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The United States is not Romania by any stretch of the imagination, but the political maneuvering you are seeing over there has been mirrored here and in more established EU countries quite a bit. 

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Romania has been in the midst of an election season, and its high court has been tossing candidates off the ballot and has now canceled the election altogether in order to prevent candidates claimed to be Russian-aligned from winning. 

I am no expert on Romanian politics, thank God, but even the barest familiarity with how RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA has been used to twist Western politics shows that the same tricks that have been used here and in Western Europe are being played out in Romania–even down to the claim that Russian posts on Facebook, TikTok, and Twitter so distort the minds of voters that their choices should be taken from them. 

I am no Putin fan–I think he is a tyrannical mafia boss-type thug–but I am not so deluded as to believe he is such a Svengali that he can hypnotize entire countries into voting for his chosen candidates. Yet that seems to be the position of our transnational elite, who control almost all the information flow in the West, but who claim to be helpless in challenging Putin’s influence. 

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Let’s assume that Russia is spending a million dollars on an influence campaign–implausible, given that the infamous Facebook campaign Russia supposedly used to swing the election to Donald Trump in 2016 cost a few hundred thousand dollars–the question is, “So what?” 

Political campaigns are the most watched events in any country, and even massive spending on ad campaigns has limited impacts because so much information flows and so much discussion takes place that anyone influence campaign has only limited impact. Ask Kamala Harris and her $2+ billion in spending to get her elected. 

Not to mention that every country tries to influence every other country’s elections. The US spends billions to influence public opinion abroad, and nobody bats an eye. This is not a Russian phenomenon–it is universal. 

In Romania the election is canceled because a Trump-loving populist looks likely to win, and many EU folks are cheering this on. In Germany, where elections are coming up because everybody hates the current German government, the political establishment is trying to ban the conservative AfD party before the vote. 

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In Great Britain, they are throwing people in jail for expressing opinions unpopular with the Establishment and going after social media companies for allowing people to say things the Establishment dislikes. They want to fine the companies for allowing speech even in other countries and even jail Elon Musk for allowing free speech on X. 

This is the technocracy at work, redefining the rules to ensure that no matter what people think, the technocrats always get their way. 

Lest you think Romania is a backwater and that this doesn’t matter, the country is a member of the European Union. And its high court just canceled an election because the wrong guy might win. 

The unexpected ruling risks destabilizing Romania, a strategically important NATO member of 19 million people on the eastern edge of the European Union.  

The shock win for Georgescu in the first round on Nov. 24 triggered widespread dismay among pro-Western centrists, and sparked demonstrations in central Bucharest. On Thursday night, thousands of pro-Europeans turned out to voice their support for maintaining the country’s international alliances. 

I have no doubt that foreign governments “interfere” in each other’s elections because that is what foreign governments do all the time. They try to persuade electorates to see things their way because it is in their interest to do so. Does anybody believe that EU countries weren’t trying to persuade Romanians to be on THEIR side? Of course they were. They would be stupid not to. 

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Democratic elections are conversations between competing viewpoints, and it is up to the public to sort out the good from the bad arguments. That Russia has an opinion about who should win is as surprising as anybody else having an opinion. 

Europe is sliding toward totalitarianism at a shocking rate. It’s not that its citizens don’t see that–many are trying to stop it, and that is why populists are gaining steam in electoral politics. 

Unfortunately, the transnational elite’s commitment to elections only extends to when they win them. Otherwise they work hard to rig the game.