intimidation tactics don't exist? Elections are always valid,
| no matter how they were facilitated?
| ossobuco wrote:
| Obviously, as long as neutral observers can guarantee the
| voting. But in this case, there is no question about the
| validity of the results; there are no voter suppression and
| intimidation tactics here. Those seem to be far more common
| in the US, with electoral nonsense such as gerrymandering,
| no ID required to vote, mail-in ballots, and so on.
| gtech1 wrote:
| Yep, you've stumbled upon a 'secret' fallacy that most know.
| People can be made to believe anything, or you can arrive at
| any conclusion you want from pretty much any premise. Not
| even in science is there consensus.
|
| What kept things in check so far has been that in the West,
| the elites have been benevolent. But now the masses, thx to
| social media and global comms, can be influenced by others.
|
| Welcome to our post truth planet.
| mns wrote:
| Because this is what happens when the country is ran by corrupt
| and/or incompetent politicians. I've seen what people are
| posting and commenting here, blaming everything on Russia, but
| this is exactly the same message that the far right uses when
| they blame everything on the EU.
|
| The thing is that when the 2 biggest parties in the country
| come to govern together, they have no opposition, they weakened
| out justice system, weakened the secret services to gain power
| and be able to do whatever they want, they allowed and ignored
| the rise of far-right parties thinking they would use them to
| scare people into still voting for them and now we're here.
|
| There was so much evidence that both this guy and the other 2
| extreme parties are doing a lot of crap and getting all kind of
| external support, but they just ignored them and hoped to use
| them, thinking they will never get above a certain level. You
| had vloggers and online people showing signs of all the fake
| accounts and crap that was being promoted and the authorities
| just pretended not to see anything. Then they banned one of the
| 3 heads of the far right side, and this just made things worse,
| because instead of letting the far right eat themselves up
| (because they are so insane, that they can't help but fight
| each other and fragment their share of the votes), they allowed
| this absolutely insane (in the worst way possible) charismatic
| guy gather even more votes.
|
| Now all of the sudden, after ignoring and pretending not to see
| anything, thinking that these far right candidates will help
| them, the establishment realized they messed up and now decide
| to take extreme measures and basically say that 9 milion votes
| don't matter. This won't end well...
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| A similar thing happened in Austria in 2016 where election
| results were cancelled due to campaign finances violations.
| mns wrote:
| Yeah, but here it's so obvious. The BEC (Central Electoral
| Bureau) should have checked constantly the campaign
| spending. They didn't do that, probably also not to upset
| the ruling parties that were doing their own financial
| "optimizations" for campaign spending, and completely
| ignored the fact that this guy that was doing influencer
| campaigns and was promoted all over TikTok was declaring
| nothing, so 0 spending. When you ask the institutions that
| are supposed to guard our country and democracy to close
| their eye so you can do whatever you want, you shouldn't
| act surprised when someone even more evil will take
| advantage of that.
| wumeow wrote:
| > Why is there barely any resistance to blatant attempts to
| undermine democracy?
|
| Because of normalcy bias[0] after the fall of the USSR. The
| West assumed that we'd all hold hands and walk together into
| the future but that was not the case.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalcy_bias
| protomolecule wrote:
| Yeah, right. Holding hands.
|
| Excerpts From Pentagon's Plan: 'Prevent the Re-Emergence of a
| New Rival' [0]
|
| [0] https://www.nytimes.com/1992/03/08/world/excerpts-from-
| penta...
| jaimsam wrote:
| You misspelled "hot war".
| byyll wrote:
| Ah, yes, we must protect democracy by... checks notes..
| canceling the democratic elections because we don't like the
| results.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Because we are afraid to call the war being a war, because our
| armies have gone to shit and the US won't back us.
| Applejinx wrote:
| Because just as much effort is spent by Russia to present the
| appearance of a broad variety of demographics all uniting to
| mock and make light of the very idea that Russia is spending
| great effort to undermine democracy and get their people in
| there.
|
| That's pretty fundamental. I've seen these efforts be real
| heavyhanded. It's almost more important to hide their tracks as
| it is to push 'vox populi' that appear to advocate for a
| political outcome. They really try very hard to not be
| publically associated in these things.
|
| What with various things out of TASS, MTG etc recently, I think
| they're trying to have it both ways, and both ride on general
| public skepticism of their role while also publically
| threatening those who are privy to their works.
| wyager wrote:
| "Undermining democracy" is when you win an election.
| "Protecting democracy" is when an unelected court unilaterally
| removes an elected candidate.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| In most locales, courts being unelected is _by design_. It 's
| how a system based on checks-and-balances is supposed to
| work.
| amaurose wrote:
| Because these attempts are mostly coming from the left, and the
| population has been indoctrinated to believe the left is
| automatically the good guys. That leads to some confusion, and
| to a lot of re-evaluation of old beliefs.
| riehwvfbk wrote:
| Democracy: keep politicians who are failing the people and
| their countries economies in office because of the goodness of
| their hearts and the virtue of their stated values.
|
| If the people vote differently, cancel the result because
| that's not democracy. For definition of democracy, see above.
| mmooss wrote:
| Democracy has worked exceptionally well, relative to any
| other option, for generations. Far more free, prosperous, and
| safe and stable. The idea that it's somehow incompetent or
| incapable or uncertain is bizarre, on a factual basis.
| riehwvfbk wrote:
| 'But Brawndo has what plants crave! It's got electrolytes!'
| '...Okay - what are electrolytes? Do you know? Yeah. It's
| what they use to make Brawndo.' 'But why do they use them
| in Brawndo? What do they do?' 'They're part of what plants
| crave. 'But why do plants crave them? 'Because plants crave
| Brawndo, and Brawndo has electrolytes.'
|
| Also: you forgot to disagree with my definition of
| democracy and basically said "yeah, but this hypocrisy
| works"? So if the only valid vote is for "the right
| people", why bother with voting at all? Just put them in
| charge and be done. That would still be democracy, right?
| cbg0 wrote:
| Do you have a different solution than democracy? We've
| already tried communism in Romania for like 45 years and it
| was garbage.
|
| For the parliament election that happened last week, the
| winning parties of parliament were the establishment parties.
| They did lose some support compared to 4 years ago, so
| democracy is definitely working, but they still have
| reasonable backing by the people.
| elorant wrote:
| So when Russia interferes with our politics it's cold war, but
| when CIA does it's just another day?
| rdm_blackhole wrote:
| Europe has made it's own bed and now it has to lie in it.
|
| Why is the far right rising on the old continent? Is it
| because:
|
| A: everybody is stupid B: people realize that the mainstream
| media has been feeding them propaganda for the last 30 years
| and decided that they want change.
|
| You can't keep ignoring a part of the population and then claim
| that they are not voting properly. At some point some kind of
| reckoning is inevitable.
| cbg0 wrote:
| Options A and B are definitely not the reason why far right
| is on the rise in my opinion. It boils down to more basic
| things, like a healthy economy, immigration, health care,
| rising cost of living, and various country specific issues.
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| >It feels like Europe is asleep at the wheel
|
| Obviously not, because a European court literally just
| overturned the results of a democratic election due to foreign
| influence on the voting population.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Because only the French know how to deal with their government.
| metalman wrote:
| this looks like a, korean scale:), miscalculation and about to be
| corrected, korean style, and for the "court" involved, they
| better hope its south rather than northern methods
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| I see many comments signaling the facts are not known and the
| situation confusing. Here is a summary:
|
| In the election, a previously unknown candidate had a massive
| TikTok campaign and got the first place, qualifying for a second
| round. The campaign funds were not declared, it looks to be
| funded by Russians and Chinese, no proof so far but it seems
| quite credible.
|
| A recount was decided and performed, no change in results. So the
| Constitutional Court, highly politically biased (appointed by the
| parties that lost), decided to annul the result and do it again.
|
| That guy was democratically elected. This is showing how fragile
| the entire idea of democracy is, people elected a really bad guy,
| but they voted for him by the millions. Practically democracy was
| trolled big time. The guy has no chance to win the finals, every
| other candidate's voters will vote against him, it's just
| trolling.
| sebastianz wrote:
| > The campaign funds were not declared, it looks to be funded
| by Russians and Chinese, no proof so far but it seems quite
| credible.
|
| Because of what you wrote in this sentence, he was not
| democratically elected according to the laws of the country. He
| was elected through a tiktok campaign funded by foreign (dirty)
| undeclared money.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| Democratically elected? Yes. Lawfully? No. There is a
| distinction.
| starik36 wrote:
| There has to be more to it than that. I seriously doubt that
| the entire country of Romania is sitting on TikTok, and was so
| easily swayed.
|
| Also, when I hear "looks to be funded by Russians and Chinese,
| no proof so far but it seems quite credible". Sure, anything is
| possible. But how can it be credible, if no proof so far, as
| you say.
|
| I am no expert on anything Romanian, but my skeptical bells are
| going off when I hear this.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| A lot of "influencers" did campaign for this guy, some of
| them not even knowing who are they doing it for. They signed
| contract with "talent company" to promote stuff without
| mentioning any name, but that stuff was his main point of the
| campaign, so they amplified the craziness. Not all of Romania
| is sitting on TikTok, but a large enough portion or around 2
| million people voted him while most of the rest of the people
| never heard about him. The list of candidates was so long
| (>10) and some were not known, most people ignored them.
|
| I personally don't know anyone that voted for him. It was a
| big surprise for most people. Now that videos of his speeches
| appeared in public space he has no chance to get any
| significant amount of votes as he sounds like a lunatic. This
| is why I said the entire thing is trolling.
| tzs wrote:
| > There has to be more to it than that. I seriously doubt
| that the entire country of Romania is sitting on TikTok, and
| was so easily swayed.
|
| Romania isn't a de facto two party system like the US. There
| were 14 candidates on the ballot, 10 from various parties and
| 4 independents.
|
| If nobody gets a majority the top 2 advance to a second round
| vote.
|
| If I've matched up candidates and parties correctly, of the
| 10 party candidates at least 6 were from right wing parties,
| and collectively got 47% of the vote. But the way it was
| split among them the highest any one of them got was 19.18%.
| The second highest of them got 13.86% and the third 8.79%.
|
| The highest non-right party or independent got 19.15% of the
| vote.
|
| So no, Georgescu didn't need the entire country to be on
| TikTok. He only needed to get more than 19.15% to get to the
| second round. He got 22.94%.
|
| If Romania had used a ranked choice or instant runoff type of
| voting system, which probably should be used when you have as
| many candidates they do from as many different parties as
| they have, Georgescu probably wouldn't have a chance.
|
| For most of the 47% who voted right wing but not for him he
| probably would have been pretty far down in their ranking and
| been eliminated after a handful of rounds.
| sgm_ro wrote:
| He'd have had a chance if not for the "$0 campaign" publicity
| stunt, and the hidden trail of money coming from very
| suspicious places. Who is supposed to believe that he invested
| nothing, and got top position in the first round, while having
| absolutely nothing to do with the "benefactors". That and it
| seems tik tok favoured him, beyond the advantage of comment
| spam. And none of the content was labeled with the campaign id
| according to the law. If he spent at least a decent amount of
| money for the campaign, $100.000 or whatever, he'd have a
| better chance at plausibly denying the connection with the tik
| tok amplifier people, who in truth, could very well be just
| "fans", like Elon Musk was for Trump. And there's also the Iron
| Guard connections all over the place, that pretty much make you
| incompatible with the function, same reason the other candidate
| got removed from the list. So the decision isn't really
| undemocratic, although the moment it was given in was probably
| not quite legal/right, should have been done after the second
| round, but that would have caused more uproar and give him more
| legitimacy if he had won, and the odds are that he would have,
| so that's why they decided to cut it early, to minimise damage.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| He had no chance in the second round. The moment he become a
| celebrity and his speeches were public, people figured out he
| is a lunatic. Therefore no chance.
| randunel wrote:
| What's suspicious about this trail of money? Check out the
| bank transfers
| https://the5star.github.io/cgarad/messages.html
| randunel wrote:
| Here's your funds, simple people
| https://the5star.github.io/cgarad/messages.html
| cbg0 wrote:
| There's a lot of people summarizing this whole situation as "the
| candidate who should have won didn't so they cancelled the
| election". I'm Romanian and I'll provide some more details on
| this:
|
| The country has been a powder keg ever since the results of first
| round of the presidential elections, with Calin Georgescu coming
| out of nowhere to win the first round, with classical polling
| showing him below 5%.
|
| The candidates need to report spending to a state organization
| overseeing elections and this guy reported that he spent nothing
| on his election campaign, which is impossible as there have been
| flyers with his face on them, plus ads on social media. This is
| against the law.
|
| There are also a lot of TikTok influencers that have come forward
| claiming to have received payments through a third party company
| to present the candidate in a positive light, and the issue is
| that these videos should have been tagged correctly as "electoral
| ads" according to Romanian law, which did not happen.
|
| With TikTok being owned by China and their imminent ban looming
| in the US, there is strong suspicion that state actors are behind
| this, pushing Calin Georgescu through the algorithm, though this
| is tricky to prove.
|
| This is not a strong grass-roots movement supporting this guy, it
| was a targeted effort of massive network of bots spamming his
| name & tiktok page on random videos on Romanian tiktok videos to
| push his popularity (this comes from the Romanian equivalent of
| CIA & other security structures). Tiktok themselves when asked to
| comment have investigated themselves and found nothing wrong,
| though they do agree that there are bots on their network and
| they've removed millions of fake likes & followers in Romania.
|
| In a video posted this summer, Calin Georgescu expressed anti-
| NATO sentiment which he recanted after winning the first round of
| the elections. He has also previously declared that we could do
| with some "russian wisdom" and he's a big fan of the Iron Guard
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Guard), which killed a bunch
| of political figures in Romania during their time. This
| organization as well as other fascist groups are illegal in
| Romania.
|
| Candidates have to declare their assets as part of transparency
| and it seems Calin Georgescu has not declared all of his assets,
| which is illegal. There's also suspicions about money laundering,
| with a house he bought for 250K in 2006 and sold for 1M in 2011
| which is unusual. This is somewhat besides the current
| discussion, just adding some context that this guy is not exactly
| squeaky clean.
|
| A criminal investigation has been requested by The Supreme
| Council of National Defence, which is the autonomous
| administrative authority in Romania invested by the Constitution
| with the task of organising and coordinating, by unanimous
| decisions, the activities related to the country's defence and
| national security. This is right now in the first stages with no
| single person being put under indictment.
| ImJamal wrote:
| > he candidates need to report spending to a state organization
| overseeing elections and this guy reported that he spent
| nothing on his election campaign, which is impossible as there
| have been flyers with his face on them, plus ads on social
| media. This is against the law
|
| Does Romania have the equivalent of US PACs? In the US an
| organization not related to the campaign/party can receive
| donations and make flyers, ads, etc.
| redleader55 wrote:
| No, this is not a thing in Romania.
| cbg0 wrote:
| Not really, and all the money needs to be declared anyway.
| I'll give you an excerpt of relevant law text, some stuff
| removed as there's a lot of fluff:
|
| Election campaign expenses shall comply with the following
| conditions: a) come solely from contributions by candidates
| or political parties; b) they shall be incurred only with the
| prior approval of the competent financial trustee; c) they
| must fall within the limits provided for by this law; d) to
| be made by electoral competitors only for the promotion of
| their candidates and electoral programs. (2) The collection
| of electoral contributions and the payment of electoral
| expenses may be made only through bank accounts notified in
| advance to the Permanent Electoral Authority. [...] (11)
| Candidates' contributions for their own election campaign or
| that of the political party that nominated them may come only
| from donations received by candidates from individuals, from
| their own income or from loans taken by them from individuals
| or credit institutions. [...]
|
| In the event of the commission of an offense provided for by
| this Law, in violation of this Article, the sums of money
| related to the electoral expenses incurred in violation of
| this Article shall be confiscated and paid into the state
| budget
|
| The financing of the electoral campaign, directly or
| indirectly, by natural persons who are not Romanian citizens
| or by legal entities of a nationality other than Romanian, is
| prohibited, with the exception of financing by citizens of
| Member States of the European Union who are domiciled in
| Romania and are members of the political party to whose
| electoral campaign they are making a financial contribution.
|
| Translated with DeepL.com
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| Thank you for doing the research. There seems to be an
| awful lot of people that just can't get the fact that other
| countries can have different laws. ...and that the EU has
| many different countries, too.
| 77pt77 wrote:
| This is not a thing in most of the developed world.
| tensor wrote:
| PACs are one of the biggest problems with the US system.
| Thank god most democracies outlaw them.
| boredhedgehog wrote:
| What if a rich supporter prints flyers and buys ads without
| telling the candidate? If that automatically disqualifies a
| candidate, his enemies have a strong incentive to do the same.
| cbg0 wrote:
| It's possible but spending has to be reported to the
| electoral authority, which it wasn't.
| jdasdf wrote:
| If i spend money on all the other candidates and don't
| declare it, will they get disqualified? Or is this a rule
| that only gets applied when the wrong person wins=?
| cbg0 wrote:
| You would be in legal trouble for breaking electoral law.
| Based on what happened today, if there is proof that the
| electoral process was tainted, the elections can be
| annulled by the constitutional court.
| jdasdf wrote:
| >You would be in legal trouble for breaking electoral
| law. Based on what happened today, if there is proof that
| the electoral process was tainted, the elections can be
| annulled by the constitutional court.
|
| So, your stance is that any foreign nation can disqualify
| any candidate they like by running a few ads for them?
|
| Think seriously about what you're saying.
| cbg0 wrote:
| This is not a "stance", I'm mostly talking about the law,
| and that's something that judges decide on, not myself.
|
| Foreign nations are not allowed to be involved in the
| electoral process in Romania by law and could lead to the
| annulment of the electoral process, which is what
| happened. The process will start again from scratch,
| nobody was disqualified.
| tensor wrote:
| Yes. That's how it is in North America too. "A few ads"
| probably no, but if it's enough to be significant then
| yes.
| stubish wrote:
| Since political advertising is and needs to be regulated,
| it needs to be regulated. What platform allowed the
| unauthorized ads to be run and who are we putting in
| jail? Local TV, radio and print gets held accountable,
| but a stick needs to be taken to foreign owned social
| media companies to make them acknowledge their social
| responsibilities.
| Wytwwww wrote:
| But why would the result of the new elections be
| different unless they disqualify that guy? It's not like
| there is a way to somehow force his voters to forget the
| illegal ads etc.
| ccozan wrote:
| look, the law requires this declaration of funding. There
| is a constitional article in which the elections must be
| correct. By doing this, there is an unfair situation and
| the corectness of the elections is no longer guaranteed.
| Also, there is no natural growth of a candidate from 5%
| to 22% in two weeks. It was a massive attack on the
| people minds with very well crafted messages, practically
| saying what the people want to hear. This is no work of a
| person, it points out to a state actor with such vast
| resources.
| culi wrote:
| Yeah but the consequences would be for that rich person,
| wouldn't it? Not the candidate themselves
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| So any third party can spend a bunch of money without the
| knowledge of the candidate that they purport to support,
| purposefully not report it, and then that candidate can be
| disqualified?
|
| If that's how the system works, it incentivizes abuse.
| cbg0 wrote:
| No, you would still be on the hook for breaking electoral
| law by not reporting spending, even as a private
| individual not part of the election. This wouldn't be
| relevant for making a few flyers as the law won't come
| after you for that, but spending hundreds of thousands on
| tiktok bots will definitely cause a stir.
| returningfory2 wrote:
| Right, so what about if I don't like a candidate and I
| intentionally pump 1 million euro into her campaign so
| she gets disqualified? This is what the parent is asking
| about.
| cbg0 wrote:
| I don't have a clear answer on that for you, but nobody
| was disqualified in this situation as the election was
| annulled and will restart from scratch.
|
| This hypothetical situation though is a bit unlikely, as
| we're talking about quite a lot of money to pump into
| someone's campaign and anyone doing this will still be
| subject to attempting to manipulate the electoral process
| if they do not abide by the law, which could land them in
| jail and lead to an annulment of the electoral process.
| returningfory2 wrote:
| Sure, but right now we're talking about a situation in
| which quite a lot of money has been pumped into someone's
| campaign! This situation is proof that people are willing
| to interfere in the election. The problem is that once
| you introduce the idea that the election can be
| "annulled" a bunch of people are going to be motivated to
| hack the election to get it "annulled" in some way.
| sebastianz wrote:
| > a bunch of people are going to be motivated to hack the
| election to get it "annulled" in some way.
|
| There will be trials for this, and both the people who
| bought the ads (if they can be found), but more
| importantly the media publishers who pocketed the
| millions will have to answer questions to prove this was
| legal.
|
| You can't unilaterally "pump some millions" to buy some
| electoral ads. Someone pocketed some millions and will
| need to show receipts.
| chupy wrote:
| As you well know since you are Romanian there are not
| many cases of people tried and in jail in Romania for
| corruption. Now take a state actor and imagine that they
| are responsible. Let's not kid ourselves and pretend
| there will be repercussions for this mess except - if
| possible - make people trust even less the 'system'.
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| Not many cases? There are _many_ people tried and jailed
| for corruption, including previous mayors, senators,
| ministers, more than one prime minister even. Of the many
| possible critiques of Romania, not jailing corrupt
| politicians is among the weaker ones.
| chupy wrote:
| Most of those cases of even the prime ministers were just
| for show. Getting a suspended punishment while not having
| to pay anything back from bribery and no repercussions.
| This is equivalent to how I punish my kid, stay in the
| corner for five minutes and promise you don't do it
| again.
|
| If you also relatively think the couple that are actually
| in jail they are too few for the amount of politicians or
| general corruption that is in prevalent Romania.
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| >and lead to an annulment of the electoral process
|
| That would be the goal.
| dh2022 wrote:
| "but nobody was disqualified in this situation as the
| election was annulled and will restart from scratch" -
| how is this logical?
|
| Nothing will change from the annulled election to the new
| election (candidates will not be invalidated, TikTok will
| still be there). So if the annulled election was invalid
| on whatever criteria, the new election would also be
| invalid on the same criteria...
| oneshtein wrote:
| Honest candidate will just report your spending. :-/
| xuhu wrote:
| Perfectly fine, as long as the supporter and candidate are
| not part of the same well known group of interest.
| mihaaly wrote:
| Was it so?
| danicriss wrote:
| Salient point
|
| What you're missing is that in this particular case the
| outside interference seems to have been the _only_ support he
| had
|
| He's claimed zero expenses and his whole stated strategy was
| "my rise is God's will"
|
| Romania's NSA surmises in this case "God" may have been Putin
|
| So, to answer your question, your spending needs to do some
| 100% of the heavy lifting in their campaign to match this
| precedent. In other words, you'd have to be the only guy
| propelling them. Which nullifies the hypothesis of a
| candidate _you_ 'd want overthrown
| dr_kiszonka wrote:
| > There's a lot of people summarizing this whole situation as
| "the candidate who should have won didn't so they cancelled the
| election".
|
| I wonder if there is any Russian influence on HN too.
|
| (I am also curious whether Dang et al. use any relevant
| monitoring tools.)
| Applejinx wrote:
| Don't know about the latter, but I notice your question seems
| mighty grey... I'd be shocked if HN, of all places, was
| exempt from internet meddling. It seems to me to be fruitful
| ground for manipulation, and for years now I've seen an
| interesting 'double face' of Hacker News: on the one hand,
| inclined towards techno-optimism, but on the other hand, the
| pressure to manipulate viewpoints seems nearly Reddit-like in
| its focus and determination. It's a bit like Fight Club: the
| first rule of downvoting suggestions of interference is that
| you must downvote any suggestion of coordinated interference
| even before you use voting to push any other desired purpose.
|
| I think this is salient to the question and to the fact that
| it's a discussion on the subject of interference causing a
| Romanian court to annul the results of an election, but I'll
| accept correction if my observations are out of line even in
| this conversation :)
| mrguyorama wrote:
| HN is full of all kinds of fun influence, and Dang swears it
| doesn't exist.
|
| Are you aware that every HN user account associated with a
| YCombinator company is visible as an orange username to every
| other HN account associated with a YCombinator company? They
| sell this as a "Perk". It's a secret club.
| lukan wrote:
| "and Dang swears it doesn't exist."
|
| Citation needed. I am aware of statements, that influence
| campaigns are not as elaborated, as you would expect. Not
| that it does not exist.
| orthecreedence wrote:
| It certainly has a strong Randian influence, despite that
| particular ideological leaning being beneficial only to a
| tiny fraction of the population. That could be indicative of
| tech culture in general though and not necessarily outside
| influence.
|
| TBH I'd be surprised if any high-traffic public forum isn't
| heavily influenced by foreign or ruling-class interests at
| this point.
| oblio wrote:
| Libertarianism is rampant here but it's due to
| demographics: geeks, (actual or wannabe) entrepreneurs,
| skewing young and male.
|
| It kinda comes with the territory :-)
| tim333 wrote:
| Bound to be some - I was debating a pro Russian guy a couple
| of days ago. But there doesn't seem to be an organised
| campaign as such as far as I can tell.
| int_19h wrote:
| Keep in mind that there are plenty of "useful idiots"
| willing to recite straight up Russian agitprop, usually
| associated with more extreme political views. On the far
| right, there's a whole subculture of people who seem to
| sincerely believe that Russia is some kind of "proper
| Christian country", whatever that means. On the far left,
| some people will simp for anyone and anything so long as it
| is anti-US and anti-West - in that retelling, Russia is
| somehow "anti-imperialist".
|
| In Russia itself there's also no shortage of people who
| genuinely support the government and its outlook, and some
| of those people hang out on Western platforms (often,
| ironically, using VPN).
|
| Which is to say, you're certainly bound to encounter a
| certain amount of rabidly pro-Russian takes even in the
| absence of any deliberate targeting.
| Dah00n wrote:
| >pro Russian
|
| doesn't necessarily mean
|
| > Russian influence
| hollerith wrote:
| >I wonder if there is any Russian influence on HN
|
| What exactly is the worry? Undeserved downvotes?
| the_af wrote:
| > _What exactly is the worry? Undeserved downvotes?_
|
| The Russkies must not get our precious bodily fluids.
| blululu wrote:
| I think the steelman for this would be something like:
| people hear factually incorrect assertions with enough
| frequency from enough different sources and become
| convinced that these assertions are true. This is basically
| of the idea of sockpuppeting/astroturfing. Given that both
| major political parties in the US deploy such tactics, it
| is not unreasonable to think that they are effective. And
| when these tactics are deployed by a hostile foreign power
| we should be even more upset than when they are used by
| domestic sources.
| hollerith wrote:
| OTOH, looking for subtle signs of Kremlin influence in
| every comment is not without its costs either, one of
| which is that it tends to make people impervious to
| evidence or arguments that our policy is too hostile
| towards the Kremlin.
| 4bpp wrote:
| Depends on what you consider "influence". There are certaimly
| pro-Russian, or at least anti-American, posters. As for the
| idea that it is being targeted by a campaign of bots or
| payrolled humans, this seems unlikely - HN is good at
| sniffing out LLMs and to date we have no indication that
| Russia can find and afford competent English writers in bulk.
|
| There is a curious human tendency since the earliest days of
| the internet to refuse to believe in the possibility of
| organic disagreement. The most stereotypical and funny
| instance of it are perhaps 4chan arguments carried out by
| insinuating that all opposing posts are actually made by the
| same person (or, recently: organised by some Discord
| channel), but the belief that niche comment sections all over
| the world are flooded by Chinese or Russian government farm
| comment slaves who are perfectly literate in the local
| language and culture and would never stand out were it not
| for their talking points is now being affirmed even by
| (formerly?) respectable mainstream institutions. I guess this
| produces the convenient effect that your populace gets strong
| memetic antibodies against any dissident positions, even as
| the proposition is transparently absurd. Where are all those
| people supposed to come from? Even lifelong techies from
| Russia have telltale quirks in their LKML posts, and little
| needs to be said about English text in Chinese docs.
| blub wrote:
| Based on my reading of many controversial threads around
| elections, politics and the Russo-Ukrainian war, the entire
| internet, including HN is infiltrated either by Russian
| agents or their useful idiots.
|
| The more likely reality which is confirmed by votes to anti-
| establishment candidates is that many people in Europe and
| the US don't like the political direction, no matter how much
| it's presented as moral and democratic.
| returningfory2 wrote:
| I appreciate the details, but ultimately I still don't buy it.
| The people who voted for this guy have agency and decided for
| themselves. Yes, they were likely influenced by a likely state-
| actor campaign. But they still have agency, they liked what
| they were being presented with, and made the final call
| themselves on who to vote for.
| cbg0 wrote:
| That's not what's being disputed and I completely agree with
| your sentiment. The issue is that electoral campaign law was
| not respected and thus the elections were not considered
| "free and fair", but tainted by this shady candidate.
| returningfory2 wrote:
| I feel this is kind of stretching the phrase "free and
| fair". The election e.g. in Venezuela earlier this year was
| not "free and fair" because the votes simply weren't
| counted and made-up tallies were published. This is not
| what's happening here. Here, there is no doubt that people
| wanted to vote a certain way and the votes were accurately
| counted to reflect that.
| tremon wrote:
| You don't get to use your own definition of the phrase
| "free and fair" here. Romanian law prescribes that
| political campaigns need to be transparent in source and
| funding. They weren't, as per the Romanian court. End of
| discussion.
| returningfory2 wrote:
| Yes, I do.
|
| By your argument if a country (e.g. China?) outlaws
| competing political parties then the rubber-stamp single-
| party elections are "free and fair" because they are in
| accordance with law. In general the whole point of a
| "free and fair" election is that the government can't
| just change the law and rules to get the result it wants.
| There is an independent notion of "free and fair"
| election that is rightly independent of country specific
| law.
| tensor wrote:
| No. There is not. Canada also has campaign spending rules
| because most civilized nations recognize that equal
| speaking time is required for a fair election. Otherwise
| you can't consider the people to be well informed.
|
| There is no "independent notion of a free and fair
| election". Personally I think your idea of a fair
| election is highly unfair and unethical.
| idunnoman1222 wrote:
| All right so we just get the Russians to spend some money
| funding the conservative party of Canada via tiktok and
| then when they win the election we can say ha ha that's
| illegal!
| tensor wrote:
| The conservatives claimed precisely this about the last
| election, but investigators deemed the interference was
| not significant enough for a redo.
|
| Foreign interference is one of the biggest threats to
| democracy today. I'd absolutely support a redo of an
| election, even if my party one, if it was found to be
| significant enough.
|
| More broadly I think all democracies need to thinking
| about ways to handle this problem as it's only getting
| worse.
| shermantanktop wrote:
| Nobody ever expects the triple reverse wag-the-dog!
| oneshtein wrote:
| IMHO, you are trying to say <<if a foreign hostile nation
| will unlawfully influence election process in Canada,
| then election will be unfair, ha ha!>>
| bmacho wrote:
| .. probably yes, it would become illegal. I don't think
| that this is the absurdity you believe it is. It can even
| be the solution. If
|
| * we want candidates to spend ~the same amount of money
| on campaign and
|
| * Russia interferes
|
| then the state, Canada or Romania, should block TikTok
| propaganda. What else?
|
| Also I think that if the "same amount of campaign money"
| rule is proven to be wrong, and they want to go in an
| "anything goes" way instead, then they should redo the
| election, and they shouldn't accept the results with
| unfair conditions.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| It is _absurd_ that you are equating Chinese one-party
| rule with spending transparency laws and asset
| documentation.
| Wytwwww wrote:
| Not any more absurd than claiming that nobody has the
| right to challenge the definition of what "free and fair"
| according the laws of a specific state (regardless if one
| agrees with that definition or not).
| Retric wrote:
| The fair bit _requires_ everyone following fair election
| laws.
|
| Think of it like a game, it's only fair if the rules are
| unbiased _and_ everyone to follow them. There's a wide
| range of possible rules for a fair game, but allowing one
| player to cheat is equivalent to unfair rules.
|
| So sure, you can have fair elections where no candidate
| needs to disclose their net worth, or fair elections
| where everyone is registered to share their net worth,
| but you can't have a fair election where _some_ people
| are registered to share their net worth.
| Wytwwww wrote:
| > you can't have a fair election where some people are
| registered to share their net worth.
|
| Didn't he do that? As for the election spending even if
| he's lying about the spending they can't prosecute and
| convict him without delaying the elections for many
| months if not more.
|
| At this point any outcome seems like a huge failure of
| the Romanian electoral/political/legal systems.
| Retric wrote:
| I don't actually know the specifics. I brought it up as a
| possible silly election law that could still be
| considered "fair".
| returningfory2 wrote:
| I was arguing against the specific claim that a "free and
| fair" election is one that is consistent with the laws of
| the country the election is being run in.
|
| In fact, I think your response proves my point. What
| you're saying is that the specifics of the laws matter -
| i.e, whether or not a election is "free or fair" depend
| on _what_ the rules of the game are, not only on the fact
| that they are the rules.
| xuhu wrote:
| Just like the umpire at the tennis match can grant
| victory to player X, and then take their title away when
| the doping tests come back.
| PunchTornado wrote:
| His electoral campaign posts weren't marked as electoral
| material. As a voter I thought they are not paid but true
| opinions of journalists/ influencers that I respect. It
| turns out that they were actually paid and not marked
| properly. So he broke the rules. Now I am going to change
| my vote.
| dlt713705 wrote:
| So, you agree with the opinion stated in electoral
| material if it is marked as official campaign material
| but disagree with the same opinion if it is marked as
| paid marketing material?
|
| I would like to quote Spock here: "Fascinating..."
| scott_w wrote:
| That's not what was said
| xuhu wrote:
| More likely he wants paid advertising to be marked as
| such. For whose benefit do advertising regulations exist
| ?
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Different person: I might give weight to the word of
| someone I respect, then change my mind when I find out
| that person wasn't saying it due to conviction but only
| for a payout, yes.
| dlt713705 wrote:
| I completely understand and fully agree with this idea
| even if I still have to see one political with a strong
| conviction that are not paid out in a way or another.
|
| Anyway, if the ideas illegally disseminated through this
| campaign material convinced the voter to choose this
| candidate over another, what other choice does he have ?
| Vote for someone that he wouldn't vote in the first place
| because of his opinion ?
|
| May be I'm wrong assuming people vote for ideas and
| opinion...
| data_maan wrote:
| People will vote for Hitler if you dress him nicely and
| make him seem to care for your personal problems (Trump
| die that really well).
|
| The thing is - in a fair election media scrutiny applies
| to all candidates. This guy flew under the radar, so
| media couldn't expose him. Therefore it wasn't a fair
| choice people were given because the mainstream
| candidates all received significant more scrutiny.
| gmueckl wrote:
| I don't even think you need to dress that person nicely.
| The film "Look who's back" had an actor in the role of
| Adolf Hitler talk to random people in the street in
| unscripted sequences. He readily pulled them over to his
| side by relating to their everyday problems.
|
| As crazy as the premise is of Hitler getting inexplicable
| transplanted into the 21st century, the film manages to
| demonstrate the appeal of these dangerous populists.
| probably_wrong wrote:
| I'd argue that if you accept that the results were "likely
| influenced by a likely state-actor campaign" then the means
| by which they achieved their objective are not above
| scrutiny. Elections are a mean for obtaining as fair (that
| is, unbiased) a measure as possible of the "true" will of the
| people, and yet we're starting from "yes, the sample has been
| altered maliciously, but...".
|
| There are (outdated, but still) campaign financing laws
| designed to prevent this exact scenario and which the
| candidate apparently broke. If the courts throw their hands
| in the air and say "whelp, what can you do?" they would be
| setting the precedence that foreign election interference is
| only wrong when you lose.
|
| Of course, the analysis rests on fair authorities trying to
| do good which is a high bar to clear. But letting a cheater
| get away with it in plain sight doesn't seem fair either.
| rayiner wrote:
| Who scrutinizes the result? If the people actually voted
| for that candidate, they won't trust anybody to look behind
| the outcome to assess whether it was "fair" or not.
|
| I feel like a large swath of the developed world has
| forgotten why we have elections. We do it because we don't
| trust each other, we don't agree what's "fair," etc. So we
| establish elections as a way of resolving disputes between
| people who don't trust each other. It's exactly like
| software security. You create a minimal trusted kernel--the
| machinery of voting and counting the votes--and then build
| decision making off the forced consensus generated by the
| elections.
|
| If there was anybody whom everyone trusted enough to second
| guess the elections, to look at voters' motivations and
| fuzzy ideas of fairness you wouldn't need elections.
| perihelions wrote:
| - _" If there was anybody whom everyone trusted enough to
| second guess the elections, to look at voters'
| motivations and fuzzy ideas of fairness you wouldn't need
| elections."_
|
| Lawrence Lessig (well known to HN for his open source law
| work) proposed that the US Electoral College was created
| with the purpose of second-guessing elections. (He didn't
| like the outcome of the 2016 one and was trying to
| rationalize mechanisms of overturning it).
|
| Lessig:
|
| - _" The framers believed, as Alexander Hamilton put it,
| that "the sense of the people should operate in the
| choice of the [president]." But no nation had ever tried
| that idea before. So the framers created a safety valve
| on the people's choice. Like a judge reviewing a jury
| verdict, where the people voted, the electoral college
| was intended to confirm -- or not -- the people's choice.
| Electors were to apply, in Hamilton's words, "a judicious
| combination of all the reasons and inducements which were
| proper to govern their choice" -- and then decide. The
| Constitution says nothing about "winner take all." It
| says nothing to suggest that electors' freedom should be
| constrained in any way. Instead, their wisdom -- about
| whether to overrule "the people" or not -- was to be free
| of political control yet guided by democratic values.
| They were to be citizens exercising judgment, not cogs
| turning a wheel."_
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-constitution-
| let... ( _" The Constitution lets the electoral college
| choose the winner. They should choose Clinton"_)
| afthonos wrote:
| I actually think the electoral college is a solution to a
| problem so obvious to anyone living then that no one
| really thought to name it: validating an election.
|
| It's 1789, and you're designing a voting-based system.
| You've decided each state gets votes proportional to its
| population in the presidential election. How do you
| validate that the result you got from Georgia, two weeks'
| travel from NYC, is trustworthy? Seals? They can be
| tampered with. What about special messengers? Someone
| could impersonate them.
|
| Solution: send dignitaries that can vouch for each other.
| The elite of neighboring states is likely to know each
| other, and you establish a chain of trust up and down the
| coast. Great!
|
| Except these are people with better things to do than to
| be errand boys. There has to be _something_ in it for
| them. Solution: _they_ get to cast the final ballot for
| President. They are electors.
|
| (This is a theory that I have not validated at all, to be
| clear.)
| ANewFormation wrote:
| An adjacent point is that states are free to run their
| elections as they see fit with relatively few rules. For
| example most states have a winner-take-all result for
| presidential elections where a guy who gets 51% of the
| vote get 100% of the 'seats', so to speak. But that's not
| necessary - Maine and Nebraska, by contrast, have
| proportional systems, where they split their vote
| proportionally.
|
| So how to interpret the results from one state could be
| quite different (and potentially subject to rapid change)
| even if you know the results were genuine. So the results
| of states always would need to be converted, by the
| states, into e.g. 15 final votes. So the electoral
| college emerges quite naturally in this context.
| Tyrannosaur wrote:
| Slight correction- Maine and Nebraska do not have
| proportional systems; they both use the Congressional
| District Method. Each congressional district votes
| plurality for an elector, and the 2 remaining electors go
| to the statewide plurality.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Electoral_Col
| leg...
| rayiner wrote:
| He's not wrong in that point. But in modern times,
| electors are chosen by the party or the candidate.
| Historically, they were chosen by elected state
| legislatures. Either way, there was a pretty short chain
| of trust between the voters and the electors.
|
| That trust isn't there when the oversight is from random
| people at an election commission or law enforcement
| agency.
| Terr_ wrote:
| I was never a fan of the Electoral College, but I
| _grudgingly_ accepted the argument that it _might_ be
| useful as a circuit-breaker where the Somber Elder
| Statesmen block a crazy-unqualified crook from gaining
| power.
|
| That was before 2016. Given how it has failed at that--
| twice now--it provides no benefit to the nation, only
| democracy-harming costs.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| You're disappointed because that's not what the Electoral
| College is for at all.
|
| No, the purpose of the Electoral College is actually very
| simple: Guarantee States' sovereign rights for
| Presidential elections in a way that every State agrees
| (Congressional representation!), while maintaining the
| clear separation between Executive and Legislative
| branches.
| barney54 wrote:
| How has the Electoral College failed twice?
| stouset wrote:
| And yet we still have laws surrounding what constitutes
| fair participation in the election.
|
| If those laws are grossly violated and the candidate
| wins... then what? "Sorry nothing we can do" just means
| you're a sucker if you follow the rules.
|
| All the last decade has shown me is that democracy is far
| more fragile than any of us really realized. Populations
| are _frighteningly_ easy to mislead and misinform en
| masse. Enough voters to swing most elections vote
| primarily on vibes more than anything resembling a
| coherent or informed political philosophy.
|
| Drought caused food prices to rise? Better kick out the
| current guy. Random weakening of our biggest trade
| partner's currency causing lower prices of goods? The
| current guy is a genius!
| rayiner wrote:
| > All the last decade has shown me is that democracy is
| far more fragile than any of us really realized.
| Populations are frighteningly easy to mislead and
| misinform en mass
|
| This is absolutely the wrong lesson to take away from the
| events of the last decade. The whole point of democracy
| is that we don't have a priestly class that gets to
| impose their views by fiat, like the Brahmins of ancient
| India.
| stouset wrote:
| I'm not saying what we have isn't an improvement on that.
| But it's also maybe uncomfortably closer to that than
| we're willing to admit to ourselves. And it is
| terrifyingly fragile.
|
| Spread the right kind of vibes and misinformation and you
| can get enough of the population to believe _anything_.
| Hell, upset enough people and they'll start to do it
| themselves.
|
| We've already seen several countries essentially vote
| themselves into dictatorships based on misinformation.
| This may have been a near miss.
| gwervc wrote:
| > I'd argue that if you accept that the results were
| "likely influenced by a likely state-actor campaign" then
| the means by which they achieved their objective are not
| above scrutiny.
|
| No influence doesn't exist in any country. In France during
| the first elections Macron was elected, he was pushed
| heavily by the media. In 2016, almost every news outlet in
| the country were vocally against Trump. Those are example
| of "state-actor" level influence on elections, but somehow
| it's supposed to be fine because it was supporting the
| "good" candidate. Democracy in unironically in danger, but
| not for the reasons often voiced. So people and factions
| try more and more to impose what is the supposed correct
| outcome of elections or the definition of democracy.
| data_maan wrote:
| There are levels to influence. Macron and Trump were
| widely recognized as candidate before the election. This
| guy in Romania was at 5%, no one knew who he was, then
| suddenly he's at 20+%. That's next level.
|
| You think that having bad press, as Trump had, was bad -
| that's not true at all, there is no such thing as bad
| press. The fact that the media in the US all went against
| him was just a freebie for Trump in terms of exposure.
|
| Here, on the other hand, no media outlet reported on him,
| which is very different - yet mysteriously he got 20%
| from TikTok alone.
|
| So yes, it's good to remove him.
| rayiner wrote:
| Second guessing an election result based on handwaving
| like this is completely insane. You do not have a
| functional mental model of how and why elections work.
| anonzzzies wrote:
| Yeah, luckily I don't live in the US where you get a
| crazy billionaire to fund a certified madman into office,
| both clearly for money and power reasons that have
| nothing to do with 'the people' and then let that be
| valid. No thanks.
| Cumpiler69 wrote:
| _> clearly for money and power reasons that have nothing
| to do with 'the people'_
|
| Wtf? Not sure in which Fantasy land you live, but all
| political candidates everywhere receive campaign money
| from billionaires specifically "for money and power
| reasons and not to make life better for the voters",
| otherwise they wouldn't pay and elections would be
| worthless to them.
|
| You're just pissed trump won, and ignoring that Kamala
| received 3x-5x the campaign money from wealthy donors
| than Trump did. So who's the one being influenced by mad
| billionaires more?
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2024/11/04/trum
| p-v...
| anonzzzies wrote:
| I don't mean the funding, I mean 'free speech' X
| prioritising everything in favor of Trump just so Musk
| (not necessarily Trump) ends up with more power for
| himself and his businesses. I didn't think Kamala was any
| good either, but this is a shitshow and I'm happy that in
| RO we don't do that, no matter what all the 'scamming
| ignorant/dumb people is democracy, so let it run!' people
| say; lying to people to get votes is not democratic. We
| saw how great it worked with brexit and we'll see how
| great it will work out with trump; the people who voted
| in both cases had no clue what they are voting for
| (unless you are rich looking for tax breaks and
| regulatory de-pressuring, then of course you knew what
| you voted for; moa moneyz); they are lied to and it will
| be their undoing.
| Cumpiler69 wrote:
| What are you on about? Kamala's campaign has the same
| free speech access o X as Trump did.
|
| Same with Joe Rogan. He even invited Kamala for a talk
| and she refused. But Trump didn't and then people blame
| Joe Rogan for "helping Trump win the elections". At what
| point is the Democratic Party gonna admit they fucked up
| every step of the way to connect with the voter, instead
| of blaming everyone else?
|
| RO is even worse since we're ruled by the same cabal from
| the communist regime and their chronies and descendents
| who are basically in every political party. So it doesn't
| matter who you vote for, the same people will end up
| profiting off corruption.
|
| At least the US cabal has some entreprenourial
| billionaires who create top companies and great jobs
| boosting their economy. RO politics is just thieves
| stealing from the economy, so we depend on the EU and
| their companies hiring here for jobs and economic growth.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >the people who voted in both cases had no clue
|
| Please speak for yourself. I voted for Trump and I knew
| _exactly_ for whom /what I was voting for.
| Cumpiler69 wrote:
| It's funny that democrats are still in denial after
| loosing big time against an orange felon :))
|
| Instead of taking a cue and learning why they lost, they
| double down that they were right and everyone else (the
| majority of voters), was wrong.
|
| So they'll have to keep loosing voters until it sinks in.
| Saline9515 wrote:
| > Macron and Trump were widely recognized as candidate
| before the election
|
| Based on the media coverage? Building a narrative around
| a character is done over time, that's what PR consultants
| do, in hand with journalists and newspapers owners and
| advertisers.
|
| > This guy in Romania was at 5%, no one knew who he was,
| then suddenly he's at 20+%. That's next level.
|
| This is very common in elections. Trump was supposed to
| lose by a large margin in 2016. Polls aren't votes.
| intended wrote:
| They are saying he was unknown, not that he was unpopular
| in the polls.
|
| In both elections Trump running by was the aberration.
| His wins have been a function of the electoral college in
| action.
| trafficante wrote:
| Pretty sure Trump won the national popular vote this last
| time around though? And there's a strong (politically
| neutral) argument that Clinton could have pulled off an
| EC win in 2016 if she had taken Trump more seriously -
| eg: she never once campaigned in Wisconsin [1].
|
| Going back a bit further, and somewhat tying into the
| topic of the thread, 2016 Trump owes his GOP nomination
| (and thus indirectly the Presidency) to a Clinton/DNC op
| designed to weaken the Republican field.[2] That's not to
| say that Trump didn't eventually resonate with the GOP
| base, but the powerbrokers of the RNC absolutely didn't
| want him and yet their counterparts at the DNC were
| heavily in favor of putting Trump front and center
| everywhere.
|
| 1. https://www.businessinsider.com/clinton-losing-
| wisconsin-res...
|
| 2. https://www.salon.com/2016/11/09/the-hillary-clinton-
| campaig...
| rayiner wrote:
| I think there's a very strong argument Clinton could've
| won the EC in 2016. There was almost no EC bias this
| year. Trump won the tipping point state, PA, by 1.8, and
| the popular vote by about 1.5. The country swung 5-6
| points right from 2020. But Harris pretty much just
| parked herself in PA, MI, and WI and kept the swing in
| those states under 3 points. If she had won, she very
| well could've done so while losing the popular vote.
|
| It also shows that the counterfactuals are misguided.
| Campaigning makes a bigger difference than the typical
| margin of the popular vote. Candidates only campaign in
| the swing states (if they're smart) so we don't know what
| would happen if they were trying to win the popular vote.
| intended wrote:
| Trump didn't win the popular vote in 2016. It looks like
| I was wrong for 2024.
| rayiner wrote:
| Trump won the popular vote and swept all the swing
| states.
| intended wrote:
| Not the popular vote in 2016.
| wqaatwt wrote:
| Stuff like that is pretty common in Eastern Europe,
| though. Combine very high levels of apathy and distrust
| with not very mature party systems plus all the
| corruption and incompetence (not that it's that different
| in some Western European countries these days) and you
| regularly get random unknown guy/party winning just
| because they are an outsider and are promising to fix
| everything (e.g. Zelenskyy is probably the most extreme
| example of that)
| Al-Khwarizmi wrote:
| He was clearly known by election day, otherwise they
| wouldn't have voted for him.
|
| That the establishment and traditional media didn't know
| him doesn't mean that he was unknown.
| intended wrote:
| Then he would show in the polls
| Al-Khwarizmi wrote:
| He showed up in the one that matters.
| intended wrote:
| I'm sure that zinger felt good to write.
|
| But it doesn't address the actual question, or point.
|
| And I'm not your opponent.
|
| If it's important to earn the personal point to you, I'm
| happy to leave it here.
|
| If it doesn't show up in the polls, either it's an
| impressive polling failure - which is a high bar that has
| to be passed.
|
| Or it's something else.
|
| Manipulation also poses a very high bar that must be
| passed.
| chupy wrote:
| Occam's razor here.. Polling failure and it's very clear
| from the actual amount of people voting for the guy. Yes
| you can make a conspiracy theory but it's a bit
| ridiculous.
|
| Most Romanians that work in IT(and post here) live in
| their own bubble (because they make 5-10x average
| Romanian salary) and are totally disconnected from the
| common folks and can't now believe that the person making
| less than minimum wage that is serving their 3 euros
| expresso is not loving it.
|
| Those common folks are similar to the rest of Eastern
| Europe with strict religious beliefs and very
| conservative so it's not a surprise they vote for someone
| that they resonate with.
|
| Similar stuff happened in Brussels where a radical
| islamist party won seats in the parliament by using
| TikTok tactics. He did not show up in the polls either.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| Young people are won over on TikTok, nothing weird about
| it.
|
| I don't know any of the TikTok people and yet many peers
| call them celebrities.
|
| This guy broke some rules around elections spending and
| he will be punished, but calling it Russia interference
| just because of his politics doesn't have any weight
| behind it.
| petre wrote:
| If the secret service tells the president it's Russian
| interference, then it is what it is. The report was
| declassified and the Constitutional Court has acted on
| some of the interference complaints, of which there were
| at least three after the report was published. It has
| unanimously voted to cancel the election. This is part of
| the checks and balances of a functioning democracy.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| First of all, the secret service did not tell the
| President it _was_ Russian interference. They said they
| _suspected_ foreign interference.
|
| Legal decisions can't be based on hearsay from the secret
| service. Courts take decisions based on proof presented
| in front of them. For extraordinary decisions, they are
| supposed to look for extraordinary evidence. The
| declassified documents are pointing at irregularities,
| and perhaps a campaign finance violation by one
| individual. That is a far cry from overwhelming evidence.
| petre wrote:
| I've read the actual reports, they contain facts and
| details, with names blacked out, not suspicions. They
| point to Russian interference. They state that the
| campaign is similar to the ones in Ukraine before the
| invasion and the one during the ellectrions in Moldova.
| And the Constitutional Court obviously knows better given
| the fact that all the judges voted for the same outcome:
| to annul the election.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| You should read them again. They do go into some detail,
| and they find the following facts:
|
| - CG's campaign was well organized, on Telegram, by many
| dedicated people (at least some of which are Romanians,
| such as those identified but blacked out in the MAI
| report); at least some of these people have a history of
| extremist and pro-Russian views, but the documents make
| no mention of any direct Russian connection
|
| - the campaign used large numbers of fake or dormant Tik
| Tok accounts, and accessed these from many IPs
|
| - Romanian influencers were paid to promote pro-CG
| messages, and they mislabeled much of the paid promotion
| videos; some Romanian corporations that funded this are
| identified but blacked out in the MAI report
|
| - Russia led its own disinformation campaigns in various
| ways, unrelated to CG's campaign (the SIE report
| documents various Russian activities, not a single one
| mentioning CG or any other candidate or party or group of
| parties)
|
| - the SRI documents mention some data breaches and
| published passwords; the STS documents vehemently deny
| that any cyber actor made any successful attack on the
| core electoral infrastructure
|
| - the shape of the campaign, from content to
| infrastructure (mass numbers of dormant Tik Tok accounts
| being resurrected, coordination over Telegram, etc) is
| veryalmost identical to known Russian campaigns in
| Ukraine and Moldova
|
| - there is exactly one, non-specific, claim that "a state
| actor" coordinated with the CG campaign; here it is
| quoted in full, from the second SRI document:
|
| > the activity of the accounts was coordinated by a state
| actor who would have used an alternative communication
| channel to "roll" messages unto the platform
|
| That is the _only_ specific claim that some state actor,
| and Russia is _not_ mentioned here despite being
| mentioned in many other places in these documents. So
| again, only a suspicion of direct Russian interference in
| the campaign.
|
| And, while these documents suggest those services have
| more detailed proof of many of the suspicious activities
| they represent, the Court has not seen any of that proof:
| they have only seen these documents, as mentioned in
| their motivation, which constituted _hearsay_.
| M95D wrote:
| But the same Constitutional Court already validated the
| election results one week ago. It was published in
| Monitorul Oficial (official publication of new laws and
| regulations, etc., closest equivalent to US Federal
| Register). At that time, The Supreme Council of National
| Defence had access to the documents. They read them and
| did nothing.
| petre wrote:
| They did not have acces to the declassified reports then
| and the initial complaints were for something else,
| voting irregularities in a few named polling stations.
| wqaatwt wrote:
| > the secret service tells the president ... then it is
| what it is
|
| That's an extremely Soviet/Russian mindset. Blind trust
| is what leads to authoritarianism. Really the opposite of
| what you'd want in a functioning democracy.
| JPLeRouzic wrote:
| > _Macron and Trump were widely recognized as candidate
| before the election. This guy in Romania was at 5%, no
| one knew who he was, then suddenly he 's at 20+%._
|
| You can say exactly that about Macron in 2017, he never
| was elected before candidating for the presidential
| election. His only public role was as _deputy_ secretary-
| general of Francois Holland who was at the time French
| president.
| rdm_blackhole wrote:
| That is not true.
|
| He was also the Minister of Economics, Industry and
| Digital Affairs under President Francois Hollande from
| 2014 to 2016. A very public role indeed.
| yehat wrote:
| Having an assumption that those 5% were real is showing
| one is far from the reality of sociological "probing".
| Especially in Eastern Europe. It is far from a precedent
| and it has happened many times already in the past 20-30
| years that the agencies are blind for certain candidates
| because... they're not paid to see them.
| kergonath wrote:
| > No influence doesn't exist in any country.
|
| There are laws to limit this, whether they limit campaign
| funding or the involvement of certain persons. In the
| Romanian case, the argument is not whether the right
| candidate won, it is whether campaigning laws were
| broken.
|
| > In France during the first elections Macron was
| elected, he was pushed heavily by the media.
|
| This canard again. Prove that something unlawful
| happened, and then you can talk. If you are butt hurt
| because Marine cannot win an elections then be relieved:
| she's likely to become ineligible for 5 years and a
| candidate that might be able to win the damn thing will
| have some room instead. If your pet politician is
| Melenchon then lol is all I can say. He's a reason why
| France is in this shite in the first place.
|
| > Those are example of "state-actor" level influence on
| elections, but somehow it's supposed to be fine because
| it was supporting the "good" candidate.
|
| This is completely off-base and intentionally misleading.
| The media endorsing candidates is nothing like state
| actors at play.
|
| > Democracy in unironically in danger, but not for the
| reasons often voiced.
|
| Yeah. Not for the reasons you mention either. The fact
| that so many people keep repeating these bullshit
| arguments _is_ part of the problem. Macron would not have
| had a chance had the others not thoroughly undermined the
| system for at least a decade before he showed up.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > In the Romanian case, the argument is not whether the
| right candidate won, it is whether campaigning laws were
| broken.
|
| > Prove that something unlawful happened, and then you
| can talk.
|
| Why this double standard? In the Romanian case, nothing
| has been _proven_. There are precisely two one-page long
| reports from secret services saying there were
| irregularities favoring this candidate. This is barely
| enough evidence to even start a prosecution, nevermind
| issue a final judicial decision to overturn an almost
| finished election.
|
| I'm as happy as anyone with half a brain that Calin
| Georgescu is not our next President. But the way the
| courts went about this is undeniably illegal.
| Al-Khwarizmi wrote:
| _> I 'm as happy as anyone with half a brain that Calin
| Georgescu is not our next President._
|
| Aren't you worried about actually getting him (or some
| pal of his) as president due to the Streisand effect?
|
| I don't know much specifically about Romanian politics,
| but in general this kind of thing can help rather than
| harm a politician. He can now claim to be a martyr of the
| establishment and an opponent of authoritarianism.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| In principle, I agree, which is one of the reasons that I
| think this was a horrible decision.
|
| On the other hand, the court has just shown that it's
| willing to redo the entire electoral process if the
| elections don't go the right way. Calin Georgescu will
| certainly not be allowed to run again. One of the other
| hard right wing candidates (Diana Sosoaca) had already
| been disqualified, for even flimsier reasons, and I don't
| expect she will be allowed to register either. There is
| only one far right candidate left (George Simion) - I
| suspect that they can find reasons to exclude him too.
|
| Whether people might rise up against this or not is
| unclear. I was dreading some violence last night, but not
| even a handful of those who had voted with Georgescu, or
| the far right parties, have taken to the streets
| (thankfully) so who knows.
| JPLeRouzic wrote:
| > _In France during the first elections Macron was
| elected, he was pushed heavily by the media._
|
| > _This canard again. Prove that something unlawful
| happened_
|
| Nobody can prove that, but it wouldn't be the first time
| that alien powers would interfere in French elections,
| beginning with USA. There is a long list of US
| interferences in France on Wikipedia [2] and CIA was very
| active recently in France [3]
|
| * in XXth century: Monnet, Bastien-Thiry, Guy Mollet,
| Antoine Pinay, Maurice Faure, Jean Lecanuet, Francois
| Mitterrand [0], Algiers putsch [1]
|
| [0] https://www.revueconflits.com/soft-power-de-gaulle-
| washingto...
|
| [1]
| https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceinter/podcasts/rendez-
| vous-...
|
| [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_France
|
| [3] https://wikileaks.org/cia-france-elections-2012/
| Paradigma11 wrote:
| One is legal and open the other is illegal and covertly.
| vintermann wrote:
| Why are you using the media as an example? They are at
| least based in the country they operate.
|
| More damning is stuff like AIPAC, or British Labour's
| material support for the Democratic party in the last
| election. Foreign lobbies openly "interfering" in an
| election in ways less favoured countries never would be
| allowed to.
| fsckboy wrote:
| seems like a bit of a leap from
|
| _There are...campaign financing laws designed to prevent
| this exact scenario and which the candidate apparently
| broke_
|
| to
|
| _the results were "likely influenced by a likely state-
| actor campaign"_
| danicriss wrote:
| I'm surprised all the discussions here missed an obvious
| point, even if it's implicit and not explicitly stated:
| the shady support this candidate had was _the only_
| support he had
|
| He's declared 0 campaign spending. For all we know, the
| _only_ way he was promoted was by a swarm of foreign-
| controlled accounts bypassing TikTok 's own anti-swarming
| policies, knowingly or not. The growth in his account was
| not organic. He had practically zero other exposure to
| justify his growth
|
| Accepting him as president is tantamount to Romania
| accepting a president chosen by someone very high up in
| another state. That, for me, is Romania becoming a puppet
| state of that power, be it Russia, China or both working
| together
|
| No, thanks, I'm happy with a borderline legal decision by
| Romania's Constitutional Court. There were enough red
| flags in the way this candidate conducted himself for his
| case to not stand as precedent if a legit candidate is
| challenged in the future for minor (and even maybe
| significant, but not _exclusive_ ) foreign support
| somenameforme wrote:
| Flip the actors and imagine how you might feel. Imagine in
| Hungary if Orban was defeated by a radically pro-NATO, pro-
| EU guy. And then courts in Hungary ruled that said person
| was unfairly promoted by Google, Instagram, et al. And so
| the election had to be completely redone. And then some
| reason was found to exclude this individual from the next
| election (as will certainly happen here, or he'd probably
| just win again).
|
| There would be 24/7 headlines about tyranny, disregarding
| democracy, and more. The US would be leading the charge
| with sanctions against Hungary if not outright "regime
| change", and the EU would likely even begin working on
| motions to remove them from the EU. Yet when the wrong
| candidate wins a democratic vote, suddenly everything is
| entirely different. The 'rules based order' becoming a joke
| is precisely why anti-establishment candidates are winning
| everywhere.
| zpeti wrote:
| Nicely said. The problem here is the message clearly
| resonated and people voted for him. Yes, he might have
| had help in spreading that message, but the message still
| landed and people chose him.
|
| To now say that the election was invalid when people
| actually chose him is extremely risky. My guess is it
| will reinforce a lot of narratives about how evil the
| west and the USA is. This will only make things worse,
| and will put the winner in an even stronger position.
| Cumpiler69 wrote:
| _> The problem here is the message clearly resonated and
| people voted for him._
|
| Indeed, that's what a lot of the middle upper class urban
| Romanians with corporate jobs don't understand, that a
| lot of the people, especially the older less educated
| ultra conservative ones, resonated with him and his
| message so they voted for him.
|
| TikTok didn't hypnotize and mind control them to vote for
| him, they stil had free will, they just like his message
| the most. Sure his message was full of lies and pandering
| but that's every single politician.
|
| Do we discard the democratic process because someone
| undesirable by the educated middle upper class won by
| majority? Then what's the point of democracy? You keep
| repeating elections till your preferred candidate wins?
| andrepd wrote:
| >Do we discard the democratic process because someone
| undesirable by the educated middle upper class won by
| majority?
|
| Why do people on this thread keep hammering on this
| ridiculous point? He is discarded for breaking the law in
| multiple points, not because he is "undesirable by the
| urbanites" or whatever ffs. If it was the "soy globohomo
| candidate" or whatever you'd call it that was breaking
| these laws, he should _also_ be suspended.
|
| This is the only conclusion I take from this: you are so
| anti-democratic that you cannot fathom following the
| rules impartially, that indeed if a court determines that
| a candidate broke the law it must be because it is trying
| to manipulate election results. Because this is what you
| would yourself do if you had that power, protect "your"
| guy and persecute the "other" guy?
| Cumpiler69 wrote:
| _> the only conclusion I take from this: you are so anti-
| democratic _
|
| If you could read, you'd understand from my previous
| comment, I'm the opposite of anti democratic. But
| whatever, you do you.
| dragandj wrote:
| People did not choose him nevertheless. He only got 1/5
| of the votes and passed to the second round with another
| candidate. In the second round he would probably loose,
| but it is not the point.
|
| The point is that _he broke the election law_. That is
| not negotiable.
| andrepd wrote:
| >Yes, he might have had help in spreading that message
|
| Modern mass social media isn't just "help spreading the
| message", as everyone on this website must surely be
| aware. It's not a guy handling out pamphlets. It's a
| hyper-optimised, hyper-targeted psychological howitzer
| that would make Goebbels or Bernays blush.
|
| Ffs I search for cake recipes on YouTube and my suggested
| videos are infinite hours of the local far-right guy
| ranting about gypsies and nepalis. Of course it has an
| effect, of course such _one-sided_ avalanche of
| propaganda skews and manipulates things. This is obvious
| and also empirically verified.
|
| I stress: _one-sided_. It 's not even so much as all the
| boomers (and impressionable kids) being fed this
| propaganda for hours on end, it's that _it 's the only
| thing that they are fed_. Listening to 30 tiktoks in a
| row of the guy ranting about gypsies and the EU would not
| be so bad if at least it was followed by some tiktoks
| giving an opposing views, or exposing that guy's shady
| business deals and how he pockets millions in taxpayer
| money! But we all know echo chambers are more lucrative
| than balanced views......
| quickthrowman wrote:
| > Modern mass social media isn't just "help spreading the
| message", as everyone on this website must surely be
| aware. It's not a guy handling out pamphlets. It's a
| hyper-optimised, hyper-targeted psychological howitzer
| that would make Goebbels or Bernays blush.
|
| I still don't understand why anyone willingly subjects
| themselves to mass social media, there's absolutely
| nothing of value and disinformation runs rampant.
|
| I know I have blind spots in my knowledge and believe
| stuff that isn't true, but I do my best to avoid being
| misinformed.
| andrepd wrote:
| Why do people gamble on the roulette? Why do people get
| addicted to cigarettes or to heroin?
| quickthrowman wrote:
| Good point, it's the dopamine. Having your beliefs
| reinforced feels great.
| dak89 wrote:
| This is exactly right.
|
| While I think it would be suboptimal you could imagine
| "rerun the elections if the winner breaks campaign
| finance law or gets support from abroad" as an
| established norm in western democracies, but that's not
| the world we live in and the EU would not accept these
| shenanigans from a populist right wing government.
| rayiner wrote:
| Developed countries never rerun elections because of
| stuff like that.
| dak89 wrote:
| Yes, I think we agree!
| briandear wrote:
| Maybe they should. You can cheat all you want but as long
| as you win, you win. What's the point of campaign finance
| laws if they can be broken with no meaningful
| consequence? The candidate's campaign gets a "fine" that
| they pay out of campaign money anyway. But they still can
| win.
| rayiner wrote:
| No, they shouldn't. Holding people liable for finance law
| violations can still provide signals to the public, which
| may affect their voting. But you can't allow unelected
| criminal justice officials to override elections. That's
| a path straight to hell, as has been proven time and
| again in Asian countries that do that.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| How would you suggest they be held to account here?
|
| Keep in mind that their ill-gotten gains include votes,
| and that a criminal's ill-gotten gains of a crime must be
| disgorged to hold the criminal to account.
| rayiner wrote:
| Voters can take it into account. But you can't elevate
| legal technicalities above democracy. People will not
| trust the people administering the election laws over the
| people they voted for.
|
| It's a "who watches the watchers" problem. Many countries
| have tried to impose the legal system on elections and it
| invariably results in destruction of trust in both
| elections and the justice system.
| ImPostingOnHN wrote:
| Your suggestion that voters can take information into
| account is precisely what is happening here:
|
| Prior to the election, the information was illegally kept
| secret, so voters couldn't take it into account.
|
| Now, in a new election, if this candidate stops illegally
| hiding the information, voters will be able to take the
| information into account.
| araes wrote:
| This from a personal view is one of the main current
| issues with America.
|
| The rules often appear to exist to punish the just and
| law abiding, while the unscrupulous simply ignore the
| laws, win their current sportball match, and then rewrite
| the laws afterward to legitimize whatever the results
| were. Really common theme with corporate America.
|
| A lot of campaign finance laws are almost flagrantly
| ignored, or superficially followed, with a light slap and
| a candy treat afterward. Corporate laws are almost
| amazing when there's a fine that "actually" matters, and
| not just a round-off error "cost-of-doing-business."
| Company makes $10^11 - $10^9 revenue per year, gets a
| $10^7 - $10^6 fine a decade later? Right, that was like
| 100th to a 1000th of a single year revenue fine.
| rayiner wrote:
| Look, that's a fine point for corporate laws. They should
| be rigorously enforced.
|
| But election laws are completely different. Enforcement
| of election laws inherently allows unelected lawyers and
| judges to second guess voters. It puts the justice system
| above the electoral system, which is corrosive to
| democracy. What are the checks and balances on the people
| enforcing those elections laws?
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| You are wrong, the same thing happened in Austria in
| 2016.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Austrian_presidential_
| ele...
| dak89 wrote:
| That's different, the austrian example was about actual
| mistakes in the way votes were counted, cast, who were
| allowed to vote etc. Not the same as <<we blame foreign
| bots>> and someone may have broken campaign finance laws.
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| No two cases are exactly the same. But annulling an
| election due to irregularities or campaign law violations
| is a possibility in any democracy.
| rdm_blackhole wrote:
| Very well said.
|
| All they have done is giving his supporters a martyr to
| support. Do they actually think that the mainstream
| candidates will get the votes of the people who voted for
| this man?
|
| If anything, this will reinforce their anger and distrust
| in the system.
| trklausss wrote:
| We had that in the 1920's in Spain, where only a group of
| oligarchs (named caciquism) were dictating whom the
| persons under their wing where voting for. Needless to
| say, there was collusion among the leaders and only
| puppet governments in place
|
| So be it, if Google, Instagram, et al. are influencing a
| campaign, _and it is deemed to be illegal with proof_ ,
| the results of the elections shall be repeated.
| bojan wrote:
| > Flip the actors and imagine how you might feel.
|
| The same. If "my" candidate wins in a way that in the
| long term undermines democratic values, it's still a net
| negative and I don't want it. That would just empower the
| "they are all the same" narrative that autocratic
| politicians use to get to and stay in power.
| tiahura wrote:
| _democratic values_
|
| Like "he who gets the most votes wins, even if the powers
| that be don't approve"?
| egeozcan wrote:
| > he who gets the most votes wins, even if the powers
| that be don't approve
|
| Through fair elections, yes. No election is ever 100%
| flawless as perfection isn't practical. However, what
| happened here is blatant cheating involving shady funds.
| buran77 wrote:
| > he who gets the most votes wins
|
| Aren't you forgetting the essential "while playing by the
| rules"? Getting the most votes by cheating - and it looks
| like that was certainly the case here, no doubt about it
| - is the opposite of democracy. Winning by cheating just
| happens to be the staple of the very country suspected of
| interfering. Are you promoting the same "values"?
|
| > the powers that be don't approve
|
| You are right here. I personally consider it completely
| normal if the democratically elected powers that be don't
| approve when someone claims to have won an election -
| which nobody actually won since the process didn't finish
| - despite cheating. Winning by cheating is the opposite
| of democracy. If breaking the law to win is considered
| democracy, then why is legally restarting elections to
| win any less so? Hypocritical or trollish preferences
| aside.
| rayiner wrote:
| "Cheating" means "manipulating votes." It cannot mean
| "persuading voters through means I don't like." That
| opens up a Pandora's box you cannot close. There's no
| limiting principle to draw clear lines about what's
| proper influence versus improper influence.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| If you reduce it to just this then Russia is also a
| democracy since Putin got most of the votes. This is
| obviously not a sufficient condition to call something
| democratic.
| tlamponi wrote:
| Well, if that pro-NATO, pro-EU guy declared having spent
| no money on their campaign while their Face being
| plastered all over the place and other proof that someone
| spent money on a campaign for that person, and there's a
| law that spending and sources of money for elections must
| be made transparent then the election should be 100%
| nullified, just like here.
|
| Feelings are one thing, but breaking laws like here
| cannot just be brushed of as some people having hurt
| their feelings.
|
| What I do not really understand is why this hasn't been
| handled before the election, i.e., why was the candidate
| with seemingly zero monetary transparency even allowed to
| be on a ballot?
| Al-Khwarizmi wrote:
| There is a lot of middle ground between "brushing it off"
| and cancelling a whole election and throwing the choice
| of millions of voters to the trash.
|
| In Spain there are violations of campaign laws all the
| time (and I'm talking by major traditional parties) and
| they are investigated, but typically the outcome is a
| fine, or maybe some jail time in severe cases, not
| invalidating a whole nation-wide election. And I suppose
| it's the same elsewhere because otherwise we would see
| news of invalidating elections left and right. Shady
| campaign financing is not exactly uncommon across the
| world.
| egeozcan wrote:
| > There is a lot of middle ground between "brushing it
| off" and cancelling a whole election and throwing the
| choice of millions of voters to the trash.
|
| If elections are rigged, the results cannot be accepted
| under any circumstances. Using shady, undeclared capital
| in elections amounts to cheating and invites outside
| influence. This is a serious issue because we entrust the
| governance of nations to those elected by the people.
|
| Democracy only functions if the outcomes cannot be
| bought. While no system is ever 100% immune to
| corruption, blatant disregard for election laws cannot be
| taken lightly.
|
| If irregularities occur, people can vote again. Yes,
| redoing elections costs time and money, but if voters
| still choose the same leaders after understanding how
| they gained power, then that's democracy in action.
|
| For me, the line is very clear because I've seen it
| blurred so many times in Turkey, where I come from, and
| I've witnessed the devastating consequences.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >Democracy only functions if the outcomes cannot be
| bought.
|
| Then by definition absolutely every democratic
| country/society does not function, because guess what: It
| takes truly stupid amounts of money to win an election.
| Ergo, you need to buy the election.
|
| Every single candidate and party and reform movement who
| have argued for removing money from democratic politics
| have _all_ lost /failed without a single exception. You
| absolutely cannot win an election without money, without
| buying it.
|
| The only saving grace is that the guy who spends the most
| money doesn't always win.
|
| We can go on for years about how it's stupid you need
| money to win an election, how the amount of money is
| despicable, how the world is unfair. Whatever: We aren't
| living in ideal dreams, we're living in the brutally
| unfair and practical reality.
| egeozcan wrote:
| Yes, you need stupid amounts of money to win, and I see
| that as normal in capitalist countries given how
| significant winning is. However, there's also an
| obligation to disclose the funding sources so people can
| decide whether they agree with them.
|
| Some may downplay the importance of this, but I see it as
| absolutely crucial.
| rayiner wrote:
| It poisonous to say elections are "rigged" unless you can
| prove votes were manipulated. Otherwise you're opening
| the door to wide ranging grievances to second guess
| election results. By your logic, the U.S. should have
| redone the 2020 election because U.S. intelligence
| agencies pressured Facebook and Twitter to suppress
| information that could have hurt Biden. Do you really
| want to open the door to claims like that?
| andrepd wrote:
| > The US would be leading the charge with sanctions
| against Hungary if not outright "regime change", and the
| EU would likely even begin working on motions to remove
| them from the EU.
|
| It's fucking _hilarious_ that this is your argument when
| in fact blocking opposition candidates and stacking
| courts and centralising powers and receiving shady money
| and prosecuting freedom of speech is _precisely_ what
| Orban has been doing _for the past 15+ years_ , with the
| EU doing exactly... fuck all about it.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| To concur, the US and EU are screaming they're required
| to report their foreign influence in Georgia -- the same
| as FARA in the US. They deployed their NGOs to influence
| and led riots in the streets to block transparency about
| foreign funding. [0] While at the same time in the US
| prosecuting a media company for not reporting foreign
| money. [1]
|
| "Rules Based Order" is anything but based on equally
| applied rules.
|
| [0] - https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/05/09/georgia-
| foreign-influenc...
|
| [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Tenet_Media_inve
| stigation
| preisschild wrote:
| > the same as FARA in the US.
|
| WRONG https://civil.ge/archives/591175
| lm28469 wrote:
| I really like how you start from an hypothetical
| scenario, then extrapolate even more ridiculous
| hypothetical scenarios to make it sound outrageous...
|
| Of course if you can prove someone cheated an election it
| should be scrutinized no matter the side.
|
| What even is your point here? That we shouldn't care
| because you imagine that your political enemies would do
| the same thing? What kind of argument is that
|
| > is precisely why anti-establishment candidates are
| winning everywhere.
|
| Anti establishment? Like Trump, Orban, Miley, Fico,
| Meloni? Lmao the only people saying they're anti
| establishment are themselves and their propaganda, as
| soon as they're in place they're very happy to milk the
| establishment and serve their own interests
|
| I'm the first to criticize the EU but if the only way out
| is through Russian puppets I'd rather stay in until we
| find a better solution.
| chpatrick wrote:
| Hungarian state propaganda is already painting the pro-EU
| pro-NATO guy (Peter Magyar) as an agent of Brussels so
| don't speak too soon.
| markvdb wrote:
| I don't claim to know all about this situation, but I do
| discern a recurring pattern that many IT professionals
| don't (want to?) realise:
|
| Information technology is giving all kinds of actors
| leverage to exploit our human brain's fundamental
| shortcomings.
|
| In this case, it's a fscking nazi sympathiser jumping to
| the fore of a presidential election from nothing.
|
| Remarkable and ironic to me, these actors weaponise the
| powers of technology while often spitting at the
| scientific method underpinning them.
| lenkite wrote:
| > In this case, it's a fscking nazi sympathiser jumping
| to the fore of a presidential election from nothing.
|
| Why do you call him "a fscking nazi sympathiser" ?
| preisschild wrote:
| The russian govt are basically the nazis of the 21st
| century. And hes a sympathizer to them. Hence: Nazi
| sympathiser.
| aguaviva wrote:
| This equation is just wrong, as applies to both Putin and
| Orban.
|
| And (ironically) simply convinces people that those who
| are concerned about Putin's arguably fascist (as opposed
| to actual Nazi) inclinations are just hyperventilating
| and overreacting.
|
| Thus, promoting his (and Orban)'s longevity.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| There are many steps between "no scrutiny" and "overturn
| the entire months long electoral process two days before it
| was supposed to end based on hearsay".
|
| The right thing to have done here was to let the process
| continue, have the fascist investigated by the relevant
| authorities for his likely crimes regardless of whether he
| won or not, have him stand before a judge, and convict him
| - and, if he had won, have Parliament suspend him and strip
| his immunity so that this can all happen.
|
| We have laws and established legal frameworks for all of
| this. The CCR can't just overrule all other procedures and
| base its decisions on hearsay.
| okasaki wrote:
| This 'state actor' stuff only comes up when it's someone
| you don't like.
|
| Is Ukraine being influenced by a state actor? Is Israel? Is
| Taiwan?
| mihaichiorean wrote:
| I agree. he can be prosecuted for not reporting his spending
| probably, but as long as he didn't ship boatloads of fake
| ballots it doesn't warrant cancelling the election. the
| authorities should put a stop to the interference, and if the
| interference to influence was his advantage, the 2nd round,
| without interference, would have him lose. Just let the
| people vote.
|
| I still believe that the main "problem" was that the front
| runner party that has been in the 2nd round for 10s of years
| and which has the prime minister as the candidate, didn't
| make it to the 2nd round. Someone wanted this fixed.
| Obviously the prime minister who was 3rd in the 1st round
| made declarations in support of the ruling.
| lukan wrote:
| "but as long as he didn't ship boatloads of fake ballots it
| doesn't warrant cancelling the election."
|
| Why do you think you can decide for romanians? They made
| their voting laws - he violated them. They sort it out.
| Wytwwww wrote:
| Why are you even commenting here if you don't believe
| that people should ever share their opinions on anything?
|
| But yeah not a great look for Romania and its political
| system either way if they have to invalidate the
| elections and throw away the votes of a significant
| proportion of the population to stop them from electing a
| pro-russian/fascist candidate...
| lukan wrote:
| If they want to elect him, they can do so the proper way
| the next time.
| scott_w wrote:
| Say he violates voting laws and becomes president as a
| result. Do you get a situation like in the USA where the
| police just say "well, you won so all crimes are
| effectively expunged," or do you have the even more insane
| situation of the president being prosecuted for violating
| electoral laws during his campaign?
| maeil wrote:
| Turns out China (or here, Russia) infiltrated the country,
| waged an enormous disinformation campaign and succeeded by
| getting their chosen candidate elected? "Tough luck, it's
| too late now, should just stand by and watch the country
| get taken over".
|
| No.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| I lack the willpower to go down the rabbit hole of how bad
| this guy was. On the political front, on the science front,
| on the logical consistency front.
|
| After 2 weeks of frantically trying to convince people not to
| vote for him, I am exhausted and just want a good night's
| sleep.
|
| Someone should document the amount of absolute insanity that
| the candidate was and maybe then you'd get it. I just feel
| relief at this point.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > I lack the willpower to go down the rabbit hole of how
| bad this guy was. On the political front, on the science
| front, on the logical consistency front.
|
| We're in the same place in the US.
|
| > After 2 weeks of frantically trying to convince people
| not to vote for him, I am exhausted and just want a good
| night's sleep.
|
| How many of us felt after the US election.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| I never thought I would say this, but this guy was,
| honestly, way way worse than Trump. Not to diminish your
| torture. But it was off the charts insane. Like... A
| compendium of conspiratorial beliefs.
| Terr_ wrote:
| In a broader sense, the exhaustive storm of BS is
| deliberate: When the people are too damn _tired_ to care
| about which story is really true, it changes the playing
| field to favor whoever is willing to tell the most-pleasing
| lies.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| That is classic Russian disinformation isn't it? Fill
| every channel with contradictory information, until no-
| one knows what to believe.
| Terr_ wrote:
| Eventually it dovetails with the dynamics of: "The way
| you have to pretend to believe/avoid my obvious lies is a
| demonstration of my power and an implicit threat to
| others."
|
| Then: "By forcing you to publicly sacrifice your
| integrity, I've poisoned any future resistance with
| mutual doubt."
|
| > He thought: the worst thing about Vorbis isn't that
| he's evil, but that he makes good people do evil. He
| turns people into things like himself. You can't help it.
| You catch it off him.
|
| -- _Small Gods_ by Terry Pratchett
| datameta wrote:
| Yes, it is known as Hypernormalization.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| My understand of Hyper Normalisation is that it is the
| construction of a fake reality that everyone agrees on:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperNormalisation
|
| Which is different to flooding the channels with
| contradictory information, so that no-one knows what to
| believe.
|
| The film 'Hyper Normalisation', by Adam Curtis, is well
| worth watching, BTW.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| Well, that fits as well for the CG crowd.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| CG?
| RealityVoid wrote:
| Calin Georgescu, the candidate that hasrussian support.
| Kind of how US abbreviates Donald Trump as DJT.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| >that everyone agrees on
|
| (or, at least, pretends to)
| datameta wrote:
| Flooding the channels is step one. Construction of the
| fake reality follows. I also recommend that documentary,
| it details "how we got here".
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| I don't think this is what's happening. There is no
| confusion.
|
| Europe is going down the drain due to the lack of
| innovation and over-regulation making people poorer and
| poorer. Refugees cause crime on the street making people
| feel unsafe.
|
| The average Joe is pissed and votes whatever extremists,
| as long as they oppose the EU.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| Trust me, there is confusion.
|
| We have inequality in Romania, but we don't have
| flrefugees causing crime or making people feel unsafe.
|
| The quality of life as steadily been improving.
|
| There is lack of faith in the political class.
| gmueckl wrote:
| And Russia is happily adding fuel to that fire. It's a
| divide and conquer strategy for them.
| Wytwwww wrote:
| So? Do you suggest that some people in Romania (and well..
| applies to many other countries just as much) should lose
| the right to vote because they are too dumb and are easily
| tricked (I mean I certainly agree that they are)? Because
| what other options are there?
| stubish wrote:
| Propaganda channels need to be shut down and replaced
| with information sources. While originating with
| politicians, the advertising industry has turned
| propaganda into a science you can study at University and
| this is the result - populations, not just dumb
| individuals, without agency, and democracy just a game to
| be played by the manipulators. Political truth and
| spending laws also need to be become agile, because the
| US election showed you can dump billions into
| disinformation if you are fast enough to not be blocked
| until after the election. But it is toothless while
| someone outside of your legal framework gets to choose
| the next leader by hiring a marketing graduate and giving
| them an advertising budget.
| Saline9515 wrote:
| The argument is doubled edged and typically what a
| totalitarian government could say to close competing
| media outlets.
|
| It is quite ironical that the main newspaper in the
| Soviet Union was called la Pravda = "the truth".
| ANewFormation wrote:
| They also had Novosti = the news. It led to a fun joke:
| "Why do we have two newspapers, Truth and News? Well
| that's because there's no truth in News, and no news in
| Truth."
|
| Alot of these old Soviet jokes are becoming quite
| appropriate again. What times we live in.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| This is true. But nonetheless, it is double edged. Not a
| fan of closing down sources, more a fan of education and
| inoculation of the population against misinformation. But
| that takes decades. And this is now. Not sure what is the
| best course of action.
| maeil wrote:
| I think most of suggest that large-scale targeted foreign
| interference, and benefiting from it, should be illegal
| qnd have consequences which may include overturning
| results. And that's the case here, as it is in most
| countries. I don't think we have to explain why.
| tiahura wrote:
| How many likes from foreigners on tiktok should a
| candidate be allowed to receive? Are all foreign
| countries to be treated equally, or are some foreigners
| ok?
| petre wrote:
| The're not losing the right to vote, they just get to do
| it all over again, hopefully without another state actor
| tainting the ballot. And without inept politicians
| combining the presidential and parliamentary elections
| over the course of two weeks, giving Russia the unique
| opportunity to manipulate both at the same time. The
| secret service was probably ignored, because they had the
| correct assessment ready.
| wqaatwt wrote:
| So unless they disqualify that guy why would the outcome
| change that much?
| petre wrote:
| Dunno, people are already brainwashed with Russian
| propaganda and convinced that the majority party somehow
| stole the elections, when in fact they're as surprised as
| everyone else. If they disqualify the guy his votes would
| likly go to another borderline fascist candidate who's
| also allegedly backed by Russia. His party took place #2
| in the parliamentary elections. He has been formerly
| declared persona non grata in Moldova and Ukraine, due to
| unionist, anti Ukrainian actity and links to the GRU.
| They already disqualified another candidate due to anti
| EU and anti NATO affiliations, who's also openly pro
| Russian and a regular at events hosted at their embassy.
| I think it was a mistake because her votes went to this
| other crazy person who made it to round two. Russia
| backed not one but three trojan horse candidates in these
| elections. This is how important it is for them to derail
| that country from its Euroatlantic path. Romania now has
| three right wing parties with over 30% in its parliament
| and a cancelled presidential election.
| jdck1326 wrote:
| How bad you or I think he is is irrelevant. If the people's
| decision is overturned when the elite do not like it then
| the country isn't any kind of democracy.
| data_maan wrote:
| How about overturning the result when the elite accepts
| it, but then discovers that he (or whoever helped him)
| actually manipulated people via TikTok?
|
| It's not really a true people's vote in that case any
| more, so it seems rather like defending democracy.
| jdck1326 wrote:
| My point is that our personal views on his positions and
| character are irrelevant. You seem to be discussing a
| different point.
| datameta wrote:
| You seem to be discussing the Romanian election in a
| vacuum divorced from the reality that Putin is doing
| everything in his power to sow chaos in Europe because
| the calculus just works for him.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| Democracy works because it leads to reasonable outcomes
| for the vas majority of the population. If the election
| itself leads to unreasonable ones, it ceases to be a good
| political system.
|
| You know about the old dilemma used for justifying the
| electoral college "the tyranny of the" majority". Well,
| me and my countrymen mostly judge that we were about to
| vote for tyranny in our country. An EC like approach
| wouldn't have stopped it because of the vote repartition,
| but only because of electors refusal to vote for a
| particular candidate. Well, actually, it kind of DID stop
| it because we had the CCR step in and declare the
| election null.
|
| This fetishizing of democracy need to take into account
| the safely valves baked into the law for situations like
| this and a safety valve just triggered.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| every form of communication is manipulation
|
| the only thing you can attack him for is the lack of
| reporting of election spending
| RealityVoid wrote:
| What if it's so bad it would likely lead to lack of
| democracy? What then? How can democracy defend itself
| from democratically electing not to be a democracy
| anymore? Because make no mistake, this was what this
| election was about.
|
| You elect this guy, you kill democracy. Essentially, this
| guy's platform was "let's try dictatorship for a change".
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| Then the choice you are offering is how you would like to
| kill democracy. Overturning a democratic election is a
| certain way to do it.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| Ok, then the answer is simple for me. We kill it with
| something that is not fascism. And we try to kill it with
| something that does not end with the suffering of
| millions of people.
|
| And we try to keep the best option that could lead to
| having a working democracy again in the shortest possible
| time.
| yehat wrote:
| Dude, you so much reveal what a brainwashing does to the
| people it is just unreal. We've seen that behavior few
| weeks ago after the US elections. How the evil has come
| now what we'll do etc. It is really a sad there're people
| who decide theirs truth is the only valid one.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| I think you don't fully grasp my point. But maybe I don't
| grasp yours. Can you explain further?
| jdhendrickson wrote:
| Not much worth arguing about in this thread. Multiple
| sleeper accounts and coopted accounts with the same
| talking points about how someone who used illegal means
| to sway votes should just be allowed to take the reins of
| power with a fine. It's not logical and isn't real
| discussion just the same nefarious actors using social
| media to try to sway opinion. Get that good nights sleep
| and I'm glad your country didn't succumb to this new
| method of warfare like mine did.
| treyfitty wrote:
| You automatically jump to "anything but fascism" as a
| solution but that's not a solution at all. That was
| Harris & Walz do-nothing strategy advertised as a "just
| don't vote for Trump." This type of anti-campaign is
| fundamentally rooted at brainwashing us to discount any
| and all fundamental problems to be solved. Instead, it
| relies on their constituents to rely on opinions, rather
| than facts. Relying on opinions and beliefs aren't
| inherently bad, but when an entire campaign doesn't
| present any other reason to vote for them other than
| "you're an idiot if you advocate for a party that claims
| their election was hacked" or "Think about your daughters
| future," that campaign is gaslighting the electorate to
| believe detractors to those views must be anti-democracy.
| Lo and behold, 2024 results come in and now the losing
| party cries "There's no way the majority of Americans
| like this guy, early votes must've been thrown out."
| Congrats, you've been brainwashed to only see flaws when
| your ideas and beliefs aren't validated and reach for any
| explanation that preserves your worldview- even
| explanations that you've laughed at when presented by the
| other side)
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| > something that is not fascism
|
| So let the will of the people stand and then it will just
| be a democracy with a leader you don't like. Overturning
| the election is the fascist thing to do.
| petre wrote:
| It was not a democratic election specifically because of
| massive foreign interference. Democracy doesn't work with
| an adversary propaganda channel in your society. This is
| why RT and Sputnik news were banned just about everywhere
| in the West. This is why the US has given Tiktok a year
| to sell their operations to a US company or gtfo. After
| this I hope the EU follows suit, kicks them out or at
| least massively fines them into compliance.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| Although in the abstract, we are on the same page, I
| think it _was_ a democratic election. With interference,
| a lot of it, but the will of the voters was CG. It's just
| that CG would have most likely destroyed democracy and
| destroyed our country.
|
| If the end result of democracy is fascism, one can simply
| not allow this transition to happen in good conscience. I
| fetishise democracy less than I value the truth and in
| turn that less than I value not having people suffer.
|
| We might have dug our own grave here, and the situation
| is pretty serious. I for one am not a big fan of the CCR
| decision and am thankful I was not the one to make it.
| But I understand how they might come to this decision.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| The correct course of action is to stop the interference
| before the people vote. Once they vote, the will of the
| people has been revealed, the ruling party is a sore
| loser, and you've lost your chance.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| > Democracy doesn't work with an adversary propaganda
| channel in your society.
|
| So the insinuation is that people stop having free agency
| when they're allowed to view certain kinds of "wrong"
| speech? Therefore they aren't entitled to a vote in an
| election? That's not democracy, that's textbook tyranny.
| dak89 wrote:
| He seems like a bad guy. If you thought he would manage
| to kill democracy you're wrong. Especially with the EU
| support for civil society and the possibility of
| sanctions if he did something really undemocratic, like
| demanding a rerun of an election he lost for example.
| andrepd wrote:
| Orban has been doing his "illiberal democracy" (i.e. not
| a democracy) thing for 15+ years now. The EU is about as
| laughably powerless to stop him as I am to stop a punch
| by Floyd Mayweather. So it's kinda funny you say that.
| dak89 wrote:
| He does some bad things but he would not get away with
| anything as extreme overturning an election based on a
| pretext like this, nor with widespread voter fraud.
| Eventually he will lose an election, just like Law and
| Justice in Poland. Judging by the polling trends that
| could be as soon as 2026: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O
| pinion_polling_for_the_2026_H...
| quickthrowman wrote:
| The most fucked up part to me is (I'm guessing) the
| majority of the votes this guy receives were from people
| that _lived under Ceausescu's rule_ and thought "Yes,
| let's bring that era back". Similar to how domestic abuse
| victims protect the person abusing them.
| andrepd wrote:
| What "elite" are you talking about? He broke multiple
| laws that would made him ineligible to run, and therefore
| he is ineligible to run. Can you explain what's wrong
| with this reasoning?
|
| It frankly speaks to your democratic culture, that you
| can only conceive of a candidate being prevented to run
| by a shady cabal of elites blocking the candidate they
| don't like.
|
| Yes how bad he is is irrelevant. I read GP's comment more
| about how utterly impossible it is for a single person to
| keep up, let alone fight, the torrent of hyper-optimised
| propaganda that a few tens of millions can buy on tiktok.
| Maybe this illustrates why mass social media manipulation
| skews democracy towards the highest bidder.
| tiahura wrote:
| _He broke multiple laws that would made him ineligible to
| run, and therefore he is ineligible to run._
|
| Do you have a link to his trial, conviction, and appeals?
| Was he given an opportunity to respond to the charges,
| provide his own witnesses and offer his own evidence?
|
| Does the constitution really say, "if foreigners on tik-
| tok give you too many likes, you may be disqualified"?
| gretch wrote:
| Under this framework, what if you simply bribed people to
| vote for your candidate of choice: e.g. Here's 20 euro, vote
| for this guy.
|
| You could still say "The people who voted for this guy have
| agency and decided for themselves."
|
| But this doesn't really pass a smell test for what we want
| democracy to look like.
|
| Similarly, if you live in a country and you see billions of
| dollars poured into your election advertisements from USA,
| Russia, China, etc, you'd be like "wtf are we even
| sovereign?"
| miohtama wrote:
| That's why there is voting secrecy. You can pay someone 20
| euros but they vote someone else.
| adriancr wrote:
| Paying for votes is illegal almost everywhere. In the US
| it's up to 5 years jail time.
|
| That is done for good reason, you can't waive it away
| with 'voting secrecy'.
|
| 'voting secrecy' can be defeated pretty quickly by asking
| the voter to take a picture with phone and report it.
| ndiddy wrote:
| Where I live it's illegal to use a camera within 100 feet
| of a voting booth to protect the privacy of people's
| votes. If you tried to take a photo of your ballot, you'd
| likely get asked by a poll worker to put the camera away.
| adriancr wrote:
| you need some imagination, this is something that has
| happened.
|
| you have a phone and the voting booth is private, how is
| anyone going to catch you?
|
| the other old school (90s) way was you were given an
| already stamped paper and you had to return an unstamped
| one to get the money.
|
| or if you want to go communist old school, you had people
| looking at you through holes in ceiling.
| leptons wrote:
| While they did have agency, what if they were also lied to?
| These campaigns to say nice things about a candidate usually
| come with equally strong campaigns to lie about their rivals.
| It could all be lies, there could be nothing redeemable about
| the candidate. We saw similar in a recent election in another
| country that I'm not going to mention specifically. This is
| exactly how fascists gain power.
| Al-Khwarizmi wrote:
| The problem is that lies are common, and sadly, accepted in
| politics. What was the last time you saw a candidate who
| didn't lie in their platform?
|
| I know that people like Trump or Georgescu are in a
| different league in this respect, they lie more and in a
| more unhinged way, but it's hard to draw a line and say
| that their votes are don't legitimate becuase their voters
| were lied to, while probably voters for other parties are
| putting hope in promises that will be unfulfilled as well.
| leptons wrote:
| > voters for other parties are putting hope in promises
| that will be unfulfilled as well.
|
| Okay, I'll get specific now. In the US this typically
| isn't because the Democrat candidate lied, it's because
| of obstruction from the right-wing. Sure, Biden promised
| to cancel student debt, but he was met with obstruction
| at every step from the right-wing. _That isn 't a lie
| from Biden_, but the lack of results is what we get when
| voters believe the right-wing obstructionist liars
| telling them that student loan forgiveness is evil. So
| then people call out Biden for somehow "lying" about
| forgiving student loans, and then don't show up to vote
| for the Democrat in the next election, because "they are
| liars".
| mihaaly wrote:
| 'And those with the deepest pocket shall win, amen'
|
| There are reasons why there are rules on how to influence
| voters (campaign), actually, despite voters having absolute
| 'agency'. There are problematic influences you know,
| considered problematic by the society.
| Etheryte wrote:
| You could say the same about people who voted for Brexit, who
| after the fact when they came to learn what it would actually
| mean said they would've never voted for it if they knew the
| implications. But alas, the United Kingdom was on the
| receiving end of a similar (dis)information campaign. Yes,
| the people technically knew which candidate they were giving
| their vote for, but no, they did not know what that candidate
| actually stood for.
| throwaway519 wrote:
| You are saying a candidate that breaks the law pursuading
| others to vote for them should still be elected?
| sneak wrote:
| The inauguration is coming up.
| intended wrote:
| How do you have agency when influenced.
|
| You act based on information. If someone controls your
| information, then they control your choices. This is most
| obvious in cults.
| sneak wrote:
| Who controls the information available to the Romanian
| electorate? Is their internet censored? Their television?
| Radio?
| intended wrote:
| Why would we needs censorship?
|
| Leaving the topic of these specific elections, and
| discussing how these operations work-
|
| Censorship isn't the offensive tool.
|
| You flood an information ecosystem with specific data,
| and you crowd other information out.
|
| The primary sin in similar discussions is usually the
| assumption that the best ideas win in the market place of
| ideas.
|
| This is definitely not the case, because that competition
| of ideas assumes a fair fight.
|
| Current disinformation techniques target disinformation
| researchers, flood networks, increase mistrust and spread
| doubt on fact checkers.
|
| -----------
|
| Holmes, who is wrote the Abram's dissent, which led to
| the analogy of the market place- didn't assume that the
| best ideas would win.
|
| He assumed majoritarian beliefs would often supplant
| other ideas.
|
| His point was that it's only through the process that
| humanity arrives at better ideas.
|
| Today, there have been domestic and International
| workarounds found to capture and disrupt the fair trade
| in ideas.
| jaredklewis wrote:
| I can appreciate the viewpoint that the election campaign
| laws don't make sense or are in some way unfair as a basis
| for advocating against such laws.
|
| But Romania has laws regulating election campaigns. Is your
| point of view that that Romanian courts should not enforce
| those existing laws?
| tsimionescu wrote:
| The laws regulating campaigns have specific penalties
| outlined for those that disobey them. Election authorities
| have broad authority to enforce those laws unilaterally
| during the campaign, without even getting the courts
| involved, such as having ads taken down immediately, fining
| those that didn't follow labeling requirements, and so on.
| People can be charged and convicted for disobeying these
| laws, through the regular court system.
|
| There is also a law for how the vote results are to be
| tallied, when they can be recounted, and in what conditions
| the recount can lead to a do-over of the election
| (specifically, the law says that only if widespread fraud
| of a nature that could have changed the order of
| candidates). The law also mentions when this do-over would
| take place (the second next Sunday after the decision is
| taken, which must be within two weeks of the suspect vote
| itself).
|
| However, no law in Romania stipulates that an election is
| to be entirely canceled, from the beginning steps of
| candidate registration before their campaigns, if one
| candidate disobeyed campaign finance laws and/or electoral
| ad labeling laws and no one caught them in time.
| datameta wrote:
| This response, while correct technically and in sentiment, is
| why democracy is more vulnerable to influence from a
| dictatorship than vice-versa.
| kergonath wrote:
| Ultimately, electoral laws exist and have a purpose. If the
| law was broken, then it must be investigated and the tainted
| election must be re-run. These laws are designed to prevent
| exactly what is alleged to be happening, so it is not a case
| of misusing power.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > If the law was broken, then it must be investigated
|
| Yes, of course.
|
| > and the tainted election must be re-run
|
| No, not at all. First because there is no law that even
| mentions this possibility - courts should not get to invent
| rules and regulations.
|
| Secondly because there is no time to take correct decisions
| of this nature during the short election cycle, and ensure
| that evidence is properly gathered, rights are respected,
| and so on. The standard of evidence used to take this
| decision is barely good enough to charge someone.
| petre wrote:
| > The people who voted for this guy have agency and decided
| for themselves
|
| They got brainwashed into the vote. The other parties had
| very weak candidates, some with a bunch of corruption issues
| that the press raved about just before the election. The
| others are just weak and unprepared, even the second runner
| up, a former journalist who's currently a mayor in a small
| town. This surprise candidate is no different, but he has an
| empty discourse that strikes a chord with many frustrated
| voters, without screaming or being hysterical, much like that
| Stoianaglo guy in Moldova. Of course, it's all mumbo jumbo,
| the guy is either deluded or a mythomaniac. People are fed
| up, most of them have given the current establishment a hate
| no-confidence vote, which Russia has speculated mainly with
| bots on Tiktok. It was quite easy for them to do so given
| that the inept Romanian politicians also set the dates of
| both presidential and parliamentary elections over the course
| of two weeks.
| patcon wrote:
| Have you not been following in the past few years about how
| susceptible the human mind is to disinformation and
| manipulation? You fake a positive belief field around a
| person and a huge number of us flip to align with that
| perceived crowd. You might disagree for yourself, or want it
| to be different, or hear people claiming otherwise, but we
| are very vulnerable to the effect of being surrounded by
| genuine sentiments (of very marginal perspectives) that have
| been boosted to appear majority.
|
| Do you disagree with the above?
| dak89 wrote:
| If these forces are so powerful, why don't both sides use
| them and cancel each other out? It seems like people only
| invoke these explanations when their side loses, when they
| win it's because the voters accepted true and good
| arguments.
| andai wrote:
| Is it possible the election itself was also "influenced" in a
| more direct manner? (Where the psywar aspect would serve
| merely to legitimize the result, rather than create it.)
| gmerc wrote:
| I love the cognitive dissonance at play here
|
| I think this comes down to a very simple question: Is one
| open to entertain the notion that well crafted messages
| targeted through algorithmic platforms can drive people to
| change behavior.
|
| As an ex Facebook person let me offer this thought:
|
| Either advertisement works or it doesn't. Looking at my past
| paychecks and stock price of all tech advertisment giants, I
| have my opinion.
|
| I think it's preposterous to think that political choices /
| votes somehow are in a different category for people than all
| the other things advertisements are run for.
|
| If medical ads work (why would we regulate them) to
| "manipulate" or convince people to act or spend against their
| own self best interest, then why would political ones not
| work.
|
| And in many countries political ads are allowed and are
| regulated and have massive ad spend. We shouldn't spend and
| regulate now if we didn't think they'd work, would we.
|
| And the debate is not new. I was at FB for Cambridge
| analytics and saw the damage mitigation first hand - along
| with the weird conclusions that no harm was done.
|
| Which is the same we see every time a big tech company
| announces they banned foreign adversaries running influence
| campaigns and found no evidence they had any impact.
|
| So we have Schroedingers ad product here - highly effective
| when the ads are official, as measurable via the ads manager,
| but totally hapless and ineffective when it's not run by an
| allowed source.
|
| Romania is a great one minute past midnight wake up call for
| western democracies to resolve this cognitive dissonance and
| get off their high horse of humans being selectively able to
| resist an industry that has mastered manipulation through
| scientific a/b testing for decades.
|
| Resolving that doesn't mean getting rid of the notion of free
| will ... one merely need to remember that people's ability to
| make decisions is constrained by the data available to them
| and their ability to make sense of that data.
|
| And time spent on platform and activity - active or passive
| collection of data - is the constraining factor there. The
| channels of information are changing and passive absorption
| is vastly outpacing active informing at a pace most
| politicians do not comprehend.
|
| The latest ofcom report in the UK shows a 25% increase (1h)
| of time spent on phones - the vast majority of which is
| either video social media platforms - in one year!
|
| Maybe 2016 the effect wasn't strong enough yet. But it's 9
| years of a/b testing down the road, a rise of aggressive
| engagement video platforms and political podcast influencers
| and a pandemic later and in the last year alone we've seen a
| massive change in engagement patterns and where people get
| their data to sensemake reality from.
| philjohn wrote:
| Also ex-facebook here, who worked in high severity
| integrity.
|
| The human mind is not well understood, and we've seen
| correlation between things like exposure to suicide and
| self injury content and increased suicidal ideation.
|
| We KNOW that advertising works, we KNOW that opinions can
| be swayed with misinformation (it's easier to fool someone,
| than convince someone they've been fooled) - just look at
| QAnon for a great example.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| You need some basic rules for what's acceptable in elections,
| or otherwise the winning tactics will be things like
| threatening or bribing voters. You won't capture the genuine
| will of the voters if that's going on.
|
| He very clearly broke the law. We could debate the severity
| of the violation, but it's certainly enough to make you
| ineligible to run many places.
| White_Wolf wrote:
| The law is about what he is spending. If I go and pay for
| ads on my own initiative, he doesn't need to declare it
| just like Basescu didn't declare all the stuff NGOs paid
| for him back in the days.
|
| EDIT: I do find it impossible for him to spend 0 on it
| though. You have to travel from A to B (at the very least)
| vasco wrote:
| My question in these events is, so why not investigate it
| and block the running BEFORE the vote? People only care
| about illegal hiding of funds post elections? Why even let
| it go on if you can get evidence so quickly just after? In
| these 6 days what came out that wasn't out say, 10 or 20
| days before voting day?
| tudurom wrote:
| Because before the first round he was considered a
| nobody, and the second round was scheduled to happen two
| weeks after the first round. It's too short of a time.
| vasco wrote:
| 2 weeks is more time than the 6 days since the election.
| They could've decided to stop things then. I get what you
| mean agree it's probably messy with the timings, but one
| gets the feeling that if you lose you can do all the
| election fraud you want, which is kind of suss to me
| because people can use decoy candidates for the fraud and
| if they lose nobody looks into it.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > The people who voted for this guy have agency and decided
| for themselves.
|
| > Yes, they were likely influenced by a likely state-actor
| campaign.
|
| That's not how democracy works, and as a matter of fact, how
| the human brain works.
|
| You can't make informed decisions when state actors are
| working day and night to make you go against your own
| interest.
|
| That's exactly why we have regulations like public campaign
| spending, radio/TV quotas, &c. Is it perfect? No. Is it
| better than the alternatives? Most likely
| sneak wrote:
| State actors are always working day and night to make you
| go against your own interest. This happens in every
| election.
|
| The question is: who gets to decide which are nullified and
| which are not?
| mistermann wrote:
| > That's not how democracy works, and as a matter of fact,
| how the human brain works.
|
| > You can't make informed decisions when state actors are
| working day and night to make you go against your own
| interest.
|
| It is possible for a brain to do, but it is not common
| because almost everyone thinks based on heuristics, like
| you are doing.
|
| It is highly analogous to the rise of science's influence
| on beliefs and thinking styles in the physical realm, but a
| different realm. We remain in a sort of dark ages in this
| regard.
| andrepd wrote:
| Modern mass social media is a hyper-optimised, hyper-targeted
| psychological howitzer that would make Goebbels or Bernays
| blush. It's more than just "an influence".
|
| Ffs I search for cake recipes on YouTube and my suggested
| videos are infinite hours of the local far-right guy ranting
| about gypsies and nepalis. Of course it has an effect, of
| course such one-sided avalanche of propaganda skews and
| manipulates things. This is obvious and also empirically
| verified.
|
| I stress this: one-sided. It's not even so much as all the
| boomers (and impressionable kids) being fed this propaganda
| for hours on end, it's that it's the only thing that they are
| fed. Listening to 30 tiktoks in a row of the guy ranting
| about gypsies and the EU would not be so bad if at least it
| was followed by some tiktoks giving an opposing views, or
| exposing that guy's shady business deals and how he pockets
| millions in taxpayer money! But we all know echo chambers are
| more lucrative than balanced views....
| darthrupert wrote:
| In other words, democracy is under serious attack and if we
| think it's worth savibg, we will need to find robust counter-
| measures against these methods.
|
| It's not a new idea that this is a serious problem:
| demagogues were recognized in the Antique.
| cainxinth wrote:
| This is like saying that people deceived by false advertising
| should have to keep what they were tricked into buying.
| VagabundoP wrote:
| Massive election interference should nullify the election.
| Obviously the evidence bar is high here, but you can't have
| someone flout election laws and have outside state
| interference and just shrug you shoulders.
|
| The correct course of action is to take the case to the
| highest court and get them to make a ruling. They decided a
| do over because the election is too flawed to continue.
|
| If this guy can run again and isn't wrapped up in a criminal
| case, maybe they will vote for him, but at least now they
| have far more information than they did before.
| eoerl wrote:
| In a lot of countries there are rules, for instance
| limitations in terms of spending or similar time on air for
| all candidates. I don't know whether that's the case in
| Romania, but it is completely possible to rule an election
| out even if people voted "freely". I know that typically
| doesn't apply to the US, but there's a world outside of it
| tomp wrote:
| _> he 's a big fan of the Iron Guard_
|
| This is quite typical character assassination, and it's sad
| that people still fall for it.
|
| I looked up how he's _actually_ associated with the Iron Guard,
| and it looks like he literally said that they _' also did "good
| deeds"'_ [1]. This is literally on the level of "fine people"
| hoax that the mainstream media perpetrated against Trump!
|
| Why do I think that Calin's right that "far right" also "did
| good deeds"? Because the same thing literally happened in my
| country, Slovenia.
|
| Look, WWII was a shitty time. War, and it wasn't necessarily a
| fight of "good versus evil". In Slovenia, there were
| "partisans" who were communists, fighting against Hitler's
| occupation. Of course, having seen the evils of communism, a
| lot of Slovenians (farmers, city businessmen) opposed
| communists (and they were right, from a historic perspective!).
| They formed the "white guard". Unfortunately, Americans allied
| with _partisans_ (communists), so the _white guard_ allied with
| Nazis.
|
| Communists won, and wrote history. _White guard_ is almost
| uniformly - in media, education etc. - known as the bad guys,
| traitors to the nation, etc. where in fact they were simply
| people fighting for their lives against communists (rightfully
| so, communists killed a lot of wealthy owners etc. after the
| war). Fortunately, the WWII and the aftermath is literally _in
| living memory_ , so if you talk to the right people, you learn
| about it...
|
| Looking back, I wish the "Nazi-collaborators" White Guard won.
| Hitler would have lost regardless, but then maybe Slovenia
| wouldn't be subjected to another 40 years of totalitarianism
| and repression by the communists...
|
| [1] https://balkaninsight.com/2022/02/01/romanian-nationalist-
| le...
| cbg0 wrote:
| This isn't character assassination, we're talking about his
| own words. He even plagiarized a speech by Ion Antonescu
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_Antonescu):
|
| https://www.euronews.ro/articole/calin-georgescu-se-
| dezice-d... - he goes back on some of the things he said and
| tries to distance himself, but the Internet is forever.
| SeanLuke wrote:
| > I looked up how he's actually associated with the Iron
| Guard, and it looks like he literally said that they 'also
| did "good deeds"' [1]. This is literally on the level of
| "fine people" hoax that the mainstream media perpetrated
| against Trump!
|
| What hoax?
|
| https://www.politifact.com/article/2019/apr/26/context-
| trump...
| TMWNN wrote:
| The hoax was and is that Trump called white supremacists
| "very fine people". As the transcript shows, that remark
| was specifically in regards to people disagreeing with the
| notion of removing statues of slaveholders and
| Confederates. Trump went on to say
|
| >And you had people -- and I'm not talking about the neo-
| Nazis and the white nationalists -- because they should be
| condemned totally
| lukan wrote:
| "Communists won, and wrote history."
|
| Not in the west, so you can look up what actually happened.
|
| "Americans allied with partisans (communists), so the white
| guard allied with Nazis."
|
| This for example would be news to me from a parallel
| universe. Or from the wiki of alternative facts.
| tomp wrote:
| Did you try searching online? https://www.quora.com/Did-
| the-Allies-ever-help-Josip-Broz-Ti...
|
| actually, you can even read about it on wikipedia:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States-
| Yugoslavia_relat...
| lukan wrote:
| Did you read the part, why the allied rather supported
| their ideological enemies, than the iron guard? What I
| understood, they aligned with the Nazis quite naturally.
| curtisblaine wrote:
| As far as I know, Americans supported Italian partisans (of
| any color, but the majority of them communists or
| socialists) against the nazi-fascists, so I'm not terribly
| surprised they did it elsewhere.
| lukan wrote:
| That they supported them, yes. But supported in a way
| that this leaves all the non communists no other choice
| than to side with the nazis, no.
| tomp wrote:
| One side is trying to kill you, the other isn't, which
| one would you choose?
| lukan wrote:
| I would ask myself first, why the partisans want to kill
| me.
|
| There were (and maybe still are) indeed also communist
| fanatics - but the common red partisan was not a
| bloodthirsty killer going after anyone who had private
| property.
|
| So the alignment with the Nazis of the wealthy and
| privileged happened way before. I am from germany. We had
| the same story, the common people all did not turn Nazis
| overnight, but fear of the communist made them align with
| the Nazis. And the rest is history. I am no expert on
| concrete romanian or slovenian history. But what I know
| sounds pretty much the same what I know from german
| history where I have also first hand accounts. And I
| strongly disagree to that excuse. The bourgeois did had a
| choice and it was NOT just between communist or faschism.
| But they eventually did choose one side - and bear the
| responsibility. They did fought for a faschist europe,
| with all implications.
| tomp wrote:
| It's obviously different than in Germany, where nazis
| were (mostly) homegrown.
|
| I know several second/hand accounts (i.e. from people who
| had it happen to their family). Murders, theft, barbarism
| (stabbing a pregnant woman in her stomach). Some during
| the war, some after when communists won.
|
| As I said, terrible times. War. No good choices,
| especially without foresight. I just wish people didn't
| praise communists as much as they do, and vilify their
| opponents.
| lukan wrote:
| "where nazis were (mostly) homegrown"
|
| Well, Nazis were the german flavour of the rise of
| ultranationalism, racism and fascism, but the movement
| existed in all of europe. With the first peak in the
| civil war in spain.
|
| And Hitler was very clear on his plans for the jews and
| for war to conquer in eastern europe. Anyone siding with
| him, did make their choices and could have known the
| consequences. (same goes for anyone siding with Stalin).
|
| "No good choices"
|
| So probably yes. And I won't claim I would have decided
| much better, if I would have lived in that time. So I am
| not trying to judge from moral high ground.
|
| But the choice was never binary between Stalin and
| Hitler, or only in extreme situations maybe. Because you
| know, after the war in germany - there were also no Nazis
| anymore. Never have been. They just had no choice.
| Followed orders. Were afraid of the communists. So
| definitely not responsible for anything.
| etc-hosts wrote:
| Never thought I would see someone defend Iron Guard on here.
|
| One thing you see these days in Romanian But Written In
| English twitter these days is defense of the good character
| of Corneliu Codreanu.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corneliu_Zelea_Codreanu
|
| He led one of the WW2 Fascist anti Communist groups that were
| so committed to Nazi ideals, that the actual Nazis asked them
| to tone it down a bit because they were making them look bad.
| wyager wrote:
| > this guy reported that he spent nothing on his election
| campaign, which is impossible as there have been flyers with
| his face on them, plus ads on social media
|
| Anyone can buy ads and flyers.
|
| If your rejoinder is "It's against the law to buy ads for a
| candidate if you're not officially part of the campaign" - who
| cares? Nothing is stopping e.g. me from buying tiktok ads in
| elections (domestic or foreign).
| cbg0 wrote:
| > Nothing is stopping e.g. me from buying tiktok ads in
| elections (domestic or foreign).
|
| Yes, and that's a big part of the problem, which is why
| tiktok is also under fire in this whole situation.
| Saline9515 wrote:
| Tik tok is one of many news sources in Romania. If a local
| journal decides to support a candidate after that one of
| its big advertiser asks them to, do we cancel the election?
| cbg0 wrote:
| TikTok is a social network where anyone can post any
| video they want, using it as a news source is very
| dangerous. And no, the election wouldn't be cancelled if
| a local journalist supported a candidate, though it's not
| an apples-to-apples comparison with a social network
| potentially messing with the algo to support a candidate
| and not respecting electoral law with regards to
| sponsored ad content.
| morkalork wrote:
| Depending on where you do that, yes, you are breaking local
| laws. Not every where like America sees money equating to
| speech.
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| You would be breaking Romanian law if you did that, which you
| may or may not care about of course.
| mopsi wrote:
| Depends heavily on where you live. I live in a place where
| donations must be declared and are capped per person. This
| ensures we know where the money came from, and prevents
| disproportional influence from rich people.
|
| An obvious hack to bypass this is to assemble "a group of
| citizens" who start spending money to campaign for a
| candidate without any direct connection to them, but in such
| case, there's a special commission run by retired campaign
| finance people that analyzes the spending and can take action
| like demand a candidate to pay back over-cap portion of the
| money spent to advertise them, even if someone else paid for
| it. In the worst case, this can be escalated to the Supreme
| Court, who has the authority to scrap and re-run entire
| elections if the impact of illegal practices is deemed large
| enough to sway elections.
|
| So far, this system has produced a very transparent campaign
| financing environment. It was heavily tested in the first few
| years and withstood attacks remarkably well. A shadow figure
| of a political party used a retail network they owned to run
| a huge advertising campaign for a keychain that depicted the
| mascot of a major political party in their colors. The party
| was never directly mentioned, but you were blasted everywhere
| with their colors and the same animal as their mascot. After
| years of legal battles, it was deemed an illegal donation and
| the party had to pay for it all back with penalties. It was
| such a financial blow that the party underperformed for the
| next few electoral cycles due to constrained finances. No-one
| dares to try these tricks since then. Both financially and
| politically, it's cheaper to respect the rules.
| fallingknife wrote:
| The part that I don't buy is that this is the way that campaign
| finance violations would ordinarily be handled. Would an
| election that was won by one of the mainstream parties be
| completely overturned and rerun if it were found that they
| violated some campaign procedure laws? I doubt it.
| cbg0 wrote:
| This isn't a few forgotten expenditures, this is a candidate
| which reported no spending on their campaign and which
| allegedly had support from a foreign state. You can get away
| with some things, but we're not just talking about a
| technicality.
| Wytwwww wrote:
| Why did they wait for the elections to do anything about
| that, though? Or do candidates only have to report their
| spending after the voting is done?
| cbg0 wrote:
| From what I know the law says that they have up to 15
| days after the election to submit their finance report,
| which is what allowed this to slip by undetected.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| >with Calin Georgescu coming out of nowhere to win the first
| round, with classical polling showing him below 5%.
|
| Harris +3 in IOWA was not an oopsie accident. Now you get to
| learn that your media runs your polls and they'll say whatever
| they need to, too.
| TMWNN wrote:
| You mean Harris +3 in Iowa.
|
| But yes, I agree that a 17-point miss by "the gold standard
| of Iowa polling" is almost inexplicable unless it was done as
| a last-minute act to persuade marginal voters to vote for
| Harris. (Selzer herself says that she thinks the poll's
| result motivated Trump voters, the preposterousness of which
| is all the more indication that she intentionally skewed the
| result.)
| permo-w wrote:
| am I understanding correctly that you're suggesting that an
| Iowa poll was artificially made to favour Harris in order
| to get more people to vote for her?
| TMWNN wrote:
| Yes. People naturally like to vote for winners, and those
| who look like winners.
|
| There was * _massive*_ news coverage of the Selzer poll
| 's surprising result, with accompanying breathless
| commentary discussing how this was proof that hordes of
| Republican women were indeed secretly[1] voting for
| Kamala. Cue the tens of thousands of Redditards' comments
| on how Harris would surely win not just Iowa but Texas,
| Florida, Ohio, etc.
|
| Governor Pritzker of Illinois told an audience at Duke of
| the poll before its release. In other words, it was
| leaked to those who would be pleased by the findings.
| <https://www.semafor.com/article/11/10/2024/gannett-
| probes-po...>
|
| [1] For example, the Julia Roberts-starring TV ad
| <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaCPck2qDhk> showing how
| women could and should secretly vote for Harris and not
| tell their horrible husbands.
|
| (Beware; the cringe level is so overwhelming that if your
| brain doesn't shut down in self-defense your computer
| might explode. There is a reason why the ad is not linked
| directly _anywhere_ on Reddit except a handful of posts
| with a half dozen comments. If Redditors saw it as truly
| "stunning" and "brave", it would have been reposted 100
| times, each time with 20K upvotes and 3.5K comments.)
| permo-w wrote:
| do you have a source saying that voters are more likely
| to vote for a candidate who polls higher?
| bhk wrote:
| ... and to keep donations coming in. It helped cultivate
| a sense of hope when they needed it.
| cbg0 wrote:
| We're not talking about an established candidate with pre-
| existing support, and this was just the first leg of the
| election with multiple presidential candidates, not the run-
| off, so don't compare this to Trump v Kamala.
|
| I'm also not talking about a single poll, or ones run by just
| the left/right, he wasn't polling well anywhere.
| oblio wrote:
| This is different. He was basically unknown, last visible in
| politics in 1996 or so. He isn't a member of any big party
| and by that I don't mean just the mainstream ones, but like,
| the top 10 parties in the country.
|
| He's a nobody.
| miohtama wrote:
| As far as I undertand there is no voting fraud involved. It
| tells a bit about the establishment candidates if you can
| become a president by buying TikTok likes with 1M EUR. Someone
| needs to take a look at a mirror.
| Wytwwww wrote:
| > if you can become a president by buying TikTok
|
| He didn't though and I doubt he could. He got 23% of the vote
| which is a lot but in no way does it guarantee that he could
| ever come close to 50% in the second round. He only won
| because the non pro-Russian (i.e. pro-fascist) parties aren't
| actually united.
| rdtsc wrote:
| > pro-Russian (i.e. pro-fascist)
|
| It's a bit funny that pro-Russian ones are considered pro-
| fascist, even as Russian government is fighting allegedly
| "fascist" Ukranians, and their official goal of their war
| is to "denazi-fy" it. "-You're the fascists!" / "-Oh I
| don't think so, you are the real fascists" / "-No, way, you
| are!" etc.
|
| But to be serious, and not being too familiar with the
| situation, if this guy is a fascist, how the heck did he
| get 23% of the votes? We're talking about a EU country not
| North Korea or something of that sort.
| bgnn wrote:
| Eastern Europe is very different. Years of eastern-block,
| and the poverty afterwards does that to you.
| nuker wrote:
| Yep. I just read this, following the wiki link of OP, and
| it starts make sense :(
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ia%C8%99i_pogrom
| Wytwwww wrote:
| > pro-Russian ones are considered pro-fascist
|
| If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks
| like a duck, then it probably is a duck (even if that
| duck claims that it's an elephant and keeps saying that
| everyone else is a duck).
|
| I mean... objectively Russia ticks pretty much all of the
| boxes, just compare it with Mussolini's Italy.
| skissane wrote:
| > I mean... objectively Russia ticks pretty much all of
| the boxes, just compare it with Mussolini's Italy.
|
| Is Putin's ideology a form of "fascism"? Some scholars
| say "yes", others say "no".
|
| Since you already seem to have a good awareness of the
| "yes" case, let me share with you some of the "no" case
| [0]:
|
| > "Snyder is wrong," Nikolay Mitrokhin, a Russia
| researcher with Germany's Bremen University, told Al
| Jazeera.
|
| > Russia doesn't meet the criteria of a fascist state -
| there is no ideological party, no hysterical cult of the
| leader, and no revolutionary new regime juxtaposed to the
| old one.
|
| > Instead, in Russia, "there is an aggressive,
| imperialist, authoritarian state with a ruling junta",
| Mitrokhin said.
|
| I'm not a fan of Putin - I have always been cheering for
| Ukraine in the present war, and I think it is
| disappointing it has not gone better for the Ukrainians,
| but I suppose hope springs eternal - but I also think the
| word "fascism" is overused nowadays, and I prefer
| narrower definitions like that of Mitrokhin - the broader
| definitions miss significant aspects of what Mussolini
| was actually on about.
|
| [0] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/10/26/how-
| fascist-are-pu...
| lostmsu wrote:
| It ticks all the boxes from the Wikipedia definition:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism
|
| Authoritarian+, and ultranationalist+, ... dictatorial
| leader+, centralized autocracy+, militarism+, forcible
| suppression of opposition+, belief in a natural social
| hierarchy (+ as far as regime goes), subordination of
| individual interests for the perceived good of the
| nation+ or race, and strong regimentation of society+ and
| the economy+
| skissane wrote:
| The same article also says:
|
| > Historian Ian Kershaw once wrote that "trying to define
| 'fascism' is like trying to nail jelly to the wall."[28]
| Each group described as "fascist" has at least some
| unique elements, and frequently definitions of "fascism"
| have been criticized as either too broad or too narrow.
| According to many scholars, fascists--especially when
| they're in power--have historically attacked communism,
| conservatism, and parliamentary liberalism, attracting
| support primarily from the far-right.[30]
|
| So, rather than purporting to define "fascism", the
| article acknowledges it has many definitions and it is
| contested which one is right. Read in the context of the
| whole section "Definitions", I don't think the opening
| sentence should be read as a _definition_ , except in a
| very vague ballpark sense, which isn't meant to be used
| in decisively answering the question of whether any
| particular thing is an instance of it.
|
| Furthermore, it mentions key elements of historical
| fascism - anti-communism, anti-conservatism, and anti-
| liberalism - whose presence in Putin's Russia is
| debatable. Putin has criticised communism, but he tends
| to go for nuanced and qualified criticism rather than the
| demonisation of it which was historically found in
| Mussolini's Italy, Hitler's Germany or Franco's Spain. He
| isn't anti-conservative either. Nor is he rhetorically
| opposed to parliamentary liberalism - he is accused of
| undermining the substance of it, but he pays it lip
| service, unlike Mussolini and Hitler who demonised it.
|
| The first actual definition it gives in the "Definition"
| section is this:
|
| > Historian Stanley G. Payne's definition is frequently
| cited as standard by notable scholars,[31] such as Roger
| Griffin,[32] Randall Schweller,[33] Bo Rothstein,[34]
| Federico Finchelstein,[35] and Stephen D. Shenfield,[36]
| [37] His definition of fascism focuses on three concepts:
|
| And the first of those three concepts is:
|
| > "Fascist negations" - anti-liberalism, anti-communism,
| and anti-conservatism.
|
| I say Putin lacks all three - he isn't anti-liberal (you
| can say he is in a contemporary sense, but not in the
| historical sense that Mussolini was, which is I believe
| the sense Payne means), he isn't anti-communist (again,
| not in the sense Mussolini/etc were), and he isn't anti-
| conservative.
| freen wrote:
| You are trying to align a governance type with a
| political spectrum.
|
| It's a category error.
|
| Fascism has nothing to do with the policies, and
| everything to do with whatever is necessary to retain
| power, given the society fascists intends to rule.
|
| He can't be a monarchist, he doesn't advocate for
| mercantilism!
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur-Fascism
| skissane wrote:
| So, when Ian Kershaw, the esteemed historian of Nazi
| Germany, said that "trying to define 'fascism' is like
| trying to nail jelly to the wall", you are telling me he
| was wrong? Because you seem to think it is much more of a
| clearcut question than he does.
| freen wrote:
| Yes, Ian Kershaw is precisely right! It is very difficult
| to define because it is a means by which one, either a
| person, a party, an ethnicity, whatever, pursues and
| attempts to preserve power regardless of the will or
| interests of the people they intend to have power over.
|
| The difference here is that anti-fascists have ethical
| and moral standards, create and support political systems
| that make it possible for them to loose, celebrate those
| losses.
|
| It's difficult to define a barbarian, but you definitely
| know it when they come to your town.
| skissane wrote:
| No, you are putting forward one particular definition as
| the "right" one, and arguing all contrary definitions
| should be ignored, even when proposed by esteemed
| scholars in relevant fields - which is the complete
| opposite of Kershaw's point.
| freen wrote:
| Ahh, so we lack a definition, no one is fascist, and
| killing political dissidents is equivalent to fair and
| legal elections.
|
| Good is equivalent to evil, because both are hard to
| define.
|
| He can't be a monarchist, he doesn't believe in
| mercantilism, which random authority says is an essential
| part of monarchism. Plus, how do you define monarchism?
| You can't.
|
| Humanity is so fucked.
|
| (Btw, this problem has been decisively solved by the
| paradox of tolerance, and was solved in the 40's, when
| the apparently undefinable, thus never repeatable,
| original fascists did their thing.)
| roenxi wrote:
| That definition doesn't make sense - everyone of every
| political persuasion is trying to retain power.
| freen wrote:
| Yes: but do they use collectively agreed upon rules?
|
| Do they agree that it is possible, and even more
| importantly, good that they can loose?
|
| Will they end the system that empowered them once in
| power?
|
| Liberal, meaning non-fascist, political movements do not
| destroy the peaceful means of the transfer of power once
| they have achieved power.
|
| Pretty simple, really.
|
| Care to try to unseat Putin? Wonder how that will work
| for your health.
|
| January 6th: anti-democratic, attempting to use force to
| reverse the peaceful transition of power, hence fascist.
| roenxi wrote:
| > Will they end the system that empowered them once in
| power?
|
| This is one of a couple of points where the lack of a
| precise definition causes the perspective to fall apart.
| Liberals would do exactly that by instituting democratic
| liberalism in a country after coming to power.
|
| Changing a system isn't fascistic. Even replacing isn't
| characteristic of fascism (although what is beyond self-
| identification), the French are up to Republic #5 and
| republics generally aren't fascist. It is necessary to
| evaluate the change and impacts of the change in context
| to work out what the nature of a political thing is.
| lostmsu wrote:
| Frankly I don't care for individual quotes taken out of
| context. I also don't care in this specific scenario for
| musings of individual researches or small groups.
| Wikipedia definition is good enough for this conversation
| or basically any public conversation that is not a
| scholarly dispute, especially considering it basically
| matches https://www.merriam-
| webster.com/dictionary/fascism and
| https://www.britannica.com/topic/fascism , today's Russia
| still hitting all checkboxes.
|
| Wiki, Merriam-Webster, and Britannica already made
| compilations for us, came to the same conclusion, and I
| don't see any reason not to just use what they ended up
| with. I doubt the two of us, or even the entirety of
| remotely interested HN could reasonably claim we can do
| much better.
|
| I also disagree with claims about Putin's regime that you
| made, but feel that it is not worth arguing.
| skissane wrote:
| > Frankly I don't care for individual quotes taken out of
| context
|
| Which specific quotes are you claiming I have "taken out
| of context"? How have I done so?
|
| > Wikipedia definition is good enough for this
| conversation or basically any public conversation that is
| not a scholarly dispute
|
| This site is supposed to be about "intellectual
| curiosity". [0] Disinterest in the diversity and detail
| of scholarly definitions is the very opposite of
| intellectual curiosity.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| lostmsu wrote:
| > Disinterest in the diversity and detail of scholarly
| definitions is the very opposite of intellectual
| curiosity.
|
| Is it? I personally consider research in classification
| to be of relatively low intellectual value, especially in
| the already poor sciences of psychology and sociology. So
| the expectation of value from it, intellectual or not, is
| extremely low.
|
| I mean, just take "cited as standard by _notable
| scholars_", "focuses on", and "anti-communism". Then ask
| yourself: what if the communism did not exist as an idea
| yet until after 1945, e.g. USSR being just another
| western democracy, and the holocaust and WWII still went
| the way they did, would Germany no longer be "fascist"?
| Somehow I asked myself that question right away, but none
| of the _notable scholars_ did.
|
| This is why in this thread the fact that masses can be
| manipulated by wordplay seems more interesting than
| classification of societies. I'm more intellectually
| curious about what to do with that problem.
| skissane wrote:
| You seem to be using the term "fascist" to mean the same
| thing as "authoritarian"/"totalitarian"/"tyrannical"/"dic
| tatorial"/"oppressive"/etc.
|
| If you use the word in that way, then the Soviet Union
| was a fascist state.
|
| But, to someone in the period between the World Wars,
| that would have seemed nonsensical - the Stalinists and
| fascists were at war with each other, on the streets of
| Italy and Germany, in the trenches of the Spanish Civil
| War. Both may well have been evil but only one was
| fascist.
|
| Because there's another sense of "fascism", in which it
| refers to a specific type of
| authoritarianism/oppression/dictatorship/tyranny/etc
| devised by Mussolini and his associates, as opposed to
| just authoritarianism/oppression/dictatorship/tyranny in
| general. And in that sense, whether anything non-Italian
| counts as "fascism" is going to depend on which elements
| it has in common with the Italian archetype, and how
| significant you think each of those elements are.
| wqaatwt wrote:
| > the streets of Italy and German
|
| Stalinists/bolsheviks hated the Socialdemocrats just as
| much if not more than the nazis for quite a while. Does
| that mean that both groups couldn't be socialist at the
| same time?
|
| After Stalin decided to (literally) bankroll the the
| German invasion of France the French communist party
| openly and directly supported Hitler and Nazi Germany.
| Until they suddenly become the greatest enemies again
| purely due to "ideological" reasons after Barbarosa..
|
| When it comes to totalitarianism the actual ideological
| differences become sort of meaningless. If Stalin tells
| you that the Fasicsts are the good guys now or that
| liberals/socialists/anarchists/etc. are just as bad,
| well.. it means that they are. Any diversion from the
| (very flexible) party line is just as bad as supporting
| the opposite side (or occasionally even much worse).
|
| I'm not saying that there is no difference between
| Fascism, Naziism or [Stalinist/Bolsvhevik] Communism, far
| from it. However trying to define these as some sort of
| coherent ideologies based on fixed beliefs and principles
| is somewhat pointless due to their extremely
| shapeshifting nature.
| lostmsu wrote:
| I don't know where you got your first statement from (and
| without it the rest of your comment is meaningless). I
| gave you the list of criteria from Wikipedia and you
| pretended that it only had one item for some reason.
| markhahn wrote:
| that's pretty funny!
|
| maybe a political-science researcher, not from Germany
| would give a less tone-based definition.
| reshlo wrote:
| > if this guy is a fascist, how the heck did he get 23%
| of the votes?
|
| Many of us are asking similar questions of the country
| that just reelected a man who regularly and openly
| expresses fascist sentiments, incited an insurrection and
| attempted to commit a coup. Comparing Romania to North
| Korea instead of to that country is an... interesting
| choice.
| rdtsc wrote:
| > any of us are asking similar questions of the country
| that just reelected a man who regularly and openly
| expresses fascist sentiments
|
| Madness. Fascism is everywhere these days, it seems!
| Ygg2 wrote:
| > are considered pro-fascist
|
| If you were to look into Devil's dictionary for the year
| 2024, you'd see: Fascism (/'faeSIz@m/)
| - people I disagree with.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| How about people that say that actual fascists were good
| people and have anti-smemitical discourse and use word
| for word fascist speeches and denie the existence of
| victims in these hideous systems? How do you call those?
| Ygg2 wrote:
| Since I would disagree with them, they are also fascist.
| Also extreme right.
|
| I'm sorry but calling everyone Fascist/Nazist has
| semantically watered down the meaning.
| freen wrote:
| Italy, Germany, Spain...
|
| Mussolini, Hitler, Franco...
|
| Fascists don't come out and say: Vote for me, and I'll
| commit genocide, and have thought police and
| assassination squads!
|
| No: fascists want power, will use that power to take
| aways yours, and have absolutely no compunction about
| lying, cheating, and stealing to get that power.
|
| Fascists will say till they are blue in the face that you
| are violating their rights in order to get power, and
| will claim to support those rights right up until they
| get power. And then? Freedom of What now? To the gulag
| with you!
| fuzztester wrote:
| >Someone needs to take a look at a mirror.
|
| irony
|
| something one finger something something something three
| fingers
|
| https://vocabulary1.quora.com/What-is-the-meaning-of-the-
| phr...
|
| goldfinger
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldfinger_(film)
| fuzztester wrote:
| "got" you, you joker! :)
| freen wrote:
| You've made the classic error: assuming that anyone who tries
| to become president is acting in good faith.
|
| A well funded bad faith candidate will ALWAYS beat any good
| faith candidate.
|
| Why? You can tell everyone you'll do exactly what they want
| you to do.
|
| Muslims: I'll stop the violence in Gaza instantly, I support
| a ceasefire. The other guy wants to kill all Palestinians.
|
| Jews: I will support Israel unconditionally. The other guy
| wants Israel wiped off the map.
|
| And people make the mistake you are: well, he's running for
| president. He CANNOT possibly be that corrupt.
|
| And they will vote, in droves, for the demagogue.
|
| That's why that word exists.
| rayiner wrote:
| Was there voter fraud? If not the election was legitimate and
| you should not complain. Trust me when I say that as someone
| who is from a dysfunctional democracy, where rioters recently
| overthrew the government that had won the last election in a
| landslide.
|
| Once you start saying that the election results are invalid
| because "the people were misled" or because of ancillary legal
| violations, or similar excuses, there is no logical stopping
| point to how far that goes. This is what happened in
| Bangladesh, where I'm from. People always complain that there
| was this or that reason why their party didn't win, they have
| protests over who won, they boycott elections and then complain
| the results are invalid because their party didn't participate.
| You cannot run a democracy that way. It's impossible to have a
| democracy when you try to second guess _voters' reasons_ for
| voting the way they did.
| mrshadowgoose wrote:
| > There's a lot of people summarizing this whole situation as
| "the candidate who should have won didn't so they cancelled the
| election".
|
| For the record, I'm personally not thrilled by the idea that
| people have voted for an extremist. However, the situation
| you're disclaiming certainly seems to be the actual case.
|
| The rest of your comment essentially boils down to "I think
| that the people who voted for him, should not have voted for
| him for reasons X,Y,Z"...which doesn't change the fact that
| people did in fact vote for him.
| mihaaly wrote:
| The question remains: why did they vote for him? What was the
| motivation?
|
| The ads, or matching of the fundamental values represented by
| him. Protest? Or something else?
|
| Of course this is futile play with thoughs while democracy is
| in danger from the benefitiaries themselves (demos),
| apparently not knowing what and how to do with it, paid
| influencers and social platforms shepherding them to wherever
| those want. It happened before.
| mrshadowgoose wrote:
| > The question remains: why did they vote for him? What was
| the motivation?
|
| Is it typical in most democratic systems that one has to
| justify their vote for it to be counted? Or does that only
| happen when the incumbent is unhappy with the outcome?
| mihaaly wrote:
| It is good to know because of understanding. To know if
| there is undue influence or the problems depicted are
| only illusions and no reason to intervene.
| imiric wrote:
| A state of confusion in the victim is one of the main
| symptoms of information warfare, and what makes it so
| effective. The source and extent of the attack can never be
| clearly determined, and it's easy to dismiss it altogether
| with allegations of fear mongering, xenophobia, sore loser
| syndrome, etc.
|
| We've seen this in many countries over the past several
| decades. The Cambridge Analytica leaks should've been
| enough for lawmakers around the world to realize that
| there's an entire industry behind these operations and to
| take action in the interest of national security. Yet major
| regulations haven't been passed, and even the proposal of a
| TikTok ban is highly controversial.
|
| We're living in strange times, and I fear it's going to get
| much worse before it can get better.
| griffzhowl wrote:
| No, the rest of the comment is mainly a list of crimes that
| are alleged to have been committed in financing the political
| campaign, which is the grounds for the anullment
| xpl wrote:
| You're reducing elections to voting, while it is only the
| final stage of a proper democratic process.
|
| First comes the preparation of the public opinion -- it is
| campaigning, political advertisement, debates, etc. This
| shapes the voting outcome.
|
| At this stage it can be heavily influenced by foreign actors
| (adversaries), this is why in most countries there are laws
| regarding the transparency of political campaigns (funding,
| ads, and so on). You can't let China elect presidents in your
| country...
|
| _> doesn 't change the fact that people did in fact vote for
| him_
|
| It also doesn't change the fact that if Russia didn't pour a
| lot of money into his campaign, he wouldn't have gotten any
| votes.
| bobsmooth wrote:
| Voting is the only thing in the democratic process. If the
| people are easily convinced by tictok, that's on the
| voters.
| xpl wrote:
| _> Voting is the only thing in the democratic process_
|
| Voting is not the only thing. If it was, Russia or
| Belarus could have been considered democracies -- people
| get to vote there (in case you didn't know). You can
| research why those countries are commonly considered
| autocracies / dictatorships, despite holding elections.
|
| _> If the people are easily convinced by tictok, that 's
| on the voters_
|
| If people are easily addicted to heroin, is that on them
| by that logic? Ok maybe. Now imagine if China were
| smuggling heroin into the U.S. specifically to
| destabilize American society -- would you still blame the
| people? Or might you consider it reasonable to fight
| against that?
| randunel wrote:
| As far as I can tell, there is no actual evidence of
| foreign interference, unless you count "using a foreign
| app" as foreign interference. The tik-tok accounts that
| they speak of could have been created by anyone.
|
| Actual evidence points to people mobilising themselves,
| including printing propaganda and putting it up on walls,
| see Arad county as an example
| https://the5star.github.io/cgarad/messages.html
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| So we all agree that it's actual people and not bot that voted
| for this guy right ?
|
| Does it mean that whoever control the most popular social media
| in Romania also controls the result of political election ?
| That's more terrifying to me than just a candidate funded by
| Putin and who lied, it's a whole generation of 'tiktok zombies'
| voting for whoever their influencer tell them to !
|
| Is their no education or political education in Romania ? Legal
| age to vote got to be above 18, so it's not just kids anymore.
| imiric wrote:
| You seem surprised. This has been happening all around the
| world for several decades now. The Cambridge Analytica leaks
| made it evident that there's an entire industry pulling the
| strings of democracy behind the scenes.
|
| Given enough time, dedication and not much resources anyone
| can get a group of individuals and entire societies to think
| and do whatever they want. This is straight from the
| advertising playbook, delivered via the greatest propaganda
| machine ever invented: the internet, adtech and social media.
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| Cambridge analytica was laser focused on voters from a few
| American 'swinger' state, it used lot of data to show
| personalized posts that would play on one fear or wish to
| get them to vote republican.
|
| This is tiktok influencers...
|
| Yes, as a libertarian, I'm astonished. Everyone over 18
| should be able to think for themselves and at least be
| mature enough that promoted and sponsored politicians from
| tiktok influencers don't have your best interest in mind.
|
| I'm not above everyone else, people can fall for
| propaganda, especially when it's well made. I studied Nazi
| propaganda movie, they are extremely clever in the way they
| make you think what they want you to, and admittedly in the
| right condition I would fall for some of the less extreme
| idea, but here it's a new low, it's an insult to intellect.
|
| If that's what people fall for, they are no more than apes
| with smartphones.
| imiric wrote:
| This is not much different from what CA did in many
| countries, not just the US. TikTok is the most popular
| platform today, so it makes sense that these tactics
| would migrate to it. Besides, CA was just one company of
| an entire industry doing these operations, which includes
| state-level actors. This industry is very much alive and
| prospering today.
|
| > If that's what people fall for, they are no more than
| apes with smartphones.
|
| You claim not to be above everyone else, but then say
| this. We're all susceptible to psychological
| manipulation, and we know that propaganda is very
| effective. Just because you haven't been manipulated in
| this specific way, doesn't mean you aren't in other ways,
| whether you realize it or not.
| cbg0 wrote:
| People voted, the question is how big of an impact do these
| bots have when it comes to promoting content on social media,
| because it seems like a lot. There's also a huge issue with
| TikTok being owned by China, which is not an ally nation to
| Romania, and with China's support of Russia in their ongoing
| war against one of our neighbors our intelligence agencies
| are suspecting foul play.
|
| I don't think this is specific to just Romania, a lot of
| people are glued to their devices on a daily basis in search
| of something to satiate their dopamine hunger and they'll
| take whatever they get fed by the algorithm.
|
| Critical thinking is not something our educational system
| does well, we're more focused on getting you to learn things
| like a robot and reproduce them for an exam. The lack of real
| educational reforms is something we'll keep seeing the
| effects of for decades to come.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| But this just comes down to "we need to overrule the plebs
| when they think wrong!"
|
| That's antithetical to democracy.
| ithkuil wrote:
| I wonder if there may be parallels to other countries.
| Perhaps that makes social networks worth billions?
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| > Does it mean that whoever control the most popular social
| media in Romania also controls the result of political
| election ? That's more terrifying to me than just a candidate
| funded by Putin and who lied, it's a whole generation of
| 'tiktok zombies' voting for whoever their influencer tell
| them to !
|
| Now you get it.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| > The candidates need to report spending to a state
| organization overseeing elections and this guy reported that he
| spent nothing on his election campaign, which is impossible as
| there have been flyers with his face on them, plus ads on
| social media. This is against the law.
|
| its very possible that HE didn't spend anything. that's how US
| political campaigns work. the vast majority of spending is by
| third parties.
| ithkuil wrote:
| If you're not in control and responsible for your own
| campaign, how can they be in control of the country once they
| run it?
| yieldcrv wrote:
| If they inspired people to support them during their
| campaign, they'll have more support to delegate and spread
| their cause
| zacmps wrote:
| In some countries (NZ for example) this does not exempt you
| from reporting requirements unless your total spend falls
| under NZD$15,700.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| but not at the penalty of annulling the election results
|
| the government would just levy sanctions against the third
| party that failed to report
| randunel wrote:
| Here's a private message archive from one of 40 Romanian
| counties, volunteers organized themselves and printed the
| propaganda out of pocket, without having been asked by the
| candidate to do so. I reckon the same happened everywhere:
| https://the5star.github.io/cgarad/messages.html
|
| The reality on the ground, so far, supports the theory "voting
| will continue until you elect the one we want you to elect",
| I've seen no actual proof otherwise, only opinions by old
| people in positions of power.
| roenxi wrote:
| > ...with Calin Georgescu coming out of nowhere to win the
| first round, with classical polling showing him below 5%.
|
| Obviously I'm no expert in Romainian voting procedures, but how
| does that make any sense without there being vote tampering?
| The polling must have been able to see him coming. It is hard
| to see even a state actor successfully pulling off that sort of
| insane last minute blitz without resorting to a mind control
| ray.
|
| Legit or not, something insane just happened.
| dak89 wrote:
| A couple of other possible explanations: 1) People voted who
| don't normally vote, the main reason Trump has often
| overperformed polls. 2) Pollsters wanted to avoid a
| preference cascade.
|
| I think 1 is the most likely reason. It's important to
| remember Romania is much poorer and more corrupt than the
| typical Western European country which means the established
| political parties are both less popular and more vulnerable
| to disruption by (in this case somewhat unhinged) outsiders.
| PeterStuer wrote:
| Don't forget: people tend to lie in polls if their real
| vote preference is deemed unsavoury by the current
| mainstream media.
| cbg0 wrote:
| This wasn't the case here, CG wasn't a well-known
| candidate with a large party behind him.
| danicriss wrote:
| It happened incredibly fast
|
| Polling did see it coming. But the growth was so
| unprecedented, the pollsters questioned their sanity (read:
| methodology, or at least sampling bias)
|
| The campaign propelling him happened during the two weeks
| preceding the election. Enough to create a wave of
| enthusiasm, just short enough to fly below the radar (of him
| properly getting scrutinised)
|
| Romania's NSA report suggests the campaign was a copycat of
| campaigns in Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova. Romania either had
| an X factor that made this one succeed, or the state actor
| managed to nail the way it calibrated the campaign this time
| tomjen3 wrote:
| He would not be my choice for candidate, but if the entire
| claim is that he won because of TikTok (and not because of
| voter suppression or ballot stuffing) then overturning the
| election was a complete fuckup. If polling showed that much
| less support then the poling did not take into account how
| modern voters act.
|
| I should stress that I disagree with everything he stands for,
| but if democracy is to mean something we have to accept that
| what people freely choose to vote for is who wins.
| atlih wrote:
| This "experts say" type explaination might have worked back
| when publications pushing such a literary style explainations
| had credibility.
| trwanrt wrote:
| An FT opinion piece thinks that the interference angle misses
| the point:
|
| https://www.ft.com/content/37347819-22ba-4b6d-a815-ec6115a8f...
|
| _For many years, political and economic conditions in Romania
| have been ripe for this sort of breakthrough. Blaming it on
| Russian interference and the support that Georgescu generated
| through the social media platform TikTok -- factors cited by
| the court on the basis of declassified intelligence reports --
| is to miss the larger point._
|
| The FT is the opposite of a pro-Russian outlet. This is the
| first time that I see a European mainstream paper acknowledge
| broader issues, which gives some hope. The article also makes
| the valid point that nationalistic movements _are not
| unambiguously positive for Russia_. This is a self evident
| point, which has also been suppressed for the past 10 years.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| I'm American, and we could tell you some stories about criminal
| irregularities in our elections!
|
| But the time to do this sort of thing is before the election,
| and preferably before reliable polls.
|
| After an election takes place, everyone, judges included, are
| influenced by its result. That's inappropriate.
|
| Why not exclude the candidate before people went to the polls?
| snapplebobapple wrote:
| Is there more round(s) where this guy could have been
| eliminated rather than cancelling the election result? That's
| the bit that confused me. Seems dangerous to strike down
| results when they appear to come from people voting like idiots
| rather than election voting machines being hijacked.
| EasyMark wrote:
| I agree with 95% of what you said, but TikTok is about to be
| resurrected by the Trump administration. There's no way they
| will let it go under, it has helped them tremendously, and they
| will reward corporations for loyalty
| IceHegel wrote:
| Romania needs some more American political thought leadership.
| Such an neglected area.
| netbioserror wrote:
| The imperial psychosis of the American liberal seems to be the
| waters in which we swim. It's no wonder populism is winning.
| The blind are at the wheel.
| indigoabstract wrote:
| I am reminded of the commotion over this way back in 2016:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_interference_in_the_20...
|
| They said Trump won with Russia's help.
|
| I wonder, are voters so easily manipulated that some other
| (hostile) country can make them vote like sheep?
|
| And should people in the state administration (who are appointed,
| not elected) have the power to cancel valid election results
| because of suspected foreign interference?
|
| What if they make a mistake? Will they ever be held responsible
| for it?
| Applejinx wrote:
| 'easily' is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. As an American
| who maintains multiple friendships all over the political map
| due to significant nonpolitical shared interests, I've got more
| perspective on that commotion.
|
| While it's true Trump won with Russia's help both times, it
| took an extraordinary effort with extraordinary results,
| patterned after internal Russian political manipulation (so
| it's not like it was just made up haphazardly). It required
| attentive siloing of Americans into camps isolated from each
| others' worldviews and the concealment of what the other camp
| was seeing. This is not remotely 'easy manipulation', it's
| lengthy hard work requiring great effort and attention, toward
| a goal of confusing both sides against each other, and
| eventually removing the very concept of reality.
|
| Sounds impossible, but it works... at least to the extent of
| getting results, and tearing apart a country. That's why 'civil
| war' is constantly invoked by these forces: you can't do
| anything constructive this way but the goal is to spur internal
| conflict.
|
| That's why it's relevant that it's foreign interference: the
| interferer isn't hobbled by a need to survive in the resulting
| damaged country. They can do whatever they want, because
| they're doing it to an enemy.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Also part of the reason the interference is so succesful is
| that America ISN'T some magical wonderland and people in the
| US know that, so they are inherently sympathetic to any
| message that says something bad about the current
| administration. It's a lot easier to have a strong effect in
| a very muddled situation than say, if it was 1944 and
| Americans were strongly united.
|
| America is having pains. It's easier to stoke that fire than
| light one anew.
| indigoabstract wrote:
| I understand that concern. Ideally, internal politics should
| remain internal, without outside interference.
|
| But when it gets to a point where a country's administration
| (the long term one, not the 4 year one) doesn't trust its
| citizens to make the correct and informed choice and be loyal
| to their own country and interests and actively tries to
| meddle with the results, then the name is all that's left of
| that democracy.
|
| Might as well start putting "People's" or "Democratic" before
| that country's name. Like in DPRK or PRC. At least they're
| being honest about it.
| tim333 wrote:
| Trump did win and Russia did help, at least as far as hacking
| the Democratic party emails.
|
| I guess overturning things depends on the laws of the
| countries. Obviously it didn't happen in that case.
| ossobuco wrote:
| So no evidence to show, except a "declassified document"
| allegedly proving that TikTok gave preferential treatment to
| Georgescu.
|
| I'd be curious to know what preferential treatment means, how
| preferential, and how it balances out if we include treatment of
| all candidates across all media, but alas, that is not for us to
| know. Even Georgescu's opponent, Elena Lasconi, condemned the
| court's ruling as "illegal" and "immoral".
|
| This just looks like a soft coup to me.
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| The documents explain clearly that thousands of sleeper
| accounts were activated days before the election and shared and
| promoted campaign material that was not marked as such in a
| highly coordinated way that suggests a state actor.
| ossobuco wrote:
| So what is the problem here, that a state actor tried to
| influence the elections? Then why aren't we talking about the
| influence of NATO&co as well? Because that can be found
| everywhere, starting from google search results. Search
| "elena lasconi campaign donors" on google, you'll get
| exclusively results about "far right kremlin backed election
| interference". Repeat the search on yandex.ru and you'll get
| actual results about Elena Lasconi.
|
| The problem isn't really a state actor here; it's that people
| didn't vote the right way(tm).
|
| As to the effect a last minute campaign on TikTok can have on
| the elections, I wonder can you really sway 9 milions of
| votes in a few days on a platform that basically nobody over
| 30 years old uses? That must have been some incredibly good
| propaganda!
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| It was only ~2 million votes, as it was a first round with
| 10+ candidates.
|
| I disagree it was about voting the right way, it was about
| campaign law violation.
| cbg0 wrote:
| > Then why aren't we talking about the influence of NATO&co
| as well? Because that can be found everywhere, starting
| from google search results. Search "elena lasconi campaign
| donors" on google, you'll get exclusively results about
| "far right kremlin backed election interference". Repeat
| the search on yandex.ru and you'll get actual results about
| Elena Lasconi.
|
| NATO is a defensive military alliance. Has there been any
| proof that they're manipulating search results or social
| media sites?
|
| Also, regarding your Google search: the reason why you're
| getting poor results is because you're searching in English
| for a subject predominantly connected to romanian language
| sites.
| ossobuco wrote:
| > NATO is a defensive military alliance. Has there been
| any proof that they're manipulating search results or
| social media sites?
|
| Plenty, if you accept the possibility[0]. The US army is
| openly recruiting for PSYOPs[1]
|
| - https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-63731751
|
| - https://www.goarmy.com/careers-and-jobs/specialty-
| careers/sp...
|
| > the reason why you're getting poor results is because
| you're searching in English for a subject predominantly
| connected to romanian language sites.
|
| Easily disproven by repeating the search in Romanian.
| Again, on google I get mostly results about Kremlin
| foreign election interference, while on yandex I only get
| relevant results. I tried several combinations of
| keywords.
| data_maan wrote:
| Does getting other results on Yandex make you trust them
| more?
|
| Is "different" for you "more true"?
| I-M-S wrote:
| Depends if it's different from a lie I guess
| exe34 wrote:
| how about filing your expenses according to the law?
| culi wrote:
| This happens all the time on major social media sites
| including reddit (in fact, it's quite easy for anybody to buy
| a reddit account with high karma). In the Depp vs Heard case
| that swept the internet it was found that both sides heavily
| used online bots to influence online dialog (tho Depp was
| better funded and obviously more successful)
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| When your astroturfing is targeted at an election, and you
| get caught, the election can be annulled to ensure its
| integrity. What's the problem here, exactly?
| ossobuco wrote:
| The problem is simple, either that astroturfing is so
| effective because it's rooted in truth and resonates with
| the issues the electors are concerned with, or electors
| are so easily influenceable that we can't have democracy
| without giving up free speech. Pick one.
| sebastianz wrote:
| There are electoral laws that state how political
| advertising can be done, and how it can be funded for an
| election campaign.
|
| Social media companies have to adhere to these laws - for
| example to say when something is an "Ad" paid by someone
| for the benefit of the candidate.
|
| In this case, apparently although TikTok was notified
| that a bot network controlled and paid for by nobody-
| knows-who was spamming election ads (untagged as such),
| and they ignored everything.
|
| This is all illegal.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| Nothing this dude said is rooted in truth. It's just
| we're so stupid we'd turn out country into a dictatorship
| for nothing.
|
| There are real grievances, no doubt, but this guy was so
| full of hot air there is no reasonable explanation for
| buying into him except us being irreparably dumb.
| ossobuco wrote:
| Just read the room, the far-right is winning across all
| of Europe, not just in Romania. It'd be more
| extraordinary if the left won the elections.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| > we can't have democracy without giving up free speech
|
| Social media does NOT equal free speech.
|
| It's clear by now that giving everyone "equal standing"
| in the ability to reach millions is a recipe for
| disaster, manipulation, hysteria, amplification of
| extremism, mental health decline, and so on...
| traditional media had social constraints and we need
| those back.
| ossobuco wrote:
| > traditional media had social constraints and we need
| those back
|
| Sure, let's go back to only governments and bilionaires
| having access to media, that was so much better.
| data_maan wrote:
| But the people that now supposedly defend free speech all
| ARE billionaires.
|
| Musk is a free speech absolutist (his words), yet biases
| his own companies algo to shove more of his stuff down my
| digital throat. I guess everyone is free to say stuff,
| but not everyone is free to see what people that are non-
| Musk writing?
|
| So much for free speech and billionaires.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| "Social media" is dominated by billionaires far more than
| "traditional" media ever was.
|
| Zuckerberg is worth 10 times what Rupert Murdoch is. Musk
| 30 x. And Murdoch is a huge outlier. Most traditional
| media is barely holding on by a shoestring.
| ossobuco wrote:
| And yet, my comments and posts can reach thousands of
| viewers with very little effort. There's no way I could
| do that with traditional media.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| And that is a good thing. That's the whole point. You
| should go through a few layers of validation (journalist
| who has professional ethics, a publishing company with
| legal responsibility, etc).
|
| Especially if yours is a reasonable and polite voice. The
| guy who screams murder daily, spreads blood-boiling fake
| news and constantly causes controversy is gonna beat you
| by miles.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| your comments don't "reach" anyone, they just become part
| of a vast cacophony which is on the whole algorithmically
| manipulated to suit the ends of other people who are far
| more powerful than yourself.
| xxs wrote:
| The free speech is a US thing. Most EU countries do have
| freedom of expression, but not 'free', speech. It comes
| from "European Convention on Human Rights" which has some
| limitations.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| I take it you voted for Meloni?
| ossobuco wrote:
| Do you take it that Elena Lasconi voted for Meloni as well?
| Because she's stated that the court ruling is "illegal" and
| "immoral".
| blub wrote:
| People were hysterical about Meloni before the elections and
| then nothing actually happened.
|
| This could be yet another case of the EUSA establishment
| crying wolf.
| scythe wrote:
| >Even Georgescu's opponent, Elena Lasconi, condemned the
| court's ruling as "illegal" and "immoral".
|
| This seems like pretty important information as an observer
| with little knowledge of Romania's inner workings.
| culi wrote:
| Elena Lasconi would be highly favored to win in a 1v1. Also
| keep in mind that both of these candidates are rightwing.
| Also keep in mind that the leading candidate only got 22.94%
| of the vote while Lasconi only got 19.18%
|
| If they do a redo and a center, liberal, or leftwing
| candidate makes it to the second round, Lasconi would have a
| much more challenging battle
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| >Elena Lasconi would be highly favored to win in a 1v1.
|
| Not according to polling[0]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2
| 024_R...
| mariusor wrote:
| > both of these candidates are rightwing
|
| Just curious by what metrics do you consider Lasconi to be
| a right winger?
| RealityVoid wrote:
| The USR party is liberal right wing. They get accused of
| being "sexomarxisti" but that's mostly brainless chants.
|
| They're pro free trade, freedoms, equality, all your
| runoff the mill liberal stuff.
| mariusor wrote:
| Yeah, I would call that a centrist party. To me the
| "right" includes trampling on individual and social
| freedoms. But maybe I've been brainwashed by American
| politics.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| Well, they are for privatizing health care I think?
| That's pretty right wing? But, yes your right wind is
| waaaaay more to the right than the norm.
| arandomusername wrote:
| Wouldn't that qualify a lot of the democratats as right
| wing since they are pro-censorship?
| RealityVoid wrote:
| It is and they are. The slider of politics in the US is
| to the right and that was op's point.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| She would definitely consider herself a right wing
| candidate, and has even tried before the election to
| convince multiple right-wing parties to form an electoral
| alliance and run a single candidate (presumably either
| herself or the president of the National Liberal Party,
| the largest right wing party in Romania, Nicolae Ciuca).
|
| This should not be confused to the far-right parties that
| backed her opponent for the second round, Calin
| Georgescu.
|
| Basically Romania's political scene has one nominally
| left wing party, the Social Democratic Party (though
| their economic policies are often centrist, and their
| social policies are often right wing, with opposition to
| civil partnerships and even some resistance to abortion
| rights)*. They are quite hated as representatives of the
| pre-Revolution communist Romania, and as very corrupt.
| Their traditional electorate are those living in rural
| areas, those living in poverty, those working in the
| state apparatus, and generally with a lower education.
|
| Then there is one traditional right-wing party, the
| National Liberal Party (liberal here in the "classical
| liberalism" sense, basically free market), that is slowly
| dying off, mostly due to the extremely unpopular current
| president who was elected on their lists; and due to
| governing in alliance with the SDP. They also have often
| been accused of corruption. They are relatively right
| wing both on economic and social issues.
|
| Then, there is a much newer centre-right party, the Save
| Romania Union, which has similar economic policies to the
| NLP and is more socially liberal. They coasted to some
| success on a powerful anti-corruption, Change message,
| but have since become embroiled in internal infighting.
| There are also several small parties that split off from
| them that have very similar policies. For both these and
| the NLP, their traditional electorate is people living in
| larger cities, wealthier, especially white collar
| workers, with higher education.
|
| All of the above parties are pro-EU, pro-NATO
| collaboration, agree on providing funds to Ukraine and so
| on.
|
| Then there's the newest force, the hard right Alliance
| for the Union of Romanians (AUR, which also means "gold"
| in Romanian). They ran on populist somewhat left-wing
| promises (cheap houses for everyone!), hard right social
| conservatism (anti-LGBT, anti-abortion, very religious
| minded). There's also a splinter party with virtually the
| same promises, the SOS Romania Party, and a newer force,
| The Young People's party. All of these three are various
| degrees of euroskpetic, NATO skeptics and against
| providing resources to Ukraine.
|
| Typically when someone in Romania says "the left", they
| mean the SDP; when they say "the right" they mean "the
| NLP and SRU", and when they want to refer to the other
| group, they'll either say "far right", "ultra
| nationalists", or their own preferred term
| "sovereignists" (from "national sovereignty").
|
| * There is one small European-style left-wing party that
| ran in this election for the first time, but they only
| won 2,3% of the vote
| fidotron wrote:
| > If they do a redo and a center, liberal, or leftwing
| candidate makes it to the second round, Lasconi would have
| a much more challenging battle
|
| Right, so the players want to change the rules of the game
| because they lost, when the left wing problem is the
| classic: they're splitters.
|
| Had the left not been split so many different ways then
| they wouldn't be in this position. And they cannot say they
| didn't understand the process in advance.
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| It's less important than seems at first. It was a tight race
| with 10+ candidates, these two went into the second round. If
| the entire procedure is annulled and repeated, the other
| person in the second round is also disadvantaged as her
| chances to get to the second round again are smaller. Her
| frustration is understandable, she seems like collateral
| casualty here.
| cbg0 wrote:
| There is no doubt in my mind that while the decision today is
| backed by the law it still erodes democratic principles in my
| country.
| sebastianz wrote:
| The main issue is he declared his election campaign cost 0.
|
| Literally, that is what he declared he spent on his election
| campaign.
|
| The million euros for the TikTok & social media storm that got
| him elected has to have been paid by someone though, and
| according to law this money has to be clean and have clear
| sources.
|
| He does not have clear sources. Probably also does not have
| clean money. The source of this dirty money is what is
| suspected to be Russian-adjacent actors that wanted him to win.
| jdasdf wrote:
| >Literally, that is what he declared he spent on his election
| campaign.
|
| >The million euros for the TikTok & social media storm that
| got him elected has to have been paid by someone though, and
| according to law this money has to be clean and have clear
| sources.
|
| What if he did indeed spend 0EUR ?
|
| If i pay some money to google to run some ads for the 2 main
| parties, and don't report it, do they also get disqualified?
| sebastianz wrote:
| > If i pay some money to google to run some ads for the 2
| main parties, and don't report it, do they also get
| disqualified?
|
| If you pay money to run electoral ads, for someone's
| campaign, this money has to be declared, and the ads should
| be marked as such.
|
| In this case, neither has happened.
|
| TikTok also did not ban these bot networks as they should
| have according to the electoral laws, so there will be a
| separate investigation that I think the EU commission has
| started to find out why they are not complying with
| electoral laws in the countries they operate in.
| jdasdf wrote:
| I see you didn't answer the question i asked (probably
| because it would make it obvious how untenable your
| argument is), so I will ask again.
|
| If i pay some money to google to run some ads for the 2
| main parties, and don't report it, do they also get
| disqualified?
| sebastianz wrote:
| I have no idea, but if you illegally want to get someone
| elected as president in a foreign country, I suggest
| talking to a very smart lawyer, not to a rando on hacker
| news :)
| theultdev wrote:
| He's not talking about getting someone elected, the
| inverse actually.
|
| An analogy would be buying github stars or reddit upvotes
| for an adversary to get them banned.
| xuhu wrote:
| It all depends on whether the candidate asked for the
| help.
| theultdev wrote:
| Okay, so where is the proof he asked for the help?
| xuhu wrote:
| https://snoop.ro/cazul-bunelu-firma-sustinatorilor-lui-
| georg...
|
| Explains the money trail, and there's even a nice picture
| with one of the sovereign candidates and the Tracia Unita
| group who paid for the campaign.
| theultdev wrote:
| That's not proof, it's the ramblings of a conspiracy
| theorist trying to put loose connections together.
|
| They even threw in a tirade about Trump to top it off.
|
| But yeah, let's throw away an entire country's election
| because of the ramblings of Victor Ilie.
|
| Thank God he put it all together and saved Romania. No
| investigation needed, he figured it out.
| avianlyric wrote:
| Probably depends on how much money you spend. But spend
| enough and at a minimum it'll be considered election
| interference (the exact rules depend on the country). If
| there's evidence the candidate that benefited
| collaborated with you in any way, then it's likely
| they'll face sanctions as well.
|
| Europe is like the U.S. We don't have Political Action
| Committees here, or anything similar. Political
| campaigns, particularly in the lead up to an election,
| are tightly controlled and limited to ensure candidates
| have to compete on an even playing field. They can't just
| try and outspend their competitors.
|
| Heck in the UK, it's illegal for political campaigning to
| occur outside the few weeks before an election. Obviously
| politicians will do everything they can to demonstrate
| their value to the people all the time. But they can't
| engage in explicit campaigning, with calls to actions
| about how to vote, outside of the time limited campaign
| period. It's all done to keep as much money as possible
| out of our political system, and prevent our politics
| becoming ruled entirely by money, like we see in the U.S.
| Hell there recently been huge controversy in the UK
| because out PM accepted some _clothes_ (literally a few
| suits) from a party donor, and that was considered as
| being potentially illegal campaign support.
| Amezarak wrote:
| In the US, the past 2 of 3 Presidential elections were
| won by the candidate + PACs who spent less money.
| wyager wrote:
| > If you pay money to run electoral ads, for someone's
| campaign, this money has to be declared, and the ads
| should be marked as such.
|
| Do you really think this makes sense as a justification
| for a court to depose a candidate, or are you just being
| disingenuous for rhetorical purposes?
|
| If we actually apply your logic as stated, then anyone
| could unilaterally "disqualify" any candidate by buying
| political ads on their behalf and not reporting the ads.
| TheRoque wrote:
| How can you advertise yourself if you spent 0EUR ? What
| genius trick is at play ? Come on, it's much more plausible
| there's something fishy.
| theultdev wrote:
| Elon companies spend $0 on traditional advertisements and
| only advertise through word of mouth, viral/social
| campaigns, etc.
|
| Many celebrities do the same as well via their social
| media presence.
| jltsiren wrote:
| I don't think anyone is getting disqualified. The elections
| will be rerun with the same candidates, because the
| authorities were unable to do it properly the first time.
|
| If you pay a small amount of money for some political ads,
| nobody is going to care, because it obviously didn't affect
| the results substantially. If the amount is large enough,
| the situation may be different. And then both you and
| Google may face consequences for illegal election
| interference.
| theultdev wrote:
| So next time Russia should buy ads for the candidate they
| want to lose.
|
| 1. Buy ads for opposition.
|
| 2. Opposition reports invalid figures not accounting for
| russian ads
|
| 3. People accuse opposition of being helped by russia and
| misreporting funds.
|
| 4. Opposition wins, recount stays the same, courts annul
| it because _russia_.
|
| Am I missing something here?
| jltsiren wrote:
| You are missing two things.
|
| First, the elections will be rerun. If people think the
| annulment was unfair, the opposition candidate may get
| even more votes due to organic publicity.
|
| Second, you can't just buy ads. You must also find
| someone with wide enough circulation willing to show the
| ads. And that someone may be liable for the consequences.
| theultdev wrote:
| No those two things are clear to me.
|
| First, yes they will be re-ran, and it's doubtful the
| winning candidate will even get to run. Also, where does
| it end, do we keep re-running it until we get the _right_
| candidate? What if it was the candidate you voted for,
| how would _you_ feel?
|
| Second, yes apparently you can, it happened. If the whole
| country was able to be swayed by TikTok ads but
| apparently no politicians noticed then they aren't very
| good at politicking or governing. If they noticed an
| issue they should have dealt with TikTok earlier.
|
| So far TikTok hasn't been held liable, only the voters
| who choose to vote for this candidate.
| jltsiren wrote:
| Right now, TikTok is under EU level investigation, which
| will take much longer than a few days. If found guilty,
| it can face a fine up to 6% of worldwide revenues.
| theultdev wrote:
| Yes, as I said, as of _right now_ they have not been held
| liable, only the voters have been punished by having
| their votes revoked.
|
| The voters were apparently too stupid and got tricked by
| scary russian ads, so we must re-do the elections until
| they come to their senses and pick the _correct_
| candidate.
|
| It's TikTok's fault for letting Russian ads in, so we'll
| take some of their money and we'll also stay in power.
| Win-win for the establishment.
|
| It couldn't possibly be that the voters knew exactly what
| they were voting for... They're too gullible, that's it.
| jltsiren wrote:
| The point is that in the future, TikTok / Google /
| whatever will have to be more careful with political ads,
| because they can be bad for business.
|
| Whatever your opinion on the candidates is, it's a fact
| that many people didn't consider the election results
| legitimate. In a situation like that, it's impossible to
| make them legitimate by any administrative action. Courts
| can make the results legal, but legitimacy is something
| people decide on their own. If legitimacy is considered
| important, the only way to regain it is to run new
| elections. It may take a long time and many attempts, and
| it may not work at all. But you can't have legitimate
| elections if the losers don't accept that the elections
| were fair and they lost.
| theultdev wrote:
| > it's a fact that many people didn't consider the
| election results legitimate
|
| it's a fact that _more_ people considered it legitimate,
| otherwise the candidate in question wouldn 't have won
| the election.
|
| let me ask you this about your "fact" how "many people"
| didn't consider it legitimate? should be easy to answer
| since it's a fact.
| jltsiren wrote:
| Legitimacy is not determined by majority vote. It's
| determined by the people who don't like the results for
| whatever reason. If the vast majority of them accept that
| the elections were legitimate, they were legitimate. If a
| substantial minority of them don't accept the results,
| the legitimacy is questionable at best, and the country
| is in a lot of trouble.
| theultdev wrote:
| > Legitimacy is not determined by majority vote.
|
| > If the vast majority of them accept that the elections
| were legitimate, they were legitimate.
|
| ???
|
| > determined by the people who don't like the results
|
| So I guess I have to ask, which _people_ and how are you
| determining majority legitimacy if not by vote?
| jltsiren wrote:
| Legitimacy is fundamentally about trust. Trust that the
| elections were fair, even if you don't like the outcome.
|
| If your candidate won, your opinion on the legitimacy
| doesn't matter much. If your candidate lost, your opinion
| matters more. If you think that the elections were
| legitimate, your opinion doesn't matter much. If you
| think they were not legitimate, your opinion matters
| more.
|
| It doesn't really matter if the elections were fair. If
| the losers don't trust the system, the elections were not
| legitimate.
|
| A society can handle a small number of people who
| question its legitimacy. Maybe 5%, maybe 10%, maybe even
| 20%, depending on the overall level of trust. If too many
| people don't trust the system, the society doesn't really
| work anymore. Laws, constitutions, and other institutions
| are only as strong as people's faith in them.
| dh2022 wrote:
| That is the thing I do not get: the basis for
| disqualifiying the first round is there for the second
| round. Second round would be as valid (or invalid) as the
| first round. Which makes this looks like a soft coup.
|
| It should be noted that Romanian Constitutional Court has
| a long tradition for yielding to political influence.
| Read and weep [0]
|
| [0] page 93 onwards Corruption https://commons.lib.jmu.ed
| u/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1317...
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > The elections will be rerun with the same candidates,
| because the authorities were unable to do it properly the
| first time.
|
| No, the whole electoral process will be restarted, as if
| it had never happened, starting from potential candidates
| gathering signatures to validate their registration.
| Anyone who wishes to run has to start anew.
|
| And it's almost impossible to believe that the candidate
| whose campaign was found to be so illegally run that the
| entire process has been corrupted and has to be restarted
| could be allowed to run again. This would be pantomime of
| the highest level. And I'm saying this as someone who
| thinks this decision was a soft coup.
| newspaper1 wrote:
| Annulling the results of an election on an accounting issue
| is not democracy. They could prosecute him for fraud if he
| committed it, that's not the same as revoking the vote of the
| population.
| sebastianz wrote:
| If a foreign state actor gets someone illegally elected in
| a separate country with dirty money, this is not an
| "accounting issue".
| empiricus wrote:
| So the next step for russia is to invest some tiktok
| money for the the person that would be elected anyways
| but they hate the most, and this way discredit that
| person?
| sebastianz wrote:
| Well hopefully they cannot do that in the future, since
| TikTok is also being investigated in the scandal. They
| are the ones who pocketed the money for the ads after
| all, and are required to comply with the electoral laws
| of the country, which they did not.
|
| (later edit: Actually probably they did not pocket the ad
| money, since I think the accusation is most of it was not
| legitimate ads, but puppet-account posts from some
| service. Of course, TikTok could still be be held
| responsible to better police these, but perhaps is not
| the direct destination of the money.)
| Wytwwww wrote:
| He only got 23% of the votes and wasn't elected yet,
| though.
|
| Also what can they do besides disqualifying him or
| delaying the elections for months(years?) until he's
| convicted of fraud (hopefully by that point all of his
| voters would have forgotten all those ads)?
| xuhu wrote:
| If my university proves I cheated on my entry exams, I
| fully expect them to throw me out, before or after the
| first day of school.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| What if they think you might have cheated, so they cancel
| the entire entrance exam for everyone because your
| potential, unproven, cheating _would_ have given you an
| unfair advantage over the other students?
|
| Because this is what our court did.
| troupo wrote:
| If large scale fraud is suspected, results of exams will
| be annulled.
|
| If a person is found cheating (and no other
| interference), that person's exam results will be
| annulled.
|
| Why do you think this is not the case?
| tsimionescu wrote:
| In this case, one person suspected of cheating (only
| suspected, he is not convicted or even charged with
| anything at all!) has led to the annulment of the entire
| exam. Only one of the candidates was found to have
| cheated, during their campaign. The voting process was
| found to be perfectly secure and to accurately reflect
| the intention of the people who voted. And yet, the
| entire election, starting not just from the vote, but
| from the moment that all candidates registered and
| started their campaign, has been annulled and started
| from scratch.
|
| Any party who wishes to participate in the elections will
| have to start from step 0, from collecting 200k
| signatures of people who support their candidacy.
| troupo wrote:
| Key part: large-scale fraud.
| Saline9515 wrote:
| This is not fraud. Voting fraud is when you manipulate
| ballots. It's amazing how well intentioned people here
| tend to believe that voters are influenced toddlers who
| can't be trusted. Why even have elections?
| troupo wrote:
| > This is not fraud. Voting fraud
|
| That's the problem with analogies: they are always
| inadequate.
|
| > tend to believe that voters are influenced toddlers who
| can't be trusted.
|
| No, people tend to believe that things like canoeing
| financing, income sources, political ads etc. have to be
| disclosed and monitored.
| anon_e-moose wrote:
| Bad analogy, a student is not being evaluated for a
| position where he controls the lives of millions.
|
| 10 people were competing for president, a position with
| significant power. Whoever you elect will have powers
| immediately so you cannot afford to kick cheaters out
| after the fact, only before.
|
| This election game is played in two rounds. If you find a
| cheater before the first round, what happens if you
| remove him? There's 9 left. What about in the second
| round where it's 1v1? You just gave away the presidency
| to last candidate.
|
| Romania acted too late in kicking the cheater out. Maybe
| there were reasons for that, but this means re-running
| the elections without the cheater might be the lesser
| evil.
| fp64 wrote:
| > The million euros for the TikTok & social media storm that
| got him elected
|
| I just read that it was approximately 360000 Euros paid to
| TikTok influencers, not millions. Doesn't change the fact
| that somebody paid them, yes, but apparently not Millions. Or
| my source was wrong, am I missing something?
|
| EDIT Thanks for downvoting - I did not want to defend
| anything, I just read in an article about the court ruling
| that it was this number that appeared quite low to me, that's
| all, I was wondering.
| miohtama wrote:
| If you can buy presidency with 360k euros or even 1M euros
| on TinTok likes it reflects how bad the other candidates
| must be.
| adriancr wrote:
| or perhaps that sum is incorrect, or perhaps it was state
| actors with power to force algorithm changes on TikTok or
| to tiktok via other means without payment.
|
| external state actors interfering with elections is a
| perfect reason to invalidate.
| fp64 wrote:
| That's why I was asking. I've got this number from a
| German article on the court ruling. I do not know if this
| is in fact the number specified in the ruling, or whether
| this was a "leak", or "misinformation". So I was hoping
| somebody could elaborate a bit more as I don't speak
| Romanian and haven't really followed the whole thing, and
| the OP I replied to mentioned "millions"
|
| Edit: https://archive.fo/tAcG1 (nzz.ch paywalled) is the
| original source, I would argue NZZ is very trustworthy.
| They quote the intelligence report. You would need to
| translate to English. Maybe you have a different source
| that puts this all in question, which I would appreciate
|
| Edit2: Here's ABC as I just ran across it, mentioning the
| same number
| https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/romanias-
| top-...
| adriancr wrote:
| here's a first part of some good investigative journalism
| on this: https://snoop.ro/strategia-cu-bani-rusesti-cum-
| au-ajuns-recl...
| petsfed wrote:
| I think this is the wrong way to think about it.
|
| I have no idea how much it costs to run a Russian or
| Chinese disinformation group, but let's suppose its 360k
| Euros. That's like the annual salary of 20 higher-income
| Romanians. If this was just a one-month campaign, that's
| like 240 TikTok users making more than double the median
| income in Romania. If they just worked full-time to push
| stuff out, maybe using a bunch of different accounts,
| yeah, that's conceivably enough to swamp Romanian TikTok.
| Keep in mind, there's only about 19 million people living
| in Romania. How many committed TikTokers are necessary to
| sway a Senate election in California?
| fp64 wrote:
| or a single Romanian expat who "made it" in Silicon
| Valley (I think this would be also illegal though)
| xxs wrote:
| you're an expat only if you are an English native
| speaker, else you are an immigrant. Hence, no such thing
| as Romanian expat.
| poincaredisk wrote:
| Is this a jab at (supposed) American racism/xenophobia?
| Because by definition I'm pretty sure being a native
| speaker is not a requirement for being an expat
|
| >An expatriate (often shortened to expat) is a person who
| resides outside their country of citizenship
| miohtama wrote:
| Here is some analysis of the court documents:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42348942
|
| "They document a social media campaign supporting Calin
| Georgescu that involved around 25,000 TikTok accounts
| coordinated through a Telegram channel, paid influencers,
| and coordinated messaging. "
| xxs wrote:
| the issue with downvoiting is a rather blatant attempt of
| playing a victim: "i just read... xxx moeny". It can be any
| number, mostly undisclosed.
| randunel wrote:
| People gathered and did all the leaflets themselves, read the
| private chat for Arad here:
| https://the5star.github.io/cgarad/messages.html
| ossobuco wrote:
| So he won with a campaign run at zero cost by volunteers?
| Now I understand why they won't allow him to win.
|
| It would set a dangerous precedent that you can run and win
| a campaign without multi-millionaire sponsorships from
| lobbies.
| randunel wrote:
| So far, I couldn't find any evidence that he received
| donations directly. All the bank statements and
| transactions that have been made public show that other
| people grouped together and did those things to his
| benefit.
|
| Old people in positions of power, the so called "Supreme
| Defence Council of Romania", don't really understand how
| web platforms work. They released an opinion, which
| weighs a lot tbh, as did others. But I could find actual
| proof that the candidate spent any money, neither did the
| authorities, so far. If there's anyone guilty of breaking
| RO electoral law, it's the volunteers in the link I
| posted.
| poincaredisk wrote:
| >It would set a dangerous precedent that you can run and
| win a campaign without multi-millionaire sponsorships
| from lobbies
|
| This is (in most cases) not a thing in Europe, generally
| political parties finance themselves and lobbying is
| illegal.
| piombisallow wrote:
| Why the scare quotes on declassified document? It's a
| declassified report from the national intelligence agency,
| which was made public.
| ossobuco wrote:
| Because it's too easy like this. Who's checking the national
| intelligence agency? Otherwise, whenever something they don't
| like comes up, they can pull out another document to
| declassify. It's basically a cheap tool for secret services
| to subvert elections or democratically elected powers.
| xg15 wrote:
| I'm not sure about this particular case, and absolutely no
| question that the specific interest in this case probably has
| very little to do with concern about democracy and a lot with
| power struggles in that new cold war we're in.
|
| (Gonna agree with it being a soft coup if they limit the new
| election to only pro-western parties. So far, it's "only" the
| repeat of an election)
|
| But, having said that, there really is a lot of pro-russian
| propaganda on TikTok and the way the algorithm selects it can't
| always be explained with user preferences.
|
| An Austrian newspaper recently posted results of an experiment
| they did themselves: They added a bunch of brand new accounts,
| pretending to be teenagers. The given interests were diverse,
| but all of them unpolitical and typical kids stuff.
|
| Nevertheless, after a short habituation period of benign posts,
| the feeds of all but one of the accounts quickly shifted from
| typical teenager stuff to "political" content, mostly hard
| right-wing, islamist and pro-russian clips. All of that without
| any of the users ever having given any indication that they
| were interested in political posts, let alone pro-russian ones.
|
| The report is here (in German) :
| https://dietagespresse.com/selbstversuch-so-radikalisiert-ti...
|
| The newspaper usually posts satire, but this article was about
| a real self-experiment.
| jowea wrote:
| Medium hot take: this is why closed-source social media post
| promotion algorithms should be banned. We should not let a
| foreign private company with government links influence
| society in a hidden way like that.
| mihaic wrote:
| It pretty much is a soft coup, yes. The general population is
| apologetic for it, since the concept of rule-of-law is not that
| important to Romanian culture.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| I do not think it was a soft coup. I look around me and all I
| can feel around except the most diehard CG or Lasconi fans is,
| honestly, relief.
|
| You can't really get the atmosphere in the country when that
| fascist was about to be voted in. I listened to a couple of
| journalists in the last couple of days, they were tearing their
| hairs out in frustration. Radio broadcasters and political
| commentators were saying the closing of their shows like it was
| a funeral and the end of free speech.
|
| Me and many people around me could not sleep for 2 weeks
| straight because we knew what this meant. CG victory would have
| meant we needed to flee the country, sooner or later.
|
| I am fully convinced we narrowly avoided something terrible.
| I'm also not convinced that we're out of the woods yet.
| danicriss wrote:
| > I'd be curious to know what preferential treatment means, how
| preferential, and how it balances out if we include treatment
| of all candidates across all media
|
| Iirc all candidates were supposed to mark their promotional
| material as electoral material. CG was the only one who didn't.
| This was considered illegal in Romania and TikTok was supposed
| to not promote the material. Yet they did
|
| The second thing I vaguely remember is that the secret service
| report surmised that TikTok has swarming detection algorithms,
| that CG's posts were clearly swarmed, yet TikTok allowed the
| material as if it hasn't been swarmed, despite its own policies
| fidotron wrote:
| The interesting things about these claims of manipulation via
| social media platforms is we are no longer on the side of the
| coin saying "my side is censored" but very much "the other side
| is visible and should not be".
|
| Interfering by censorship is bad because you deny people
| information on which to base their decision. Interfering by
| allowing all candidates to be heard is not negative interference
| at all. This decision by the court is yet another blow for the
| credibility of democracy in the west.
|
| The UK with Brexit was an interesting case: highly contentious,
| counted promptly, the establishment acknowledged they didn't like
| it and reluctantly eventually followed through. That was when
| democracy went too far, and now the plebs must pick only between
| pre approved options.
| Viliam1234 wrote:
| > "the other side is visible and should not be"
|
| The other side is visible in millions of ads, despite
| officially declaring that 0 money was spent on visibility.
| fidotron wrote:
| Aka "when people look at us it is entirely organic but the
| only reason they would look at that guy is he is paying for
| it".
| cbg0 wrote:
| The other parties reported spending as per the law, and
| this guy didn't. You can't run a campaign with no money,
| and he had no real grass-roots support (he was polling
| below 5% in all polls).
| fidotron wrote:
| > You can't run a campaign with no money, and he had no
| real grass-roots support
|
| The fact he won the first round contradicts you on both
| points.
|
| You seem to think your statements are axiomatic, but they
| have no basis.
| cbg0 wrote:
| They do have a basis, as the candidate had flyers printed
| out, paid ads on social media as well as paid ads that
| were not marked as political ads, which is against the
| law, and so is not reporting campaign spending.
|
| Political polls from across the spectrum showing him
| polling poorly as well as not being an established
| candidate is what led to this whole investigation
| starting up to figure out exactly how he garnered so much
| support so fast.
| fidotron wrote:
| > They do have a basis, as the candidate had flyers
| printed out, paid ads on social media as well as paid ads
| that were not marked as political ads, which is against
| the law, and so is not reporting campaign spending.
|
| Did he pay for them? And we all know polls miss things
| they don't know about or want to find. As long as the
| ballots were counted accurately the problem was not the
| campaign he was running, but the ineptitude of the
| pollsters.
|
| As discussed at length elsewhere in this thread this
| whole thing opens up so many new ways to abuse the system
| Romania simply will not be able to have an election
| anyone believes in again for a generation.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Yeah the whole thing very much sounds like "this guy's platform
| is actually really popular with voters, but he should have
| remained an unknown because he shouldn't have been able to
| spread his message that effectively."
| mihaic wrote:
| Seeing this election unfold from the inside the country has
| turned me simultaneously more anti-establishment and anti-
| democratic.
|
| The candidate that could have potentially won is an imbecile that
| dresses well, has good diction and spouts jingoism about God and
| country. He also says stuff like maybe we didn't land on the moon
| and soda's have microchips. The voters are poor and uneducated
| and just like Trump seems like the poor's man idea of a rich
| person, so was he the uneducated person's idea of an
| intellectual. TikTok did not sway them much, it just presented
| the candidate.
|
| The political establishment has been gorging itself on public
| funds and the urban intellectuals (who had the other hopeful
| candidate) are simply copying US left-leaning ideology in a
| country that has vastly different problems. For instance,
| abortions are perfectly legal in Romania, yet they keep bringing
| reproductive rights onto their agenda, instead of focusing on
| massive corruption and on improving the economy.
|
| Each political faction seems to filter for candidates that are
| either unrealistic ideologues or the most corrupt individuals in
| the European Union.
|
| Let this maybe be a warning for the future: an uneducated
| democracy is not easier or harder to manipulate, it's simply
| random and unpredictable.
| bamboozled wrote:
| This is why Romans used to actually appoint dictators for some
| periods of time, some how they were often good people who'd
| come into power , fix a bunch of stuff, then go back to their
| tomato growing.
| wood_spirit wrote:
| Isn't it about time that the EU banned TikTok?
| cbg0 wrote:
| I don't think banning outright is the solution, but I do think
| that social media has a tremendous amount of power and can
| impact things like elections if you have control over the
| recommendation algorithm on one of these sites.
|
| I think more transparency into how these recommendation
| algorithms work is required especially when it comes to
| elections, as well as mechanisms to verify that they aren't
| being tampered with.
| severino wrote:
| You mean that only media and information approved by some EU
| bureoucrats be allowed here? Well, there was no need to tear
| down the wall 35 years ago for that.
| mikrotikker wrote:
| Tiktok is clearly a civilizational weapon wielded by the
| enemies of the west, freedom, and democracy. 5th generational
| warfare.
| Dah00n wrote:
| And Facebook etc. are a weapon being wielded by the US.
| That's just as bad. If you allow one side but not the
| other, you are living in an authoritarian state.
| Dah00n wrote:
| Sure, if they also ban Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, etc.
| Otherwise, they are choosing sides. That's not a democratic
| system, but deciding what people can read and do (and think) as
| they do the exact same thing but for the "other side".
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Boy, that was a stupid place for TikTok to blow their wad. I
| suspect that this will result in some fairly serious pummeling of
| their operations in many places.
| culi wrote:
| The court didn't provide any evidence that this was somehow
| coordinate by TikTok themselves. Rather a state actor that made
| hundreds of TikTok accounts just before the election. This kind
| of stuff happened on Twitter all the time. It'll probably
| happen on Bluesky as well if they succeed
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> hundreds of TikTok accounts_
|
| I read a much, _much_ higher number. One that suggests that
| TT knew _exactly_ what was going on.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| The Georgescu trend was no.9 world wide and exploded 2
| weeks before the election
|
| What I learned from this is that people are much more easy
| to influence than previously thought. Especially if you
| come up with something that is a blank slate. Me included.
|
| I was literally crying for my country these last 2 weeks.
| randunel wrote:
| How many state actors can you see in here?
| https://the5star.github.io/cgarad/messages.html
| codedokode wrote:
| Interesting that a winning candidate was allegedly not marking
| his promotion videos. Does it mean that people generally distrust
| everything officially marked and skip the video instantly (like I
| skip ads on Youtube)? And so, marking the video makes your
| campaign inefficient? Or it wasn't an important factor?
| cbg0 wrote:
| Seeing "sponsored campaign ad" is an instant skip for most
| people.
| randunel wrote:
| People gathered and did the propaganda stuff themselves, here's
| an export of one of many private chats where they coordinated
| https://the5star.github.io/cgarad/messages.html
| codedokode wrote:
| Isn't that normal political activity? Making propaganda for
| candidate you support? (if I understand correctly that people
| simply gathered and tried to promote their candidate).
| randunel wrote:
| That is illegal in Romania, all campaign contributions must
| be declared, even if you're not a willing beneficiary.
|
| To be honest, I couldn't find any proof that the candidate
| got funded by anyone, and all news articles express
| opinions of old people in positions of power who don't
| understand how web platforms work.
|
| If I suddenly decided to print campaign posters myself and
| gather a group of people to donate to me for doing so, in
| favour of some random candidate, shouldn't the
| constitutional court cancel the elections again?... Bad
| precedent.
| shmerl wrote:
| Putin paid candidate should not be just disqualified - prison is
| proper for that.
| FlyingBears wrote:
| I am getting 1989 flashbacks, but this time this is a coupe that
| subverts institution to its purpose.
| fuoqi wrote:
| Attempts to ban AfD (which is projected to take the second
| place), "firewalled" LePen's party which has won with 33% of
| votes and has zero political power, and now this. And people
| wonder why trust in the "democratic" system gradually falls and
| anti-establishment sentiment is on the rise.
| cbg0 wrote:
| I would contend that the anti-establishment movements are the
| reason why parties like AfD and LePen's sprouted in the first
| place.
| rdm_blackhole wrote:
| That is not entirely true. Le Pen just brought down the french
| government yesterday. She has some power as a King maker in the
| current configuration.
|
| But she does not govern nor does she want to. However, the left
| wing coalition won the most seats in the national assembly but
| Macron refused to appoint a prime mister which was from this
| coalition as it is normally customary.
|
| In July, he called on the left wing coalition to safeguard
| democracy by instructing his party to drop out of the races in
| which they had no chance to win so that the left could win
| these races against the National Rally.
|
| Now he saying that the left wing coalition is extremist and
| that the National Rally is extremist just as well and that he
| won't have a government with either of them. Basically he just
| told half of the population to get stuffed.
|
| Then people wonder how democracy dies, that is how it dies.
|
| We can disagree with the right and with the left but if the
| will of the people is not respected, then the consequences will
| be dramatic.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| I'm not saying those parties are fascists but they lean that
| way. Once fascists gain power, they undermine the entire
| democratic system and stay in power. So how does one deal with
| this situation? Do you just hand over a democracy over because
| a certain percentage of the population voted for them or do you
| play dirty back?
| dtquad wrote:
| I dislike the anti-immigration far-right in Denmark but for the
| past 25 years they have been electorally and influentially more
| successful with one simple trick: Don't support the
| geopolitical adversaries of the West. Maybe the AfD and LePen
| should have listened instead of publicly fellating Putin.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > Maybe the AfD and LePen should have listened instead of
| publicly fellating Putin.
|
| They're winning, though. Why would they do anything
| differently? The reason why people vote for them is because
| they hate _you._
| dtquad wrote:
| >They're winning, though. Why would they do anything
| differently?
|
| They are not really winning. At best they are just sewing
| chaos. Their voters only vote for them for anti-immigration
| and anti-trans reasons which they have failed to
| politically materialize. In Denmark their ideological
| brethren made mainstream parties fold on immigration and on
| some trans issues by simply not being complete idiots on
| foreign policy.
| mmooss wrote:
| Why are we suddenly screwing around with democracy? We know how
| to do it - we've known for generations. Nothing else compares
| morally, or in terms of results - freedom, prosperity, or
| security - or in terms of competency of government (yes - it's
| very flawed, but no other form of government compares).
|
| Everything else is 'influence campaigns' and BS, designed to
| distract people and keep them inert - and it's doing an effective
| job!
| bamboozled wrote:
| Yes it's a properly scary time. I think people are just waking
| up to it and are becoming more vigilant, it might be too late
| for the USA though.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > Why are we suddenly screwing around with democracy?
|
| Suddenly? We've been doing this for 60 years, most
| particularly, in South America. It's now just made it's way
| fully into Europe.
|
| > We know how to do it - we've known for generations.
|
| We know how to do mob rule. We're not particularly good at
| Democracy. Sometimes the two would produce the same outcome and
| people do not struggle to notice the difference.
| redleader55 wrote:
| The judicial branch needs to get involved when the election
| process is being tampered with. In the past there were times
| when "democracy" won, but society lost: 1789 France, 1933
| Germany, 1949 Romania, etc. If only the will of the people
| rules you sometimes get abuse and dictators. The concept of a
| "republic" means the rule of the people under a set of laws and
| a constitution which protects all people from abuses of the
| majority. The decision to call for another presidential
| election was taken by the Constitutional Court - similar to the
| Supreme Court of US, which is the one that needs to validate
| the results of elections before they can produce results.
| mmooss wrote:
| > The concept of a "republic" means the rule of the people
| under a set of laws and a constitution which protects all
| people from abuses of the majority.
|
| I agree, but I think that's called 'constitutional
| democracy'. Democracy can't be mob rule, is another way of
| looking at it; it can't be 'two wolves and a sheep voting on
| what's for dinner'.
|
| > In the past there were times when "democracy" won, but
| society lost: 1789 France, 1933 Germany, 1949 Romania, etc.
|
| Yes, the cardinal sin is someone who uses their power to
| prevent future democracy (or to oppress the minority).
| adverbly wrote:
| It seems like democracy is not as good as it used to be because
| of online bubbles and personalized/targeted media. Propaganda
| has levelled up.
|
| Despite this, "democracy is still the worst system of
| government we know of... except for all the other ones" is
| still true.
|
| We need to get better at it though because it's not trending in
| a good direction at the moment. Because it is and will likely
| always be the best option, we should really be making sure that
| it works as well as possible and produces the best quality
| results.
| A_Serious_Man wrote:
| Did they just do the barman that kicks out the first fascist in a
| pub? Wish Hungary, Poland and USA had guts to do this ...
| bamboozled wrote:
| These countries are more familiar with these tactics and are
| not wiling to accept it, South Korea too.
| radiator wrote:
| In a european democracy, things are pretty clear: Influence from
| Russia and China is forbidden. Influence from the USA, Germany,
| France is permitted. There are countless examples.
| cbg0 wrote:
| Care to name a few examples? Also, USA, Germany and France are
| allies to Romania as part of either NATO or the EU.
|
| Russia has invaded Ukraine, our neighbor and we have a pretty
| good reason to stay far away from them, not to mention some
| historical bad blood with many tons of gold we gave them for
| safe-keeping in WW2 that they never returned, or the crimes the
| red army did while retreating through Romania at the end of
| WW2.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Sounds like you're agreeing with the comment above, but just
| saying that it's a good thing.
| cbg0 wrote:
| It is a good thing to stick with your allies and not side
| with potential enemies. We've been warring in Europe for
| centuries and we've managed to stop and get along, but
| Russia is still at it for some reason.
| pessimizer wrote:
| When people pretend to be confused about why Russia
| wouldn't want Ukraine in NATO, or why Putin would be
| under immense pressure to defend the Russians in the
| east, it's not because they intend to have a good faith
| discussion.
|
| Centuries of war are irrelevant. Talk about this one. And
| start in 2014, or even before if you're in the mood.
| mopsi wrote:
| > why Putin would be under immense pressure to defend the
| Russians in the east
|
| This has approximately as much credibility as trying to
| argue that Hitler was defending German citizens in Poland
| and France. Much like Germany with its concentration
| camps and Gestapo was a very dangerous place at the time
| for any German (and other people), Russia in 2024 is one
| of the most dangerous places for any Russian (and other
| people). Freedom indices place Russia near the end of
| global ranking[1]. The mere act of writing and performing
| an anti-war poem can get you raped by police and
| sentenced to years in a horrible penal colony[2], where
| poor conditions and lack of medical care slowly kill
| you[3]. If you insist on pursuing the "defense" narrative
| in either case, most people will rightfully label you
| severely misinformed, malicious, or braindead.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_freedom_indices
| #List_o...
|
| [2] https://www.euronews.com/culture/2023/12/28/russian-
| poet-sen...
|
| [3]
| https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/eur46/8805/2024/en/
| wiseowise wrote:
| You ignored "provide a few examples" part.
| Dah00n wrote:
| How about the simple fact that banning TikTok is even
| thought about but banning all US Social media is not?
| That is definitely picking sides and anti-democratic. I
| agree TikTok can cause problems, but no more than
| Facebook etc. Ban all or ban none.
| wiseowise wrote:
| Current campaign was conducted over TikTok and not over
| Facebook, isn't it?
| victordevt wrote:
| Indeed. Well-established parties created an aggressive media
| campaign against CG over these last two weeks. The problem was
| that even today, the odds were clearly for CG. So they had no
| choice but to take this last solution, an anti-democratic
| decision. Undeclared money should not be more important than
| people's votes.
| Svoka wrote:
| Building military is much much more expensive than paying
| influencers.
|
| Russian propaganda machine is incredibly strong, because it was
| perfected on their own citizens for basically century now. They
| spend billions on pure propaganda: - discrediting
| news agencies without actual reasons - cultivating "free
| thinkers" festering on real problems - offering variety of
| narratives and providing state sponsored falsehoods to justify
| them - overloading people with information to point where
| they don't care - generating so much outrageous (false and
| true) news that people spend all their attention on bogus -
| supporting 'nobody cares' atmosphere where people feel no agency
|
| While with military - they relied on propaganda as well. They
| projected power while not picking conflicts with anyone who can
| punch back.
|
| Ukraine appeared too big to swallow this time and everyone can
| see, that king is naked. Russian military is a sham compared to
| US. Like, incomparable to be honest. But problem is that
| propaganda is much stronger than military. So west made a mistake
| dismissing russia because of their weak corrupt military while
| being invaded by propaganda.
|
| West has nothing against russian propaganda machine and this is
| what truly terrifying to be honest.
| dtquad wrote:
| Something that makes the Russian propaganda machine so
| effective is that they have the multiple departments at Russian
| universities at their disposal to produce both international
| and domestic propaganda. The West is up against Russian
| propaganda refined by psychiatrists, psychologists,
| anthropologists etc.
|
| In the West the academias are contrarian. We are not used to
| adversaries that can put every single intelligent educated
| person in their country to work to undermine our countries.
| Dah00n wrote:
| >In the West the academias are contrarian
|
| Yet they have participated in tons of human experimentation
| in the US.
| joshdavham wrote:
| Isn't there still the possibility of beating the guy in the
| second round? Would that be more fair?
|
| (disclaimer: I'm a random Canadian on the internet who's out of
| the loop on this)
| isaacremuant wrote:
| Places like Reddit or HN are so funny considering the "red scare"
| attitude of "everyone who doesn't fall in line is a russian or
| influenced by Russia".
|
| We saw for year of Russiagate and now we see, every time, the
| same pro-NATO/pro-war propaganda and we're supposed to be fully
| xenophobic towards russians.
|
| "Fuck democracy when it doesn't suit me". The CIA would be proud.
| eximius wrote:
| I don't think anyone is advocating xenophobia towards
| _Russians_. However, skepticism towards stances known to be
| propagated by the _Russian government psyops groups_ meant to
| destabilize... well, just about anything they can... sure.
| tim333 wrote:
| >every time, the same pro-NATO/pro-war propaganda and we're
| supposed to be fully xenophobic towards russians
|
| They've done a fair bit of bad stuff beyond pro-NATO/pro-war
| propaganda.
| tlogan wrote:
| This seems to be exactly the outcome Russia desired: undermining
| the democratic process.
|
| It also sets a dangerous precedent, suggesting that anyone with
| sufficient resources can invalidate election results.
| morkalork wrote:
| Yes, any motivated bad actor with money, resources and willing
| or unwitting patsys can get an election invalidated. What is
| the alternative, turn a blind eye to it and disregard
| regulations for how elections should run? Why even have
| regulations at all if an election can never be invalidated?
| pessimizer wrote:
| I've gone through this entire comment thread, and I keep reading
| that voters were influenced by "false information," but nobody
| seems to mention what that false information is.
|
| "Tiktok", "right-wing", "Putin", "anti-NATO sentiment", "Iron
| Guard" and "Russia" isn't false information. Why are people
| repeating this over and over again? Has any Romanian in this
| thread asked someone who voted for the winner why they voted that
| way? Was there any lie involved, or do you just hate that they're
| allowed to vote?
|
| Trump won twice in the US by spending half the amount of his
| opponents. The internet now means that constant media saturation
| is infinitely less valuable, so elections aren't linear functions
| of the amount of donor cash. People can just choose the person
| they agree with. If he's the only anti-NATO candidate, and if for
| 25% of the population this is their main issue, why wouldn't he
| win?
|
| Feels to me like the goal is to restrict the amount of
| information people can get about candidates that will not be
| allowed to win, in favor of an array of candidates with identical
| opinions on the _important_ issues, but that come in a range of
| different colors and flavors.
| polotics wrote:
| Hello pessimizer! Please get yourself a few romanian tik-tok
| accounts, browse as a young man, and you will see what
| relentless propaganda has been produced. I am sorry this
| information, ie. the videos, are not widely available on the
| internet. (like most of the good useful information, if I may
| add)
| modzu wrote:
| did the bots vote???
|
| "influence operation"... we must keep influence operations out of
| politics LOL
| 9front wrote:
| It will take another generation or two for the Romanian commies
| to disappear. The majority of those in power, starting with
| Iohannis, the justices of the Romanian high court, and the rest
| of the parties grew up as young communist. It's hard to change
| their Marxist upbringing.
| tzs wrote:
| If ever there was a country that should be using ranked choice
| voting or something similar it is Romania.
|
| They had 14 candidates, with a lot of overlap in where they were
| on the left/right spectrum, and they use a "top 2 advance to the
| next round" system if nobody gets a majority in the first round.
|
| That's a situation that makes it fairly easy for candidates that
| are liked by a majority to get eliminated due to vote splitting,
| leaving a second round where a majority are not happy with either
| candidate.
| scrollaway wrote:
| From a European to many Americans here who feel the need to chime
| in with their ideas of what exactly democracy should be (when
| clearly, America itself doesn't have a clear clue what democracy
| actually is):
|
| Europe is a continent at war. We are being attacked both
| physically on our eastern front, and online in all countries.
| Russia is exploiting weaknesses in our systems and employing
| state sponsored propaganda to install pro-Russian sentiment
| through means that our own laws have trouble catching.
|
| It's not about whether it's 1 million euros vs. 360k vs 100
| million. It's about where this money is coming from. Who is using
| it, and exactly WHY they are doing so. The other candidates may
| or may not be shit, it's irrelevant, if a country that is
| attacking one of ours is putting its defence spending to use in
| OUR ELECTIONS.
|
| Kindly, ask yourself whether you are REALLY qualified to comment
| on who we should accept as the next people running countries that
| aren't yours, and deciding fates an ocean away from you.
|
| I notice similar sentiment from the US around election time.
| "What does Europe have to say about who we elect?" -- well, quite
| a bit considering your president decides a lot of our fates. But
| EU leaders have far less individual influence over yours.
|
| So, take a step back, and don't tell our people at war not to
| fight back.
|
| This is the new reality y'all ain't woken up to yet. It's not
| just Ukraine anymore. In fact it never was. I say this, having
| lost people there myself.
| tetnis wrote:
| thank you romania for saving democracy!
| ein0p wrote:
| That's a bold precedent to create, if nothing else. Let's see how
| it works for them in the future, when political winds start
| blowing in some other direction. These things _always_ backfire.
| tekkk wrote:
| I don't know what the big fuss is about. There are clearly rules
| in places that force you to declare your voting budgets and where
| the money comes from. Seems pretty clear. So saying you spent
| 0EUR and then have ads everywhere and _win_, is clearly illegal.
| In smaller scale, this could have been omitted but this is just
| blatant fraud.
|
| For people who say this undermines democracy, I think this is
| perfectly the opposite. We have rules in democracy that need to
| be followed. If he now declares he got the money from Russia and
| China or wherever and people still vote for him, so be it. He'll
| probably end up in 2nd round either way but it's good Romania
| shows that they are vigilant even though their people aren't
| necessarily that smart.
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| > There are clearly rules in places that force you to declare
| your voting budgets and where the money comes from. Seems
| pretty clear. So saying you spent 0EUR and then have ads
| everywhere and _win_, is clearly illegal.
|
| Is it though? It's entirely possible that people who wanted him
| to win purchased ads to support him, possibly without his
| consent. This happens in most countries, including the US. That
| doesn't mean he actually spent the money himself or had
| anything to do with the ads.
| tekkk wrote:
| Without his consent seems implausible. Clearly somebody has
| been coordinating it and he should have noticed this and done
| something. Pretending that it was all just coincidence is
| just bad faith.
|
| "And happens in most countries" is just a blanket statement.
| Major proportion is still declared and you dont just skate
| into presidential election 2nd round with 0EUR spent.
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| Why would he do something about it if it's helping him win?
|
| > "And happens in most countries" is just a blanket
| statement. Major proportion is still declared and you dont
| just skate into presidential election 2nd round with 0EUR
| spent.
|
| Are you kidding? In the 2024 election, super PACs spent
| $4.5 billion on helping one candidate or the other win, and
| the source of more than 50% of those funds is unknown. I
| don't think you can name a single democratic country where
| this doesn't happen.
|
| It's kind of funny how people are willing to shut down all
| critical thinking when they want to believe a particular
| thing.
| tekkk wrote:
| If a foreign, hostile country is helping you to win the
| election I think you ought to report it. I get if you are
| of the school that all that matters is winning and not
| how you do it, ethics aside, but setting a precedent that
| all is allowed is just dangerous. That's why I think it's
| great that there's new vote. I believe he might as well
| win again, but this time it's much more transparent
| what's behind it.
|
| > Are you kidding? In the 2024 election, super PACs spent
| $4.5 billion on helping one candidate or the other win,
| and the source of more than 50% of those funds is
| unknown. I don't think you can name a single democratic
| country where this doesn't happen.
|
| Yes, US the shining beacon of democratic process. But
| even in that system, there's a money trace--clear
| evidence who has spent and what amount. But since you are
| enthusiastic about it, can you analyze the Nordic systems
| as well?
|
| > It's kind of funny how people are willing to shut down
| all critical thinking when they want to believe a
| particular thing.
|
| To me the funny part is that you can't argue without
| trying to dismiss my point of view. I think you should
| evaluate your own critical thinking before critizing
| others.
|
| Look, I merely wanted to point out that it's good the
| interference was caught and put on display, probably the
| people will elect him to 2nd round nonetheless. I think
| he should be allowed to run of course, if that's why you
| are getting so worked up about this. It's clear the other
| parties probably try to out-maneuver him this time, but
| this might just as well help him.
| Dah00n wrote:
| > If he now declares he got the money ...
|
| He didn't pay for the ads. Others did or home printed them.
| rosmax_1337 wrote:
| I am gravely disappointed with all attempts of democratic
| government.
|
| "People" don't end up deciding, some small elite does instead,
| usually financial, but sometimes sociopolitical.
| (media/education/parties) The way Romania handles it is just as
| bad as more western countries, they just let their dictatorship
| moves slip up as more obvious. I would give examples about how
| more western countries are corrupt, but I don't think that's
| allowed on this site, pretty much making my point for me.
| kesor wrote:
| If there is a candidate that the globalist do not approve. Simply
| cancel the election. Easy.
| kesor wrote:
| A proper explanation of what is going on with all the propaganda
| outlets painting elections in the light they decide they want to
| paint it with. https://youtu.be/XTZ-V1z8C9o
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